Revolutions And Counter Revolutions

Unquestionably a watershed year in world history, 1917 not only saw the Russian Revolution and the US entry into World War I, it also marked a foundational moment in determining global political structures for the remaining twentieth century. Yet while contemporaries were cognizant of these global connections, historiography has been largely limited to analysis of the nation-state. A century later, this book discusses the transnational dimension of the numerous upheavals, rebellions, and violent reactions on a global level that began with 1917. Experts from different continents contribute findings that go beyond the well-known European and transatlantic narratives, making for a uniquely global study of this crucial period in history.

If anything characterizes our times, it is a sense of pervading chaos. In every field of human endeavor, the windstorms of change are fast altering the ways we live. Contemporary man is no longer anchored in certainties and thus has lost sight of who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. If there is a single book that can shed light amid the postmodern darkness, this is it.

Examines the Arab Spring, seen as a series counter-revolutions, rather than failed revolutions, in six Arab countries.

Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

1989 was one of the great Years of Revolution in history, and it was also the anniversary of many famous revolutions. As the world commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, startling changes were occuring in an Eastern Europe whose political map had been drawn in the aftermath of the Second World War, the revolutionary consequences of which could hardly be imagined at its outbreak fifty years before in 1939. Although few of us can have expected to see the revolutionary changes of 1989 in our lifetime, it remains to be seen whether history will judge all of the upheavals in Eastern Europe as 'revolutions', or whether some will be categorized in later centuries as 'revolts', 'coups', 'failed revolutions', or indeed 'counter-revolutions'. The distinguished contributors to this volume, published in the Wolfson College Lectures series, enjoy the advantage of historical perespective regarding past revolutions and counter-revolutions. Their papers present a wide-ranging analysis both of the concepts of revolution and counter-revolution, and of particular upheavals of vastly different character.

"The far right is on the rise globally, with the rhetoric of anger and resentment emanating from personalities like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Rodrigo Duterte, and Viktor Orban captivating and mobilizing large numbers of people. Indeed, in a number of countries, the extreme right has already captured the government or is on the threshold of power. While the swift turn of events has shocked or surprised many in the North, the extreme right's seizure of power is not an uncommon event in the South. Deploying what he calls the "dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution" and harnessing the methods of comparative history and comparative sociology, Walden Bello's Counterrevolution is a bold, sweeping enterprise that seeks to deconstruct the challenge from the far right. Using as case studies Italy in the 1920's, Indonesia in the 1960s', Chile in the 1970's, and contemporary Thailand, India, and the Philippines, Bello lays bare the origins, dynamics, and consequences of counterrevolutionary movements. Reflections on the rise of the right in the United States, Europe, and Brazil round out this remarkable, timely study by one of the premier intellectuals of the South. Bello weds his well-known analytical scalpel to vigorous and clear writing to produce what reviewers have already dubbed one of the most profound, exciting, and controversial contributions to the study of social movements in years, one that bears comparison to the classic works of Barrington Moore, Jr., and Theda Skocpol. While he is well known for his progressive views, Bello, who was a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (aka the Alternative Nobel Prize) and named the International Studies Association's Outstanding Public Scholar, is one of those rare analysts who does not let politics get in the way of clear-sighted analysis."--

The flow and counter flow of revolution and counterrevolution have become the norm of the twentieth century. In this fascinating and well-rounded volume, the author illuminates the revolutionary process as it has developed from antiquity to the present day, from the vantage points of political science, history, and sociology. Meisel's work is presented in the form of twelve absorbing episodes in the history of Western civilization. His remarkable for the detail with which he approaches a subject often difficult to define and even more difficult to explain. He suggests a new and highly useful perspective of history by viewing it as a process of revolution and counterrevolution and their transitional stages. As it is the nature of revolutions to fall short of their objectives and to enjoy only a brief heyday that becomes the stereotype accepted by posterity, the author emphasizes their antithetical closing phases--whose lessons posterity tends to forget. Meisel's belief is that second-echelon figures teach us more about the natural process of revolution than the atypical "men of destiny," and he illustrates his account with many portrayals of comparative unknowns who lived through all the stages of revolution and counterrevolution. But revolutions can also be aborted or be preceded by counterrevolutions, as Meisel demonstrates by enlightening analyses of Mussolini's coup d'utat, the origins of the Spanish Civil War, and General de Gaulle's defeat of a potential army insurrection in behalf of French Algeria. In this profound and wide-ranging work, Meisel achieves an admirable balance between theory, action, and biography. The result is a unique survey of revolutionary history, in which a sophisticated thinker provides on almost every page a deepening understanding of the problems of revolution for the scholar and student of political processes, political theory, and comparative politics. The reader with a lively interest in the modus operandi of history will also find this book compelling reading.

Can open society survive? Is Europe disintegrating? How to overcome the economic crisis? Will Europeans feel secure again? Counter Revolution is a bold attempt to make sense of the extraordinary events taking place in Europe today. It examines the counter-revolution developing in Europe, exploring its roots and implications. The book takes the form of a series of heartfelt letters to the late European guru Ralf Dahrendorf. Several months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dahrendorf wrote a book fashioned on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Like Burke, he chose to put his analysis in the form of a letter, reflecting on the implications of the turbulent period around 1989. Thirty years' later, and faced with an equally turbulent period, Jan Zielonka asks: what next? This is not a book on populism, however: it is a book about liberalism. Populism has become a favourite topic within liberal circles and few have exposed populist deceptions and dangers better than liberal writers. Yet, liberals have shown themselves better at finger-pointing than at self-reflection. This book addresses the imbalance; it is a self-critical book by a life-time liberal. Counter-Revolution suggests that Europe and its liberal project need to be reinvented and recreated. There is no simple way back. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel will not produce wonders. Europe failed to adjust to enormous geopolitical, economic, and technological changes that swept the continent over the past three decades. European models of democracy, capitalism, and integration are not in sync with new complex networks of cities, bankers, terrorists, or migrants. Liberal values that made Europe thrive for many decades have been betrayed. The escalation of emotions, myths, and ordinary lies left little space for reason, deliberation, and conciliation. This book examines these different aspects, proposing a way out of the labyrinth.