France 1848

The revolutions of 1848 have gotten renewed attention in light of this year's "Arab Spring" uprisings. (The amazing photo above depicts the barricades in Paris, 1848.) The parallels are obvious -- uprisings in a number of countries, similar grievances across countries, and a degree of cross-communication among the movements and leaders. And, of course, widespread optimism among progressives and activists about the prospects for fundamental social and political reform. The outcomes of 1848 were discouraging to progressives -- repression and authoritarian governments were usually successful in turning back the progressive tide. So one hopes that the prospects for democracy and equality are better in the MENA uprisings.

Particularly interesting, of course, is the example of France. So it is intriguing to look back at the causes and processes of demonstrations and resistance in May and June, 1848, in Paris and in other parts of the country. Roger Price's Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 (Documents in History Series) is worth reading for a number of reasons. First, it provides an astute analysis of the economic, social, and political situation of France in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the events that unfolded into the revolution of 1848. But second, it is a genuinely interesting book from an historiographical point of view. The analytical text takes up roughly 50 pages of an introductory essay. The remainder of the book consists of short extracts from primary documents of the period. The extracts are selected and ordered according to the author's conception of the factors and turning points that were historically central to the moment; so they constitute a narrative of an unusual kind. Price presents his analysis and framing of the events entirely through the extracts he provides; the participants tell the story.

Price's framing essay begins with the point that France was a backward country in the first part of the nineteenth century, compared to Britain. The population was overwhelmingly rural, the economy was primarily agricultural, and the infrastructure of roads and railroads was underdeveloped. Industry was in the most embryonic state of development, and markets were primarily local because of the weakness of the transport system.

The great weakness of the system, however, lay in its transport infrastructure. Communications by water and, particularly, road were slow and costly. Only the first unconnected lines of the future railway network had been constructed before the 1850s. (12)

And, unlike Britain, there were few signs of an emerging proletariat in large factories and industrial cities, along the lines of the Manchester documented decades earlier by Engels:

The typical French worker would be the artisan working in a small workshop rather than the factory worker. This was true in Paris, for example, where the majority found work in industries catering for the material needs of the population -- food, clothing, furniture and housing -- or in the typically Parisian luxury industries, all traditionally operating on a small scale. (18)

These factors had social consequences. Hunger in the countryside was a recurring possibility. Landlords and gentry had great power over the rural population. Social inequalities in both town and countryside were visible and extreme. And neither peasant nor urban worker had a strong social basis for resistance.

The contrast in the living standards of rich and poor that daily greeted the eyes of the urban populations, especially in the larger towns, was often extreme. For as long as such a contrast was felt to be inevitable, it could be accepted only with resignation, or with a resentment that might burst out in violence. But new ideas and the diffusion of a more critical outlook were bound to erode this attitude. (20)

At the same time as economic inequalities were increasing the power of a small sector of elites was increasing as well.

The grand notables -- landowners, financiers, major industrialists, but also politicians and administrators -- collaborated in extending their economic power and safeguarding their social and political authority. This was a group given unity not simply by shared material interests, but by an entire style of life. (23)

Of course it is clear that this is one particular framing of the historical episode, and another historian would have highlighted other issues and other turning points. So the book doesn't serve as a broad repository of documents, potentially relevant to many different interpretations; instead, the documents have been specifically selected to serve as waypoints on a particular path through Price's interpretation. That said, the documents are fascinating to read, from observations by elite participants, to government announcements, to confessions by activist leaders and followers.

Was this a social revolution? Some of the goals of the activists involved radical social transformation; but these goals were entirely unsuccessful. The balance between the propertied and the property-less did not change in any meaningful way. Was it more successful as a political revolution? Again, not really. Universal suffrage was established before the June repression; but what followed was autocratic rule and eventually the election of yet another dictator, Napoleon III. So it is hard to see that the revolution of 1848 in France had much effect on the conditions of freedom and well-being of the majority of the poor in France.

It would be very interesting to have a similar compilation of documents and framing social descriptions for Egypt, 2011. I'm sure that researchers and observers in Cairo have been collecting interviews, posters, and other kinds of documents that will shed more light on the social and political grievances offered by ordinary Egyptians as they participated in the demonstrations and collective resistance that led to the fall of Mubarak. And, likewise, it will be valuable to document the timeline of reaction by the state during these crucial several weeks, including repression, accommodation, and eventually capitulation by the ruling circles in favor of -- the army.

France 1848

The revolutions of 1848 have gotten renewed attention in light of this year's "Arab Spring" uprisings. (The amazing photo above depicts the barricades in Paris, 1848.) The parallels are obvious -- uprisings in a number of countries, similar grievances across countries, and a degree of cross-communication among the movements and leaders. And, of course, widespread optimism among progressives and activists about the prospects for fundamental social and political reform. The outcomes of 1848 were discouraging to progressives -- repression and authoritarian governments were usually successful in turning back the progressive tide. So one hopes that the prospects for democracy and equality are better in the MENA uprisings.

Particularly interesting, of course, is the example of France. So it is intriguing to look back at the causes and processes of demonstrations and resistance in May and June, 1848, in Paris and in other parts of the country. Roger Price's Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 (Documents in History Series) is worth reading for a number of reasons. First, it provides an astute analysis of the economic, social, and political situation of France in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the events that unfolded into the revolution of 1848. But second, it is a genuinely interesting book from an historiographical point of view. The analytical text takes up roughly 50 pages of an introductory essay. The remainder of the book consists of short extracts from primary documents of the period. The extracts are selected and ordered according to the author's conception of the factors and turning points that were historically central to the moment; so they constitute a narrative of an unusual kind. Price presents his analysis and framing of the events entirely through the extracts he provides; the participants tell the story.

Price's framing essay begins with the point that France was a backward country in the first part of the nineteenth century, compared to Britain. The population was overwhelmingly rural, the economy was primarily agricultural, and the infrastructure of roads and railroads was underdeveloped. Industry was in the most embryonic state of development, and markets were primarily local because of the weakness of the transport system.

The great weakness of the system, however, lay in its transport infrastructure. Communications by water and, particularly, road were slow and costly. Only the first unconnected lines of the future railway network had been constructed before the 1850s. (12)

And, unlike Britain, there were few signs of an emerging proletariat in large factories and industrial cities, along the lines of the Manchester documented decades earlier by Engels:

The typical French worker would be the artisan working in a small workshop rather than the factory worker. This was true in Paris, for example, where the majority found work in industries catering for the material needs of the population -- food, clothing, furniture and housing -- or in the typically Parisian luxury industries, all traditionally operating on a small scale. (18)

These factors had social consequences. Hunger in the countryside was a recurring possibility. Landlords and gentry had great power over the rural population. Social inequalities in both town and countryside were visible and extreme. And neither peasant nor urban worker had a strong social basis for resistance.

The contrast in the living standards of rich and poor that daily greeted the eyes of the urban populations, especially in the larger towns, was often extreme. For as long as such a contrast was felt to be inevitable, it could be accepted only with resignation, or with a resentment that might burst out in violence. But new ideas and the diffusion of a more critical outlook were bound to erode this attitude. (20)

At the same time as economic inequalities were increasing the power of a small sector of elites was increasing as well.

The grand notables -- landowners, financiers, major industrialists, but also politicians and administrators -- collaborated in extending their economic power and safeguarding their social and political authority. This was a group given unity not simply by shared material interests, but by an entire style of life. (23)

Of course it is clear that this is one particular framing of the historical episode, and another historian would have highlighted other issues and other turning points. So the book doesn't serve as a broad repository of documents, potentially relevant to many different interpretations; instead, the documents have been specifically selected to serve as waypoints on a particular path through Price's interpretation. That said, the documents are fascinating to read, from observations by elite participants, to government announcements, to confessions by activist leaders and followers.

Was this a social revolution? Some of the goals of the activists involved radical social transformation; but these goals were entirely unsuccessful. The balance between the propertied and the property-less did not change in any meaningful way. Was it more successful as a political revolution? Again, not really. Universal suffrage was established before the June repression; but what followed was autocratic rule and eventually the election of yet another dictator, Napoleon III. So it is hard to see that the revolution of 1848 in France had much effect on the conditions of freedom and well-being of the majority of the poor in France.

It would be very interesting to have a similar compilation of documents and framing social descriptions for Egypt, 2011. I'm sure that researchers and observers in Cairo have been collecting interviews, posters, and other kinds of documents that will shed more light on the social and political grievances offered by ordinary Egyptians as they participated in the demonstrations and collective resistance that led to the fall of Mubarak. And, likewise, it will be valuable to document the timeline of reaction by the state during these crucial several weeks, including repression, accommodation, and eventually capitulation by the ruling circles in favor of -- the army.

France 1848

The revolutions of 1848 have gotten renewed attention in light of this year's "Arab Spring" uprisings. (The amazing photo above depicts the barricades in Paris, 1848.) The parallels are obvious -- uprisings in a number of countries, similar grievances across countries, and a degree of cross-communication among the movements and leaders. And, of course, widespread optimism among progressives and activists about the prospects for fundamental social and political reform. The outcomes of 1848 were discouraging to progressives -- repression and authoritarian governments were usually successful in turning back the progressive tide. So one hopes that the prospects for democracy and equality are better in the MENA uprisings.

Particularly interesting, of course, is the example of France. So it is intriguing to look back at the causes and processes of demonstrations and resistance in May and June, 1848, in Paris and in other parts of the country. Roger Price's Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 (Documents in History Series) is worth reading for a number of reasons. First, it provides an astute analysis of the economic, social, and political situation of France in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the events that unfolded into the revolution of 1848. But second, it is a genuinely interesting book from an historiographical point of view. The analytical text takes up roughly 50 pages of an introductory essay. The remainder of the book consists of short extracts from primary documents of the period. The extracts are selected and ordered according to the author's conception of the factors and turning points that were historically central to the moment; so they constitute a narrative of an unusual kind. Price presents his analysis and framing of the events entirely through the extracts he provides; the participants tell the story.

Price's framing essay begins with the point that France was a backward country in the first part of the nineteenth century, compared to Britain. The population was overwhelmingly rural, the economy was primarily agricultural, and the infrastructure of roads and railroads was underdeveloped. Industry was in the most embryonic state of development, and markets were primarily local because of the weakness of the transport system.

The great weakness of the system, however, lay in its transport infrastructure. Communications by water and, particularly, road were slow and costly. Only the first unconnected lines of the future railway network had been constructed before the 1850s. (12)

And, unlike Britain, there were few signs of an emerging proletariat in large factories and industrial cities, along the lines of the Manchester documented decades earlier by Engels:

The typical French worker would be the artisan working in a small workshop rather than the factory worker. This was true in Paris, for example, where the majority found work in industries catering for the material needs of the population -- food, clothing, furniture and housing -- or in the typically Parisian luxury industries, all traditionally operating on a small scale. (18)

These factors had social consequences. Hunger in the countryside was a recurring possibility. Landlords and gentry had great power over the rural population. Social inequalities in both town and countryside were visible and extreme. And neither peasant nor urban worker had a strong social basis for resistance.

The contrast in the living standards of rich and poor that daily greeted the eyes of the urban populations, especially in the larger towns, was often extreme. For as long as such a contrast was felt to be inevitable, it could be accepted only with resignation, or with a resentment that might burst out in violence. But new ideas and the diffusion of a more critical outlook were bound to erode this attitude. (20)

At the same time as economic inequalities were increasing the power of a small sector of elites was increasing as well.

The grand notables -- landowners, financiers, major industrialists, but also politicians and administrators -- collaborated in extending their economic power and safeguarding their social and political authority. This was a group given unity not simply by shared material interests, but by an entire style of life. (23)

Of course it is clear that this is one particular framing of the historical episode, and another historian would have highlighted other issues and other turning points. So the book doesn't serve as a broad repository of documents, potentially relevant to many different interpretations; instead, the documents have been specifically selected to serve as waypoints on a particular path through Price's interpretation. That said, the documents are fascinating to read, from observations by elite participants, to government announcements, to confessions by activist leaders and followers.

Was this a social revolution? Some of the goals of the activists involved radical social transformation; but these goals were entirely unsuccessful. The balance between the propertied and the property-less did not change in any meaningful way. Was it more successful as a political revolution? Again, not really. Universal suffrage was established before the June repression; but what followed was autocratic rule and eventually the election of yet another dictator, Napoleon III. So it is hard to see that the revolution of 1848 in France had much effect on the conditions of freedom and well-being of the majority of the poor in France.

It would be very interesting to have a similar compilation of documents and framing social descriptions for Egypt, 2011. I'm sure that researchers and observers in Cairo have been collecting interviews, posters, and other kinds of documents that will shed more light on the social and political grievances offered by ordinary Egyptians as they participated in the demonstrations and collective resistance that led to the fall of Mubarak. And, likewise, it will be valuable to document the timeline of reaction by the state during these crucial several weeks, including repression, accommodation, and eventually capitulation by the ruling circles in favor of -- the army.

England's Glorious Revolution

Earlier posts have remarked upon the interesting fact that large historical events are often significantly reconsidered and re-understood through the passage of time.  China's Cultural Revolution is one such example (link), as are the revolutions of 1848 (link).

A truly stunning example of this kind of historical recasting of something that we think we've fully understood is Steve Pincus's 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Pincus sets up his argument beautifully: there has been a dominant and eventually unquestioned narrative about the English Revolution of 1688-89, and in detail and in broad outline -- this narrative is incorrect. Here is the thrust of the standard story:

According to this dominant story,

The revolution was unrevolutionary. Unlike other subsequent revolutions, England's revolution was bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all sensible. The English had no desire to transform their polity, their society, or their culture. Instead they worried that James II had intended to do just that. Second, the revolution was Protestant. James II had tried to reinstitute Catholicism in England. The revolution insured that England would remain a Protestant polity. Third, the revolution demonstrated the fundamentally exceptional nature of English national character.... Fourth, there could have been no social grievances undergirding the Revolution of 1688-89 because English society had changed little in the modern world. (kindle loc 134)

According to Pincus, this account fundamentally misrepresents the nature of the transformation that 1688 represented in English history, and it defines the scope of the historical question incorrectly in profoundly misleading ways. Pincus wants to tell a more accurate and revealing story; and he also wants to provide a political historiography that attempts to explain how these misrepresentations have come to define the dominant view of this revolution -- the political ins and outs of Establishment Whigs, Conservatives, and Opposition Whigs in the ensuing century and a half of debate and historical interpretation.

His own approach to the historical problem is to start over: to reassess the materials and archives that exist today that allow the historian to gain fragmentary glimpses into the complex social reality that 1688 represented.  As he points out, there are substantial materials available today that were not available in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries when the master narrative was pieced together.  But he also observes that even materials available to Macaulay and Trevelyan can be read to a very different conclusion from those drawn by the eighteenth and nineteenth century historians.

Pincus's interpretation disagrees with the standard narrative in every major respect. First, he believes that the English Revolution was "the first modern revolution" -- the result of conflicts created by the process of state modernization that James II had undertaken. Second, he believes that the English Revolution was fundamentally located within a European context -- not a purely sui generis English affair.

The Revolution of 1688-89 is important not because it reaffirmed the exceptional English national character but because it was a landmark moment in the emergence of the modern state. (kindle loc 184)

Just as in the French and Russian Revolutions, there was extensive and violent crowd activity. And just as in other modern revolutions, the revolutionary events resulted not in consensus and compromise but in deep ideological cleavages. (kindle loc 3450)

Third, fourth, and fifth, Pincus refutes the idea that the revolution was "bloodless, aristocratic, and consensual". He documents that mass mobilization and violence were just as striking in England, Scotland, and Ireland as in the first year of the French Revolution (chapter 9), that segments from all levels of society were actively involved in these conflicts (chapter 8), and that the Revolution and its aftermath involved deep and abiding disagreements about the directions that the English state and society should take (chapter 10).  So -- not bloodless, not aristocratic, and not consensual.

Instead Pincus tells a new story:

In this book, then, I retell the story of the Glorious Revolution, but I retell it in significantly new ways.  Instead of a story of triumphant English exceptionalism emphasizing the far-seeing actions of a few men, I tell a story about a wide range of actors reacting not only to developments in English high politics and in the English church but to changes in society, in the economy, and on the broader European scene. (kindle loc 210)

The Revolution of 1688-89, then, like all modern revolutions, was a struggle ultimately waged between two competing groups of modernizers. The revolution did not pit defenders of traditional society against advocates of modernity. Both Whigs and Jacobites were modernizers. It was the Tories who wished to defend a version of the old order. The Tories were placed in the unpalatable position of having to choose between two very imperfect political outcomes. (kindle loc 7542)

So how is it that a great historical event could be so fundamentally mis-construed and mis-remembered? Pincus refers to a number of factors that have distorted the historical understanding of the English Revolution over intervening centuries. One is an English belief in "English exceptionalism." There was a powerful desire on the part of English intellectuals -- for example, Burke and Hume -- to see England as being very different from France -- more civil, more consensual, and more constitutional.  Second is the intellectual framework of "revolution as conflict between a decaying traditional state and a challenging modernist opponent" (see an earlier post on this conception of revolution).  This led historians to narrow the focus of the events they highlighted, and to give primacy in their accounts to the debates and positions of the great figures inside and outside of government.

Third and most important is a feature of English political ideology, as expressed in the political conflicts between Tory and Whig parties and between establishment and opposition Whigs.

Walpole and his political allies now claimed that the revolution had instantiated parliamentary rather than popular sovereignty and that it had established a constitution rather than a blueprint for further reform. (kindle loc 310)  

Opposition Whigs insisted that the revolution's principles should continue to drive a reformist agenda. In short, by the 1720s the establishment Whigs were emphasizing the immediate tyrannical causes of the events of 1688-89, whereas the Opposition Whigs were highlighting long-term structural causes and the revolutionary consequences of 1688-89. (kindle loc 394)

The works of Burke, Macaulay, and Trevelyan reasserted the establishment Whig interpretation of the revolution. ... Their interpretations became hegemonic not because they had uncovered new, irrefutable historical evidence but because in the face of contemporary political events their interpretative opponents had abandoned the field. .... Burke, Macaulay, and Trevelyan did not so much refute the arguments of the Opposition Whigs as assume that in the contemporary political climate their claims were irrelevant. (kindle loc 470)

These passages perhaps represent the key to Pincus's own perspective on the English Revolution -- we might argue that the book contributes to an unfettered "Opposition Whig" account of the revolution. And Pincus seems to support this interpretation: "It is now time to find answers to the questions that the Opposition Whigs raised in the eighteenth century" (kindle loc 503).

So we have the makings of a partial answer to the historiographic question -- why did several generations of historians so badly misunderstand the nature of the English Revolution? Ideology played a role; mental frameworks about "being English" played a role; and concrete political conflicts about what the state should do played a role. And, of course, these sorts of factors are still with us.

England's Glorious Revolution

Earlier posts have remarked upon the interesting fact that large historical events are often significantly reconsidered and re-understood through the passage of time.  China's Cultural Revolution is one such example (link), as are the revolutions of 1848 (link).

A truly stunning example of this kind of historical recasting of something that we think we've fully understood is Steve Pincus's 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Pincus sets up his argument beautifully: there has been a dominant and eventually unquestioned narrative about the English Revolution of 1688-89, and in detail and in broad outline -- this narrative is incorrect. Here is the thrust of the standard story:

According to this dominant story,

The revolution was unrevolutionary. Unlike other subsequent revolutions, England's revolution was bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all sensible. The English had no desire to transform their polity, their society, or their culture. Instead they worried that James II had intended to do just that. Second, the revolution was Protestant. James II had tried to reinstitute Catholicism in England. The revolution insured that England would remain a Protestant polity. Third, the revolution demonstrated the fundamentally exceptional nature of English national character.... Fourth, there could have been no social grievances undergirding the Revolution of 1688-89 because English society had changed little in the modern world. (kindle loc 134)

According to Pincus, this account fundamentally misrepresents the nature of the transformation that 1688 represented in English history, and it defines the scope of the historical question incorrectly in profoundly misleading ways. Pincus wants to tell a more accurate and revealing story; and he also wants to provide a political historiography that attempts to explain how these misrepresentations have come to define the dominant view of this revolution -- the political ins and outs of Establishment Whigs, Conservatives, and Opposition Whigs in the ensuing century and a half of debate and historical interpretation.

His own approach to the historical problem is to start over: to reassess the materials and archives that exist today that allow the historian to gain fragmentary glimpses into the complex social reality that 1688 represented.  As he points out, there are substantial materials available today that were not available in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries when the master narrative was pieced together.  But he also observes that even materials available to Macaulay and Trevelyan can be read to a very different conclusion from those drawn by the eighteenth and nineteenth century historians.

Pincus's interpretation disagrees with the standard narrative in every major respect. First, he believes that the English Revolution was "the first modern revolution" -- the result of conflicts created by the process of state modernization that James II had undertaken. Second, he believes that the English Revolution was fundamentally located within a European context -- not a purely sui generis English affair.

The Revolution of 1688-89 is important not because it reaffirmed the exceptional English national character but because it was a landmark moment in the emergence of the modern state. (kindle loc 184)

Just as in the French and Russian Revolutions, there was extensive and violent crowd activity. And just as in other modern revolutions, the revolutionary events resulted not in consensus and compromise but in deep ideological cleavages. (kindle loc 3450)

Third, fourth, and fifth, Pincus refutes the idea that the revolution was "bloodless, aristocratic, and consensual". He documents that mass mobilization and violence were just as striking in England, Scotland, and Ireland as in the first year of the French Revolution (chapter 9), that segments from all levels of society were actively involved in these conflicts (chapter 8), and that the Revolution and its aftermath involved deep and abiding disagreements about the directions that the English state and society should take (chapter 10).  So -- not bloodless, not aristocratic, and not consensual.

Instead Pincus tells a new story:

In this book, then, I retell the story of the Glorious Revolution, but I retell it in significantly new ways.  Instead of a story of triumphant English exceptionalism emphasizing the far-seeing actions of a few men, I tell a story about a wide range of actors reacting not only to developments in English high politics and in the English church but to changes in society, in the economy, and on the broader European scene. (kindle loc 210)

The Revolution of 1688-89, then, like all modern revolutions, was a struggle ultimately waged between two competing groups of modernizers. The revolution did not pit defenders of traditional society against advocates of modernity. Both Whigs and Jacobites were modernizers. It was the Tories who wished to defend a version of the old order. The Tories were placed in the unpalatable position of having to choose between two very imperfect political outcomes. (kindle loc 7542)

So how is it that a great historical event could be so fundamentally mis-construed and mis-remembered? Pincus refers to a number of factors that have distorted the historical understanding of the English Revolution over intervening centuries. One is an English belief in "English exceptionalism." There was a powerful desire on the part of English intellectuals -- for example, Burke and Hume -- to see England as being very different from France -- more civil, more consensual, and more constitutional.  Second is the intellectual framework of "revolution as conflict between a decaying traditional state and a challenging modernist opponent" (see an earlier post on this conception of revolution).  This led historians to narrow the focus of the events they highlighted, and to give primacy in their accounts to the debates and positions of the great figures inside and outside of government.

Third and most important is a feature of English political ideology, as expressed in the political conflicts between Tory and Whig parties and between establishment and opposition Whigs.

Walpole and his political allies now claimed that the revolution had instantiated parliamentary rather than popular sovereignty and that it had established a constitution rather than a blueprint for further reform. (kindle loc 310)  

Opposition Whigs insisted that the revolution's principles should continue to drive a reformist agenda. In short, by the 1720s the establishment Whigs were emphasizing the immediate tyrannical causes of the events of 1688-89, whereas the Opposition Whigs were highlighting long-term structural causes and the revolutionary consequences of 1688-89. (kindle loc 394)

The works of Burke, Macaulay, and Trevelyan reasserted the establishment Whig interpretation of the revolution. ... Their interpretations became hegemonic not because they had uncovered new, irrefutable historical evidence but because in the face of contemporary political events their interpretative opponents had abandoned the field. .... Burke, Macaulay, and Trevelyan did not so much refute the arguments of the Opposition Whigs as assume that in the contemporary political climate their claims were irrelevant. (kindle loc 470)

These passages perhaps represent the key to Pincus's own perspective on the English Revolution -- we might argue that the book contributes to an unfettered "Opposition Whig" account of the revolution. And Pincus seems to support this interpretation: "It is now time to find answers to the questions that the Opposition Whigs raised in the eighteenth century" (kindle loc 503).

So we have the makings of a partial answer to the historiographic question -- why did several generations of historians so badly misunderstand the nature of the English Revolution? Ideology played a role; mental frameworks about "being English" played a role; and concrete political conflicts about what the state should do played a role. And, of course, these sorts of factors are still with us.

England's Glorious Revolution

Earlier posts have remarked upon the interesting fact that large historical events are often significantly reconsidered and re-understood through the passage of time.  China's Cultural Revolution is one such example (link), as are the revolutions of 1848 (link).

A truly stunning example of this kind of historical recasting of something that we think we've fully understood is Steve Pincus's 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Pincus sets up his argument beautifully: there has been a dominant and eventually unquestioned narrative about the English Revolution of 1688-89, and in detail and in broad outline -- this narrative is incorrect. Here is the thrust of the standard story:

According to this dominant story,

The revolution was unrevolutionary. Unlike other subsequent revolutions, England's revolution was bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all sensible. The English had no desire to transform their polity, their society, or their culture. Instead they worried that James II had intended to do just that. Second, the revolution was Protestant. James II had tried to reinstitute Catholicism in England. The revolution insured that England would remain a Protestant polity. Third, the revolution demonstrated the fundamentally exceptional nature of English national character.... Fourth, there could have been no social grievances undergirding the Revolution of 1688-89 because English society had changed little in the modern world. (kindle loc 134)

According to Pincus, this account fundamentally misrepresents the nature of the transformation that 1688 represented in English history, and it defines the scope of the historical question incorrectly in profoundly misleading ways. Pincus wants to tell a more accurate and revealing story; and he also wants to provide a political historiography that attempts to explain how these misrepresentations have come to define the dominant view of this revolution -- the political ins and outs of Establishment Whigs, Conservatives, and Opposition Whigs in the ensuing century and a half of debate and historical interpretation.

His own approach to the historical problem is to start over: to reassess the materials and archives that exist today that allow the historian to gain fragmentary glimpses into the complex social reality that 1688 represented.  As he points out, there are substantial materials available today that were not available in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries when the master narrative was pieced together.  But he also observes that even materials available to Macaulay and Trevelyan can be read to a very different conclusion from those drawn by the eighteenth and nineteenth century historians.

Pincus's interpretation disagrees with the standard narrative in every major respect. First, he believes that the English Revolution was "the first modern revolution" -- the result of conflicts created by the process of state modernization that James II had undertaken. Second, he believes that the English Revolution was fundamentally located within a European context -- not a purely sui generis English affair.

The Revolution of 1688-89 is important not because it reaffirmed the exceptional English national character but because it was a landmark moment in the emergence of the modern state. (kindle loc 184)

Just as in the French and Russian Revolutions, there was extensive and violent crowd activity. And just as in other modern revolutions, the revolutionary events resulted not in consensus and compromise but in deep ideological cleavages. (kindle loc 3450)

Third, fourth, and fifth, Pincus refutes the idea that the revolution was "bloodless, aristocratic, and consensual". He documents that mass mobilization and violence were just as striking in England, Scotland, and Ireland as in the first year of the French Revolution (chapter 9), that segments from all levels of society were actively involved in these conflicts (chapter 8), and that the Revolution and its aftermath involved deep and abiding disagreements about the directions that the English state and society should take (chapter 10).  So -- not bloodless, not aristocratic, and not consensual.

Instead Pincus tells a new story:

In this book, then, I retell the story of the Glorious Revolution, but I retell it in significantly new ways.  Instead of a story of triumphant English exceptionalism emphasizing the far-seeing actions of a few men, I tell a story about a wide range of actors reacting not only to developments in English high politics and in the English church but to changes in society, in the economy, and on the broader European scene. (kindle loc 210)

The Revolution of 1688-89, then, like all modern revolutions, was a struggle ultimately waged between two competing groups of modernizers. The revolution did not pit defenders of traditional society against advocates of modernity. Both Whigs and Jacobites were modernizers. It was the Tories who wished to defend a version of the old order. The Tories were placed in the unpalatable position of having to choose between two very imperfect political outcomes. (kindle loc 7542)

So how is it that a great historical event could be so fundamentally mis-construed and mis-remembered? Pincus refers to a number of factors that have distorted the historical understanding of the English Revolution over intervening centuries. One is an English belief in "English exceptionalism." There was a powerful desire on the part of English intellectuals -- for example, Burke and Hume -- to see England as being very different from France -- more civil, more consensual, and more constitutional.  Second is the intellectual framework of "revolution as conflict between a decaying traditional state and a challenging modernist opponent" (see an earlier post on this conception of revolution).  This led historians to narrow the focus of the events they highlighted, and to give primacy in their accounts to the debates and positions of the great figures inside and outside of government.

Third and most important is a feature of English political ideology, as expressed in the political conflicts between Tory and Whig parties and between establishment and opposition Whigs.

Walpole and his political allies now claimed that the revolution had instantiated parliamentary rather than popular sovereignty and that it had established a constitution rather than a blueprint for further reform. (kindle loc 310)  

Opposition Whigs insisted that the revolution's principles should continue to drive a reformist agenda. In short, by the 1720s the establishment Whigs were emphasizing the immediate tyrannical causes of the events of 1688-89, whereas the Opposition Whigs were highlighting long-term structural causes and the revolutionary consequences of 1688-89. (kindle loc 394)

The works of Burke, Macaulay, and Trevelyan reasserted the establishment Whig interpretation of the revolution. ... Their interpretations became hegemonic not because they had uncovered new, irrefutable historical evidence but because in the face of contemporary political events their interpretative opponents had abandoned the field. .... Burke, Macaulay, and Trevelyan did not so much refute the arguments of the Opposition Whigs as assume that in the contemporary political climate their claims were irrelevant. (kindle loc 470)

These passages perhaps represent the key to Pincus's own perspective on the English Revolution -- we might argue that the book contributes to an unfettered "Opposition Whig" account of the revolution. And Pincus seems to support this interpretation: "It is now time to find answers to the questions that the Opposition Whigs raised in the eighteenth century" (kindle loc 503).

So we have the makings of a partial answer to the historiographic question -- why did several generations of historians so badly misunderstand the nature of the English Revolution? Ideology played a role; mental frameworks about "being English" played a role; and concrete political conflicts about what the state should do played a role. And, of course, these sorts of factors are still with us.

New thinking about the Red Guards

Andrew Walder has spent almost all of his academic life, on and off, studying the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  In Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009) he offers some genuinely new insights into this crucial and chaotic period of China's revolutionary history.  Some historians have focused on the political motivations of Mao and other top leaders in the party; others have examined the economic and social cleavages that existed in China only a decade and a half into its Communist Revolution.  Walder is interested in a much more grass-roots question: what were the motivations, calculations, and states of mind of the "foot soldiers" of the CR, the Red Guards in the earliest years of the upheavals?  And why did the political activism of the CR devolve almost inevitably into intense factionalism between groups whose ideologies seemed virtually indistinguishable -- loyalty to Mao, defense of the revolution, attacks on treacherous leaders?  Walder is a political sociologist, and he wants to understand the dynamics of mobilization and affiliation that led to the group violence and inter-group factionalism in the early years of this period.

Here is an example of the kind of factionalism that most interests Walder:

Chapter 8 examines the puzzling disintegration of the rebel movement in January 1967, soon after the decisive victory over its opponents.  Why did the victorious rebel coalition rapidly split into two opposing camps?  In their earlier attacks on ministries and commissions, rebels stayed within separate bureaucratic hierarchies.  Work teams were dispatched down these hierarchies to the schools under them, and the pursuit of work teams led rebels directly back up this hierarchy to the ministry or commission that sent them.  When these rebels moved to seize power in national and municipal agencies, however, they crossed into different bureaucratic hierarchies.  Rebel groups from different schools who went to the same organs of power turned quickly from allies into competitors.  These competitive rivalries were exacerbated by deep splits that had earlier developed among rebel forces in the two largest and most important campuses, Beijing and Quinghua universities.  The splits at Beida and Qinghua served as a wedge to divide rebel forces citywide, as factions of different schools aligned themselves with one or another faction at these two large campuses.  The resulting split between "Heaven" and "Earth" factions crippled the student movement and frustrated the CCRG until the very end. (26-27)

Walder suggests that earlier scholars have sought to understand the motivations and factions of China's young people in terms of the class position of the participants and the pervasive political indoctrination of youth that had been ubiquitous in the 1950s and 1960s.  Factions existed, according to this line of thought, either because different groups had different interests, or they had different political theories and ideologies ("conservative" and "radical").  Walder finds these explanations unsatisfactory, since they apply equally to both sides in all the factions -- and so he wants to identify some other feature of the political landscape that would explain the behavior and the factionalization.  And, unlike the scholars of the 1970s and 1980s who had to largely speculate about these issues, Walder takes advantage of primary sources that allow the researcher to get a great deal of information about the participants in their own words, and in their relationships to other activists.

Walder also questions the relevance of the core assumptions of social mobilization theory for the Cultural Revolution -- the idea that social movements need to be understood in terms of grievances, resources, and the state's ability to resist group demands.  Fundamentally his objection is that this theory doesn't help to explain the early months of the Cultural Revolution because all the postulated conditions were present in 1966, and mobilization did in fact occur (14).  But it occurred in a very distinctive way that resource mobilization theory seems not to prove a basis for explaining -- the constant fissioning of a group of activists into two or more factions, bitterly opposed to each other.  It appears, then, that resource mobilization theory lacks the tools necessary to explain this specific pattern of mobilization -- radicalization followed by bitter factionalism.

Walder's explanation is a novel one.  He argues that factionalization was a consequence, not of class differences or ideological disagreements between individuals, but simply of the early choices that various individuals made early in the period.  A central feature of this period was the fact of denunciation -- denouncing past or current leaders for disloyalty to the revolution or other ideological errors.  And these denunciations within the universities were highly consequential: "by mid-July 55 percent of all university party first secretaries and 40 percent of all general branch secretaries had been labeled anti-party reactionaries and placed in category 4" (57).  The rapid proliferation of denunciations meant that persons close to the denounced leader needed to decide -- should they join the denunciation or should they refrain?  The work teams that were sent into Beijing's elite universities in June 1966 (Peking University, to begin with) were forced to make choices in light of radical students' denunciation of top university officials; lower officials had to make similar choices; and activist student leaders had to decide whether to support or oppose the activities of the work teams.  And, Walder argues, this choice was fateful and enduring.  It meant that the individual would be shunted into this group or that group, with further decisions cementing the affinity with the group.

Another way of stating the argument is that factional identities and the common interests that define them are the product of political interactions rooted in specific contexts whose properties must be researched, not simply assumed.  Individual decisions -- to join factions, to oppose or support a work team -- are not the product of prior socialization or social ties but are actdively shaped by political encounters.  The focus is on the interactions that generate choices and outcomes, not the prior statuses of individuals or their preexisting social and political ties. These processes determine when prior social statuses or network ties are activated in a conflict, and when they are not. (13)

In other words, Walder argues that the fact of pervasive factionalization in the Cultural Revolution does not reflect fundamental underlying disagreements or contradictions between the factions; it does not reflect prior sociological distinctions among the participants; but rather reflects the emergence of separate networks of political affiliation from which there was no exit.

Chapter 3 describes how the work teams split university power structures into warring factions, with a focus on the issues that bred conflict between work teams and militant students.  Only in rare and fleeting circumstances were the issues of contention about attacks on the incumbent power structure -- a question that might distinguish "conservative" from "radical" political orientations.  Instead, they were usually about the work team's authority over student actions and the physical control of officials held for interrogation, and about heavy-handed work-team punishment of students who proved hard to control. (24)

This is a fascinating micro-sociology of a crucial span of a few months of violent upheaval in a single city.  It helps to explain a particularly pervasive feature of a broad and chaotic period of political unrest in China -- the constant factionalism that occurred at virtually every level of conflict.  It introduces an innovative model of political behavior (path-dependent choices by individuals leading to a durable configuration of political affiliations).  And it provides a new avenue through which the methods of network analysis can be fruitfully used to explain complex social processes.  It is a valuable contribution to the new wave of scholarship that is currently underway about the Cultural Revolution.  (Other contributions to this new scholarship are included in Esherick, Pickowitz, and Walder, eds., China's Cultural Revolution As History.)

A side note, not crucial to Walder's argument but interesting nonetheless, is the apparently simple question of when the Cultural Revolution took place.  It is conventional by many historians to date the CR to the years 1966-1976.  In 1966 the Red Guard movement erupted with wall posters and virulent activism in Beijing, among high school and university students.  And in 1976 Mao died, the Gang of Four were arrested, and the disruptions of the decade were decisively put aside.  But Walder dates the CR to a much shorter period, 1966-68, beginning with the same Red Guard explosion that occurred in 1966 but ending in 1968 when Mao unleased the military to put down the radical activists: "Not until August 1968 were the flames of China's Cultural revolution extinguished by the imposition of a harsh regime of martial law" (1).

New thinking about the Red Guards

Andrew Walder has spent almost all of his academic life, on and off, studying the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  In Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009) he offers some genuinely new insights into this crucial and chaotic period of China's revolutionary history.  Some historians have focused on the political motivations of Mao and other top leaders in the party; others have examined the economic and social cleavages that existed in China only a decade and a half into its Communist Revolution.  Walder is interested in a much more grass-roots question: what were the motivations, calculations, and states of mind of the "foot soldiers" of the CR, the Red Guards in the earliest years of the upheavals?  And why did the political activism of the CR devolve almost inevitably into intense factionalism between groups whose ideologies seemed virtually indistinguishable -- loyalty to Mao, defense of the revolution, attacks on treacherous leaders?  Walder is a political sociologist, and he wants to understand the dynamics of mobilization and affiliation that led to the group violence and inter-group factionalism in the early years of this period.

Here is an example of the kind of factionalism that most interests Walder:

Chapter 8 examines the puzzling disintegration of the rebel movement in January 1967, soon after the decisive victory over its opponents.  Why did the victorious rebel coalition rapidly split into two opposing camps?  In their earlier attacks on ministries and commissions, rebels stayed within separate bureaucratic hierarchies.  Work teams were dispatched down these hierarchies to the schools under them, and the pursuit of work teams led rebels directly back up this hierarchy to the ministry or commission that sent them.  When these rebels moved to seize power in national and municipal agencies, however, they crossed into different bureaucratic hierarchies.  Rebel groups from different schools who went to the same organs of power turned quickly from allies into competitors.  These competitive rivalries were exacerbated by deep splits that had earlier developed among rebel forces in the two largest and most important campuses, Beijing and Quinghua universities.  The splits at Beida and Qinghua served as a wedge to divide rebel forces citywide, as factions of different schools aligned themselves with one or another faction at these two large campuses.  The resulting split between "Heaven" and "Earth" factions crippled the student movement and frustrated the CCRG until the very end. (26-27)

Walder suggests that earlier scholars have sought to understand the motivations and factions of China's young people in terms of the class position of the participants and the pervasive political indoctrination of youth that had been ubiquitous in the 1950s and 1960s.  Factions existed, according to this line of thought, either because different groups had different interests, or they had different political theories and ideologies ("conservative" and "radical").  Walder finds these explanations unsatisfactory, since they apply equally to both sides in all the factions -- and so he wants to identify some other feature of the political landscape that would explain the behavior and the factionalization.  And, unlike the scholars of the 1970s and 1980s who had to largely speculate about these issues, Walder takes advantage of primary sources that allow the researcher to get a great deal of information about the participants in their own words, and in their relationships to other activists.

Walder also questions the relevance of the core assumptions of social mobilization theory for the Cultural Revolution -- the idea that social movements need to be understood in terms of grievances, resources, and the state's ability to resist group demands.  Fundamentally his objection is that this theory doesn't help to explain the early months of the Cultural Revolution because all the postulated conditions were present in 1966, and mobilization did in fact occur (14).  But it occurred in a very distinctive way that resource mobilization theory seems not to prove a basis for explaining -- the constant fissioning of a group of activists into two or more factions, bitterly opposed to each other.  It appears, then, that resource mobilization theory lacks the tools necessary to explain this specific pattern of mobilization -- radicalization followed by bitter factionalism.

Walder's explanation is a novel one.  He argues that factionalization was a consequence, not of class differences or ideological disagreements between individuals, but simply of the early choices that various individuals made early in the period.  A central feature of this period was the fact of denunciation -- denouncing past or current leaders for disloyalty to the revolution or other ideological errors.  And these denunciations within the universities were highly consequential: "by mid-July 55 percent of all university party first secretaries and 40 percent of all general branch secretaries had been labeled anti-party reactionaries and placed in category 4" (57).  The rapid proliferation of denunciations meant that persons close to the denounced leader needed to decide -- should they join the denunciation or should they refrain?  The work teams that were sent into Beijing's elite universities in June 1966 (Peking University, to begin with) were forced to make choices in light of radical students' denunciation of top university officials; lower officials had to make similar choices; and activist student leaders had to decide whether to support or oppose the activities of the work teams.  And, Walder argues, this choice was fateful and enduring.  It meant that the individual would be shunted into this group or that group, with further decisions cementing the affinity with the group.

Another way of stating the argument is that factional identities and the common interests that define them are the product of political interactions rooted in specific contexts whose properties must be researched, not simply assumed.  Individual decisions -- to join factions, to oppose or support a work team -- are not the product of prior socialization or social ties but are actdively shaped by political encounters.  The focus is on the interactions that generate choices and outcomes, not the prior statuses of individuals or their preexisting social and political ties. These processes determine when prior social statuses or network ties are activated in a conflict, and when they are not. (13)

In other words, Walder argues that the fact of pervasive factionalization in the Cultural Revolution does not reflect fundamental underlying disagreements or contradictions between the factions; it does not reflect prior sociological distinctions among the participants; but rather reflects the emergence of separate networks of political affiliation from which there was no exit.

Chapter 3 describes how the work teams split university power structures into warring factions, with a focus on the issues that bred conflict between work teams and militant students.  Only in rare and fleeting circumstances were the issues of contention about attacks on the incumbent power structure -- a question that might distinguish "conservative" from "radical" political orientations.  Instead, they were usually about the work team's authority over student actions and the physical control of officials held for interrogation, and about heavy-handed work-team punishment of students who proved hard to control. (24)

This is a fascinating micro-sociology of a crucial span of a few months of violent upheaval in a single city.  It helps to explain a particularly pervasive feature of a broad and chaotic period of political unrest in China -- the constant factionalism that occurred at virtually every level of conflict.  It introduces an innovative model of political behavior (path-dependent choices by individuals leading to a durable configuration of political affiliations).  And it provides a new avenue through which the methods of network analysis can be fruitfully used to explain complex social processes.  It is a valuable contribution to the new wave of scholarship that is currently underway about the Cultural Revolution.  (Other contributions to this new scholarship are included in Esherick, Pickowitz, and Walder, eds., China's Cultural Revolution As History.)

A side note, not crucial to Walder's argument but interesting nonetheless, is the apparently simple question of when the Cultural Revolution took place.  It is conventional by many historians to date the CR to the years 1966-1976.  In 1966 the Red Guard movement erupted with wall posters and virulent activism in Beijing, among high school and university students.  And in 1976 Mao died, the Gang of Four were arrested, and the disruptions of the decade were decisively put aside.  But Walder dates the CR to a much shorter period, 1966-68, beginning with the same Red Guard explosion that occurred in 1966 but ending in 1968 when Mao unleased the military to put down the radical activists: "Not until August 1968 were the flames of China's Cultural revolution extinguished by the imposition of a harsh regime of martial law" (1).

New thinking about the Red Guards

Andrew Walder has spent almost all of his academic life, on and off, studying the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  In Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009) he offers some genuinely new insights into this crucial and chaotic period of China's revolutionary history.  Some historians have focused on the political motivations of Mao and other top leaders in the party; others have examined the economic and social cleavages that existed in China only a decade and a half into its Communist Revolution.  Walder is interested in a much more grass-roots question: what were the motivations, calculations, and states of mind of the "foot soldiers" of the CR, the Red Guards in the earliest years of the upheavals?  And why did the political activism of the CR devolve almost inevitably into intense factionalism between groups whose ideologies seemed virtually indistinguishable -- loyalty to Mao, defense of the revolution, attacks on treacherous leaders?  Walder is a political sociologist, and he wants to understand the dynamics of mobilization and affiliation that led to the group violence and inter-group factionalism in the early years of this period.

Here is an example of the kind of factionalism that most interests Walder:

Chapter 8 examines the puzzling disintegration of the rebel movement in January 1967, soon after the decisive victory over its opponents.  Why did the victorious rebel coalition rapidly split into two opposing camps?  In their earlier attacks on ministries and commissions, rebels stayed within separate bureaucratic hierarchies.  Work teams were dispatched down these hierarchies to the schools under them, and the pursuit of work teams led rebels directly back up this hierarchy to the ministry or commission that sent them.  When these rebels moved to seize power in national and municipal agencies, however, they crossed into different bureaucratic hierarchies.  Rebel groups from different schools who went to the same organs of power turned quickly from allies into competitors.  These competitive rivalries were exacerbated by deep splits that had earlier developed among rebel forces in the two largest and most important campuses, Beijing and Quinghua universities.  The splits at Beida and Qinghua served as a wedge to divide rebel forces citywide, as factions of different schools aligned themselves with one or another faction at these two large campuses.  The resulting split between "Heaven" and "Earth" factions crippled the student movement and frustrated the CCRG until the very end. (26-27)

Walder suggests that earlier scholars have sought to understand the motivations and factions of China's young people in terms of the class position of the participants and the pervasive political indoctrination of youth that had been ubiquitous in the 1950s and 1960s.  Factions existed, according to this line of thought, either because different groups had different interests, or they had different political theories and ideologies ("conservative" and "radical").  Walder finds these explanations unsatisfactory, since they apply equally to both sides in all the factions -- and so he wants to identify some other feature of the political landscape that would explain the behavior and the factionalization.  And, unlike the scholars of the 1970s and 1980s who had to largely speculate about these issues, Walder takes advantage of primary sources that allow the researcher to get a great deal of information about the participants in their own words, and in their relationships to other activists.

Walder also questions the relevance of the core assumptions of social mobilization theory for the Cultural Revolution -- the idea that social movements need to be understood in terms of grievances, resources, and the state's ability to resist group demands.  Fundamentally his objection is that this theory doesn't help to explain the early months of the Cultural Revolution because all the postulated conditions were present in 1966, and mobilization did in fact occur (14).  But it occurred in a very distinctive way that resource mobilization theory seems not to prove a basis for explaining -- the constant fissioning of a group of activists into two or more factions, bitterly opposed to each other.  It appears, then, that resource mobilization theory lacks the tools necessary to explain this specific pattern of mobilization -- radicalization followed by bitter factionalism.

Walder's explanation is a novel one.  He argues that factionalization was a consequence, not of class differences or ideological disagreements between individuals, but simply of the early choices that various individuals made early in the period.  A central feature of this period was the fact of denunciation -- denouncing past or current leaders for disloyalty to the revolution or other ideological errors.  And these denunciations within the universities were highly consequential: "by mid-July 55 percent of all university party first secretaries and 40 percent of all general branch secretaries had been labeled anti-party reactionaries and placed in category 4" (57).  The rapid proliferation of denunciations meant that persons close to the denounced leader needed to decide -- should they join the denunciation or should they refrain?  The work teams that were sent into Beijing's elite universities in June 1966 (Peking University, to begin with) were forced to make choices in light of radical students' denunciation of top university officials; lower officials had to make similar choices; and activist student leaders had to decide whether to support or oppose the activities of the work teams.  And, Walder argues, this choice was fateful and enduring.  It meant that the individual would be shunted into this group or that group, with further decisions cementing the affinity with the group.

Another way of stating the argument is that factional identities and the common interests that define them are the product of political interactions rooted in specific contexts whose properties must be researched, not simply assumed.  Individual decisions -- to join factions, to oppose or support a work team -- are not the product of prior socialization or social ties but are actdively shaped by political encounters.  The focus is on the interactions that generate choices and outcomes, not the prior statuses of individuals or their preexisting social and political ties. These processes determine when prior social statuses or network ties are activated in a conflict, and when they are not. (13)

In other words, Walder argues that the fact of pervasive factionalization in the Cultural Revolution does not reflect fundamental underlying disagreements or contradictions between the factions; it does not reflect prior sociological distinctions among the participants; but rather reflects the emergence of separate networks of political affiliation from which there was no exit.

Chapter 3 describes how the work teams split university power structures into warring factions, with a focus on the issues that bred conflict between work teams and militant students.  Only in rare and fleeting circumstances were the issues of contention about attacks on the incumbent power structure -- a question that might distinguish "conservative" from "radical" political orientations.  Instead, they were usually about the work team's authority over student actions and the physical control of officials held for interrogation, and about heavy-handed work-team punishment of students who proved hard to control. (24)

This is a fascinating micro-sociology of a crucial span of a few months of violent upheaval in a single city.  It helps to explain a particularly pervasive feature of a broad and chaotic period of political unrest in China -- the constant factionalism that occurred at virtually every level of conflict.  It introduces an innovative model of political behavior (path-dependent choices by individuals leading to a durable configuration of political affiliations).  And it provides a new avenue through which the methods of network analysis can be fruitfully used to explain complex social processes.  It is a valuable contribution to the new wave of scholarship that is currently underway about the Cultural Revolution.  (Other contributions to this new scholarship are included in Esherick, Pickowitz, and Walder, eds., China's Cultural Revolution As History.)

A side note, not crucial to Walder's argument but interesting nonetheless, is the apparently simple question of when the Cultural Revolution took place.  It is conventional by many historians to date the CR to the years 1966-1976.  In 1966 the Red Guard movement erupted with wall posters and virulent activism in Beijing, among high school and university students.  And in 1976 Mao died, the Gang of Four were arrested, and the disruptions of the decade were decisively put aside.  But Walder dates the CR to a much shorter period, 1966-68, beginning with the same Red Guard explosion that occurred in 1966 but ending in 1968 when Mao unleased the military to put down the radical activists: "Not until August 1968 were the flames of China's Cultural revolution extinguished by the imposition of a harsh regime of martial law" (1).

Steve Pincus on revolution

Steve Pincus offers a sweeping and compelling reinterpretation of the English Revolution in 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Along the way he provides a review of existing theories of revolution -- Skocpol, Huntington, Barrington Moore, and Goldstone, in particular (chapter 2). Pincus's definition of revolution goes along these lines:

Revolutions thus constitute a structural and ideological break from the previous regime. They entail changes to both the political and socioeconomic structures of a polity. They involve an often violent popular movement to overturn the previous regime. Revolutions change the political leadership and the policy orientations of the state. And revolutionary regimes bring with them a new conception of time, a notion that they are beginning a new epoch in the history of the state and its society. (kindle loc 549)

Pincus criticizes each of the prevailing theories of revolution. Fundamentally Pincus's criticism is that these theories share a common error of conceptualization: they work on the assumption that revolutions are the outcome of a conflict between a rigid, conservative, and exhausted state, on the one hand, and a movement of modernizers, on the other. Tocqueville embodies this assumption in his own history of the French Revolution -- the defenders of the Ancien regime are defeated by economic and social reformers (Ancien Regime and the French Revolution). But Pincus argues that the historical reality was quite different, in France, Russia, China, the Ottoman Empire, and England.

In all cases the old regime had ceased to exist before the revolution. Revolutions, then, do not pit modernizing elements against defenders of the traditional order. Instead revolutions occur only after the regime in power has set itself on a modernizing course. State modernization itself cannot occur without prior socioeconomic modernization. But that socioeconomic modernization is a necessary though not a sufficient cause of state modernization. It is for that reason that revolutions are the often-violent working out of competing state modernization programs. (kindle loc 613)

So it is fissures and catalysts created by the state's own processes of modernization that create the impetus towards revolution, according to Pincus. But what is modernization? Here is Pincus's brief account:

By state modernization I mean a self-conscious effort by the regime to transform itself in fundamental ways. State modernization will usually include an effort to centralize and bureaucratize political authority, an initiative to transform the military using the most up-to-date techniques, a program to accelerate economic growth and shape the contours of society using the tools of the state, and the deployment of techniques allowing the state to gather information about and potentially supporess social and political activities taking place in a wide range of social levels and geographical locales within the polity. (kindle loc 613)

But not all modernizing states result in revolution; so what factors make revolution more likely? Pincus mentions Sweden, Denmark, and Meiji Japan as historical examples of societies with modernizing states and no revolution. Pincus thinks the answer lies in the degree to which the modernizing state is able to keep credible control of the apparatus of social order.

Revolutions are more likely in situations in which the modernizing regime is not clearly perceived to have a monopoly of the forces of violence.... When the modernizing state quickly demonstrates its control of resources and disarms the opposition, as in seventeenth-century Denmark and Sweden or late-nineteenth-century Japan, revolutions do not occur. (kindle loc 699)

So the causal narrative the Pincus offers goes along something like these lines:

• The state initiates a process of reform and modernization.
• There are multiple visions of what "modernization" ought to look like for the polity, both within the state and outside the state.
• These multiple visions have the capacity to create advocates and processes of collective mobilization outside the state within civil society.
• One or more parties in civil society gain the intention and the resources to challenge the state.
• The state marshalls its forces to repress opposition.
• If it lacks sufficient capacity to intimidate or repress opposition, revolution occurs.

What this narrative discounts is quite a bit of what other theories of revolution place in the foreground -- under-class revolt, state breakdown, demographic change, ideological conflict, the disruptive social effects of war, and fiscal crisis, to name several. Pincus is too good a historian to truly overlook these factors, and they all come into his narrative of the English Revolution. But when it comes to offering a "theory" of revolution, Pincus is led down the same rhetorical path as the authors he criticizes: he wants to identify a single factor that "explains" the occurrence of revolution. Within the viewpoint of that single factor, he is willing to interweave the "secondary" factors mentioned here; but there is an intellectual desire to identify a single, most-important factor. And this seems misguided.

Better is the approach taken by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly in Dynamics of Contention. Fundamentally, they reject the impulse towards any kind of single-factor theory of revolution or any other kind of contentious politics. They argue that these large social outcomes are the result of the concatenation of a diverse range of social mechanisms and processes, none of which is paramount.

To call the events of 1789 "contentious politics" may seem to demean a great revolution. This book aims to demonstrate that the label "contentious politics" not only makes sense but also helps explain what happened in Paris and the rest of France during that turbulent summer. ... Further [the book] shows how different forms of contention -- social movements, revolutions, strike waves, nationalism, democratization, and more -- result from similar mechanisms and processes. It wagers that we can learn more about all of them by comparing their dynamics than by looking at each on its own. Finally, it explores several combinations of mechanisms and processes with the aim of discovering recurring causal sequences of contentious politics. (4)

Revolution is an instance of what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly call "transgressive contention" (7), but there are important examples of transgressive contention that are not revolutionary -- for example, the American civil rights struggle, cycles of protest in Italian cities, the Mau Mau rebellion, and other examples.

So Dynamics of Contention offer a serious methodological alternative to all of the theories of revolution mentioned here: rather than looking for a small number of structural characteristics that "cause" or "inhibit" revolution, we are better served by moving down to the meso- and micro-levels of mobilization, claim-making, repression, state building, tax collecting, and ideological competition that constitute the real causal stuff of revolution and contention.

It is worth observing, further, that the Dynamics of Contention approach -- identifying discrete mechanisms and processes of contentious politics -- offers vastly better resources for investigating and explaining the wave of revolts, uprisings, and popular movements that are taking place today across the Middle East than any single theory of revolution would provide.  The processes of grievance-making, group mobilization, communication, escalation, brokerage, and state tactics of repression that MTT describe are of obvious relevance in trying to understand the last few months of unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and other countries. In particular, none of the macro-theories -- class conflict, state breakdown, or crises of the modernizing state -- seem to shed much light on these events.  What is occurring seems to be much more akin to the path-dependent, multi-causal kind of process that McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly describe.

(McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly have been discussed several times here, including link, link.)

Steve Pincus on revolution

Steve Pincus offers a sweeping and compelling reinterpretation of the English Revolution in 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Along the way he provides a review of existing theories of revolution -- Skocpol, Huntington, Barrington Moore, and Goldstone, in particular (chapter 2). Pincus's definition of revolution goes along these lines:

Revolutions thus constitute a structural and ideological break from the previous regime. They entail changes to both the political and socioeconomic structures of a polity. They involve an often violent popular movement to overturn the previous regime. Revolutions change the political leadership and the policy orientations of the state. And revolutionary regimes bring with them a new conception of time, a notion that they are beginning a new epoch in the history of the state and its society. (kindle loc 549)

Pincus criticizes each of the prevailing theories of revolution. Fundamentally Pincus's criticism is that these theories share a common error of conceptualization: they work on the assumption that revolutions are the outcome of a conflict between a rigid, conservative, and exhausted state, on the one hand, and a movement of modernizers, on the other. Tocqueville embodies this assumption in his own history of the French Revolution -- the defenders of the Ancien regime are defeated by economic and social reformers (Ancien Regime and the French Revolution). But Pincus argues that the historical reality was quite different, in France, Russia, China, the Ottoman Empire, and England.

In all cases the old regime had ceased to exist before the revolution. Revolutions, then, do not pit modernizing elements against defenders of the traditional order. Instead revolutions occur only after the regime in power has set itself on a modernizing course. State modernization itself cannot occur without prior socioeconomic modernization. But that socioeconomic modernization is a necessary though not a sufficient cause of state modernization. It is for that reason that revolutions are the often-violent working out of competing state modernization programs. (kindle loc 613)

So it is fissures and catalysts created by the state's own processes of modernization that create the impetus towards revolution, according to Pincus. But what is modernization? Here is Pincus's brief account:

By state modernization I mean a self-conscious effort by the regime to transform itself in fundamental ways. State modernization will usually include an effort to centralize and bureaucratize political authority, an initiative to transform the military using the most up-to-date techniques, a program to accelerate economic growth and shape the contours of society using the tools of the state, and the deployment of techniques allowing the state to gather information about and potentially supporess social and political activities taking place in a wide range of social levels and geographical locales within the polity. (kindle loc 613)

But not all modernizing states result in revolution; so what factors make revolution more likely? Pincus mentions Sweden, Denmark, and Meiji Japan as historical examples of societies with modernizing states and no revolution. Pincus thinks the answer lies in the degree to which the modernizing state is able to keep credible control of the apparatus of social order.

Revolutions are more likely in situations in which the modernizing regime is not clearly perceived to have a monopoly of the forces of violence.... When the modernizing state quickly demonstrates its control of resources and disarms the opposition, as in seventeenth-century Denmark and Sweden or late-nineteenth-century Japan, revolutions do not occur. (kindle loc 699)

So the causal narrative the Pincus offers goes along something like these lines:

• The state initiates a process of reform and modernization.
• There are multiple visions of what "modernization" ought to look like for the polity, both within the state and outside the state.
• These multiple visions have the capacity to create advocates and processes of collective mobilization outside the state within civil society.
• One or more parties in civil society gain the intention and the resources to challenge the state.
• The state marshalls its forces to repress opposition.
• If it lacks sufficient capacity to intimidate or repress opposition, revolution occurs.

What this narrative discounts is quite a bit of what other theories of revolution place in the foreground -- under-class revolt, state breakdown, demographic change, ideological conflict, the disruptive social effects of war, and fiscal crisis, to name several. Pincus is too good a historian to truly overlook these factors, and they all come into his narrative of the English Revolution. But when it comes to offering a "theory" of revolution, Pincus is led down the same rhetorical path as the authors he criticizes: he wants to identify a single factor that "explains" the occurrence of revolution. Within the viewpoint of that single factor, he is willing to interweave the "secondary" factors mentioned here; but there is an intellectual desire to identify a single, most-important factor. And this seems misguided.

Better is the approach taken by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly in Dynamics of Contention. Fundamentally, they reject the impulse towards any kind of single-factor theory of revolution or any other kind of contentious politics. They argue that these large social outcomes are the result of the concatenation of a diverse range of social mechanisms and processes, none of which is paramount.

To call the events of 1789 "contentious politics" may seem to demean a great revolution. This book aims to demonstrate that the label "contentious politics" not only makes sense but also helps explain what happened in Paris and the rest of France during that turbulent summer. ... Further [the book] shows how different forms of contention -- social movements, revolutions, strike waves, nationalism, democratization, and more -- result from similar mechanisms and processes. It wagers that we can learn more about all of them by comparing their dynamics than by looking at each on its own. Finally, it explores several combinations of mechanisms and processes with the aim of discovering recurring causal sequences of contentious politics. (4)

Revolution is an instance of what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly call "transgressive contention" (7), but there are important examples of transgressive contention that are not revolutionary -- for example, the American civil rights struggle, cycles of protest in Italian cities, the Mau Mau rebellion, and other examples.

So Dynamics of Contention offer a serious methodological alternative to all of the theories of revolution mentioned here: rather than looking for a small number of structural characteristics that "cause" or "inhibit" revolution, we are better served by moving down to the meso- and micro-levels of mobilization, claim-making, repression, state building, tax collecting, and ideological competition that constitute the real causal stuff of revolution and contention.

It is worth observing, further, that the Dynamics of Contention approach -- identifying discrete mechanisms and processes of contentious politics -- offers vastly better resources for investigating and explaining the wave of revolts, uprisings, and popular movements that are taking place today across the Middle East than any single theory of revolution would provide.  The processes of grievance-making, group mobilization, communication, escalation, brokerage, and state tactics of repression that MTT describe are of obvious relevance in trying to understand the last few months of unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and other countries. In particular, none of the macro-theories -- class conflict, state breakdown, or crises of the modernizing state -- seem to shed much light on these events.  What is occurring seems to be much more akin to the path-dependent, multi-causal kind of process that McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly describe.

(McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly have been discussed several times here, including link, link.)