The Cold War produced an obsession with the origins of revolution, The reasoning was that if it were possible to understand what caused revolutions it might be possible to find ways to prevent them from occurring. To some extent, we have moved from an over-emphasis on the origins of revolution and the seizure of power to a concern with the use of power. In any case, beginning with the British Revolutions of the seventeenth century also helps the importance of taking a long-term view of the phenomenon of revolution
Until we have seen how revolutionaries put power to use it is difficult to determine whether a revolution has succeeded or failed, course, a revolution that does not result in the seizure of power is clearly a failure even though it as was, for example, the case with the 1905 Revolution in may leave is possible that the "failure" of a revolution may create conditions leading to its eventual "success." In the case of the British Revolution of the seemed to mark the restoration of the Stuart kings in the person of Charles mid-century revolutionary efforts as failure, The dynasty, however, ran into problems, to which the Revolution of 1688 formed one possible solution. Over an additional period of more than a century, an evolutionary with occasional near-revolutionary situati of a constitutional monarchy with the House of Commons as the development uccessful and enduring political system
Once the idea of revolution became part of the political repertoire, even if many political actors did not care to acknowledge it as such, individuals and groups tried with increasing frequency to make use of it. The nineteenth century is filled with efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to imitate the French Revolution of 1789, several of these efforts took place in France itself as the France seemed doomed to repeat their initial revolutionary experience.
Ultimately, the revolutions of the nineteenth century demonstrated the historical character of revolution. Revolution in the nineteenth century was mostly about politics, although with the social question and even some ideas about cultural change thrown in. In the course of the nineteenth century, the world changed fundamentally as industrial capitalism and the concept of nation states took hold. Revolution, defined as a form of politics, changed if for no other reason than political problems and political aspirations changed. The addition of economic and social issues complicated the situation even more Expectations about what a revolution might accomplish increased rapidly.
After the French Revolution, with its idea of starting over, many revolution- aries paradoxically attempted to go outside politics, in a sense to escape from history, by destroying the old regime and setting in its place something with no connections to the old systems, culture, and traditions. The Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the 1970s provides an extreme example of a desire to set in place a utopian system in which all revolutionaries will be good and pure.
The British Revolutions of the seventeenth century set the stage for the book, calling attention both to the wish to modify and the desire to establish something radically different. The British Revolutions also point to the importance of looking at the use of power and at ways in which "failure might eventually lead to "success." Finally, the British Revolutions had an impact on other countries and on political thought more generally.
The four remaining chapters focus on twentieth-century revolutions the Mexican, Russian, Vietnamese, and Iranian revolutions. The Mexican Revolution was the first major revolution of the twentieth century, beginning in 1910 and continuing for most of that decade. It, too, is an excellent illus tration of the themes of the book. For example, revolution as an integral part of history, another plausible form of politics, is connected with the failure of the Porfiriato, the regime of Porfirio Diaz, to maintain a viable political system It is perhaps uncharitable to calla regime that lasted thirty-four years a failure; nonetheless, its collapse in 1910 opened the way to revolution. The second concerns the use of power. Tracing that theme requires an examination of course of Mexican history not only in the revolutionary decade also through the 1920s and 1930s as well. Out of the turmoil of revolution came a remarkably stable, quite cynical political system that lasted nearly the rest of the century. It was, to be sure, a highly limited system in that it worked well only for certain groups, but it became more successful, least in its own terms, than one would have predicted in the 1920s. Ultimately, the "success or "failure" of the Mexican Revolution will depend on the direction taken by Mexico in the next few decades.
The Russian Revolution must count as the most important revolutionary upheaval of the twentieth century. The trauma of World War I led directly to the February Revolution and eventually, also, to