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Evolution and Typology of Revolutions
This chapter studies the development of revolutions over 500 years since the beginning of the sixteenth century. It analyzes the patterns of transformation of revolutions during the Modern Era, in particular, the way their world-historical role, social bases, revolutionary ideologies, practices, and the information technologies they employed were changing throughout these centuries. It is shown how, why, and what new characteristics, practices etc. appeared after each great revolution and several revolutionary waves (about waves see Chapter “The European Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves of the Nineteenth Century: Their Causes and Consequences” [Grinin, 2022f], Chapter “Revolutionary Waves and Lines of the Twentieth Century” [Grinin & Grinin, 2022], and Chapter “On Revolutionary Waves Since the Sixteenth Century” [Grinin, 2022b, in this volume]). In Chapter “Revolutions and Historical Process” (Grinin, 2022d, in this book), we have shown that although there were revolutions in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages, their role in the development of the historical process was relatively insignificant. Only starting from Modern history did the role of revolutions as driving forces, as engines of the historical process, social and economic development, increase dramatically. We showed that this new role is connected with the beginning of the industrial era and new technologies, and the development of capitalist relations, for which modern revolutions opened the way by fighting against absolutism and obsolete social relations. However, the formation of the modern type of revolutions as a powerful tool of progress started from the Reformation. We define four important prerequisites for the transition to modern revolutions and show that by the beginning of the sixteenth century these had already appeared in a number of European societies. This chapter analyzes the lines of transformation of revolutions in terms of their contribution to revolutionary strategy and goals, ideologies and social bases, and also the way the information technologies used during revolutions have changed throughout these centuries. It shows the important changes introduced by each major revolution to revolutionary practices and to the very understanding of the essence of revolution. The author shows their changing significance over the course of historical process, in particular, how their world-historical role was transformed.
In book
