Analysis Of Crane Brinton's The Anatomy Of Revolution

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In his book, The Anatomy of Revolution, Crane Brinton describes four historically significant revolutions in modern states, the English Revolution of the 1640s, the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Russian Revolution of 1917, and compares uniform trends and commonalities within those revolutions. Brinton hypothesizes that those revolutions have specific similarities in their inception, manifestation, conduct, and conclusion. Brinton posits that revolutions are born in during times of unusual economic unrest and political upheaval. Such societies which produce revolutions aren’t those where there are “no expressions of discontent with the government or with existing institutions, in which no laws are ever …show more content…

While most of Europe had develop strong central governments and weakened the power of the nobles, Russia had lagged behind the times and still had serfs as late as 1861. The economic development that followed the emancipation of peasants in the rest of Europe created strong industrial and tax bases in those nations. Russian monarchs had attempted some level of reforms to address this inequality for almost a century before, and were indeed on their way to “economic maturity” (32) on par with the rest of Europe. But they overextended themselves and the crushing defeats of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and the First World War in 1917 lost them the necessary support from their subjects and created “high prices and scarcity” which were by far “the most obvious factors in the general tension” …show more content…

During the Stuarts, the only people who had the liquid cash to pay for the needs of the modern government were primarily the middle-class and gentry, which were represented by the parliament. The “awkward, hand-to-mouth expedients” (38) of the Stuarts agitated by the differences in expectations of governance, brought them into conflict with their primary tax base. The impatience of the eventual rebels was exacerbated by their Stuart’s disregard for the traditional balance between the crown and the parliament, as they were Scottish royals who had only dealt with a very weak

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