States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China / Theda Skocpol.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Skocpol, Theda, author.

Series:

Canto classics.

Canto classics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Revolutions--Case studies.

Revolutions.

Revolutions--France--History.

Revolutions--Soviet Union--History.

Revolutions--China--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 407 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

Canto classics edition.

Other Title:

States & Social Revolutions

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Summary:

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations. Social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. It develops a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, Skocpol urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.

Contents:

Introduction: Explaining social revolutions : alternatives to existing theories. A structural perspective ; International and world-historical contexts ; The potential autonomy of the state ; A comparative historical method ; Why France, Russia, and China?

Part I: Causes of social revolutions in France, Russia, and China. Old-regime states in crisis. Old regime France : the contradictions of Bourbon absolutism ; Manchu China : from the Celestial Empire to the fall of the imperial system ; Imperial Russia : an underdeveloped great power ; Japan and Prussia as contrasts

Agrarian structures and peasant insurrections. Peasants against seigneurs in the French Revolution ; The revolution of the Obshchinas : peasant radicalism in Russia ; Two counterpoints : the absence of peasant revolts in the English and German revolutions ; Peasant incapacity and gentry vulnerability in China

Part II: Outcomes of social revolutions in France, Russia, and China. What changed and how : a focus on state building. Political leaderships ; The role of revolutionary ideologies

The birth of a "modern state edifice" in France. A bourgeois revolution? ; The effects of the social-revolutionary crisis of 1789 ; War, the Jacobins, and Napoleon ; The new regime

The emergence of a dictatorial party-state in Russia. The effects of the social-revolutionary crisis of 1917 ; The Bolshevik struggle to rule ; The Stalinist "revolution from above" ; The new regime

The rise of a mass-mobilizing party-state in China. The social-revolutionary situation after 1911 ; The rise and decline of the urban-based Kuomintang ; The communists and the peasants ; The new regime.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-45250-6

1-316-45538-6

1-316-45586-6

1-316-45682-X

1-316-45874-1

1-316-45634-X

1-316-45778-8

1-316-42399-9