Recently in humanities my class has been looking at something called Crane Brintons Theory of a revolution. It basically states that all or most revolutions in the world happen in a certain order, A. The general people are upset B. They overthrow the reigning president or king C. There is terror and madness D. O person of the people comes into control and E. The government slowly turn back into what it was before or back to a normal state.

Once my class and me learned this we were excited and we thought this was really cool. We were then encouraged to come up with an inquiry question of our own to fallow up on and answer. So we did that and, here’s mine: is Crane Brintons theory still correct if we go farther back in time? So in this blog post I will tell you all about my inquiry question and its answer.

Well, first things first we need to set some guidelines so, let’s not go to far back in time (at first), only revolutions where the people revolting succeeded and, only more major revolutions. First let’s look at the 80 years war.

This was a revolution where the Dutch wanted independence from the Spanish. It happened from 1568 to 1648. This is because they were tired of funding the Spanish and they had a growing in popularity different religion. Eventually they got tired of it and started fighting for independence, they lost at first a few years later they started another attempt at the rebellion and the fight was successful and the people did choose their leader, a man named William of Orange. Eventually he died and the Spanish took back half the country. The Dutch called upon England and then finally they resolved the conflict. So the revolution followed Crane’s theory at the beginning but, not at the end.

 

Now let’s go further back to see if his theory still applies at all. Let’s look at the Ciompi revolt. This revolt was from 1378 to 1382. In this revolt there were two groups of people, the ciompi (low class workers) and the rich in Florence at the time. The Ciompi were tired of being unrecognized, underpaid and overtaxed. It got so bad that some lost their homes. They started getting angry and eventually they became violent . They took over the government building and took power and they elected a leader. They gave themselves more rights but slowly they were taken out of power. This is almost 100 percent accurate to Crane Brintons theory.

 

For our last check we will be going way back. All the way back to the Ionian Revolt. The Ionian Revolt was a revolt of the Turkish and Greeks against the Persians in control in Turkey. The Persians has recently made several failed attempts to attack nearby places and this made them look weak. The majority of Ionians decided to revolt and attack the Persians in control because they thought it would be their best chance to be their own nation. It went well at first. The ionians fought their way into the capital city and had general control of the country for a short period of time. The Persians slowly started coming back and attacking relentlessly. After some time the Persians took back Turkey. Looking at this revolution I would say that the Crane’s theory is generally accurate here too.

Overall it looks like Crane Brintons anatomy of a revolution theory stays correct for the most part. There will always be exceptions but, generally he is correct. Looking back on this mini/lead-up project for this unit I thought it was a good way to get the facts into your head but not the most interesting project. This is because all though you may be interested in your inquiry question, you don’t know where it leads you because of the open endedness of it.