So, we’ve been learning about revolutions.
More specifically, we talked about Crane Brinton’s theory of revolutionary process. Brinton defines a revolution as a “drastic, sudden substitution of one group in charge of running the territorial political entity by another group hitherto not running that government.”, and Brinton’s theory states that a revolution has four stages: the incubation stage, the moderate stage, the crisis stage, and the recovery stage.
In the incubation stage, people feel that the government has done something wrong. Often there is an economic crisis, and the current government may be thought to be weak by the general population. People who are considered intellectuals usually speak against the government at this stage.
In the moderate stage, the people leading the revolution try to get the government to change without extreme violence. This can consist of protests, and sometimes violence or threats on a small scale. Here, the revolutionaries are looking for the government to improve, not be overthrown.
In the crisis stage, radicals step up to take over, and sometimes assassinate members of, the government. There is a lot of violence during this stage. The radicals try and achieve justice, but in cruel or harsh ways.
In the recovery stage, things settle down and return to normal… with a few changes to the government due to the revolution.
Here’s a comic I drew showing the four stages of revolution according to Brinton.
After learning about Brinton’s theory, we were asked to come up with a question about it. My question was whether Brinton’s theory applied to all revolutions, and how it applied to fictional revolutions.
I’m going to stick to the first part of the question… Sort of. The revolution I want to look at, which I don’t think follows Brinton’s theory, is the one against Julius Caesar. However, as I was able to do a lot more in depth research about the events of Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar than the actual event (I.e. actually reading the play), I’ll be following that, and I’m not sure if it’s totally historically accurate.
So, the first, third and fourth stages of Brinton’s theory actually do fit The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In the first stage, Brutus, Cassius, and the other conspirators believe that Caesar is a weak leader, and has done wrong by killing Pompey. In the third stage, the conspirators assassinate Caesar, and subsequently go to war with Caesar’s supporters. In the fourth stage, they are defeated, and Caesar’s supporters, specifically Octavius, take over as government.
However, they kind of skip over the second stage, where they would try and get the government to change somewhat peaceably. Here is a video with the stages of my comic from earlier versus the events of Julius Caesar.
*cue generic iMovie music*
Yeah, so there’s a bit of a difference there…
I think this answers my question. Basically: no, not all revolutions necessarily follow Crane Brinton’s theory of revolutionary process, but that doesn’t mean that most don’t.
Toodles.