Revolutions that succeeded and revolutions that didn't

Every revolution begins with the conviction that the old order must be destroyed and the hope that something better will take its place. What actually happens is more complicated. Some revolutions produce stable new orders that endure for centuries. Others produce chaos, terror, and regimes more oppressive than the ones they replaced. Many produce a cycle of revolution and counter-revolution that takes generations to resolve. And some -- perhaps the most remarkable -- succeed against overwhelming odds, only to be deliberately excluded from the narrative of what counts as a "real" revolution.

The comparative study of revolutions is one of the oldest and most contested areas of historical scholarship. Historians have disagreed not only about why revolutions happen and what they produce, but about what a revolution is, how to measure its success, and which events deserve the label at all.

How Historians Think About Revolutions

The systematic comparative study of revolutions begins, in many ways, with Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution (1938). Brinton, an American historian, compared the English, American, French, and Russian revolutions and identified a common pattern: a period of moderate reform, followed by the rise of radicals, a reign of terror or virtu, and eventually a return to stability under a strongman or moderate regime. Brinton's model was influential but also criticized for being too schematic and for selecting cases that fit his pattern while ignoring those that did not.

The sociologist Theda Skocpol, in States and Social Revolutions (1979), offered a structural account that became one of the most widely cited frameworks in the field. Skocpol argued that revolutions were not primarily the result of deliberate revolutionary action or popular discontent, but of structural crises in which state breakdown -- caused by military pressure, fiscal crisis, or elite division -- created opportunities for peasant rebellions and political transformation. Her key cases were the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, and she argued that their outcomes were shaped less by revolutionary ideology than by the structural conditions in which they occurred: the degree of state collapse, the organization of the peasantry, and the position of the country in the international state system.

Marxist historians, following Karl Marx's analysis of the French Revolution, emphasized class struggle as the engine of revolution. In this view, revolutions occurred when the productive forces of a society outgrew its existing relations of production -- when, for example, a rising bourgeoisie found its economic power blocked by the political privileges of a feudal aristocracy. The revolution was the moment when the rising class seized political power and reorganized society in its own interests. This framework had the virtue of providing a clear criterion for success: a revolution succeeded if it consolidated the power of the rising class and reorganized the relations of production. It had the disadvantage of being difficult to apply to revolutions that did not fit the Marxist template -- nationalist revolutions, anti-colonial revolutions, or revolutions in societies that did not have a clearly defined bourgeoisie.

More recently, historians have emphasized the international dimension of revolutions. The political scientist Fred Halliday, in Revolution and World Politics (1999), argued that revolutions could not be understood in isolation from the international system in which they occurred. Revolutions were shaped by international pressures -- war, economic crisis, ideological competition -- and their outcomes were strongly influenced by the responses of other states. The French Revolution was transformed by war with Austria and Prussia. The Russian Revolution was shaped by the First World War and the Allied intervention. The Cuban Revolution was defined by the Cold War.

The American Revolution

The American Revolution (1775-1783) is often cited as the paradigmatic successful revolution. It overthrew colonial rule, established a republic, and produced a constitution that has endured -- with amendments -- for over two centuries. It inspired revolutionary movements around the world and became a foundational myth of American national identity.

But the American Revolution's success was contingent and partial. It did not abolish slavery. It did not extend political rights to women. It did not resolve the tension between federal and state power that would eventually lead to civil war. The historian Gordon Wood, in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), argued that the revolution's radicalism lay not in its political innovations -- which were moderate compared to what followed in France -- but in its social consequences: the dismantling of monarchy, aristocracy, and patronage, and the creation of a society organized around the principle of individual equality. Other historians, including Edmund Morgan, noted that the rhetoric of equality coexisted with the reality of slavery, and that the revolution's success for white men was purchased at the cost of continued oppression for others.

The American Revolution also succeeded, in part, because of favorable international circumstances. Britain was engaged in conflicts with France and Spain, which diverted military resources away from the American colonies. French military and financial aid was decisive. The revolution's success was not purely the result of American virtue or revolutionary fervor; it was also the product of great-power politics.

The French Revolution

The French Revolution (1789-1799) is the revolution against which all others are measured. It began with the convocation of the Estates-General and the storming of the Bastille, passed through the moderate constitutional phase of the National Assembly, radicalized under the Jacobins and the Committee of Public Safety, consumed itself in the Terror of 1793-1794, and ended with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who declared himself emperor in 1804.

The French Revolution's trajectory -- from liberty to terror to dictatorship -- became the template for Brinton's anatomy and for much subsequent revolutionary theory. The historian Simon Schama, in Citizens (1989), argued that violence was not an aberration in the French Revolution but was central to it from the beginning, and that the revolution's most lasting legacy was not liberty or equality but the modern practice of political violence. Schama's interpretation was controversial. Other historians, including Timothy Tackett and Keith Michael Baker, emphasized the contingency of the revolution's radicalization, arguing that the Terror was not the inevitable product of revolutionary ideology but the result of specific decisions made under the pressure of war, counter-revolution, and economic crisis.

The French Revolution's impact extended far beyond France. It disseminated the principles of popular sovereignty, national citizenship, and legal equality across Europe. It inspired revolutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. It also produced the modern counter-revolutionary tradition, as conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre articulated the case against revolutionary upheaval and in favor of tradition, hierarchy, and gradual reform.

The Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) is, by any measure, one of the most extraordinary events in modern history. It was the only successful slave revolt in history. It defeated the armies of France, Britain, and Spain. It produced the first independent nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, the first post-colonial state in Latin America, and the first and only nation in modern history to be founded by formerly enslaved people.

And yet, for most of the two centuries since its conclusion, the Haitian Revolution has been marginalized or ignored in mainstream historical scholarship. The historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in Silencing the Past (1995), used the Haitian Revolution as his central example of how historical narratives are constructed to exclude events that challenge dominant assumptions. The idea that enslaved people could organize a successful revolution and establish an independent state was, Trouillot argued, literally unthinkable within the racial categories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was unthinkable to the French, who could not believe that enslaved Africans could defeat their army. It was unthinkable to the Americans, who refused to recognize Haiti for decades because the existence of a free Black republic threatened the institution of slavery. It was even, Trouillot suggested, difficult for later historians to assimilate, because the Haitian Revolution did not fit into the narrative frameworks -- the rise of the bourgeoisie, the transition to modernity, the spread of democracy -- that structured the writing of revolutionary history.

The Haitian Revolution's "success" was also severely compromised by the international response. France demanded enormous financial compensation for the loss of its colony -- a debt that was not fully paid off until 1947 and that crippled Haiti's economy for generations. The United States refused diplomatic recognition until 1862 and occupied Haiti militarily from 1915 to 1934. The combined effect of debt, isolation, and foreign intervention ensured that Haiti remained the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The revolution succeeded in ending slavery and establishing independence. It did not succeed in creating prosperity or security, largely because the international system was determined to punish Haiti for the crime of having won.

The historian C.L.R. James, in The Black Jacobins (1938), placed the Haitian Revolution squarely within the tradition of the French Revolution, arguing that the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue were carrying the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity to their logical conclusion -- a conclusion that the French themselves were not willing to accept. James's account emphasized the agency and political sophistication of the revolution's leaders, particularly Toussaint Louverture, and challenged the racist assumption that the revolution was a mere slave riot rather than a genuine political revolution.

The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution of 1917 began with the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy in February and continued with the Bolshevik seizure of power in October. It produced the world's first socialist state and, eventually, a superpower that endured for seven decades. Whether it "succeeded" depends entirely on what criteria one uses.

If success means the creation of a stable state that survived external threats, industrialized rapidly, defeated Nazi Germany, and competed with the United States for global influence for half a century, then the Russian Revolution succeeded. If success means the creation of a workers' democracy, the abolition of exploitation, and the withering away of the state -- the goals that the Bolsheviks themselves proclaimed -- then it failed catastrophically. The Soviet Union was a one-party state that suppressed political dissent, imprisoned and killed millions of its own citizens, and maintained power through a combination of ideological control and state violence.

The historian Orlando Figes, in A People's Tragedy (1996), emphasized the role of popular agency and the gap between revolutionary aspirations and revolutionary outcomes. The Bolsheviks, he argued, did not simply impose their will on a passive population. The revolution was shaped by the actions and expectations of workers, peasants, soldiers, and intellectuals, many of whom had goals that conflicted with those of the Bolshevik leadership. The gap between what people wanted from the revolution and what they got was the tragedy of the title.

The historiography of the Russian Revolution has been shaped by political commitments to an unusual degree. Soviet historiography, controlled by the Communist Party, presented the revolution as the inevitable triumph of the proletariat guided by the vanguard party. Cold War Western historiography, in reaction, often portrayed the revolution as a coup by a minority of ideologues who hijacked a popular movement. The opening of Soviet archives after 1991 allowed more nuanced accounts to emerge, but the debate remains deeply contested.

The Chinese Revolution

The Chinese Revolution, culminating in the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, was in many ways the most consequential revolution of the twentieth century. It transformed the world's most populous country from a semi-colonial, fragmented state into a unified, industrializing power that would become the second-largest economy in the world.

The historian Arif Dirlik, in The Origins of Chinese Communism (1989), emphasized the specifically Chinese conditions that shaped the revolution: the legacy of imperialism, the weakness of the central state, the immensity of the peasantry, and the cultural resources of Chinese radicalism. The Chinese Revolution did not follow the Marxist script, which predicted revolution in advanced industrial societies, not agrarian ones. Mao Zedong's innovation was to make the peasantry, rather than the industrial proletariat, the agent of revolution -- a theoretical heresy from the orthodox Marxist perspective but a practical necessity in the Chinese context.

The Chinese Revolution's human cost was enormous. The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) caused a famine that killed an estimated 15 to 55 million people. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) produced widespread violence, destruction of cultural heritage, and social chaos. The historian Frank Dikotter, in Mao's Great Famine (2010), used archival evidence to argue that the famine was not merely the result of misguided policy but of a system that prioritized political loyalty over human life. Other historians, while acknowledging the catastrophic scale of the suffering, have placed greater emphasis on the structural challenges of industrializing a vast, poor country under conditions of international isolation.

Since the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, China has evolved into a system that combines Communist Party rule with market economics -- a hybrid that defies easy categorization and that challenges the assumption that economic liberalization must lead to political liberalization.

The Iranian Revolution

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 overthrew the secular, Western-aligned monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah and established an Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It was, in the first instance, a successful revolution: it achieved its immediate goal of overthrowing the existing regime and establishing a new order that has endured for over four decades. But its character -- a religious revolution that replaced a secular modernizing regime with a theocratic state -- challenged the assumptions of most revolutionary theory.

Skocpol's structural framework, which emphasized state breakdown and peasant rebellion, did not predict and could not easily account for a revolution led by clergy. The historian Nikki Keddie, in Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (2003), argued that the Iranian Revolution required a different analytical framework that took religion seriously as a revolutionary force, rather than treating it as an epiphenomenon of deeper structural processes. The Iranian Revolution also demonstrated the role of international factors -- particularly the Shah's close relationship with the United States and the perception that his regime was a puppet of foreign interests -- in generating revolutionary sentiment.

The Arab Spring

The Arab Spring of 2010-2011 provides a more recent and more sobering case. Beginning with the self-immolation of a street vendor in Tunisia, protests spread across the Arab world, toppling governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and triggering civil war in Syria. A decade later, the results were grim. Tunisia, the one apparent success story, experienced democratic backsliding. Egypt reverted to military rule. Libya and Yemen descended into civil war. Syria's civil war killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. The Arab Spring produced no stable democracies, no successful revolutions in the traditional sense, and enormous human suffering.

The political scientist Steven Heydemann, writing in 2013, argued that the Arab Spring demonstrated the limitations of existing revolutionary theory. The uprisings were not led by organized revolutionary parties. They were not driven by a coherent ideology. They were not directed toward the seizure of state power in the manner of the French or Russian revolutions. They were, instead, popular uprisings against specific grievances -- corruption, unemployment, political repression -- that lacked the institutional capacity to translate mass protest into stable new political orders. The Arab Spring suggested that revolution, in the age of social media and global media coverage, might take forms that did not fit the templates developed from the study of earlier revolutions.

Defining Success

The question of which revolutions succeeded and which failed is ultimately a question about what counts as success. If success means the establishment of a stable new political order, then the American, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian revolutions succeeded. If it means the achievement of the revolution's stated ideals, the record is far more mixed. The American Revolution did not achieve equality. The French Revolution did not achieve liberty. The Russian Revolution did not achieve a classless society. The Chinese Revolution did not achieve prosperity -- at least not until it abandoned many of its original economic principles.

The Haitian Revolution poses the most fundamental challenge to any framework for evaluating revolutionary success. It achieved something unprecedented -- the destruction of slavery by the enslaved -- and was punished for it. Its exclusion from the standard narratives of revolutionary history is not an oversight. It is a consequence of the fact that the frameworks used to study revolutions were developed in the West, by white men, to explain revolutions made by white men. The recovery of the Haitian Revolution as a central event in modern history -- the work of James, Trouillot, and subsequent scholars -- is not merely an act of historical correction. It is a challenge to the categories themselves.

Sources

• Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton, 1938.
• Dikotter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. London: Bloomsbury, 2010.
• Figes, Orlando. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924. London: Jonathan Cape, 1996.
• James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. London: Secker and Warburg, 1938.
• Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
• Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1989.
• Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
• Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1992.
• Dirlik, Arif. The Origins of Chinese Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.