Historian Answers Revolution Questions

WIRED

George Mason University Political Scientist Jack Goldstone joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about revolutions. Can there be a revolution without violence? Does every revolution need a figurehead? Where are the conditions for a revolution simmering right now? Why is the French Revolution considered a bigger turning point in the history of government than the American Revolution? Is there a revolution underway in Nepal? Answers to these questions and many more await on WIRED Revolution Support.  Director: Lauren Zeitoun Director of Photography: Charlie Jordan Editor: Richard Trammell Expert: Jack Goldstone Creative Producer: Lisandro Perez-Rey Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer Camera Operator: Chris Eustache Sound Mixer: Lily Van Leeuwen Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name is Jack Goldstone. I'm a political scientist at George Mason University.

00:05Let's answer your questions from the internet. This is Revolution Support.

00:13Golden Kumquat asks, what is the difference between a rebellion, a revolution, and a civil war?

00:20Very few people are proud to say they've started a civil war or rebellion, but lots of people love

00:26to say, I started a revolution. Civil wars, rebellions, they're often part of revolutionary

00:32struggles, but by themselves, they're just violent episodes. It's the effort to change things for the

00:37better that makes a revolution special. Philip is asking, it's a little known fact, but did you know

00:43the French Revolution was largely about baguettes? Well, Philip means that humorously, no doubt, but he

00:48is right that the French Revolution was largely about the price of bread. Shortages of grain and

00:54escalating bread prices are one of the main factors that brought French people into the

01:00streets of Paris. And this has been really true of revolutions throughout history. We have seen

01:05price spikes as an important factor in the Arab uprisings, where bread prices reached among their

01:11highest level in the early 20th century. Indeed, governments around the world worry about escalating

01:17grain prices because they do know that revolutions often start with the price of bread.

01:22L Spiral asks, is Nepal having a revolution right now? Yes, Nepal is having a revolution. One of these

01:31Gen Z revolutions have forced the ruler to flee and a new ruler has been put in place with a mandate

01:38to create a more constitutional and accountable government. The reason young people are spearheading

01:43revolutions in places like Nepal is that they are fed up. Young people are protesting against the lack of

01:48basic services, electricity being shut off for hours every day, absence of things like fresh water. They

01:54know that there are better options available and they're angry at governments that have been enriching

02:00themselves while doing nothing for the population. Chris Holt 1 says, me, who do you think has been the most

02:08significant figure in China since the Xinhai Revolution of 1911? My cat, Mao. The hero of the Xinhai Revolution was

02:17Sun Yat-sen. Several decades later, Mao came as the head of the Communist Party and created modern communist China and

02:25wanted to destroy anything in China that didn't conform to his communist vision. So Mao is the creator of the modern Chinese

02:33communist state. But for me, the most important person in China since the

02:38Qinghai Revolution is Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, the creator of China's modern economy. He encouraged cities to

02:45sponsor local industries. He encouraged farmers to improve their efficiency and farm for markets. The reason

02:52that China today is the second largest economy in the world is because of Deng Xiaoping. He set the framework for

02:59China's economy to grow and grow. And that, I think, is what really changed China's place in the world.

03:05Jack C.1126, are there any revolutions that are mostly considered to have been bad?

03:12Revolutions are the creation of human beings, and human beings are both virtuous and flawed. However,

03:19there may be some agreement that one of the worst revolutions was the Khmer Rouge revolution in

03:25Cambodia. That's where the communist dictator Pol Pot seized power, and he unleashed a terrible reign of

03:32terror, really going after anyone who had any kind of relation to the Western imperialist world. The

03:40Khmer Rouge killed maybe one in four people in Cambodia during their short reign. But other people

03:46point to the millions of people killed by Stalin or Mao's famine. There are a number of competitors for

03:51that title of worst revolution ever. Stalin's revolution strengthened the Soviet Union to withstand

03:57Germany's invasion and help defeat Nazism. And Mao's horrible famines were followed by China becoming

04:05the world's second strongest economic power. So again, revolutions have to be assessed carefully,

04:10separate the good and the bad. That's probably up to the people of each country to decide how they

04:15look at their own past. Five Pugnito asks a challenging question, what is the oldest recorded

04:20revolution? We have records from the end of the old kingdom in ancient pharaonic Egypt that seem to

04:28say there was something like a revolution that brought down the last pharaoh of the middle kingdom.

04:34Ordinary people were dressing themselves up in finery. The rich were reduced to wearing rags, and there was

04:40disorder and a change in rule. It does seem that the rule of the pharaohs was ended for a while

04:47and replaced by some kind of council of new rulers. That goes back over 4,000 years. But if you want to

04:54ask what is the oldest revolution of which we have a clear, unambiguous record, that would be the

05:00founding of the Roman Republic in 509 BC. Rome was ruled for most of the sixth century by a series of

05:08Tarquin kings. The kings got more and more tyrannical, and in 509, there was an uprising.

05:15We call it a revolution because the Romans didn't just put their own king in the place of the foreign

05:20ruler. They created an entirely new government, the Roman Republic, led by senators and tribunes of the

05:27people. The first real republic in Europe remained the model for city republics. Nessa Solarguy asks,

05:35Are today's conditions in the U.S. similar to any historic revolutions?

05:40Yes, to a surprising degree. A lot of the MAGA followers claim that they're having a revolution.

05:46They're going to transform America's government. They want to create an America in which the president

05:52is the all-powerful embodiment of the national will, and in which the government ceases to be this large,

05:59protected organization. We talk about checks and balances to prevent any single person from gaining

06:06excessive power. The institutions that we've had have largely failed for a lot of Americans. I'm

06:12quite sympathetic to that. It turns out that if you look at the real wages of non-college educated men,

06:18they've fallen over the last 40 years. And so it's understandable that people feel they're being

06:24left behind. During the COVID crisis, it seemed like the government couldn't speak with one voice.

06:29A million people died. And so again, people felt the government's not protecting us. So many people

06:34have just come to believe that America's democracy is just serving a small corrupt elite and is not

06:40looking out for ordinary American men and women. Now that is exactly the belief that gives rise to

06:46revolutionary situations. So it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing people mobilize against the

06:52government, calling for it to be dismantled, calling for Democrats to be seen as enemies, or for

06:59Democrats to say that Republicans are trying to dismantle and overthrow the government. We're not in a

07:04revolution yet. That is to say, I don't think America's political institutions have been completely or

07:10permanently changed. But we're very much in a revolutionary situation. A question from the

07:15Anarchy 101 subreddit, can there be a revolution without violence? Yes, there can. Non-violent

07:22revolutions have become much more common in the last quarter century. They need to persuade military

07:28officers and soldiers that the revolutionaries are a more virtuous group representing the country,

07:34while the government that they are sworn to defend is actually a threat to the country and is really in

07:40it for itself. The key is persuading the military to support the revolution. So yes, non-violent protests

07:46can succeed. That said, it's hard to have a purely non-violent revolution simply because human nature

07:53is such that once emotions get stirred, some people are likely to turn to throwing bricks or even burning

07:59government buildings. And of course, if government troops fire on crowds, you're going to have some

08:04deaths as well. What's really critical is whether that violence overwhelms the peaceful protest. Often,

08:11if the violence becomes dominant, that discredits the revolutionaries and the military may feel more

08:17impelled to defend the government. So it's a bit of a delicate balance. And one of the tasks that

08:22non-violent revolutions face is keeping to the non-violent path. Ape and or goblin, where do you

08:29think the next world historic revolution will happen? I think Brazil. The reconstituted party there

08:35is doing really stupendous work. I don't think Brazil will be the next world-changing revolution

08:40for the same reason that the American revolution wasn't world-changing. That is, Brazil is not

08:46centrally positioned right now in the world's global economy or politics. If there is a world-changing

08:53revolution, I think it's going to come in China, which is the last great communist power. Xi Jinping is

09:00leading a country that's running into economic and demographic problems. The economy is

09:05weakening. Growth is slowing. People are hardly having children. And that means China's workforce

09:10is going to decline quite a lot in the next 20 or 30 years. So the combination of an increasingly

09:17kind of autocratic one-man rule and an economy that is faltering and where people don't have faith

09:24in the future, that's a combination that has often led to revolutionary rebellion. Sometime in the next 10

09:31years, it's possible that the Chinese people will ask for a more accountable, a more democratic government.

09:38And if that happens, that would have probably the greatest implications for the world of any revolution

09:45since the Chinese revolution in 1949. Forum Mod asks, did anyone else remember Che Guevara shirts being big

09:55in the mid-2000s? Che became a symbol of revolution in the 50s and 60s because at that time, Fidel Castro,

10:03who had created a communist revolution in Cuba, was promoting his revolution as doing wonderful and

10:11great things. And because there was no outside news to really counter that view, he was able to kind of

10:17cultivate an image that the Cuban revolution had stood up against the imperialist Yankees in America,

10:23had gotten rid of poverty and prostitution, that it had spread health care and education. Some of

10:30that was true, but the economy didn't do well under Castro. In fact, Cuba, which had been the most

10:35advanced economy in Latin America, started to fall behind. So Che Guevara, who had been one of Castro's

10:42leading lieutenants and was a great proselytizer for the virtues of the Cuban revolution, became the face

10:48of the Cuban revolution, along with Fidel. T-shirts with Fidel and with Che became common among college

10:55students in the 1960s because they were saying, hey, we also want freedom. And we think Che is a symbol

11:02of how we fight against capitalism and imperialism. Blacksmith Most asks, is the Haitian revolution

11:09really the first successful slave rebellion? What about the Mamluks in Egypt? Well, that question

11:15shows a good knowledge of history. The Mamluks were slaves, but slavery in the ancient world didn't

11:22mean the same thing as African-American plantation slavery. In the Ottoman Empire, slaves could be

11:28prime ministers, skilled engineers, provincial governors. What made them slaves is they remained

11:33totally the property and totally loyal to the sultan. Now, the Mamluks were military slaves put in

11:41charge of the Egyptian province under the sultan, and they rose up and created an independent Mamluk

11:47dynasty in Egypt. The Haitian revolution was the first modern slave rebellion in which African plantation

11:55slaves rose up against their masters. And it was a really incredibly influential event. People are

12:02starting to look at the Haitian revolution and say, along with the American and the French revolution,

12:07all three of these were really big, pivotal events in world history. The Haitian revolution helped spur

12:12the abolitionist movement in Europe. It showed that former slaves like Toussaint L'Overture could lead armies,

12:20could lead countries. And so the Haitian revolution gave new dignity and new respect among slaves and kicked off

12:29the discussion across Europe about what should the relationship be between slavery and democratic

12:35government. Yodajiva poses this question, do all revolutions need a figurehead? I have to say revolutions

12:42need a leader. They need someone to inspire people to leave their ordinary day-to-day lives and join protests

12:51to take risks opposing a government. Sometimes the leader can just be a quiet and powerful figure. George Washington

12:57was known for his humble leadership, his virtue, and his efforts to be a leader that everyone could

13:04follow. In other cases, you have revolutionary leaders like Mao who try and inspire divisions.

13:10So there are a number of different ways to lead a revolution, but you don't get very far without

13:14leaders who can galvanize people, maintain mobilization, and then build a new government.

13:19Bothrops asked, why is the French revolution considered the main catalyst for global democracy and not the

13:26American Revolution? Americans always like to say it was our revolution that started global democracy, but the

13:32French like to say, but our revolution transformed all of Europe. The American Revolution started with a list of

13:38grievances against the British King George III and blamed him for being a tyrant. Still, the American

13:47revolutionaries were very aware that by getting rid of a monarchy and its viceroys, they were embarked on a new path.

13:56They were creating citizen government in which all the rulers would not have legal privileges,

14:02all citizens were equal before the law, and where even the highest officials were accountable to

14:08elections by the people. And that was something new. So the Americans knew they were doing something

14:13different, but let's face it. In 1776, America was a relatively small group of colonies on the far edge of

14:22European civilization. Now, France, that was the big power in Europe. Culturally, politically, militarily,

14:30French language was spoken all the way from Paris to Moscow. And when France had a revolution,

14:35and the king and queen of France were paraded to the guillotine, that couldn't be ignored in Europe.

14:41Everyone had to sit up and say, wow, even the greatest sun monarchy in Europe can be overthrown and

14:50replaced by a citizen republic. Certainly, it had its roots and influence in the American

14:54revolution. But you have to say the French revolution had a much bigger impact all across

15:00Europe than the America's colonial war for independence. A Quora user is asking,

15:06why aren't Venezuelans revolting right now? They have no food, electricity, water. People have started

15:12revolutions for less. Well, it's certainly true that people have started revolutions for less. In fact,

15:17one of the paradoxes of revolutions is that in many cases, revolutions start when things are getting

15:24better rather than when they are at their worst. In order to overthrow a government, people have to

15:31come together. They have to organize. Elites have to turn against the regime. When people are really

15:36desperate and impoverished, it's hard to sustain a protest. For most of the people in Venezuela,

15:42survival has become so difficult that they are simply leaving in droves. Millions of Venezuelans

15:47have fled to Colombia or have sought to enter the United States. And for its part, the government in

15:54Venezuela is all too aware that it is hated by the people. So what the government has done in order to

16:00assure the loyalty of the military is it has engaged the military in narcotics trafficking and other

16:07illegal activities. This essentially forces the military to remain loyal to the government. Now, it's still

16:13possible that the bulk of ordinary soldiers might refuse to follow orders. They might engage in

16:21protest joining the population. That's how revolutions have often started in the past. But at the moment,

16:27the military leadership is all too aware that they need to keep their troops loyal. So they are trying

16:33to give privileges to Venezuelan soldiers, helping them share in the fruits of these illegal activities,

16:40and that way protect their loyalty. Now, the question may come up, is there a breaking point? Can Venezuela become so

16:47impoverished that the government can no longer support itself? I do think at some point in the future,

16:54we'll see ordinary soldiers joining popular protests and the Maduro dictatorship may come to an end.

17:02Independent Fact 082, hey, no taxation without representation. But what representation did the colonists want?

17:09The colonists wanted the same rights as other Englishmen. Every borough and province in England

17:16had some claim to be represented in the British Parliament, and no taxes could be levied throughout

17:22Britain without the consent of Parliament. But the British colonists in America didn't have that.

17:29They had no representation in the British Parliament, and so the British monarchy felt they could

17:35levy whatever taxes they wished. The colonists had no say. And so the colonists said, hey, we want to have

17:41representation. We want our people to be able to vote just like other British citizens. And when King George said,

17:49no, no, you guys are far away. You're colonists. We know what's better for you. That started the colonies down the road

17:56toward revolution. They didn't want to go there, but they really felt that eventually Britain gave them no choice.

18:01They said, we're being treated not like free people who can control their own destiny, but just like

18:08subjects of an empire. And that's why the rhetoric of the American Revolution started to become,

18:13give me liberty or give me death. So that's the representation story. And that's why people in

18:18the U.S. value their representation so very much to this day.

18:21J.C. Dixon Canne asks, did the Glorious Revolution kickstart England's imperial age? If so, why?

18:30England had one of the great empires in world history. As they said, the sun never sets on the

18:36British Empire. Where did that all begin? In 1640, England had a Puritan revolution. The king was tried

18:44for treason, beheaded, and a commonwealth government under Oliver Cromwell took power. And in a series of wars,

18:51defeated the Dutch and made Britain the leading power on the high seas. Cromwell also took out his

18:58anger on Ireland. Not only did he defeat rebellions in Ireland, he invited Scottish settlers to come

19:06and settle the Emerald Island. So we have Cromwell to blame for the conflict between Protestant

19:12settlers and native Irish Catholics that has created problems to this day. In my view, that's really the

19:19beginning of Britain's imperial future. The Glorious Revolution, which occurred in 1688,

19:25was another episode in which the British rose up against their king because he was Catholic,

19:30James II. And they invited William, the leader of the Netherlands, who was a Protestant, to come and

19:37become the new king of England. The Glorious Revolution was called Glorious because the British felt that

19:43they weren't really changing that much. They were just setting things straight. And so inviting William

19:47and Mary to come and become king and queen of England, British saw that as a glorious restoration

19:54of the proper Protestant balance in their country. Where did Britain's global imperial reign really start?

20:01I think we have to go back to Cromwell and the conquest of Ireland and see that's the beginning of

20:06Britain as an imperial power. Harrison Jodite says, was January 6th an attempted revolution?

20:13In some ways, I kind of see January 6th as being like the storming of the Bastille in the French

20:18Revolution. In 1789, citizens in Paris were worried that the government was going to let them down. So

20:26the people of Paris organized themselves and said, we're going to send a message. We're going to storm

20:31this citadel, the armory at the Bastille, and they stormed it, managed to knock down the doors and

20:37kill the people who were inside. Now, the people who protested on January 6th, they shouted, hang Mike

20:44Pence. Would they have actually done it if they had found him? We don't know, but they were certainly

20:49shouting their intent to execute their enemies. In many ways, January 6th, yes, it was kind of a

20:55revolutionary insurrection. By itself, that doesn't constitute a revolution. But could it someday

21:01be seen as the opening stages or the opening blow of change in America's government? That could

21:07certainly be. It's Me poses this question. To what extent did the Cultural Revolution destroy

21:14Chinese culture? China was really committed under Mao to really drive out any older or foreign influences.

21:22And so for a decade or more, China's so-called feudal past, the Confucian and Buddhist eras,

21:31were condemned. And communism was supposed to start a new day. Mao tried to destroy all kinds of foreign

21:38elements, not only the classical Chinese past, but also elements of Western culture. During the Cultural

21:44Revolution, professors were beaten if they taught modern Western physics or classical music. Students were

21:52encouraged to attack their teachers, workers to attack their managers. But the result of all that

21:57was chaos. The army eventually had to step in and stop it. So even though Mao tried to create his ideal

22:04fantasy of a permanent revolution, it just didn't work in practice. What China went back to, especially

22:10under Deng Xiaobing, was the business of making things, building an economy, and going back to traditional

22:18Chinese beliefs. Beliefs in a moral government, Confucian ideal of the importance of family.

22:25Those things were very deeply rooted in China, and Mao was not able to destroy them.

22:29America Papa Bear asks, so was the Iranian Revolution a product of the West invasion? The West didn't

22:37really invade Iran. It is true that in the 1950s, the CIA helped overthrow the government of the Iranian

22:46Prime Minister Mossadegh and install Reza Pellevi as the Shah of Iran. That CIA action did, in the long

22:55run, help contribute to the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Now it did so because Mossadegh was fairly popular,

23:01and he was standing up for Iran's right to control its oil revenues, which were being increasingly taken

23:08by American and British companies. But of course the Americans wanted to continue to benefit from that,

23:13so they saw Mossadegh and his nationalism as a threat, and they worked to undermine him and bring

23:20in the new Shah, the son of the previous ruler. He ruled as a kind of pro-Western secular leader. He

23:28managed to alienate almost everyone else in Iran. He made enemies out of the Shia clergy. He attacked the

23:34traditional merchants of the bazaar. He fought with the unions of oil workers who demanded higher wages,

23:41and he kind of neglected the large numbers of peasants that were moving from the Iranian countryside to

23:48the cities, where they were increasingly recruited and socialized by the mosques and religious leaders.

23:54Now the Shah remained in control through most of the 60s and 70s, but by the late 70s he was growing ill,

24:02he'd become a bit more arbitrary, his children were acting more corruptly, and many people in Iran started to

24:08see the Shah as a source of more problems than benefits. They saw him as responsible for really

24:15terrible inflation, for excluding the professional middle class from the government and treating them

24:21more as subjects than citizens. So as the Shah became more and more out of touch with his own society,

24:27the Ayatollahs were able to recruit more and more people into protesting, and they saw the Shah and his

24:34connections to the West as the enemy. So I don't think you'd say the Iranian revolution is a result

24:40of Western invasion, but certainly it was targeting Western influence, Western meddling, corruption that

24:48was tolerated by the West, and all of those elements helped mobilize people and bring about the revolution.

24:54Collective1985 wants to know what were the bloodiest revolutions in the history of mankind

25:00that everybody seemed to forget about. Well, most revolutions are pretty famous, but there actually

25:06is one that's surprisingly unknown. That's the Taiping Rebellion that took place in China from 1850 to 1864.

25:16That uprising was led by a kind of delusional young man who started reading the Christian Bible and having

25:24dreams in which Jesus spoke to him and told him that he was destined to lead China into a new world.

25:30In which men and women would be equal. Now you'd say, wow, that's strange. How could such a person

25:37lead a revolution in such a different culture as China? Well, by the middle of the 19th century,

25:42a lot of Chinese felt that the old imperial system had become rickety and rotten. Eventually,

25:48hundreds of millions across China joined the Taiping banner, and in the civil wars that ensued,

25:5520 or 30 million people were killed. It was actually the bloodiest revolution of all time. And yet,

26:01it's kind of unknown because in the years that followed, the Chinese empire restored order,

26:06and so the revolution that we remember in China, that's the communist revolution that gave us the

26:11China we have today. G Radio Rockstar asks, how did the Arab Spring start again?

26:18Well, the Arab Spring, a series of rebellions in the major Arab countries of North Africa and the

26:23Middle East, started in Tunisia where the dictatorship of Ben Ali had become increasingly corrupt. One fruit

26:30vendor was constantly shut down by the police. In despair, he set himself on fire. His action was

26:37caught on camera and then seen all across Tunisia and the Middle East. And that act of despair and protest

26:44resonated with millions of people who were struggling. Protests started in Tunisia. They spread from the

26:50countryside to the capital of Tunis. Ben Ali fled. And thus, the Tunisian peaceful popular revolution

26:58took over. Now, when that happened, a lot of people said, oh, well, Tunisia is unusual. You know, it's a small

27:03state. It has an unusually large westernized professional population. People in Egypt said, if Tunisia can do

27:10that, why can't we? And so a small protest that was planned for police day turned into an unexpectedly

27:17large citywide protest as tens and tens of thousands of people joined the protesters. The government tried

27:24to suppress them, of course, and it was back and forth. But then the Muslim Brotherhood, a large

27:28underground protest organization, they decided, hey, this is our opportunity. We should join the protesters.

27:35And at that point, everything came down to the military. Was Egypt's army, which was very large,

27:41very professional, very effective, were they going to be employed to put down the protests

27:46in the capital city of Cairo? Well, certainly the government ordered them to do so. But they were

27:51reluctant. And so the army felt, we have a special role to play here. And, you know, we're not crazy

27:56with how Hosni Mubarak is running Egypt. So the military stood aside. They enabled the protests to go on,

28:03even at some point defending the protesters in Tahrir Square. Eventually Hosni Mubarak resigned.

28:09And so the Egyptian revolution was also successful. Unfortunately, not everything went smoothly. In

28:14Libya, the revolution devolved into civil war. Same thing happened in Yemen and Syria. The Arab Spring

28:20began with a kind of common foundation of long lived, increasingly corrupt and distant rulers,

28:27populations who were angry about unemployment, about a lagging standard of living. And once protest was

28:34seen to be an effective way to create change, it spread from one country to the next. This is

28:40everything for today. I hope you learned something. This is Revolution Support.

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