9 Historic Revolutions

Howard Sherman

Description

In concrete terms, the author has been facinated by the many powerful revoutions that have occured during his own lifetime. It is a mystery to many writers exactly how history evolves through different stages of society. REVOLUTION answers this question by looking at the excitng events and different group relationshships that have powered each revolution. 

The revolutions revealed in this book include the Neolithic revolution of prehistoric times, the crises and the end of the Roman empire, the rise of feudilsm and serfdom in England and the path was followed to end feudlaism in England forever. The book shows how France went through a bloody revolution against the feudal Lords which resulted in the beginnings of democracy and capitalism throughout Europe. 

The complex and difficult revolution against Brittish emperialism iun India is revealed and stand as a sign as an example of many anti colonial revolutions that later occured throughout the world. The revolutionary path then goes through China and Russia.

Finally, the patterns of these revolutions in their orgins activity and final explosive activity are examined to see how they all behaved in certain similiar manners- even though the conditions were entirely different in each era. The last chapter in the book present social movements and conflicts as a concluding historical event.

Foreword; Acknowledgments; 1 Class Conflict and the Path to Revolution; 2 Prehistoric Communal Clans (Middle East); 3 Revolution from Communal Equality to Slavery (Middle East); 4 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Revolution from Slavery to Feudalism; 5 The English Revolution (1640– 60): From Feudalism to Capitalism; 6 The American Revolution (1776): From Colony to Capitalism; 7 French Revolution (1789): From Feudalism to Capitalism; 8 American Civil War (1861): Revolution from Slavery to Capitalism; 9 Anti-colonial Revolutions for Independence Such as India; 10 The Russian Revolution; 11 The Chinese Revolution; 12 Patterns of Revolution; 13 The Progressive Theory of Revolution; 14 The Present as History; Bibliography; Index.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Revolutions
• Rebellion
• General officer
• International relations
• Revolution
• World
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785275388
• Langue: English

Extrait

9 HISTORIC REVOLUTIONS
9 HISTORIC REVOLUTIONS
A Study in Political and Economic Evolution
HOWARD J. SHERMAN
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2021
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright Howard J. Sherman © 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020949921
Cover images: Anti-clockwise from the bottom—Statue of Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India, reddees / Shutterstock.com; Tribe of hunter-gatherers, Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock.com; Two African American soldiers wearing Union uniforms, Everett Collection / Shutterstock.com; The American Revolution, Yankee Doodle 1776, three patriots, by Archibald M. Willard, ca 1876, Everett Collection / Shutterstock.com; Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, jorisvo / Shutterstock.com; Caesar on horseback, Voropaev Vasiliy / Shutterstock.com; A stamp printed in France commemorates the opening of the Estates General, May 5, 1789, Olga Popova / Shutterstock.com; Poster on the culture revolution of China in 1970s, John Lock /Shutterstock.com; Soviet communistic background, Triff / Shutterstock.com.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-536-4 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-536-4 (Pbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1 Class Conflict and the Path to Revolution
2 Prehistoric Communal Clans (Middle East)
3 Revolution from Communal Equality to Slavery (Middle East)
4 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Revolution from Slavery to Feudalism
5 The English Revolution (1640–60): From Feudalism to Capitalism
6 The American Revolution (1776): From Colony to Capitalism
7 French Revolution (1789): From Feudalism to Capitalism
8 American Civil War (1861): Revolution from Slavery to Capitalism
9 Anti-colonial Revolutions for Independence Such as India
10 The Russian Revolution
11 The Chinese Revolution
12 Patterns of Revolution
13 The Progressive Theory of Revolution
14 The Present as History
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD
The daily lives that we human beings experience—all of us, in all generations throughout history—consist of a large number of activities that, among other things, enable us to keep food on our tables and roofs over our heads. These acts of provisioning—how we organize our lives to keep ourselves and our families alive—can easily come to seem immutable, as patterns that never change over the course of lifetimes or even generations.
In reality, however, all of our life patterns are grounded within the framework of a prevailing social order that defines a historical epoch. We may not think much about, or even notice, the specific features of these prevailing social orders as we go about our daily lives. But they are nevertheless always present. This is what Karl Marx was referring to in the justly famous epigram he wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon : “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, and given and transmitted from the past. The history of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the living.”
This book by Howard Sherman that you are holding in your hands brings alive the processes through which various social orders have arisen in history, how they became consolidated over periods of centuries, but then also how they slowly began to deteriorate, eventually to collapse and disappear into the dustbin of history.
The historical sweep of 9 Historic Revolutions is breathtaking. It includes 10 chapters that describe huge transformations that have taken place over time within social orders that were once dominant in a given time and place. Each of these transformations began with long-term evolutionary transitions that then led to relatively brief but intense moments of revolutionary upheaval.
In the book’s first historical chapter, Sherman describes what he terms “prehistoric communal clans.” These are the earliest form of social organization, consisting of extended families that formed into mutually supportive and relatively egalitarian social organizations. Archaeological evidence from the Middle East dates this form of social organization back roughly 100,000 years.
From this starting point, Sherman explains how prehistorical communal clans were gradually supplanted by slave societies in the Middle East. He then moves forward in time to describe the rise and fall of the Roman Empire as a slave society, and more broadly, the transition from slavery to feudalism in antiquity. From there, he discusses the English Revolution of 1640–60, the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, the American Civil War of 1861, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1948, and the large number of anticolonial uprisings, including in India, Africa, and Latin America. Most of these anticolonial struggles lasted for decades and even centuries until they broke through to achieve independence by the middle of the twentieth century.
Sherman infuses these historical chapters with vivid observations that build from bodies of evidence gathered by thousands of researchers. He manages to synthesize this vast and disparate literature into a clear narrative. This alone makes 9 Historic Revolutions a valuable contribution. But the book’s accomplishments do not stop here. This is because Sherman also advances a unified theoretical framework for understanding how the social orders that he describes have risen and fallen over time. He first states his approach clearly in Chapter 1 when he writes, “One common pattern in all of the revolutions is a dramatic increase in the amount of class conflict.” He then reiterates this overarching point toward the end of the book, in Chapter 13 , which he titles “The Progressive Theory of Revolution.” He writes:

Since the end of the prehistoric era, every event in human evolution and revolution has always involved conflict among different classes. For example, in Rome there were slaves and masters; feudal England had lords and serfs; and today we have billionaire capitalists and ordinary workers. Each of these serious class conflicts was over the distribution of wealth and resources. (p. 233)
Between Chapters 1 and 13, Sherman works through the specifics as to how class conflicts play themselves out in the various historical epochs. In all cases, he shows how exploited classes have risen up against their oppressors, after having appeared to accept their conditions of life as inevitable.
Of course, Sherman’s analytic framework builds directly from Marx and Frederick Engels, who wrote, in the first sentence of chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.” But, like Marx and Engels themselves, Sherman’s approach does not focus only on class conflict. He rather develops a framework that shows how class conflict interacts with the development of technologies, the formation of economic and social institutions, and the establishment of ideologies. In the relatively early phases of a social order’s existence, while it is still in ascendance, technologies, social and economic institutions, and ideologies all act as cornerstones serving to reinforce the power of the society’s ruling classes. But Sherman also shows how the emergence of new productive technologies can, with time, also serve to undermine an existing social order, and how economic and social institutions as well as ideologies can undergo change through dynamic interactions with the forces of class conflict.
Thus, in his chapter on the Roman Empire (Chapter 4), Sherman writes:

The great wealth of Rome was all built by the effort of slaves. The situation was very pleasant from the masters’ viewpoint, though it was awful from the slaves’ viewpoint (p. 64).
Living one’s life as a slave under Roman rule, it would have been nearly impossible to envision that this mighty empire would decline and fall. But it did indeed fall. A major reason for the collapse of Rome was that the slave system held back technological progress. The slaves resisted the introduction of new technologies, in agriculture for example, because they themselves gained no benefit from accepting new production methods. In particular, the slaves would see no reduction in the length of their working days or the intensity with which they labored. All benefits flowed to their masters.

The oppression experienced by slaves also meant that large numbers of supervisors were required to prevent the slaves from organizing rebellions. But the rebellions occurred anyway. The most famous was that led by the gladiator Spartacus. The slaves defeated three Roman armies before the uprising was finally defeated. Over time, this intense level of resistance to slavery forced plantation owners under the Roman Empire to grant slaves some degree of freedom. T