The Arab uprisings of 2011 are like the European revolutions of 1848
slate.com
slate.com
The Wiki article is in the context of Marxism; I never learned this concept from that POV but the concept holds.
It's interesting to see the roles different technologies have played in these waves. Go back to 1848 and the industrial revolution and resulting urbanization are certainly one of many causes.
SMS played a key organizing role in the Color revolutions, especially in Ukraine. And now we're seeing Twitter/Facebook play a role. I think some people are exaggerating that role, but the role is there.
In 2011 people are not just tired and full of anger for the countries they're living in, but they also have communication they never had before, which means they can work with each other, and organize efficiently as they never could in past (anyone watched 300 movie how small but coordinated army defeated big one?).
I wouldn't dare to predict what will happened in those countries after revolutions, but I dare to predict many more countries where people are tired of same bullshit years over years will take same path.
Funny you say that. People in 1848 also had "communication they never had before," and they could "organize efficiently as they never could in past".
From _1848: Year of Revolution_ by Mike Rapport:
> The speed with which the wave of revolutions swept across
> Europe was due to the wonders of modern technology. In
> 1789 it took weeks for news – carried, at its fastest, on
> horseback or under sail – for the fall of the Bastille to
> be relayed across Central and Eastern Europe. In 1848,
> thanks to steamships and a nascent telegraph system,
> reports were being heard within days or even minutes.
[1] it's not much of a revolution when the king simply signs the damn agreement, but is a lot less bloody and there would have been much violence if he hadn't.
The Hungarian independence of 1848 was really pretty damned cool, actually. It would have changed the world had it survived.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Number_of...
Bah. The European 80's/90's were just as complex and messy as 1848.
I think that’s a pretty superficial search for similarities. We don’t yet know how the revolutions will work out and there are not that many examples in the history of revolutions spreading from one country to the next like wildfire. (I can actually only think of 1848 and 1989/1990. Does anyone know more?) To what extent comparisons to 1848 and 1989/1990 make sense at all is certainly questionable.
- 20 years ago the superpower USSR stopped to side with the opressors
- nowadays the united states (and europe) stopped to side with the oppressors
in both cases it might be out of weakness and/or a change in policy.
The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is they probably won't work out, given the track record. Public institutions take a long long time to build.
I don't know to what extent these really classify as either revolutions or spreading from one country to the next, but the collapse of Empires after WWI (notable the Hapsburgs) and WWII (the British) may qualify.
The Reformation away from the Roman Church was also similar in spreading. Not as ostensibly political, but the Church and State were much more intertwined at that point so I'd slip it in.
Much prior to that (say, the fall of the Roman Empire, though that was invasion more than revolution) and I think communication happened too slowly for a cascading revolutionary effect to generate, or at least it gets lost in a lot of other historic noise.
AFAIK, in many countries the decision to reform was very much indeed a political one. The local sovereigns desired independence from the then considerable Papal influence, as well as an excuse to "acquire" the (also considerable) wealth of the national Catholic parishes.
And aside from Romania, there weren't any dictators in the story. Hungary had had something like a Brezhnev figure in the 70's, but he was long gone by 1989 and there was just a Parliament. Same with East Germany - there was a Heimatssicherheitsamt (just a little joke there) but there was certainly no dictator.
And the crucial point is this - nobody knew that the USSR was going to wither up and blow away. This caused the USSR to wither up and blow away - it could very well have happened that the tanks would have rolled in by Christmas, but instead, the trucks rolled out and east.
In 1956, things worked exactly in this same manner - the people revolted, and only after a couple of months did the tanks roll in. (My mother-in-law was 10. She told me some stories. It will fry your American brain to realize your mother-in-law was playing next to stacked bodies one winter).
And actually in 1848 it was a similar situation.
Here, the expectation is that America's tanks will roll in - or at least their bombers will scream by overhead. They're not going to, though - and in that point, this wave is very, very much like 1989/90 in Europe. Each individual country has its own story. Some had people with their backs up against the wall, others just ... merged with their cousins.
To your second point - our own Revolution sparked off a few, France being one of them. And the European empires in Africa all fell within a few years of one another. When it happens, it changes maps.
Post-WWII wars of independence from European empires.
Spanish American wars of independence in the early 19th century.
The 16th century protestant reformation?
While it didn't create that outcome (it took 23 more years), I guess the book saw that event (and similar European attempts in the same time period, with less alliteration) as being a key starting point. Of course, I'm not convinced current uprisings are comparable, (or aren't comparable for that matter, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239018) but it's an interesting discussion.
"Each revolution must be assessed in its own context, each had a distinctive impact. The revolutions spread from one point to another. They interacted to a limited extent. … The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each therefore demands its own narrative …"