Revolutions and international relations: Rediscovering the classical bourgeois revolutions

Abstract

In the modern era, revolutions have been central to the structure and dynamics of international affairs. They have always been international events: international in origin, ideology, process and effect, supercharging the rhythms and logics of any given international system. Yet, within the discipline of International Relations, the study of revolutions has remained something of a secondary subject. Not only have there been relatively few studies theoretically engaging with revolution and international relations, but the dominant theoretical frameworks in International Relations have largely bracketed out revolutions from their conceptions of international politics. Yet, if revolutions have been, in part, international in both cause and effect, thereby transcending the confines of ‘second-’ and ‘third-image’ conceptions of international relations, we require theoretical tools capable of capturing the sociological and geopolitical dimensions of these Janus-faced events without reducing one dimension to the other. Drawing on the theory of uneven and combined development, this article provides such a conception, organically uniting both ‘sociological’ and ‘geopolitical’ modes of explanation. It does so, in particular, by re-examining two of the key ‘classical’ bourgeois revolutions of the early-modern epoch: the English and French revolutions.