Revolutionary Tradition Research Articles

Vico's Theory of History and the French Revolutionary Tradition

Vico's Theory of History and the French Revolutionary Tradition

Liberalism and the American Revolution

T HE specific problem confronting historians of the American Revolution is to explain that event without relying upon the assumptions embedded in the revolutionary legacy. The heirs of a revolution are at a disadvantage, for they have received the revolutionary tradition as a set of unexamined assumptions. The fact that men would resort to the violent overthrow of their government for personal liberty is such an assumption. The preeminent place which the founding fathers gave to individual freedom has been accepted as natural, and if the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence have not always been taken as self-evident truths, they have rarely been approached as radical ideas requiring explanation. This does not mean that the historiography of the American Revolution has remained where George Bancroft left it. For forty of the two hundred years of writing on the subject, powerful currents of European thought interrupted the tendency to examine American events within a closed cultural context. However, the Progressive historians' effort to interpret liberal ideology as a mask behind which diverse economic groups struggled for power, foundered on the rock of specific proof. More enduring as a challenge to the Whig explanation

Scholars and the Revolutionary Tradition: Vietnam and West Africa

When and why do scholars become revolutionaries? This question has been occupying my mind for some time, in its most general form. But, though I would like to discuss it in this general way, it seems more manageable-and quite ambitious enough-for the purpose of this paper to consider it in the context of two specific regions which I know something about, Vietnam and West Africa, more particularly the Western Sudan, and to try to make some comparisons between them. At the outset one is struck by certain points of resemblance between the two systems. Both Vietnamese and West Sudanic societies have been much influenced-as regards their poetry and cookery as well as their administration and their law-by adjacent civilizations, the Chinese and the Arab; and by world-views which have emerged within those civilizations-Confucianism and Islam-each associated with a specific script, an extensive literature of 'classics' composed in the script, and a class of scholars trained in the use of the script and the ability to read, understand, comment on, pass on knowledge of, the 'classics'. In both Vietnam and West Africa these various constituents of the adjacent civilizations-world-view, script, 'classics', scholarly class-have influenced the local societies for more than a millennium (in Vietnam much more). In both, side by side with 'classical' literature (in Chinese and Arabic), there developed an indigenous literature, particularly poetry, written in Vietnamese on the one hand, in Kanuri, Fulfulde, Hausa, Malinke, etc, on the other, in modified forms of Chinese and Arabic script. In both societies, coincidentally or otherwise, there were important transformations in the fifteenth century and late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century. In Vietnam, after the defeat of the Ming invasion and occupation in 1427, under Le Loi-leader of the liberation movement and founder of the Le dynasty which survived for the next 360 years-and Le Thanh Tong (I460-I497), reformer, centralizer, expansionist, patron of learning, poet, there was an important shift in the balance of power within the state towards the Confucian-trained bureaucracy, the mandarinate. This was associated with a strengthening of the examination system (the ceremony of proclamation at the palace of the names of candidates who had been successful in the national examinations was introduced in 1462; their names began to be inscribed on the stelae at Van Mieu, the Temple of Literature, in Hanoi in I484) and a growth of the production of learned works, particularly encyclopaedias. One can compare what was happening in some of the Muslim states of the Western Sudan (Bornu, Kano, Katsina, Songhai) at roughly the same period -bureaucratization, political expansion, growth of a scholar class, development of centres of learning, production of Arabic works. Comparison between the late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth transformations in the two societies is more complicated. In both revolutions occurred, more significant in character

Sheffield and the English Revolutionary Tradition, 1791–1820

Was there a secret revolutionary movement in England during the early Industrial Revolution and, if there was such a movement, must we accept that its existence would be “unprovable”? Should we agree with a recent writer that no conclusions can be reached on such questions, the existing historical sources being so ambiguous as to allow the historian to impress his own prejudices on them?. We believe that a rigorous study of the historical evidence of a revolutionary tradition in one region can offer an insight into this important area of English social history. The purpose of this essay will be to set the revolutionary aspect of Sheffield's political history against a brief outline of the town's economic development.

Criticism of Revisionism and Rectification of The Work Style Bear Fruit — The Redbanner of Tach'Ing is More Brilliant Than Ever

Abstract The great movement to criticize revisionism and rectify the work style has made the red banner of the Tach'ing Oil Field more brilliant than ever before. Under the leadership of the Party committee of the oil field, the broad masses of workers have further raised their awareness of the struggle in line and further promoted revolutionary traditions. Revolution and production show vigorous development. Compared with 1965, before the Great Cultural Revolution, crude oil production capacity in 1972 rose 210 percent, crude oil output 260 percent, and the quantity of crude oil refined 130 percent. Gratifying results have also been achieved in comprehensive production by the petrochemical industry and in scientific experiments. Since the beginning of this year the broad worker masses have exerted further efforts and scored new achievements in crude oil production, drilling, oil field construction, crude oil refining, and other fields of endeavor. The new oil zone which started to be drilled only in April this year began to spout crude oil in mid-July.

Nechaev and Tsaricide: The Conspiracy within the Conspiracy

The vague and puzzling character of the Nechaev conspiracy issues in part from the nature of conspiracy itself. Nechaev aimed to sow confusion, to deceive. But was he himself confused, ideologically infirm, and capricious? Reading through his proclamations and short-lived revolutionary journals one encounters a swarm of mutually contradictory ideologies and revolutionary strategies. It would appear that he was conducting several conspiracies simultaneously, some of them based upon the seventeenth and eighteenth century Russian experience of palace coups, pretenders, and cossackled peasant insurrections, others modelled upon the European revolutionary tradition, or contemporary anarchist and communist movements. Perhaps he was confused about the political implications of the several doctrines which he evidently studied only superficially. Certainly, the fine points of systematic doctrines were lost upon him. In typical fashion, he called such developed systems products of mental onanism.' Hence, any attempt to label Nechaev precisely is an even more futile exercise than is usually the case when one deals with thirdor fourth-rate ideologues. Nonetheless, amid the confusion of revolutionary programs, strategies, and tactics expressed by Nechaev during his strange career, it is possible to pick out two unifying themes running like red threads, to borrow a particularly appropriate cliche, all the way through that career. These themes

A Revolutionary Tradition, 1689-1774: "There Was a Revolution Here as Well as in England

reality.l The lessons of English history, and especially the revolutionary settlement of 1688-1689, were uppermost in the minds of the American revolutionaries of 1776. Although one finds few references to the colonial rebellions of 1689 in comparison with those to English and Classical history, yet was a revolutionary tradition in New England which stemmed from the events surrounding the overthrow of Sir Edmund Andros' regime in 1689. John Adams was appealing to that tradition when he reminded his readers that there was a

Fedor Raskolnikov, a "Secondary Bolshevik"

Both Soviet and Western historians have concentrated on major figures of Bolshevik Revolution, and especially on Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, the three who made revolution. Other members of Bolshevik first circle who were unfortunate enough to lose in battles against this troika, for example Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Kamenev, have only recently received a long overdue appraisal of their contribution to drama of events. Left practically untouched are unsung heroes of that Revolution, secondary echelon of party stalwarts which included people such as Nikolai Podvoisky, Vladimir Nevsky, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, Pavel Dybenko, Ivan Smilga, and Fedor Raskolnikov.1 A close examination of one of these tacticians of revolution, Fedor Raskolnikov, reveals that lie does not quite fit stereotype of a Russian revolutionary that often appears in general histories: He does not follow predictable Bolshevik path through power struggle of 1920s and into purges. The unique features of Raskolnikov's life that place him in a category of his own-his background, participation in events of 1917, subsequent Soviet careers, death under mysterious circumnstances, and rehabilitation and repurging in 1960s-may also provide insights into history of Bolshevism. That Raskolnikov was son of a priest should not seem unusual in Russian revolutionary tradition, but his father, Fedor Ilyin, was a progressive St. Petersburg clhurclhmanj a widower who could not legally remarry and whose sons were therefore technically illegitimate. The Ilyin family life was fairly normal, however, from Fedor's

The American Conservative Response

The Commune marked a decisive moment in America's historical and political consciousness and in her image of her own revolutionary tradition. The impact of the Commune is best appreciated when the response it evoked is placed in the context of America's reaction to France's revolutionary efforts from the summer of 1789 to the spring of 1968. In these two centuries the prevailing attitude in the United States shifted steadily from an openness toward the necessity of revolutions to a position of fear and dread of this historical action. Americans at all times used the French experience as a mirror to examine their own conflicts and contradictions, their greatest expectations, their gravest anxieties, their receptivity to innovation, and their hostility to change. Each crisis in France polarized opinion in the United States and on some occasions such as the Commune the resulting tensions concretely influenced the course of the nation's history.

Forever Carry Forward the Revolutionary Tradition of the Red Army Health School

Forever Carry Forward the Revolutionary Tradition of the Red Army Health School

Colonialism, Social Structure and Nationalism: The Philippine Case

FILIPINOS JUSTIFIABLY TAKE PRIDE in the fact that their nationalistic and revolutionary traditions are the oldest in Southeast Asia, particularly from the standpoint of overt systematic efforts designed to expel the colonial rulers and attain independence. Thus the fact that there has been a resurgence of Philippine nationalism during the past decade in one sense should not have been unexpected in view of its relatively long history. Nonetheless, because of the pragmatic and moderate nature of that nationalism prior to the i960s, many observers of the Philippine political scene were surprised both by the rapidity with which the resurgence occurred and by the extent to which it came to reflect the impact of radical interpretations of Philippine society generally and of Philippine-American relations specifically. Yet the nationalist movement undoubtedly would have developed even more rapidly-and more radically-than it has, but for the fact that a number of fundamental issues divided the ranks of its adherents in the i960s. The main purpose of this article is to describe the nature of those divisions by examining the social dynamics underlying the nationalist revival in the Philippines.* This will be done after a brief general account of the major reasons for that revival. The second part of the article focuses on the principal societal sectors and groups involved in the nationalist movement, with emphasis on the factors that have hampered their efforts to achieve unity, both internally and externally. The analysis provides a case-study of the persisting (i.e., post-independence) effects of colonialism on the colonized country. Finally, in the light of that analysis, the third section assesses the prospects for, and the likely political impact of, the nationalist movement in the i97os. Throughout, this essay stresses the ideas and perspectives of the movement's more radical segments, whose views have received little scholarly attention either within or outside their country. Philippine nationalism reached unprecedented heights of intensity during the last years of Spanish control, as manifested in the revolutionary * This article is considerably revised and condensed from my two papers: Resurgent Philippine Nationalism: the 196os, prepared for a 1970 Cornell University Symposium on Philippine Nationalism; and Constitution or Revolution? The Philippines After 25 Years, presented at the 28th International Congress of Orientalists, Canberra, in January 197i. A more extended analysis is contained in my larger study, Nationalism in the Philippines (not yet published).

Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America

T is only natural that the riots and civil turbulence of the past decade J and a half have awakened a new interest in the history of American mobs. It should be emphasized, however, that scholarly attention to the subject has roots independent of contemporary events and founded in long-developing historiographical trends. George Rude's studies of pre-industrial crowds in France and England, E. J. Hobsbawm's discussion of archaic social movements, and recent works linking eighteenth-century American thought with English revolutionary tradition have all, in different ways, inspired a new concern among historians with colonial uprisings.1 This discovery of the early American mob promises to have a significant effect upon historical interpretation. Particularly affected are the Revolutionary struggle and the early decades of the new nation, when events often turned upon well-known popular insurrections. * Mrs. Maier is a member of the Department of History, University of Massachusetts. 1 See the following by George Rude: Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, I959); The London 'Mob' of the Eighteenth Century, Journal, II (959), i-i8; Wilkes and Liberty: Social Study of 1763 to 1774 (Oxford, i962); Crowd in History: Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-i848 (New York, i964). See also E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the s9th and 20th Centuries (New York, I959), esp. The City Mob, i08-I25. For recent discussions of the colonial mob see: Bernard Bailyn, Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., i965), I, 58I-584; Jesse Lemisch, Jack Tar in the Street: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXV (i968), 371-407; Gordon S. Wood, A Note on Mobs in the American Revolution, Wm. and Mary Qtly., 3d Ser., XXIII (i966), 635-642, and more recently Wood's Creation of the American Republic, 5776-i787 (Chapel Hill, i969), passim, but esp. 319-328. Wood offers an excellent analysis of the place of mobs and extralegal assemblies in the development of American constitutionalism. Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, Violence in America: and Comparative Perspectives (New York, i969) primarily discusses uprisings of the i9th and 20th centuries, but see the chapters by Richard M. Brown, Historical Patterns of Violence in America, 45-84, and The American Vigilante Tradition, I54-226.

A Soviet Historian Looks at Reconstruction

A SOVIET HISTORIAN LOOKS AT RECONSTRUCTION Translated and Edited by John V. Bratcher Three or four review essays usually appear in each monthly edition of Voprosy Istorii, the Soviet Union's leading historical journal. In a review essay published in January, 1960, pp. 186-190, A. V. Efimov reviewed The Negroes' Struggle for Land and Freedom in the South, U.S.A. (1865-1877), by R. F. Ivanov (The Academy of Sciences. U.S.S.R Moscow. 1958). This review is quite different from that usually encountered in this journal because it deals with a non-Russian theme. In this essay Efimov presents an interesting interpretation of the Negro 's role in the American Civil War and Reconstruction and a critical analysis of American historiography of that period. Although he critically reviews Ivanov's book Efimov devotes the major portion of his essay to his own interpretation of these and related themes. This interpretation must approximate the Soviet interpretation since A. V. Efimov is a Correspondent Member of the Academy of Sciences and the review contains terminology which indicates that the ideas are not solely those of the author. A translation of that essay forms the basis for the text that follows. To preserve intact Efimov's original ideas no liberties have been taken by the translator. Expansion of proper names and added footnotes are contained in the translator's brackets.« « « « The Civil War in North America approximates the most important turning point in the history of the United States of America. Millions of farm laborers, workers, and Negroes fighting for freedom from the yoke of slavery participated in the war. As a maker of history the role of the popular masses grew considerably during the Civil War (18611865 ) and later in the reconstruction of the South (1865-1877). Consequently three and a half million black slaves received their personal freedom from the revolution. Although lacking political experience and having almost no political leaders from among their ranks, they contributed significantly to the victory of the North over the slaveholding confederation and actively participated in the most acute class struggle in the period of reconstruction. In the work being reviewed only the introductory chapter is devoted to the Civil War. The primary object of investigation is the period of 257 258CIVIL WAR HISTORY reconstruction of the South which was a continuation of the Civil War or the second phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the U. S. A. The events of this period are most flagrantly falsified by reactionary bourgeois historiography which ignores the revolutionary character of these events and the active participation in them of a great mass of people , especially Negroes. The racist conception of the hisotry of this period finds its expression in the works of J[ohn] W[illiam] Burgess, J[ames] F[ord] Rhodes, and William Afrchibald] Dunning and their successors, who completely deny the progressive aspects of reconstruction.1 According to them the negroes, representatives of the lowest race, "never created any kind of civilization". For instance, Burgess regards the activity of the reconstruction governments in the South, which had a revolutionary character, as the establishment of a supremacy "of barbarism over civilization". He considers the program of reconstruction worked out by congress a most gross error and a direct violation of the constitution .2 At the end of the nineteenth—beginning of the twentieth centuries there appeared in bourgeois historiography in the United States the socalled "economic orientation" with its most distinguished advocate Charles Beard. For the first time individual historians acknowledged the revolutionary character of the Civil War and regarded it as the second American Revolution. Beard considered the Negroes a weak-willed instrument in the hands of "ruling groups" and denied them a political role in the Civil War and reconstruction like the racist-historians. A majority of the advocates of the "economic orientation" emphasizes the struggle against the revolutionary traditions of the American people. As a group this school has conducted an active fight with Marxism. Contemporary American reactionary historians have adopted the racist conception of their predecessors. The revolutionary character of the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction is completely denied in the works of E[llis...

Progressive Humanity: In the Philosophy of P.-J. Proudhon

InOurDay, the concept of progress has fallen into disfavor in philosophical and scientific circles, although most people ordinarily seem to take it for granted, in an unanalyzed fashion. There is some reason for its rejection by the more thoughtful; in most of its expressions it was accepted in what now seems rather simplistic terms with regard to its nature and certainty. Without some idea of progress, however, an age dominated by radical change may lack any standard by which to evaluate its condition and tendencies. Furthermore, the idea of progress, and of a meaningful history, was not always presented in oversimplified terms. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a singular figure in the French revolutionary tradition, developed in the middle of the last century a complex and flexible thought about progress in history, and attention to his now little-known ideas may help us save the concept for political analysis and practice.

The Revolutionary Tradition of Learning

As soon as one enters the Changsha Political School of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, one is struck by the revolutionary and militant spirit of learning.

Constitutional Developments in Ceylon Since Independence

C EYLON STILL REMAINS a monarchy, still allows appeals to the Privy Council, still has regular elections at which it regularly changes its government, and still maintains, almost without modification, the constitution on which independence was granted in i948.1 The question to be asked is not Why has the model failed? but Why, and to what extent, has it succeeded? The authorship and guidance of Sir Ivor Jennings provide part of the answer. His understanding of British and local politics contrasted favourably with that of other constitutional lawyers drafting new constitutions which failed. However, much credit must go to the Ceylonese voters and politicians, without whom the system might have collapsed. Ceylon's people are wedded to parliamentary methods. Ceylon has no revolutionary tradition, no revolutionary parties worthy of the name, a tiny army whose occasional political incursions have been farcical rather than threatening, and, most important, politicians who are neither particularly corrupt nor hostile to democracy. Most of its political leaders have had British legal training.2 The administrators, too, have a long background of experience in working constitutional democracy. The Ceylon Civil Service (the administrative class) was Ceylonized to the extent of 33.3 per cent in i925, 64 per cent in I940, and go per cent by I949. The nature of the present constitutional situation in Ceylon can best be examined against the background of past developments.3 Ceylon has had universal suffrage since i93i. At independence it had a class of established politicians, drawn from the professional classes and landed aristocracy, educated in Britain and deeply committed to parliamentary methods. The dominant families-the Senanayakes, Goonetillekes, Bandaranaikes, Ratwattes, and so on-were well represented in the Legislative and State Councils,

Pierre Viret and the Sixteenth-Century French Protestant Revolutionary Tradition

Previous articleNext article No AccessPierre Viret and the Sixteenth-Century French Protestant Revolutionary TraditionRobert D. LinderRobert D. Linder Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 38, Number 2Jun., 1966 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/239853 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1966 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Helen Parish “Every Living Beast Being a Word, Every Kind Being a Sentence”: Animals and Religion in Reformation Europe, Religions 10, no.77 (Jul 2019): 421.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10070421Paul W. Roberts The Politics of Piety : Pierre Viret, William Farel, and the Genevan Consistory as an Early Test-Case for a Unifying Theme in Viret’s Theology, (Apr 2014): 176–189.https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666550331.176J. H. Burns, Mark Goldie The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, 54 (Mar 2008).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521247160

Communist China's Latin American Policy

The main goal of Communist China in Latin America is to establish ideological leadership over the revolutionary movements in that area. To do this it is necessary first, to identify the revolutionary struggles of the Latin American people with Chinese revolutionary tradition and, second, to convince the Latin Americans that Chinese revolutionary experience and strategy is applicable to their situation. As the Chinese lack normal diplomatic channels and have limited economic resources, they have chosen to use an ideological approach-penetration via cultural contact and exchange.

An Open Letter to the Italian Historian Franco Venturi (1)

Dear Colleague: It was pleasant for me to learn that progressive Italian historians responded with lively interest to the initiative of the journal Istoriia SSSR, which had organized an exchange of scholarly experience. In particular, I was pleased that they expressed themselves with respect to my answers to the editors' questions, published in that journal in 1961. International cultural exchange — extensive discussions, familiarization with arguments, conclusions, and evaluations — promote not only a knowledge of other peoples, but also the mutual enrichment of factual resources and the techniques for studying them. Soviet historians know you as an active participant in the self-sacrificing struggle against fascism and as the author of important works on the history of the Age of Enlightenment and 19th-century Russian ideology. Our personal meeting at the Rome Congress in 1955 confirmed my opinion of your sympathetic attitude to the revolutionary traditions of Decembrism and the Narodniks. Therefore I w...

Certain Problems in the History of Soviet Historical Scholarship

Soviet historical scholarship is an inseparable part of the cultural advances of our people. It is impossible to trace the history of the cultural development of the Soviet land without the great and incomparable progress of Soviet scholarship. Marxist-Leninist historical scholarship, one of the most important disciplines, occupies a significant place among the humanities. It contains a concrete and scientifically rational exposition of the postulate that mankind progresses in accordance with definite laws from the primitive communal system, via successive antagonistic social orders, to communism. It follows that one cannot acquire a forward-looking world outlook unless one has mastered the fundamentals of historical scholarship. In order to analyze the vast mass of facts of the contemporary life of man it is necessary to know his past and to understand the direction of historical movement. In his report to the 21st CPSU Congress Comrade N. S. Khrushchev emphasized the important educative significance of history. In offering his definition of the problems facing Soviet scholarship during the forthcoming seven-year period he said: "It is quite important … that our young generation know the history of the country, the struggle of the working population for its freedom and the heroic history of the Communist Party, and that it be trained in the revolutionary traditions of our Party and working class."