The anatomy of revolution

foundation of the Lowell Institute. I wish here to thank the officers of the Lowell Institute for giving me the opportunity to initiate this study, and my audience for the co-operation an audience—perhaps without knowing it—always gives. I wish also to thank those of my friends and colleagues with whom I have discussed the subject of this book for the last two years, and especially Professor L. J. Henderson, the effects of whose care, taste and judgment ought to be evident everywhere in a work he has gone over with great thoroughness; Professor W. S. Ferguson, who first called to my attention the inadequacy of important parts of my uniformities when applied to Athenian history; Professor R. B. Merriman, who very kindly placed the manuscript of his study of seventeenth-century revolutions at my disposal, and discussed it with me to the great profit of the present work; Professors Frederick Merk and A. M. Schlesinger and Dr. Richard Leopold, Americanists most gentle with me and helpful in my invasion of a field not my own; Dr. George Pettee; and Professor Penfield Roberts and Dr. O. H. Taylor who, if there is anything in the adage that solvitur ambulando , have had a large part in this book. Finally, I am very grateful to my research assistant, Miss Bernice Hempel, for patient and discerning help alike in the gathering and in the organizing of my materials. Crane Brinton PEACHAM, VERMONT. July 2, 1938. THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF REVOLUTIONS I. The Necessity for a Scientific Approach We are today very much aware of revolution. The bare word itself is likely to set stirring a whole set of sentiments and associations in the mind of any modern man or woman. For some, perhaps for most in the older democracies of the West, these sentiments are not far from fear and dislike. For others, revolution is still a word of good promise, a beginning of better things, a necessary part of the progress of the race. Once, indeed, and not so very long ago, hopeful liberals could believe that certain favored countries—England, the United States, Germany, the good little countries of Europe like Switzerland and Holland, possibly even the classic land of revolution, France—had outgrown this kind of political instability. Freedom in the long run might slowly broaden down from precedent to precedent everywhere, even in South and Central America. All this seems, like so…