Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies
Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies
List of Tables and Maps ix
Preface xi
Introduction
1 Explaining Social Revolutions Alternatives to
Existing Theories 3
A Structural Perspective 14
International and World historical Contexts 19
The Potential Autonomy of the State 24
A Comparative Historical Method 33
Why France Russia and China 40
Part I Causes of Social Revolutions in France Russia
and China
2 Old Regime States in Crisis 47
Old Regime France The Contradictions of Bourbon Absolutism
51
Manchu China From the Celestial Empire to the Fall of
the Imperial System 67
Imperial Russia An Underdeveloped Great Power 81
Japan and Prussia as Contrasts 99
3 Agrarian Structures and Peasant Insurrections 112
Peasants Against Seigneurs in the French Revolution
118
The Revolution of the Obshchinas Peasant Radicalism in
Russia 128
Two Counterpoints The Absence of Peasant Revolts in
the English and German Revolutions 140
Peasant Incapacity and Gentry Vulnerability in China
147
Part II Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France
Russia and China
4 What Changed and How A Focus on State Building 161
Political Leaderships 164
The Role of Revolutionary Ideologies 168
5 The Birth of a Modern State Edifice in France 174
A Bourgeois Revolution 174
The Effects of the Social Revolutionary Crisis of 1789
181
War the Jacobins and Napoleon 185
The New Regime 196
6 The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party State in Russia
206
The Effects of the Social Revolutionary Crisis of 1917
207
The Bolshevik Struggle to Rule 212
The Stalinist Revolution from Above 220
The New Regime 225
7 The Rise of a Mass Mobilizing Party State in China
236
The Social Revolutionary Situation after 1911 237
The Rise and Decline of the Urban Based Kuomintang 242
The Communists and the Peasants 252
The New Regime 263
Conclusion 284
Notes 294
Bibliography 351
Index 391
