Revolutions and History An Essay in Interpretation [Paperback]

This book offers a fresh framework for the historical understanding of revolutions and ideas about revolution.Acknowledgements.

ntroduction: Meanings of Revolution in Time and Space.

Part I: How Revolutions Happen:.

1. Revolutions in Past History.

2. Why Revolutions have Occurred.

3. The Trend in Revolutions.

4. Revolutions and Modernity in the Twentieth Century.

Part II: Why Revolutions Matter: .

5. Revolutions and Historical Change: the 'Revolutionary Narrative'.

6. The Revolutionary Narrative in History.

7. The Revolutionary Narrative at the End of the Twentieth Century.

Appendix: Revolutions and the Understanding of History.

Notes.

References.

Index.

'Revolutions and History combines the virtues of two very different kinds of study. It is a lucid, concise and reliable guide through the forest of literature on the subject: an ideal introduction for students. It is also a wide-ranging essay full of original ideas on topics as diverse as world-system theory and the effects of what the author describes as 'the revolutionary narrative'. I don't know of any book which so skilfully combines history with theory in a study of revolution.' Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge

'[Covers] the topic from its beginnings in modern European history up to the present. Parker has more in mind than a mere typology. He wishes also to give a structural-analytic explanation of revolutions, along with a hermeneutically inflected history of their appearance over time.' American Historical Review

Noel Parker is Senior Lecturer in European Politics, in the Department of Linguistic alcÚ