Anatomy of Revolution: Introduction

The Anatomy of Revolution by Crane Brinton is a comparative study of the four great European revolutions: English, American, French, and Russian. They are not necessarily "typical" but they are four important revolutions about which Brinton proposes to try to observe parallels.

He does not expect to divine the truth of these revolutions; he is a Kantian, and does not expect to find the truth, the thing-in-itself. Nor is the book about the "facts." But he does propose to use a "conceptual scheme" to approach the analysis of the four revolutions, which he will use to frame questions and hypotheses about them, and facts, but not rigidity. And he hopes to steer clear of wishful thinking about "what he would like to prevail" with respect to the four revolutions.

But what conceptual scheme? The notion of a storm, starting with rumblings, building to a thunderous climax, and then subsiding back into sunshine? The notion of equilibrium, of a society getting out of equilibrium and then rocking to and fro before returning to some sort of equilibrium?

Brinton chooses the conceptual scheme of a "fever." In the old regime, 

there will be found signs of the coming disturbance... Then comes a time when the full symptoms disclose themselves, and when we can say that the fever of revolution has begun. This works up... to a crisis, frequently accompanied by delirium, the rule of the most violent revolutionists, the Reign of Terror. After the crisis comes a period of convalescence, and the patient is himself again,

and maybe "strengthened by the experience... perhaps in some respects stronger for it[.]" But, in later chapters, he also uses the notion, as in "disequilibrium" as a sign of regime ill health.

Three of the four revolutions, the British, the French, and the Russian, have a "social or class" basis.

All are begun in hope and moderation, all reach a crisis in a reign of terror, and all end in something like dictatorship -- Cromwell, Bonaparte, Stalin.

The American Revolution is different. It was "predominantly a territorial and nationalistic revolution, animated by patriotic American hatred for the British." But it had a social, class character, and had "some terroristic aspects." It does not fit quite as well into the "fever" conceptual scheme.

There will be no "great discoveries," Brinton warns, and the reader should expect the anatomy of revolutions to yield familiar results. The uniformities in four the revolutions will turn out to be "just what every sensible man already knew about revolutions." 

Next: The Old Regimes.