Revolution Definition

This is actually one of my favorite assignments of the entire year. Define Revolution? Hell yeah!

One of the major reasons I decided to take the humanities course is its focus on studying the revolution. Before this class, my understanding of the term “revolution” is quite shallow; I thought it is a similar term as a rebellion that only involves the violent overthrow of s government. However, after spending a year in the Humanities program, I learned that revolution has a much broader context than I expected and here’s my working definition of the term revolution.

During Professor David Robb’s unit, we defined revolution as the change in conceptual schemes. However, I believe revolution should be something more than that. The word revolution comes from the Late Latin revolutionem “a revolving”, noun of action from past participle stem of Latin revolvere “turn, roll back”. That’s why we can see the word revolution still means rotation in physics nowadays.

Currently, I believe people are overusing the term “revolution”. It is almost as if any slight change or improvement in any field can be called a “revolution” nowadays. When a new iPhone comes out, it’s not a revolution! The term “revolution” should only mean a complete change in or overthrow of the major aspects of the previous society, no matter that be political, cultural, economic, or technological, that occurs in a short period of time and not naturally.

According to my definition of the term “revolution”, there are not so many real “revolutions” throughout the course of human history. For example, I wouldn’t even consider the “American Revolution” a real revolution, for even though the American colonies acquired their independence from the British Empire, the culture, economics, and even the political atmosphere barely changed. Likewise, I wouldn’t consider the “Soviet Revolution” fully as a revolution(please read my research paper) for the fundamental political structure remained the same.

I read Lapham’s Collection on “revolution” earlier this year. And in my opinion, none of the examples except maybe the French Revolution(we will talk about this later) satisfies the qualification of a “revolution”. Lapham talked about how revolutions are meaningless by listing examples of “revolutions” from all around the world since the 1940s in his introduction. If you ask me, of course these so-called “revolutions” are meaningless because they are not revolutions at all! For example, the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 did not change the politics, cultures, and economics of the country a single bit, and therefore it is a failed revolt at most and shouldn’t be called a revolution.

I think the French Revolution is a brilliant example of a real revolution under my definition. If you know nothing about the French Revolution, let me give you a one sentence summary. The French Revolution is a series of events that began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790s. The French Revolution completely destroyed and rebuilt the French political system. Gone was the Old Regime monarchy and nobles and the middle class took power. It also changed the culture of the French people as well. Just listen to Les Marseilles. Revolution is now part of the French identity. It’s crazy to think that before 1789 most French people were adamant royalist. Moreover, the French Revolution changed the dominant culture as well. Before the revolution, culottes(stocking-like tight silk pants) were the popular style of dressing among the nobles and aristocrats. However, the radical revolutionaries from the middle and lower class, who literally called themselves Sans-Culottes(without culottes), violently overthrew the previous regime. As a result, the dominant dressing style became pantaloons or trousers. The shift of the dressing style is just one of the many cultural changes that the French Revolution brought.

Going through the units that we covered in the class, here are a couple events I would consider to be a true revolution.

We covered the Scientific Revolution in Professor Robb’s unit and I think it is such a great example of a true revolution. For one, the Scientific Revolution completely shifted people’s view of the world in a little bit more than a century. This paradigm shift, as we discussed in class, marked a complete change in the culture, politics, economics, and the technology of the world. The Scientific Revolution marked the beginning of the Age of the Exploration during which Spain and Portugal rose to become superpowers of the world in lieu of Italian states and the Holy Roman Empire.

Another interesting example we went over in class is Ulrike Meinhof in Professor Denham’s unit. Personal values aside, I think every Meinhop and RAF was attempting to achieve should be considered a “revolution”. Please note that the cause or the reason is irrelevant in my definition of revolution. However, please RAF never succeeded in achieving its goal of changing the culture and the political structure of Germany, it is at most a failed revolution attempt and not a revolution.