Jack A. Goldstone

This book is a lot more interesting than its title suggests. It argues that the crises of state that set off the English Civil War and the French Revolution had primarily DEMOGRAPHIC causes: rising populations caused rising prices of necessities, which reduced the real wages of the masses and strained state finances to the point of insolvency; but, most originally, it argues population growth and falling wages together wound up the competition to join and stay among the elite, which alone show more enjoyed a rising standard of living on the basis of rising prices and falling wages. Revolution broke out when marginal factions of a fractured, anxious elite allied with impoverished masses to reshape a bankrupted state in line with their ideologies: the State's power to maintain order collapsed in three connected ways at once. He finds falling real wages and a fierce struggle for elite credentials and positions (indexed on university admissions, even in the 17th century!) presaged crisis: a lesson for the US and UK today. (The parallel with modern times is obviously not exact, but automation and global free trade have in a different way caused an effective glut of labour compared to capital.)

The argument for the importance of these factors in the French Revolution is very powerful. Goldstone shows how each of the three estates at the Estates General split according to the pattern of winners and losers from the intra-elite conflicts within each class.

However, the argument for one factor in the state breakdown that set off the English Civil War seems under-powered, namely the role of intra-elite competition. Goldstone shows that there was fierce turnover and competition among elites, but he does not manage to show that this competition was a decisive factor in the collapse of elite consensus over how to handle Charles I. He argues (p. 123) that the context of elite competition made consensus difficult to achieve, and that local elites used the great split of the national elite between Royalists and Parliamentarians as an opportunity to ramp up pursuit of their local conflicts over status and influence. However, he only quotes and cites a few other historians, and the cited works only really serve to show how little we know about what drove local allegiances in the Civil War. He does not therefore manage to demonstrate that general, contextual elite conflict was more fundamental a cause of the breakdown than the more obvious ideological, constitutional, legal and religious differences. There is not a strong enough link drawn between general local elite conflict, which comes across as somewhat empty of content, and the actual issues that divided the sides in the Civil War. It is not really enough to say that general elite conflict made the religious ideology of Puritanism more 'salient' to some involved in such conflict when historians have not been able to use allegiance in local conflicts to predict local elites' side-taking in the crisis. Goldstone may be right, but a lot stronger evidence and argument are required. show less

This book is a lot more interesting than its title suggests. It argues that the crises of state that set off the English Civil War and the French Revolution had primarily DEMOGRAPHIC causes: rising populations caused rising prices of necessities, which reduced the real wages of the masses and strained state finances to the point of insolvency; but, most originally, it argues population growth and falling wages together wound up the competition to join and stay among the elite, which alone show more enjoyed a rising standard of living on the basis of rising prices and falling wages. Revolution broke out when marginal factions of a fractured, anxious elite allied with impoverished masses to reshape a bankrupted state in line with their ideologies: the State's power to maintain order collapsed in three connected ways at once. He finds falling real wages and a fierce struggle for elite credentials and positions (indexed on university admissions, even in the 17th century!) presaged crisis: a lesson for the US and UK today.

The argument for the importance of these factors in the French Revolution is very powerful. Goldstone shows how each of the three estates at the Estates General split according to the pattern of winners and losers from the intra-elite conflicts within each class.

However, the argument for one factor in the state breakdown that set off the English Civil War seems under-powered, namely the role of intra-elite competition. Goldstone shows that there was fierce turnover and competition among elites, but he does not manage to show that this competition was a decisive factor in the collapse of elite consensus over how to handle Charles I. He argues (p. 123) that the context of elite competition made consensus difficult to achieve, and that local elites used the great split of the national elite between Royalists and Parliamentarians as an opportunity to ramp up pursuit of their local conflicts over status and influence. However, he only quotes and cites a few other historians, and the cited works only really serve to show how little we know about what drove local allegiances in the Civil War. He does not therefore manage to demonstrate that general, contextual elite conflict was more fundamental a cause of the breakdown than the more obvious ideological, constitutional, legal and religious differences. There is not a strong enough link drawn between general local elite conflict, which comes across as somewhat empty of content, and the actual issues that divided the sides in the Civil War. It is not really enough to say that general elite conflict made the religious ideology of Puritanism more 'salient' to some involved in such conflict when historians have not been able to use allegiance in local conflicts to predict local elites' side-taking in the crisis. Goldstone may be right, but a lot stronger evidence and argument are required. show less

The first three chapters and 40 pages of this book provide a general overview of what revolutions are, how they appear to the people who experience them, and what their leaders and outcomes usually are like. This part was as informative as I expected. But I didn't find the remaining 100 pages equally useful. The author narrates the arcs of about twenty historical and modern revolutions, but the examples are far too brief to be informative and the modern sections will soon be outdated. I show more would have liked to see stronger links between the introductory chapters and these case studies. show less

Very interesting read. I really liked the chapter about ancient revolutions, and the changing perception of revolutions throughout history was also something new to me. The ending of the book also had a very hopeful message, one that I would love for it to become true.