A global historical sociology of revolution

Beyond the Second Wave Few issues were more central to second-wave historical sociology than revolution. Figures such as Theda Skocpol (1979) and Charles Tilly (1978, 1993) saw revolutions as essential to unraveling processes of state formation. Others, such as Barrington Moore Jr. (1967) and Jack Goldstone (1991), argued that revolutions were fundamental to the emergence of modernity itself. However, as the Introduction to this book argued, although second-wave accounts often claimed to be incorporating international dynamics into their analysis, the emergence of a fully global historical sociology of revolution did not take place. For the most part, global, transnational, and international processes were seen either as the facilitating context for revolutions or as the dependent outcome of revolutions. The result was an analytical bifurcation between international and domestic in which the former served as the backdrop to the latter’s causal agency. The purpose of this chapter is to go beyond second-wave accounts by demonstrating the benefits of a deeper engagement between global historical sociology and the study of revolutions. The chapter pursues three themes raised in the Introduction to this volume. First, if global historical sociology entails examination of the transnational and global dynamics that enable the emergence, reproduction, and breakdown of social orders, then revolutions must play a central role in its agenda. After all, revolutions represent the archetypal instance of social breakdown and re-emergence. Second, although revolutions are primarily sites of contestation within a particular polity over control of a particular state, this does not entail a commitment to methodological nationalism. As the Introduction makes clear, it is not the object of analysis that distinguishes global historical sociology, but its attentiveness to the multiple scales in which social forms emerge and transform. This chapter contends that global entanglements constitute revolutions “all the way down.” This does not contradict the assertion that states are the main sites of revolutionary struggles. Rather, the link between this chapter and the wider goals of the volume stems from its focus on the multiple scales that produce revolutions in particular polities. Finally, this chapter is explicitly relational in that it sees revolutions as “entities-in-motion.” This means shifting enquiry away from a view of revolutions as bundles of properties towards examination of the ways in which transboundary interactions are generative of revolutionary struggles.