Revolutionary wave

A revolutionary wave is a series of revolutions occurring in various locations in a similar time period. In many cases, past revolutions and revolutionary waves may inspire current ones, or an initial revolution inspires other concurrent "affiliate revolutions" with similar aims.

Historians and political philosophers have studied the causes of revolutionary waves, including Robert Roswell Palmer, Crane Brinton, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hoffer and Jacques Godechot. The concept is important to Marxists, who see revolutionary waves as evidence that a world revolution is possible. For Rosa Luxemburg, "The most precious thing...in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth. The advance by leaps and bounds of the intellectual stature of the proletariat affords an inviolable guarantee of its further progress in the inevitable economic and political struggles ahead." However, the phrase also has been used by non-Marxist activists and writers, including Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind, to describe numbers of revolutions happening within a short period of time. Various examples of revolutionary waves are cited.

18th and 19th century

• The wave of Atlantic Revolutions occurring at the end of the 18th century, including the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Haitian Revolution (1791) and the Batavian Revolution (1795).
• The Latin American wars of independence, including the various Spanish American wars of independence of 1810–1826. These revolutions are often seen as inspired at least in part by the American and French Revolutions in terms of their liberal Enlightenment ideology and aims, are counted as the second part of the Atlantic Wave.
• The Revolutions of 1830, such as the July Revolution in France and the Belgian Revolution.
• The Revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe, following the February Revolution in France.

20th century

• The Revolutions of 1905-1911 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War, including the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Argentine Revolution of 1905, the Persian Constitutional Revolution, the Young Turk Revolution, the Greek Goudi Revolt, the Monegasque Revolution, the Portuguese Revolution of 1910, the Mexican Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 involved nationalism, constitutionalism, modernisation, and/or republicanism targeting autocracy and traditionalism.
• The Revolutions of 1917-23 in the aftermath of World War I, including the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the emergence of an international communist party alliance in the Soviet-led Comintern, the collapse of the major territorial empires of continental Europe, the first protest of the Indian independence movement organized by Mohandas K. Gandhi, as well as other nationalist, populist and socialist uprisings and protests worldwide.
• Post-World War II communist revolutions in East Asia and Southeast Asia including the 1949 victory of the Maoists in decades-long Chinese Civil War; the establishment of a communist state in North Korea and the subsequent Korean War; the success of the Viet Minh and the communist North Vietnamese regime through the First Indochina War; the failed uprisings by the Huks in the Philippines and by communists in the Malay Emergency; and the Indonesian War of Independence in 1949.
• Waves of revolution in Africa, cresting in the 1970s, including the communist revolutions and pro-Soviet military coups in Somalia, Congo-Brazzaville, Dahomey/Benin and Ethiopia; the fight of the communist parties allied under CONCP against the Portuguese Empire in the Portuguese Colonial War; as well as the anti-apartheid struggle, the South African Border War and the Rhodesian Bush War (in what is now known as Zimbabwe).
• Arab nationalist movements in the 1950s and 1960s, inspired especially by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, led to formation of the Arab League.
• The Cuban Revolution in 1959 preceded communist revolutionary waves in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s including the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War (or Second Indochina War), the Cambodian Civil War and Laotian Civil War, and the efforts of the New People's Army in the Philippines.
• The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) organized successful nonviolent protests against government and private discrimination. Continuing unrest in African-American communities led to the multi-city riots during the “Long Hot Summer of 1967” and the various 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr..
• During the mid-1960s-mid-1970s period youth movements worldwide included opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the worldwide counterculture of the 1960s, the New Left movement and the Protests of 1968, including the May 1968 events in France.
• 1979 saw a Castroite/Guevarist movement take power in the Nicaraguan Revolution; Vietnam-backed Cambodian insurgents drive Pol Pot out of power (followed by the brief Sino-Vietnamese War as the People's Republic of China invaded northern Vietnam in response); the Iranian Revolution which brought an end to the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran and established the Islamic Republic of Iran; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to defend the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen guerrilla movement and Arab and Muslim volunteers.
• The Revolutions of 1989 dissolved the communist Soviet Union by the end of 1991, resulting in Russia and 14 countries declaring their independence from the Soviet Union: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Communism soon was abandoned by other countries, including Albania, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mongolia and South Yemen.

21st century

• The Color Revolutions, starting in 2000 with the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia.
• Opposition to the Iraq War during the 2002-2005 period, including the February 15, 2003 anti-war protest where between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries, with one in Rome, Italy breaking a world record for size.
• Financial and economic protests in Europe included Iceland in 2009 (the Kitchenware Revolution); the 2010–2011 Greek protests sparked by plans to cut public spending and raise taxes as austerity measures,; and the 2011 Spanish protests organized by disenchanted youth. In the Americas there were the 2011 United States public employee protests, starting in Wisconsin, were against proposed legislation in eighteen states which would remove some collective bargaining powers from unions. As well as the 2011 Chilean protests for more public schools and universities.
• Arab Spring protests and revolutions, starting in Tunisia in December 2010 and spreading to Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Djibouti, Iran, Yemen and Syria by May 2011. Protests around the world have been seen as a consequence of the Arab Spring.
• The Occupy movement, beginning in mid-September 2011 and inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, are international protests directed against social and economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government.
• 15 October 2011 global protests sponsored by members of these various movements were held in more than 950 cities and 82 countries.

See also

• Domino theory
• Social cycle theory
• War cycles

External links

• Deborah Jerome, Can Tunisia Spark a Revolutionary Wave?, Council on Foreign Relations analysis brief, January 18, 2011.

• Mark Kosman, Is revolution back on the agenda?