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Revolution (disambiguation) and Revolutions (disambiguation).

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Revolution

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In political science, a revolution (Latin: revolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental and

relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the
population revolts against the government, typically due to perceived oppression (political,
social, economic) or political incompetence.[1]
Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and vary widely in terms of methods,
duration and motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in culture, economy,
and socio-political institutions, usually in response to perceived
overwhelming autocracy or plutocracy.
Scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center on several issues.
Early studies of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from a psychological
perspective, but more modern examinations include global events and incorporate perspectives
from several social sciences, including sociology and political science. Several generations of
scholarly thought on revolutions have generated many competing theories and contributed much
to the current understanding of this complex phenomenon.
Notable revolutions in recent centuries include the creation of the United States through
the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the French Revolution (1789–1799), the Haitian
Revolution (1791–1804), the Spanish American wars of independence (1808–1826), the
European Revolutions of 1848, the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Chinese Revolution of the
1940s, the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the
European Revolutions of 1989.

Contents

 1Etymology
 2Types
 3Political and socioeconomic revolutions
 4See also
o 4.1Lists of revolutions
 5Further reading
 6Bibliography
 7References
 8External links

Etymology
The word "revolucion" is known in French from the 13th century, and "revolution" in English by
the late fourteenth century, with regard to the revolving motion of celestial bodies. "Revolution"
in the sense of representing abrupt change in a social order is attested by at least 1450.[2]
[3]
 Political usage of the term had been well established by 1688 in the description of the
replacement of James II with William III. This incident was termed the "Glorious Revolution".[4]
Types

A Watt steam engine in Madrid. The development of the steam enginepropelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain and
the world. The steam engine was created to pump water from coal mines, enabling them to be deepened
beyond groundwater levels.

There are many different typologies of revolutions in social science and literature.
Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated between:

 political revolutions, sudden and violent revolutions that seek not only to establish a
new political system but to transform an entire society, and;
 slow but sweeping transformations of the entire society that take several generations
to bring about (such as changes in religion).[5]
One of several different Marxist typologies [6] divides revolutions into: 

 pre-capitalist
 early bourgeois
 bourgeois
 bourgeois-democratic
 early proletarian
 socialist
Charles Tilly, a modern scholar of revolutions, differentiated between; 

 coup d'état (a top-down seizure of power)

 civil war
 revolt, and
 "great revolution" (a revolution that transforms economic and social structures as
well as political institutions, such as the French Revolution of 1789, Russian
Revolution of 1917, or Islamic Revolution of Iran).[7][8]
Revolutions of 1848 were essentially bourgeois revolutions and