A historian explains the key markings of revolution. It’s a description worth reading.
Jon Miltimore | August 2, 2016
The Modern Era was born with a revolution. So begins Jacques Barzun’s seminal history, From Dawn to Decadence.
Martin Luther might not have intended to ignite a revolution when he pounded his 95 theses into the door of Wittenberg’s All Saints’ Church on Oct. 31, 1517. (This practice was not uncommon in Luther’s day; it was a device used by clergy to start debates.) But that is what he got. The Protestant Reformation upended the moral, social, religious, and political order of the day. Each of the major “revolutions” in the West that transpired in the wake of Luther’s revolution—England’s (1688), America’s (1776), France’s (1789), and all those until Russia’s in 1917—were mere aftershocks of the quake, Barzun argued.
The Protestant Reformation was of course much bigger than Luther. Revolutions have a lifeforce of their own. Their leaders cannot only not control them; they are often swept away by their currents (see: Robespierre). What precipitates such powerful force?
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/are-we-witnessing-birth-revolution
