What is Revolution?
According to Goldstone, revolutions involve rapid and fundamental changes in this aspect of society.
What is the political and social order?
Goldstone argues revolutions are more likely when governments face this kind of crisis.
What is a state or fiscal crisis?
Laurent Dubois argues this revolution should be placed at the center of the Age of Revolutions.
What is the Haitian Revolution?
This event in 1789 symbolized the beginning of the French Revolution.
What is the storming of the Bastille?
The Death of Stalin shows the political chaos that can emerge after the death of this Soviet leader.
Who is Joseph Stalin?
Goldstone argues that not every protest, rebellion, or coup qualifies as one of these.
What is a revolution?
Goldstone says revolutions often occur not simply because people are poor, but because expectations rise and then this happens.
What is disappointment or frustration?
Saint-Domingue was economically important because it produced enormous quantities of these two goods.
What are sugar and coffee?
The French Revolution began partly because King Louis XVI faced this type of crisis.
What is a financial crisis?
The film demonstrates how revolutions can eventually produce this kind of political system.
What is authoritarianism / dictatorship?
Beissinger criticizes earlier revolution theories for assuming all revolutions follow predictable versions of these.
What are stages or fixed patterns?
According to Goldstone, revolutions become possible when elites stop supporting this institution.
What is the state or government?
Franklin Knight called the Haitian Revolution the most thorough example of this kind of change in modern history.
What is revolutionary change?
The Declaration of the Rights of Man claimed universal rights, but many groups were still excluded, including these two.
Who are women and enslaved people?
One theme of the film is that revolutionary governments often struggle with this issue after the revolution succeeds.
What is succession or consolidation of power?
This theorist argued that fourth-generation revolution scholarship focused too much on process and fragmentation.
Who is Mark Beissinger?
Beissinger argues scholars “threw the structural baby out with the bathwater,” meaning they abandoned this type of analysis completely.
What is structural analysis?
Dubois argues Haiti is often excluded from revolutionary narratives because of this issue.
What is racism / Eurocentrism / discomfort with slave revolution?
According to Merriman, the French Revolution became increasingly radical because revolutionaries feared these two threats.
What are internal enemies and foreign invasion?
The fear and paranoia shown in The Death of Stalin connect to Goldstone’s discussion of revolutionary this.
What is instability / factional struggle / revolutionary process?
According to Beissinger, one major problem with universal theories of revolution is that revolutions differ dramatically across these dimensions.
What are goals, actors, processes, and outcomes?
This tension between structure and unpredictability sits at the center of the disagreement between Goldstone and Beissinger.
What is whether revolutions follow identifiable patterns or are too varied for one model?
The Haitian Revolution was unique because it was the only successful revolution of this kind in modern history.
What is a slave revolt?
One major comparison between France and Haiti is that France proclaimed universal rights while Haiti actually did this.
What is abolish slavery / extend citizenship to formerly enslaved people?
Using Beissinger’s critique, one could argue The Death of Stalin demonstrates that revolutions must also be studied in terms of their long-term this.
What are consequences / aftermaths / outcomes?