Rethinking Revolutionary Change in Europe

Book excerpt: Reconsidering the English, French, and Russian Revolutions, this book offers an important new approach to the theoretical and comparative study of revolutions. Bailey Stone proposes an innovative “neostructuralist” integration of competing structuralist and postmodernist theory. Providing a balanced and nuanced critique of both sides, he presents new ways of understanding radical change in the European polities that created the concept—and the dramatic realities—of modern revolution. He focuses on the central issues of modernizers versus traditionalists, old regime bourgeoisies, regicides, terror, and state legitimacy. By reconciling political and cultural theories of revolutionary causation and process, Stone’s synthesis marks a critical advance in our understanding of revolution.