Let’s talk about the word “revolution.” According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it has two meanings: one is “the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course,” and the other is “a sudden, radical, or...
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Let’s talk about the word “revolution.”
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it has two meanings: one is “the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course,” and the other is “a sudden, radical, or complete change” (i.e. of a political organization). (READ MORE: Two Ways of Ending Empire)
Those seem like somewhat unrelated definitions. After all, what does “going round” have to do with radical change?
Like most words related to science and government in the English language, “revolution” has Latin roots. It comes from the verb “revolvere,” meaning “to roll back to a starting point.” At this point, you may be wondering why we’re talking about words — this is a history post, after all, not a lesson in etymology.
But here’s the thing: Revolutions (of the radical and complete change type) have been part of human history for a very long time. Ancient Egypt and Babylon saw regime changes, as did Plato’s Greece and Caesar’s Rome. But, we didn’t refer to these regime changes by the word “revolution” until the mid-15th century.
By the time our Founding Fathers were staging a revolution on the North American continent in the 1770s, the term had been used most recently to describe the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (when the Stuarts were expelled from England and replaced by King William and Queen Mary). (READ MORE: The Man, The Myth, The Legend)
In the colonial mind, the ideas of the revolution of bodies and revolution in politics were still closely linked. That is to say, when they conceived of a political “revolution” they didn’t think they were breaking from everything that came before them. Rather, they believed in breaking from the political and social innovations of the British state, which they thought was violating their rights as Englishmen under English Common Law. This is why, after a years-long war, the colonists built a justice system that looked an awful lot like England’s and a political system that mimicked Ancient Rome.
To them “revolution” meant to “turn back.” In their mind, the English crown had strayed from its fundamental principles (a 180-degree revolution) and the colonists had to return to those principles (another 180-degree revolution). It was, in total, a 360-degree revolution.
That wasn’t at all the case for the men who stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, just over a decade later. The French not only wanted to reject the French crown and the social structures it had spawned, but they also intended to reject Western society up to that point. (READ MORE: After 1940, Poet No Longer a ‘Hero of the Left’)
The storming of the Bastille represents the simultaneous end of the French monarchy and the redefining of the term “revolution.” It, and not the signing of the Declaration of Independence, signaled the dawning of a new age.
This article originally appeared on Aubrey’s Substack, Pilgrim’s Way on July 15, 2024.
The post A New Kind of Revolution appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
