In “Summer of Fire and Blood,” Lyndal Roper tells the story of the serfs who fought for a better life and the elites who co-opted their movement.
Category: freedom
Roberto Breña: “The Age of Revolutions Under the Microscope”
“This bibliographic essay critically reviews two recent books on the Atlantic Revolutions and the Age of Revolutions: The Age of Atlantic Revolution by Patrick Griffin (2023) and The Age of Revolutions by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (2024).”
Shafi Md Mostofa: “Injustice Paves the Way for Revolution: Lessons from Bangladesh”
“Moreover, the success of any revolution depends on the cultural preparedness of the people. Revolutions may be sparked by injustice, but their outcomes are shaped by the collective consciousness and readiness of the populace to embrace change. In Bangladesh’s case, the cultural strength of the student-led movement, and the symbolic leadership of a figure like…
Miguel Amorós: “What is Anarchism?”
“Despite the undeniably crucial role of the anarchist masses in the revolutions of the last century, no matter how much we search through classic anarchist literature, we will find few references to revolution as a means of transforming society. Because of the violent implications it necessarily contains, it contradicted the pacifist postulates of the ideology,…
Emi Eleode: “‘In some cases, it was the women who were fiercest in the fight’: The female freedom fighters of the Haitian Revolution”
“However, it’s important to acknowledge that the brave overthrowing of slavery and the creation of an independent Haiti was a joint victory between men and women. And while many sources exist focusing on the male figures of the Haitian Revolution, recent efforts have been made by historians, scholars, activists, writers and others to locate women’s…
Tareq Baconi: “Confronting the Abject: What Gaza Can Teach Us About the Struggles That Shape Our World”
“What would it mean for us to confront our abjection honestly? To overcome our fears and succumb to that internal voice of self-loathing that speaks of our possible defeat, of the errors we have acquiesced to out of fear or pride? Abjection is the primer of our culture. We have, each of us, the potential…
Jean Vioulac: “Revolution and Destruction: The Fascist Obstacle”
“The revolution is not an ideal or a utopia; it is the fundamental movement of our time. For two centuries, private life and society, art and religion, technology and science, everything has been revolutionised.”
For Alfredo M. Bonanno (1927-2023)
“That is why we are, and define ourselves, insurrectionalist anarchists. Not because we think the solution is the barricades — the barricades could be a tragic consequence of choices that are not our own — but we are insurrectionalists because we think that anarchist action must necessarily face very serious problems.”
“The Revolutionary Temper” (2023) by Robert Darnton reviewed
Darnton “suggests that between the end of the war of the Austrian succession in 1748 and the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the French population underwent a series of convulsions, some as molten as others were icy, which resulted in a subtle but powerful molecular shift.”
Carlo Greppi: “Happy Birthday, Toussaint Louverture”
The French Revolution, “confronted with the colonial question,” had to “confront itself,” and “the principles from which it had sprung,” Aimé Césaire writes. It hesitated, wavered, and ended up engulfing itself. But it also learned, thanks to the determination of Toussaint Louverture and his slave army, that freedom is not a force you can stop…