ASIA
03 July 2023
REBELLIONS, REVOLUTIONS
Bob Harris' book, Dancing Before Storms, was about historical denials of the signs of impending revolutions. He argues that those signs are all there today.
Readers of my book -- Dancing Before Storms: the story of five revolutions -- often ask: ‘where do you think the next revolution will start?’.
A few weeks ago, I thought ‘probably Russia’. Wagner’s thuggish frontman said so publicly. Then came his rebellion last weekend again Russian generals. There is speculation in every media – TV, print, social – about what will happen next.
I made a several points in the book that are relevant here:
Revolutions, ie the overthrow of a regime, are generally preceded by rebellions displaying major discontent, take the Stamp Act rebellion in the American colonies, or the Boxer Rebellion in Imperial China.
Revolutions are almost always concomitant with wars: with Austria and Britain then across Europe during the 10 years of the first French Revolution. And of course, World War I sealed the fate of the Romanov Tsars.
The consequences of revolutions are always unpredictable: see the book’s account of the 1848 revolutions across Europe.
Speaking of the Wagner group and other Private Military Companies (PMCs), it worth recalling the role of private armies in the colonial era. The book relates how the British East India Company, with a bigger army than Britain’s official one, was nationalized in the wake of the Opium Wars leading to the takeover of Hong Kong.
Profit-making mercenary groups are not new!
Wagner’s rebellion and march on Moscow was last weekend’s big story.
Then this week, the police shooting of a 17-year-old unlicensed driver in a Paris suburb sparked rebellion across France. Hundreds of local town halls, police stations, schools, libraries, health centres, tramways burnt, looting of shopping centres and local boutiques, pitched battles with 45,000 police called out night after night in the major cities.
As I write, French television reports local mayors and their families were threatened – irrespective of political tendencies. Kylian Mbappe, French football captain and world cup champion, himself from a poor Paris neighbourhood, called for calm, stating he and his teammates shared the pain but violence resolved nothing.
Mbappe’s statement reflected a reality. The rebellions across France were set off by one event, but anger, even despair, had been festering, and with it, rejection of the institutions of a democratic Republic. Again, these points, together with the multiplier effects of social media, are underlined in Dancing Before Storms,
Many of those rioting in France this week are of school age. There are calls from the President down for parents to control their children. It will not surprise readers that I come back to the importance of quality education for all – and by quality education I mean more than PISA scores, but education for fulfilment and participation in society – in employment, in communities. Nothing new there. We said it when Education International was founded in Stockholm 30 years ago. It was restated at last year’s UN Transforming Education Summit, recognizing the role of well qualified, well supported teachers. But what is the reality on the ground in country after country? Ramping up expenditure on an increasingly militarized yet exhausted police force is not the answer to urban rebellion. Decent educational opportunities, properly funded, with participation of educators and parent in collaborative engagement to address challenges must be the way forward.
Rebellions of two different types this week in two big countries - Russia and France.
But it goes further – into the heartlands of the United States and many other countries – big and small, developed and developing.
Dancing Before Storms was also about historical denials of the signs of impending revolutions. Those signs are all there today.
Robert T Harris
In an upcoming blog: a review of a fascinating book that addresses themes underlying rebellions in Russia and the United States, and the importance of finding opportunity through education, by Fiona Hill, entitled There is nothing for you here. Dr Hill, a coal miner’s daughter from Yorkshire served as the Russia expert on the US National Security Council, famously testified in the first Trump impeachment proceeding, and has now been appointed to be Chancellor of Durham University in the UK.
A few weeks ago, I thought ‘probably Russia’. Wagner’s thuggish frontman said so publicly. Then came his rebellion last weekend again Russian generals. There is speculation in every media – TV, print, social – about what will happen next.
I made a several points in the book that are relevant here:
Revolutions, ie the overthrow of a regime, are generally preceded by rebellions displaying major discontent, take the Stamp Act rebellion in the American colonies, or the Boxer Rebellion in Imperial China.
Revolutions are almost always concomitant with wars: with Austria and Britain then across Europe during the 10 years of the first French Revolution. And of course, World War I sealed the fate of the Romanov Tsars.
The consequences of revolutions are always unpredictable: see the book’s account of the 1848 revolutions across Europe.
Speaking of the Wagner group and other Private Military Companies (PMCs), it worth recalling the role of private armies in the colonial era. The book relates how the British East India Company, with a bigger army than Britain’s official one, was nationalized in the wake of the Opium Wars leading to the takeover of Hong Kong.
Profit-making mercenary groups are not new!
Wagner’s rebellion and march on Moscow was last weekend’s big story.
Then this week, the police shooting of a 17-year-old unlicensed driver in a Paris suburb sparked rebellion across France. Hundreds of local town halls, police stations, schools, libraries, health centres, tramways burnt, looting of shopping centres and local boutiques, pitched battles with 45,000 police called out night after night in the major cities.
As I write, French television reports local mayors and their families were threatened – irrespective of political tendencies. Kylian Mbappe, French football captain and world cup champion, himself from a poor Paris neighbourhood, called for calm, stating he and his teammates shared the pain but violence resolved nothing.
Mbappe’s statement reflected a reality. The rebellions across France were set off by one event, but anger, even despair, had been festering, and with it, rejection of the institutions of a democratic Republic. Again, these points, together with the multiplier effects of social media, are underlined in Dancing Before Storms,
Many of those rioting in France this week are of school age. There are calls from the President down for parents to control their children. It will not surprise readers that I come back to the importance of quality education for all – and by quality education I mean more than PISA scores, but education for fulfilment and participation in society – in employment, in communities. Nothing new there. We said it when Education International was founded in Stockholm 30 years ago. It was restated at last year’s UN Transforming Education Summit, recognizing the role of well qualified, well supported teachers. But what is the reality on the ground in country after country? Ramping up expenditure on an increasingly militarized yet exhausted police force is not the answer to urban rebellion. Decent educational opportunities, properly funded, with participation of educators and parent in collaborative engagement to address challenges must be the way forward.
Rebellions of two different types this week in two big countries - Russia and France.
But it goes further – into the heartlands of the United States and many other countries – big and small, developed and developing.
Dancing Before Storms was also about historical denials of the signs of impending revolutions. Those signs are all there today.
Robert T Harris
In an upcoming blog: a review of a fascinating book that addresses themes underlying rebellions in Russia and the United States, and the importance of finding opportunity through education, by Fiona Hill, entitled There is nothing for you here. Dr Hill, a coal miner’s daughter from Yorkshire served as the Russia expert on the US National Security Council, famously testified in the first Trump impeachment proceeding, and has now been appointed to be Chancellor of Durham University in the UK.