Instead of trying to draw parallels to one wave or another, just recognize that it seems like we are in the midst of a revolutionary wave. These things happen every so often: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_wave
The Wiki article is in the context of Marxism; I never learned this concept from that POV but the concept holds.
It's interesting to see the roles different technologies have played in these waves. Go back to 1848 and the industrial revolution and resulting urbanization are certainly one of many causes.
SMS played a key organizing role in the Color revolutions, especially in Ukraine. And now we're seeing Twitter/Facebook play a role. I think some people are exaggerating that role, but the role is there.
In 1848 people were just tired and full of anger for the "world" they were living in.
In 2011 people are not just tired and full of anger for the countries they're living in, but they also have communication they never had before, which means they can work with each other, and organize efficiently as they never could in past (anyone watched 300 movie how small but coordinated army defeated big one?).
I wouldn't dare to predict what will happened in those countries after revolutions, but I dare to predict many more countries where people are tired of same bullshit years over years will take same path.
Hopefully, not quite like 1848, as those revolutions didn't go anywhere. Things are different now (more religious issues, more communication, ...), and they seem to go faster. Hopefully, people there get what they want (and remember, it might not be what YOU want).
In most of Central-Eastern Europe 1848 removed the last traces of feudalism, catalysed the "awakening" of nations, leading to the formation of nation-states some decades later. The nationalism ignited in 1848 is such a strong force until today that we find it hard to imagine what was before that. 1848 in Hungary turned into a war of independence from Austria, which although defeated, led to the formation of Austria-Hungary, a largely multiethnic entity, with relative stability and strong growth for half a century, but which proved to be unsustainable and whose breakup ignited the first world war (EDIT: the end of which sew the seeds of a further world war which had inside the germs of the cold war that would follow, etc. etc.)
I'm not saying that 1848 wasn't significant, merely that it wasn't decisive in a local sense. The old order did not really recover, and the changes ultimately percolated to the surface. Changes in today's world might/will not be so slow.
That was the formalization. Hungarian independence in 1848 was the catalyst (and is still celebrated today; I'm pretty sure that's March 17, but there are so damn many significant dates in 1000 years of Hungarian history that I frankly can't remember half of them).
The Hungarian independence of 1848 was really pretty damned cool, actually. It would have changed the world had it survived.
The "revolution" in Denmark in 49[1] got us our constitution which kept the king, but removed almost all his power and made him a ceremonious figure head.
[1] it's not much of a revolution when the king simply signs the damn agreement, but is a lot less bloody and there would have been much violence if he hadn't.
The point is probably that the withdrawal of Soviet support is what connects all the revolutions in 1989 and 1990. Soviet tanks no longer came rolling in and crushed the revolts like before, in 1953 (East Germany), 1956 (Hungary) and 1968 (Czechoslovakia). There is, like in 1848, no such a central fact that connects all Arab revolutions.
I think that’s a pretty superficial search for similarities. We don’t yet know how the revolutions will work out and there are not that many examples in the history of revolutions spreading from one country to the next like wildfire. (I can actually only think of 1848 and 1989/1990. Does anyone know more?) To what extent comparisons to 1848 and 1989/1990 make sense at all is certainly questionable.
I know that's the point, but it's wrong - nobody knew what the USSR was going to do in 1989. I know, I was living in Germany and marrying a Hungarian wife that year, and when the border guards in Hungary said to each other one fine summer day that it wasn't their job to keep vacationing East Germans bottled up away from Western Europe, and that if East Germany had a problem with that they could just come over here and say that, neener neener - none of that had anything to do with the USSR.
And aside from Romania, there weren't any dictators in the story. Hungary had had something like a Brezhnev figure in the 70's, but he was long gone by 1989 and there was just a Parliament. Same with East Germany - there was a Heimatssicherheitsamt (just a little joke there) but there was certainly no dictator.
And the crucial point is this - nobody knew that the USSR was going to wither up and blow away. This caused the USSR to wither up and blow away - it could very well have happened that the tanks would have rolled in by Christmas, but instead, the trucks rolled out and east.
In 1956, things worked exactly in this same manner - the people revolted, and only after a couple of months did the tanks roll in. (My mother-in-law was 10. She told me some stories. It will fry your American brain to realize your mother-in-law was playing next to stacked bodies one winter).
And actually in 1848 it was a similar situation.
Here, the expectation is that America's tanks will roll in - or at least their bombers will scream by overhead. They're not going to, though - and in that point, this wave is very, very much like 1989/90 in Europe. Each individual country has its own story. Some had people with their backs up against the wall, others just ... merged with their cousins.
To your second point - our own Revolution sparked off a few, France being one of them. And the European empires in Africa all fell within a few years of one another. When it happens, it changes maps.
I would be a bit more careful in disregarding the role of the weakening USSR. It’s true that history is never monocausal and it’s certainly not the weakening of the USSR alone that led to protests (you could even argue that the first protests in Poland in 1980 had nothing to do with the USSR) and later revolution but I think it played an important role. East Germany certainly hoped for support from the USSR and was denied the same by Gorbachev. It was certainly never completely certain that the USSR would not intervene but it was a lot more certain than in 1956.
Actually, Gorbachev had given a speech at the previous Warsaw Pact convention where he explicitly said that the USSR would no longer give military support to other Pact countries facing uprisings. After that, it was just a matter of time till the Iron Curtain fell (or Gorbachev was deposed).
Well, Gorbachev had said so, sure. And Gorbachev could very well have come down with a really bad cold that autumn. Lucky for all of us (Gorbachev included), he actually managed to convince his hardliners - or things really were that iffy in the Soviet Union.
"there are not that many examples in the history of revolutions spreading from one country to the next like wildfire. (I can actually only think of 1848 and 1989/1990. Does anyone know more?)"
I don't know to what extent these really classify as either revolutions or spreading from one country to the next, but the collapse of Empires after WWI (notable the Hapsburgs) and WWII (the British) may qualify.
The Reformation away from the Roman Church was also similar in spreading. Not as ostensibly political, but the Church and State were much more intertwined at that point so I'd slip it in.
Much prior to that (say, the fall of the Roman Empire, though that was invasion more than revolution) and I think communication happened too slowly for a cascading revolutionary effect to generate, or at least it gets lost in a lot of other historic noise.
"The Reformation away from the Roman Church was also similar in spreading. Not as ostensibly political, but the Church and State were much more intertwined at that point so I'd slip it in."
AFAIK, in many countries the decision to reform was very much indeed a political one. The local sovereigns desired independence from the then considerable Papal influence, as well as an excuse to "acquire" the (also considerable) wealth of the national Catholic parishes.
In Europe, the Soviets stopped backing the local princelings before the 89/90 revolutions happened. This time around, the relevant powers seem more to be backing whoever wins and congratulating themselves after the fact for supporting freedom/stability (as appropriate).
i think the relevant powers have used the same diplomatic tone back then as they do nowadays, because of the uncertainty of how things might turn out to be.
>We don’t yet know how the revolutions will work out...
The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is they probably won't work out, given the track record. Public institutions take a long long time to build.
When I studied modern history in High School our text book was called 'Frankfurt to Fra Mauro'. Fra Mauro was a landing site on the moon (where Apollo 13 was headed, iirc); Frankfurt referred to the convention in 1848 which attempted to combine the German-speaking principalities and nationalities into a unified 'Germany'.
While it didn't create that outcome (it took 23 more years), I guess the book saw that event (and similar European attempts in the same time period, with less alliteration) as being a key starting point. Of course, I'm not convinced current uprisings are comparable, (or aren't comparable for that matter, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239018) but it's an interesting discussion.
The opening paragraph of the article (since you just read the headline on hackernews apparently):
"Each revolution must be assessed in its own context, each had a distinctive impact. The revolutions spread from one point to another. They interacted to a limited extent. … The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each therefore demands its own narrative …"
I was referring to the statement in the title, yes - it makes it seem as if those countries are now finally having the revolutions we had a long time ago, which is not what's going on (clearly).
The Wiki article is in the context of Marxism; I never learned this concept from that POV but the concept holds.
It's interesting to see the roles different technologies have played in these waves. Go back to 1848 and the industrial revolution and resulting urbanization are certainly one of many causes.
SMS played a key organizing role in the Color revolutions, especially in Ukraine. And now we're seeing Twitter/Facebook play a role. I think some people are exaggerating that role, but the role is there.