Counterintuitive Facts (86): Why Do Revolutions Often Happen When Things Are Getting Better?
PremiumTocqueville Effect: Pain can be endured, but disappointment of 'could have been better' is unbearable
I. You might think: revolutions happen in the darkest moments. When oppression is heaviest, when people suffer most, they rise up. That's intuition. That's wrong.
II. History's greatest revolutions often happened when things were getting better. French Revolution. Happened after Louis XVI's reforms and improved peasant conditions. Russian Revolution. Happened after the Tsar began industrialization and reforms. Arab Spring. Happened after Middle East economic growth and rising education levels. China's Taiping Rebellion. Happened after the relative peace of Daoguang era.
III. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville recorded this observation in 1856's "The Old Regime and the Revolution": "Revolutions don't always happen because things keep getting worse. On the contrary, revolutions most ofte
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