Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern WorldThis classic work of comparative history explores why some countries have developed as democracies and others as fascist or communist dictatorships Originally published in 1966, this classic text is a comparative survey of some of what Barrington Moore considers the major and most indicative world economies as they evolved out of pre-modern political systems into industrialism. But Moore is not ultimately concerned with explaining economic development so much as exploring why modes of development produced different political forms that managed the transition to industrialism and modernization. Why did one society modernize into a "relatively free," democratic society (by which Moore means England)? Why did others metamorphose into fascist or communist states? His core thesis is that in each country, the relationship between the landlord class and the peasants was a primary influence on the ultimate form of government the society arrived at upon arrival in its modern age. “Throughout the book, there is the constant play of a mind that is scholarly, original, and imbued with the rarest gift of all, a deep sense of human reality . . . This book will influence a whole generation of young American historians and lead them to problems of the greatest significance.” —The New York Review of Books |
Contents
Chapter I England and the Contributions of Violence to Gradualism | 3 |
2 Agrarian Aspects of the Civil War | 14 |
3 Enclosures and the Destruction of the Peasantry | 20 |
4 Aristocratic Rule for Triumphant Capitalism | 29 |
Chapter II Evolution and Revolution in France | 40 |
2 The Noble Response to Commercial Agriculture | 45 |
3 Class Relationships under Royal Absolutism | 56 |
4 The Aristocratic Offensive and the Collapse of Absolutism | 63 |
5 The Kuomintang Interlude and its Meaning | 185 |
6 Rebellion Revolution and the Peasants | 199 |
Japan | 226 |
2 The Absence of a Peasant Revolution | 252 |
The New Landlords and Capitalism | 273 |
The Nature of Japanese Fascism | 289 |
India and the Price of Peaceful Change | 312 |
Obstacles to Democracy | 315 |
5 The Peasants Relationship to Radicalism during the Revolution | 70 |
The Vendee | 90 |
7 Social Consequences of Revolutionary Terror | 99 |
8 Recapitulation | 106 |
The Last Capitalist Revolution | 109 |
2 Three Forms of American Capitalist Growth | 113 |
3 Toward an Explanation of the Causes of the War | 130 |
4 The Revolutionary Impulse and its Failure | 139 |
5 The Meaning of the War | 147 |
THREE ROUTES TO THE MODERN WORLD IN ASIA | 155 |
Problems in Comparing European and Asian Political Processes | 157 |
Chapter IV The Decay of Imperial China and the Origins of the Communist Variant | 160 |
2 The Gentry and the World of Commerce | 172 |
3 The Failure to Adopt Commercial Agriculture | 176 |
4 Collapse of the Imperial System and the Rise of the Warlords | 179 |
Obstacles to Rebellion | 328 |
4 Changes Produced by the British up to 1857 | 339 |
A Landlords Paradise? | 351 |
6 The Bourgeois Link to the Peasantry through Nonviolence | 368 |
7 A Note on the Extent and Character of Peasant Violence | 376 |
8 Independence and the Price of Peaceful Change | 383 |
THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS AND PROJECTIONS | 409 |
Chapter VII The Democratic Route to Modern Society | 411 |
Chapter VIII Revolution from Above and Fascism | 431 |
Chapter IX The Peasants and Revolution | 451 |
Reactionary and Revolutionary Imagery | 482 |
A Note on Statistics and Conservative Historiography | 507 |
Bibliography | 522 |
Index | 545 |
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Common terms and phrases
agrarian Agrarian Origins American American Civil War ancien régime areas aristocracy bourgeois bourgeoisie British bureaucracy capitalism capitalist caste changes China Chinese Chōshū Civil Communists countryside cultivation daimyō democracy democratic discussion Economic History economic surplus eighteenth century élite enclosures England English evidence fact farmers farming fascism feudal forces France French French Revolution gentry Germany growth historians Imperial important India industrial Japan Japanese Kuomintang labor landed aristocracy landed upper classes landlords Lefebvre mainly Meiji ment merchants modern Mogul Moreland movement Nien Rebellion nineteenth century nobility nomic notion parliamentary parliamentary democracy peas peasant revolutions peasantry peasants plantation political population problem produce radical reactionary rebellion reform repressive revolutionary royal rulers rural Russia samurai sans-culottes seems Shōgun situation slavery social structure statistical strong substantial surplus tenants tion Tokugawa took towns traditional urban Vendée village Western zamindars