Arab Spring and the French Revolution: The Longue Durée of Transformation

Research Fellow, Manohar Parrikar IDSA, Dr Adil Rasheed’s chapter 'Arab Spring and the French Revolution: The Longue Durée of Transformation' has been published in the book 'Arab Spring and its Legacies', edited by Sujata Ashwarya and Mujib Alam and published by Knowledge World, 2023 (ISBN : 9789394915282)

The chapter posits that it may be too early to write off the soc-alled Arab Spring upheavals as the French Revolution itself took nearly a hundred years to produce a democratic government in France after the Fall of Bastille in 1789. In fact, there was a period of Reign of Terror by the Jacobin leader Robespierre, Napoleonic wars and then the counter-revolution coup of the monarchical order in the Congress of Vienna of 1815. Similar upheavals have been witnessed following the Arab Spring upheavals, with initial strengthening of totalitarian regimes, rise of terrorist groups like ISIS and yet the gradual introduction of political and socio-economic reforms by many Arab governments to placate their restive populations.

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