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
Evolution and Revolution in France | |
2 | |
Toward an Explanation of the Causes of the | |
The Revolutionary Impulse and its Failure | |
The Meaning of the | |
The Nature of Japanese Fascism | |
India and the Price of Peaceful Change 1 Relevance of the Indian Experience | |
Obstacles to Democracy | |
Obstacles to Rebellion | |
Changes Produced by the British up | |
A Landlords Paradise? | |
The Bourgeois Link to the Peasantry through Nonviolence | |
A Note on the Extent and Character of Peasant Violence | |
PART TWO THREE ROUTES TO THE MODERN WORLD IN ASIA | |
Problems in Comparing European and Asian Political Processes | |
The Decay of Imperial China and the Origins of the Communist Variant 1 The Upper Classes and the Imperial System | |
The Gentry and the World of Commerce | |
The Failure to Adopt Commercial Agriculture | |
Collapse of the Imperial System and Rise of the Warlords 5 The Kuomintang Interlude and its Meaning | |
Rebellion Revolution and the Peasants | |
Japan 1 Revolution from Above The Response of the Ruling Classes to Old and New Threats | |
The Absence of a Peasant Revolution | |
The New Landlords and Capitalism | |
Independence and the Price of Peaceful Change | |
PART THREE THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS AND PROJECTIONS | |
The Democratic Route to Modern Society | |
Revolution from Above and Fascism | |
The Peasants and Revolution | |
Reactionary and Revolutionary Imagery | |
A Note on Statistics and Conservative Historiography | |
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Common terms and phrases
Agrarian Origins Agrarian System American ancien régime areas aristocracy bourgeois revolution bourgeoisie British bureaucracy capitalism capitalist caste changes chap China Chinese Chōshū Civil commercial agriculture Communists counterrevolution countryside cultivation daimyō democratic discussion economic economic surplus effect eighteenth century élite enclosures England English evidence fact farmers farming fascism feudal forces France French French Revolution gentry Germany historians Imperial important India industrial interests Japan Japanese Kuomintang labor landed aristocracy landed upper classes landlords Lefebvre mainly Meiji merchants modern Mogul Moreland movement Nien Rebellion nineteenth century nobility notion parliamentary democracy peasant revolutions peasant society peasantry percent plantation political population problem produce radical reactionary rebellion reform regime repressive revolutionary royal rulers rural Russia samurai sans-culottes seems sharecropping Shōgun significant situation slavery social structure statistical strong substantial surplus tenants Tokugawa took towns traditional urban Vendée village Western zamindars