Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana*

Warning: this has the potential to be dry and/or political. If you’d prefer something more along the well-written/fiction side, I suggest you check out Le Collier Diabolique by Ben A. Bell. It’s not one of my stories, though it is written by a friend. And this post isn’t an excuse to hock it. I just figured if I was going to get a little political, I’d give you an alternative 😉

Think of this as an exercize in world-building.

In the late 1700’s, the French Revolution ocurred. Within three years, the monarchy that had ruled the country for centuries collapsed. As with any war, the reasons can be debated night and day. Frequently sited though are things like

• the cost of food rising to a point where the average citizen couldn’t afford to eat
• An exorbinant national debt, caused partly by French participation in wars, including an overseas war (the American Revolution)
• Disdain of the lower and middle class toward the upper class, and visa-versa
• Resentment of religious over public policy and institutions

Just before that, in the mid-late 1700’s, the American Revolution took place. Some of the better known causes:

• Higher taxes for the American colonies to cover the debt resulting from the French Indian war.
• Fear of corruption in the British government
• A desire to practice religion outside of the Church of England
• A segragation between British citizens in the American colonies. Different laws that discriminated against their rights when compared to Brittish citizens still living in their homeland.

Two hundred years earlier, there was the The Eighty Years War. Some causes:

• A heavy level of taxation for the lower and middle class
• The Spanish Inquisition
• An unrealistic expectation of the citizens placed on them by a government which had grown too big to focus on ‘lesser’ issues like outlying conquered regions.

So for the purposes of world-building…common causes of revolution seem to be:

• Disparity between classes
• Money
• Religion

Taking this hypothetical world-building a step further…how does a society react differently when they have access to global information and opinion? All of the revolutions above happened centuries before things like social media. The French and American revolutions took place just a decade or two apart.

How would they have happened differently if the people revolting in France had direct access to the people in America? Would the outcome, or even the onset, have been more or less immediate if the average Joe Revolutionary had talked to his counterparts overseas first?

Does globalized social media and news coverage inspire talk of revolution by spreading it, or hamper it by giving people an open forum in which to vent?

*any similarity to current global politics, written or implied, is not coincidental.