Annotated list of popular movement literature

National movements

Stein Rokkan & Derek Urwin: Economy, territory, identity, Sage 1983

Gives the definition of 'national movement': movement defending the interests of a territory threatened by disadvantage in a centre-periphery relationship. The relationship has three dimensions: economic (power over investment), political (who will be co-opted) and cultural (the power to decide which codes will apply). The periphery can apply at the global or regional level and be either overdeveloped (well-developed economy but no political power to defend it) or underdeveloped. An overdeveloped periphery is easier to defend than an underdeveloped one but falls more easily to upper class control. In particular, the authors point out that due to the fragmented identity of the periphery, it is difficult to organize a powerful national movement, but that it becomes easier if you can "steal" a previously formulated identity (e.g. Catholicism in Ireland or the peasant movement in Norway).

Cristóbal Kay: Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment, Routledge 1989

In addition to what the name suggests, also a review of the thinking of national movements on economic self-reliance since the days of Hamilton and List. However, unfortunately written in a forbidding economist language.

Pauline Maier: From resistance to revolution, Alfred Knopf 1972

About how the American independence movement was born, not out of a conscious national desire for independence, but out of local resistance to local abuses that became an independence movement only when it became clear that it was the only way to get rid of oppression.

Joshua Miller: The rise and fall of democracy in early America, Pennsylvania University Press 1991

Shows how the upper class tames the concept of democracy after the American Revolution by referring to a mythical "people", embodied in the elected authorities, which can always be pitted against the real people whenever it speaks.

D. George Boyce: Nationalism in Ireland, Routledge 1982

Description of the movement that led to the first defeat of the English colonial power. Not least shows how important it is to be able to respond quickly to new situations. But it is not The Big Book of the Irish independence movement.

Robert Kee: The green flag - a history of Irish nationalism, (1972) Penguin 2000

One of the two extant descriptions of the entire Irish independence movement from beginning to end. Particularly interesting because the author problematizes "nationalism" and shows that the basis of it all was that the majority Irish were treated step-motherly by the British state via the property rights system. Thick and detailed and gives almost reasonable attention even to the pedestrians. The only weakness is the extremely superficial depiction of the turning point: the struggle of the tenants against the landlords in the 1880s.

P.S. O’Hegarty: A history of Ireland under the Union, Methuen 1952

The second detailed description. Partly suffers from the slightly archaic approach -- emphasis on leading figures -- partly the author himself is one of the leading figures and likes to adopt an apologetic tone, which feels a bit tiring after fifty pages. But the facts are probably completely true.

Trond Nordby: The modern breakthrough in farming society. University Press 1991

About Norway as the exception to the principle that national movements are a creation of the urban middle class. In Norway, the national movement “came into being” because the farmers fought for local self-determination and needed a bat against the Swedish-dependent central bureaucracy.

Edward Acton: Rethinking the Russian revolution, Edward Arnold 1990

Sort out what was a labor movement, what was a peasant movement and what was a nationalist middle class movement in the Russian Revolution. Conclusion: It was the middle class movement that drew the longest straw, because it mastered the political codes through the Bolshevik Party and was able to exploit the other two actors. However, says Acton, the Bolshevik Party in 1917 was not an unambiguous middle-class movement -- much of the spontaneous popular activism gathered there -- it became so only in 1918 when the economy collapsed and its ally, the labor movement, was annihilated.

John Dunn: Modern revolutions. Cambridge University Press 1972

Analysis of the revolutions in Mexico (best), China, Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba (pretty good).

Eric Wolf: Peasant wars in the 20th century. Harper & Row 1968

Same content as above. Based on the decisive role of farmers. More focus on economic and social background variables than on the actual actions of the peasants and their allies.

Jean Chesneaux: Peasant revolts in China 1840-1949. Thames and Hudson 1973

The Chinese Revolution in context plus how it was organized socially. Contents: The tradition: peasant revolts and secret societies. The great uprisings in the middle of the 19th century. Peasants' Revolt and the Collapse of the Empire. Traditional Peasant Rebellion Pattern. 20th century: the farmers' associations as a response to the growing power of the landlords. The 1930s: the Soviet movement as an alliance between peasant associations, secret societies and the communist-organized armies. Yenan as the headquarters and the eventual seizure of power as a result of the leadership in the resistance against Japan. Describes the ups and downs of the peasant movement in the balance of power with the Communist Party.

Anthony D. Smith: State and nation in the third world, Wheatsheaf Books 1983

Africa as an example. Describes in particular the crucial role of the educated urban middle class; they were the only ones who could crack the 'code' of the world market system. But they contented themselves with taking over the colonial state which was an even more authoritarian creation than the European one and eventually became just as authoritarian themselves.

Bipan Chandra et al: India's struggle for independence, Penguin 1989

The first and, to my knowledge, so far the only book on this central popular movement mobilization that deals with (almost) all the important aspects of it. The perspective is to show how an incredibly broad popular movement mobilization could wage a “war of position” with the colonial power where all parts of the movement strengthened each other without having to be centrally controlled for that reason, and in this way it is particularly interesting for today’s grassroots democratic movements. Then one can sometimes get a little irritated by the apologetic stance of the authors on behalf of the Gandhians -- little in the movement’s practice is indicated as failures and where it was, the text takes on an unnecessary apologetic tone. The structure is narrative, from 1857 onwards, with both details and overviews, both local examples and overall analyses.

Francis G. Hutchins: Gandhi and the Quit India Movement. Harvard University Press 1973

The Quit India movement was the uprising in primarily northern India in 1942 that finally made the UK government realize that they could no longer rule India. The interesting thing about this book is not least that it shows that Gandhi, even though the movement was violent, supported it. Gandhi was not a doctrinaire but above all a pragmatist. He had been against violence because it would have scared away too many, but when it became clear that Indians were now ripe for it, Gandhi did not stand in the way. Of course, the book also provides a chronicle of how the movement developed.

Hari Hara Das & Sasmita Das: The national movement in India. Renaissance 1988

What strategies were followed during different periods. Spiritual nationalism at the end of the 19th century. Radicalism around 1905. Gandhi’s radical mass mobilizations for moderate economic goals with a national edge. The book is written from a Gandhian political point of view, which limits its outlook.

Alistair Horne: A savage war of peace. Macmillan 1977

A book about the Algerian war which unfortunately, due to the sources available, mainly describes the French madness, I.e. how the French state was completely in the hands of the settler colonists until the resistance started to wake up in France as the costs rose. The one about the Algerian resistance focuses on what the divided leadership did, and only a few chapters deal with the actions of the rank and file. But apparently that’s all that’s available.

Gabriel Kolko: Vietnam -- the anatomy of a war, Allen & Unwin 1986

Describes partly why the US engaged in this madness (the prestige or “credibility” as a hegemonic power), partly how the Vietnamese, i.e. the Vietnamese peasant movement, coped with the resistance (they ensured that the enormous US firepower was mainly wasted in uninhabited areas until the costs became too high for US domestic opinion).

David Birmingham: Frontline Nationalism in Angola & Mozambique, James Currey 1992.

Describes the differences with Africa in general and why it went bad. It was the movement in Mozambique that got the job done, the others basked in the victory -- but the Mozambicans got little joy out of it because the South African regime needed the port of Maputo for exports from the Witwatersrand.

Wunyabari O. Maloba: Mau Mau and Kenya, James Currey/Indiana University Press 1993

About how a colonial power provokes the civil war it desires, and about how angry young men fall into the trap and get beaten, more than they could dream of. The interesting thing about the book is that Maloba points to very concrete mistakes and points where the radical self-government activists could have done differently.

Baruch Kimmerling & Joel Migdal: Palestinians, the making of a people, The Free Press 1993

How the Syrian upper class registered as owners of the peasants’ land and then sold the land to European immigrants, thus contributing to the Palestinian national movement becoming so much more radical and at the same time weaker than in the rest of the world -- i.e. why it could not count on any support from their own upper class. Contains all the ups and downs until the book was written.

Richard Mitchell: The society of the Muslim Brotherhood, Oxford University Press 1969

Shows the emergence of an organization during the 20s and 30s in Egypt that shows approximately what the Swedish Free Churches would have become if they had been the ones to build trade unions. What is crushing the movement is the militarized violence created in connection with the Palestine War of 1948.

Edmund Burke & Ira M Lapidus (ed): Islam, politics and social movements. University of California Press 1988

Ira Lapidus and Edmund Burke about why Islam is such a suitable way of expression for people in those countries. Peter von Sivers on how Sufi movements were the link in all anti-colonial uprisings until the First World War. Ted Swedenburg on the Palestinian peasant uprising of 1936-39, which shaped the entire Palestinian resistance vocabulary. Nikki Keddie on what made Islam so strong and so radical in Iran.

Olivier Roy: Islam and resistance in Afghanistan. Cambridge Middle East Library 1990

Introduction about what Islamism is, which is the strongest part of the book. State and society in Afghanistan. Traditional Islam in Afghanistan. Origins of Islamism. The movement in the 70s. The state repression. The rise. The political parties. The war. The Russian retreat and after.

Nikki R Keddie: Roots of revolution -- an interpretative history of modern Iran. Yale University Press 1981

Contents: The Shi'ite tradition from the 16th century. Anti-imperialist movements in the 19th century. The Constitutional Revolution of 1905. The Pahlavi State. World War II and the oil crisis. Political Thought in Iran. The revolution. The Islamic Republic. Clear and honest storytelling.

Juan R I Cole & Nikki Keddie (ed): Shi'ism and social protest, Yale University Press 1986

What is about Lebanon is the most interesting; it’s about how a social movement based on people’s everyday needs defeats the violent nationalists.

Olivier Roy: The failure of political Islam, Harvard University Press 1996

Critical engagement with Islamism in an unusual way. Acknowledging its merits -- but pointing out that they have no solutions to the problems, they have no new proposal for organizing against Third World subjugation. Not the least exciting is his contrast between Islamism (=focus on justice) and neo-fundamentalism (=focus on individual morality, as a result of which oil state money started flowing in).

François Burgat & William Dowell: The Islamic movement in North Africa, University of Texas Press 1993

Contents: What is Islamism? From nationalism to Islamism. Reaction to Western dominance. From preaching to elections. The issue of violence. The question of democracy. Variations: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco.

Alan Knight: The Mexican Revolution, Cambridge University Press 1986

A thousand-page thick description of everything that happened up to 1920. Personally, I thought the first two hundred pages were very exciting, but then it goes on in the same style until you get tired somewhere a little after the middle. But it is certainly my own fault.

John Tutino: From insurrection to revolution in Mexico, Princeton University Press 1986

Description of the peasant revolution. Question: why didn't they do better than they did? Answer: the failure to spread the movement beyond Morelos.

James Dunkerley: Rebellion in the veins: political struggle in Bolivia 1952-1982, Verso 1982

Content: Background in a Peronist middle-class movement. The national revolution and paternalistic peasant movement. Military regimes in battle against miners. The gist seems to be that the miners are so strong during this time that the middle class vacillates between seeking their help and putting them down by force.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: Oppressed but not defeated, UNRISD 1987

About Bolivia's Indian movement and its development out of the peasant movement, as an opposition movement against the paternalistic rule of the Creole middle class in the peasant organizations.

Marc Becker: Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador's Modern Indigenous Movements, Duke University Press 2008

How the “old” peasant movement with Mexican roots developed into the modern Indian movement, gradually - apparently because the repression was moderate in Ecuador and the movement never lost momentum. In addition, you get to see how important women have been all along.

Martin Smith: Burma -- Insurgency and the politics of ethnicity. Zed 1991

National movements towards the post-colonial nation. About how center-periphery conflicts arise on the national level in connection with the building of the state

Wilma Dunaway: Ethnic conflict in the modern world system. From Journal of World-System Research ix, 2003

An attempt to answer whether the ethnic conflicts have increased over the years, and if so they pose any threat to the system. The first question is answered in the negative and this is supported by statistics. On the other hand, Dunaway believes that the conflicts may very well cause the system more trouble now than before. However, the strong focus on ethnic conflicts is a Europe-centric phenomenon, she says; in Europe, the conflicts have become more and more serious, and those in power there also use such conflicts to build up repressive power apparatuses, which is why unnecessary regulation of them can very well be dangerous.

Tom Garvin: 1922 -- the birth of Irish democracy, Gil & Macmillan 1996

Despite its boring title, a rather fascinating description of how the leadership of a national movement is separated from its base when it is forced to start building a state, and how this, in the Irish case, provokes a counter-movement from the base. Garvin’s assessment, despite sympathizing with the state phalanx, is that what saves democracy in Ireland is grassroots opposition to state power.

Jack Reece: The Bretons against France, University of North Carolina Press 1977

About a European peripheral movement. Shows e.g. their difficulty in creating a common identity that is attractive to all concerned. In the Breton case, one succeeded only when one ignored the culture and took up the economic struggle against Paris in terms of the center's exploitation of the periphery.

Alain Touraine: Sociological intervention and the internal dynamics of the Occitanist movement, in Edward A Tiryakian & Ronald Rogowski: New nationalisms of the developed west, Allen & Unwin 1985

About who builds up the industrial world’s peripheral movements. They are the ones who have their livelihood in the periphery, says Touraine, e.g. wine farmers in Occitanie, and fishermen in coastal Norway.

Peter Fritzsche: Rehearsal for fascism, Oxford University Press 1989

About how a distinctly bourgeois national movement, German Nazism, could grow strong by appealing to the middle class’ desire for revenge against both the labor movement and the traditional upper class. Also clearly shows partly how the Nazi party was organized as an NGO and not as a people’s movement, partly how ideologically it was a pure continuation of the Prussian Bund der Landwirte, the landowners’ organization.