Revolutionaries : Gendered Experiences and Scripts from France to Nicaragua

Revolutionaries traces the gendered experiences of revolution from the 18th century Atlantic Revolutions through the late 20th century. With an explanatory framework that focuses on the evolution of revolutionary ‘scripts,’ Revolutionaries synthesizes the latest scholarship on gender and revolution.

Revolutionaries traces the gendered experiences of revolution from the 18th-century Atlantic Revolutions through the late 20th century. With an explanatory framework that focuses on the evolution of revolutionary scripts, Revolutionaries synthesizes the latest microhistorical scholarship on gender and revolution into a survey of two centuries of world history. Because revolutionaries are among the most self-aware of historical actors, they adapted the phrases, such as "all men are created equal" and followed the phases – mobilization through victory and consolidation – across one revolution after another. For example, when Nicaraguans commemorated the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989 – and their Revolution's decennial – by paying homage to “Liberty Leading the People” on a postage stamp, they evoked this modern global revolutionary script, one they had improved upon. While scholars have identified these phrases and stages, and compared revolutions across time and space, few have focused on gender. Although patriarchy was renovated over and over, when "great men" consolidated power, revolutionaries also rose up again and again, with new tools, determined to widen political and economic rights for women and other excluded groups. Revolutionaries interrogates the Great Man script that leaves masculinity underexplored while sharing the stories of extraordinary and ordinary women and men and their gendered dreams. With vignettes, different global examples for each theme, and illustrations and photographs, this is the perfect guide for anyone wanting to find out about the gendered implications of revolutions.