Diplomacy and Revolution

Noé Cornago, Department of International Relations, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao,
Spain

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.155
Published in print: 01 March 2010
Published online: 30 November 2017

Summary
The relationship between diplomacy and revolution is often intertwined with the broader
issue of the international dimensions of revolution. Diplomacy can offer important
insights into both the historical evolution of world order and its evolving functional and
normative needs. In other words, the most important dimension of diplomacy, beyond its
concrete symbolic and pragmatic operational value, is its very existence as raison de
système. A number of scholarly works that explore the link between revolution and the
international arena have given rise to a minority subfield of scholarly research and
debate which is particularly vibrant and plural. Three basic lines of research can be
identified: case studies undertaken by historians and area studies scholars that focus on
the international dimensions surrounding particular revolutions; comparative political
studies that address the international implications of revolutions by departing from a
more comprehensive theoretical framework but still based in comprehensive case
studies; and more theoretically comprehensive literature which, in addition to careful
case studies, aims to provide a general and far-reaching explanatory theoretical
framework on the relationship between revolution and long-term historical change from
different perspectives: English school international theory, neorealism, world systems
analysis, postmarxism, or constructivism. In a context of growing inequality and global
exploitation, the international dimension of revolutions is receiving renewed attention
from scholars using innovative critical theoretical approaches.

Keywords: diplomacy, revolution, world order, case studies, comparative political studies,
historical change, English school international theory, neorealism, world systems analysis,
constructivism

Introduction

The relationship between diplomacy and revolution is frequently conflated with the broader
issue of the international dimensions of revolution, both in terms of explanatory causes and,
more often, in terms of the wide-ranging implications of the revolutionary foreign policies of
specific states in the international realm. In so doing, some authors seem to suggest that
diplomacy lacks any substantial content, as if it were little more than an extremely formalized
and rigid element of the wider machineries of foreign policy and world politics. But diplomacy
is much more than this. It is a set of practices, institutions, and discourses crucial for the

Page 1 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
basic understanding of both the historical evolution of world order and its evolving functional
and normative needs. That means that the most important dimension of diplomacy, beyond its
concrete symbolic and pragmatic operational value, is surely, as Watson eloquently observes,
its very existence as raison de système (1984:201). For this reason, any reflective
consideration of the mutual impact of diplomacy and revolution has to take into account the
importance of the diplomatic system as a differentiated domain, which only reveals its deeper
significance when considered in the long term and in a wider context.

But in order to approach this relationship properly a brief comment is also required regarding
revolution and its significance. Although mainstream literature in political science (e.g.
Goldstone 1986), and sociology (e.g. Tilly 1993) tends to understand revolutions as discrete
events, able to produce relevant social and political changes, susceptible of comparative
analysis by scholars, but always contained within the contours of specific states, the
importance of revolutions is surely better grasped when they are understood in broader
terms.

International relations scholars are of course well aware of it. After examining carefully the
international consequences of the French, Russian, Iranian, American, Mexican, Turkish, and
Chinese revolutions, Walt (1996), for instance, asserts that revolutions intensify the security
competition between states, exacerbate mutual perceptions of threats, and sharply increase
the risk of international war. But rather than being considered as isolated events, or
potentially enduring interruptions of already existing world orders, revolutions are perhaps
better understood – as suggested by Boswell (1989), Kowalewski (1991), Katz (1997), Halliday
(1999), Philpott (2001), Bukovansky (2002), Foran (2003) or Stopinska, Bartels and
Kollmorgen (2007), with diverse arguments – as multiple and changing expressions of a
broader social conflict that exceeds the contours of specific states, and whose influence in the
formation of the modern world needs to be considered seriously.

This essay provides an introduction to the complex relationship between diplomacy and
revolution, as well as to the scholarly treatment that this issue has received in the past
decades and is receiving presently. To accomplish this objective, it begins with a thematic
delineation about what an exploration of such a relationship entails and why it could lead to a
better understanding of world historical change. The essay subsequently provides a basic but
critical overview of the scholarly debate in the field, with the goal of identifying the most
significant contributions, and trying to assess its most remarkable achievements but also its
possible shortcomings or blind spots. Finally, several possible directions for future research
are discussed with the aim of promoting further explorations on a topic which for a long time
was widely neglected within the mainstream international studies literature but which now, in
a new era of global social turmoil, seems to generate renewed interest.

Significance of the Relationship

In his exploration of the genealogy of diplomacy, Der Derian (1987) asserts that diplomacy
only acquired its modern meaning at a critical juncture in world history when the prevailing
proto-diplomatic system was under serious attack. As he aptly observes: “Diplomacy comes of
age, both ontologically and etymologically when it confronts the first major threat to its
fledgling existence, the French Revolution” (1987:107). In other words, it was solely under the

Page 2 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
radical challenge of modern revolution that old diplomacy realized its ultimate and crucial
rationale, being forced to define both its institutional recognizability and its formal content. In
support of this vision it can be argued that it was only after the revision and regulation of
existing diplomatic practices and institutions during the Congress of Vienna, in the light of the
decisive impact of the French Revolution throughout the world, that modern and secularized
diplomacy was born in 1815 (see Albrecht-Carrie 1958; Kissinger 1967; Klaits and Haltzel
1994; Belissa and Ferragu 2007). A similar reflection can be made regarding the way in which
the containment of the international influence of the Russian Revolution was surely one of the
most decisive forces behind the important diplomatic innovations included in the Treaty of
Versailles (Mayer 1967). Even the process of codification of diplomatic law in 1961, in the
framework of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, was largely the result of
Western fears about the way in which a new era of African, Asian, or American revolutionary
states could affect the diplomatic world. In sum, in this field, as in many others, the French
Revolution was surely the fundamental catalyst of modernity (Fehér 1990). However, in spite
of these historical realities, the most influential scholarly literature on diplomacy has tended
to minimize, and even ignore, the role of the French and other revolutions in the development
of the modern diplomatic system (e.g. Nicolson 1963; Watson 1984; Anderson 1993; Hamilton
and Langhorne 1995).

Fortunately some prominent exceptions exist. In a work that is particularly valuable for the
purposes of this essay due to its careful attention to the specific implications of revolution for
the diplomatic system, Armstrong introduces the theme in very precise words: “It is the
function of diplomacy as symbol and sustainer of international society that gives rise to the
most fundamental revolutionary objection to it” (1993:251). This revolutionary objection to
diplomacy gave rise to what Der Derian (1987:136) called antidiplomacy. While the purpose of
diplomacy is to mediate relations among estranged states, antidiplomacy’s original
revolutionary aim would be to transcend all estranged relations among peoples. In Der
Derian’s words: “as diplomacy became increasingly identified with the mediation of the
particular alienation of states, antidiplomatic theory developed in opposition as the ‘mediation
for the universal alienation of mankind’” (1987:136). Although later Der Derian (1989) moved
from his initial understanding of antidiplomacy as a form of utopian universalistic
emancipatory movement, toward a less promising dystopian one, in the hands of spies,
warriors, criminals, and terrorists, his original notion remains of particular interest.
Nevertheless, it is also true that in spite of the antidiplomatic impulse that generally
surrounds revolutionary political culture in its early stages, and partly due to
counterrevolutionary reactions among the advocates of the prevailing order (Calvert 1990;
Bisley 2004), it happens almost invariably that revolutionary regimes come to realize sooner
or later the need to adapt themselves to some extent to the same diplomatic system that they
initially seemed to reject. To realize this constitutive ambivalence of revolution regarding the
diplomatic system is surely the point of departure for any reflective approach to the
theoretical and practical dimensions of this relationship.

This ambivalence explains the many hesitations that revolutionary leaders have always shown
when confronted with the need to establish priorities in the international field. The dispute
between moderates and radicals appears at the core of the American, French, and Russian
initial efforts to attain international recognition and influence, as well as later appearing
among Chinese, Iranian, and other more recent revolutionaries. Most importantly, the
conventional distinction between national and social revolution can be largely explained in

Page 3 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
terms of their diverse compatibility with the prevailing diplomatic order. While national
revolutions, such as American or Haitian, always will need to gain some international
recognition among other sovereign states, social revolutionaries – such as Jacobins,
proletarians, anarchists, feminists, indigenists or Muslim fundamentalists – may be better
depicted as radical internationalists, more inclined to trespass over states’ territorial
boundaries and to challenge state sovereignty. Although this divide does not always appear so
clearly differentiated in practice, the Soviet revolution provides surely the most eloquent
illustration of this debate in the struggle between Stalin’s socialism in one country, and
Trotsky’s permanent revolution (see Goodman 1960; White and Revell 1999). This conflict of
priorities between advocates of the consolidation of revolution in a particular country, and
those who prefer the spreading of revolution across the world, remains today one of the most
emblematic expressions of the contradictions surrounding revolutionary internationalism.

Changing the Terms of the Scholarly Debate

As previously stated, for a long time the interplay between revolutions and the international
realm was a neglected topic in the scholarly literature. Except in Marxist historiography (e.g.
Hobsbawm 1962), and in the more ambitious scholarship within the field of diplomatic history
(e.g. Droz 1952; Duroselle 1957; Albrecht-Carrie 1958), both the international sources of
revolutions and their more prominent international effects have been largely absent from the
literature on revolutions written by the most influential historians, sociologists, and political
scientists (see Brinton 1965; Gurr 1970; Skocpol 1979; Goldstone 1986; Tilly 1993). Moreover,
the narrowly positivist and comparative approaches that dominate those works sharply
contrast with the hermeneutic and holistic approaches that the issue of revolution used to
receive in the fields of philosophy of history and political theory (e.g. Arendt 1963), as well as
within the grand tradition of critical historical sociology (e.g. Polanyi 1957). Fortunately,
however, a select number of prominent works specifically devoted to exploring the connection
between revolution and the international arena have forged a minority subfield of scholarly
research and debate which is particularly vibrant and plural. Until quite recently, however, the
most prominent contributions in the field were those provided by historians and area studies
scholars, in the context of their accounts of different revolutions. The enduring relevance of
such classic studies is beyond dispute, but their case study approach is typically not conducive
to the elaboration of more general conclusions regarding the overall implications of
revolutions for the diplomatic world. For purposes of clarity, and departing from the
aforementioned precedents, three basic lines of research, not strictly isolated, can be
identified here:

1 Case studies provided by historians and area studies scholars centered on the
international dimensions surrounding particular revolutions, such as the American (e.g.
Bemiss 1957; Dull 1985), French (e.g. Godechot 1969; Klaits and Haltzel 1994; Lemoin
1996), Russian (e.g. Goodman 1960; Senn 1974; Uldricks 1979), Mexican (e.g.
Clendenen 1961; Staples 2000), Chinese (e.g. Van Ness 1970; Gittings 1974), Cuban
(e.g. Weinstein 1979; Dominguez 1989; Ritter and Kirk 1995), Iranian (e.g. Djalilli 1989;
Esposito 2001) or Nicaraguan (e.g. Vilas 1986), among others, as well as on the foreign
policy of specific revolutionary states.

Page 4 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
 Comparative political studies that try to extract more general conclusions regarding the
international implications of revolutions by departing from a more comprehensive
theoretical framework but still based in comprehensive case studies (e.g. Kim 1970;
Calvert 1984; Schutz and Slater 1990; Keddie 1995; Chan and Williams 1994).

3 More theoretically comprehensive works which, in addition to careful case studies, aim
to provide a general and far-reaching explanatory theoretical framework on the
relationship between the phenomenon of revolution and long-term historical change
from different perspectives: English school international theory (Armstrong 1993),
neorealism (Walt 1996), world systems analysis (Boswell 1989), postmarxism (Halliday
1999), or constructivism (Philpott 2001; Bukovansky 2002).

It is impossible to offer even a brief account of each of these lines of research, but a brief
comment at least is dedicated to several of the most influential works. Firstly, Peter Calvert’s
work must be noted. Although his work focuses more on the internal pressures and events
that forge social revolutions in specific states than on either the wider international sources of
revolutions or their impact on the international domain, it contains interesting observations
regarding the recourse to specific diplomatic means with revolutionary ends. Calvert
emphasizes the way in which diplomatic institutions and procedures have been carefully
managed by revolutionary regimes as a powerful vehicle for advancing the cause of revolution
across the world (1984:152). The careful administration of diplomatic recognition, the
intensive use of diplomatic immunities and privileges (see also McClanahan 1989; Frey and
Frey 1999), the selective management of the active and passive dimensions of the right of
legation, the problematic consideration of diplomats as political commissaries, or the new
prominence assigned to multilateral and summit diplomacy (Moore 1984), are some of the
specifically diplomatic tools that revolutionary states have frequently added to their less
diplomatic repertory of measures, including covert actions, in support of revolutionary forces
elsewhere (see Chan and Williams 1994). This learning process is also illustrated in the
remarkable way in which old forms of revolutionary propaganda have evolved toward more
elaborate public diplomacy strategies (Sharp 2005).

David Armstrong’s work (1993) is doubtless one the most systematic and accomplished efforts
to analyze rigorously the connection between revolution and international relations. Rooted in
the English school approach, his analysis takes as its point of departure the disputable
premise that revolutionary states disrupt an already existing and stable world order formed by
a community of states, based on common values, interests, and rules. Through the detailed
study of the American, French, and Russian revolutions, but also taking into account other
more recent revolutionary episodes, Armstrong examines the impact of revolutionary states
on what he depicts as the foundations of international society: international law, the balance
of power, and diplomacy.

Although his analysis recognizes that revolutions can also influence the international realm in
relevant ways, such as in the important revolutionary impulse to decolonization, or the
promotion of innovations in international law and diplomatic practice, he prefers however to
emphasize the opposite effect: namely, the way in which the prevailing international order
affects the revolutionary state. At this point, Armstrong advances the notion of
“socialization” (1993:271) as the almost inevitable path of conversion that revolutionary states
seem to adopt sooner or later. He posits that revolutionary states take this path when the
initial hostility toward the existing world order that generally defines revolutionary foreign

Page 5 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
policies in their early stages moves into conformity with the conventional rules of the game,
albeit often with reluctance and “sometimes coupled with a desire to reform
them” (Armstrong 1993:302). Illustrations of this trend are offered by American, French,
Soviet, or Chinese revolutionary regimes which initially showed a great mistrust, if not a
radical refusal, of diplomacy, even though later they needed to engage in diplomatic dialogue
and participate in an already existing diplomatic system for both functional and normative
reasons, in order to consolidate their own achievements and gain wider international
legitimacy and respect.

In line with Armstrong’s approach, but descending to the phenomenology of diplomacy as

experienced by professional diplomats, Sharp (2003) has recently provided interesting
insights about the unavoidably transformative experience of being a diplomat (see also
Neumann 2005), even for the most radical Taliban. However, in contrast with the linear
adaptive pattern common to all revolutions suggested by Armstrong, other observers maintain
that revolutionary regimes generally adopt a more ambivalent or dual approach, in which
radical and rupturist ambitions have to be tempered with more conventional diplomatic means
inspired by prudence and realism (see Halliday 1999:133).

The most influential contribution in the field surely has been that of Fred Halliday (1999).
Taking his inspiration from both historical sociology and historical materialism but open to
other influences, Halliday develops a quite personal and innovative postmarxist approach that
has renewed considerably the terms of the academic debate in this terrain. As a point of
departure, he argues that revolution is one of the most influential formative processes of the
modern world and consequently merits a much more central place in the study of
international relations than it now has. In so doing, and instead of the comparative or case
studies approach characteristic of the already existing literature, Halliday adopts a more
holistic and comprehensive perspective, less interested in the narration of political events,
diplomatic negotiations details, or foreign policy achievements or failures, than in the deeper
exploration of the complex relationship between revolutions and world historical change, in
terms of mutual causation and influence. In contrast with Calvert (1984), Armstrong (1993) or
Walt (1996), rather than presenting revolutions as isolated events or significant disruptions of
already existing world orders, Halliday maintains that revolutions should be understood as
multiple expressions of a wider social conflict that exceeds the contours of specific states, and
whose influence in the formation of world order needs to be reconsidered. In so doing he
emphasizes not only the constitutive importance of revolution in the world system of states,
but also the role played by revolutionary forces in the shaping of modernity even within
nonrevolutionary states, in regard to democratization, social welfare, and the role of the state
in contemporary society. Halliday’s work, although not always received sympathetically, has
generated great scholarly interest, giving rise to a plural discussion which finally has renewed
the terms of the debate framing the issue of the relationship between diplomacy and
revolution (see Armstrong 2001; González Gómez 2001; Halliday 2001; Mann 2001; Walt
2001).

Page 6 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
Further Explorations

Presently, in a context of growing inequality and global exploitation, the international

dimension of revolutions is receiving renewed attention by innovative critical theoretical
approaches (Keddie 1995; Foran 2003; Stopinska et al. 2007). Conventional accounts of this
process of renewal in the International Relations domain used to celebrate, in contrast, the
arrival of constructivism to the field (e.g. Philpott 2001; Bukovansky 2002). According to this
perspective, which has been sharply criticized by Halliday (2001), a new emphasis shall be
placed on the way in which social expectations of justice and changing notions of political
legitimacy have contributed historically to revolutionary changes in sovereignty, both at the
domestic level and in the international realm. Although that argument has surely some
plausibility, it has to be applied very carefully. Otherwise, it could facilitate the coming of a
new idealism in the study of revolutions not very consistent with the crudeness of historical
facts. For instance, through the discussion of a very selective series of cases, such as the
Czech velvet revolution, Chilean transition, or South African end of apartheid, among other
nonviolent major political changes, the meaning of revolution can be completely redefined,
even to the extent of being depicted as a negotiated change in which “festivals of violence”
are turned into “festivals of hope,” and “guillotines” are replaced by “roundtables” (see
Lawson 2005:487–9).

Contrary to what conventional constructivist approaches seem to suggest, ideas, even those
predominant in the scholarly world, do not always promote peaceful change. Sometimes they
act precisely in the opposite manner, becoming the most rigid obstacle to human
emancipation and international justice. Stinchcombe (1994), for instance, argues that Haiti’s
diplomatic isolation in the Americas after its revolution and independence in 1804 was surely
due to its problematic place, as an antislavery black republic, in the symbolic system of
domestic politics in the United States. Moreover, in spite of Haitian support for the
independence movements of many Latin American countries, the republic of former slaves
was excluded from the hemisphere’s first regional meeting of independent nations held in
Panama in 1826, and was not recognized by the US until 1862. Later, in 1915, US military
forces occupied Haiti for almost two decades, and only in 1934, after the US withdrawal, did
the small revolutionary republic regain its sovereignty. Almost a century later, the diplomatic
establishment in the US and elsewhere is willing to accept the validity of the notion of
coercive diplomacy, even in its worst incarnations (e.g. George and Simmons 1994; Art and
Cronin 2003), while simultaneously denying diplomatic respectability to the perhaps
disturbing but basically discursive outbursts of countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia,
and even, although surely more abrupt, North Korea and Iran.

References
Albrecht-Carrie, R. (1958) A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. New
York: Harper and Row.

Anderson, M.S. (1993) The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450–1919. London: Longman.

Arendt, H. (1963) On Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Page 7 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
Armstrong, D. (1993) Revolution and World Order: The Revolutionary State in International
Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Armstrong, D. (2001) On Revolutionary Chickens and International Eggs. Review of

International Studies 27 (4), 669–74.

Art, R.J., and Cronin, P. (eds.) (2003) The United States and Coercive Diplomacy. Washington,
DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Belissa, M., and Ferragu, G. (2007) Acteurs Diplomatiques et Ordre International Fin XVIII
Siècle–XIX Siècle. Paris: Kimé.

Bemiss, S.F. (1957) The Diplomacy of American Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press. Originally published 1935.

Bisley, N. (2004) Counter-revolution, Order and International Politics. Review of International

Studies 30 (1), 49–69.

Boswell, T. (ed.) (1989) Revolution in the World System. New York: Greenwood Press.

Brinton, C. (1965) The Anatomy of Revolution. New York: Vintage.

Bukovansky, M. (2002) Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in
International Political Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Calvert, P. (1984) Revolution and International Politics. London: Frances Pinter.

Calvert, P. (1990) Revolution and Counter-revolution. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Chan, S., and Williams, A.J. (eds.) (1994) Renegade States: The Evolution of Revolutionary
Foreign Policy. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Clendenen, C. (1961) The United States and Pancho Villa: A Study in Unconventional Diplomacy.
Ithaca: American Historical Association.

Der Derian, J. (1987) On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement. Oxford: Blackwell.

Der Derian, J. (1989) Antidiplomacy: Spies, War, Terror. Oxford: Blackwell.

Djalilli, M.R. (1989) Diplomatie Islamique; Stratégie Internationale du Khomeynisme. Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France.

Dominguez, J. (1989) To Make a World Safe for the Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Droz, J. (1952) Histoire Diplomatique de 1648 à 1919. Paris: Dalloz.

Dull, J.R. (1985) A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. New Haven: Yale University
Press.

Duroselle, J.B. (1957) Histoire Diplomatique de 1919 à Nos Jours. Paris: Dalloz.

Esposito, J. (ed.) (2001) The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact. Miami: Florida University
Press.

Page 8 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
Fehér, F. (ed.) (1990) The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity. Berkeley: University of
California Press.

Foran, J. (ed.) (2003) The Future of Revolutions: Rethinking Radical Change in the Age of
Revolutions. London: Verso.

Frey, L., and Frey, M. (1999) The History of Diplomatic Immunity. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press.

George, A.L., and Simons, W.S. (eds.) (1994). The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy. Boulder:
Westview.

Gittings, J. (1974) The World and China 1922–1972. London: Methuen.

Godechot, J. (1969) Les Révolutions. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Goldstone, J.A. (ed.) (1986) Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies. New
York: Harcourt.

González Gómez, R. (2001) The Pertinence of Revolution. Review of International Studies 27 (4),
675–81.

Goodman, E.R. (1960) The Soviet Design for a World State. New York: Columbia University
Press.

Gurr, R.T. (1970). Why Men Rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Halliday, F. (1999) Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power.
London: Macmillan.

Halliday, F. (2001) The Great Anomaly. Review of International Studies 27 (4), 693–9.

Hamilton, K., and Langhorne, R. (1995) The Practice of Modern Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory
and Administration. London: Routledge.

Hobsbawm, E. (1962) The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Katz, M. (1997) Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves. London: Macmillan.

Keddie, N. (ed.) (1995) Debating Revolutions. New York: New York University Press.

Kim, K.W. (1970) Revolution and International System. New York: New York University Press.

Kissinger, H. (1967) A World Restored: Europe after Napoleon. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

Klaits, J., and Haltzel, M.H. (1994) The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kowalewski, D. (1991) Periphery Revolutions in World System Perspective: 1821–1985.

Comparative Political Studies 24 (1), 76–99.

Lawson, G. (2005) Negotiated Revolutions: The Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile.
Aldershot: Ashgate.

Page 9 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
Lemoin, Y. (1996) La Diplomatie Française pendant la Révolution. Paris: Michel de Maule.

Mann, M. (2001) Communism, Fascism and Counter-revolution in World Politics. Review of

International Studies 27 (4), 683–6.

Mayer, A. (1967) Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counter-revolution at

Versailles, 1918–19. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McClanahan, G.V. (1989) Diplomatic Immunity: Principles, Practices, Problems. New York: St.
Martin’s Press.

Moore, R.J. (1984) Third-World Diplomats in Dialogue with the First World: The New Diplomacy.
London: Macmillan.

Neumann, I. (2005) To be a Diplomat. International Studies Perspectives 6, 72–93.

Nicolson, H. (1963) Diplomacy. London: Oxford University Press.

Philpott, D. (2001) Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International

Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Polanyi, K. (1957) The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.

Ritter, A., and Kirk, J. (1995) Cuba in the International System: Normalisation and Integration.
London: Macmillan.

Schutz, B.M., and Slater, R. (eds.) (1990) Revolution in the Third World. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Senn, A.E. (1974) Diplomacy and Revolution: The Soviet Mission to Switzerland 1918. Notre
Dame: Notre Dame University Press.

Sharp, P. (2003) Mullah Zaeef and Taliban Diplomacy: An English School Approach. Review of
International Studies 29, 481–98.

Sharp, P. (2005) The Public Diplomacy of Revolutionary States and Outlaw Regimes. In J.
Melissen (ed.) The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations. Basingtoke:
Palgrave, pp. 106–23.

Skocpol, T. (1979). States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and
China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Staples, A. (ed.) (2000) Diplomacia y Revolución. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.

Stinchcombe, A.L. (1994) Class Conflict and Diplomacy: Haitian Isolation in the Nineteenth-
Century World System. Sociological Perspectives 37 (1), 1–23.

Stopinska, A., Bartels, A., and Kollmorgen, R. (eds.) (2007) Revolutions: Reframed, Revisited,
rev. edn. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Tilly, C.L. (1993) European Revolutions, 1492–1992. Oxford: Blackwell.

Uldricks, T. (1979) Diplomacy and Ideology: The Origins of Soviet Foreign Relations 1917–1930.
London: Sage.

Page 10 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
Van Ness, P. (1970) Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy: Peking’s Support for Wars of
National Liberation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Vilas, C. (1986) The Sandinista Revolution: National Liberation and Social Transformation in
Central America. New York: Monthly Review.

Walt, S. (1996) Revolution and War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Walt, S. (2001) Nothing Revolutionary. Review of International Studies 27 (4), 687–92.

Watson, A. (1984) Diplomacy: The Dialogue between States. London: Methuen.

Weinstein, M. (ed.) (1979) Revolutionary Cuba in the World Arena. Philadelphia: Institute for the
Study of Human Issues.

White, S., and Revell, S. (1999) Revolution and Integration in Soviet International Diplomacy,
1917–1991. Review of International Studies 25 (4), 641–54.

Links to Digital Materials

Internet Archive. At www.archive.org/details/texts <http://www.archive.org/details/texts>, accessed
Apr. 2009. Offers fully downloadable versions of some of the most classic old books on the American (e.g. S.F. Bemiss),
French (e.g. H.A. Taine), Haitian (e.g. T.E. Steward), and Soviet (E.H. Carr) revolutions.

World History Archives. At www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/index.html <http://www.hartford-

hwp.com/archives/index.html>, accessed Apr. 2009. Maintained by Hartford Web Publishing, the archives offer
documents to support the study of world history from a working-class and non-Eurocentric perspective.

Exploring the French Revolution. At http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/ <http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/

>, accessed Apr. 2009. An array of primary documents, images, maps, songs, etc., provided by the Center for History
and New Media (George Mason University) and American Social History Project (City University of New York),
supported by the US National Endowment for the Humanities.

Communist International archives. At www.comintern-online.com/ <http://www.comintern-online.com/

>, accessed Apr. 2009. The Comintern archive consists of all the records created under the authority of the Third
International from 1919 to 1943. It contains original documents in more than 30 languages from 7 congresses and 13
executive committee (ECCI) plenums, drawn up by more than 70 communist and left socialist parties, together with
different international organizations.

Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations. At http://europa.cubaminrex.cu/index.htm <http://

europa.cubaminrex.cu/index.htm>, accessed Apr. 2009. Offers official information about Cuban diplomacy as
well as an important number of links to diverse international media.

Islamic Republic of Iran, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At www.mfa.gov.ir/index.jsp <http://www.mfa.gov.ir/

index.jsp>, accessed Apr. 2009. A very interesting website through which the Iranian government delivers some of
its frequently controversial diplomatic statements.

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Ministry of Popular Power for Foreign Relations. At www.mre.gov.ve/metadot/
index.pl <http://www.mre.gov.ve/metadot/index.pl>, accessed Apr. 2009. Offers fully updated information
about the diplomacy of President Hugo Chávez, as well as an important number of links to alternative media.

Page 11 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).
Acknowledgments

Although he remains solely responsible for the text, the author wishes to acknowledge the valuable comments of
Celestino del Arenal, Iver Neumann, Monica Schurtman, Paul Sharp, and Robert Weiner.

Page 12 of 12

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (oxfordre.com/internationalstudies). (c)
International Studies Association and Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is
Privacy Policy <https://global.oup.com/privacy> Legal Notice strictly prohibited (for details see and ).