Rebellion, Revolution, and Armed Force. A Comparative Study of Fifteen Countries with Special Emphasis on Cuba and South Africa

218 Pages·1974·3.476 MB·English

by  D.E.H. Russell

STUDIES IN SOCIAL DISCONTINUITY
Under The Consulting Editorship of:
CHARLES TILLY EDWARD SHORTER
University of Michigan University of Toronto
William A. Christian, Jr. Person and God in a Spanish Valley
Joel Samaha. Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The
Case of Elizabethan Essex
John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf. The Hidden Frontier: Ecology
and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World-System: Capitalist
Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy
in the Sixteenth Century
John R. Gillis. Youth and History: Tradition and Change in
European Age Relations 1770 - Present
D. E. H. Russell. Rebellion, Revolution, and Armed Force: A
Comparative Study of Fifteen Countries with Special Em-
phasis on Cuba and South Africa
Jn preparation
Kristian Hvidt. Flight to America: The Social Background of
300,000 Danish Emigrants
Rebellion,
Revolution,
and Armed Force
A Comparative Study of Fifteen Countries
with Special Emphasis
on Cuba and South Africa
D. E. H. Russell
Division of Social Science
Mills College
Oakland, California
Academic Press, Inc. New York San Francisco London
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Russell, D.E.H.
Rebellion, revolution, and armed force.
(Studies in social discontinuity)
Bibliography: p.
1. Revolutions. 2. Revolutions-Case studies.
3. Armed forces-Political activity. I. Title.
II. Series.
HM281.R86 301.5'92 74-7205
ISBN 0-13-785745-1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To those who are struggling for a more just South Africa
. . . few attempts seem to have been made to assemble
the historical facts of various revolutions in an endeavor
to deduce from them whether there be any general laws
which govern the practical conduct of a revolutionary
outbreak and account for its success or failure.
K. C. CHORLEY, Armies and the Art of Revolution
To determine whether revolutions are governed by con-
stant laws, there is only one method: we must compare
one with the other the greatest possible number of revo-
lutions . . . and we must see whether between these
phenomena so far apart in time and space there can be
discovered similarities and dissimilarities which are
constant.
G. SALVEMINI, Historian and Scientist; An Essay
on the Nature of History and the Social
Sciences
V
Preface
The study on the role of armed forces in rebellion, presented in the
second half of this volume, was written originally as my doctoral disser-
tation.1 While these chapters have since been revised to include the most
recent scholarly data, in those cases where the data were already consider-
able and of good quality, the analyses were not redone. However, for
many cases where new data on the behavior of the armed forces were
available, they were incorporated into the case studies.
In contrast to the original study, the scope of the book has been greatly
broadened. General questions relating to oppression are raised and dis-
cussed, the literature on rebellion and revolution is critically evaluated,
the cases of Cuba and, particularly, South Africa are analyzed in detail,
and finally, the implications of the findings and analyses are presented,
especially as they relate to foreign policy toward South Africa.
A number of people have been very helpful in different ways through-
out the course of this study. Most of all I wish to thank Charles Tilly for
1D. E. H. Russell, A comparative study of the relation between the loyalty of armed
forces and the outcome of mass rebellion in the twentieth century. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation. Harvard University, 1970.
xi
xii Preface
his ready and sound advice on many occasions. He was particularly help-
ful in the early phases of the research, and then again later in his sugges-
tions as to how I might transform my dissertation into a more readable
and, hopefully, a more significant book. Aside from his personal advice,
which has been considerable, I found his own work most useful when it
came to designing and carrying out my study: first, because of his insis-
tence on the need to try to measure political upheaval, while at the same
time do justice to the data; and second, because of his unusual ability
to do work that is guided by important theoretical considerations, as well
as highly sophisticated methodology. These exemplary attributes, com-
bined with his personal encouragement and advice, have been invaluable
to me.
Next, I want to thank Kenneth Carstens for the many informative
comments and useful suggestions he made after reading an earlier draft of
of the book, particularly on the South African material. I followed many
of his suggestions and incorporated some of his information. I am also
very grateful for his encouragement and enthusiasm for the book, in spite
of its depressing conclusions, and for his helping me to go against the
usual scholarly tradition in clearly expressing my view in favor of inter-
vention in support of black Africans in South Africa. I believe scholarship
should inform people's politics, even when it leads to regrettable con-
clusions. I also believe that political concern should not make scholar-
ship suspect. Kenneth Carstens helped me to be more true to these views.
I would like to thank Maria Leslie for going through the Spanish sources
for the cases of Cuba (1912, 1959), Brazil (1930), and Bolivia (1952).
Although there was very little specific information on the behavior of the
armed forces in these rebellions in the Spanish sources, it was important
that this material be examined. (Since these sources were so unhelpful,
however, most of them have not been included in the selected biblio-
graphy.)
I am very grateful to Arlene Daniels for her willingness to make exten-
sive editorial suggestions on the first half of the book at a time that was
very inconvenient for her. I also want to thank Jack Fremont for his sugges-
tions on the style of the Introduction and Chapter One; and Laurie
Tempkin and Linda Wong for their help in the arduous task of locating
books and articles at the University of California library at Berkeley.
Finally, I am very grateful to Phyillis Pacin for her incredible ability to
decipher my handwriting and for her careful typing of the final manuscript.
I also want to thank the Center of International Studies at Princeton
University for a Research Associateship during the academic year 1967—
1968, which gave me time to research the study presented in this volume.
And, I would like to thank Mills College for a grant to help me cover
typing costs.
Credits
Pages 7 and 15: From Tilly, Charles, and James Rule. 1965. Measuring political up-
heaval. Princeton, New Jersey: Center of International Studies,
Princeton University Research Monograph No. 19
Page 14: From Johnson, Chalmers A. 1966. Revolutionary change. Boston:
Little, Brown, pp. 32, 91. Copyright © 1966 by Little, Brown and
Company. Reprinted by permission.
Page 17: From Draper, Theodore. 1962. Castro's revolution. Myths
and realities. New York: Praeger.
Pages 32 and 35: From van den Berghe, Pierre L. 1965. South Africa: A study in
conflict. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
Copyright © 1965 by Weslyan University Press. Reprinted by per-
mission of the publisher.
Page 34: From Bunting, Brian. 1964. The rise of the South African reich.
London: Penguin.
Pages 43, 52, From Adam, Heribert (Ed.) 1971. South Africa: Sociological
and 82: perspectives. London and New York: Oxford University Press. Re-
printed by permission of the publisher.
Page 61: From Chorley, Katherine. 1943. Armies and the art of revolution.
London: Faber and Faber.
Page 88: From Chapelle. Dickey. 1962. How Castro won. In F. M. Osana
(Ed.), Modern guerilla war: Fighting communist movements
1941-1961. New York: Free Press. Originally published in the Marine
Corps Gazette, February 1960. Copyright 1960 by the Marine Corps
Association.
Pages 92-95: From Afghanistan, by W. K. Fraser-Tytler, revised by Sir M. C
Gillet. Published 1967 by Oxford University Press and reproduced by
permission of the publisher.
xiii
xiv Credits
Pages 96-98: From Swire, Joseph. 1929. Albania: The rise of a kingdom. London:
Unwin Bros., Ltd.
Pages 100-101: From Hispanic American Report, Vol. 5, No. 4. (May, 1952)
pp. 34-35. Reproduced by permission of the Center for Latin
American Studies, Stanford University.
Pages 104-106: From Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964: An experiment in democracy, by
Thomas E. Skidmore. Copyright © 1967 by Oxford University
Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
Pages 106 and 107: From Bello, Jose M. 1966. A history of modern Brazil, 1899-1964,
Transl. by J. L. Taylor. Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press.
Pages 109-111: From China. Reprinted by permission,©. Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1967.
Page 114: From Gittings, John. 1967. The role of the Chinese army. London
and New York: Oxford University Press.
Pages 115-116, From Lieuwen, Edwin. 1958. Arms and politics in Latin America.
119, and 124 New York: Praeger.
Page 120: From Goldenberg, Boris. 1965. The Cuban revolution and Latin
America. New York: Praeger.
Pages 121-123: From Cline, Howard F. 1963. The United States and Mexico.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Pages 126-127: From Hasluck, Eugene L. 1938. Foreign affairs, 1919-1937.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Pages 128-129: From Hall, Daniel G. E. 1960. Burma, 3rd ed. London: Hutchinson.
Pages 129-130: From Trager, Frank N. 1954. Burma: Land of golden pagodas. New
York: Foreign Policy Association.
Pages 132-134: From Columbia by W. O. Galbraith. Published 1966 by Oxford
University Press under the auspices of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs.
Pages 136-137: From Russell H. Fitzgibbon, Cuba and the United States, 1900-
1935 [1935]. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
Pages 138-139: From New International Yearbook: A compendium of the world's
affairs, 1933. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
Pages 140-141: From Hughes, Serge. 1967. The fall and rise of modern Italy. New
York: Macmillan. Copyright© 1967 by Serge Hughes.
Pages 142-143: From New International Yearbook: A compendium of the world's
affairs, 1934. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
Introduction
I grew interested in the subject of rebellion when I finally became con-
vinced that the radical social change so desperately needed in South
Africa—the country of my birth—could not be achieved through traditional
political channels. I found Leo Kuper's (1960, p. 94) conclusion that the
whites in South Africa would not be converted by the voluntary suffering
entailed by passive resistance intellectually compelling; and I found it a
confirmation of my own experiences, particularly in peaceful demonstra-
tions. I accepted Kuper's view that whites could resist conversion because
they so strongly believe in the Tightness of white domination. Most white
South Africans really do not see the "nonwhites" (that is, all peoples with
skins darker than their own) as fellow human beings, and consequently
are unmoved by the involuntary suffering intrinsic to the black experience
in South Africa.1 Indeed, this suffering is directly related to the benefits
the whites receive in a system they have created. Here is what seems to
me to be the key reason for the probable ineffectiveness of nonviolent
1A rather personal illustration of this is provided by the experience of my brother. He is
a white Anglican priest who works in a black African resettlement location in South Africa.
As a means of protesting the insufficiency of the government pensions and rations for black
1
2 Introduction
means in the South African situation: The whites have too much to lose
by a breakdown of a caste system that reserves for them virtually all the
power, money, and high-status positions available in the nation. And since
the whites in South Africa are no different from any other entrenched group
that enjoys a monopoly of privilege and power, they cannot be expected
to voluntarily relinquish their position.
However, seeing the futility of a nonviolent strategy and the need for
a violent rebellion is one thing. Organizing rebellion is quite another, for
it is necessary that a rebellion not only happen, but that it succeed. But
is a successful rebellion possible in South Africa? While Kuper's analysis
leads to the conclusion that nonviolent methods cannot work against oppres-
sors like white South Africans, it might just as well be true that violent
methods will not work either. Many people optimistically believe that if
social change is desperately needed and morally justified, it will, or at
least can, happen. Yet is this notion realistic, both in the South African
situation, and in general? What determines the success or failure of a rebel-
lion? Why do some rebellions succeed in overthrowing the regime that
is trying to suppress them, while others fail? And more specifically, what
is the relationship between regime oppressiveness and the outcome of rebel-
%
lion? In seeking an answer to these questions, one finds the literature on
rebellion, revolution, and related phenomena of extraordinarily little help.
First, it seems that nearly all students of this subject have been preoccupied
with the causes of rebellion or revolution. The question of what determines
the outcome has been virtually ignored. Eckstein (1965) makes this point
nicely:
. . .almost nothing careful and systematic has been written about the long-run
social effects of internal wars .... Little more is available on the determinants of
success or failure in internal wars .... But in regard to etiology, to "causes,"
we are absolutely inundated with print [p. 136].2
The profusion of material on etiology not withstanding, there is little agree-
ment on the question of causes. Eckstein (pp. 143-144) lists 21 of the condi-
tions that students of ^internal war" (as he calls it) have regarded as causes;
Africans, he recently tried to live for 6 months on $6.37 a month. This is the amount on
which African pensioners are expected to live; those receiving rations or maintenance grants
receive half this amount. Over and over again whites were appalled at the level of deprivation
this involved for him. Since what he experienced was commonplace for black Africans, it
is obvious that the horror of living on this inadequate amount was only brought home to
many of them because it was a white who was suffering.
2Eckstein includes both rebellions and revolutions in his more general category of "internal
war."