‘Après Nous, le Déluge’

What I've noticed is that governments have been discarded when they've outlived their usefulness. Sometimes cataclysmic events precede the upheaval, but it is not the event, rather it is the institutions' inability to respond effectively that seals their fate.

In the case of the American Revolution I don't recall such a cataclysmic event. The colonials simply no longer needed the British to protect them from the French, or provide essentials for their continuing existence. They resented being required to meet the expenses of the empire disproportionate to the benefits they felt they would enjoy. Given the common history and shared traditions of the English-speaking peoples, accommodations could have been arrived at, but a change in the relationship would have been necessary. Pitt understood that, North didn't. Exacerbating the different appreciation of their respective positions was their geographic separation. If it took five or six weeks for a message to cross the Atlantic, two weeks for a response to be devised, then five or six weeks for the response to be conveyed back to the colonies, the crown's response was three months after the fact. As the crisis developed and committees of correspondence spread throughout the colonies, the pace of radicalization far outpaced the crown's ability to respond.

The French Revolution may have been precipitated by the bread riots that resulted from increases in the price of bread beyond the means of the masses to afford. But as is often pointed out, the peasants and the Paris mob sought to have their protests reach the ears of the king who they hoped would address their needs. The king had other concerns. The feudal organization of the regime had bestowed privileges upon the nobility and the church including exemption from taxes. The monarchy was bankrupt and the government's deficit could not be funded. The king was endeavoring to find new sources of revenue. His preoccupation prevented him from perceiving that the rise of a literate urban population enabled his subjects to visualize a different order than the divinely ordained absolutism of the monarchy. It was on this growing urban class that the burden of taxation fell most heavily. The distance that separated him from his people was not geographic but social. Reportedly on July 14, the day of the fall of the Bastille, in his diary under significant events of the day he entered. "None."

The third revolution that comes readily to mind, the Russian Revolution, except for its tragic consequences could be described as black comedy. The last of the Romanov rulers appeared entirely at the mercy of circumstances over which he had no control. Given that the Russian army had been soundly defeated by the upstart Japanese 10 years earlier, it should have surprised no one that they would be slaughtered by the Germans. And during the earlier war there had been labor strikes and demonstrations by starving workers and mutinies amongst the military, all foreshadowing the events of 1917-18. Compounding the tragedy was a history of political assassinations and repression that forewarned that when the end came it wouldn't be pretty. And when the end did come in Ekaterinburg, before they and their children were murdered, Nicholas and Alexandra probably hugged and commiserated, "We knew this job was too big for us, but we did our best." Too much suffering preceded and followed their demise for them to be exonerated. But they too were crushed in the collapse of a system which had evolved hundreds of years earlier, and hadn't the ability to deal with the challenges it faced.

While in retrospect, the autocrats can be seen as having been inept, badly informed, or ill served, it must be remembered that they promoted and rewarded the ministers and courtiers who told then what they wanted to hear. They then turned a blind eye as these administrators and deputies enriched themselves, their friends and their families, while the population was driven to poverty and despair.