History, Revolution, and South Africa

In the first section of this inaugural lecture the author gives a definition of the concept of ‘revolution’. To give a sense of how the study of revolution has changed over time, and also of the theoretical bearings he is steering by, the author sketches, in the second section, some of the more influential theories and indicates what appear to be some of the most popular and fruitful approaches available at the moment. In the last section, he answers the following questions: What constitutes a revolutionary situation? Can one identify certain kinds of historical moments that offer realistic changes of a revolutionary outcome? And, if so, does contemporary South Africa appear, in terms historians might agree on, to have entered a revolutionary situation? Bibliogr., notes, ref.