Etymology

The word "revolucion" is known in French from the 13th century, and "revolution" in English by
the late fourteenth century, with regards to the revolving motion of celestial bodies.
"Revolution" in the sense of representing abrupt change in a social order is attested by at least
1450.[2][3] Political usage of the term had been well established by 1688 in the description of the
replacement of James II with William III. This incident was termed the "Glorious Revolution".[4]

Types

A Watt steam engine in Madrid. The development of the steam enginepropelled the Industrial
Revolution in Britain and the world. The steam engine was created to pump water from coal mines,
enabling them to be deepened beyond groundwater levels.

There are many different typologies of revolutions in social science and literature. For example,
classical scholar Alexis de Tocquevilledifferentiated between political revolutions, sudden and
violent revolutions that seek not only to establish a new political system but to transform an
entire society, and slow but sweeping transformations of the entire society that take several
generations to bring about (such as changes in religion).[5] One of several
different Marxist typologies divides revolutions into pre-capitalist, early bourgeois, bourgeois,
bourgeois-democratic, early proletarian, and socialist revolutions.[6]
Charles Tilly, a modern scholar of revolutions, differentiated between a coup d'tat (a top-down
seizure of power), a civil war, a revolt, and a "great revolution" (a revolution that transforms
economic and social structures as well as political institutions, such as the French Revolutionof
1789, Russian Revolution of 1917, or Islamic Revolution of Iran).[7][8]
Other types of revolution, created for other typologies, include the social
revolutions; proletarian or communist revolutions (inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to
replace capitalism with Communism); failed or abortive revolutions (revolutions that fail to
secure power after temporary victories or large-scale mobilization); or violent vs. nonviolent
revolutions.
The term revolution has also been used to denote great changes outside the political sphere.
Such revolutions are usually recognized as having transformed in society, culture, philosophy,
and technology much more than political systems; they are often known as social
revolutions.[9] Some can be global, while others are limited to single countries. One of the
classic examples of the usage of the word revolution in such contex