Current Events > is there a difference between a revolution and a civil war?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Doesn't it just depend on which side wins? If the rebellion wins, it becomes retroactively a revolution. If the rebels lose, its remembered as a civil war. If the American colonists had lost their rebellion, I bet today's world would call it a British civil war

And the confederates would probably have called the Civil War a revolution if they had won

Doflammingo was right.

A revolution (nor a civil war) doesn't necessarily need a rebellion.

Think the Culture Revolution. That was done by the Chinese government. For revolution, I think it's more along the lines of reversing some societal norm - whether it is political, economical, etc. It also doesn't need to be the winners. Sure, the French Revolution ultimately off the heads of many, but I think most of the "winners" there lost.

Civil wars just need to be internal conflicts that ultimately engulf the whole state. I doubt the American Revolution would have been called a civil war since I don't believe the colonies were considered part of the state. Part of the empire, but not the state.

Yeah, a Revolution doesn't need to invoke conflict (Industrial Revolution, for example), but a Revolution that has conflict could turn into a civil war if things internally get bad enough.

If you win you get to call it what you want.

Russia a perfect example here. The October Revolution happened and ended the Tsar's reign. The civil war came later, after the different factions couldn't agree on what to replace the monarchy with.

ScazarMeltex posted...

Russia a perfect example here. The October Revolution happened and ended the Tsar's reign. The civil war came later, after the different factions couldn't agree on what to replace the monarchy with.

The February Revolution ended the Tsar's reign; the October Revolution ousted the interim Provisional Government which had taken over after the Tsar, and that kicked off the civil war.

On topic: in terms of violent revolutions as opposed to cultural or industrial revolutions, I'd say the difference is the time scale. A revolution that succeeds (or fails) quickly doesn't get called a civil war unless it's particularly bloody; a revolution that drags on and involves the entire country is called a civil war.

Revolution doesn't require violence

to me a revolution signifies a single entity that has basically mutated and transformed within itself to reshape its own structure

whereas a civil war is distinctly two rivaling partitions that have declared independence of each other and these nearly equal opponents face off to declare a victor