This chapter sets the stage for the work to come, posing the central question about how to understand ancient Assyrian identity in the second millennium bce and how it changed over time. It critiques the concept of ethnicity and explains why grappling with Assyrianness requires a new approach to identity.

This chapter develops a theory to explain why counterrevolutions emerge and succeed. This movement-centric theory emphasizes the strategies movement leaders embrace, which, more than anything else, define the capacities and interests of the old and new regimes during the post-revolutionary transition. All revolutionary governments enjoy an initial power advantage over the old regime. Whether a counterrevolution emerges depends on how much capacity these old regime forces have left and how much their interests are threatened by revolutionary rule. And whether their counterrevolutions succeed depends on how effectively revolutionaries can preserve their initial capacity through the tumultuous transition. Specifically, the chapter lays out a post-revolutionary “governance trilemma,” which requires new leaders to simultaneously manage the concerns of lingering old regime forces, elites in their coalition, and popular groups who supported the revolution. The chapter then explains how these dynamics differ following two ideal-typical forms of revolution: radical-violent movements and moderate-unarmed movements. Counterrevolutions are less likely to emerge following extreme versions of both movements – because the former lowers counterrevolutionary capacities and the latter lowers their interests in restoration. However, counterrevolutions are more likely to succeed against moderate-unarmed movements, because they establish governments that lack key tools for effectively navigating the governance trilemma.

This chapter draws on the original cross-national dataset of counterrevolutions to examine global patterns and historical trends in counterrevolutionary emergence and success. It begins with a series of statistical analyses that support core elements of the theory. Counterrevolutions are much less likely to topple radical-violent revolutions than moderate-unarmed ones – a finding that holds across two different measures of these types. Subsequent analyses shed light on the mechanisms behind this relationship: loyal armies and powerful foreign sponsors are key to defeating counterrevolution, whereas robust parties matter less. Next, the chapter shows that counterrevolutions are most likely to emerge following revolutions with medium levels of violence, which leave the old regime with both the capacity and interest to launch a challenge. Further, there is little support for four alternative explanations, particularly when it comes to counterrevolutionary success. Next, the chapter evaluates how key events during the post-revolutionary transition (like land reforms and elections) affect the likelihood of counterrevolution. It concludes with an exploration of the decline in counterrevolution since 1900 (followed by an uptick in the last decade), which it traces to a combination of the changing nature of revolution and shifts in the distribution of global power.

This chapter offers an overview of the Middle Assyrian social world and the construction of Assyrian identity within it. The chapter finds that in the Middle Assyrian period, Assyrianness was an incidental identity with permeable boundaries.

This chapter examines the complex diplomacy between the United States and Israel during the administration of President George H. W. Bush and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, with a particular focus on the road to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. It argues that US Secretary of State James Baker ultimately played a pivotal role in shaping the negotiations. Drawing on newly available archival materials from the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, the Israel State Archives, and the American Jewish Archives, the chapter presents a detailed account of the tensions that characterized the period. It explores how emotions - alongside interests and strategy - shaped diplomatic behavior, particularly over the peace process and the request for US loan guarantees to support the absorption of Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel. The chapter also investigates the parallel strains in US relations with American Jewish organizations. In contrast to accounts that treat this period as an aberration in the U.S.-Israel "special relationship," the chapter shows how it encapsulated the recurring frictions and deep-rooted affinities that have long defined the alliance. It also reflects on the broader historiographical and methodological implications of using newly declassified sources to reassess well-known diplomatic episodes.1

This chapter traces trajectories of counterrevolutions following six revolutions, which exhibit the full range of counterrevolutionary outcomes and offer useful comparisons to Egypt. First, it examines two revolutions that never experienced counterrevolutions: Tunisia’s and Libya’s 2011 revolutions. Both occurred in the same Arab Spring wave as Egypt’s revolution, but in Tunisia the new government faced a military whose interests were not deeply threatened by civilian rule and in Libya the coercive capacity of the former regime was largely destroyed in the brief civil war. Next, it examines two Latin American revolutions that demonstrate the two ways in which revolutionaries can maintain their capacity and defeat counterrevolutionary threats. Following Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro’s regime put down multiple counterrevolutions using its loyal revolutionary army. In Venezuela, following the 1958 democratic revolution, the government enjoyed none of these coercive resources, yet managed to thwart multiple counterrevolutionary coup attempts through a preservation of revolutionary unity and a return to mass mobilization. Finally, in two cases that are otherwise quite different to Egypt – Thailand’s 1973 democratic uprising and Hungary’s 1919 communist revolution – a very similar set of mechanisms undermined the capacity of the new governments and created opportunities for counterrevolutionaries to return to power.

The year 1992 marked political shifts in both Israel and the US, as the loan guarantee dispute deepened tensions in US-Israel relations. The Bush administration continued to tie financial aid for absorbing Soviet Jewish immigrants to a freeze on Israeli settlement construction - a condition Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir firmly rejected. The dispute became central in both countries’ political discourse, shaping the June Israeli elections and the US presidential race in November. Shamir’s defeat by Yitzhak Rabin signaled a policy shift, as Labour leaders were more open to US cooperation on the peace process. Meanwhile, President Bush’s failure to gain substantial Jewish support contributed to his loss to Bill Clinton. This chapter explores how the loan guarantee debate reflected deeper ideological and strategic divides, and how the Bush administration tried to balance security ties with political pressure. It also examines the role of American Jewish organizations in shaping public discourse and considers the long-term effects of this turbulent period on US-Israel relations.

This chapter summarizes the main findings, arguments, and contributions of the book. It reviews the theoretical arguments and discusses promising avenues for further research on revolution and counterrevolution. Then it explains how the book’s findings speak to a number of scholarly and public debates. First, for scholars of violence and nonviolence, who have argued that unarmed civil resistance is more effective at toppling autocrats than armed conflict, the book raises questions about the tenacity of the regimes established through these nonviolent movements. Second, it speaks to scholarship on democratization, highlighting the important differences between transitions effected through elite pacts versus those brought about through revolutionary mobilization. Third, it offers lessons about how foreign powers can help or hinder the consolidation of new democracies. Next, the chapter discusses implications for Egypt and the broader Middle East, including the possibility that future revolutions might avoid the disappointing fates of the 2011 revolutions. The chapter ends by reflecting on what the book has to say about our current historical moment, when rising rates of counterrevolution appear to be only one manifestation of a broader resurgence of authoritarian populism and reactionary politics worldwide.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 reshaped US foreign policy and placed Israel in a precarious position. As the Bush administration built an international coalition against Saddam Hussein, it deliberately distanced itself from Israel to secure Arab participation in Operation Desert Shield. This led to Israeli concerns about its strategic value to the US, especially amid debates over arms sales to Saudi Arabia and exclusion from military coordination. Although Israel exercised restraint at Washington’s request, tensions emerged over intelligence sharing, arms procurement, and settlements. US efforts to sideline Israel during the Gulf conflict fuelled fears of estrangement and prompted Israeli efforts to secure military aid and reaffirm its alliance with the US. This chapter examines Israel’s role in the Gulf War’s geopolitical landscape, focusing on its strategic concerns, diplomatic responses, and evolving relationship with the Bush administration. It also explores how American outreach to Arab states reshaped Israel’s perceived standing in US foreign policy.

What is a counterrevolution? And how often do they occur? Chapter 2 is devoted to answering these foundational questions. According to this book, a counterrevolution is an irregular effort in the aftermath of a successful revolution to restore a version of the pre-revolutionary political regime. The chapter begins by explaining and contextualizing this definition. It reviews the various alternative understandings of counterrevolution that have been invoked by both scholars and activists. It then explains the decision to adopt a definition of counterrevolution as restoration and shows how this definition was operationalized in building the original dataset. The second half of the chapter lays out the main high-level findings from this dataset. About half of all revolutionary governments have faced a counterrevolutionary challenge of some type, and roughly one in five of these governments was successfully overturned. Moreover, these counterrevolutions have been distributed unevenly: the vast majority have toppled democratic revolutions, rather than ethnic or leftist ones. And counterrevolutions had for years been declining in frequency, until the last decade when this trend reversed. These descriptive findings provide the motivation for the theory developed in Chapter 3.