Daily Mail

Rounding up the revolution­s

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QUESTION Which was the first uprising to be described as a revolution?

The link between the word ‘revolution’ and political change was expounded in the 1500s by Italian historians describing changes in the government of Florence: the idea was that change represents a cyclical return to the order of the past.

This notion was popularise­d across Western europe, aided by the publicatio­n of Copernicus’s De revolution­ibus orbium

coelestium (On The Revolution­s Of The heavenly Bodies) in 1543 and a fascinatio­n with astrology, which encouraged people to associate human affairs with the ‘revolution­s’ of the stars and planets.

The first rebellion to be widely labelled a revolution was england’s ‘ Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, whereby a Protestant Dutchman, William of Orange, and his wife, Mary Stuart, were invited to take the throne, a return to a previous legal order upset by King James II.

Only in the 18th century did ‘revolution’ become linked to the idea of change as progress towards a new order, as with the French Revolution of 1789-99. Edward Jordan, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshir­e.

QUESTION How has Botswana managed to be economical­ly stable and successful?

FuRTheR to earlier answers, which described how good governance, particular­ly by Seretse Khama, made Botswana one of Africa’s success stories, my family lived near him and his wife Ruth when he was banished from his own country by the British.

We lived in Chipstead in Surrey, and my parents enjoyed a drink with the couple at a pub. My sister and I attended a party for the Khamas’ first child, Jacqueline.

When my parents visited South Africa years later, my mother wrote to Ruth and received a lovely letter in reply. Marnie Simmans (nee Bennett),

Reigate, Surrey.

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