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<p>Acts of violent state repression seem to have an indeterminant effect on the future of the opposition, in some cases creating an effective deterrent against future protests, and in others causing a dramatic escalation in resistance against the regime. This article takes a different approach, asking how some highly visible acts of state repression can be regarded as a “cracking event” (Della Porta 2020) that transforms structures and produces surprising political outcomes. The article uses the concept of critical event analysis to ask how two cases of civilian massacres in 20th century China and India set in motion contrasting event sequences that produced unanticipated turns in revolutionary nationalist politics: the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22) in India and the Northern Expedition (1926-7) in China. Process-tracing and counterfactual analysis of possible worlds establish that (1) the shootings were highly contingent events that could have been averted and (2) a subsequent causal chain of events produced a revolutionary turn in anti-colonial opposition in each case. An assessment of the necessary and sufficient causal properties of each repression episode shows that one was highly necessary and the other was highly sufficient in pushing the respective nationalist movements toward revolutionary strategies and tactics.</p>

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Civilian Massacres and Anti-Colonial Revolutionary Movements in India and China, 1919–1925: A Critical Event Analysis

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月29日

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  • Mark W. Frazier

摘要

Acts of violent state repression seem to have an indeterminant effect on the future of the opposition, in some cases creating an effective deterrent against future protests, and in others causing a dramatic escalation in resistance against the regime. This article takes a different approach, asking how some highly visible acts of state repression can be regarded as a “cracking event” (Della Porta 2020) that transforms structures and produces surprising political outcomes. The article uses the concept of critical event analysis to ask how two cases of civilian massacres in 20th century China and India set in motion contrasting event sequences that produced unanticipated turns in revolutionary nationalist politics: the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22) in India and the Northern Expedition (1926-7) in China. Process-tracing and counterfactual analysis of possible worlds establish that (1) the shootings were highly contingent events that could have been averted and (2) a subsequent causal chain of events produced a revolutionary turn in anti-colonial opposition in each case. An assessment of the necessary and sufficient causal properties of each repression episode shows that one was highly necessary and the other was highly sufficient in pushing the respective nationalist movements toward revolutionary strategies and tactics.