Given Fuller's distinction, how are we to understand the mutiny of German sailors that brought about the collapse of the German military at the end of World War One. Given rumors that the navy was launching a last suicide attack against the British fleet, sailors rose up against their officers. The rebellion spread quickly through the German fleet and then onto soldiers at the Western front.
Daniel Purdy | Homepage | 08 May, 2009 - 2:40 am | #

Well, Fuller claims that such WWI mutinies (also the Potemkin) were part of a larger revolutionary movement, so not really pure mutinies. Again, he wants to distinguish revolution from mutiny, though "sometimes the atmosphere of revolution is such that a mutinous act occurs spontaneously within it" (xi).
Jon | Homepage | 08 May, 2009 - 12:31 pm | #

It's not only sailors who mutiny, though, is it? There were serious mutinies by both French and British soldiers on the Western Front in WWI. These weren't part of a larger revolutionary movement and their form, or very occurence, was determined by industrial modernity and technology since without industrial modernity the soldiers wouldn't have been in the trenches in the first place. Not sure where that leaves Fuller's distinction, really...
Jeremy | 11 May, 2009 - 1:31 am | #