A bouquet of revolutions

The recently silenced Umbrella Revolution made me think about the colourful names given to revolutions. It’s fascinating to notice the names of revolutions that organically emerge from the protests.

Have you noticed how flowers’ and colours’ names have been quite popular? And such consistently themed ‘revolutionary’ names. I will avoid chronology here jump to the 2000s in the area around the Soviet Union and the Balkans when the Colour Revolutions started. Inspired by the Yellow Revolution of the Philippines (1986), a whole rainbow of revolutions exploded: Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004), Iraq’s Purple Revolution (2005), Kuwait’s Blue Revolution (2005), Myanmar’s Saffron Revolution (2007) and Iran’s Green Revolution (2009). After colour, comes the flowers: Portugal’s Carnation Revolution (1974), Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution (2005), Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution (2010) and Egypt’s Lotus Revolution (2011). There are some oddities too – a few fruits and textures thrown in for variety I suppose – Moldova’s Grape Revolution (2009), the Czech Velvet Revolution (1989) and Belarus’s Jeans Revolution (2006). If I didn’t know better I’d suspect someone who loves flowers, fruits and colours was left in charge of the names of revolutions and they have used colouring books and crayons for inspiration.