Paraphrasing Tolstoï, Paul Bairoch, in Mythes et paradoxes de l’histoire économique writes that "economic history is a deaf person who answers questions that no economist has ever asked him". If, etymologically, revolution means "return to the starting point”, (the image of the seasonal cycle, of the circle which constantly loops up), the Grand dictionnaire encyclopédique Larousse gives, in the 1960s, this definition: "a revolution is an abrupt and violent change in the political and social structure of a state, which occurs when a group revolts against the ruling authorities, takes power and manages to keep it… Based on the same model, the "industrial revolution" (R.I.) has in its terminological identity this same idea of suddenness.