Introduction: heritage and revolution - first as tragedy, then as farce?

If a revolution is taken to be a decisive break with the past, how can there be a heritage of revolution? Conversely, how does any revolution affect tangible and intangible heritage, as well as shifting conceptions of heritage? In this introduction to four papers dedicated to the theme of ‘Heritage and Revolution’, we provide an overview of changing conceptualizations of both ideas and how they have shaped each other since the French Revolution first radically changed both. This special section’s papers developed from the 2017 Annual Seminar of the Cambridge Heritage Research Group. 2017, as the centenary of the February and October Russian Revolutions, provided a global opportunity for reflection on these themes and for analysis of how contemporary heritagization of revolution (or lack thereof) molds and is molded by a society’s conception of itself and its past. At at time of shifting political and heritage paradigms worldwide, this topic remains timely and fascinating. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor \& Francis Group.