This chapter highlights the old regimes in crisis, such as France, China, and Russia. These states set the precedent for old regimes in crisis and help to outline pre-revolutionary conditions and the leading causes. Skocpol states that revolutionary crises are created when the old regimes fail to modernize with the evolving international situation (Skocpol 1979, 48). The reason that the old regimes were in crisis was because the upper classes could not defend against peasant rebellions on a local basis; therefore, they supervise society to maintain order (Skocpol 1979, 48). The landed upper class relied on the monarchical class to bolster their status, prerogatives, and they built their fortune on state services to have such opportunities (Skocpol 1979, 49). Thus, the economic interests of the landed upper classes were in part obstacles to be overcome. These states were caught in a tough situation where the state decided to update their status in the international arena or fix the domestic class structure among the rich and the poor (Skocpol 1979, 50).