Long-term suffering creates pressure, but revolutions ignite from specific moments — a bread riot, a tax decree, a single arrest. Understanding the difference between conditions and triggers is the foundation of every strong historical argument. Raise the pressure to build up the conditions, then fire a trigger and see whether it sets anything off.
Long-term causes are the structural conditions that accumulate over years or decades: economic inequality, political exclusion, ideological shifts, fiscal crisis, crop failures. These build pressure like water behind a dam. The French Third Estate was locked out of power for centuries, Russian serfs endured brutal conditions for generations, colonial subjects faced systematic exploitation for decades. But conditions alone rarely produce eruption — they create fragility and anger, but revolution requires ignition. The critical insight: most societies endure terrible conditions without revolting. What tips them over is the trigger.
A strong answer always separates long-term causes (conditions building over years) from short-term triggers (specific igniting events), then shows how both were necessary — the conditions created the pressure, the trigger released it.