If your first language is English, you may be satisfied that the true peasant’s revolt — the Peasants’ Revolt — happened in England in the 14th century1.
Suppose you have a different first language, and/or a more flexible mind set. You may not be surprised that there have been at least a hundred peasants’ revolts defined and recorded.
Apparently peasants’ revolts have a tendency to flop, their advocates having mighty grievances but not a great deal of skill or equipment in pressing a revolt forwards.
With a mediocre track record in history, it’s perhaps understandable why memory of peasant revolts may get swallowed up in the sands of time. Once again, however, Wikipedia steps to our rescue: List of peasant revolts
But in our modern world, it might be prudent to avoid the idea that ‘it couldn’t happen here.’ Recently we’ve seen peasants’ revolts sputter into action on American university campuses, actions taken in response to the massive numbers of civilian deaths being wreaked on Palestinians living in Gaza2.
Some American pundits predict such campus events as being of minimal importance. Are those pundits too young to remember the campus unrest, which spilled violently over in the 1968 Democratic Convention and ultimately influenced the course of the war in Viet Nam3?
Why do peasant revolts happen? Wikipedia’s list of revolts helps out again, with a list of reasons why peasants react violently to attitudes and actions of ‘superior classes’ including royalty and other overlords, minor and major:
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- Tax resistance
- Social inequality
- Religious war
- National liberation
- Resistance against serfdom
- Redistribution of land
- External factors such as plague and famine
Are any of these crises present today in the world — events that are becoming more and more threatening to the underclasses, but less important, even unnoticeable, to a country’s wealthy rulers?
Take, for example the U.S. Supreme Court, which these days searches for wisdom in a document written almost 250 years ago: the American Constitution. That, by unfortunate decision (or possibly accidental oversight) did not mention the human right to shelter (housing). Could such constitutional certainty ultimately reach the point of a peasant revolt? As it turns out, we have an inkling that the answer could be ‘yes!’
Consider the Spanish phrase Canarias tiene un límite: ‘The Canaries have a limit.’ That’s the rallying cry of a current peasant revolt. The Canaries are Spanish Islands off the west coast of Africa where citizens are protesting by the thousands. Read more in The Guardian: Thousands protest against Canary islands’ ‘unsustainable’ tourism model.
Might it one day happen, not off the West Coast of Africa, but closer to your home, or your tent?
Footnotes
- Wikipedia offers a useful and very extensive discussion of its history: Peasants’ Revolt
- Read this account in TeenVOGUE: University Protests at Columbia, NYU, and More: Pro-Palestine Encampments Spread Over Israel Divestment
- Read more about this in History: 1968 Democratic Convention
