Not a historian nor economist, but to my layman's mind, these revolts seem like a recurring phenomenon whenever long running economic cycles reach that point at which the aristocracy overreaches while trying to suppressing growing public sentiment against them, not unlike in Polybius' anacyclosis. But unlike Polybius' cycles, as technology improves, the likelihood of a successful reset at the end of a cycle, gradually diminishes with each cycle. I've recently started on Piketty's Capital, and he too alludes to the possibility that the post-industrial-revolution spiral into inequality could have continued uninterrupted into the 20th century and beyond, had it not been for the socioeconomic shock of the world war. Looking at the current trajectory of automation of intellectual labour and surveillance technology, I too am starting to worry that the odds of breaking the current cycle are slim.
Something else is going to happen this time, or really is happening already: people vote with their feet and stop having children.
On one hand wealth is being pooled into a smaller number of people, on the other it's becoming difficult to have anyone invested in working harder - and for good reason, as there's little payoff in that.
The Demographic Transition is modern but the age of family formation is actually used by historians to track how stressed the social contract is. Families have always been expensive and delaying them has always been a last resort for expense management.
Not an expert at all, so mostly a question. I have often heard the opposite, where large families are more common in less developed countries because having many children acts as insurance/social safety net for when parents become older and more frail. How does that relate?
If I generalize a bit: sometimes conditions change enough for the system as a whole to become unviable, but the entitled part of the population still tries their utmost to keep those entitlements.
Usually, it was a tiny elite, but nowadays, in the time of heavy pension systems, we might actually have succeeded in building an untenable system for a massive part of the population.
An episode of history I had never heard about. 100-300,000 peasants killed.
As someone who reads a lot about the early history of religion, the most interesting part of this for me was the role of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism: "In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the aristocrats to put down the rebels like mad dogs". My study of history of Christianity had left Protestantism relatively unscathed up to now. Well, no longer.
I mean, see also Cromwell. There’s a natural tendency to try to sort historical conflicts into good and bad. The reformation and counter-reformation were very much bad v. bad. But they did unlimited produce change which was probably, on balance, good.
> Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
Romans 13. Is it any surprise that such a religion has consistently, throughout the centuries, been on the side of the rich and powerful, of the lords and emperors, the reactionaries of all stripes?
Ours is a religion of submission to God, literally calling upon us to "pick up your cross daily." Which is, to die to yourself in submitting to God's will.
Various books of the Bible were written to very specific peoples at specific times, but at the same time, to all Christians everywhere. It takes wisdom to discern to which group does an instruction apply, and when?
This isn't to say that under no circumstances can you break the law; consider Christians in countries where Christianity is unlawful, they consistently break the law and defy the government because submission to God supersedes submission to government.
This passage specifically establishes that building a "Christian Caliphate" is not a goal of Christianity nor should it be a goal of any individual Christian. In general, the government is an institution put in place by God. The general principle is that God is sovereign, so by resorting to violence to assert yourself and your rights you are in no small way asserting your own will over His.
Books have been written on this, so I'll stop here. If you're interested, you can to much deeper on this.
I just wanted to clarify the drive-by theology indicating Christians are somehow "siding" with the "elite" is a very poor understanding of the scripture and ignores basically all of history.
the protestants have a long history of violence, beginning with the persecution of the Anabaptists, the witch burning and even running concentration camps for the Nazis (KZ Kuhlen), they are not really unscathed
No religion is unscathed: joining with the powers that be and lagging behind every ethical development is the rule, for sure, but I had mistakenly believed that at least the founding had been devoid of the usual hypocrisies and blood. Alas.
I know everything is told from a perspective, but I find the Marxist “aristocrat / bourgeois” lens rather tired and severely anachronistic. This is told as if Luther and the Magisterial Reformers were just “siding with the aristocracy” and didn’t have any other reasons for opposing a violent uprising on anarchy. The Reformers were trying to effect spiritual and theological change. But when the magistrate, who was supporting the Reformation, encountered radicals who used those ideas for violence and their own ambition, the Reformers had a conundrum. Carl Truman writes in his book “Luther in the Christian Life” (Crossway, 2015), ‘This latter concept, often known as “the priesthood of all believers” or “the general priesthood of all believers” was explosive in Luther’s day because it struck at the very structure of medieval piety. … The problem became acutely significant for the Reformers, and especially Luther, in 1525, with the Peasants’ War. At that time, radicals used Luther’s language of freedom as part of the rhetoric of rebellion, for understandable reasons. Such language resonates powerfully with the oppressed and disenfranchised in every age. The problem, of course, was that Luther was using such words in a manner that assumed their refraction through the cross. The same applied to the language of universal priesthood: the obvious democratizing tendency of the language was popular with those seeking more social equality. Yet the anarchy of the war placed Luther in an impossible position: he was no democratizing radical; he needed to reassure his secular lords that reformation did not mean revolution; and he needed to make sure that his teaching was clearly understood.’ The simple Marxist interpretation is rubbish — the situation was far more complicated than oppressor / oppressed.
i discovered this event by reading Sartre's play "The devil and the good lord" (Le diable et le bon dieu): not historical in any way, simply takes the uprising as context, but a masterpiece nonetheless.
Crazy how obscure episodes of world history land randomly on the front page - how does it even happen?
I grew up in Germany but I don’t think we covered this in history class - maybe I forgot about it, the whole medieval period is mostly a blur for me now
On one hand wealth is being pooled into a smaller number of people, on the other it's becoming difficult to have anyone invested in working harder - and for good reason, as there's little payoff in that.
With their reproductive organs more likely.
Usually, it was a tiny elite, but nowadays, in the time of heavy pension systems, we might actually have succeeded in building an untenable system for a massive part of the population.
As someone who reads a lot about the early history of religion, the most interesting part of this for me was the role of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism: "In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the aristocrats to put down the rebels like mad dogs". My study of history of Christianity had left Protestantism relatively unscathed up to now. Well, no longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Ribbon
Romans 13. Is it any surprise that such a religion has consistently, throughout the centuries, been on the side of the rich and powerful, of the lords and emperors, the reactionaries of all stripes?
Various books of the Bible were written to very specific peoples at specific times, but at the same time, to all Christians everywhere. It takes wisdom to discern to which group does an instruction apply, and when?
This isn't to say that under no circumstances can you break the law; consider Christians in countries where Christianity is unlawful, they consistently break the law and defy the government because submission to God supersedes submission to government.
This passage specifically establishes that building a "Christian Caliphate" is not a goal of Christianity nor should it be a goal of any individual Christian. In general, the government is an institution put in place by God. The general principle is that God is sovereign, so by resorting to violence to assert yourself and your rights you are in no small way asserting your own will over His.
Books have been written on this, so I'll stop here. If you're interested, you can to much deeper on this.
I just wanted to clarify the drive-by theology indicating Christians are somehow "siding" with the "elite" is a very poor understanding of the scripture and ignores basically all of history.
https://www.contretemps.eu/geneve-temps-calvin-theocratie-di...
With Jan Žižka they also had arguably one of the best commanders in history, up there with Alexander and Hanibal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_republic
Notably Handeln and the communes of the Swiss Cantons are considered to have "survived" into 19th C.
I grew up in Germany but I don’t think we covered this in history class - maybe I forgot about it, the whole medieval period is mostly a blur for me now