Talk:Peasant revolt (disambiguation)

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This is already a Category, which is suitable. There are, or should be, entries on each individual peasant revolt throughout history. This entry is not offering helpful information.

I rather strongly disagree, a great article on the general subject could be written. Although if the article is just going to deal with medieval European peasant revolts, it should be renamed. Everyking 00:54, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've moved it to Peasant revolts (Europe). --LeeHunter 01:18, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The expression "peasant revolt" is mostly used to describe the peasant revolts of feudal Europe. It has been lately expanded (like "peasant" itself to include other rebellions. This is now mentioned in the article, so I'm moving it back. And no, I don't want this article to be a member of category:Peasant revolts. Zocky 03:06, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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"Peasant" revolt, as a historicaly netural description of the events of 14th-16th century europe, went out of style .. well, it never was in style. Peasant is a pejorative term (as of the end of the 13th century). Historians call this period "Popular Rebellions" or "Popular Revolts" or "Popular uprisings". The name for the 1381 event is by convention called the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 although even this is often called instead The English Rising of 1381 (see Hilton). One must be careful in the usage of the word "peasant". It has negative connotations. The Category needs to be renamed as well.

As an aside, recent evidence in the past 10-15 years has shown that many of these "peasant" revolts were actually organized and led by people who were not peasants at all, but those who had the most to loose from increased taxations: the middle classes. Stbalbach 06:26, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Any sources for this? In central Europe the same expressions that were always used are still used i.e. there has been no change in nomenclature. And of course it was peasants that rebelled - even when they had middle class leadership, overwhelming majority of the rebels were peasants and main demands were for the rights of peasants. In places they even demanded the return to the "old justice" of early feudalism and thus went against the interests of middle classes.

Peasant rebelions started well before 16 century and continued into the 19th, until the final abolition of serfdom. They thus partly coincided with wars of reformation when they became a part of a wider political movement, but they also existed as pure expressions of discontent of the peasant classes. Zocky 12:08, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm mainly looking at 14th and 15th and early 16th century popular uprisings (Medieval). Peasant means agrarian rural worker, some of the revolts were urban and did not really involve peasants. They can be classified, as a whole, as popular uprisings. For source see Hiltons most recent work on the 1381 rising. --Stbalbach 04:14, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Look, peasant revolts are a kind of popular uprisings. There's no need to come up with a different term if we already have a widely used one, especially not because some people use the word peasant as an insult. People use all sorts of words as insults. Zocky 09:47, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The issue with an article called "peasant revolt" is two-fold. First it covers a very broad swath of time, just about any popular uprising from the start of time in antiquity to current events in a 3rd world country could be called a peasant revolt so it's hard to speak meaningfully about them as a whole, other than that they all involve militant rural poor people. The second issue is that many of these popular uprisings, peasants were secondary, or not at all, they were urban affairs and/or involving, mainly, aristorcrats. So when speaking of these things in a meaningful way, one has to broadly include all popular uprisings (not just those involving peasants), and one has to narrow the time frame and place in order to give some meaning and significance. Otherwise, it is just a list.

What is interesting about the word peasant is not that it is an insult, but how it became that way? It was not always an insult. What happened? That is the question to ask, and is most interesting. We all know the word is deragetory, but how come? --Stbalbach 18:01, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The words that we use here (kmet in Slovenian, seljak in all flavors of Serbo-Croatian) now actually mean "farmer", for which meaning they are neutral. However, they are also used as pejoratives, just like peasant in English. I guess it's all down to biggotry. Peasants - the landless rural folk - were simply the lowest class in the feudal and pre-industrialized capitalist society, so of course the word was used pejoratively among and by higher classes, but it was still just the name of the class. Compare You're such a peasant with You're such a Jew, the first wanting to say "You are uncultured" and the second "You're tight with money". In both cases, it's the usage of the word that's derogatory, not the word itself. If you don't think being a peasant is a shameful thing, then being called one isn't offensive. Zocky 11:51, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What's interesting is the shift that occured in the upheavels of the 14th and 15th centuries, and the rise of an "upper class" during the high middle ages, peasant was not always a neutral and/or perogative term. You say "of course" .. but how come? It seems obvious to us now, how did it get that way, was there a time when such distinctions of class where not known, how did these bigotrys arise. Stbalbach 15:19, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AFD debate link

This article has been kept following this AFD debate. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)