Dreaming of Sentinels

Uprisings. Revolts. Insurgencies. Rebellions. Civil wars.

What are the differences between all these things?

The gradations can be quite fine, in no small part because they're often as much a question of public relations as one of technical definitions. (Especially in a historical context, before political scientists started making technical definitions.) They're all forms of internecine strife, differentiated by how organized they are, how violent, how acknowledged by the official government, and so forth. And so, rather than trying to separate all the possible strands, I'm just going to talk about them in a lump here.

Genre fiction loves the idea of the Big Rebellion. A plucky band of idealists gather together, maybe fight a few battles, kill or capture the king, and put somebody new in charge: Mission Accomplished! A phrase George W. Bush famously used rather prematurely after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and I deploy it here quite with deliberate intent, because of course the situation is unlikely to be that simple. Regime changes rarely go that quickly and smoothly, and even if the guy who used to be in charge dies, is that really the end? His loyalists, instead of laying down arms, are liable to find someone else to rally around: a brother, a son, somebody claiming to be a son, etc. It took about thirty-one years for the fighting to end after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposed James II & VII from the thrones of England and Scotland, and Henry VII had to deal with multiple pretenders announcing themselves as various lost royal relatives after the Wars of the Roses.

But it's also somewhat rare for a rebellion to sweep in and put somebody totally new on the throne, at least in the kinds of societies we tend to write about. Changes of dynasty do happen, but where there's a strong expectation of titles being inherited within a bloodline, claimants often grasp for some fig leaf of lineage or marriage to a suitable spouse to cover their naked ambition. Winning legitimacy on charisma alone is not unheard of, but it's much less common. Most civil wars within a kingdom look more like the English Anarchy, with the previous king's daughter fighting his nephew for the crown. (She lost, but her son wound up inheriting anyway after her cousin died.)

There are other reasons for civil strife, though, and they tend to be much less explored in science fiction and fantasy.

In particular, a whole swath of this subject can be placed under the header of "listen to us, damn it!" The famous Magna Carta of England was the product of rebellion by a group of barons against King John -- but they weren't trying to replace him. Instead they wanted him to confirm the Charter of Liberties proclaimed by Henry I about a century before, which protected certain elite rights. (Magna Carta itself is not about the rights of the common man, either, though people in later centuries assumed for a while that it was.) If war is the continuation of policy with other means -- the actual phrasing used by Clausewitz, often somewhat misquoted -- then revolts can be a way of angling for leverage in a political dispute.

This is especially true of peasant revolts. It is extraordinarily rare for the common folk to rise up and effect a regime change all on their own; in fact, it is rare enough that I can't think of any ironclad examples. (If you know of one, I welcome it in the comments!) The American and French Revolutions were heavily led, at least in the first instance, by relatively privileged men; even the Haitian Revolution likely would not have succeeded if the rebels hadn't received support from outside. Peasants, slaves, and other such folk simply do not have the resources or knowledge necessary to stand unsupported against people who hold every advantage against them.

But most peasant revolts aren't aimed at installing a new king or swapping monarchy for some other system of government. They're attempts to redress specific grievances, like unfair taxation or judicial corruption, or to achieve improved rights, such as through the abolition of serfdom (one of the goals of Wat Tyler's Rebellion in 1381). And if we're being honest, goals like that are a lot more important to the average farmer in his field than who exactly is ruling the country! Kings come and go, but taxes remain.

The relative achievability of those goals doesn't mean they get achieved, though. Governments have a loooooong and inglorious history of viewing any such resistance as treason, and they put it down with extreme force. Nor is this solely a thing of the distant past: in more modern times, labor organization has been viewed in a very similar light, as a rebellious disobedience to the law, posing a great enough threat to the stability of the nation that it justifies violent or even lethal response.

Nonviolent resistance isn't unheard of in historical eras, but large-scale acts of it have become more common over the past century or so. I wonder -- this is entirely my own thought, not anything I've read, and it's not a subject I'm deeply familiar with -- if its success relies at least in part on mass communication. While nonviolent groups have existed before, as a tactic in effecting widespread social change it seems to be mostly new, and that makes sense when you think about the role played by optics. As I said above, governments tend to respond with force to those who disobey, and that excites a lot more sympathy and support for peaceful protesters when the news can be widely circulated. (Particularly if the event is captured on video.) Of course, routine interpersonal violence has also declined over time, so most disputes these days are less likely to break out into fights, let alone fatal ones.

Civil strife has absolutely not gone away, though, nor do I think it's likely to do so any time soon. Right now in my own country, we have widespread resistance to the authoritarian government of Donald Trump, ranging from peaceful protests in the streets to acts of low-grade sabotage against the secret police of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arresting and deporting anybody who looks too brown. It's not a revolution to throw him out ahead of schedule and replace him with somebody new, and it certainly can't be accomplished with one climactic fight and a quick denouement . . . but perhaps we could use more fictional examples of how this kind of struggle is fought.



(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/CYJRUS)