First ever revolution?

[Nox]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt

Is it possible that this is the first ever attempt by 'workers' (peasants at the time) to seize power?

[tfb]

I think the helots in Sparta tried.

[Smyg]

There has been plenty more, since the beginning of time. Or at least since the beginning of the class system. For some more modern ones, check out Spartacus, the slave uprising of Romes, revolts in Sparta, etc.

[rundontwalk]

The first revolution happened when one lazy caveman tried to steal all the mammoth meat that the other cavemen had killed for his own use. Well, in my head anyway.

[Comrade Gwydion]

At the top of that article, their is a link to "lists of peasant revolts". The earliest on that list is dated to the year 185, but as said, the risings of Spartacus or the Spartan Helots were a lot earlier. There are even older stories of people lynching their tyrants.

[RedSonRising]

It depends what you mean by revolution. If you just mean a broad sense of shifting power structures in favor of the masses, then there have been plenty more before that.

If you're talking in academic terms, modernity classifies revolutions as a strictly 20th century phenomenon (or sometimes a post-industrial phenomenon.) In this case the Paris Commune (post industrial) or the Russian Revolution (1905/1917) can be considered the first "modern" revolutions.

[Ravachol]

There is a grand history of peoples and (hunter-gatherer) tribes resisting incorporation into the state/civilisation apparatus and it's accompanying class-structure. One could say that these attempts (or the attempts to break free from the early forms of class society) form the earliest forms of revolt. If you're interested, check out Against His-story, Against Leviathan! by Fredy Perlman (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Fredy_Perlman__Against_His-story__Against_Leviathan.html).

[Threetune]

Revolution is the correct human condition, it’s nothing special.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil

[A Marxist Historian]

It depends what you mean by revolution. If you just mean a broad sense of shifting power structures in favor of the masses, then there have been plenty more before that.

If you're talking in academic terms, modernity classifies revolutions as a strictly 20th century phenomenon (or sometimes a post-industrial phenomenon.) In this case the Paris Commune (post industrial) or the Russian Revolution (1905/1917) can be considered the first "modern" revolutions.

Eh? I'm rather familiar with academic conventions, and that's a new one on me. You would find it very hard to find an American historian who would say that the American Revolution is no such thing.

Historically, in the literal sense the first revolution was the Glorious Revolution of William of Orange, in the 1690s. The first called such at any rate.

Rather ironically, it didn't meet many of the classic definitions of revolution, as it was after all the imposition of a new regime on England by an outside force, the Dutch army. More like one of Napoleon's revolutions in Western Europe, or Stalin's in Eastern Europe, than the usual model.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

While I wouldn't proclaim it the "first revolution", I would say that the Great Rising is arguably one of the first attempts at bourgeois revolution. The name "peasant's revolt" evokes image of emaciated serfs in tattered rags, but the movement seems to have been largely comprised of relatively prosperous and autonomous farmers and artisans, and even a few relatively wealthy merchants, civil servants and minor noblemen - in short, they were what amounted to middle class, albeit in most cases the contemporary equivalent of a "lower-middle class". There could well be a real argument for this representing one of the earliest attempts to challenge aristocratic hegemony on a national level; the failure, I would presume, could be broadly attributed to the lack of economic development precluding the level of conciousness and organisation needed to carry this sort of thing through. The composition of the movement was fundamentally quite similar to that which conducted the French Revolution.


Eh? I'm rather familiar with academic conventions, and that's a new one on me. You would find it very hard to find an American historian who would say that the American Revolution is no such thing.
News to me as well. If anything, the anti-Marxist tendency seems to be to push revolutions back in time, to relegate them to the purely historical, treating 1871, 1917, etc. as the tail end of the "classical" revolutionary period of c.1750-1848, rather than to drag it forward closer to the present. I mean, they invented the Irish Revolution for a reason.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Tim F: I don't really have any evidence at the moment to corroborate this, but from what i'm studying at the moment, it actually seems as though, in the UK, the feudal Lords simply transferred their activities into Capitalism and became those who, in literature related to the late-medieval/early-modern period, are referred to as 'farmers'. The 'farmers' were often not those who you might conjure up in your mind as having a pitchfork and a flatcap, but those who were at the head of the enclosure movement, heading up massive farms (500 acres+, compared to 50 acre or so family farms in France, for example).

[Tim Finnegan]

Tim F: I don't really have any evidence at the moment to corroborate this, but from what i'm studying at the moment, it actually seems as though, in the UK, the feudal Lords simply transferred their activities into Capitalism and became those who, in literature related to the late-medieval/early-modern period, are referred to as 'farmers'. The 'farmers' were often not those who you might conjure up in your mind as having a pitchfork and a flatcap, but those who were at the head of the enclosure movement, heading up massive farms (500 acres+, compared to 50 acre or so family farms in France, for example).
Wasn't the Great Rising before the enclosure movement really got under way? That said, you're certainly right that England's actual bourgeois revolution was conducted in a large part by country "gentlemen".

[CommunityBeliever]

There has been considerable opposition to class society ever since its very formation ~10000 years ago.

[DaringMehring]

When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

[Fawkes]

It depends what you mean by revolution. If you just mean a broad sense of shifting power structures in favor of the masses, then there have been plenty more before that.

If you're talking in academic terms, modernity classifies revolutions as a strictly 20th century phenomenon (or sometimes a post-industrial phenomenon.) In this case the Paris Commune (post industrial) or the Russian Revolution (1905/1917) can be considered the first "modern" revolutions.

What was post-industrial about 1871 Paris?

[Pretty Flaco]

I would think that in today's more modern sense of a political revolution, the government formed by oliver cromwell after the english civil war would have been one of the first. not only did he change the political system, but his new model army revolutionized military hierarchy.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The agricultural revolution was the first revoluiton.

[RebelRev]

While I wouldn't proclaim it the "first revolution", I would say that the Great Rising is arguably one of the first attempts at bourgeois revolution. The name "peasant's revolt" evokes image of emaciated serfs in tattered rags, but the movement seems to have been largely comprised of relatively prosperous and autonomous farmers and artisans, and even a few relatively wealthy merchants, civil servants and minor noblemen - in short, they were what amounted to middle class, albeit in most cases the contemporary equivalent of a "lower-middle class". There could well be a real argument for this representing one of the earliest attempts to challenge aristocratic hegemony on a national level; the failure, I would presume, could be broadly attributed to the lack of economic development precluding the level of conciousness and organisation needed to carry this sort of thing through. The composition of the movement was fundamentally quite similar to that which conducted the French Revolution.


News to me as well. If anything, the anti-Marxist tendency seems to be to push revolutions back in time, to relegate them to the purely historical, treating 1871, 1917, etc. as the tail end of the "classical" revolutionary period of c.1750-1848, rather than to drag it forward closer to the present. I mean, they invented the Irish Revolution for a reason.

I think this is a great response to the OPs question. Good job brother.

[RedSonRising]

Eh? I'm rather familiar with academic conventions, and that's a new one on me. You would find it very hard to find an American historian who would say that the American Revolution is no such thing.

Historically, in the literal sense the first revolution was the Glorious Revolution of William of Orange, in the 1690s. The first called such at any rate.

Rather ironically, it didn't meet many of the classic definitions of revolution, as it was after all the imposition of a new regime on England by an outside force, the Dutch army. More like one of Napoleon's revolutions in Western Europe, or Stalin's in Eastern Europe, than the usual model.

-M.H.-

I suppose I'm coming from a very sociological perspective; we study a lot of Wallerstein and other social thinkers who expand on traditional Marxism, so maybe my academic definition doesn't quite gel with what history or political science-based academia might say. Interesting bit there about the other classifications.

[chegitz guevara]

This isn't even close to the first revolution.

The first recorded revolution was in the Sumerian city of Lagash, led by Urukagina, in 2380BC.

That would be 3600 years earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

This isn't even close to the first revolution.

The first recorded revolution was in the Sumerian city of Lagash, led by Urukagina, in 2380BC.

That would be 3600 years earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina


And the Invariant International Communist Party (Bordigist) can trace it's legacy directly to this revolution.

[chegitz guevara]

Splitters!