Guerrilla History - Peasants' Revolt of 1381 w/ Taylor Genovese

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Guerrilla History- Intelligence Briefings will be roughly a twice monthly series of shorter, more informal discussions between the hosts about topics of their choice.  Patrons at the Comrade tier and above will have access to all Intelligence Briefings. We get medieval in this episode, and we're joined by a special guest!  The topic of this conversation is the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and we are joined by the fantastic Taylor Genovese for the episode.  We talk about the historical context of the Revolt, the events of it, as well as its impacts.  A very interesting discussion, and one that we were very happy that Taylor could join us for! Taylor Genovese is a PhD researcher of anthropology at Arizona State University (where his PhD work is supervised by, among others, none other than Alexander Aviña).  He is also an editorial board member of the fantastic journal Peace, Land, and Bread, which all Guerrilla History listeners should check out.  You can follow Taylor on twitter @trgenovese and on his website at taylorgenovese.com.  You can also follow Peace, Land, and Bread on twitter @PLBmagazine and on their website at peacelandbread.com. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea. Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod.  Your contributions make the show possible to continue and succeed!  Please encourage your comrades to join us, which will help our show grow. To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter at @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter at @Red_Menace_Pod.  You can find and support these shows by visiting https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/. Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. and welcome to a guerrilla history intelligence briefing. Guerrilla history is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. If you're not familiar with our intelligence briefings, they're generally shorter episodes that we put first on Patreon and then most of them eventually go out on our public feed, although we do have some Patreon exclusive episodes that are released as intelligence briefings on our Patreon. This episode will be an early release on Patreon, and then we'll go on our general feed. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined by one of my usual co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today?

I'm doing well. It's great to be with you, Henry. Always great to see you, too, Adnan. Unfortunately, we're not joined by Brett O'Shea today, who was unable to make this recording time, but we do. have an excellent guest who is going to be kind of filling in that other seat of the podcast for this intelligence briefing. And someone who I'm going to say long time no see to, this is a little joke because I recorded another interview with him yesterday for the David Feldman show, Taylor Genovese. Taylor Genovese, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience since it's your first time on the podcast? Hi, yeah, sure. This is I feel like I have enormous shoes to fill with Brett gone, but I don't presume to try and fill them. But I'm Taylor

Genovese. I'm a PhD student at Arizona State University. I'm an anthropologist of science and technology, but I'm also a Marxist and interested in social movements. And I think I may be the first, second generation, so to speak, guerrilla history guest because I am my comrade and who's on my committee as well, Alex Avenia has been on the podcast as well. So I'm excited to be here and talk today. Absolutely. Alex is a fan favorite as well as one of our favorite people to talk to and we always enjoy the conversations that we have with them. Taylor, you're also an editorial board member of Peaceland and Bread, which is a Marxist-Leninist journal that I think that our listeners should definitely check out. If you're a fan of guerrilla history, you'll probably

be a fan of Peace Land and Bread. And if you're a fan of Peace Land and Bread, and you're listening to this because Taylor's on the show, well, you'll probably like guerrilla history as well, because there's quite a bit of overlap between the two different platforms. Peace Line and Bread is a written medium in guerrilla history as a podcast. So without further ado, let's start to turn our attention to the topic of discussion today, which is the English Peasants Revolt. It's called the English Peasants Revolt. But we might talk about a little bit later how that might be a little bit of a misnomer. It was not necessarily a peasant led rebellion. But this is something that took place really, really long ago. This is one of the oldest things, if not the oldest thing

that we'll be talking about, that we will have talked about on guerrilla history yet. This took place in 1381. So Adnan, why don't I turn it over to you for the opening introduction of just kind of laying the groundwork for what this English peasants revolt was and why you decided that we should talk about it today for this intelligence briefing. Well, thanks, Henry. Well, we've had a couple of episodes in the past that were on medieval topics like one on the Black Death, and this is something that we briefly mentioned in that episode, as often seen by some social and economic historians as a political consequence of some of the

demographic and social changes that took place. in the 14th century after the ravages of the plague and the continuing experience of black death. In fact, actually in 1381, later in that summer, there was another outbreak. And this had all kinds of consequences demographically. And, you know, what we're talking about in the later 14th century is a period of enormous social change, a period of great difficulty for the sort of feudal structure that was being undermined by the increasing value of labor, and as a result, and I think I mentioned when we talked a little bit about this before, that very soon after the outbreak, there was a statute of laborers

That was a new piece of legislation that was designed to try and control and suppress the movement of laborers who could escape being tied to the land under surf status. It's called villainage, you know, in this parlance, and that attempts to enforce the statute of laborers created conditions of conflict between peasants and their lords. over the course of the 14th century. And also during this time, there was a great need for expanding taxation because of the incessant wars that the English nobility were engaged in on the continent in France to hold onto Norman and later Angevin territory in what is today France.

And so that's known as the 100 years war, And war is extremely costly. And so there were many measures made to kind of extract as much, you know, financial support as possible to continue these war efforts. And it started in 1377 with a new kind of taxation called the pole tax, which was a head tax, which was being levied on everybody. It was not based on goods, being exchanged, like customs duties. It was not based on, you know, the product of the harvest, that is, kind of shares of, you know, agricultural production being commuted into fees for taxation. It was merely for existing to pay a tax. And this was seen as terribly unjust.

The first one was established in 1377, but then it was successively imposed so that by the third time that a new tax was announced, in November, December, by the Northampton Parliament of a poll tax, discontent was very high, and the attempts to collect the tax were being resisted in some places in southern England like Essex and Kent, and discontent led to conflicts with the justices of the crown, the monarchical agents that were tax collectors, as well as the judicial apparatus locally. They were these extensions of the state and were seen as very oppressive and resistance to the tax led to physical conflict,

sending of troops and royal officials, and it touched off wide-scale, you know, rioting, attack on judicial institutions, on unpopular figures who associated with the administration, that is those on the Privy Council. So the treasurer of England, obviously a very unpopular person

since he was seen as responsible for collecting the tax and maybe wasting the resources from previous taxation on corruption, war profiteering. We find that there's already in 1377 at Parliament discussions about impeaching various public officials

for corruption, war profiteering, and so on. And so there was this kind of context where many people, whether peasants or small-scale artisans, rose up, demanded redress of various grievances, and at the same time we're making the, you know, demand to have their freedoms be established by charter, that they would no longer be serfs or vilains. and these groups marched to London, the seat of government.

They attacked the tower. They ended up assassinating the Archbishop Sudbury, who was the chief counselor. And there were a series of negotiations between the leadership, principally a figure named Watt Tyler, who emerged as the leader of the leader of the like of the of the popular uprising and that these people were imbued with you know preaching by a dissident priest I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about him John Ball and his kind of egalitarian sort of liberation theology if you want to think of it in that in that manner before there was a kind of fateful set of negotiations outside of the city of London at a place called Smithfield, where the king appeared to accede to some of these demands. But the mayor of London

actually ended up using this as an opportunity to assassinate Watt Tyler, throwing the rebels into disarray and suppression, violent suppression of the revolt and rounding up of those who were seen as ringleaders and organizers, their trials, and executions. And so that's basically that by the, you know, this started basically in May June, the, you know, initial, you know, uprising lasted through until early, you know, early July. And, you know, by the end of the summer, you know, most of this was, was, you know, over with, but it had, I think, lots of lasting consequences that we can talk about. Yeah, let me just clarify one thing before turning this over to Taylor. So one thing that you mentioned of none is increasing value of labor, and this is

something that ties into that intelligence briefing that we did on the plague. So if listeners haven't heard that. There's some connections, as a nun said, between these episodes. Now, what he's meaning by the increasing value of labor, of course, remember that the black death killed up to a third of Europe. Well, what does that mean? It means that the reserve army of labor is incredibly depleted by that. And due to a scarcity of labor, therefore, we have increasing valuation of that labor. And the English crown was doing things to try to combat that. Like, instituting, for example, maximum wages for laborers for kind of surf labor. So this is one of the things that also led to discontent to some of these laws that were

coming into place after a very traumatic time for these individuals where they had to go through this absolutely incredible pandemic. And immediately after that, they're having their wages, which are finally starting to rise for like the first time ever, they're having their wages pressed. down forcibly by the crown because they see this rising wage as a result of the reduced army of labor. So that's what Adnan meant when he talked about the increasing value of labor and it's something we talked about in our plague episode. Just figured I'd throw it out there since it's probably interesting to many of the listeners here who want that kind of connection

between those two episodes. Now, Taylor, I'm going to turn this over to you. Adnan did a very, very good overview of the revolt, as well as some of the things that led into the revolt. But I'm just going to leave this pretty open for you. I'll say if there's anything that, so I know that you teach about this in a course that you teach, if there's anything that, you know, you would do in your five-minute spiel that Adnan did not cover, that you think that the listener should hear before we get deeper into this, feel free to throw it out there. And then perhaps you'd like to introduce maybe the three main characters.

of England to kind of ground us a little bit and not part of the conversation. So the three main characters of the story are Watt Tyler, John Ball, and of course, the King of England at the time, who was a 14-year-old. So I'll just turn it over to you, Taylor, to take it away. Sure. Yeah, thanks, Henry. Yeah, there was a really great overview that I'm learning from as well. So that I enjoyed that quite a bit. One of the, so the class that I teach, is an overview of religion and the way that kind of religion exists around the world because I'm an anthropologist. And one of the units that I like to introduce is religion and social change because there is a connection. And a lot of people, it was touched on already from a non about

the kind of proto-liberation theology that existed during this time that many don't tie back this early in history, but one of the major figures in this uprising was the man, John Ball, who was kind of a dissident priest. He was not endorsed by the church. In fact, the Archbishop of Canterbury arrested him and confined him in prison for what he was doing and saying. But a lot of this was sparked. I think there's actually this kind of looming forth character in this, which was the black death, the plague, because it informed a lot of the actions that were happening then as we see these connections to today even, right, in a smaller scale in the modern plague. And similar things happen with the reserve army of

labor being reduced and people seeing the value of their labor and we're seeing strike waves and such. So John Ball, as a priest, was preaching this really egalitarian way of thinking about religion, what we would tie to a liberation theology. He's famous for saying, while Adam delved in Eve's span, who then was the gentleman, a very pointed and directed attack on the kind of aristocracy and the barons who the church often cited with during this time. And the abbots and the bishops were very much within the social class and the kind of political economy of the barons rather than the peasants.

And this played into the eventual uprising and being able to start to live. levy some religious teaching against a class that had that had usually been able to fall back on religious teaching in order to support themselves. And so this is very interesting to be able to rely on as a historical precedent because it creates, it starts a reaction or a chain to be able to follow to even modern day liberation theologians who still get in trouble with the established churches or religious institutions. So I wanted to just really introduce that concept of John Ball initially, and I'll leave some of the other major figures for either you, Henry, or on none to expound on.

Yeah, I'll just briefly introduce the king, I guess, and I'll leave Blat Tyler to Adnan. So, as I mentioned, the king of England at the time was a 14-year-old. It was Richard II. And it was a very interesting time period in terms of governorship in England because it was one of those generational skips within the monarchy. There was a very old monarch who died. But previous to him dying, his son, who was his successor, had also died, which meant that the crown was passed down to Richard II, who at the time was 11. And as Adnan introduced earlier, this is a time of great tension and war, frankly, between

England and France. And at the time that Richard II took power, and Richard II wasn't making too, too many of the decisions himself, we'll probably talk about his, you know, advisor a little bit later, perhaps, perhaps. But during this this three-year period of time between him taking power and the revolts breaking out, the war was not going very well for England. So we had pretty poor advice, frankly, for this, you know, 11 to 14-year-old kid, really, in terms of these poll taxes, there was three rounds of poll taxes. The first one was basically a flat tax. It was the same amount for everybody, regardless of how much money they had, everybody that was over the age of 14.

They paid the same amount. So, of course, if you're a peasant who has very little, it's going to be a pretty big tax for you, whereas if you're, you know, a member of the landed aristocracy, it's not really anything at all to you. The second poll tax was a little bit more of almost a progressive tax in some ways. it was tailored so that people that had more means were actually paying a higher tax. However, when this third poll tax went through, they reverted back to the manner of the first poll tax, which is to say everybody was paying the same thing again.

Now, going through three poll taxes at a time where, again, there was a shortage of labor, and at the same time, there's maximum wage laws. And at the same time, these people had just gone through a pandemic that killed up to a third of the continent. And at the same time, they're waging a war that's not going very well. And at the same time, they're trying to end the peasantry and serfdom as an entire system. In spite of all of that, they're still being taxed on that. So it was a very, the conditions were present for a revolt to take place. And a lot of this falls down to the really shoddy advice that Richard the second was getting as well as the fact that Richard the second was this 14-year-old

kid who was very ill-equipped to deal with the situation that was present at the time, which I mean, was really more or less of a powder keg waiting to go off because of all of these conditions that were present within society. That's my little overview. Adnan, I'll turn it over to you for what, Tyler, and if there's anything on Richard II that you want to mention, And feel free to throw it out there. That was not an exhaustive overview. Oh, yeah. Well, of course, there's so much that one could get into.

But I think the important points you've made is that it was a weak king, you know, in a minority with an unpopular regent, his uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was really in charge and running things. And he was unpopular because of the poll taxes, because of the incessant war. And because, you know, it's seen as less legitimate than. you know, the monarch. And so there was always these kinds of senses that it wasn't the king himself who was to blame for these terrible policies and the oppression. And in fact, actually some of the discourse, the political discourse of the rebels in this rising was demanding

redress from the king against these corrupt advisors. And so there was this kind of sort of fiction that was perpetuated that, which maybe wasn't a complete fiction because he was, you know, a underage, you know, inexperienced monarch. But there always was this idea that it's the men around the king who are corrupting the government and his advisors are misadvising or taking advantage and that they directed principally their ire against those unpopular figures in order to preserve the idea of the good and noble king who would, you know, recognize our suffering and would be a just ruler if we kind of rise up and allow the king to make the good decisions by eliminating and removing these unfortunate, you know, hangers on and graspers of power who are in it for themselves,

whereas the king as a kind of monarch is, you know, a figure of justice for everybody. Now, this is a kind of conservative, you know, kind of idea. It's a very interesting that they didn't necessarily articulate, at least publicly, you know, anti-monarchical kinds of sentiment. So if you're looking at this in terms of, you know, some development of, you know, political ideals of egalitarianism, of democracy, the way, for example, oftentimes the Magna Carta is held to be this democratizing event, previous century 1215 where king john is forced to accede to demands by the nobles to institute certain regular systems for preserving you know justice and rights of the nobles against this increasingly

centralizing state under the english you know kings this is what's sort of happening and there is this counterbalancing that takes place during the period where there's a weak king this is a little bit different is with the growth of that sort of centralized state this is sort of the people arguing that these illegitimate aspects of bureaucracy the you know monarchical institutions of local judicial appointees who are making decisions these tax collectors these bureaucrats that are arms of this growing more you know intervening kind of state that those have to be removed and if we could just get to the king he would see that this is this is wrong so they targeted actually the Chancellor the Archbishop of Canterbury who was the

Chancellor the Treasurer I'm forgetting his name I think Richard of Hales Richard Hales they actually end up killing these people like sort of trying them as traitors but engaged the monarch in what seems to be at least publicly good faith negotiations that they're just trying to restore justice in the kingdom. Now, there are suggestions afterwards, you know, in forced confessions or in some perhaps invented texts that are confessions of some of the rebels in subsequent trials and in chronicles like Jack Straw, who's another figure who's often regarded as a leader of and named in various documents as a leader and was subsequently tried and forced to confess, you know, his role, that according to some kind of accounts of his

confession, that they actually wanted to kill the king and get rid of all the nobility. And there's this expression of a more radical. Now, we don't, you know, radical sort of political vision. Now, we don't know if this is a projection because of the fears of that, you know, elite class about, you know, the rising actually being a threat to them as a group. And so they've projected this, you know, onto him and invented it to make it seem like it was so radical and that these were, you know, a kind of rebellious rabble that would have been uncontrollable and just destroyed the kingdom from their perspective. Or if these were, you know, actually do articulate some political ideas that may have, you know, been developing. It's hard to know. But in the

public kinds of expressions, they keep mentioning their loyalty to the king, but the corruption of all of these advisors. So that's their attitude or relationship, it seems, to the king. What Tyler, we don't know very much about, to be honest. There are some legends that circulate later that he was moved to resistance against the tax collector because children under 15 were exempt from the tax, And he claimed, apparently, according to this story, that one of his daughters was under 15, but the tax collector didn't believe and was being very aggressive and unjust and demanded to examine her in order to determine her age. And this so outraged a sense of dignity of his daughter that he ended up killing the tax collector

and kind of spawned this revolt because people came to. to his defense when, you know, the king sent justices to, you know, arrest him and so on. And this is kind of a mythical sort of story that is invented later, but it's one that Thomas Payne, for example, tells in his response to Edmund Burke, who was condemning, you know, the rising because during the French Revolution, this episode of popular resistance against, you know, the feudal hierarchy became an interesting subject of English history to debate in the, you know, post-French revolution context. And you had conservatives like Edmund Burke condemning it.

And, you know, radical liberals like Thomas Payne, you know, defending it and seeing it as an inspiration of subsequent attempts at liberty. So that, we don't actually know that much about what Tyler, but he seems to have emerged as one of the leaders. He was in Kent, and the Essex forces and Kent groups joined together. He seems to have then emerged as a kind of leader who was then the person involved in the negotiations. There were more than one meetings between him and Richard the, you know, Richard the second. It was really, I think, the second or third meeting at Smithfield where he was assassinated.

But it's clear that over a period of several days, maybe about a week, when the rebels had come to London and been joined in their revolt by the, you know, artisans and, you know, many of the inhabitants of the city of London, which is why, when we call it a peasant's revolt, it may be, you know, not fully reflective of the diversity of social groupings that came together here. And even what Tyler, you know, shows that his name here, Tyler, means he was a tailor. So it was an artisan. He wasn't necessarily a peasant. So it seems that there were urban workers and artisans who also joined the, the rebels and attacked the tower and were involved in trying to get rid of some of these,

you know, evil lords. They also attacked the, you know, John of Gaunt's castle. He happened not to be present at the time. He was on a diplomatic mission elsewhere, but there was an urban rising as well as people coming from the countryside. And so it was a much wider and more diverse group that came together to demand justice against Richard. I'm just going to step in for a second, and this is a historical parallel that kind of strikes me based off of the last thing you said. And feel free to tell me that, like, this is absolutely not the same. But you mentioned that none, not many of the people at the time were seeing the king is like a figurehead and all of the power was with the big, bad advisors. It kind of reminds me of the narrative pushed by a lot of liberals these days that George W. Bush was not really that bad of a guy.

and it was the evil monsters, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld that were pulling the strings behind the scene. And George W. Bush, you know, he was just this poor guy who really didn't have any clue of what was going on. This is kind of like the 14th century equivalent of that. At least it sounds like it to me. But like I said, feel free to disabuse me of that notion. You're pointing out that it's a way for people not to question

in some ways the legitimacy of the whole political. order perhaps or at least in their attempts to gain redress for particular grievances right you know that they're saying well we're not against you king please you know do what you can to solve these problems and of course when those fail sometimes then you will find more overt articulation of those more radical egalitarian ideas you know but it's a way of not questioning the legitimacy of the political order entirely but it is interesting that one of the targets does seem to you know have been serfdom as a whole that all a lot of the

people who assembled from the countryside came with the express desire to have confirmed to them a charter of freedom because initially what Richard offers is amnesty we won't prosecute you for you know disturbing the peace and for the violent you know attacks on, you know, the tower and other kind of government institutions or the harassment of, you know, royal officials and tax collectors and so on. We'll give you amnesty for those, and then I'll look at your grievances. They did not disperse with that initial promise. They demanded, they wanted their, you know, established freedom from serfdom.

So there was a larger social aim or goal. or objective, I think, that shows some elements of a kind of peasant class consciousness that their condition as a whole was oppressive and they wanted to get rid of that situation, quite apart from the poll taxes, injustice, quite apart from other oppressive or unfair and oppressive practices by corrupt officials and so on. They had a slightly larger social and political objective as well. Yeah, which brings me to the next point that I was going to make before I turn it back over to Taylor, is that you mentioned earlier that the Lord Mayor of London assassinated

Watt Tyler during this one of these meetings where they were meeting with each other, Watt Tyler and Richard II. And as they were at this field and they were going to be meeting each other, the Lord Mayor of London essentially jumped him with a knife and stabbed him to death. And this is where, again, that notion. of ending serfdom as a major driving goal, it really displays itself to my mind. So as what Tyler lay on the ground dying from these stab wounds,

he tells the army that's assembled behind him, this group of, you know, not really soldiers, but this kind of more or less mob, this rebellious mob that's behind him. He tells them to attack. And at this point, the attack would have been, you know, very interesting to see how it would have turned out because the king also had his soldiers behind him, but the king is at the front of this of this parade and, you know, in the chaos

that would have ensued. It would have been very interesting to see how that would have unfolded. But Richard the second, as I mentioned earlier, was only 14 at the time. And despite the fact that he was pretty weak and incompetent, he did display one one stunning moment of charisma here, which is he rides out in front of the assembled mob, and he tells them, I will be your king and your leader as they're being told to attack him. And the rebellious mob listens to him. I will be your king and your leader. And at that point, he promises that if they disassemble and they go, he will abolish serfdom, which is something that had been in negotiations up until that point. And that promise on Richard II's part was enough that this mob, which had just

seen one of their leaders stabbed to death in broad daylight right in front of them, that promise was enough for them to actually listen and disperse because that was one of the driving factors as they wanted an abolition of serfdom as a system. Now, think about, again, just trying to tie it into contemporary parallels so people can kind of conceptualize this. Think about the things that we're pushing right now in the United States, for example, we're trying to codify Roe v. We're trying to protect it in any way possible. People that are looking for and even more transformative change in terms of things that haven't happened yet.

That's not to say that Roe v. Weight is not transformative, but it already has been established. Something like a universal health care system in the United States is like the extreme reach of like what people can possibly imagine. This abolition of serfdom is not like abolishing a poll tax, which would be, you know, the 14th century equivalent to kind of these reformist measures like instituting universal health care or codifying the right to an abortion. This is a systematic change. It's saying let's abolish capitalism, not let's get rid of, you know, or let's bring in universal health care. It's a very, very, like, epochal, changing call that was actually agreed to by the king on the field of a potential battle. And that was, they understood the ultimate goal right there.

And they dispersed. And, of course, it ended up turning out Richard II didn't really mean it. He really didn't have the intention of ending serfdom. And lo and behold, it did not end. So, Taylor, now that my little bit of a rant is over, I'll turn it over to you to pick up that thread, either that thread or really anywhere that you want to go with this conversation because we kind of have a couple of disparate threads out there and we haven't really tied any of them together yet. Sure, yeah. One of the things I just wanted to mention, too, he had mentioned about George W. Bush and blame on his advisors. and we see this similar thing happening happened with Trump as well, right, that he was kind of this dumb figurehead.

And Bannon was really the voice behind him. And then as he switched his advisors out, we started, or, you know, liberals mostly, started like blaming the successive chain of advisors that eventually, you know, cycled through. Now it's John Bolton. Now it's, you know, whoever is, yeah, as you said, it kept changing throughout Trump's presidency and they never quite figured that one out. how the evil people could just be a revolving door of figures and yet nothing materially

changed. Anyway, sorry for budding in. No, right. I mean, and this is, this is fairly common throughout history, I think, too, especially as systems begin to crack. And as this revolt is really kind of seen as a catalyst for the breakdown of the feudal system, even though serfdom wasn't abolished at this time exactly. It's often seen as kind of this flashpoint in which we start to see the feudal system crumble before Europe. And as these different humanist attitudes begin to erupt in the population. And so I guess we can shift a little bit maybe to talking about what resulted from this, what actually happened after this rebellion, right? So the king promises to do these changes. As we see a lot of these changes happen only with these kinds of violent uprisings in which multiple

social groups band together in solidarity and move towards a system that is usually oppressing them, right? This is also a common throughout history and something that we're seeing today, right, that we've seen throughout modern history even, too. And so the demands for rents to be to be reduced and pulled the poll tax to be abolished and pardons for everybody and wanting to have serfdom abolished we see some of these things actually being enacted right like the poll tax was never raised again after this there are certain wins that we see happening because the the threat of solidarity between these social groups against the aristocracy or against the bourgeoisie, whatever, this continuity throughout history, we see that there is

learning happening here, that some things you can't really push forward any longer because it won't be tolerated. And so maybe we can start to move towards talking about some of the results, the wins, or I should say maybe that resulted from this uprising or this revolt. Absolutely. I'm just going to make one quick note. You mentioned that there was no poll tax that took place after that. I do have a correction there for you, Taylor. Margaret Thatcher implemented the poll tax that took effect in I believe 1990 in the UK. So yeah, from from 1889. Yes, and there were revolts in 1990. Exactly. So there was no poll tax in the UK from 1389 until 1990. But. There were poll taxes afterwards. You know, you were close. No, right. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I stand corrected there. It's just very funny. Anytime that we get to take a dump on Margaret Thatcher, it's worth it. Well, it's so funny because I was actually studying the rising of 1381 around that time, actually. I was in a seminar and as an undergraduate and we were learning about. the rising of 1381 and then you know just a few months later this ridiculous decision by Margaret Thatcher to reimpose a kind of poll tax led to revolts

and I thought well you know this should have been obvious if she'd studied any history that if you try and impose this regressive kind of tax the last time it was tried you know it almost led to the collapse of the government and certainly led to massive social disturbance and attacks on the government and that those riots did end up leading in 1990 to the reversal of the poll tax and the change to a kind of council tax, a different kind of system for doing it. So, but in terms of the other kinds of overall consequences, I think Taylor, you're right that it fits into this kind of collapsing, even if the king did not abolish the system of villainage, the serfdom, it was

under pressure and it was seen as very oppressive, these attempts to restrict, you know, freedom of movement and wage the wage labor system, but it seems to have hurried the kind of collapse of that feudal structure, even if the king didn't make those decisions. And as part of the process of it, I think also it was something that lived in folk memory. And when you come to the period of the glorious revolution and you have the diggers and levelers and other social movements for egalitarian change and reform that in some ways these figures like watt tyler and john ball and jack straw become part of the folk culture of people in britain as signs of resistance against oppressive conditions and so there are a lot of songs of protests political songs

historical poems that were hearkening back to that and were important in the kind of memory and culture of resistance that led to, you know, further progressive attempts to create a vision of a just sort of society and world. And I guess I would also say that, you know, this was the ideology of John Ball, who you mentioned and talked quite a bit about, seen as something close to or connected to John Wycliffe's radical ideas. He was a theologian during the time and those who adhered to some of his ideas about how you had to disestablish the church, which let's remember during this period was one of the largest landowners across Europe, maybe a third of all land was controlled and owned by the church. That, you know, this call for disestablishment

establishing the church. That is that it should give up control of land and that these should be distributed to lay people was a very radical and threatening idea. He was charged with, you know, heretical views at certain points. And he and his ideas were associated with the rising, not because he necessarily agreed with it. In fact, he actually condemned it. But John Ball was seen as somebody following the same kind of radical ideas. Whether that's exactly true or not, It was important, however, in connecting social kinds of movements for justice and reform and changes within the church to break down the church's involvement in the feudal hierarchy and structure of land tenure in Europe that we see with the Protestant Reformation. And so Wycliffe and John Ball, these are in some ways figures that reflected both social and religious reform at the same time. and the way in which those two could be connected in other stages in European history.

So I think those are some kind of important lasting effects. I think the last thing that I want to mention about the rising was how important documentary culture was. These were canny rebels. So when we talk about them as an unruly kind of riotous mob that's rising up, they weren't so kind of unfortunate there were some you know cases of violent attack of groups that we would see as sort of

scapegoating so there were attacks on Fleming's in the city because they were seen as foreigners involved with you know kind of you know mercantile activity that was you know you know seen as as as

you know not contributing anything but taking and sucking away things or that they were somehow unpopular there were some episodes like that but by and large the attacks that were made had a real political intent and direction and logic so they attacked the tower the symbol of government when they you know attacked the tower they destroyed records now it's often represented as they just had no you know they just wanted to destroy and so they burned and attacked actually it had a targeted purpose of destroying the tax rolls you know so how

What does a state operate? What are the mechanisms by which it exerts power and force? Increasingly, it is through these bureaucratic administrations, record keeping, documentation, being able to surveil and have information that allows agents of the Crown to go find people, to determine whether they've paid their tax or not. So this was actually meaningful political attack, and likewise in other parts of England at St. Albans, at other kind of monasteries that were large landowners where peasants and local townspeople rose up. One of the first things they did was to destroy the charters, you know,

to make sure that the documentation that existed about their villainage, their serfly status and the obligations that they owed, you know, in free service and labor, the restrictions upon them would be destroyed, right? So there were, I think, very kind of canny activities. This was not some unruly, unthinking mob, but actually an organized political force that was resisting the mechanisms of their impression in a fairly conscious and canny way that they understood, even if they themselves were not literate or educated, they understood what were the mechanisms that were used in order to oppress them and they were trying to destroy those things. So they hit the treasury, the tower, the record, the sort of the

archival documents. They targeted agents of the crown, the tax collectors, and those that they associated with corrupt governance. And I think that's important to recognize that there's a real political consciousness that clearly developed, and that might also be seen to have lasting consequences when we think of political risings, that they're not just kind of these emotional responses to terrible circumstances without actual, you know, political conscious targets. You know, just a quick add on on that as well, that the political targeting, you know, one of the first things they attacked two were the prisons, right? They understood that the people that were being imprisoned were political prisoners. And so they first, in the first few

days of the rebellion, they attacked the prisons and set prisoners free that had previously. been arrested for, you know, trying to spark this. So I just wanted to mention that, too, because that was a real thinking political target as opposed to just kind of ransacking things. Yeah. And similarly, that was very similar to the note that I was going to make, which is that when targeting, targeting things, again, they, as a non-mentioned, they weren't looting. There was no looting that was taking place. They didn't burn artwork. They were burning records. And they would target places like, for example, one of the places that was targeted was the University of Cambridge, which was staffed by priests. And the fact that priests had special privileges at

this time, you know, John Ball, notwithstanding, because he was imprisoned all the time. But priests had special privileges that made a lot of these, you know, peasant, rebellious mobs very upset. And so they went to Cambridge and they burned the records there. And just as a self-compliance, correction. I realized earlier I said 1389. There hadn't been a poll tax between 1389 and 1990. I meant 1381. So people, you don't have to call me out on that. I did catch that after I set up. Anyway, yeah, if you look at University of Cambridge's records, you'll see there's almost nothing from before 1381 because it was destroyed when these mobs went in there and they targeted these records that would show things like, you know, serve statuses as well as special favors

to these, these royal favors to these different classes. Taylor, we have just a couple of minutes left. Why don't we turn it to you for any lasting impacts that you want to talk about before we wrap things up? Sure. I think that this revolt helped create continuity within, you know, especially Marxist thinkers, right? A lot of Marxists will hold on to this revolt, even though Marxism wasn't a thing for many hundreds of years, but to show that this was a popular rebellion, that this was something that was proto-Marxian in a way,

and that this showed a continuity of kind of egalitarian principles of showing that people could and did rise, up, that this isn't something that was just invented, right? That this can be charted in a similar way that the French Revolution is held out and that you can show this chain throughout history and can use historical data to be able to show that people have always kind of had these principles within them that, again, that it's not senseless violence, that there's a sense, an inherent political project that is imagined by people, and then that imagination can be enacted within the world, and that those that are in power can be forced to change things

through popular rebellion. So even though the serfdom wasn't abolished, the lords got scared. The people in power got scared and they did enact certain freedoms. There were a lot of people made free, right, men made free. One thing we didn't get to touch on that I'm not sure about in this that I was going to ask a question about when Sylvia Federici talks about, you know, about 150 years after this, she talks about further rebellions. and says that women had big roles in this. And that's something that we don't really hear about during this revolt. And it makes me wonder what the women's role was this, what were there women that were involved in these uprisings as well?

And that's, I'm not really sure about that. That's just a question that throughout there if either of you, you know. But if this was kind of between men and women kind of join. joining forces, or was this really men who were in the lead because we only really hear about the leaders of this and then the leaders are always the men? So I'm not sure if either you know about this or not. Yeah, I'm unaware of it. Adnan, you would have a better idea than I would. I haven't seen a lot recently about women in the rising itself, though I think when it comes to some of the social sources of grievances and the dissident theologies

that, you know, may have been involved or at least informed some of the articulation of these, you know, kinds of new ideas that questioned contemporary conditions and the status quo of the church, that you do find that there are a lot of women who are important to Lollardy and the network of, you know, this kind of new social, religious movement. But when it comes to the actual events of the rising, there's not a lot of evidence of their leadership or participation in direct ways. But, you know, hopefully there'll be more research and work. Unfortunately, the problem is that while this is very well documented in some respects, like a lot of peasant uprisings or peasant resistance has historically gone undocumented. And certainly, even when it has been documented, what's survived.

vives, are not the words, you know, the sentiments and perspectives of the peasants or the artisans, the revolters, the rebels themselves, but those who had access and means to preserving their words, the, you know, priests, the, you know, monastic chroniclers, the educated clerks serving, you know, the government and recording, which is, you know, where we get most of our historical information is from the records that survive and those who produce those records typically are in positions of power or serve the interests of power and property and so we get hostile views and visions of the rebels and their motivations but it is remarkable how much despite that some very interesting and radical ideas still seem to force their way through the sources and I guess

I would want to, you know, encourage people to go take a look at Jean Frossart's Chronicles. They've been translated into English. And he gives a really interesting account of the social vision, the radical ideas of John Ball. And, you know, he points out that people have had ideas that hierarchy and inequality are unnatural, right? That it wasn't part of human origins. You know, he, if I can quote a little bit, you know, Frossart talks about the people who were stirring

against, you know, the serfdom, saying that in the beginning of the world, they said, there were no bondmen, no serfs, wherefore they maintained that none ought to be bound without he did treason to his Lord, as Lucifer did to God. So the only reason why you should be in servitude and have your freedom taken away is if you performed treason, for example, and they theologize it the way Lucifer did, you know, the devil did to God.

But they said they could have no such battle, for they were neither angels nor spirits, but men formed to the similitude of their lords. In other words, they're the same as their lords, saying, why then should they be kept so under like beasts the which they said they would no longer suffer for they would be all one and if they labored or did anything for their lords they would have wages therefore as well as others so you know they're they're saying we're the same as the lord we're human beings we're not angels or spirits we share the same nature so there's no basis for this hierarchy unless we do something evil you know we're

we betray, you know, others, then, okay, there would be some kind of reason for us to be punished, but there's no natural reason for us to be punished. Why are we being subjected and treated like animals without human dignity? And if we're going to work, then at least we should have fair wages and not be compelled to labor for our lords without compensation. So these ideas are already starting to emerge that break down feudal hierarchies and show a kind of transition to ideas of wage kind of labor becoming more of a norm. It's an actual demand, right? We think of the wage system.

You know, if we think of Marxist ideas, we think of the wage labor system as incredibly oppressive and the basis of capitalism. The point, however, is that during this period, in terms of breaking down in human progress, it was seen as an advance on the feudal ten-year system of serfdom. So they're demanding what they can envision.

a greater sense that there shouldn't be hierarchy. But okay, if we're going to have to labor in this world, at least let us be paid fairly for the work that we do, right? So that's kind of, I think the interesting thing here is that across history there have been these ideas and ideals of egalitarian justice. And there's been this idea that hierarchy isn't the natural order, despite everything that the elites are always telling us. that, you know, that try to naturalize, you know, inequality and hierarchy in history. I think that that's a great note to end it on, you know, Jordan Peterson's example of a lobster being the basis for why we need hierarchy in our lives. It does not hold true with human history

and it does not hold true with these radical tendencies throughout history. So on that note, I think that we should wrap it up because I know we have places that we have to be. Taylor, again, our guest today was Taylor Genovese. Can you tell the listeners how they can find you and follow the work that you're doing? Sure. Yeah. Thanks for having me both of you. You can find me on Twitter at TR Genovese or also at taylorgenovese.com. Also check out the journal Peaceland and Bread at Peacelandbred.com or you can check out the center. I'm a part of that publishes it at communist studies.org. And, yeah, I had a great time.

Thanks for having me on here. Absolutely. It was great to talk to you for two days in a row. And again, I'm going to highly, highly recommend everybody to check out Peace Land and Bread, which is a Marxist-Leninist journal. And it's free to read on the website. You can either get print copies for very low cost or the PDFs are freely available on the website.

So everybody that listens to guerrilla history, the journal is most, likely going to be up your alley, and it's something that you can read for free. Adnan, why don't I turn it to you? You can tell the listeners how they can follow you and find your other podcast. Sure, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain-Hus-A-I-N. And if you're interested in the M-A-L-L-I-S, because you'd like to learn more about the Middle East, Islamic World, Muslim Diasporas. Do check us out. It's on all the platforms, M-A-J-L-L-I-S, because. And I also just want to say, thanks so much, Taylor, for hopping on. I hope we'll have a chance to talk with you more about your research, very interesting topics.

And, you know, it was great to have you on. And again, as I said, I hope we can continue a conversation on other topics in the future. Thanks for coming. Yeah. And the interview that I did with Taylor yesterday for the David Feldman show talked about some of his field work that he did. And when that comes out, I will put the link for that interview. in the description box below. So you can check that out.

And absolutely when Taylor gets further along in his research, we will definitely bring him back to talk about the topics that he's exploring because very interesting stuff that we definitely are going to want to talk about in the future. Listeners, for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-K-1995. You can follow Guerrilla history, the podcast on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pond, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-N-Sk, and you can support us. on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash G-U-E-R-I-L-A history. And just one more mention, make sure you spell gorilla with two R's.

Every week we have people contact this thing. I can't find you on Spotify or I can't find you on whatever. It's because almost every time they only spell it with one R. Both are in the dictionary. Both are correct, but these apps only recognize it if you actually type it with two R's. So that's just a little reminder for all of you out there. So listeners, until next time, thanks for listening to Gorilla. history and solidarity.

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