24 - Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions in Europe

Summary

Profound religious, political, social and economic change marked the early modern period of European history. The religious reformations of the sixteenth century, the expanding power and fiscality of the monarchical state, the pressures of a growing population, and economic change associated with agricultural enclosures and the first stirrings of industrialisation all contributed to frequent eruptions of collective popular violence. That violence assumed three chief forms. Riots were characterised by geographically limited violence, of relatively brief duration, that generally arose over local issues like the high cost of necessities such as bread in local markets. In rebellions, local protests, often beginning as riots, merged with more general issues to affect more than one locale and to extend for more than a few days when protestors secured effective leadership, often by social elites. Revolutions drew the support of a national group, or of a single ethnic group within one of the ethnically composite states emerging in our period, to seek fundamental countrywide change.