http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2010/04/16#peasant-revolts <P>These have been (and still are!) extremely important parts of history, which I frankly don't understand very well. Hence my interest in learning more, which involves learning more about peasant societies. Most members of the human race have been peasants, but frankly the more I learn about them, the more I agree with Marx that leaving behind the "idiocy of rural life" was a Good Thing... <P>See also: <a href="collective-action.html">Collective Action</a>; <a href="empires.html">Empires and Imperialism</a>; <a href="globalization.html">Globalization</a>; <a href="millenarian.html">Millenarianism</a>; <a href="modernity.html">Modernity</a>; <a href="revolution.html">Revolutions and Revolutionaries</a>; <a href="sociology.html">Sociology</a>; <a href="terrorism.html">Terrorism</A>; <a href="war.html">War</a> <ul>Recommended: <li>Samuel Popkin, <cite>The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam</cite> <li>Eric R. Wolf, <cite>The Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century</cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Leslie E. Anderson, <cite>The Political Ecology of the Modern Peasant: Calculation and Community</cite> <li>Larry E. Cable, <cite>Conflict of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War</cite> <li>Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., <cite>Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200--1425</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/COHLUS.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Vanda Feldab-Brown, <cite>Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs</cite> <li>Steven Justice, <cite>Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6250.php">blurb</a>] <li>T. David Mason, <cite>Caught in the Crossfire: Revolutions, Repression, and the Rational Peasant</cite> <li>Edward E. Rice, <cite>Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped Countries</cite> [<a href="http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6c6006rm">Online</a>] <li>D. Michael Shafer, <cite>Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy</cite> <li>Jeremy M. Weinstein, <cite>Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521677971">blurb</a>] <li>Elisabeth Joan Wood, <cite>Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador</cite> </ul>