Annotated list of popular movement literature

Old/ancient peoples' movements

Against the classical empires

Ulrich Duchrow: Alternatives to global capitalism, International Books 1995

In addition to being one of the foremost theoretical works of European liberation theology, it also provides an exciting depiction of the emergence of the Jewish/Christian tradition as a resistance movement against the ancient empires. This takes place in several stages: 1. The exodus from Egypt as liberation from bureaucratic supremacy, 2. The prophetic tradition as resistance to the merchant state's economic fixation, 3. Survival under the “Babylonian captivity” by rejecting power success as a criterion of truth, and 4 .Jesus’ emphasis on the good society possible to create here and now through solidarity, linked to collective organization.

Rodney Stark: The rise of Christianity, Princeton University Press 1996.

Describes how Christianity becomes a mass movement by offering the only social insurance that existed in the Roman Empire: during the two great epidemics that ravaged 165-168 and 251-266, the Christians took care of their sick who survived while the pagans saved themselves and left their sick to death.

Maxime Rodinson: Muhammad, (1960), New York Review of Books 2021 (and others)

The Classic about the origins of Islam, written by a sympathetic Marxist historian. Shows Islam as a idea about how a just society can be created here and now, which has made it attractive during centuries,

Medieval / early modern

Victor Magagna, Communities of grain -- rural rebellion in comparative perspective, Cornell Univ Press 1990.

A primer on traditional peasant movements. Starting from the egalitarian self-sustaining village defense against invaders such as aristocracy, state and market. The essence is that all farmers must help each other in this defense and invest what they had. Contents: Class, society and collective action, Coercive powers and rebellion, Agrarian histories of the West, England: the compromise of the village, France: struggle for control of the village, Spain: the cohesion of the village, Russia: the withdrawal of the village from the social scene.

Ranajit Guha: Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Oxford Univerity Press 1983

Is, as far as I can tell, relevant to peasant uprisings in all pre-industrial societies - something Guha tacitly acknowledges by drawing heavily on European peasant uprising literature as well. In that case, what is specifically Indian would be the caste system, which on the one hand makes solidarity within villages difficult, on the other hand facilitates it between villages across entire regions.

James C Scott: The moral economy of the peasant. Yale University Press 1976

The classic on moral economics. Assumes that subsistence farmers do not care about profit, they are interested in safety and equality. This means, for example, that it is not the size of the extraction that matters, only how much they have left after tax and rent. Traditional rulers realized this and always lowered taxes in bad years, says Scott, while capitalist rulers ignore this, which explains all the peasant uprisings of the 20th century. Scott's thesis has provoked angry protests from market liberals, see below under Peasant Movements, the article on Nathan Brown.

Thomas Head & Richard Landes (ed): The peace of God -- Social violence and religious response in France around the year 1000, Cornell University Press 1992

About our first documented peace movement, when the whole community united in defense against local warlords. Most are detailed accounts of various mobilizations, as they can be sensed from old writings. R.I. Moore, however, puts the perspective together in a final chapter where he describes how the clergy created a compromise that lasted for several hundred years by inventing the “chivalry ideal” -- they simply let the warlords themselves defend society against violence, often in return for quite juicy patronage money.

Albert Vermeesch: Essai sur les origines et la signification de la commune dans le nord de la France, Heule 1966

About how this peace movement could look like in the cities in the cases where church potentates were themselves local warlords. It was this movement that gave rise to the concept of municipality, which came to stand for an equal treaty to protect the peace.

Michel Mollat & Philippe Wolff: The popular revolutions of the late middle ages, Allen & Unwin 1973

A narrative, i.e. not very analytical, book about peasant and artisan revolts in the Middle Ages. The strength lies in the fact that there are enough details to keep the book from being schematic, but not so much that you don't see the forest for the trees. The weakness of the attempts to explain it all fall back on old-fashioned notions that people rebel because they are hungry, or are lured by agitators with shady purposes. But of course it would be interesting to know why the revolutionary waves occurred throughout Europe around 1350 and 1380.

Gordon Leff: Heresy in the later middle age. Manchester University Press 1967

Narrative primer on the radical Christian movements, often dramatically depicted. Contents: Poverty and anticlericalism. Enumeration of different movements and their characteristics. The Hussites as the culmination. The most interesting thing is the definition of heresy: it was not the positions and ideas but the fact that people disobeyed the hierarchy that was heretical. St. Francis had rather more radical ideas than Jan Hus, but he submitted to the Pope while Hus continued to claim that the hierarchy was unjustly privileged. Therefore he was burned while Francis became a saint.

Malcolm Lambert: Medieval heresy, Blackwell 1977

Much like the above. Less emphasis on social factors and more on doctrinal -- perhaps as a result of Lambert not, like Leff, openly sympathizing with the movements he depicts. However, Lambert's book is more manageable -- it's easier to get an overview of where and when various movements flourished and roughly how important they were.

Wayne te Brake: Shaping history, University of California Press 1998

An attempt to show how ordinary people, through both everyday politics and rebellion, could influence history during the 16th and 17th centuries. The examples are mainly taken from the conflicts of the Reformation period, which sets a limitation -- the religious contradictions are assumed as a basis, but te Brake does not explain where they in turn come from. But in any case, he explains how the outcome of conflicts is determined based on who can ally with whom: if the majority of the people manage to build alliances with disaffected elite groups, they can have some success, otherwise not.

Geoffrey Parker: The Dutch Revolt, Penguin 1977

Exemplifies the preceding. The Dutch rebelled twice against the Spanish crown; the first time was defeated because the two main actors - particularistic aristocracy and urban artisans gathered in Calvinist congregations - could not stand each other, the second time, however, everyone could unite against a new tax and and against marauding soldiers, which laid the foundation for success. Read more about the Dutch uprising here.

Perez Zagorin: Rebels and rulers, Cambridge University Press 1982

A classic that covers all major rebellions during the period 1500-1700. Unfortunately rather marked by older notions of popular movements - all initiatives are attributed to society’s elites while ordinary people are only assumed to trudge along in line or sometimes wildly beat around them. But if you have this clear, you can get quite a lot out of the short descriptions of e.g. the Dutch and English revolutions.

Yves-Marie Bercé: Revolt and revolution in early modern Europe, Manchester University Press 1987

If the classic so-called the tax revolts during the 16th-17th centuries, mainly in Western Europe, with the English Revolution in 1640 as the highlight. Mainly systematic -- what were the demands, who were the most active, etc. -- but there are also some brief reports of the most important uprisings.

Roland Mousnier: Peasant uprisings in seventeenth France, Russia and China, Allen & Unwin 1971

Half of the book is devoted to French tax revolts and that part is really detailed. A little less is devoted to Russian and the least -- only 25 pages -- to Chinese, which is a bit of a shame.

Jack A. Goldstone: Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world, University of California Press 1991

Attempts to explain the early modern revolutions in Europe and Asia on the basis that the economy developed faster than the state tax collection, which is why the states became increasingly resource-stretched and unable to keep people calm. Also noteworthy is his conclusion that the European revolutions were socially more fruitful than the Asian ones because they were based on an alliance between the common people and marginalized elites on a basis of equal value for all, while the Asian ones only involved the marginalized elites (and the common people participated it just as cannon fodder).

Wensheng Wang: White Lotus rebels and South China pirates, Harvard University Press 2014

Primarily deals with the difficulties of the Qing Empire in overcoming the obstacles in the title. But the first episode is also about what a typical popular movement in China could look like in the 18th century – fringe population who tried to keep the bailiffs at bay and organized themselves in so-called secret societies with Buddhist or Taoist ideology. In this case, they became so strong that they could defeat armies sent to crush them and force the state to give up its rigid attempts at governance.

J.H.Elliott: The revolt of the Catalans, Cambridge University Press 1963

A thick tome that follows in detail the development from about 1600 to the revolt in 1640 that ended the Spanish great power empire, with insights mainly from the increasingly financially desperate Spanish government and the Catalan upper class who saw no value whatsoever in financing the Spanish the kings’ dreams of empire. The bizarre thing about this book is that the author almost seems to sympathize with the poor Spanish ministers who were forced to extort money from the people to keep their armies going while those who were forced to pay were treated with more or less contempt; yet the idiocy of it all appears perfectly clear and the revolt appears completely consequential.

Brian Manning: The English people and the English revolution 1640-1649, Heineman 1976

About how it was ordinary peasants and artisans who drove the famous Puritan Parliament before them and forced it to take battle after battle with king and aristocracy when they really weren’t that keen. Unfortunately, the book suffers from a documentation craze and cites pages up and pages down in Old English, which drives up the page count unnecessarily, but otherwise doesn't skimp on the details, and we also get to know what the conflicts were about (patents and theft of commons, like today!). Another weakness is that the author interrupts the story when the revolution is at its height in 1649, so you don’t get to see how the Puritans gradually abandon their popular allies and make peace with the aristocracy. But overall, it's refreshing to see someone other than Cromwell in the hero role for once.

Christopher Hill: The world turned upside down. Penguin 1972

About how the rebellious English thought during the revolution in the 1640s. We learn that the distinction between politics and religion was as non-existent as in today’s Iran and simply a language of social change

Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker: The Many-Headed Hydra Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Beacon Press Books 2000

About the Atlantic proletariat of the 16th-18th centuries and how they defended themselves - the slaves with slave revolts and by escaping, the sailors by occupying the ships and establishing themselves as pirates. In many cases in solidarity, united by a common underclass culture formed during the English Revolution.

Jean Chesneaux (ed): Popular movements and secret societies in China 1840-1950. Stanford University Press 1972

An insight into a popular movement tradition foreign to us: the Chinese secret society, which organized the opposition in the bureaucratic empire. Egalitarian, anti-sexist, rooted in Taoism and Buddhism, they played a greater role in the lead-up to the Chinese revolutions (both 1365 and 1949) than we generally realize.

E.P. Thompson: Customs in common, The Free Perss 1993

Some of Thompson’s classics collected. The most classic is perhaps his story about bread seizures, the favourite popular politics from about 1650 and forward until the industrial strike got the upper hand (but still common today!). Very ordered, very eager to keep the moral upper ground, and not easy to quell.

Malcolm Thomis & Jennifer Grimmett: Women in protest 1800-1850, Croom Helm 1982

Fuller on women's participation in bread seizures and other local protest actions. The authors argue that their protests were seen as legitimate by a society that generally did not allow women in politics, because they defended house and home.
George Rudé: Paris and London in the eighteenth century, Viking Press 1952
A classic about old popular movement repertoires, mainly about how bread uprisings during the French Revolution developed into demands for participation in power through the birth of the concept of “citizenship”.

Peter Kropotkin: The Great French Revolution, (1893) e.g. PM Press 2022

An overlooked predecessor of Thompson and other modern historians, i.e. a book based more on what ordinary people did than on leaders and great men. Describes without mentioning it outright how the French Revolution was a three-way struggle between the court, the modernizing bourgeoisie and “the people” divided into the artisans of Paris and the peasants. Between these three (or four) there was always an intricate game, and the outcome depended on who at the moment could ally with any of the others.

P.M. Jones: The peasantry in the French revolution, Cambridge University Press 1988

A book that explains the entire course of the French Revolution. How the peasants had already begun to act -- through authorized channels and through collective violence -- even before 1789 to remove various impositions and thus created the political atmosphere that made it necessary for the National Assembly to meet them. How this continued in the same way despite the fact that the elected usually protected property rights rather than the peasants' right to cultivate, thus undermining support for the revolution. And how eventually, by confiscating the property of the church parishes, it completely alienated the peasantry and created a foundation for Bonaparte’s dictatorship.

George Rudé: The crowd in the French revolution, Oxford University Press 1959

A more recent writing than Kropotkin’s but with the same perspective. Concentrates entirely on the 5-6 occasions when the mass movement brought about decisive changes in the political situation, and pays little attention to what people did in between, which perhaps makes the account a little rhapsodic.

C L R James: The black Jacobins, Allison & Busby 1994

About the slave rebellion in what is now Haiti, which ruined the French bourgeoisie and for a while gave hegemony to the Parisian artisans, and also tied down up to half the British army. An example of the most efficient North-South movement alliance ever – but one the one that the Northerners took the most advantage of.

Shirley Elson Roessler: Out of the shadows -- Women and politics in the French revolution 1789-1795. Peter Lang 1996

A variation on Rudé. About how women steered the course of the French Revolution through their involvement in the Bread Rebellion. Every time something new happened -- the move of the government to Paris, the fall of the Girondists, the fall of the Jacobins -- it was because of large demonstrations against the high prices of bread, and it was women who organized them.

Gebru Tareke: Ethiopia: power and protest -- Peasant revolts in the twentieth century, Red Sea Press 1996

Here is a book that deals with movements not unlike the early modern peasant risings, but in a time that now living people remember. It could be a great book but somehow it drowns in academicism -- there are analyzes but not a straight and simple narrative of what is to be analysed, and there are political conclusions but because the reader floats in ignorance of what the conclusions are drawn about is hardly of any use. Maybe the book would do better in Amhara or Tigrinya?