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Popular Culture and Popular Protest (Basics (What is it? Popular - Below…
Popular Culture and Popular Protest
Basics
What is it?
Popular - Below level of aristocracy, poor or middling classes, people without political power
Protest - People without power pushed too far and taking a stand - petitioning, large-scale movements, riots, revolutions
Types of Riot
Socio-economic - food, grain (urban), land use/enclosure (rural)
Tax riots
Religious riots
Others - specific laws etc
Historians' categories eg
Tilley
separates French socio-economic riots into urban market, rural grain and
taxation populaire
(redistribution of food by population at 'fair' prices)
Why where protests common?
Big-picture causes - religious upheaval, centralisation, market economy -> uncertainty, isolation, competition -> loss of community and feudal protection -> could only make voices heard via protest
Socio-economic
-- Population growth - pressures on housing, increase in rents and prices, drop in wages
-- Harvest failures and food shortages - mini ice age in late C16, floods in C17 - rising grain prices
-- Specific and localised grievances - wanted authorities to do their job
-- Riots often triggered on market days or at community gatherings especially urban - targeted those responsible for food supply (merchants, authorities, bulk buyers) but few fatalities or serious injuries eg 1775 Paris grain riots only ended when 25,000 troops called in
Taxation
-- Regular taxation a new and unpopular idea - targeted middle men and tax collectors
Religious
--
Davis
- separate from official actions against religious targets
-- Debated whether just socio-economic scapegoats but unlikely - preaching against opponents, defense of religious freedoms
-- Targeted public processions, buildings, clergy, sermons, icons and symbols eg iconoclast riots in Netherlands, procession attacks in France
-- Often became more serious and violent if linked to rulers changing the religion of the country
Why did riots occur?
Saw themselves as doing the job of the authorities when they weren't stepping up, defending the community - often copied authorities' methods
Rarely suggested that what they thought they were doing wasn't legal or legitimate
Inspired by times of emergency and had precedents in popular culture eg cited Jesus in the Temple
Rioters usually conservatives, not revolutionaries - wanted to make rulers do their job, not overthrow them
How could riots develop into something more serious?
Religion - idea of revolt as a purifying mission combined with nationalistic/xenophobic ideals eg Netherlands against Spain
Nationalism - against trading of grain to other countries while people were starving etc
People with different aims - criminals, drunks, youths, off-duty troops
Changing social/class involvement - people linked via patronage/clientage, pressure from below, support from elite if going against political rivals
Changing circumstances - momentum/success vs desperation/failure, false information and rumour, idea of a point of no return
1725 Paris bread riot - official sent to negotiate and put under siege in a house by rioters, local militia threatened rioters but were overwhelmed, finally put down by a cavalry charge
Kumin
Popular Culture
Beliefs/values/customs distinct from the elite/learned majority
Also many features shared by all social levels - religion, gender, hierarchy, playhouses, animal entertainment
1970s studies on binary division between elite and popular culture
--
Muchembled
- Acculturation in France - alliance between Catholic Ref and state to strengthen control by rooting out popular superstitions/customs and imposing elite culture
--
Burke
- Single medieval culture embracing everyone except a handful of theologians but early modern elite withdrew from tradition encouraged by humanism, enlightenment and Refs
Binary division now being questioned - stress on cultural continuity and diversity
--
Chartier
- Cultural elements used, understood and appropriated in different ways in different communities
Diversity of Culture
Southern vs Northern, East vs West, mountain vs plains, rural vs urban
Cultures of specific jobs or guilds
Peasants, nobles, 'middling' merchants and yeomen
Some features descend from elite to popular eg chivalric traits
Some popular become elite eg writers drawing on popular songs and stories
Print Culture
Most people illiterate but slowly improved - especially poor literacy in women and southern Europe - importance of spoken word in popular culture
Print culture encouraged literacy - presses made pamphlets, cartoons, ballards, made people want to learn to read
Generally printed conservative texts - encouraging piety etc - 1640s England started printing rival views to authority reflecting divisions, 1520s Protestant pamphlets undermining the church
Aubrey
- writing late C17 thought print had already driven out popular culture
Fox
- complex relationship between orality and print, not driven out but evolved
Tradition and Change
Culture spread via social gatherings - alehouse, tavern, well, wash-house, church gatherings - and secular gatherings
Secular festivals/carnival held in some cities - semi-licensed disorder
-- Preserved hierarchy by providing a controlled outlet for rebellion or threatened it? Sometimes seen as a threat - 1580 'Romans' carnival in France revellers/leaders massacred by local elite; German carnivals in 1520s/30s became anti-Catholic parades
Traditional hierarchy broadly accepted - ascension day of Elizabeth I celebrated for decades, popular return of Charles II after unpopular Charles I execution and acknowledgement in 1650s that the people wanted the monarchy back - but not completely eg officials often faced abuse and physical violence
Belief that rulers and religions had obligations to the people - led to petitions, protests, riots - community had the right to intervene where magistrates had failed
Women often involved in protests - belief that authorities would show 'Christian compassion' - but sometimes still hanged
Evolving over time
-- Earlier community justice against women being 'scolds' - by C18 more likely to be against men beating their wives
-- Declining belief in witchcraft and astrology
-- Religion had a weaker hold
-- Spread of print led to mass culture rather than popular culture
Popular Culture and Elite Repression
Burke
Cross-European approach
Argues that there was one popular culture across Europe and that elite and popular culture were co-dependent
Decline of popular culture irreversible but complex - creation of new forms of culture only to be destroyed
Print spreading and standardising mythology and folklore
Rise of rationality in elite led to them withdrawing from popular culture
Muchembled
Systems of belief related to changing political domination
Popular culture linked to struggle against insecurity
A counterpoint to feudal society - deliberate repression of popular culture to reduce autonomy and to increase reliance on church and state
Eradication of popular culture as a coherent whole and introduction of false consciousness of mass culture
Role of women as custodians of popular culture explains misogyny of elite
Witch craze an attempt to eradicate rural culture and independence
Print not a reflection of popular culture but a repression
Beik
Need to focus more on collective political action as an expression of popular culture
Freedman
German Peasants' Revolt - 1524-26
Crucial event in German history
Seen either against background of victory of particularism and territorial principalities or as a response to secular economic conditions
Combination of religious reform, anticlericalism and ideology of equality
Teachings of Martin Luther confirmed sense of right to resist - not intended to be revolutionary but were
Climate of unrest combined with invocation of 'divine law'
--
Franz
- Regional struggles united by belief in divine law that questioned oppression and local law
-- Serfdom attacked on basis of Christian equality - 90% of local grievance lists call for end to serfdom - elite view of animalistic peasantry complicated by their Christianity, some elite supported them
Also drew on C13 HRE judicial works eg
Sachsenspiegel
law codes of Eike von Repgow - idea of no legitimate servitude because of Christ's sacrifice - tradition of moral opposition aka contesting oppression with universally understood ideas
Eventually suppressed and never again mounted a coordinated movement
Catalan War/War of the Remences - 1462-86
Sustained conflict, more or less purely peasant
Both political and social
-- Political - Catalan peasants supported King John II against the nobility
-- Social - John II had promised to end serfdom/remença
Start of a peasant war without a religious reform movement
Facilitated by breakdown in political authority - divisions between king and parliament over support for remences
Steady conflict building from about 1380 -
Vilar
: 'the Hundred Years' War of the Catalan countryside'
Protesting 'the bad customs' - manumission, levies, 'right of mistreatment' (confiscation of property, public humiliation and punishment of serfs - general ability to inflict harm without reason or justification)
Couldn't appeal to custom so appealed to Christianity - elite defended serfdom by calling it a merited punishment for ancestral origins
Elite argued that remences were originally Muslim so were allowed to be serfs but serfs argued that they had since converted so Christ's sacrifice should apply to them
Eventually succeeded
Similarities/Differences
German revolt failed; Catalan revolt succeeded
Similar root causes and similar attitudes towards revolt
Both had moderate demands and didn't require an external stimulus or radical reform
Catalan success came from a more complete breakdown in authority, a longer history of active resistance, greater support in elite circles, greater elite doubt over legitimacy of serfdom, fewer religious arguments, aimed moral rhetoric at points of weakness and uncertainty
Sharpe - Early Modern English Riot
Historiography
Historians traditionally not sympathetic eg
Hibbert
said caused by poverty and drink
Advent of social history means more sympathetic - riots not purely caused by social conditions and not by drink or greed
Riots directed by a cultural awareness of popular disturbance and notion of legitimation supported by consensus
English Riots
In law a riot was a gathering of 3+ who intended to break the peace - many 'riots' in records just group fights/brawls
Large-scale incidents enough for commoners to enter history - smaller riots were over grain, enclosure, taxes and would now be classed as strikes or demonstrations
Statements by crowds often demonstrated defiance and pre-class consciousness - limited aims, feeling that poor had right to act when the rich weren't doing their duty
Poor had perception of class in society but could be punished for voicing it
Were able to quickly organise and mobilise - often organised large groups to chase off tax collectors as soon as they heard they were coming - solidarity between neighbours and people in the same trade
Rioting frequently successful when combined with other lines - a sense of justice and restraint, wanted to address specific grievances and restore rights
1549 rising most serious since 1381 - arguably the last 'peasants' rebellion - West Country and East Anglia under rebel control, smaller risings from Yorkshire to Sussex
1566 Colchester riots over lack of work and wages in the textile industry and declarations that the commons would rise - four ringleaders hanged