German Peasants' Revolt: A Failed Revolution

The thesis of this essay is that the German Peasants’ Revolt was not a revolution because it failed to achieve a significant number of factors that arguably define revolutions. I intend to use a variety of sources that will outline the failures of the revolt whilst analysing Arendt’s theories on revolution and how her work can help explain the statement that the German Peasants’ Revolt was not a revolution. In addition to this I will identify some definitions of a revolution in order to provide insight into the shortcomings of the German Peasants’ Revolt and its inability to become a revolution.

Historians such as Frederick Engels have argued that the German Peasants’ Revolt was a failure of the middle class proletariat to affirm its independence

This is the ideology that an economic crisis combined with a renewed version of serfdom was the cause behind the uprising. Tom Scott has been particularly outspoken against this theory as he suggests it ‘underplays the profound changes already underway in the social and economic structure of the main areas of the revolt’. Additionally Neil Davidson explains that feudal relations were not a key factor in the German Peasants’ Revolt because ‘in the case of peasant communities, the means of production were collectively owned’ thus the cultivation of land meant the peasants had some relative control over their farming. As aforementioned, the societal structure in Western Germany at this time was already fragmented due to the Reformation which provided a catalyst for social change on a wider scale leading to the uprising. The German Peasants’ Revolt does however maintain a distinct lack of political revolution which ultimately culminated in its failure to turn into a widespread revolution. This links in well to Arendt’s proposal that a revolution is only successful if it manages to create a lasting bourgeois governing structure such as in the American revolution. In comparison the German Peasants’ Revolt failed to create any lasting impact on the governing of West Germany at the time and was actually overshadowed by the religious Reformation that it coincided with. In

This lies in the idea that the peasantry and lower classes did not gain anything from the revolt and in fact faced huge losses. As it stands Engels has also argued that ‘the sole gainers under these conditions were the princes’ further suggesting that one of the defining factors of a failed a revolution is the fact that there is no gain for the rebels. Theda Skocpol’s definition of a revolution further supports this theory as she suggests ‘rebellions, even when successful, may involve the revolt of subordinate classes – but they do not eventuate in structural change’. This idea of a lack of structural change is formative in the conclusion that the German Peasants’ Revolt failed to create any lasting change or impact and thus generally failed as a revolution. In addition to this one of the major consequential factors of the German Peasants’ Revolt was the fact that none of the independent groups involved in the revolt could come together for a common aim. This meant the needs of the peasantry were not understood by the middle class thus isolating the working class and eventually leading to the mass slaughter of many working class farmers who made up the bulk of the German Peasants’ Revolt. A smaller scale impact of the German Peasants’ Revolt was ‘the cost of suppressing the rebellion’ which was perhaps