Good Revisiting The Peasants’ Revolt Essay Example

In the excerpt from “The Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381”, author Dan Jones, draws a parallel between the revolt of the lower class during medieval times and events that are happening in our modern era. Jones describes how the “lower orders rebelled against the lawmaking and landowning classes” (Jones 33) in a bloody revolt in which many members of the ruling class were savagely murdered. In addition to the execution of prominent citizens like the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer of England and one of the two chief justices of the royal court and many others of the ruling class, the Peasants turned into rioters, burning and looting and destroying the city. This rebellion of the people has been mimicked many times over in history and we even see this behavior today all over the world.
Jones draws the parallel to modern times by showing that this was a “rebellion of ordinary people protesting against an ill-managed, expensive war, and the corruption of super-rich, who were seen to grow fat while the rest of the population were taxed through the nose”. (Jones 34) Though he points to the G20 protestors who “danced through the self-same streets
beneath apocalyptic hobby horses” (Jones 3) as a modern day equivalent to the peasants’ revolt in 1381, we could easily point to any recent revolution or protest, from the American Revolution to the Anti-Vietnam protests mere decades ago to current day protests, riots and civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of an unarmed black man by police officers.
The final point that Jones makes is a good one and one that we should all keep in mind; that is that history repeats itself and by studying history, it can help us avoid the same mistakes again, which is the whole point in why we should study history!

Works Cited

Jones, Dan. “The Peasants’ Revolt”, History Today, (June 2009), 33-39, web