The aim of this study is to make a comparative study between the grievances during the Dacke Warand the German Peasant´s War. These two conflicts may have occurred separately, regarding bothgeographical and chronological distances but also share common issues for this comparative study.Less than two decades separates these two conflicts and they were all by their own serious insurrectionsduring their time. While the German Peasant´s War was the greatest uprising in Europe up tothe French Revolution, the Dacke War was the biggest Peasant Rebellion in Scandinavian history.While the German Peasant War has been studied and researched by historians for a relative longtime, the Dacke War has been neglected in research history. If it were not for the Swedish professorLars-Olof Larsson’s studies during foremost in the 1960s, the Dacke War would have been a historicallyuncharted territory of research indeed. This study aims to foremost supplement the unsatisfiedresearch on the Dacke War, but also supplement the research of The German Peasant war, with thiscomparative study. Although is exists a somewhat considerable amount of studies and theories regardinggeneral peasant uprisings and revolts from this period, researchers are still debating themain causes for these violent conflicts. The combination of different geographical and social differencesand insufficient sources makes studies about theses conflicts both problematic and complex.The result of this comparative study, show that both uprisings shared both common and differentkinds of grievances where generally the rebels of the German Peasant´s War had a larger propotionof demands than the rebels of the Dacke War. In Sweden the grievances was largely made up bycomplaints. While the German Peasant´s War was generally more radical and religious motivatedthan the Dacke War, it shared many similarities to each other, especially when it came to economicand economical complaints. While the German Peasants (although not all rebel-groups) made radicaldemands, such as the abolishment of serfdom, the rebels during the Dacke War were more intenton restoring their former rights and customs. Therefore the Swedish peasantry motivated theircomplaints by claiming they had juridical rights and legal claims to motivate rebellion. The Germanpeasants on the other hand, although also sharing the same motives but in somewhat lesser degree,had less legal rights and therefore motivated their demands in religious terms. The reason why thegrievances during the Dacke War mostly can be categorized as complaints instead of demands, maybe explained how influential and political equal the Swedish peasants were as a social group and estatein Swedish society compared to the many peasants living in serfdom in the Holy Roman Empire.This is also why German rebels more often legitimized their demands with religious motive,because they lacked the political power as social group and estate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-30643 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Steinvall, Alexander |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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