Rebellion
A rebellion is an armed resistance to an established government. Those who participate in rebellions are rebels.
Other words for a rebellion include: revolt, uprising, insurrection, and insurgency. Some of these words, especially rebellion and revolt, often have a pejorative connotation while uprising or insurrection are preferred by rebels (insurgents, freedom fighters) themselves. Compare: mutiny, revolution.
For example, the Boxer rebellion was an uprising against Western commercial and political influence in China during the final years of the 19th century, and the Jacobite Risings which attempted to restore the deposed Stuart kings to the thrones of England and Scotland were called the Jacobite Rebellions by the government.
Famous rebellions / uprisings in history
- 73-71 B.C: The Roman Slave rebellion
- 66-70 (A.D): Great Jewish Revolt
- 1378: Revolt of the Ciompi in Florence
- 1381: Peasants' Revolt in England
- 1519-1659: Jelali Revolts in Ottoman Empire
- 1524-26: Peasants' War in Germany
- 1637-1638: Shimabara Rebellion
- 1642-1649: The English civil wars, also known as the Great Rebellion
- 1676: Bacon's Rebellion
- 1689: Jacobite Rising
- 1715: the 'Fifteen Jacobite Rising
- 1745: the 'Forty-Five Jacobite Rising
- 1763-1766: Pontiac's Rebellion
- 1775-1783: American Revolutionary War
- 1786: Shays' Rebellion
- 1794: Whiskey Rebellion
- 1798: Irish Rebellion of 1798
- 1804-1807: First Serbian Uprising
- 1815: Second Serbian Uprising
- 1837: Rebellions of 1837 in Canada
- 1848: Fenian rebellion (also known as the Young Irelanders' Rebellion of 1848)
- 1851-1864: The Taiping rebellion
- 1853-1868: Nian Rebellion (捻軍起義)
- 1857-1858: Sepoy Rebellion
- 1861-1865: American Civil War (originally officially called The War of the Rebellion)
- 1899-1913: Moro Rebellion
- 1900: Boxer rebellion
- 1916: Easter Rebellion
- 1919-1921: Tambov rebellion
- 1921: Kronstadt rebellion
- 1932: Mäntsälä rebellion
- 1968: May 1968 revolt in France
- 1994-Present: Zapatista Rebellion
Famous rebels
- Bohdan Chmielnicki
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Che Guevara
- Helgi Hóseasson
- John O'Mahoney
- Subcomandante Marcos
- Francis Meagher
- John Mitchel
- William Smith O'Brien
- Eric Raymond
- Lucifer
- Spartacus
- Leon Trotsky
- William Wordsworth
- Jack Cade
- Owen Glendower
See also
- American Slave rebellions (Nat Turner's rebellion, Stono Rebellion, et cetera)
- Polish uprisings
- Rokosz, a legal rebellion in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
- The Open Source Movement has been called a "rebellion" against closed source software and intellectual capitalism.