Rebellion and Armed Revolt

Armed resistance to an established state by subjects or elites, distinct from interstate war and from full civil war; recurring cause of dynastic and polity fragmentation.

Details

Rebellion here means organised armed challenge to a ruling authority from within its territory. It overlaps with civil war (see Civil War) when rebels hold territory and field armies.

Corpus cases (this patch)

• An Lushan Rebellion (755-763): provincial military commander revolt in the Tang (An Lushan Rebellion (755-763 CE)).
• Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864): religious-political movement controlling large Yangzi territories (Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864 CE)).
• Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: preceded by an Inca civil war (Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire (1532-1572 CE)).

Analytical notes

• Research on civil-war onset stresses state weakness and opportunity more than ethnic grievance (Fearon & Laitin 2003; Collier & Hoeffler 2004). These are modern, cross-national findings; applying them to premodern polities is an extrapolation and is flagged as such.
• Goldstone (1991) links early-modern rebellions to demographic and fiscal pressure on states; again a framework, not a data claim for every civilization.

Gaps

No premodern cross-civilization rebellion frequency dataset was verified. Do not state frequencies.

Citations

• fearon2003-ethnicity-insurgency [formal] James D. Fearon, David D. Laitin (2003). Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War. American Political Science Review 97(1). DOI 10.1017/S0003055403000534 (Crossref-verified). Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
• collier2004-greed-grievance [formal] Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler (2004). Greed and Grievance in Civil War. Oxford Economic Papers 56(4). DOI 10.1093/oep/gpf064 (Crossref-verified). Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
• goldstone1991-revolution-rebellion [formal] Jack A. Goldstone (1991). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. University of California Press. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4805268W. Verified 2026-10-11 (Open Library record found; edition exists, page-level not checked).

Review status

SOFT draft; not Official. Claims are definitional or tied to a cited source; page-level locators not verified.