WEBVTT NOTE The Revolt of the Comuneros: A Revisionist Perspective 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.760 The Revolt of the Communeros is described and often dismissed as an uprising of citizens 2 00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:13.200 in Castile against the rule of Charles V in Spain between 1520 and 1521. 3 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:17.400 I don't actually remember what brought me to this kind of small or seemingly small event 4 00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:21.480 in history, but I think it was I was doing some research or reading about the Great Plague 5 00:00:21.480 --> 00:00:26.560 and this is a peripheral or a tangential sort of event and there's really not much written 6 00:00:26.560 --> 00:00:27.560 on it. 7 00:00:27.560 --> 00:00:32.680 Books, most of which are out of print, as well as documents that are in archives in Spain, 8 00:00:32.680 --> 00:00:37.240 obviously in Spanish, and they're 500 years old. So it's not easy to find information 9 00:00:37.240 --> 00:00:44.960 on this event. But the plan is basically I'll discuss what occurred in the event, what precipitated 10 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:50.240 the events. Second, I'll talk about the official views, those that I was able to find, explaining 11 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:54.960 the revolution itself. And then finally, I'll present my perspective, which as you probably 12 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:57.960 So the guest is in stark contrast to what the official views are. 13 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:00.960 And that's it. 14 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.960 So starting here. 15 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:07.960 Okay, so there's a map of Spain and you see that since most of the action here, 16 00:01:07.960 --> 00:01:10.960 almost all of it takes place in Castile, it's the central region of Spain, 17 00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:12.960 just a map so you can orient yourself. 18 00:01:12.960 --> 00:01:16.960 Okay, so there's two really, initially there are two really high level trends 19 00:01:16.960 --> 00:01:20.960 that led to, that sort of precipitated the events. 20 00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:27.160 The first was explosive economic growth in Castile. Essentially what had occurred in 21 00:01:27.160 --> 00:01:33.720 the late 15th and early 16th century is the combination of the Black Death, the social 22 00:01:33.720 --> 00:01:38.880 effects of the Great Schism, the Hundred Years' War and the protectionism which arose as a 23 00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:44.680 result of all these events led to Spain and in particular the Castilian region being in 24 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:51.080 and sort of the same position that America was in on the eve after World War II. 25 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:58.840 Essentially, they had no competitors, so there was a huge economic boom in Castile. 26 00:01:58.840 --> 00:02:05.400 Plus the monarchy under Isabella and Philip was, this isn't saying much, but it was initially 27 00:02:05.400 --> 00:02:08.160 relatively non-interventionist in nature. 28 00:02:08.160 --> 00:02:14.140 And so a significantly less competition came a growth, a boom in business in Castile. 29 00:02:14.140 --> 00:02:18.940 And what this led to was improvements in technology, specifically the hydraulic press, which allowed 30 00:02:18.940 --> 00:02:23.140 producers of, and I have a list here so I don't have to memorize, wool, ceramic, soap, 31 00:02:23.140 --> 00:02:30.180 leather, wine, books and paper, sugar dyes, jewelry, silver, gold, etc. to produce more 32 00:02:30.180 --> 00:02:31.820 products more quickly. 33 00:02:31.820 --> 00:02:37.140 So with improvements in hydraulic mills, they were able to produce more products more quickly. 34 00:02:37.140 --> 00:02:40.460 And of course with more stuff to ship, that means there had to be improvements in roads 35 00:02:40.460 --> 00:02:41.820 and bridges. 36 00:02:41.820 --> 00:02:43.540 A lot of that was actually done privately. 37 00:02:43.540 --> 00:02:53.540 One of the things about those lands that didn't go through feudal land or over feudal manners was that were done privately like merchants. They could facilitate the transfer of their goods. 38 00:02:53.540 --> 00:03:00.540 And with the growth and the improvement of the roadways and bridges came more fairs. 39 00:03:00.540 --> 00:03:04.540 And fairs played a really important role in Castile in that they brought merchants together. 40 00:03:04.540 --> 00:03:08.540 They permitted for differentiation and specialization and for price competition. 41 00:03:08.540 --> 00:03:15.500 and in that way they had that effect of weeding out the worst and the less efficient competitors 42 00:03:15.500 --> 00:03:22.060 in the given business and allowing the more efficient and the better run to rise up. 43 00:03:22.060 --> 00:03:25.740 Shortly thereafter of course with briskness of trade comes money markets and then primitive 44 00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:29.660 capital and commodity markets, all of which in turn help the entrepreneurs because they 45 00:03:29.660 --> 00:03:34.700 allow for pricing and liquidity and all that sort of thing and all positive developments 46 00:03:34.700 --> 00:03:36.220 as it would seem. 47 00:03:36.220 --> 00:03:45.220 With this growth came the ascendance of a merchant class which was displacing nobles and localities and it caused a lot of tensions in Castilian society. 48 00:03:45.220 --> 00:03:53.220 At the same time there was political instability where first, and I'll just go over this quickly, there was Ferdinand and Isabella. 49 00:03:53.220 --> 00:03:58.220 They ruled in the last quarter of the 15th century. They were succeeded by Philip and Joanna. 50 00:03:58.220 --> 00:04:07.220 Joanna was committed to an insane asylum. Philip died and their small son was elevated to the throne. 51 00:04:07.220 --> 00:04:12.220 He was educated in Flanders and he spent most of his time there so he didn't speak Spanish. 52 00:04:12.220 --> 00:04:20.220 When he finally rose to the throne in his teens, he didn't speak Spanish and he brought with him a coterie of Flemish and Dutch advisors 53 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:26.220 which rankled a lot of nerves in Spain at the time because he didn't speak Spanish and he really wasn't familiar with Spanish customs. 54 00:04:26.220 --> 00:04:32.140 Two years after he took the crown, he was named Holy Roman Emperor and he left, and 55 00:04:32.140 --> 00:04:38.480 he left Spain essentially in the hands of a Dutch Cardinal, which also really, you know, 56 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:42.820 Spaniards weren't very amused by that. 57 00:04:42.820 --> 00:04:47.060 So now we'll go to the, those are the two, the political instability and the economic 58 00:04:47.060 --> 00:04:53.900 boom were the two major factors at this time and now I'd like to point to the, or outline 59 00:04:53.900 --> 00:04:58.620 Those events which led to the actual revolt, the tensions. First, taxes, and that's probably 60 00:04:58.620 --> 00:05:06.020 not surprising. These, by the way, these various tensions started under Philip and Isabel and 61 00:05:06.020 --> 00:05:09.660 they were accelerated under Charles. So in the course of about 30 years, these things 62 00:05:09.660 --> 00:05:16.580 ramped up. There was a lot of military interventionism at this time. Spain had troops in the Navarre 63 00:05:16.580 --> 00:05:21.560 and also in North Africa. So there was a need, as well as considering the opulent lifestyles 64 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:24.380 of the Monarchy, there was a need to increase revenue. 65 00:05:24.380 --> 00:05:30.760 And so between 1479 and 1504, taxes increased almost 350%. 66 00:05:30.760 --> 00:05:36.800 On top of that, as taxes rose, again, no surprise, they were increasingly evaded. 67 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:44.080 And so this led to the deputization or the mercenarizing of tax farmers. 68 00:05:44.080 --> 00:05:46.400 Basically they went out to people, almost like bounty hunters, and they said, if you 69 00:05:46.400 --> 00:05:48.960 can get this person to pay their taxes, you'll get a cut. 70 00:05:48.960 --> 00:05:56.640 And that of course led to violations of property and such, which was property had a new position 71 00:05:56.640 --> 00:06:01.500 in society as merchants began to rise, it was a lot more important at that time. 72 00:06:01.500 --> 00:06:04.360 Corruption of course is shortly thereafter. 73 00:06:04.360 --> 00:06:08.600 Most controversial here, there was a mysterious little edict that let low-level nobles exile 74 00:06:08.600 --> 00:06:12.000 certain subjects under certain conditions without judicial process. 75 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:16.660 And more than a few of these newly successful merchants found themselves essentially ejected 76 00:06:16.660 --> 00:06:37.140 Next was the forming of the Irman Adad, which was extremely 77 00:06:37.140 --> 00:06:42.500 Ericsson to many Castilians. It's essentially, it suggests a military brotherhood, but it's 78 00:06:42.500 --> 00:06:46.860 kind of, I would liken it to like a state police kind of thing. And it was created with 79 00:06:46.860 --> 00:06:52.260 the explicit goal, and I quote here, of giving the crown a striking force with which to consolidate, 80 00:06:52.260 --> 00:06:56.960 to defeat local enemies and consolidate power. And it doesn't seem to me like a coincidence 81 00:06:56.960 --> 00:07:02.300 that this was formed as the tax deputizers had a hard time collecting these astronomical 82 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:04.900 levels of uncollected taxes. 83 00:07:04.900 --> 00:07:08.860 In addition, the Council of the Inquisition formed during this time period a loose but 84 00:07:08.860 --> 00:07:14.100 important coalition with the Crown, whereby they acted as a sort of a, like the Crown's 85 00:07:14.100 --> 00:07:20.820 Gestapo in a way, and they expanded their power far beyond the policing of purity and 86 00:07:20.820 --> 00:07:22.460 religious doctrine. 87 00:07:22.460 --> 00:07:26.340 And essentially what the Crown did was they made a deal with the Inquisition whereby they 88 00:07:26.340 --> 00:07:31.660 set a minimum price for indulgences and then they would take a cut. 89 00:07:31.660 --> 00:07:36.220 where formerly it was at the discretion of the official of the Inquisition. 90 00:07:36.220 --> 00:07:39.380 Now there is a minimum price and the crown got cut. 91 00:07:39.380 --> 00:07:43.620 So that was another thing that offended people. 92 00:07:43.620 --> 00:07:50.500 When I was reading this, I never realized that people despise the Inquisition so much 93 00:07:50.500 --> 00:07:53.940 that Inquisition officials had to travel bodyguards because they're caught alone. 94 00:07:53.940 --> 00:07:56.380 The people would usually just beat them up or kill them. 95 00:07:56.380 --> 00:08:00.440 They're absolutely hated by the people of Spain. 96 00:08:00.440 --> 00:08:06.360 Two other things, many of these resentful displaced nobles began to strike at the merchants 97 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:11.560 by levying tolls on their land, which was their right, but nonetheless it caused tensions 98 00:08:11.560 --> 00:08:16.160 between the two groups. And finally, no doubt arising, to some extent arising from the inability 99 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:20.480 of the crown to collect their taxes, there was a general inflation that arose in the 100 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:25.720 land about this time, probably because of fiat currency printing and those sorts of 101 00:08:25.720 --> 00:08:55.720 Practices. So finally we reach the point of no return. In the last few years before the revolt began in 1520, when the amount of debt that military striking force was founded, there were very few volunteers, mostly because people who were so inclined to fight were already in the military and the rest of them were merchants. And so they started a conscription effort. And to add insult to injury, you had to buy all of your own equipment. 102 00:08:55.720 --> 00:09:04.720 That stinks. And at the same time, Charles left to assume his position as Holy Roman 103 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:12.720 Empire in Germany. There were rumors that the coterie of advisors and people who were 104 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:17.280 led to rule in Zapsans were siphoning funds, the few funds that they could collect and 105 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:25.680 sending them off to Flanders and to the Netherlands. So that wrangled nerves as well. And finally, 106 00:09:25.680 --> 00:09:31.080 The exasperation between tax collectors and taxpayers reached a crescendo when there was 107 00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:34.680 occurrence of a number of business whereby when traveling abroad, a number of merchants 108 00:09:34.680 --> 00:09:39.320 had their properties sold without their knowledge. They came back to find out that their possessions 109 00:09:39.320 --> 00:09:45.320 had been sold off for disputed tax liens. And so with that, this is when people start 110 00:09:45.320 --> 00:09:58.800 In April 15, 1520, organized mobs ran royal representatives, tax collectors and other 111 00:09:58.800 --> 00:10:03.760 officials out of cities in Castile. You see here, there's a circle. I have around a number 112 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:07.360 of the purple cities there. Those are the cities that were part of this rebellion. There 113 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:12.120 are 13 cities that got together and they formed a junta. The junta was essentially a loose 114 00:10:12.120 --> 00:10:23.120 In the first union of cities, each individual city was run by a board called a communero which were mostly these merchants at the time who had risen up in the social structure and also some low-level nobles as well. 115 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:41.120 And they expressed a desire to band together and they finally sent a letter to the king, to Charles, or actually to Adrian who was ruling in place of Charles, saying that they wanted to essentially secede from the monarchy and form a series of independent city-states 116 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:44.880 which would be loosely bound by a defense pact and other than that they would trade 117 00:10:44.880 --> 00:10:48.240 freely among each other and they would have their own sort of ruling class. They would 118 00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:54.000 pay some lip service to a king. In fact, I think to sort of assuage the fears of the 119 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:59.160 populace they were going to appoint a figurehead queen which was the insane Queen Joanna, Charles's 120 00:10:59.160 --> 00:11:10.480 mother. And so that's where the revolt begins. Now the description of the military operations, 121 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:14.080 The tactical and strategic undertakings is beyond the scope of this talk. It's not very important. 122 00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:22.680 But suffice it to say that in the very beginning, the junta, the joined-up communera, scored 123 00:11:22.680 --> 00:11:32.120 a number of surprising military victories. But by the fall of 1520, a shift in support 124 00:11:32.120 --> 00:11:37.240 among the people, poor financing or lack of financing and rain conspired to bring the 125 00:11:37.240 --> 00:11:41.560 Revolt to a Decisive Halt at the Battle of Villier in April of 1521, just almost exactly 126 00:11:41.560 --> 00:11:46.560 a year after the revolt began. It's also worthy of note that most of the people leading this 127 00:11:46.560 --> 00:11:51.800 revolution were merchants and lower nobles. They weren't actually professional soldiers. 128 00:11:51.800 --> 00:11:57.000 So the day after the revolution began, the three leaders were taken out and beheaded 129 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:04.400 and Toledo held out for a while, but they were all, all the revolting cities were brought 130 00:12:04.400 --> 00:12:13.640 So, here are some of the official reviews in the revolt. In 1854, Karl Marx described 131 00:12:13.640 --> 00:12:21.480 a loose union of artisans, workers and farmers combining with intellectuals to combat aristocrats 132 00:12:21.480 --> 00:12:28.460 and merchants. Danvila, writing in 1897, characterized the commoner's goal as one of sorted fiscal 133 00:12:28.460 --> 00:12:37.780 Gregorio Maranone, in the Roaring Twenties, described the revolt as one where invested 134 00:12:37.780 --> 00:12:43.460 economic interests were rebelling against a progressive monarchy. 135 00:12:43.460 --> 00:12:50.020 And finally, Jose Penan, who was a court historian of Francisco Franco, wrote in the 50s, dismissed 136 00:12:50.020 --> 00:12:53.060 the event as petty regionalism. 137 00:12:53.060 --> 00:12:57.660 So those are the official views. 138 00:12:57.660 --> 00:13:02.540 This is my thesis. I'll give you a second to read it. Essentially, like I said, I disagree 139 00:13:02.540 --> 00:13:12.540 markedly with the preponderantly status interpretations of the revolt. And I went to both, to Conceived 140 00:13:12.540 --> 00:13:18.540 in Liberty and For New Liberty, both by Murray Rothbard. And I tried to ferret out what I 141 00:13:18.540 --> 00:13:22.940 basically summarized as hallmarks of a libertarian rebellion, or essentially of a liberty-focused 142 00:13:22.940 --> 00:13:27.860 uprising, and they include these five points, and in the interest of time, I'll describe 143 00:13:27.860 --> 00:13:29.260 two of them. 144 00:13:29.260 --> 00:13:34.220 The first of which, philosophical upheaval, what I mean by that is, there's generally 145 00:13:34.220 --> 00:13:40.860 a, there's a re-examination of the relationship between the citizen and the state at these 146 00:13:40.860 --> 00:13:41.860 times. 147 00:13:41.860 --> 00:13:48.100 And in the time of the communist revolt, political theory was dominated by Don Francisco de Toledo, 148 00:13:48.100 --> 00:13:53.100 And his perspective, his ideological viewpoint was that no matter how bad a king is, the 149 00:13:53.100 --> 00:13:59.540 subject must never rise against him. Unsurprisingly, this was the view espoused by the monarchy. 150 00:13:59.540 --> 00:14:04.860 With the meeting of the junta and the discussions that followed, they discovered or renewed 151 00:14:04.860 --> 00:14:10.620 a vigor to the writings of Diego de Valera, Enrique de Valenya, and Rodrigo Sanchez de 152 00:14:10.620 --> 00:14:14.660 Aravello, who together expressed that it was right and salutary to overthrow a ruler if 153 00:14:14.660 --> 00:14:22.100 If he disrespects the laws he laid in the land and seizes private property without cause. 154 00:14:22.100 --> 00:14:27.340 In addition, point five, I'll speak out here, and that is that Rothbard points out in particular 155 00:14:27.340 --> 00:14:34.940 in Toward a New Liberty that in this type of political upheaval, it's important to 156 00:14:34.940 --> 00:14:38.540 strenuously avoid contradiction, not to do things that undermine us. 157 00:14:38.540 --> 00:14:44.580 And this is one of the places where the communeros failed greatly because in the spring of 50, 158 00:14:44.580 --> 00:15:01.580 In 1521, as they were losing more and more battles, the common air forces turned to looting and robbery, including murder in some cases, and in the most horrendous reversal of all, they established an emergency tax on their own city-states in order to finance a continuing rebellion. 159 00:15:01.580 --> 00:15:10.580 And as a result of all that, they lost a lot of support, and that was one reason why they had trouble getting recruits and getting funding, and one thing leads to another, and they were ultimately defeated. 160 00:15:10.580 --> 00:15:17.580 In the aftermath of the revolt, the ultimate loser still appears to have been the monarchy 161 00:15:17.580 --> 00:15:21.540 because while they stayed in power, they were forced to enact a large number of radical 162 00:15:21.540 --> 00:15:27.700 legal and fiscal reform measures as well as hugely lowering tax rates. 163 00:15:27.700 --> 00:15:33.580 In addition, in a sign of how widespread the support for the Junta and its constituent 164 00:15:33.580 --> 00:15:38.700 communeros was, a large portion of the regulators were within two years released without any 165 00:15:38.700 --> 00:15:39.700 penalty. 166 00:15:39.700 --> 00:15:51.540 Lastly, and one of the most ironic points is that the marauding and the pillaging that 167 00:15:51.540 --> 00:15:55.980 some of the common air forces did at the end led to the establishment of more thorough 168 00:15:55.980 --> 00:15:58.100 rights to bear arms among the civilians. 169 00:15:58.100 --> 00:16:02.660 It's just very strange to think that it worked out that way. 170 00:16:02.660 --> 00:16:07.980 But in summary, my view is that this was an arguably libertarian uprising. 171 00:16:07.980 --> 00:16:13.980 are all really liberty-focused, at any rate, poorly served by status interpretations, and 172 00:16:13.980 --> 00:16:18.980 that the communist revolt requires, you know, reconsideration by all of us. That's it.