Welcome back. At the end of the last lecture, I left you off with the Taiping Rebellion.

And we explored the ways in which a prophetic movement, such as this one, would lead to the world's most bloody and destructive civil war as a result of the kinds of destitutions that swept across China in the middle of nineteenth century, and these were the results of, in a sense, a conflation, a combination of regional and global forces. This is an image of the armies of the empire moving in to put down a rebellion. But poverty and hunger, in a sense, the most proximate motivators for this upheaval are, are not just happenstance. They don't happen as a result of accidents in history. Although, it is true that sometimes climactic shocks can lead to destitution. But, on this scale and at this sustained level, there are often much more structural embedded reasons why people would lead to this kind of violence. So, let's consider very briefly the kinds of structures that gave rise to the upheaval of the Taiping Rebellion. In China, there were local and regional factors. There was the difficulty that the empire faced in opening up new fertile arable frontiers. This was a case of, what we might call agrarian compression as populations were rising, having to move into more and more inferior lands unable then, to feed this growing population. It was an example, in some respects, of a trap we call the Malthusian Trap. Whereas population grew, the demand for food outstripped the capacity to produce more supply. We're going to come back to this over and over again in the course. This intersects with the increasing weakness of the Qing State. So, we have the Qing State unable to defend the sovereignty of the empire against outsiders, faced with growing contestation from the inside, right? Combined with this agrarian oppression. Here, we see then, the intersection of economic and political factors that gave rise to a prophetic movement, such as this one, calling for a new moral order. Now, some of these demands also call for the restoration of an old moral order that prophetic movements feel have been betrayed by leaders.

And in history, among historians, often give, historians often give local explanations for and local causes to these kinds of, of upheavals. They appear so peculiar, right? And so odd that its very hard to have a global explanation for them. Often because there's, the results of these amalgamations of very localized, spiritual and religious movements. But we can ask ourselves, why in the course of the nineteenth century did we see such widespread, massive upheavals around the globe at roughly the same time? Could something more systematic be happening? We see similar prophetic movements in Mexico. For instance, in the 1840's, the same decade that witnesses the Taiping Rebellion, we see Mayan villagers in the south of Mexico rising up against the Mexican state. Indians, now, trying to roll back the clock of centuries of Spanish conquest driving, threatening to drive Europeans into the sea to restore an indigenous order. We see similar developments in the back country of the United States itself. The war of 1812 which North Americans are discussing and, one I might say, celebrating this, this year, witness the, a series of uprisings in the back countries of the United States. Here, you have an im, image of a Tecumseh who was a prophetic leader of one of these back country movements. A Shawnee leader from the Ohio country who allied himself with the British during the 1812 war. Tecumseh, and prophetic leaders then around the world, in a sense, combined a message of, that conveyed visions of a prophetic delivery, like Moses, from the bondage to Europeans. And this prophetic drive to deliver people from bondage, and again, sort of, harkening to Moses metaphor here, swept across the Indian back country in North America from the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, in Europe too, we see prophetic movements also rising up against this emerging new order forming mass movements in Europe itself often farmers losing their lands, or artisans losing their jobs to new factory workers that gave rise to the revolutions of 1848. Witness once more, the decade of the

1840's is the seismic upheaval around the globe. So, we see by the middle of the nineteenth century, a spasm of upheaval circling the globe. One of the prophets, in a sense, who observed these, he was a prophetic figure in many senses as he observed these events around the globe and argued that there was something systemic happening here, Karl Marx. This was a famous image of Marx, would argue that this had something to do with the imposition of a whole new set of economic laws. Economic laws that he would ascribe to a system called Capitalism. I'm going to come back to Marx's theory of capitalism in a later lecture. The point I want to make here about Marx and other prophets was that, in a sense, they were seen major historic changes happening around them and arguing for a hinge in world history. In the case of Marx, he thought that these upheavals were going to bring this, were, were the anticipators of a set of upheavals that would bring the capitalist system down. As artisans took to the streets in Paris and barricaded them during the revolution of 1848, he thought that what he was beginning to see was something he would later call a Proletarian Revolution. In fact, he was mistaken. I mean, Marx was very astute and, and, and really looking at a lot of these events. In fact, the people who were taking to the streets in Paris in 1848 were not the proletarians of the future, the factory workers. They were rather the losers in the transitions, they were the artisans and the farmers disgruntled by the effects that new market forces were inflicting on them. And, so Marx went back to revisit his theory of revolution and will eventually come up with a different kind of theory later on in the 1850's, and I'll come back to that later on in another lecture. But, let's ask ourselves. What did China, Mexico, France, what could they possibly have shared in common? Well, one was that they were lead by prophets or inspired by prophetic images, symbols, messages. And these prophetic messages give rise to, give voice rather, to kind of, discontent with the emerging new order that galvanizes then a mass mobilization

at the bottom of the social pyramid, so that's the second aspect of this feature. So, if one, there are prophetic leaders, the second is, now we are seeing the emergence of the most humble members of society demanding or asserting their presence on the public stage of history. Who are feeling the negative effects of the pressures on their lands and on their livelihoods. And so local, rather, historians tend to look at these events and they ascribe to, the, the, the causes to local factors and they have great difficulty trying to figure out, trying to account for the simultaneity of these upheavals. So, while they bear important common traits, let's ask ourselves, what accounts for the simultaneity of these eruptions.