@postopinions: More than six centuries ago, the Black Death wiped out nearly half of England’s population. Suddenly, workers had more power, wealthy landowners had less, and the old social order began to crack. When the ruling class tried to force that order back into place, anger erupted into the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 — a political crisis that feels startlingly familiar today, dramatized in the new film “The Uprising.” Megan McArdle talks Dan Jones, author of “Summer of Blood,” who was a consultant on the film, about what happens when elites stop listening to the people they govern.

Ramoose :

The Uprising is really about unfair taxation. Yes, a Piketty understanding of inequality existed (though it was normalized then by concepts like divine order) and yes, there was a populist 'uprising'; but the real catalyst was an unfair poll tax. In 1381 the Crown levied a third poll tax in four years: a flat charge on every person over fifteen, after wages had already been frozen in the wake of the Black Death. A labourer paid the same as a lord. That was the spark. In response, the peasants marched on London. The king initially conceded, but then got the upper hand and had them peasant leaders .... . The early Robin Hood—the forest outlaw—is the fantastical story that was concocted after they lost. Game of Thrones performed the same manoeuvre with the Wars of the Roses: real dynastic violence, a myth of ice and fire w/ dragons laid over the top.