/lit/ - Literature

>>20537285

Haiti is a good example since it was a literal slave revolt.
But the other two illustrate the point I was alluding to. It wasn't about freedom. In Colonial America it was entirely instigated by the local elites to gain privileges that only benefited them, and in the case of Charles I it was ultimately because his measures to counter the country's bankruptcy after the Thirty Years' War caused instability in Parliament which he failed to manage. Insofar as religion was involved, none of the sides involved were interested in real freedom of religion, the Protestants used this as a bad excuse to enforce their own new uniformity.
As a rule, regimes fall because one elite segment sees an opportunity or a reason to destroy the status quo.

Freedom spread as a rallying cry as the agricultural economy of the feudal period grew ever weaker compared to the mercantile sector, and the agricultural elites lost out to the mercantile elites. The mercantile elites were able to use liberty as a justification for the expansion of their privileges relative to the nobility. They appealed to classical ideas as well as the Anglo-Germanic customary laws and protections for freemen which went on to form the basis of common law.
In the feudal system, the military and agricultural elites were one and the same, therefore, they were doomed to military defeat after the change in economic emphasis. The same thing happened in the one other arguably feudal culture in history with the opening of Japan. Notice that the justification there had little to do with liberty despite the Western entanglement of the imperial faction and was essentially about Japanese honor in the face of the world.
Getting back to Europe, this situation actually happened in Italy much earlier and less gradually, for similar economic reasons, leading to republican city-states like Venice and Pisa which were very apparently oligarchical. Most of these republics fell into autocratic lordship quite fast because their institutions were not strong enough to maintain order and legitimacy. The vague notions of classical values were famously "reborn" in the Renaissance... which, in its aspect of political theory, consisted of scholars paid by oligarchs to scour Greek texts brought by fleeing Byzantines after 1453 and hack together a justification for their rule. That solidified republicanism, which nevertheless suffered further blows with the Plague and Ottoman shutting of trade routes... with a reorientation towards the agrarian economy. The shift in trade northwards is seen as a key factor in the reversal of fortunes between North and South Europe, solidified by industrialization and colonialism.

I should add, if you define freedom just as "X class in some society was restricted from doing what they wanted and revolted", instead of a concrete principle like liberty, you are consolidating the idea that these are pragmatic power struggles, and it comes right back to authority.