Does one look for reasons for the re­peated uprisings of the wild Saxons? No.... Civilization presses forward, and whatever tries to oppose it will be taught through blood and steel that there is no opposing it.

—German correspondent writing in 1905 during the Maji Maji Rebellion in East Africa¹

As long as empires and imperial formations have exerted their dominance and ex­panded their control, people have resisted them.² The very notion of Pax Imperii, in its manifold incarnations, was only ever a convenient myth that either legitimized or glossed over the violent suppression and domination of other societies and cultures; there would be no Pax Romana without slaves crucified along the Via Appia, and no Pax Britannica without Indian sepoys being blown from cannon. Varyingly described as rebellions, insurrection, uprisings, revolts, jacqueries, or emeutes, so-called subaltern resistance played a significant role in shaping the his­torical trajectories of the people, societies, and states involved—often falling short of their putative aims, such conflicts still managed to transform the political land­scape within their respective contexts. If, however, we are not to take for granted the inevitability of rebellion by “wild” people against the advance of “civilization,” to use the wording of the preceding turn-of-the-century quote, and if we are to query the dichotomy between tradition and modernity implied by that juxtaposition, a more considered approach is required.

Within post-colonial historiographies, it has been commonplace to rewrite the history of anti-colonial resistance in the nineteenth century, and before, as proto­nationalist and as the precursor to the movements that later brought about decol­onization. While in many ways understandable, the attempt to provide a colonial

¹ Quoted in Monson 2010, 64.

² I am indebted to the friends and colleagues who have helped me clarify my ideas, especially Gajendra Singh, John Pincince, Mark Condos, Saul Dubow and Peter Fibiger Bang. Research for this chapter has been generously supported with funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro­gram under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 658047.

Kim A. Wagner, Resistance, Rebellion, and the Subaltern In: The Oxford World History of Empire. Edited by: Peter Fibiger Bang,

C.A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199772360.003.0012. genealogy for modern nationalism is primarily a political endeavor and one that often assumes a distinctly anachronistic tenor. As the rebels of the past—be they Maji Maji or Mau Mau—are reinvented as heroes for the modern age, we are ef­fectively, to use the words of Indian historian Shahid Amin, “hanging the rebels twice over.”^[1008] The Indian sepoys of 1857 were not the predecessors to post-1947 India any more than the Chinese Boxers of 1900 presaged the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-1970s, and the attempt to yoke subaltern resistance to modern agendas and ideologies must in itself be historicized.^[1009]

In keeping with the overall aim of the present volume, this chapter reflects some of the more recent developments, as well as criticisms, of the broader study of sub­altern resistance and rebellion within a global context.^[1010] The empirical case studies are drawn primarily from the European imperial expansion during the long nine­teenth century, and from British India in particular, while the discussion will focus in particular on three central themes: violence, rumors, and religion.^[1011] Considering the centrality of historiographical debates on the key concepts of “resistance” and “subalternity,” the following discussion is framed by a critical reading of the work of Ranajit Guha and his classic 1983 book, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency.^[1012] As both the foundational text of the South Asian Subaltern Studies community, as James C. Scott describes it, and as arguably the most influential study of rebellion within the context of European imperialism, Guha’s book constitutes an obvious point of reference.^[1013]

It should be noted that, obviously, Subaltern Studies does not offer the only ap­proach to resistance or the role of marginalized groups within a global perspective, yet it is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that research in this vein has had an un­paralleled impact on the wider historiography.^[1014] While it might appear as something of a straw man to revisit scholarship more than three decades old, our main con­cern here is to examine both the possibilities and limitations of such a historical and methodological focus.