Revolt and revolutions: the resistence of provincial elites

Abstract

The author's aim is to draft - based on the historical example of the political tensions within the Catholic Monarchy in the mid 17^th century - a typology of political discontent and of its outcome in early modern ages. In order to support the thesis that, in a corporate society (Ständegesellschaft) - in which each social group had a differentiated political status, along with a particular representation of the norms ruling its political behaviour -, a global concept of «political discontent», «revolt» or «revolution» is historically useless.