ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the different types of violence and resistance. It provides a taxonomy of different types of violent confrontation: large regional risings, smaller local flare-ups and isolated incidents of banditry, vagrancy and piracy. The first category includes several different movements. The Irmandino revolt in Galicia at the end of the fifteenth century involved mostly peasants, a few petty-bourgeois and lower clergy taking arms against a harassing nobility. Local risings, such as those of Fuente Ovejuna, Alcaraz, the Netherlands and the new world followed different paths. The first represented a small town's resistance to harsh abuse by its lordly master. The second resulted from the internal factional struggles of well-to-do groups in Alcaraz. Both types of revolts entangled members of different social orders in increasingly violent relationships. Finally, banditry, piracy and vagrancy provided additional outlets for violence.
