“A Time for Rebirth” – Historian Dan Jones on ‘The Uprising’
The Uprising follows the Ploughman (Andrew Garfield) as he leads a violent rebellion against King Richard II’s tyranny. The film is based on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and the filmmakers worked closely with historian Dan Jones throughout the production process. Dan Jones is a British historian and novelist who wrote Summer of Blood, which chronicles this event. His most recent publication, Henry V, was released in 2024.
(Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full conversation above.)
Nyah Phillips: How unusual was it for the people to rise up back then, and what did it mean for them to make that kind of weighty decision?
Dan Jones: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in England is the first time that you see ordinary people really step onto the stage in a political way. And once that happens, something has changed fundamentally in society. The concerns of ordinary people start to become a serious part of political discourse.
If you look at the broader world in which this exists—the generation after the Black Death, so the middle of the 14th century—the worst pandemic in human history engulfs Europe. In places, 50 to 60 percent of people are killed. It inspires revolutionary times.
There is a spate of popular rebellions across Europe at this time in France, in Italy, in England. In the 16th century, you’ll have the Peasants’ War in Germany. So this is a time of popular movements and of ordinary people saying, “Half the world has died. This feels like a time for rebirth, regeneration, a new model for society.”
At the same time, you have groups of people in power saying, “Hold on a second. Let’s not turn everything upside down.” They have a vested interest in maintaining the way the world has always been. This creates these cultural-political collisions. One of them is the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which is dramatized in The Uprising.
Phillips: How important were religion and ideas about justice to the Peasants’ Revolt?
Jones: You can’t understand the medieval world at all without religion. The existence of God, the reality of creation, the truth of Christ’s ministry and passion are as fundamental to their worldview as the belief in atoms is to ours. You can’t conceive of the world without it. So everything, by definition, comes through religion.
But there are different perspectives in Christian Catholic England at this time as to what religion is for, how it should operate, who should control it. And that’s something we see at the fore of the movie. On the one hand, you have the Catholic Church, the head of which in England is the Archbishop. He’s represented in the movie on the King’s Council. That’s institutional religion.
On the other hand, you have a much more revolutionary view of the teaching of Christ and the meaning of religion. That’s represented by John Ball, the renegade preacher. He’s much closer to a friar, someone who’s out in the community, who sees, understands, and shares the lives of ordinary people—their misery, their poverty, their oppression—and who stands up every Sunday and preaches a message that is very disquieting to the organized church.
He says, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” That’s a revolutionary message. Where does aristocracy come from? Where does lordship come from? Where does property come from? When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, and then once they were thrown out of paradise and were working the earth—where was all this then? Did God institute lordship? Did he want private property?
That’s a very different view of religion. The established church is the great landowner, the great protector of private property. The ordinary grassroots church is diametrically opposed. And you see those two religious worldviews, both within Christian dogma and theology, clash in this enormously violent uprising that takes place in June 1381, which is dramatized in the movie.
Phillips: Is there a danger in looking at a historical uprising like this and then immediately trying to map it into our own political movement? What can we learn from the Peasants’ Revolt without necessarily forcing modern ideas onto it?
Jones: That’s such an insightful question, and you’ve really drilled down into the purpose of studying history, particularly in a time like ours when it feels like there’s an enormous amount of social, political, and technological change. What is historical study for? It would be crazy to think that we don’t look at history in search of answers. But how do we find those answers, and what is the purpose of history? That’s the deep problem historians like me think about a lot.
I think this movie is a great example, because Paul Greengrass is a subtle, talented, brilliant storyteller and moviemaker. What he doesn’t say in The Uprising is, “Hey, this movie is about today.” It’s a movie that’s set in the medieval world. You can watch it as a historical epic. But I don’t think anybody can come away from watching this movie, whatever your political persuasion, and not think about the world today. And it’s not driving you to any conclusion other than the one you want to reach.
The movie asks what happens in a society where you have rapidly increasing inequality in the aftermath of a pandemic, when people feel out of touch and the old ways are not serving them anymore. What happens when that translates into violence, into popular rebellion? And then, because this is a Paul Greengrass film, how does someone like the Ploughman, an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances, navigate that world? What does it mean for them? There are no easy answers to those questions. And if there’s one thing that history teaches us, it’s that questions don’t have easy answers.
History teaches you to be a thoughtful human being. History is very often weaponized today to score political points, but anyone who has spent any time really immersed in history knows that the one lesson it teaches you is that the world is complex, and the only way to navigate it is through deep thought and listening.
Phillips: Was there anything that happened in the Peasants’ Revolt that didn’t make it into the movie that you really wanted to see on screen?
Jones: Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the Peasants’ Revolt called Summer of Blood. I was in my early 20s, really struggling, and thinking it was a hopeless endeavor. I wish I could tell my younger self, “Hang on a little bit. The peasants will come to Hollywood. This will be the stuff of mainstream entertainment in movie theaters across the world.” So I don’t look at the movie and think, “Oh, I wish my favorite peasant encounter had made it in.” I think, “What an enormous blessing it is to live in a world where a great Hollywood movie has been made about this rebellion that maybe people didn’t know a lot about before.”
I’m totally thrilled, and I texted Paul just before we started talking to tell him what a blessing it’s been to sit alongside a great storyteller like him.
The Uprising will debut in theatres on September 11th.
