The difference between war and rebellion.

The history of mankind is replete with armed conflicts and confrontations. The man could not yet speak plainly, did not know the written language, and already perfectly learned to kill his own kind. Therefore, it is not surprising that words such as war, revolution, uprising have become firmly established in our vocabulary. However, many do not quite clearly understand, for example, how a war differs from an uprising. In this article, we will try to explain the meanings of these words as accurately as possible.

Definitions

First, let's give the generally accepted interpretation of these words:

• Uprising - an armed uprising against the existing order, government or any specific actions taken by the authorities. Synonyms for this word are well known and also widespread: mutiny, riot, turmoil, putsch. As a rule, such performances are fleeting and local in nature. Sometimes the uprising takes on a long-term character and captures vast territories. In this case, it goes into another phase - war, or rather, into one of its types: civil, peasant, etc.
• War - in the classical form it is an armed conflict between at least two states with the use of all available types of weapons. Moreover, there are no restrictions on the number of participants, the size of the territories involved in the war. It can be a small war between two small states for a piece of land, in which several hundred or thousands of people participate. Or there may be a confrontation on a planetary scale, in which several dozen countries, led by world powers, clashed and the human resource is estimated at hundreds of millions of people. You don't have to go far for examples - just remember the 1st and 2nd world wars.

Wars are also called the consequences of protracted uprisings or revolutions when they result in full-scale conflicts affecting vast territories, and a huge mass of people participate in them. Examples of this are the October Revolution (1917), which turned into a full-fledged civil war, or the Pugachev revolt (1773), later called the peasant war.

To clarify the above definitions, we give a couple of specific examples on this topic.

Spartak is not only a confectionery factory

The armed uprising against slavery, organized by the gladiator Spartacus, is considered a textbook example of a classic uprising. Around 74-71. BC NS. in the warm Italian town of Capua, several dozen gladiator slaves rebelled against their unenviable lot, killed the guards and fled from the gladiator school. We will not describe in detail the subsequent events (those who wish can find a lot of material on this topic both in electronic and paper form). Let us briefly say only the following - 78 people (this figure is cited by historians - contemporaries of Spartak) in a couple of years turned into a formidable and skillful army of 120,000, which made the most powerful power of that time tremble - the Great Roman Empire.

However, for all its scale, these actions do not fit the definition of "war" for a number of signs that you can see in the summary table below. It shows the difference between war and insurrection.

"Today, June 22, at 4 am, without a declaration of war..."

The brightest and most formidable phenomenon, perhaps, in the entire history of mankind is considered 2nd World War, which broke out in the 20th century. At that time, there were 73 states on the planet - 62 of them took a direct or indirect part in this conflict. It affected almost 80% of the world's population and lasted almost 7 years (1939-1945). For the first time, and I really want to hope that the last, nuclear weapons were used. In this war, about 65 million people died, which, according to some historians, is comparable to the total losses of humanity in all known armed clashes. Well, in conclusion, let us summarize the data of our small study on the topic of war and insurrection.

Comparative table

Let's make a reservation right away, in the table we are talking about a classic type of war (see above).