Welcome

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Hello, Yaa Reit, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page provides helpful information for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on this page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Happy editing! Scolaire (talk) 15:10, 14 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

Reapers' War

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Thank you for your edit to the Catalan independence article, and especially for the link to the excellent Encyclopedia.com article. Unfortunately, I felt I had to revert your edit because, having read the linked article, I didn't think it said what your edit said. It seems that poor Catalans rebelled against their Catalan rulers, but not "both against the Spanish Habsburg monarchy and against their own ruling classes". It was the nobles who allied themselves with France against the rebels, and thus against the Habsburgs. So, for example, we read that "In January 1641 the combined military forces of France and Catalonia defeated the Castilian army of the marquis of los Vélez in the Battle of Montjuich". When things began to go against them, many of the nobles "reconciled with the Spanish crown", and allowed Castile to put down the peasants who hadn't risen against them in the first place. That's what I got out of it anyway. It seems to me that the article, if properly summarised, would be an excellent source for the Reapers' War article, which is both low on sources and missing much of the information on the class war aspect. It's probably too complex for the Catalan independence article, which only needs to say that Catalonia fought Spain and lost. Regards, Scolaire (talk) 15:10, 14 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

What? The article didn't say what my edit said? Have you even read the article?

"The Revolt of the Catalans was really two wars at once: a social revolution pitting rich against poor and a political revolt pitting Catalans against Castilians." http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/catalonia-revolt-1640-1652

I don't agree with the deletion of my edit, and I'd like some other reviewer to look at this. Thanks!

Of course I read the article. My post above was a précis of the article. What you're doing is taking a single sentence out of context. The sentence immediately following the one you quote says, "As the Catalan poor turned against the Catalan rich, the elites turned to France rather than seek common cause with their neighbors..." The elites turned to France. The poor didn't turn to France or against the Habsburg monarchy. Your edit was wrong. Scolaire (talk) 09:36, 4 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

I did not write that the poor turned to France or to the Habsburg monarchy! I wrote that they turned against their own ruling class as well as against the Spanish authorities, which is what it says in the article. That is what made it a class war, too!

I'd like to bring this paragraph from the article to your attention: "In response, armed rebels, many of them peasants, essentially took over the countryside, staging a series of attacks, including the 22 May 1640 release of the imprisoned deputy. Olivares saw that his heavy-handed approach had backfired and tried to mollify the Catalans, but it was too late. On 7 June Santa Coloma was beaten to death by a mob, and the Guerra dels Segadors, or the Reapers War, began."

The fact that the elites turned to outside powers is neither here not there; the people revolted against the Spanish authorities AND against their Catalan elites, which is what I wrote. And that is what the Reapers' War was; the elites where not "segadors", the people were.

Given the current political debate, and the fact that historical facts are being distorted, it is important to get them right, isn't it? Contrary to what the separatists are saying, the Reapers' War was not "Catalonia v. Spain"; it was a sector of the Catalan population agains the elites, both Catalan and Spanish. This is not an irrelevant detail.

Could I get someone else to look into this, please?

This is a content dispute that should be discussed at the article's talk page. At a glance, Scolaire's point is that the Catalan poor did not revolt "against the Spanish Habsburg monarchy"; rather, the conflict saw the Catalan elites and France on one side, opposed to both the Catalan poor (I'd say "working-class" is kind of an anachronism for the 17th century) and the Habsburg Castilians. Huon (talk) 11:46, 4 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your "glance", but no, he's not saying that, and it would be wrong to say it. And you're the only one who's used the term "working class". But I've already wasted enough of my valuable time on this. If you don't need the input of an actual scholar (an academic, professor and published author), suit yourselves.