These words all denote some kind of effort to defy or overthrow a government or other form of authority. Uprising is the broadest term and may be substituted in a general way for any of the other words. Specifically it may refer to a minor or unsuccessful act of popular resistance: a historic uprising of the slaves on a Jamaican Plantation. It can apply also to those localized signs of unrest and discontent indicating the imminence of widespread conflict: the first short-lived uprisings in Germany and Austria that led to the Peasant’s War of 1524-1526. Rebellion is an armed resistance or uprising against a government, often on a large scale and frequently doomed to failure. If successful, a rebellion may become a full-scale revolution , which involves the overthrow and replacement of a government or a political system by those who are governed. In a wider sense, revolution can denote any extensive or drastic change in economic institutions, in ideas or in mores: the Industrial Revolution that began in England in the mid-18th century; the revolution in manners and morals that followed World War II.

Insurrection point to an organized effort to seize power, especially political power, while revolt emphasizes protest against oppression or other intolerable conditions. Unlike insurrection , revolt has the extended meaning of any refusal to go on tolerating an allegiance or a powerful authority: a revolt within an established church.

Insurgency has almost the same meaning as insurrection , but it usually designates a better-organized kind of revolt , and is often used today to refer to revolutionary activity that is aided by foreign powers. Counter-insurgency , a word most common in news and propaganda media, is any measure designed to combat revolutionary activity or guerrilla warfare.

If an uprising , insurrection or insurgency continues for a long period of time without being effectively countered, the country of its origin may be said to be in a state of civil war . Civil war is armed conflict openly carried on between parties or sections of the same country, whether or not both parties involved are legally recognized as belligerents. In the usual sense of the term, civil war involves factions (generally two) each of which is trying to gain control of the existing central government. In this way, a civil war differs from a revolution in that the emphasis is not on overthrowing a régime. The American Civil War differed from the above concept in that the South seceded and wished to become a separate nation.