Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate | Hacker News Reader

Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate

thecritic.co.uk

37 pointsflannery55 comments

Cromwell really does have a lingering propaganda support, doesn't he?

The UK is one of a very small number of countries to have deliberately restored its monarchy after a revolution and period of parliamentary government, and the reason for that is that Cromwellian government was even worse for a lot of people. A modern analogue might be the Iranian Revolution; congratulations on getting rid of the puppet monarch controlled by overseas interests, now dancing is banned. Or in the case of Cromwell, Christmas. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/what-is-designation/h...

The UK does an extremely bad job of teaching its historial "religious" conflict, which was rarely about doctrine so much as temporal power-politics.

The article says things got worse not because cromwell was worse than Charles 1, but rather he inherited the mess caused by charles' policies and a country broken by civil war. Naturally it was worse for many people (specially Irish). But I wonder what would happen if characters like Cromwell weren't there at that time, Charles was allowed to continue bypassing parliament and ruling like a tyrant, and Britain turned into an absolute monarchy like France and Prussia. I'm not defending Cromwell. But I think if he was an evil, perhaps it was a necessary evil.

About Iran, while it's absolutely not a perfect country, I can not agree that things got worse for average Iranian after revolution. Iranians dead from starvation was a common scenery in Tehran's street during shah. Things did get worse for a tiny ruling-westernised-urban elite, who were forced to go into exile and now vocal in western countries against the regime, but for an average Iranian I do believe things got better.

Btw, I'm from Bangladesh, meaning I'm neither British nor Iranian.

He certainly inherited a country broken by civil war, but it is difficult to argue that his own decision to bypass Parliament and rule like a tyrant was the only possible course of action, or an improvement on his predecessor. Ultimately if Cromwell helped steer the country away from despotism - a matter of great debate - it was less by example and more because he, like Charles I, ended up having his head lopped off to popular acclaim (posthumously after a natural death, in his case) and subsequent leaders largely chose not to emulate him.

> The UK does an extremely bad job of teaching its historial "religious" conflict, which was rarely about doctrine so much as temporal power-politics.

I disagree. There really is no way to understand the English Civil War without understanding the religious disputes at its cores. Yes, it was a power struggle. But for the most part, many if not most of its major players were fighting out of deep-seated religious convictions. This most certainly includes Cromwell.

The reverberations of this conflict still color our modern-day ideological conflicts. The Royalist strongholds during the conflict are still the areas of England with the highest Anglican identification. Anglican identification is still the strongest predictor of Tory support. The Red/Blue-state divide in America is largely the same map of what areas were settled by Cavaliers and what areas were settled by dissenters.

That last line is interesting. Can you please provide any links for further reading?

The book /Albion's Seed/, and this review of it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-se...

The map of Royalist areas also matches that of support for Brexit.

An interesting idea but tenuous. The Parliamentary homeland in the southeastern counties mostly voted for Brexit outside London, Cambridge and Oxford [Oxford being a royalist redoubt surrounded by Parliamentarians on the Civil War map rather than the reverse]. The Remain voting areas of England were mostly conurbations which didn't exist during the Civil War, some of them like Liverpool being in predominantly Royalist areas. Overall, the local population didn't get much say in which areas were occupied by which troops back then either.

> now dancing is banned. Or in the case of Cromwell, Christmas.

Also dancing. The Puritans weren't big fans of dancing.

Samuel Pepys diary starts as the Cromwell regime ends. While England remained an economic basket case that was at war with basically everyone, personal freedom dramatically improves in the early pages. It's worth noting that it did all bring around a more constitutional monarchy; the post-restoration monarchy was substantially different to pre-restoration.

I must object to your "puppet monarch" comment here. By the standards of 'puppetry' that we can discern from historic documents the Shah of Iran was no more of a puppet than a certain "poodle".

Do you always prefix "puppet minister" before say mentioning Tony Blair or any of the post Suez UK PMs?

People like you who in the tradition of "lingering propaganda" continue to cast calumny on the late Shah of Iran need to let us know what exactly is your definition of "puppet" and "overseas interests".

For example, "overseas" interests that held the alledged "puppet's" strings felt Iran choosing a path of industrialization was not acceptable in the 1960s. So the puppet gets industrialization support, including Iran's steel industry bootstrap, from the USSR. 1960s, btw.

"Overseas interests" also didn't want the oil producers from organizing and getting their act together. Wasn't the "puppet" one of the key figures behind the rise of OPEC? Remember that?

From the point of view of the revolutionaries, who objected to "foreign influence". Regardless of how much the Shah was under American influence or Charles I under Papal influence, the perception that they were was used against them by their enemies.

(I have to say that running into a partisan defending the honor of the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the internet is a new experience. I was sort of expecting someone to object that the claim that a Catholic monarch was a puppet of the Pope was sectarian - which it is, but again that's not my position but the position of the Cromwellians)

"I have to say that running into a partisan defending the honor of the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the internet is a new experience."

Yeh, it's called "propaganda". As you can see, it works.

However you have chosen in your oblique reponse to not respond to a simple question: what is your definition of puppet? And how does Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi qualify per that standard?

Looking forward to your thoughtful response.

I imagine being the beneficiary of the 1953 US/UK backed coup would qualify him for puppet status.

Gee, I can reach back 14 centuries and name an Sassanid Shah that took refuge with Rome during a period of crisis and division in the Sassanid Empire. No one has ever accused Khosrow II of being a "puppet of Rome".

A sub-set of Iranian society (including military, and clergy) were on the side of the counter-coup that removed Dr. Mossadegh. These Iranians had a shared interest with the US and UK. That is it. And the main military players in the 50s were in fact purged by the 60s, when Shah started his White Revolution after assuming actual power in Iran.

> I have to say that running into a partisan defending the honor of the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the internet is a new experience

That's a really unnecessary quip to make against GP, especially since you failed to address the substance of his argument.

final note regarding your "defending the honor of the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi":

You should recognize that you denigrate the honor of an entire generation of thoughtful, intelligent, progressive Iranian men and women in industry and academy that very much believed in the Shah's program for Iran.

In fact, what is one saying about a nation when their king is declared a puppet?

> The UK does an extremely bad job of teaching its historial "religious" conflict, which was rarely about doctrine so much as temporal power-politics.

One essay that does attempt to address the politics is this [1]

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-re...

The range of opinions of Cromwell amongst modern and historic Britons is even wider than the range of views Cromwell chose to project [a man known not only for winning a war for Parliamentary prerogative and then permanently dissolving Parliament, but also both for enforcement of extreme Puritanism and murderous repression of Catholics and and for drafting comparatively tolerant legislation on freedom of worship and allowing Jews to return to England]

The reviewer Simon Heffer, an admirer of influential historian Carlyle who put Cromwell at the centre of his 'Great Man' theories of history and did more to rehabilitate Cromwell's image in British eyes than anyone else, represents one extreme of that range of opinion.

Killing royalty always deserves our thanks.

> albeit well over 300 years later, and as further proof that the Irish have perhaps the longest memories in the world.

Oh right. At what point do historical figures get a free pass on bringing up their bad doings?

And by bad doings, we're talking deaths in the hundreds of thousands, enforced slavery etc.

Yeah, I am Irish and I think that patriotism is a disease. But even so, historical figures who have reputations for ethnic cleansing and genocide [1] should not be forgotten OR forgiven.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Irelan...

Out of interest, how is Cromwell taught in Irish schools and what do they say about the causes of the war?

“Irish slavery” is usually a sign someone is a racist asshole who has no idea what they’re talking about.

I'm not American and have no interest in that side of stuff. Keep your partisan political terms and debates to yourselves.

Call them forced to migrate, indented servants or whatever makes yourself feel good. I'll stick with the accurate term for such.

Edit: Sorry for being a dick, I made assumptions there.

This is an article about Oliver Cromwell, where the author completely brushes off the atrocities he committed in Ireland.

You are correct that as well as all the murder and disenfranchisement and land confiscation, it was only indentured servitude (in Caribbean plantations, where the servants often died before their term of servitude was complete) and not chattel slavery.

But that's not really enough to accuse people of being racist assholes.

> has no idea what they’re talking about.

Funny -- because you've clearly misread something in the thread or think you're in another thread. This has nothing to do with "Irish Slavery".

You be sure to continue to pontificate who does and doesn't know what they're talking about though.

Racist? Toward whom, Irish? I'm sorry, not from the anglosaxon world, I know britain put Ireland under the boot centuries ago, but is calling all of that's effects a form of enslavement deragotary toward Irish?

There's a frequent claim, especially amongst the American far-right, that chattel slavery of Irish people was a common thing (it wasn't, outside isolated cases, generally of non-white Irish people eg https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/an-irish-slave-in-antigua-7...), and that this somehow shows that slavery isn't a factor in the modern socioeconomic condition of black people in the US (because Irish people in the US had better socioeconomic outcomes).

In reality, indentured servitude of Irish people (and English people) was common in the early colonisation of America. This would be considered _modern_ slavery, colloquially (the term slavery is in a modern context used for all unfree labour), but it wasn't _chattel_ slavery, and was pretty dramatically different from chattel slavery. In addition, most Irish people immigrated to the America in the 19th century as free immigrants.

The Irish slavery myth isn't inherently racist (though it is inherently ahistorical), but it is often used as a racist talking point.

Much more context here: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/04/19/how-myth-iris... ; tldr; it's complicated.

By the way, it's worth noting that claims of widespread Irish chattel slavery are almost exclusively an American thing. Here in Ireland history classes etc give a more accurate impression of it. Cromwell engaged in in forced population displacement and unfree labour in Ireland (and there's certainly a case that he engaged in genocide), but not chattel slavery. Think more Stalin than Caesar.

Thanks. So it's a term that's taken its own life in US, and is not itself offensive, but labels the user as a member of one faction in the current US culture wars.

Even if one was speaking only about Irish history without any link to US.

Sigh.

It's a term that, as far as anyone can see, _originated_ in the US.

Thanks, that clarifies why it's felt to be such an odd thing.

> “Irish slavery” is usually a sign someone is a racist asshole who has no idea what they’re talking about.

So long for the praised HN guidelines.

Still waiting for my reparations from the Normans.

Fagamid suid mar a ta se

I am just now re-reading Neal Stephenson's "System of the World" or "Baroque Cycle"[0], the first book of which is set in Restoration-Era London.

A fictionalized account, the flavor of which serves to resonate with the feel of dot-Com startup disruption. Which as I write this, my own words sound trite and trivial. Stephenson's work is anything but: Civil War in England, Queen Anne's War in the American Colonies, interminable war in continental Europe... So far, it gives short shrift to England's treatment of Ireland.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle

The article,though not the book, is by Simon Heffer who's always a bit controversial on matters Irish. In my view he'd be one of those British who still feel that, on maps the British Isles should in their entirety be coloured pink just as many Irish feel that the whole island of Ireland should be coloured green.

“the sins of Cromwell and his army in rooting out the supporters (both Catholic and Protestant) of the Stuarts in Ireland were used regularly as a stick with which to beat the English, albeit well over 300 years later, and as further proof that the Irish have perhaps the longest memories in the world”

People tend to remember when you kill a third of their population.

Wow, what a truly offensive article. Firstly speaking as an Irish person, the dismissive tone here is outrageous:

"And later in the century, as one phase of the conflict between England and Ireland followed another, the sins of Cromwell and his army in rooting out the supporters (both Catholic and Protestant) of the Stuarts in Ireland were used regularly as a stick with which to beat the English, albeit well over 300 years later, and as further proof that the Irish have perhaps the longest memories in the world."

For some historical context, start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Drogheda

And as for the conclusion:

"The growth of British power and prosperity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was in great measure built on those secure foundations. Cromwell’s part in leading the great change of culture was absolutely fundamental to that."

So Cromwell helped build the foundations of the British Empire, and that's a "good thing"? I don't know where to start, consider me triggered ;-)

> I don't know where to start, consider me triggered ;-)

Ha! You and me both. As an Irish lad in the UK, one of the funniest things I still encounter is republicans (British ones!) who hold him up as a hero. You really have to wonder at times.

I would love to see Britain become a republic some day for their benefit (up to them of course to vote on that), but agree they need a better hero.

I used to be of that mindset (re: become a republic) but tbh I'm more of the line of thinking, if it ain't broke... With the parliamentary style of government, you need a figurehead. So you'd have to tear up a whole host of UK conventions going back centuries and re-jig everything, just so someone else gets the ceremonial role?

Much as some might like a complete re-write, I say expand the unit tests around it if minor bugs arise ( e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15492607 ) and let the system run unless a major blocker comes up ;)

I don't think replacing the Monarch with a ceremonial president requires a complete rewrite. It's more of a cosmetic refactoring, if you will.

King! King! No point in the thing!

Lots of 17th century writers are held up as republican heroes, but usually not Cromwell himself (Levellers/Diggers, Harrington, etc).

My comment relates more to irl conversations. I'll freely admit to not reading up too much on British republicanism.

Indeed - Cromwell wasn't an aberration, he was the start of the occupation of Ireland with all the usual brutality of colonialism, and the Orange Order will happily bring him out as a "stick" in the other direction.

England ruled Ireland well before Cromwell.

Yes and no.

The "English" running Ireland pre-Cromwell were predominantly Anglo-Irish lords, and were mostly Catholic.

Post-Cromwell, the brutality got much worse, and the Catholic vs Protestant dimension caused extremely repressive laws for Irish catholics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws

The Norman and then English occupation of Ireland had a number of stages from the 12th century on, but Cromwell definitely marked a sea change.

For a primer on this period take a listen to the now defunct Bing Thinking History Podcast

http://bingethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/?m=1

And the early episodes of Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast.

https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/

Together these really disabused of the propaganda taught in American schools like that the entire world was under tyranny before the American Republic, that the founders were geniuses that came up with religious toleration, consent of governed and seperation of powers all on their own, etc.

This is a recounting the story in the book, and the threads the author of the book draws out.

This is not a review. It is terrible. I want to know is the book interesting, is it well written, engaging, well-paced? Critique it!

That isn't what magazines like "The Critic", "London Review of Books", and the like publish. They aren't like movie reviews ("two thumbs up!"). Instead, the articles are by other people who know the respective subjects and while sometimes the reviews criticize the theses of the books, they aren't interested in whether it is an exciting page-turner.

If there's any one here that's well-versed in USA history and this episode of Cromwell history, can you give me an example of an event in American history that's similarly controversial along the lines of what I'm seeing in this HN discussion? I know that there will be no perfect comparison but I sense that there is some historical event with a similar sort of political charge and ambiguity.

Bit of an odd place to ask .. surely most of American history has politically charged ambiguity to it? The least controversial bits are the two world wars and the War of Independence itself. Everything beyond that is up for grabs, in the colonialism vs. post-colonialism struggle.

The civil war is the main contended issue, right up to the present day. To a much greater extent than it is in the UK outside of the few areas of sectarian Catholic/Protestant fighting (mostly Northern Ireland, Glasgow). Even there the central figure is more likely to be William of Orange (a few decades later) than Cromwell.

I agree most of American history is charged and comparing civil wars makes sense, but I would add that much of the US government interaction with the first nations seems generally comparable as well. The history of Oklahoma, boarding schools, allotment, and the recent pipeline protests are four particular areas (there are many others) that are very charged today.

Looking at it a bit differently, Texas history, where a bunch of ranchers decided on their own to expand the US, could be comparable as well and is still charged today.

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