h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well if you'd been brought up in that period you would probably have felt quite at home with the prevailing values of the period.

As for being atypical of British history what about 'Bloody Mary'? Elizabeth I burnt quite a few Catholics. Religious persecution was a given in Britain for most of the Christian era. Expecting people from other historical periods to behave like modern liberals is unrealistic.

BC, can you stop being so damn.....reasonable.

I know the values of the time were different, but they were (on all sides) a bunch of bigoted butchering savages. So there

So was Cromwell a reasonable man, when judged by the times he lived in?

yes
he didn't want to execute the king
he tried to negotiate with the Levellers
he made various attempts to find an acceptable form of government
the Long, Rump and Barebones Parliaments, the Rule of the Major Generals, only when everything else had failed did he fall back on personal rule and even then he refused the title of king
by the standards of the time he was religiously tolerated, being prepared to tolerate a wide variety of Protestant sects when most Protestants were as happy to persecute each other as Catholics
I don't object to people saying goddamn the lot of them but I find it annoying when people say Cromwell was a bigot when compared to most other leaders of the period he wasn't

(rant over now )
he only broke with the Long Parliament when that Presbyterian-dominated body wanted to enforce a Presbyterian C of E on England

Sorry was that a yes or a no?

<>

At this time religion was still "the continuation of politics by other means". (And vice versa).

This was, after all, only a half century after the Spanish Armada.

Noggin

given that Catholicism had only recently been trying to regain lost territory by military force Protestant paranoia is not entirely inexplicable

re Cromwell and religious toleration I'll let the man speak for himself,

'As for the people, what thoughts they have in matters of religion, in their own breasts I cannot reach; but I shall think my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same.'

Many historians regard the period of Cromwells rule as one of religious toleration, at least compared to what preceded and followed it.

Many historians may, but many have more reservations, too. It's also surely questionable to judge someone on their own depiction of themselves. Cromwell was among other things a very successful politician - what was the context of the quote - when he said it, why he said it, to whom he said it, and what he hoped to achieve or persuade people of by saying it.

Good point King_Bomba. However I do agree that Cromwell was not as bad as he is sometimes painted.

Remember the saying "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"

I have seen some of the most pleasant, tolerant people change when put in a position of power. I may have been guilty of that myself to some degree. Power is an intoxicating drug and it takes a special person not to use it to their own advantage. Abuse of power should be seen as the norm, rather than the exception. It is part of human nature.

You just have to make sure that no one ever gets absolute power.

Donald

I've now lost the source of that quote and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to reread the whole book for the sake of this conversation. In general I'd agree with Donald. I find Cromwell neither likeable or particularly admirable but I feel many peoples assesment of him is based on modern values.

Re Cromwell and tolerance lacking a primary source (for the moment) I'll quote a secondary one,

'while the Commonwealth and the generals were adamant about the monopoly of armed force and the control of expressly political opinions, they were (especially Cromwell) equally insistant on freedom of conscience for any sect or cofession (other than Catholics, naturally) who caused no threat to the public peace.'

Limited admittedly but by the standards of the times liberal.

sorry, and the source of that quote was Simon Schama

...and dis bloke, did this fing wight, where he beat up, like, these blokies on horsies wif, like, a bunch of people wif funny hats!!!

I take it the source for that quote was "Da English Civil War 4 Chavs, Innit."

Channel 4 are doing a series of three films about the Civil War, starting this Thursday.

Another chap who I believe has had a bad press is Genghis (Chingis/Jingis) Khan.

From what I've read he seems to have been much misunderstood.

He was tough, but he was fair for his time. Or have I been reading the wrong books?

Probably.

Just like Cromwell, Gengis was prone to get a bit upset when cities refused to surrender, quite often killing everyone once he had defeated the city. If a city surrendered and subjected themselves to him, he was pretty reasonable, quite often leaving the original people in charge. Normal behaviour for the time.

He did make a bit of a mess of Bahgdad though - not only killing the inhabitants, but destroying a huge amount literature and knowledge that had been accumulated by the Arab inhabitants and destroying one of the most effective irrigation systems that had been in place since the time of Babylon. Probably out of ignorance rather than vindictiveness.

Channel 4 are running a series on the Civil War starting on Saturday at 19:30.

Donald

I think a lot of this has to do with the nature of the study of history. Nearly always, the pros and cons of historical figures are weighed up, and a judgement is placed on them as to whether they were mainly "good" or mainly "bad".

A new generation of historians comes along, with research to publish and careers to be made. The nature of it is that they have to re-evaluate episodes of someone's life, and allocate different weighting to the importance of certain events and actions.

There's also a trend in modern historiography to try to be as sympathetic as possible to the subject. This can be a very enlightening, since you can only understand a person's actions and motivations if you appreciate their outlook and values. At its worst though, it can leave us with a singularly uninformative cannon of history, where almost everyone's intentions are honourable, although sometimes they have their hands forced and have to make unpalatable decisions.

To the best of my knowledge, the only historical figure who hasn't had such treatment in academia (at least any credible section of academia) is Hitler.

There is a place for value judgments in history; we just need to be sceptical when we see them, and to acknowledge them for being value judgments.

or sometimes as in Tom Reillys case looking at Cromwell in Ireland they go back and look at eyewitness accounts, documents from the time etc, relying on primary rather than secondary sources

Well, I wouldn't consider anyone a historian if they don't examine primary sources. What I was referring to was that the weight attached to certain primary sources changes.

true, thats how they should work, but not neccessarily how school textbooks get written (maybe thats changed for the better since when I was at school) or television programs get made and thats where a lot of people get most of their history from

Appy polly loggies. Just book marking...