This collection of new essays covers a whole range of
subjects military, political, social, religious, cultural and economic that
were impacted by the civil war. Primarily aimed at the student and the general
reader the book combines charts, extracts from original documents and
illustrative material drawn largely from contemporary pamphlets and sources to
provide the reader with a basic understanding of the impact of the civil war.
Like many other aspects of the history of the English Civil
War, its impact on society, politics and the economy has caused serious
disagreements among historians. While a substantial minority (albeit in the
past) have said it is impossible to ignore or deny that the civil war did have
some impact and that changes did occur in the social, economic and political
superstructure, others have played down appreciably the consequences. Some have
even tried to deny that social changes were crucial in determining the outcome
of the war.
The New Social History historiography appeared in the early
1970s. According to some historians, it was perhaps the last major
historiography of the 20th century to try and explain the complex historical
phenomenon known as the English Civil War. Before the 1970s, Social History had
mostly been limited to a study of everyday life. During the last thirty-odd years,
the subject has come to prominence because some aspects of it have become the
bête noir of several revisionist historians. The most positive side of the new
history is that it has brought into the public domain the lives of working
people or the poor who had largely been ignored by historians. On the downside,
this new history became divorced from any form of economic or materialist
explanation of the civil war.
This collection of essays comes predominantly from
historians who in one way or another are sceptical regarding the impact of the
war with the sole exception of John Walters. The majority of contributors are against
any form of Marxist historiography.
Given John Morrill's editorial role in preparing this
collection of essays, it is, necessary to understand his take on these events.
He was clearly influenced by the New Social History historiography in an
interview he describes his attitude towards those historians who were in the
forefront of the group "So there came along the new social history which
opened up a whole range of types of evidence, and so one of the most important
things to happen for my period was the work which is most naturally associated
with Keith Wrightson (who trained in Cambridge, spent many years in St Andrews,
returned to Cambridge and then moved to Yale). And the Wrightson revolution
indeed, in the way in which social history is done, had an enormous impact on
those of us who were more interested in high politics. I mean traditional
politics, constructed high politics. Wrightson's importance for my work is
again something that people might be a bit surprised to hear about, but I
personally, in my mid-career, saw it as absolutely fundamental.[1]
In his introduction, John Morrill is correct to point out
while there is general agreement amongst historians of what to call the events
in France around 1789 or 1917 in Russia. However, there is little agreement as
to what to call the revolutionary events in 1640s England.
A reader coming to these events for the first time will find
out that this problem is down to many factors.
A major one being the political bias of the historian. Another is the sheer complexity of the
historical crisis that gripped the English state. The book is recommended in
the sense that it does give the reader a broad range of differing views, albeit
absent is a Marxist explanation. The book is simple in design but has a
generous supply of fantastic illustrations which in themselves are worth
further exploration.
Chapter one is Charles Charlton's Impact of the fighting.
Charlton begins by assessing the number of dead and wounded during the
conflict. Another ground for disagreement. Charlton does highlight one of the biggest
problems is that when dealing with primary sources regarding causalities, they
are open to bias depending on which side they came .
In a striking passage in his memoirs, Richard Baxter "said
he watched the battle of Langport as a young chaplain in the army of the parliament. Baxter witnessed fierce fighting. Facing
defeat, the Royalists panicked. Standing next to Baxter was Major Thomas
Harrison. As the Parliamentary army charged the Royalists fled, Baxter heard
him 'with a loud voice break forth into the praises of God with fluent
expressions, as if he had been in a rapture.'[2]
According to D H Pennington, "it was the bloodiest
conflict in relative terms in English history" crops and land were seized;
cattle and horses were taken. Pennington makes the point that the Royalists
were often more brutal than the Parliamentarians.
Another useful source on the impact of the civil war is the
work of Steven Porter. While careful not to exaggerate the destruction, he has
some relevant statistical data on the scale of the impact of the civil war. 150
towns and 50 villages suffered the destruction of property. According to the
House of Lords Record Office, Main Papers,23 Sept. 1648 "…miserable it is
to see the multitudes of inhabitants and their children flocking in the streets
of the bordering towns and villages and have not a house to putt their heads
therein, whereby to exercise their calling."
Taunton according to the Earl of Clarendon heavily destroyed
by fire, but according to Sprigge a flourishing city was all but destroyed. A
number of books have come out recently which contain important sources of
eyewitness accounts of the civil war. Jogh adair's book contains important eye
witness accounts. Adair highlighted one particular aspect "which was the
development of social advancement inside the army and service in the armies of
parliament certainly provided opportunities for social advancement. At first,
the rival armies were officered by men of much the same social status, but
gradually new people from the middle, lower middle and artisan classed moved into
positions of responsibility, both on committees that ran the war and in the
wider army. John Hampden's Shepherd, Thomas Shelbourne, rose to be colonel of
Cromwell regiment of Ironsides and there were similar stories. The more
conservative Puritan gentry objected to their newcomers as much as on social
grounds as on account of their often unorthodox or radical religious views".[3]
Forced requisitioning took place but a lot of goods were
paid for at market prices. Adair says while there was "decay of life"
there was also opposition to this massive growth of profits for many people.
Also, things such as the legal system remained relatively healthy and survived
unscathed. In London, the impact of the civil war is hard to assess in many
respects everyday life carried on as normal. London also avoided sack or siege,
however, emergency wartime powers were resented by large sections of the
population. Its economy was vital for the New Model Army and this state of
affairs led one Royalist to lament "if posterity shall ask who pulled the
crown from the king's head said it was proud unthankful schismatically,
rebellious, blood City of London".Charlton who came from a military background is particularly
keen on military matters, but when it comes to a more in-depth understanding of
why people fought and how the war came about, the chapter is very light. People
on both sides of the war "chose deliberately which side they fought on".
Chapter Two the Impact on Government by David L Smith. Smith seems to argue that the civil war was
largely a defensive manoeuvre by parliament against a corrupt and inept
monarchy. Smith believes that no appreciable changes occurred during the civil
war and protectorate, and we quickly move onto a united monarchy after Cromwell's
death.
Chapter 3 The Impact of Puritanism is by John Morrill is
well written, and Morrill argues his point well but a lot more could have been
said on this subject. The Puritan religion did have a material basis. For the
understanding of some of the great problems of human history, the study of
religion is a necessity. Cliff slaughter posed this question "What are the
relationship between the social divisions among men and their beliefs about the
nature of things? How do ruling classes ensure extended periods of acceptance
of their rule by those they oppress? Why was the 'Utopians' wrong in thinking
that it was sufficient only to work out a reasonable arrangement of social
relations in order to proceed to its construction? It was out of the
examination of questions like this in the German school of criticism of
religion that Marx emerged to present for the first time a scientific view of
society. 'The criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.' [4]
Suffice to say this is not Morrill's position. Therefore, I
find his analysis on Puritanism a little one-sided. Also, there appears to be an absence of
struggle in Morrill's chapter. Morrill writes nothing about the differing
radical Puritan groups that were outside mainstream Puritan politics.
This is the history of the victors as Christopher Hill would
have said. Little is mentioned of radical sects such as the Ranters, who
flourished in England at the time of the Puritan Revolution. While it is
generally accepted that there was not a massive amount of unrest and protest
during the civil war, there was riots and unrest. John Morrill has made the
point that changes in social and economic policy were mostly controlled by the
middling sort and large-scale outbreaks were prevented by this class.
However, there was a tangible fear amongst sections of the
middle class who feared the little people As Lucy Hutchinson writes with disdain, "almost all the
Parliament garrisons were infested and disturbed with like factious little
people, in so much that many worthy gentlemen were wearied out of their
command, some oppressed by a particular sort of individuals in the House whom,
to distinguish from the most honorable gentlemen, they called worsted stocking
men".[5]
Hutchinson is probably referring to the people that were increasingly
being influenced by the Levellers who expressed an awareness especially among
the lower sections of society that in order to have a say in these changes they
must organise through some kind of political organisation.
The ideas of this group came from the lower strata of
society. Their ideas of wider democracy and equality were an anathema to the
victorious upper-middle classes. It was as necessary for Cromwell to crush the
Ranters as to liquidate Lilburne's Levellers and Winstanley's Diggers.
Chapter IV The Impact on Political Thought by Glen Burgess.
For a substantial part of the 20th-century, civil war historiography was
dominated by Marxist historians who were clear that social and economic changes
did bring about changes in people's thinking.
Burgess in this chapter does not agree that there is a
connection between economics and politics which Marxists have commonly
described as the relationship between base and superstructure.
As Karl Marx explained in his Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy (1859) "In the social production of their existence,
men inevitably enter into definite relations, who are independent of their
will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which
correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material
life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual
life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but
their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage
of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict
with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same
thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of
which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive
forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social
revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead, sooner or later, to
the transformation of the whole, immense, superstructure. In studying such
transformations, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material
transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, artistic, or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge
an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a
period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this
consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from
the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations
of production".
Burgess goes on to explain that previous approaches to
ideological struggles in the revolution were expressed through an examination
of pamphlets of the 1640s. While recognising that the literature was partisan,
they were taken "at face value, as part of a philosophical debate."
This approach, says Burgess, maybe "inherently distorting."
Burgess believes that politics were fluid and that no one
stuck to their principles but ideas were mere "rhetoric." His
examination of the different groups, including radical groups guides his
approach. He believes that the various political groups were mostly acting
empirically. Taking advantage of changes in the political situation with some
rhetorical statements.
This, in my opinion, does not explain the complex
philosophical problems that were being tackled by people like Thomas Hobbes and
James Harrington, to name just two. In
Anti Duhring Engels said if "Englishmen nowadays do not exactly relish the
compliment they paid their ancestors, more's the pity. It is none the less
undeniable that Bacon, Hobbes and Locke are the fathers of that brilliant
school of French materialists which made the eighteenth century in spite of all
battles of land and sea won over Frenchmen by Germans and Englishmen, a
primarily French Century, even before that crowning French revolution, the
results of which we outsiders, in England as well as in Germany are still
trying to acclimatise".[6]
Chapter V the Impact of the New Model Army. Ian Gentles does
an excellent introduction to the New Model Army. John Walters chapter is a bit
of a strange choice in this selection of essays in so much as you would not
classify him as a revisionist historian. He would be much closer to Marxist
historians. His work is always impressive, and this essay carries on in the
same vein. Walters actually believes that the world was turned upside down.
Walters examines large swathes of primary sources, but as
a good historian does not take them at face value. He recognises that these are
not impartial documents but were weapons of war. Significantly it is in this chapter that we
get a real feel of the social turmoil that existed during the civil war. Walter's
believes that large segments of the population were becoming radicalised and
became involved in a number of political and military activities.
Riots broke
out all over the place and many of these reflected the level of poverty that
existed. Walters believes that these disorders threatened the social order.
Walters is the only chapter that women get a look in. while not examined in any
depth Walters recognises that large sections of the female population were
being radicalised alongside their menfolk.
[1]
Professor John Morrill Interview Transcript This interview took place at Selwyn
College, Cambridge, 26 March 2008
[2]
Quoted in -Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars
1638-1651 by Charles Carlton Routledge, 428 pp, £25.00, October 1992, ISBN 0
415 03282 2
[3]
By the Sword Divided: Eyewitness Accounts of the English Civil War (Sutton
Illustrated History Paperbacks) Paperback – 22 April 1998
by John Adair
[4]
Cliff Slaughter Religion and Social Revolt From Labour Review, Vol.3 No.3,
May-June 1958,
[5]
] Memoirs of the life of Colonel Hutchinson, publ. by J. Hutchinson. To which
is prefixed The life of Mrs. Hutchinson, written by herself (Google eBook)
[6]
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific-By Friedrich Engels
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