English Revolution
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The English Revolution is a term that describes two separate events in
However,
Although Charles II was retroactively declared to have been the legal and rightful monarch since the death of his father in 1649, [4][5] which resulted in a return to the status quo in many areas, a number of gains made under the Commonwealth remained in law.[6][7]
Whig theory
Tensions regarding the English monarchy began well before the
Marxist theory
The
The phrase "English Revolution" was first used by Marx in the short text "England's 17th Century Revolution", a response to a pamphlet on the Glorious Revolution of 1688 by François Guizot.[14] Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War are also referred to multiple times in the work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, but the event is not directly referred to by the name.[15] By 1892, Engels was using the term "The Great Rebellion" for the conflict, and, while still recognising it as part of the same revolutionary event, dismissed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as "comparatively puny".[3]
According to the Marxist historian
Later developments of the Marxist view moved on from the theory of bourgeois revolution to suggest that the English Revolution anticipated the
The old status quo began a retrenchment after the end of the main civil war in 1646, and more especially after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, but some gains endured in the long term. The democratic element introduced in the watermen's company in 1642, for example, survived, with vicissitudes, until 1827.[6][7]
The Marxist view also developed a concept of a “Revolution within the Revolution” (pursued by Hill, Brian Manning and others), which placed a greater deal of emphasis on the radical movements of the period (such as the agitator Levellers, mutineers in the New Model Army and the Diggers), who attempted to go further than Parliament in the aftermath of the Civil War.
There were, we may oversimplify, two revolutions in mid-seventeenth-century England. The one which succeeded established the sacred rights of property (abolition of feudal tenures, no arbitrary taxation), gave political power to the propertied (sovereignty of Parliament and common law, abolition of prerogative courts), and removed all impediments to the triumph of the ideology of the men of property – the protestant ethic. There was, however, another revolution that never happened, though from time to time it threatened. This might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have disestablished the state church, and rejected the Protestant ethic.[17]
Brian Manning claimed:
The old ruling class came back with new ideas and new outlooks which were attuned to economic growth and expansion and facilitated, in the long run, the development of a fully capitalist economy. It would all have been very different if Charles I had not been obliged to summon that Parliament to meet at Westminster on November 3rd, 1640.[18]
Criticism
The idea, while popular among Marxist historians, has been criticised by many historians of more liberal schools,[19] and of revisionist schools.[20]
The notion that the events of 1640 to 1660 constitute an English Revolution has been criticized by historians such as Austin Woolrych, who pointed out that
painstaking research in the county after county, in local record offices, and family archives, has revealed that the changes in the ownership of the real estate, and hence in the composition of the governing class, were nothing like as great as used to be thought.[21]
Woolrych argues that the notion that the period constitutes an "English Revolution" not only ignores the lack of significant social change contained within the period but also ignores the long-term trends of the early modern period which extend beyond this narrow time frame.
Neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels ever ignored the further development of the bourgeois state beyond that point, however, as is clear from their writings on the Industrial Revolution.[22]
Other uses
The term "English Revolution" is also used by non-Marxists in the
References
- ^ a b Trevelyan 1938, p. ?.
- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1920). "4: Terrorism". Terrorism and Communism – via Marxists Internet Archive.
In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. [...] The reason for this difference in estimates was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the people; while in the second it was almost "silent." [...] But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history is, nonetheless, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great Rebellion."
- ^ a b Engels, Friedrich (1892). "1892 English Edition Introduction". Socialism: Utopian and Scientific – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ House of Commons 1802a.
- ISBN 0-7139-9191-7.
- ^ a b O'Riordan, Christopher (1992). "Self-determination and the London Transport Workers in the Century of Revolution". Archived from the original on 26 October 2009.
- ^ doi:10.1111/j.1468-229X.1993.tb01577.x. Archived from the originalon 26 October 2009.
- ^ JSTOR 43697072– via JSTOR.
- ISBN 978-0-429-32555-7.
- ISBN 0-415-01167-1.
- ISBN 978-1-60846-067-0.
- ^ Callinicos, Alex (Summer 1989). "Bourgeois Revolutions and Historical Materialism". International Socialism. 2 (43): 113–171 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Davidson, Neil (May 2012). "Bourgeois Revolution and the US Civil War". International Socialist Review. No. 83. Center For Economic Research and Social Change.
- ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1850). "England's 17th Century Revolution: A Review of Francois Guizot's 1850 pamphlet Pourquoi la revolution d'Angleterre a-t-elle reussi?". Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Marx, Karl. "Index". The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Hill, Christopher (2002) [1940]. The English Revolution 1640 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Hill, Christopher (1991). The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution (New ed.). Penguin.
- ^ Manning, Brian (1984). "What Was the English Revolution". History Today. 34.
- UK Parliament. Archived from the originalon 13 June 2021.
- ISBN 978-1-315-18492-0.
- ^ Woolrych, Austin (2002). Britain in Revolution, 1625–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 794.
- ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich. "Marx and Engels: On the Industrial Revolution: Primitive Accumulation and The Condition of the Working Class". Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Arnold, Matthew. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (PDF). Blackmask.
Sources
- ISBN 9781594516603.
- "House of Commons Journal Volume 8: 8 May 1660". Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 8, 1660–1667. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office: 16–18. 1802a.
- ISBN 978-7240010488.