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Comment by jules | Hacker News Reader

The UK does not have that shared French Revolution tradition at all, and neither do a large number of European countries that are still monarchies. Instead of a violent French Revolution, the UK had a nonviolent change of power from royalty to the people. Instead of a civil war over slavery, the UK had a peaceful transition where the state bought the slaves from the slave owners. This referendum fits in a great tradition of nonviolent change.

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Just to expand on this, because it isn't often mentioned in contrast to how awful colonial England was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

The UK abolished slavery, and even fought commonwealth territories that resisted. Maybe if parts of the US had still been in the commonwealth, slavery would have ended sooner there too.

It's even less mentioned that the French abolished slavery about 40 years before that.

Let's be honest, it is actually the brutality of the French revolution which forced the British royalty to hand over power to the people. And before doing these "peaceful" transitions, all neighbouring countries tried to smother the French with war in order to preserve the priviledges of the remaining monarchies.

You kinda throwing the thousand years of gradual maturing of democracy in UK out of the window with that common. The "royalty" didn't suddenly give power to the people after seing horrors of French revolution; it happened over ages of internal conflicts and civil wars.

So you are implying that a add-hoc democracy like in the cold war country's or post-war Germany, is not a real democracy? Cause it had no time in the barrel, going to the irish-famine, the scottish conquering s, the Falkland wars, the opium-wars. Dear god, what uncivilized undemocratic huns we outsiders are. And nothing off value got lost.

No. Why would anyone think so?

Hrm, England had its own bloody Civil War, and if that wasn't enough there was also the Glorious Revolution. These were the 2 events that ultimately gave political power to the parliament.

If you look at the way Western Countries transitioned from one form of govt. to another its seems to have been very bloody. Glorious Revolution, French Revolution, American Revolution, German Revolutions, Russian Revolution etc.

Actually the Glorious Revolution had such relatively few deaths it is also known as the Bloodless Revolution.

> nonviolent change of power from royalty to the people

So regicide doesn't count as violence? Also, as mentioned down-thread, we had a pretty bloody civil war here, which replaced the monarchy with a 'Lord Protector' which ultimately amounted to the same thing by another name and so we decided the monarchy wasn't that bad, as long as parliament kept the worst excesses in check.

What on earth are you talking about? Not only did the UK have the 'French Revolution tradition', it's arguable that they got there first. I take it you're not that familiar with the English Civil War...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

Not that England/Britain didn't have their own bloody, violent civil wars along the way to get there. The English were ahead of the curve by just over a hundred years, as far as executing their king and instituting a military dictatorship goes.

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