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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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?

Killing royalty always deserves our thanks.

> 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...

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