War of the Three Kingdoms or English Revolution?

A rather surprising article from Ronan Bennett in the Guardian. Bennett is both someone who possesses a Phd in the history of the mid-seventeenth century (“Enforcing the Law in Revolutionary England: Yorkshire, c.1640-1660”) and a supporter of Gerry Adams, who often comments on his experience as a prisoner in Long Kesh (see here, here, and here for examples) though somehow his keen historical mind neglects to mention that he was in the Offical and not the Provisional IRA cages. Naturally, anything he says relevant to the events of the period that saw the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a British Republic, religious war in Ireland and the Cromwellite invasion and land settlement will be of interest. See his review of Micheál Ó Siochrú’s recent study of Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland for example.

All of which makes his article from today’s Guardian all the more strange. The article is an analysis of Channel Four’s new series The Devil’s Whore, and a comment on the absence of this period in British popular memory. Bennett notes

Charles Stuart was beheaded shortly before 2pm on Tuesday, January 30 1649. A week later, the parliament voted to abolish the House of Lords, and the following day it decided that, having done away with the monarch, it might as well dispense with the institution of monarchy itself. The necessary legislation was enacted within a month and England became officially a republic. The unthinkable had happened: it was, in a phrase from the time and much used since, “the world turned upside down”.

Bennett is impresed with the programme.

But The Devil’s Whore has a great deal to commend it, in particular Flannery’s focus on the radical spirits who flourished as the old order faltered, before they were themselves crushed as the new regime under Cromwell turned against the very militancy that had propelled it to power. It would have been easier – and probably more crowd-pleasing – to have retold the already familiar story of cavaliers and roundheads, avoiding politics for a dashing romp among the young blades and buxom lasses of merry old England. Instead, Flannery does us all a great service in reminding us of a revolutionary past of which the English often seem embarrassed, ignorant or in denial.

All of which seems fair enough, although the programme hasn’t been on yet so we’ll have to take his word for it on the quality for now. Why then am I writing this piece? For three decades now, since J.G.A. Pocock’s article British History: A Plea for a New Subject (1974 and reprinted in his The Discovery of Islands from 2005), the early modern history of the Atlantic Archipelago/British Isles/these islands has undergone great change. Pocock called for a new type of history, Three Kingdoms history, which would no longer be the history of England with stray references to events elsewhere but an integrated history of both islands.

Nowhere has this call been better answered than in the history of what used to be known as the English Revolution or Civil War, and which has now become – especially among Irish historians – The Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Events in Ireland and especially Scotland were absolutely crucial to the struggle between the monarch and Westminster, and to some extent shaped them, and it is impossible to write the history of this period as simply a history of England any longer – and in fact, some historians are replacing the term Three Kingdoms with four nations instead lest the Welsh feel discriminated against (much to the jealousy of Cornish nationalists no doubt). Although Bennett’s article does question why there is no reference to Scotland during what he calls the civil wars, he fails to mention Ireland. Which for someone with his background is, frankly, bizarre. Perhaps his message that English people needed to reclaim their radical heritage was more important to him in this piece than voicing any Irish nationalist sense of exclusion and grievance, unlike in his review of Ó Siochrú’s book.

The article serves as a reminder, then, of the political uses of history, and the faddish nature of it. Given that over the last few days, we have been discussing politics and the writing of history here and here it is refreshing to see that even the ancient grievances that motivate much of our hatreds and fuel a great deal of our rhetoric can be set aside in the interest of other axes to grind. But of course, history is an objective profession. Honest.

For what it’s worth, I think that basically the period in question was at heart an English Revolution, albeit influenced by events outside England. So in that sense, I find myself agreeing with Bennett. Can’t say that happens a great deal. I also plan to watch The Devil’s Whore – with that title, how could one not?