English Commonwealth lives on?
- Thread starter mrsandman
- Start date
I was just thinking about this on the subway. I think you really need two PoDs for this to work. One is the death of Charles II as he tries to flee England, most likely he is captured, but executed in secret, and his capture is never shared. He simply disappears. The other PoD is Oliver Cromwell's son Oliver surviving typhiod. By most accounts he was his father's favourite and was much more like his father than Richard Cromwell, whose weak leadership helped doom the Commonwealth.
If these two things change, I expect we can see the establishment of a more permanent republic, especially once industrialization begins and a powerful merchant class becomes more important.
How do you think this would change the development of Europe and English colonies in the New World?
Isn't it a little paradoxical to set a republic on a steady course by in effect establishing a dynasty of Protectors? That might be an excellent way to get a sound, competitive nation-state in the context of Early Modern Europe, but it looks an awful lot like establishing a monarchy by another name!
It would still be "The Commonwealth" of course and not "The Kingdom." So, challenge satisfied!
But if we extend the challenge to stipulate that "The Commonwealth" should in fact be something like an actual republic, then at some point it is necessary to spread power around, and wean it off its dependency on strong Cromwells! Perhaps it is too much to dispense with Oliver Sr. any time much sooner than his natural death OTL, but perhaps instead of having a better Cromwell around, the leading citizens should resolve the crisis of his death by working out a more distributed institution, thus sidestepping the appeal of bringing back the King, if they can do it. Or, Cromwell dies earlier and they have to sink or swim on a more collegial basis. Or, Cromwell is pushed aside (probably into an early grave) by a movement that by its nature has to establish more republican institutions?
No matter how it happens--English republicanism of the Commonwealth period was, I suppose, a disturbing factor for the crowned heads of Europe to contemplate; they must have been much relieved when England went back to what they regarded as normal; I would guess this was a significant factor in the appeal of Restoration in England, that it would normalize their relations with most of the powerful (and weak, for that matter) nations of Europe. Therefore, if the English decide not to take that option, I suppose it is a declaration of continued radical subversiveness that will definitely color their relations. The flip side is, they might inspire other successful anti-monarchial revolutions and gain ideological allies that way.
It would help me if I had a more concrete knowledge of just why bringing back Charles II Stuart seemed like a good idea to a solid majority in Parliament at the time! I guess it went beyond the matter of normalizing foreign relations; there was also the domestic matter to consider that the logic of republicanism can lead to radical democracy--indeed this tendency had gone full-blown during the Civil War and it was Cromwell himself who reined in a lot of the more radical movements. Having a monarch interposed a different, non-democratic principle of the nature of government and thus gave the better-off in general a leg to stand high on and look down on the mob from, grounds to deny their annoying petitions just because they happened to outnumber the aristocrats! This was of course the general principle on which Europe was governed. Eventually the British would take pride in balancing the dangerous tendencies of both democracy and monarchy by combining them in the "British constitution" which also included the aristocracy, separate from both commons and King, as a vital mediating factor and third leg of the tripod. For the English to soldier on with no monarch would have meant coming up with different answers to the dilemmas posed by a class society that purports to exist on a democratic basis; perhaps it would have been necessary to further strengthen the powers and role of the Church, Puritan style thus coming in danger of theocracy, or perhaps England would have grown steadily more populist and radical--this seems unlikely to work to me in an early capitalist setting. It would be pretty amazing, and unlikely, for them to anticipate the forms whereby the USA dealt with the conundrum!
Bringing in some king or other does seem like a straightforward solution, from an elite point of view anyway. Why it had to be a Stuart--I'd have to know more about the details of the actual debate at the time I guess, and how Charles responded to the overtures and what promises he agreed to make...
Cook
Banned
I was going to raise this issue myself. My understanding of it was that the Republic ended with the founding of the Protectorate and the investiture of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth in December 1653.
Had Cromwell’s son Oliver survived I can easily see the Protectorate continuing but progressively taking on more of the trappings of a Monarchy, (And it had plenty of them under Cromwell and Queen Dick) and ultimately the Lord Protector being considered no different from the Tsar or Kaiser.
Isn't it a little paradoxical to set a republic on a steady course by in effect establishing a dynasty of Protectors? That might be an excellent way to get a sound, competitive nation-state in the context of Early Modern Europe, but it looks an awful lot like establishing a monarchy by another name!
It would still be "The Commonwealth" of course and not "The Kingdom." So, challenge satisfied!
But if we extend the challenge to stipulate that "The Commonwealth" should in fact be something like an actual republic, then at some point it is necessary to spread power around, and wean it off its dependency on strong Cromwells! Perhaps it is too much to dispense with Oliver Sr. any time much sooner than his natural death OTL, but perhaps instead of having a better Cromwell around, the leading citizens should resolve the crisis of his death by working out a more distributed institution, thus sidestepping the appeal of bringing back the King, if they can do it. Or, Cromwell dies earlier and they have to sink or swim on a more collegial basis. Or, Cromwell is pushed aside (probably into an early grave) by a movement that by its nature has to establish more republican institutions?
Well, what I'd say is that something resembling modern democracy really didn't arise until the French Revolution, and look how that turned out. I don't think as you say, that the nation's leadership could have initially come together to create a "more distributed" leadership. They needed a period of strngman rule to solidify the new political order.
I think that the Commonwealth of England, if established under the tutelage of the Cromwells, would have been much more stable in its early years, allowing time for the soft monarchists who brought Charles II back to fade. The Cromwells, unlike the former monarchy, would lack both religious and legal legitimacy as the permanent leaders of England. This would likely lead, in the medium term, to a system similar in some ways to that of the Italian merchant republics, with a few powerful families competing for the position of ruler, while the merchant class dominates the day-to-day running of the country.
I'm guessing that English republicanism, especially if it had remained a military dictatorship under the Cromwells, would have given an even worse name to republicanism. England likely would have become isolated diplomatically and economically, at least initially. This would have forced England to do a few things:
A) Support foreign nations, especially other republics, against England's fiercest enemies of Spain and France. A Anglo-Dutch alliance could be conceivable.
B) Rapidly expand their colonial possessions, to create markets for their economy and bring in goods from outside England.
C) Reform the economy to be more efficient.
With those actions, isolation and conflict might have actually spurred innovation and growth in England.
However, the danger remains that England would experience collapse. A foreign army would be unlikely to march to London, but an invasion of Ireland, and a major Scottish revolt could have splintered England itself. England might, if invaded, see the creation of an absolute monarchy with a foreign king, as opposed to the relative mildness of Charles II.
I could see the Church becoming stronger easily. Another thing I could see however, would be the three-legged stool of the republic; the landowners, the merchants, and the commoners. The commoners would retain most of their power through the right to revolt, the landowners would be able to vote and control Parliament, and the merchants would hold the purse strings. The military could easily be another power center, seeing as it was vital in maintaining Cromwell's rule. A militaristic republican Puritan England would make for some crazy butterflies, and an interesting TL..
MAlexMatt
Banned
How about following the Roman path? The aristocrats keep control of the government in their own circles initially, but popular discontent stays under the surface until it erupts a few times, eventually forcing open the government with the aristocrats retaining some kind of secondary role (perhaps, still following the Romans, the House of Lords retains a lot of important judiciary functions).
I've always been of the opinion that England was the Rome That Never Got To Be, with America being a pale shadow of What Might Have Been. Trying to force the Commonwealth along the path the early Roman Republic took would both save the Common Wealth and open the ATL in question to a true New Rome.
I've always been of the opinion that England was the Rome That Never Got To Be, with America being a pale shadow of What Might Have Been. Trying to force the Commonwealth along the path the early Roman Republic took would both save the Common Wealth and open the ATL in question to a true New Rome.