the thirty years war

it has... something of a protestant bias. but not that extent by any means!

it has a much stronger "pro-peace" and "anti-prolonging this useless war" bias

she tends to have very kind words for ferdinand

everyone has kind words for ferdinand

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5uTl8P_QI5c/TBf6QsgTzUI/AAAAAAAAH0w/9BSzhIjty3U/s400/ferdinand2.jpg

except franco

FWIW, a very Catholic historian friend of mine thinks the book has an enormous pro-Protestant bias -- "and then the noble Protestants attacked and seized Prague, but the cowardly, treacherous Catholics got it back" etc.

the Catholics are the bad guys in that war, though, with their popery and wanting to bring everyone under the Habsburg yoke. Nearly all the others are also the bad guys, though. I love how the Lutherans revolt against the strictures of popery, and then start laying into other types of Protestant for not following their particular line.

I think in one of CVW's books about the English/Irish/Scottish civil wars she talks about the Marquis of Montrose's army as a wonderful example to the world, because it contained people of all kinds of different faith. One of the things that is always striking about the 17th century is how long it takes people to register that society might just work better for everyone if you just let people follow whatever religion they like.

she tends to have very kind words for ferdinand

in general doesn't CVW tend to have kind words for everyone? She keeps falling over herself to defend that drunken waster John of Saxony, and even feels a little bit sorry for poor Tilly after his soldiers have massacared 30,000 people at Magdeburg.

CVW's tendency to sympathise with everyone is even more notable in her brilliant books "The King's Peace" and "The King's War", about the wars in England/Ireand/Scotland in the mid 17th century

oh no, missing full stop.

its true! shes likes everyone, mostly

she would vote for g2a in this poll

The best bit in that book is the description of Johann Georg of Saxony having dinner, so I will have to vote for him.

John George, who scorned foreign delicacies, had been known to sit at table gorging homely foods and swilling native beer for seven hours on end, his sole approach at conversation to box his dwarf's ears, or pour the dreges of a tankard over a servant's head as a signal for more. He was not a confirmed drunkard; his brain when he was sober was perfectly clear, and he drank through habit and good fellowship rather than weakness. But he drank too much and too often. Later on it became the fashion to say that whenever he made an inept political decision that he had been far gone at the time, and the dispatches of one ambassador at least are punctuated with such remarks as, 'He began to be somewhat heated with wine', and 'He seemed to me to be very drunk'. It made diplomacy difficult.

you only really need the first sentence there to see what a stand-up fellow he was.

I seem to remember visiting Wallenstein's house when I was in Prague. Only they call him Waldstein there.

I can't really even think about this subject w/o thinking of Jacques Callot's famous series of etchings, Les Grandes Misères de la guerre.

La bataille

http://images.clevelandart.org/prd1/ump.secure_uma?surl=1823977022ZZSFTVBEJHIW&version=4&enc=E553DA32447E0C1F83D8A3AF4014CD5B&f=1923.277.3.jpg

Pillaging

http://images.clevelandart.org/prd1/ump.secure_uma?surl=1823977022ZZSFTVBEJHIW&version=4&enc=2730541D94341051FDF866F316FD220D&f=1923.277.5.jpg

The Hanging

http://images.clevelandart.org/prd1/ump.secure_uma?surl=1823977022ZZSFTVBEJHIW&version=4&enc=85212A230200210F020AE76034486D39&f=1923.277.10.jpg

Pillaging and burning a village

http://images.clevelandart.org/prd1/ump.secure_uma?surl=1823977022ZZSFTVBEJHIW&version=4&enc=688E81C4B32DF2D79048920E48784400&f=1923.277.6.jpg

reminds me of Goya, he had presumably seen these...

the great cover to the NYRB edition has a detail from "the hanging"

reminds me of Goya, he had presumably seen these...

He owned a copy of these and they are widely cited as an influence on his Los Desastres de la Guerra.

re why no revolution in England.
I always thought it was agreed that a primary reason for the absence of a revolution in England (and specifically in the 19th century) was because of the rise and pervasiveness of the Methodist Church amongst the English working-classes.
ie the Methodist Church siphoning off the energies of a large proportion of the most of intelligent and outspoken members of the English working-class. It being particularly strong in the industrial areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire as well as with the rural poor in the West Country.
After all its often said that the rise of socialism in England was based more on Methodism than Marx.

to be honest, there weren't really revolutions in that many places... maybe the focus should be on why there were revolutions in places rather than the other way around.

Found the question a bit odd in a thread about a c17th war - seems like a c19th question, & idea of revolution. But did anyone read the recent Steve Pincus book that claims 1688, rather than the French, is the first modern revolution?

if methodism is being cited as a reason, the fact of america as "britain west" must also be: emigration to these particular colonies -- many settlements were explicitly set up with a religious-political basis -- filtered off generations of more radical protestant activism, working but especially middle class -- it's "where you went" if you felt the restoration/glorious revolution had turned the wrong way; it;s where you went if you didn't want kings up in your business (they were much further away etc

thus when methodism arose, it wasn't having to compete with a whole slew of more militant protestant-political activism: i;d also argue that the long century of torpid corruption essentually had to manage much less prickly protest "at home" because people likely to be pissed off had somewhere to travel to -- and overseas their energies were otherwise engaged, in survival, in self-establishment etc. And ultimately, come 1760 or so, in rebellion.

the first modern revolution is 1640-41: it was about money

LET US GET BACK TO THE 30 YEARS WAR.

What is your favorite battle in the war?

OK IN A MINUTE

40/41: money kicks it off, but the actual revolutionary-looking stuff 8 or so years later - execute the king in a (pretend) court, set up a commonwealth - had long ceased to be about that imo (all mixed up in it: religion; constitution; local beefs in the shires; charles I being a dick).

agree on Britain west & radicalism, tho' also Anglican church maybe a factor in non-revolution - latitude tradition means its a well-padded institution, can soak up, deaden some radical energies (when does Methodism split?)

OK 30YW

I started the Wedgwood book. She's so readable! I forgot how good she is at sweeping state-of-play summaries.

I can't believe we have to wait ELEVEN MONTHS to find out who wins this.

Would read a 400pp CV Wedgwood summary of A Song of Ice and Fire.

ilx technology does not allow polls that close in 30 years

:[

But did anyone read the recent Steve Pincus book that claims 1688, rather than the French, is the first modern revolution?

I think Thatcher made a very similar statement when the French were celebrating the bicentennaire of their revolution in 1989.

If this is the Thatch quote:

Human rights did not begin with the French Revolution; they stem from a mixture of Judaism and Christianity. We had 1688, our quiet revolution, where Parliament exerted its will over the King. It was not the sort of Revolution that France’s was. ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’ — they forgot obligations and duties I think. And then of course the fraternity went missing for a long time.

I think that's just a v trad Whig view - afaict Pincus is making some more challopsy claims (it's a very bloody revolution seems to be the big one), tho' it does still look like a whiggish kick against those Dutch invasion, dynastic politics, aristo coup views of 1688 that have been strong over the last 10-20 years. Maybe I'll read it.

Isn't 1688 the triumph of the Whigs, though?

since my view of the english revolution is that it began with the lollards and still isn't completed, i can simultaneously out-bloody and out-whig allcomers

As a political term, Tory entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–81. The Whigs (initially an insult: 'whiggamore,' [a term meaning "cattle driver" used to describe western Scots who came to Leith for corn]) were those who supported the exclusion of James, the Duke of York from the succession to thrones of Scotland and England & Ireland (the 'Petitioners'), and the Tories (also an insult, derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí — outlaw, robber, from the Irish word tóir, meaning 'pursuit', since outlaws were "pursued men") were those who opposed the Exclusion Bill (the Abhorrers).

630 year old slow burn revolution - how British!

I've heard the derivations many times and of course there evolves something relatively coherent which we can call Whiggery, but W&M and then Anne were forced to rely rather extensively on the Junto Whigs and it was their aversion to a Catholic on the throne that led to 1688.

having a similar discussion on another board about a month ago: an actual real professional historian of the period said that pretty much everyone from 1690-1810 considered themselves some sort of whig: that actually existing politics was internal to whiggery

interesting also that the two main factions in a nascent global empire devise lasting insult-names for one another via terms for somewhat lowly inhabitants in two of the earliest nations to be swallowed up in said empire

xps

yes, but over the last 20 years this kind of reading has pushed forward (in some diff forms) & it tends to undermine what the Whigs have been taken to represent (trade, constitutional, bourgeois, parliamentary, 'popular' etc etc).

pretty much everyone from 1690-1810 considered themselves some sort of whig

this is horrible. Rockingham Whigs vs Chatham whigs, totally lost up that end of the century.

Part of the problem is that Tories tend to be shadowed by Jacobitism through to the middle of the 18th (not helped by eg Bolingbroke running off to St Germain, many of them had a side bet on Jamess II/III etc) - and Whigs are confusingly factional all on their own.

I kind of think that position is making-work-for-historians BS. Sure, I can see wanting to link the Anglo-Dutch wars and the western, bourgeois, Protestant, commercial rivalries of the Netherlands and Britain but Mary was a Stuart (and unlike Monmouth, of direct, legitimate birth), the country was steadfastly opposed to a Catholic, they'd just had a murderous civil war and subsequent military tyranny, and James was fucking idiot... Otherwise William wouldn't have been able to seize the throne and speaking of which, he and his wife were co-rulers. The only time in English history where there is a bi-partite sovereign.

Tories tend to be shadowed by Jacobitism

Thankfully James and brood were fools in the pay of the much-loved-in-Britain monarch of France. I think even Marlborough kept a correspondance w/James, though, for a while at least.

i'm a bit lost in all the xposts: what's horrible, that position i posted? and what's "making-work-for-historians BS"?

i think he was making a kind of Very Serious People argument about the "art of the possible" -- also to be fair, i added those dates, i can't now recall exactly when he was referring to, it may not have been as sweeping, though i think it reached into the 19th century

i don't really know enough abt 18th century parliamentary politics to defend or attack his position

what's "making-work-for-historians BS"?

Revisionist dutch-invasion position.

what's horrible, that position i posted

Sorry Mark, the 'horrible' was not a 'WRONG' just a shudder of horror/recognition from me, remembering old attempts to follow 18th century politics and realising everyone was a whig and I couldn't keep it all straight.

it was YES if anything

Mary was a Stuart (and unlike Monmouth, of direct, legitimate birth)

But Mary was James's daughter. She shouldn't be on the throne if her dad's alive and hasn't explicitly abdicated. Legitimising the revolution is trickier and more contentious than it at first seems, see for instance Edmund Bohun.

the country was steadfastly opposed to a Catholic

they'd just had a murderous civil war and subsequent military tyranny

and James was fucking idiot

Basically I don't think Dutch invasion is a BS position, but it's a bit narrow: it's a useful corrective to triumphal whiggism, and I think makes one look more carefully at England in 88, but it's wilfully blind to the successes of a trade-modernising interest in England.

And a lot of people would rather have the sitting king, catholic or no, than any kind of upset

one thing I have read about the "Glorious" "Revolution" is that the elite wanted rid of James but were very hostile to the idea that Kings could formally be got rid of - the last thing they wanted was to start the idea that Britain had an elective monarchy or one where the king could be removed for bad behaviour. So they seized on the idea that actually James had abdicated and so left the throne vacant for King Williamandmary.

yeah, it's a bit of a mess: the elite were divided, I think, but the sort-of-abdication justification (which has to cover James's son James too, forgot about him yesterday) is a good-enough theoretical fudge for the whole business - it just has not look like rule by conquest, or election, or a rebellion. It's p incoherent really, especially given the conditions William II puts on taking the throne.