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@ VOTD
True. However they did take dogma and hard-line purity to a point beyond most of the other protestant and catholic faiths. Again, I think it is that fact which led to Cromwell shutting down parliament, and eventually the return to a more moderate monarchy after his death.
It is a fact that faiths like the Quakers, and Roger WIlliams, sprang from the same stock, along with some of the first calls for separation of church and state. But in a time when Britain had started to put the religious wars of the previous century behind it, the Puritans were a throwback, both in Europe, and in the U.S.
Again, it got to the point where their rule had to be shut down by the king because they were exiling or executing anyone who presumed to believe anything different.
Certainly that faith produced a culture which, 100 years later, was in the front line of opposing slavery and unfair taxation, but by that time their negative power was also tempered.
(edit)
I think the whole situation was made worse by the fact that catholicism was a mistrusted and suppressed minority because of their very real political threat. It wasn't just religious.
And to add to what you said, I don't think the Puritans were entirely a negative force either. Without their hard line approach it is hard to say if the battle against abolutism would have been won.
Certainly that faith produced a culture which, 100 years later, was in the front line of opposing slavery and unfair taxation, but by that time their negative power was also tempered.
Those contraditictions between negative and positive power contiuned for a while. Wilberforce, the guy who led the fight to abolish the British Slave Trade, was later a big booster of sending missionaries to India(from which they had been banned by the colonial authorities), in order to convert the "mean, licentious and cruel" Hindus. He was finally successful in 1813, though my understanding is that this change in policy did not work out so well for British interests.
And to add to what you said, I don't think the Puritans were entirely a negative force either. Without their hard line approach it is hard to say if the battle against abolutism would have been won.
I unfortntately no longer own a copy of Barrington Moore jr.'s Social Origins Of Dictatorship And Democracy, but in it he makes the point that the supposed English genius for gradualism and compromise in politics was given a pretty strong shot in the arm by the fact that they had the guts to execute a king way back at the beginning. After that, English kings understood all too clearly what their limitations were.
As I recall, Moore's overall thesis is that, the longer a country forestalls having its violent revolution, the bloodier that revolution will be.
link
If a post-Cromwellian financier oligarchy did support religious edicts, they were certainly cherry picking which ones to uphold. Physical slavery fell out of favour among the rich and powerful in favour of debt peonage and debt slavery.
But they totally ignored the Judeo-Christian biblical edict to avoid perpetrating usury and enslaving whole nations at a time with compounding interest on debts which are typically acquired by their bought and paid-for warmongers in cosmetic government power.
In glorious imperial centuries past, money chased power. Today the the complete opposite is true.
14 weeks and no UI-EI-O! Oh?
Hmm... someone probably should have let Wat Tyler know how free and easy everything really was before he went and got himself chopped to pieces.
Ever wonder why?
What does that have to do with debt slavery being more cost efficient than its previous version of physical ownership? You are sadly mistaken if you think British blue bloods were anywhere close to being champions of the people and of freedom. They were lustful, appallingly greedy, inbred and half of them insane, megalomaniacal tyrants. And those were their good points. They were right bloody bastards most of them and Cromwell far more bloodthirsty than any Spanish inquisition. British royals would have made the Nazis blush with their mass murdering ways over the centuries.
I've lost count of the fallacious arguments you've tried to pawn-off on us. Google this.
I didn't say the monarchs were champions, only that Charles II was more reformist than Cromwell; it is a fact that he ended theocratic rule of the Massachussetts colony. And he re-opened the theatres and brought back Christmas.
As for this other point you keep bringing up, I am stymied. I presume you are talking about the imaginary distiction between Royal debt and National debt. Because in practical terms, there is no distinction.
I read your link at #34, and noted, among some other curious points, the author's claim that England's economy was thriving and stable until Cromwell came along.
That might come as news to anyone familiar with Richard I, Richard II, or Henry VIII, all of whom, to varying degrees practically bankrupted the treasury, and imposed crushing taxes - and Elizabeth, who brought the country back from the brink.
Here's my problem; the page ends at the point where Cromwell finds financiers for his war against "the Tudors" (the Stuarts, actually).
I am guessing the establishment of the Bank of England in the 1690s, which changed government financing, holds some significance for you, though I can only guess as to why. Fact is, that event took place several monarchs, several wars, and a parliamentary coup after Cromwell was dead, dug out of the ground, and cut to pieces.
There is no connection that I am aware of, nor any legitimate claim of a connection that I can find.
As a person of some English heritage I can say verily that he knows little of that which he writes. He's not interested in the truth only clobbering us with disconnected factoids and pro imperialist blather. Ignore him.
I find this a rather selective history of the Puritan influence. After a few generations of the holy lifestyle in the New World they virtually wiped out the native population. The good Puritan leaders of Boston also ethnically cleansed my Acadian ancestors and resettled the Acadian homeland with 10,000 Protestant Planters. In a truly Canadian irony two of our most right wing PM's descended from Planter stock. They both claimed to be devout Christians. Borden called himself an Anglican. His Great Grandfather came to settle on stolen land in the Acadian heartland of Grand Pre. R.B. Bennett was another good Christian man whose ancestors arrived in Canada to take over stolen land. He was a Methodist and than a United Church member according to Wikki.
The foundations of America and Canada are built on religious and racial based genocide.
http://www.muiniskw.org/pgHistory2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Borden
http://rabble.ca/comment/reply/92797/1346220?quote=1#comment-form
Actually Fidel, I am trying to say I give up, since you haven't actually put anything on the table to discuss - well, other than historians who claim that serfs had it easy in the late middle ages, the finances were just fine under psychopaths like Henry and Richard, and who use the bible as a primary source, and who draw attention to myths about the Jews for no reason other that to say we shouldn't pay attention to them.
And to imply that the Catholic Church was a force against corruption is kind of odd. I think it suggests that those who were compelled to be in the money business in the middle ages had far more power and influence than they actually did (excepting the Templars, and we know what happened to them). In reality the church was the biggest player in Europe when it came to power and corruption, and controlling the playing field.
As for any "financial oligarchy", you haven't backed any of that up. Now I know that the roundheads, and Cromwell personally had supporters. I also know that some of those supporters received land and titles. But as for being some kind of power behind the protector's chair, and one which mysteriously persisted, I am stumped.
When I try a search like "who financed Oliver Cromwell" well... you can see how I am at a loss at how to proceed. Not casting any blame on you, but if anything you say is based on serious scholarship I wouldn't mind seeing it so I can have something to respond to.
That, or move on to something else.
@ kropotkin
To be fair, it is an attempt to balance my portrayal of them, which focused on the negative.
But yes, any of the people in the colony who favoured peaceful co-existence and respect - like Roger Williams - were driven out.
Though as someone had ancestors there from the very start, I'd say judge Borden and Bennett based on the actions of Borden and Bennett, not their ancestors.
Kropotkin wrote:
I find this a rather selective history of the Puritan influence. After a few generations of the holy lifestyle in the New World they virtually wiped out the native population. The good Puritan leaders of Boston also ethnically cleansed my Acadian ancestors and resettled the Acadian homeland with 10,000 Protestant Planters. In a truly Canadian irony two of our most right wing PM's descended from Planter stock. They both claimed to be devout Christians. Borden called himself an Anglican.
Were Borden's ancestors also Anglican? If so, I don't know if they qualify as Puritan in the generally accepted sense of the word. Were Puritans supportive of the Acadian cleansing and the native genocide any moreso than other protestant groups in the colonies?
And as Smith pointed out, I was basically just supplementing his negative portrayal of Puritanism(and my points were largely related to theology, not politics). Certainly, the Puritans were up to their neck in imperialism. As was almost every other major faith at the time, including the Roman Catholicism of the Acadians.
Yup the Puritans are and always have been good christians. The salt of the earth. Sorry for thinking negative thoughts about one of the truly progressive forces in North American history.
But really are you saying the leadership of Boston in the late 18th century was not Puritan. I stand by what I said; "The good Puritan leaders of Boston also ethnically cleansed my Acadian ancestors and resettled the Acadian homeland with 10,000 Protestant Planters."
Note the different adjectives for Boston elite and Planters. Anything else you would like to pick nits over.
I judged both those PM's by their own actions. The man who imposed conscription during WW! and the asshole they named the Bennett Buggy after during the depression years. They were right wing jerks just like their ancestors who stole the land from the Acadians. I believe it is part and parcel of their religious upbringing and traditions. Harper is a modern day version of those two other Conservative PM's.