My review of English Civil War historiography shoots forward 30 years (I’m not doing it any particular order) with a 2006 special issue of History Workshop Journal (issue 61) on ‘Rethinking the English Revolution’. The introduction by Lyndal Roper and Laura Gowing briefly discusses the significance of terminology, noting that while Marxists assumed that there was a revolution in the 1640s, revisionists questioned that assumption and preferred to talk about the English Civil War. It would be naive to assume that “English Civil War” is any more neutral or objective than “English Revolution”, so I should write another post explaining why I habitually use the former. Whatever you call this period, I think Roper and Gowing are right that now is an exciting time to study it. The following essays, by Quentin Skinner, John Walter, Rachel Weil, and Ann Hughes, show how historians are breaking out of the Marxist vs revisionist dialectic by taking imaginative approaches which recognise diversity and complexity.
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An article that I’m working on involves getting on top of the debates over the causes and outbreak of the English Civil War. This is something that I avoided like the plague during my PhD, partly because it wasn’t vital to my study of the development of administrative systems, and partly because it was too big and complicated (and, let’s be honest, too scary - Conrad Russell wasn’t entirely joking when he called it “bloodsport”). Now all that’s changed and I’m getting stuck into the historiography. In a way I feel like I need to prove myself by taking a position on these issues rather than ignoring them, but it’s also necessary to make what would otherwise be some dull empirical data seem exciting and relevant. To help me get things straight in my mind, and also to increase the frequency of my posts, I’m trying to write some thoughts on some of the major works and post them here. Today I’m kicking off with John Morrill’s Revolt in the Provinces, the 1998 edition of his similarly titled 1976 work Revolt of the Provinces, with a new introduction and epilogue assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the book and how subsequent research has changed things.
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I’ll be giving a paper to the research seminar at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln, on Wednesday 14th November at 4pm. The paper is entitled “The Great Supply Chain of Being: Horses, People, and Networks of Authority in Civil War Essex”. I’m still not sure whether that’s a good title, but it’s a reaction against my “stuckist” phase when I hated puns and tried to make my paper titles as boring and descriptive as possible! The paper will be a fairly brief and accessible overview of some work in progress, which takes in military supply systems, authority, property rights, and the human/animal boundary. Abstract below, although the focus keeps changing as I rewrite it:
The right of humans to control and exploit the non-human was justified by the concept of the Great Chain of Being, which also reflected the hierarchical ideal of early-modern government and society. Much recent work has shown that this concept is inadequate as a model for analysing realities which were far more complex than the ideal. Grids and networks are now seen as better analogies for understanding what Michael Braddick and John Walter termed a “complex of hierarchies”. As King and Parliament raised armies, created new administrative structures, and sought legitimation, these hierarchies multiplied and the relationships between them became even more complex.
Horses were a vital resource for armies and economies, leading to conflicts over ownership. These conflicts can not simply be seen in terms of binary oppositions between military and civilian, or local and central. There were many different ways in which soldiers, administrators, and civilians negotiated power and property rights. Material contributions to the war effort ranged from voluntary contributions to requisitioning through military force. Even when arbitrary force was used, there was scope for choice and agency in strategies for seeking redress. Ultimately forced requisitioning proved to be inefficient and counter-productive. Parliament found that the consent and co-operation of property owners was vital. The war could only be won by resolving conflicts of interest and maintaining enough consensus for long enough to overcome the royalists.
While isolated from the main theatres of military operations, the county of Essex was a major contributor of horses, men, and money to the parliamentarian war effort. This was not simply determined by the dominance of pro-parliament puritans in county government. Authority still had to be negotiated both within and outside the county. This paper will explore experiences of war in Essex in 1642-45, demonstrating the complexity of networks of power, and how conflicts could arise within them and be resolved. The pressures of war revealed that even the distinction between man and beast was not as clear as the chain of being might suggest.
The new edition of the Military History Carnival is now up at American Presidents Blog. Thanks to Jennie for all her hard work.
The next edition will be at Armchair General on September 16th. You can email submissions to $jim@$armchairgeneral.com$ (minus the $) or use our carnival submission form.
I’m also pleased to say that I’ve got enough hosts lined up for the rest of the year, but there will be plenty of opportunities to host next year.
Investigations of a Dog is back after some database trouble - my hosting company had to install a critical update for cpanel and it killed MySQL on all their servers!
The next Military History Carnival will be at American Presidents Blog on 16th August. That’s this Thursday, but there’s still time to submit posts on any aspect of wars and armed forces in any period up to the end of the 20th century. E-mail submissions to £coppertop67£@£hotmail.com£ (without the GBP£ signs) or use the submission form.
I also have to point out a couple of new military history blogs. Clio and Me is the blog of Mark R. Stoneman whose main research interest is war and society in modern Germany. Osprey Publishing Blog is the official blog of Osprey Publishing but unlike some publishers’ blogs it includes a lot more than press releases. The group of bloggers/employees is refreshingly gender balanced, and they are taking a strong interest in the military history blogosphere.
The word “Ironsides” is variously associated with Oliver Cromwell, his cavalry regiment, and even English Civil War cavalry in general. The consensus now seems to be that “Old Ironsides” was originally a nickname of Cromwell himself (I’m not sure why he was called that or when it started). It seems likely that “Ironsides” later spread to his regiment, then to all the cavalry under his command as Lieutenant-General of horse, then to parliamentarian cavalry in general, then to civil war cavalry in general. For example, “Ironsides” was used as the title of John Tincey’s book about civil war cavalry.
There was another folk etymology which suggested that Cromwell’s cavalry were known as “Ironsides” because they wore heavy armour. In the classic Cromwell’s Army, C. H. Firth took down T. S. Baldock for repeating the myth that Cromwell’s cavalry were heavily armoured cuirassiers in contrast to Prince Rupert’s supposedly unarmoured light cavalry. As Firth says, the vast majority of cavalry on both sides during the First Civil War were equipped as arquebusiers, and no new research in the last hundred years or so has changed that. I had assumed that the myth belonged to the 19th century but today I discovered that it was much older.
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The 55th History Carnival is now up at Civil War Memory, and as you’d expect it’s full of fascinating links.
The 5th Military History Carnival will be at American Presidents Blog on 16th August. E-mail submissions to £coppertop67£@£hotmail.com£ (without the GBP£ signs) or use the submission form. Remember the definition of “military” is very broad, so anything that’s somehow related to wars and armed forces has a chance of getting in.
I have hosts for September and October, but if anyone is interested in hosting the MHC in November or afterwards, please get in touch.
