Xss3 7 days ago

It wasn't taught to me at all here in the UK.

3
notahacker 7 days ago

I did learn it, but at A-level (i.e an elective course after many kids had left school altogether)

tbf the English Civil War is, like most Civil Wars, pretty darned complicated in the motivations and actions of the key players, and dumbing it down gives lessons which are near, fit very nicely into modern tropes and are also almost entirely wrong in the messages they convey.

vondur 7 days ago

Yes, I was listening to the revolutions podcast which covers it in great detail. It's certainly messy to follow, but not as bad as the French Revolution.

notahacker 7 days ago

I'm less familiar with the French Revolution. But the English Civil War might actually be worse: there are two diametrically opposed dumbed down narratives ("Parliament, represented by rugged common folk, fought an arrogant king and nobility for the right to democracy and religious liberty" vs "Puritan extremists fought to overthrow a king, installed a dictator infamous for banning public enjoyment and massacring the Irish, and the whole thing was such a failure that the monarchy was restored with widespread public support.") which are equally [in]accurate and both miss key points like Cromwell not being that important until relatively late on and Parliament really not representing many people and there actually being two English Civil Wars either side of peaceful factional struggles over what the future agreement with the king should look like, plus a prologue involving one side invading Scotland and an epilogue involving the other side invading Scotland

Then you've got questions like "was Cromwell unusually enlightened on issues of religious freedom or a religious extremist with a vicious hatred of anything that vaguely resembled Catholicism?" to which the correct answer is "both actually, and simultaneously". And the likelihood the whole thing could have been avoided if a king who wasn't exactly unusual in his behaviour for contemporary monarchs was actually good at politics or military planning, and that having taking the unprecedented step of executing a monarch for refusing to acknowledge them, Parliament then let a gentleman of modest background and means rule whilst refusing to acknowledge them them because he actually was good at politics and military planning.

Then there was the Glorious Revolution which wasn't actually a revolution a couple of decades and two kings later which was way more influential on democracy and religion in modern Britain and gets studied way less...

GJim 6 days ago

> there are two diametrically opposed dumbed down narratives

As every British schoolboy knows, there is only one narrative....

Royalists: Wrong but Wromantic

Parliament: Right but Repulsive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That

cryptonector 6 days ago

Just a few decades out of... millenia.

PontifexMinimus 7 days ago

Nor me.