The Armies
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So this section was originally supposed to be a part of Episode 5 – Cavaliers and Roundheads, but it just kept growing, started to sidetrack the narrative, and had I let it go on like that, we never would have gotten anywhere, so I pulled it out and created this […]
The Restoration
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Today, we conclude our run of episodes on the English Revolution. Since the death of King Charles, we’ve seen numerous attempts to cement a Republican Constitution for Britain, but none of them have succeeded. Here now, at the very end, we’ll witness the last round of squabbling between the army […]
The Good Old Cause
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions, So we left off our story in May 1657, with Oliver Cromwell’s decision to not allow himself to be Crown King. But as we are about to see, while Cromwell himself had built up enough gravitas to rule merely as Lord Protector, when he died, that gravitas died with him. […]
The War on Christmas
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions, As you know, the triumph of Parliament over the King in the First Civil War put a bunch of Puritans in power. This bunch of Puritans wasted no time trying to implement a whole series of religious reforms designed to roll back not only Archbishop Laud’s recent innovations to the […]
The Humble Petition and Advice
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions, After frustration with the first Protectorate Parliament led Oliver Cromwell to prematurely dissolve the body in January 1655. Oh, wait, what’s that, Mr. Lord Protector? It wasn’t premature. You just have to go by lunar months? Okay. After frustration with the first Protectorate Parliament led Oliver Cromwell to totally legitimately […]
Catholic Church Orders Conquest and Slavery
It’s common knowledge that the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are perfectly OK with slavery. But did you know that the Catholic Church actively encouraged the enslavement of non-Christians? Dum Diversas is a papal bull issued on 18 June 1452 by Pope Nicholas V. It authorized Afonso V of Portugal to conquer Saracens [Muslims] and pagans […]
Age of Revolution – Timeline
1700 — Bourbons replace Hapsburgs as royal family in Spain.1763 — French and Indian (Seven Years’) War ends; westward migration in 13 colonies banned.1764 — English Parliament passes Sugar Act.1765 — English Parliament passes Stamp Act.1766 — Stamp Act repealed.1767 — English Parliament passes Townshend Acts.1768 — British troops sent to Boston.March 5, 1770 — […]
Revolutions Made and Unmade
In this outline, we return to the “big picture” of the age of revolutions. We look at the general processes across all of the Americas and compare all the revolutions. In particular, the outline focuses on how the differing colonial traditions (political, economic, and cultural) shaped the revolutionary paths and the outcomes of the wars […]
The Strange Case of Paraguay
Paraguay is perhaps the most unusual country in Latin America in the 19th century. Isolated deep in the interior of South America, it was largely populated through the creation of Jesuit missions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Ostensibly under the control of the viceroyalty of La Plata at the beginning of the 19th century, […]
Mexico – Empire and Chaos
In the aftermath of the specter of social revolution and racial war raised by the Hidalgo and Morelos revolts, Spaniards and Creoles closed ranks in Mexico to preserve peace. As they had in 1810, events in Europe sparked the second war for independence. When the supporters of a liberal constitution triumphed in Spain in 1820, […]