I’m sure this whole article comes as a shock to nobody, but it’s nice to see it recognised like this.
It was far more of a religious war than anything else. You had aristocracy and rich capitalists on both sides. More so, the birth of nationwide capitalism had already taken place in the UK and joint venture stock companies were around long before the civil war too.
But catholic and protestant was a line you could always 100% accurately draw between the two sides. In fact, the only thing that really changed was that the monarch having to be church of England was made into law. The rest of British history makes infinitely more sense when the civil war is looked at through that lense.
I feel there is a misunderstanding of what a bourgeois revolution is. Sure, soon before the English Revolution, there was the institution of stock markets and corporations. But bourgeois revolutions don’t “make” capitalism. They institute capitalism as the main power and system.
Before the English Revolution, nobility and owning land was the real power. After it it was owning capital. That’s what makes it a bourgeois revolution.
And sure? There were “capitalists” fighting to maintain the existing power structures, just like there were workers fighting against the bolsheviks in the Russian revolution, right? That’s not a very compelling argument.
The capitalists could, through ideology and propaganda, be working against their own interests. Or they as individuals actually benefitted from the system as it was, despite not being the class in power.
In any case, revolutions happen when the existing dominant class is abruptly removed in favour of another. You can’t say this happened in England before the English Revolution.
Also, if you think Protestantism vs Catholicism has nothing to do with the power structures of late medieval and early modern Europe… idk what to tell you man. Religion is never just religion.
I understand it just fine and no, the first joint stock company was nearly 100 years before the civil war. Thats not soon before at all. It just really kills the narrative being spun.
Capitalism was nationwide here long before the civil war. Not only in the form of joint stock companies, ending merchantilism, but in the acts of enclosure forcing the yeomanry into the factories and workhouses (capital not land). Again, nearly 100 years before the civil war.
It was a war of religion and wherever you got this alternative narrative from is completely wrong. It was literally just fanatics killing each other over liking the wrong flavour of Jesus. Nothing meaningful changed after the war. Capitalism wasn’t ushered in, as it was already here. Capital didn’t become the dominant power due to it, as it already was the dominant power. CoE was already the dominant religion too. So, it wasn’t changing the power structure of the existing dominant religion. So, wrong on every account that could make it what you claim.
Specifically in the UK, the Catholic/protestant power structure change was that the monarch decided to, essentially, make themselves both monarch and pope. I think you’re confusing it with the German wars of religion and they weren’t the same.
