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I highly recommend reading about the Levellers. It might be the only democratic movement in Britain until the 20th century.
by growlNark 1y ago
I highly recommend reading about the Levellers. It might be the only democratic movement in Britain until the 20th century.
- potato3732842 1y agoBritain had a habit of showing all its religious/political (can't really separate them at this point in history) minorities the door (and to be fair, some of them were basically lunatics) which is likely a large part of why things shook out the way they did. A bunch of ideologically opposed groups cast onto another continent had no choice but to learn how to self govern despite their differences.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago>religious/political (can't really separate them at this point in history) In the US this is still true (idk anything about other countries' politics)
- nicoburns 1y agoReligion has a relatively minor influence on UK politics these days. 37% of people are non-religious. 46% identify as Christians, but only 10% actually attend Church. And the majority of those Christians belong to moderate denominations whose politics isn't that different to that of the general population.
- growlNark 1y agoEh even the nonreligious are still pretty culturally christian. This especially bubbles up during conversations about immigration
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoPolitics is still religion. the "free market" religion, the "climate change" religion, etc.
- wahern 1y agoDemocratic in the modern sense. The past millennia of English history could be understood as a slow progression of the devolution of power. The actual politics were pretty messy, but the evolution in legal and political theory was more steady. Compare that to most other civilizations, where the evolution of democracy was much more abrupt and epochal, not to mention even bloodier and altogether much more recent. There were democratic movements elsewhere, but almost all were squelched by king and tsars (domestic or foreign) and the legal and political environments reset to square 0. Also, the modern notion of the history of democracy is the devolution of power to the masses. But I like to think of the evolution of English history, at least legally, as the (albeit slow and uneven) elevation of the masses to the aristocracy, and in that way something similar to how the Greek's viewed democracy--with power comes responsibility and stricture. Though, that was partially the product of the expulsion of certain groups from the island; yet, that process was carried over in the US where many of those groups landed.
- dan-robertson 1y agoI think one should be wary of taking a view of history like this. Feels a bit too whiggish
- jltsiren 1y agoThe republican tradition never really died out in Europe. From city states to merchant / maritime republics to free imperial cities, there were always polities that can be best understood as republics. Venice lasted for 1100 years, and San Marino is even older, with its origins lost in time.
- rjsw 1y agoThere was more than just the Levellers at the time, maybe read "The English Revolution, 1640" [1] by Christopher Hill. [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-re...
- growlNark 1y agoVery interesting. Cheers, thanks for the read!