I once read a Batman graphic novel set in an alternate history where Oliver Cromwell recovered from the disease that killed him in 1658 IRL. The result is that modern America is a puritanical and racist theocracy (with its capital at Plymouth, MA). OTOH, I read in Paul Johnson’s A History of the English People (written in 1972, when Johnson was a leftist; originally titled The Offshore Islanders) that Cromwell’s regime was much merrier and much less “Puritan” than popular imagination has it.
Suppose the English Commonwealth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_England), if not Cromwell himself, had lasted longer? What if there had been no Restoration in 1660? Would the Commonwealth have remained the military dictatorship it was under Cromwell’s rule, or would it have evolved into a genuine republic? What would British society have been like? Less aristocratic, more egalitarian? More religious, or more secular? How would all that have affected Britain’s subsequent history, and the world’s?
And BTW, does anybody remember that Batman GN? What was the title? I skimmed it on the stands but didn’t buy it. I think it came out in '90 or '91. The cover had Batman holding an American flag with a white cross substituted for the stars.
It was an Elseworlds comic (obviously) called “Batman: Holy Terror”. It came out in 1991. Needless to say, I don’t think a state like that would be the neccesary result of a successful commonwealth.
As far as the religious aspect goes, I don’t think that Puritanism as we understand it would have lasted any better than it did in Massachusetts. The Puritans did not believe in any sort of church heirarchy. Each church was individual, and the pastor was chosen by the laypeople of his congregation. Thus, I would think that Puritanism would be opposed to any sort of unified theocracy, especially after they had purged the nation of any lingering popishness.
And what of Massachusetts? Many of the original Puritan congregations are still aound. Until 1833 the state had an official state-supported church, with Episcopalians and either Jews or Catholics being able to opt out. By then, many congregations had chosen divergent paths. Here in Cambridge, in 1829, the parish wanted to embrace Arianism, while the pastor (incidentally, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.) and most of the congregation remained Calvinist, splitting the congregation in two. In 1899 they agreed to call themselves the First Church in Cambridge (Unitarian) and the First Church in Cambridge (Congregational). They are both still there, associated with Unitarian Universalism and the United Church of Christ, respectively. Likewise, many of the original Puritan congregations from the Seventeenth Century are still around, and are often some of the most liberal churches around (largely UU, which grew pretty directly out of the original Puritan churches).
On the other hand, Massachusetts was never under a Puritan military dictator, so who knows how that would have affected things. Still, though, the religion was pretty badly set up for autocratic rule in the religious sphere. I’d like to think that the idea of organizing society from the local level on up would have prevailed over the other aspects, largely because I think that for all its faults, the English Commonwealth was one of the best opportunities that history has seen for that sort of thing to really take hold.
For one thing, we would not be incessantly hectored with supposed news about one useless member of the House of Windsor or another. The whole outfit would have dissolved into a family of minor German gentry. We would all be a lot better off.
Well, if Eric Flint ever gets around to writing the next book in the 1632 series maybe we’ll find out. In 1633 Oliver Cromwell was imprisoned in the Tower…but I think the store is poised to bust him out and turn him loose on the English. I can’t wait to find out whats going to happen (though I’ve now been waiting several years with no end in sight…I understand Flint hasn’t even started the next book in the main story line yet ).
/end hijack
I don’t think the Commonwealth would have remained a military dictatorship, especially if Cromwell had lived longer…I think he became dictator because he had too, not because it was something he really wanted. I see the English going more towards a Republic of some kind…perhaps with a similar setup to what they have today sans royal family.
The possibilities though are too hard for me to trace though. Ireland, the US and other colonies, Australia, the East India Company, India, China and the Opium Wars…all of these things and more would be different. For that matter, if England HAD become a Republic, what of the French and their first failed Revolution? After all England opposed France for economic reasons due to their own Empire…but also because France WAS a Republic, and that was a scary thing to an England with a royal family still in power.
Actually, if the Commonwealth had lasted, no one outside Germany would ever had heard of the House of Hanover/Welf/Windsor, who were not called in to rule Britain until 1714, when the main Stuart/Orange line failed (Queen Anne dying childless, and other Stuarts being unacceptably Catholic). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_I_of_Great_Britain
But historians agree, the main reason the French Revolution happened – at least, the main reason it happened in 1789 – was because military intervention in the American Revolution had bankrupted the state, so it was politically necessary to call a new Estates General for the first time since 1614 to authorize new taxes, and things quickly got out of hand.
If the Commonwealth had lasted, would there have been an American Revolution? Probably not, if the revolutionaries had put through some kind of parliamentary reform, and if it had included direct representation for the colonies. “No taxation without representation!” would not have been available as a rallying cry.
Would a Commonwealth regime have reformed Parliament? Maybe. Depends on how strong the landed gentry remained, as a political force, under the Commonwealth; they were the ones who always resisted it and clung to the principle that “Parliament represents land, not people.” Many of them valued their rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs.
The Commonwealth abolished the House of Lords but not aristocracy itself. I suspect the nobility would have been gradually reduced to irrelevance and marginalized. Unless they decided to get together and fight back.
In 1633 Oliver Cromwell was imprisoned in the Tower…but I think the store is poised to bust him out and turn him loose on the English. I can’t wait to find out whats going to happen (though I’ve now been waiting several years with no end in sight…I understand Flint hasn’t even started the next book in the main story line yet 
).