At least no Baby Doc to worry about as he is only 8 years old in 1959.
Alternate History Ideas and Discussion
- Thread starter AndrewJTalon
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At least no Baby Doc to worry about as he is only 8 years old in 1959.
Not really, just accepting the reality of the times. Absolutism in England dated back to William the Savage in 1066 and its prime limitation was the occasional weakness of the monarchs to other forces, generally powerful nobles. It was similar in most states across the continent. This absolutism was generally supported by the Catholic church as it increased their own control.
The idea that the Catholic church in this period would support tolerance is farcical. No religious faction in this period did so, with rare local exceptions possibly and it took the bloodshed of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to finally drive at least some states to accept the idea of religious tolerance to any degree. The Papacy of the time was definitely not an exception.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Your first first paragraph indicates the solution to the issue you raise in the second one. The Catholics in England wouldn't be able to bloodily suppress all non-Catholicism, and in fact that wasn't even their aim at the time. You might have noticed that these supposed tyrannical Catholics that we're talking about wanted to keep Henry as King. They just wanted to make him to stop his brutal and tyrannical persecution of Catholics.
The major underlying error in your historiography is that you refer to occasional weakness of the monarch, whereas in reality, there was occasionally a monarch who could at times exert absolute power. That you depict the Church as supportive of absolute monarchy betrays a skewed view of this relation. Surely the investiture controversy hasn't passed you by? The entire pre-Reformation history of Europe can be explained as a balance of power between temporal and ecclesiastical authority (with the latter supporting the monarch against the nobles, or the other way around, specifically to prevent a too-united emporal power that could potentially opt for Byzantine-style Caesaropapism).
If the Catholics remove Henry VIII, they're still presiding over a divided country, and neither their actual goals nor their abilities extend to forcing Catholicism in everyone. They'll see a Catholic monarchy restored, and Henry's policies reversed. To actually form a coalition capable of reigning, they'll have to embrace the support of any influential player willing to accept this new status quo. That will include non-Catholics who previously backed Henry. In fact, a major player from the royalist side doing so and taking on the leading role among the rebels is the POD. What, you expect these Catholic rebels to suddenly try and murder their (partially Protestant!) cadre of backers in a mad purity spiral? No! They get a Catholic monarch, a restoration of the Church's holdings, and the Protestant figures who support replacing Henry with a Catholic monarch get influential positions-- and certainly the freedom to practice their own religion. (Indeed, the attraction to them will be that this king will be weak; precisely what benefits them.)
I expect that over time, a new Catholic consensus will emerge as Protestant sentiment (brought to life by Henry VIII) fades out of popularity; although "English Catholicism" is probably always going to be a bit of a unique spin from then on. But this will happen slowly, and without Henry's criminal misconduct, it'll happen without any major upheavals.
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Sight.Church NEVER supported absolutism,becouse it mean state control over Church.That is why medieval Europe was free - free Church,free cities,free nobles with relatively weak Kings without standing army which need consensus of their subjects to rule.
When protestants made their churches part of state,which with added standing armies made absolutism possible.
Reformation lead to Absolutism,becouse it have power to rulers over Church.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
‘AHC: Ex-Communist Regime Conducts Truth And Reconciliation Commission’.
Not really counting Cambodia here, since it needed Vietnam counter-invading to oust Pol Pot and make trials for the remaining Khmer Rouge leadership possible in the first place. Apartheid was horrid for sure, but at least the white-minority government eventually stepped aside and largely cooperated when the ANC finally came to power and tried to turn the country around. Russia, China, and a host of other communist regimes, on the other hand, have yet to acknowledge their own bloody legacies — despite being every bit as bad as (and in many cases, worse than) Apartheid South Africa.
Not really counting Cambodia here, since it needed Vietnam counter-invading to oust Pol Pot and make trials for the remaining Khmer Rouge leadership possible in the first place. Apartheid was horrid for sure, but at least the white-minority government eventually stepped aside and largely cooperated when the ANC finally came to power and tried to turn the country around. Russia, China, and a host of other communist regimes, on the other hand, have yet to acknowledge their own bloody legacies — despite being every bit as bad as (and in many cases, worse than) Apartheid South Africa.
TheRomanSlayer
Kayabangan, Dugo, at Dangal
I wonder what kind of Christian branch would have allowed for a possible English Caesaropapist style of government.
‘PC: Britain Seizes New France During War of the Spanish Succession’
Was it possible for New France in North America to have been captured by the British during the conflict of Jenkins’s Ear? New France was practically small at that point.
‘PC: Britain Seizes New France During War of the Spanish Succession’
Was it possible for New France in North America to have been captured by the British during the conflict of Jenkins’s Ear? New France was practically small at that point.
TheRomanSlayer
Kayabangan, Dugo, at Dangal
A possible violent collapse of the Eastern European communist regimes, along with the violent collapse of the USSR, could do the trick. I could see Poland being the front runner for the whole truth and reconciliation thing, though falling short of forgiveness due to the lingering hatred of communism after its collapse.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Yeah, but what are the odds the resulting uprisings and civil wars turn into a bloc-wide nuclear exchange instead? Not only in the USSR, but also in other Warsaw Pact states, as I'm guessing those places also hosted Soviet nukes that loyalists and rebels alike would seize, and — if sufficiently desperate or unhinged — start launching. Not sure how successful they'll be (due to continued maintenance being difficult in the midst of violent collapse), though surely, there are enough nukes and unstable warlords for at least a handful of launch attempts to take place.
Theres also another Possibilty. Look at France, where you basically had a series of bloody wars charecterized by extreme pogroms and assinations, fought on and on for hundreds of years until the Catholics forced there supremacy. Thats perfectly possible in England.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
That has a rather specific context, though, and was directly caused by the Reformation. Specifically, what I wrote about the rivalry between the Monarch and the Church was very much true (take good look at the captivity in Avignon), but then the Reformation happened, and the French monarchy was 1) already quite powerful and very inclined towards centralisation and 2) very much Catholic.
Which caused nobles to go Protestant, which in turn compelled the Church to overlook (1) because of (2). That is to say: they didn't like a too-strong monarch, but they liked the idea of a Protestant monarch even less!
In England, the context is different. You'll have a weak monarch, who has to rely on both Ctholic and Protestant nobles to exert real power, which means that consensus-seeking is going to be the main thing. Rather than what we saw in France, which came about specifically because the King's virulant Catholicism and his virulent centralism finally aligned and the latter had Papal backing for the first time ever.
The situations aren't exactly the same, so the outcomes can't reasonably be expected to be the same either. (Can't rule it out, of course, but it's not the expected result by a long shot.)
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
‘AHC: US More Often Likened To Carthage Than Rome’.
Me waiting for @Skallagrim to post another macrohistorical outline, colorized:
Me waiting for @Skallagrim to post another macrohistorical outline, colorized:
TheRomanSlayer
Kayabangan, Dugo, at Dangal
Wasn't Carthage a mercantile empire before Rome wiped it off entirely?
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Pretty much, though I stress we don’t need to take the analogy quite that far. Rather, what I’m after is more the US remaining a commercial powerhouse with a penchant for trade and free enterprise, as well as largely keep to its own hemisphere for purposes of occasional economic imperialism and little else.
TheRomanSlayer
Kayabangan, Dugo, at Dangal
Let's see. How about preventing the US from getting involved with Hawaii and the Philippines? Although we might have to go further back, before the ACW.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Otherwise, too tired to comment much, though I’m curious as to whether Grover Cleveland winning in 1888 would help solidify the Bourbon Democrats as an electoral force and steer the US in a more isolationist, gold-backed, free-enterprise direction than IOTL? Not doubting that later presidents (like Calvin Coolidge) necessarily had the will to, but unfortunately, that was after Teddy and Wilson laid the groundwork for American proto-hegemony already, so…
TheRomanSlayer
Kayabangan, Dugo, at Dangal
Wouldn't that Bryan guy also be a well suited President who would also be an isolationist candidate to prevent the US from getting involved in imperialist projects?
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Yeah, but WJB was the biggest Free Silver advocate of his day, as well as a “democratic farmer-labor” guy on economic issues more broadly, if I recall correctly.
In any case, not a hands-off or free-market fella like Cleveland, who was both an isolationist and someone whose Bourbon economic sensibilities would make the US more of a Carthage of the West in the long haul, assuming he cements a legacy as resolute as Lincoln or FDR. Managing that will be the trickiest part of all, I think.
Note I specifically stated centralised power under the church. Of course the church wanted to keep their power over the temporal and well as spiritual realms, hence the prolonged conflicts between the HRE and other rulers and the church.
That's why mediveal Europe was free for powerful clergy and nobles - provided a monarch wasn't powerful enough to subdue the latter - and pretty hellish for everybody else. It should be remembered that the reason monarchs were able to grow powerful in the 17thC and 18thC was that the broad population supported them as it got a corrupt and frequently parastical nobility off their backs. That in some cases this ended up with too much power for the monarchy, or often a new alliance between the king, church and nobility didn't prevent this happening in the 1st case. That coalition was what caused the French revolution in the 1st place.
Hang on. Your saying that still wanted Henry as king but then saying they want a Catholic king and Henry has thrown the coup by this stage. Or are you saying they initially said they wanted to keep Henry as king but when he wouldn't accept their demands moved to deposing him for a Catholic monarch?
As I said to ATP I said centralised power under the church. The latter by its nature definitely determined to keep as much power as possible in its hands. Note that I'm talking about this for any totalitarian mindset not just an over-powerful Catholicism. The only reason we're discussing it here in response to the Catholic church is because there are a number of fan-boys who continually deny what happened historical and the way power structures behave. Its probably the best thing that Luther didn't get his desired reform of the church as that would have just placed another set of 'values' and religious rulers in charge again, probably after a wave of oppression of both rival reformers and die hard old Catholics.
Why would those Catholics wish to risk papal hostility by allowing alternative forms of religion to be tolerated inside their new state? That didn't happen elsewhere to any level elsewhere in Europe and oppression continued later both in the Counter-Reformation and later still as Earl points out with Louis XIV's moronic bigotry in one of the few Catholic states that allowed some tolerance.
As I said the Protestants in many cases were no better and if one of them were to gain the level of power that the Catholic church held before the Reformation then you would just get a repeat of the old system fairly quickly. It was the final acceptance that religion couldn't be imposed on people across much of the continent that not only ended the religious wars but also allowed a far broader development of society and spread of power.
Not really. You could have a hell of a lot of butterflies later than that. The planters who gained domination over the islands only overthrew the monarchy in ~1890 and even that could well have been defeated if a USN warship wasn't present and seen as supporting the coup. Or some other powers, most likely Britain or France could have established a protectorate with the monarchy as a way of restoring local power.
Alternatively some internal butterflies could see the US delay its overseas imperial period and the planters never get US support and recognition of them by the annexation of the islands to the US. There was a strong interest in a more isolationist and introvert US in the 1880's and 1890's.
If the US never gets Hawaii then its still possible for it to attack Spain but it could have less interest in the western Pacific and not be in a position to attack the Philippines, or to be willing to give the latter independence quickly afterwards. [Although that could still count as "getting involved" in the latter islands depending on what you mean by the term]