Oliver Cromwell

''Oliver Cromwell'' (born April 25, 1599 Old Style, died September 3, 1658 Old Style) was an English military and political leader best known for his involvement in making England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War. After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Cromwell dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland and Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658. Cromwell was born into the ranks of the middle gentry, and remained relatively obscure for the first 40 years of his life, at times his lifestyle resembling that of a yeoman farmer until his finances were boosted thanks to an inheritance from his uncle. After undergoing a religious conversion during the same decade, he made an Independent style of Puritanism a core tenet of his life. Cromwell was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640-49) Parliaments, and later entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians. An effective soldier (nicknamed "Old Ironsides") he rose from leading a single cavalry troop to command of the entire army. Cromwell was the third person to sign Charles I's death warrant in 1649 and was an MP in the Rump Parliament (1649-1653), being chosen by the Rump to take command of the English campaign in Ireland during 1649-50. He then led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650-51. On April 20, 1653 he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as the Barebones Parliament before being made Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland on 16 December 1653 until his death. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but when the Royalists returned to power in 1660, his corpse was dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. Cromwell has been a very controversial figure in the history of the British Isles &ndash; a regicidal dictator to some historians (such as David Hume and Christopher Hill) and a hero of liberty to others (such as Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner). In Britain he was elected as one of the Top 10 Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll.<ref></ref> His measures against Irish Catholics have been characterized by some historians as genocidal or near-genocidal,<ref name=near-genocidal>genocidal or near-genocidal: *Breton Albert (ed). 1995, 'Nationalism and Rationality', Cambridge University Press, Chapter 'Regulating nations and ethnic communities' by Brendam O'Leary and John McGarry p 248. "Oliver Cromwell offered the Irish Catholics a choice between genocide and forced mass population transfer. They could go 'To Hell or to Connaught!'" *Coogan Tim-Pat, . 2002. 'The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace'. ISBN 978-0312294182. Page 6. "The massacres by Catholics of Protestants, which occurred in the religious wars of the 1640s, were magnified for propagandist purposes to justify Cromwell's subsequent genocide." *Ellis, Peter Berresford. 2002. 'Eyewitness to Irish History'. John Wiley & Sons Inc. Page 108. ISBN-13: 978-0471266334. "It was to be the justification for Cromwell's genocidal campaign and settlement." *Levene Mark, 2005, 'Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State', I.B.Tauris: London: "Considered overall, an Irish population collapse from 1.5 or possibly over 2 million inhabitants at the onset of the Irish wars in 1641, to no more than 850,000 eleven years later represents an absolutely devastating demographic catastrophe. Undoubted the largest proportion of this massive death toll did not arise from direct massacre but from hunger and then bubonic plagues, especially from the outbreak between 1649 and 1652. Even so, the relationship to the worst years of the fighting is all too apparent.<br />[The Act of Settlement of Ireland], and the parliamentary legislation which succeeded it the following year, is the nearest thing on paper in the English, and more broadly British, domestic record, to a programme of state-sanctioned and systematic ethnic cleansing of another people. The fact that it did not include 'total' genocide in its remit, or that it failed to put into practice the vast majority of its proposed expulsions, ultimately, however, says less about the lethal determination of its makers and more about the political, structural and financial weakness of the early modern English state. For instance, though the Act begins rather ominously by claiming that it was not its intention to extirpate the whole Irish nation, it then goes on to list five categories of people who, as participators in or alleged supporters of the 1641 rebellion and its aftermath, would automatically be forfeit of their lives. It has been suggested that as many as 100,000 people would have been liable under these headings. A further five categories - by implication an even larger body of 'passive' supporters of the rebellion - were to be spared their lives but not their property." *Levene, Mark. 2005. 'Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 2'. Page 55, 56 & 57. A sample quote describes the Cromwellian campaign and settlement as "a conscious attempt to reduce a distinct ethnic population". ISBN-13: 978-1845110574 *Levene, Mark and Roberts Penny. 1999, 'The Massacre in History', Berghahn Books: Oxford: "Further evidence for a massacre-ridden civil war in Ireland appears to come from population figures. Though military and civilian deaths from civil war were not light in England or in Scotland, in neither country did war inflict a clear drop in population level. It was otherwise in Ireland. Up to 1641 the population had risen steadily: one million in 1500, 1.4 in 1600, 2.1 in 1641; but then there occurred a sharp fall so that numbers stood at 1.7 million by 1672. After this, renewed growth took the population to 2.2 million in 1687, and 2.8 in 1712. By far the greater part of this massive decline - some four hundred thousand people or 19% of the 1641 population - took place in the 1640s and 1650, and was the direct or indirect result of over a decade of warfare. Ireland's civil war death toll is comparable to the devastation suffered during the Second World War by countries such as the Soviet Union, Poland, or Yugoslavia, and suggests that the war-time massacres which so contributed to these horrific modern figures, also occurred in mid-seventeenth-century Ireland." *Lutz,James M and Lutz Brenda J, 2004. 'Global Terrorism', Routledge, London, p.193: "The draconian laws applied by Oliver Cromwell in Ireland were an early version of ethnic cleansing. The Catholic Irish were to be expelled to the northwestern areas of the island. Relocation rather than extermination was the goal." <!-- *Midlarsky, Manus I. 2005, 'The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century' Page 101. "The 'existential' nature of such conflict is emphasized by Schmitt: 'There exists no rational purpose, no norm no matter how true, no program no matter how exemplary, no social ideal no matter how beautiful, no legitimacy nor legality which could justify men in killing each other for this reason. 'If such physical destruction of human life is not motivated by an existential threat to one's own way of life, then it cannot be justified.(Carl Schmitt 'The Concept of the Political' Page 49.)" --> *O'Leary, Brendan, Callaghy Thomas M., Ian S. Lustick, 2001, 'Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders', Oxford University Press: "Ethnic expulsion is a right-peopling strategy, the intended, direct or indirect, forcible movement by state officials, or sanctioned paramilitaries, of the whole or part of a community from its current homeland, usually beyond the sovereign borders of the state. A population can also be forcibly 'repatriated', or pushed back towards its alleged 'homeland', as happened to blacks during the high tide of apartheid in South Africa. We may distinguish two paradigm forms: creating 'Serbian exiles', that is coerced transfers within a state or empire, and 'creating refugees', that is, the expulsion of populations beyond the sovereign border. Examples of the former include the treatment of indigenous peoples throughout the world; the Irish Catholics moved by Oliver Cromwell to Connaught during 1649-50 and after; and national minorities within the Soviet Union." *Stewart, Frances. 'War and Underdevelopment: Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict v. 1', (Queen Elizabeth House Series in Development Studies), Oxford University Press. 2000. "Faced with the prospect of an Irish alliance with Charles II, Cromwell carried out a series of massacres to subdue the Irish. Then, once Cromwell had returned to England, the English Commissary, General Henry Ireton, adopted a deliberate policy of crop burning and starvation, which was responsible for the majority of an estimated 600,000 deaths out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000." ---- *[http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/17-09.php Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland], [http://www.iisg.nl/ International Institute of Social History] Website (Based in the Netherlands), "Roman Catholic Irish were subdued to ethnic cleansing policy by Oliver Cromwell. After his suppression of a rebellion against the English in 1649 he ordered that the Irish were allowed to live west of the Shannon river only. During guerrilla warfare that followed thousands of Irish died or were sold as slaves to America. Cromwell had promised Irish land to the business investors and soldiers who had helped him perform his expeditions. The 'Act for the Attainder of the Rebels in Ireland' of 17 September 1656 is part of this programme. The land of rebels is attained and 'rebels' are defined in such a way that all Catholics match. By the end of 1656 four fifths of the Irish land was in Protestant hands."</ref> and in Ireland itself he is widely hated.<ref>"Of all these doings in Cromwell's Irish Chapter, each of us may say what he will. Yet to everyone it will at least be intelligible how his name came to be hated in the tenacious heart of Ireland". John Morley, Biography of Oliver Cromwell. Page 298. 1900 and 2001. ISBN-13: 978-1421267074.; "Cromwell is still a hate figure in Ireland today because of the brutal effectiveness of his campaigns in Ireland. Of course, his victories in Ireland made him a hero in Protestant England." [http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/civilwar/g5/cs2/s4/] British National Archives web site. Accessed March 2007; [http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/1649-52-cromwell-ireland.htm] From a history site dedicated to the English Civil War. "... making Cromwell's name into one of the most hated in Irish history". Accessed March 2007. Site currently offline. WayBack Machine holds archive here [http://web.archive.org/web/20041211163740/http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/1649-52-cromwell-ireland.htm]</ref><ref> ; From the Channel 4 History site: [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/war/cromwell.html] "Cromwell's name has always been execrated by Irish Catholics for the massacre at Drogheda. He is also hated for the transplanting of Protestant settlers to Ireland, a policy established in the reign of Elizabeth I." Accessed March 2007.</ref>