Civilization Most Overrated in Influence.

[cybrxkhan]

common US "propaganda" (for lack of better wording): Britain at time of of American Revolution was evil, king was tyrant, and so on.

truth: Britain, actually having a parliament (whether effective or not) and actually having something like the Magna Carta, was actually arguably one of the most liberal and "free" countries in the world at the time of the American Revolution

 

[Plotinus]

The question isn't whether the English parliament in the 1770s was "effective". That's neither here nor there. It may have been very effective (I don't know enough about the period to say); the point is that its purpose was to be neither democratic, nor liberal, nor "free". Simply having a parliament doesn't make a country any of those things; was England liberal and free under Henry VIII? As I said before, the purpose of parliament was for centuries to limit the power of the king - in favour of barons, landowners, and other elites. A bit like having a dictator who is advised by old Etonians, and no-one else. That may be less autocratic than having a dictator and no old Etonians to advise him, but it is not more democratic, liberal, or free.

[GinandTonic] As I understand it, the franchise wasn't really much extended until the nineteenth century, when it was extended in a series of Reform Acts, notably those of 1832, 1867, and 1884. There were different, and complex, motives behind each of the acts. Briefly, the main motive behind the first was to remove corruption and rationalise the voting system; allowing more people to vote (one in five men!) was just part of that. The 1867 act allowed any man in a city who owned a house (or paid substantial rent) to vote (which meant working-class men could now vote), and the motive behind this was more political: Disraeli backed it in order to split the opposition, the Liberals, who couldn't agree among themselves whether reform was good or bad. It was also believed that the newly enfranchised workers would be grateful and vote Conservative. The 1884 act was pushed by Gladstone, on the grounds that rural workers should be given similar voting rights to those of the city workers enfranchised by the previous act (and Gladstone also thought it was simply the right thing to do). And the 1918 act basically allowed pretty much all men to vote, and most women (though only over the age of 30, and if they owned property - it wasn't until 1928 that they could vote on the same basis as men). The rationale behind this is debated, but one major factor is that politicians were scared of communism and thought that concessions such as this would keep the workers happy.

So it's not like people decided that democracy was a good thing and all the reforms came from that; the ideal developed gradually, and many people (such as Salisbury) opposed the reforms because they feared that they were leading to democracy, which they viewed as a bad thing.

 

[cybrxkhan]

^i agree with you, but im saying, the very "concept" of a parliament already made Britain ridiculously more liberal than a lot of other countries.

 

[GinandTonic]

Cheezy posted a stat a while back that C. the US revoloution x Brit gov had been elected with the votes of something like 3% of the population. This would seem to imply a 5%ish franchise. So, assuming my memory and Cheezy's stat are correct there would seem to have been a vast increase in the franchise over the last 540ish years.

The voters around magna carta were a frection of a percent, and Im facinated by how they became several percent.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

^i agree with you, but im saying, the very "concept" of a parliament already made Britain ridiculously more liberal than a lot of other countries.

Compared to the Russian Empire for example.

I can understand cybrxkhan's point about the American viewpoint on the American Revolution though. I can perfectly understand that they think they were the in the right and they were fighting for their freedom and so on, but when you have films like The Patriot that basically portray the British as equivalent to the Nazis it has gone too far.

 

[Verbose]

Compared to the Russian Empire for example.

Which in fact did have the institution of the "Duma" with pretty much the same advisory capacity as the English parliament Plotinus has pointed out.

Duma in early Russian history
The term comes from the Russian word думать (dumat&#8217, "to think" or "to consider". Boyar Duma was an advisory council to the grand princes and tsars of Muscovy. The Duma was discontinued by Peter the Great, who transferred its functions to the Governing Senate in 1721. However, the Duma would be re-introduced later in Russian history by Tsar Nicholas II, in the pre-Revolutionary period, with the aide of his many advisors such as Stolypin, Snydercha (translated from Сґђде,) amongst others.

In fact, parliaments have been around in every European society able to back-track to old Germanic political institutions. The advent of royal absolutism in the continental monarchies just meant parliament activity was suspended, in the case of France for a couple of hundred years. While at the same time Sweden had as at least as much "parlamentarianism" as the UK from 1721 to 1772, and has had a constitutional "freedom of speech act" in place since 1766.

And even with no actual "parliament" the rest had almost always something similar, like the Russian "Duma".

Edit:
Which means my conclusion is that while Britian was vastly more liberal than most European societies in the 17th and 18th c's, this wasn't really an effect of the institution of the parliament or the concept of parlamentarianism, but had to do with other things.

 

[Plotinus]

One shouldn't overestimate the "liberalism" of late-eighteenth-century Britain, though. This was the age of the Gordon riots. Sometimes, the government was considerably more liberal than society at large.

 

[Civfan333]

Definitely the Egyptians.

common US "propaganda" (for lack of better wording): Britain at time of of American Revolution was evil, king was tyrant, and so on.

truth: Britain, actually having a parliament (whether effective or not) and actually having something like the Magna Carta, was actually arguably one of the most liberal and "free" countries in the world at the time of the American Revolution

Yes, Britain was NOT the EVIL that pretty much Everybody says they were in America. Here in Hawaii, we KNOW that Britain wasn't evil. So they brought rats, mongooses, wasps, diseases, oh and ummm, oh yeah MOSQUITOS. They're DEFINITELY not evil.
Actually, they did discover Hawaii adn they brought us up to date with the world.

 

[mr_lewington]

hmm how is hawaii, never been there but sounds like a wicked vaction....

anyways, what is the power balance between the parliment and monarch now?

 

[Plotinus]

The monarch has no effective power of any kind.

 

[Lotus49]

I'd say the Maori (New Zealand), Sotho, Zulu & other South African cultures (among others elsewhere) would disagree about the gentleness involved with British colonialism.

The Brits really were atrocious and nasty in the 13 colonies, btw - down at the local level, interacting with the people... the kind of numerous historical 'footnotes' they don't teach in depth at Oxford & Cambridge. I think we have at least a couple of Brits within the past half-dozen or so posts that have been subjected to a lifetime of counter-propaganda.

Next thing you know a Japanese will show up and say how civilized they were to the Filipinos & Chinese in WWII.

"No. We did not throw Filipino babies up in the air and catch them on our bayonets. That is merely American propaganda... the most overrated culture of all time, btw."

 

[Brighteye]

The point is not that British colonists were kind, peaceful and heavenly, but that compared to anyone else at the time they weren't particularly atrocious. There have always been barbarians within any society, and there will always be societies/people who find themselves in positions of power.
To claim that one society is worse than another with no justification of why that other would have behaved differently had it been in the same situation is silly.
These historical footnotes aren't necessarily taught at good universities because we have this strange thing called specialisation, whereby we don't all study self-flagellation as part of a liberal arts degree, but do useful things like research into medical science.
Is it counter-propaganda that we're subjected to when most modern historical takes on the subject portray Britain as an evil empire spreading misery and taking resources under the pretence of spreading civilisation? Or could it be that these universities actually encourage thinking for oneself and realising that if we judge past societies by today's standards they all come up short?

And anyway, the colonists are actually the descendants of the people in the colonies, not of the people over here.

 

[mr_lewington]

The monarch has no effective power of any kind.

For Now...

The Brits really were atrocious and nasty in the 13 colonies

The Colonials were pretty nasty to the Loyalists too, I.e, stealing/burning homes and a number of murders which can be classified as an atrocity

 

[Civfan333]

hmm how is hawaii, never been there but sounds like a wicked vaction....

anyways, what is the power balance between the parliment and monarch now?

GREAT PLACE. Good beaches, nice people, nice weather, GREAT football (american football) team for college. Girls with Bikinis EVERYWHERE. and nice place. You should come here one day.

 

[aronnax]

I have no idea how Hawaii turned from British to American and why the British flag is still in the state flag of Hawaii

 

[Lotus49]

I have no idea how Hawaii turned from British to American and why the British flag is still in the state flag of Hawaii

This section (1800s) describes how it all began. The real meat of it is the last 3 or 4paragraphs of that section.

Much more civilized than how the British handled the New Zealand situation, in which they merely crushed the revolts with sheer force, after the natives had gotten fed up from being ripped off, cheated, lied to, etc.

Same thing happened in British Columbia (Canada), btw. "Oh, there's gold?" Well, you natives can go f-#$ yourselves, this here is ours, now!" - pretty much sums it up. Yet, the U.S. gets all the bad press regarding taking lands from native Americans, forcing them to relocate, etc. -Same thing happened throughout Canada.

 

[Traitorfish]

For Now...

And for ever. The chances of the monarchy ever regaining any power in Britain are infinitesimally small.

 

[Civfan333]

I have no idea how Hawaii turned from British to American and why the British flag is still in the state flag of Hawaii

yeah, and we're proud of it!

The egyptians are the most overrated.

 

[mr_lewington]

And for ever. The chances of the monarchy ever regaining any power in Britain are infinitesimally small

it may not return in the form of kings and queens but once democracy falls, which it will, some form of monarchist government will take over.

 

[mr_lewington]

This section (1800s) describes how it all began. The real meat of it is the last 3 or 4paragraphs of that section.

Much more civilized than how the British handled the New Zealand situation, in which they merely crushed the revolts with sheer force, after the natives had gotten fed up from being ripped off, cheated, lied to, etc.

Same thing happened in British Columbia (Canada), btw. "Oh, there's gold?" Well, you natives can go f-#$ yourselves, this here is ours, now!" - pretty much sums it up. Yet, the U.S. gets all the bad press regarding taking lands from native Americans, forcing them to relocate, etc. -Same thing happened throughout Canada.

if your saying the natives are treated bad now ur completely and utterly wrong