English Civil War

Examples of English Civil War in the following topics:

• Cromwell and the Roundheads

  • The escalating conflict between Charles I of England and the English Parliament resulted in the English Civil War, in the aftermath of which monarchy disappeared for over a decade and Oliver Cromwell ruled  as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
  • First and foremost, to avoid Parliament, the King needed to avoid war.
  • What followed, is know as the English Civil War (1642–1651), which developed into a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers").
  • He was an intensely religious man (an Independent Puritan), who entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians.
  • The victory of the Parliamentarian New Model Army over the Royalist Army at the Battle of Naseby on June 14, 1645 marked the decisive turning point in the English Civil War.

• The English Protectorate

  • The Commonwealth was the period when England, later along with Ireland and Scotland, was ruled as a republic following the end of the Second English Civil War and the trial and execution of Charles I (1649).
  • During the period, fighting continued, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, between the parliamentary forces and those opposed to them, as part of what is now referred to as the Third English Civil War.
  • The first was "healing and settling" the nation after the chaos of the civil wars and the regicide. 
  • This led to his encouraging Jews to return to England, 350 years after their banishment by Edward I, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the English Civil War.
  • In early 1649, the Confederates allied with the English Royalists, who had been defeated by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War.

• The First Stuarts and Catholicism

  • Reluctant King James to declare war on Spain.
  • In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the English Parliament. 
  • The escalating conflict between the king and the Parliament resulted in what is known as the English Civil War (1642–1651).
  • The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I; the exile of his son, Charles II; and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–53) and then the Protectorate (1653–59) under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule.
  • Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although the idea of parliament as the ruling power of England was legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.

• Thomas Hobbes

  • Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher and scientist, was one of the key figures in the political debates of the Enlightenment period, who introduced a social contract theory based on the relation between the absolute sovereign and the civil society.
  • Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher and scientist, was one of the key figures in the political debates of the period.
  • As Leviathan was written during the English Civil War, much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.
  • This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all."
  • So in order to avoid it, people accede to a social contract and establish a civil society.

• The Hundred Years' War

  • In the 13th century, after the Magna Carta failed to prevent the Baron Wars, King John and his son King Henry III's reigns were characterized by numerous rebellions and civil wars, often provoked by incompetence and mismanagement in government.
  • Although primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of French and English nationalism.
  • The dissatisfaction of English nobles, resulting from the loss of their continental landholdings, became a factor leading to the civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487).
  • In France, civil wars, deadly epidemics, famines, and bandit free-companies of mercenaries reduced the population drastically.
  • Historians commonly divide the war into three phases separated by truces: 1) the Edwardian Era War (1337–1360); 2) the Caroline War (1369–1389); and 3) the Lancastrian War (1415–1453), which saw the slow decline of English fortunes after the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429.

• The Russian Civil War

• The Chinese Civil War

• The Guatemalan Civil War

• The Syrian Civil War

• John Locke

  • John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism." 
  • The Second Treatise outlines a theory of civil society.
  • Similarly to Hobbes, he assumed that the sole right to defend in the state of nature was not enough, so people established a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way with help from government in a state of society.
  • However, when one citizen breaks the Law of Nature, both the transgressor and the victim enter into a state of war, from which it is virtually impossible to break free.
  • However, historians also note that Locke was a major investor in the English slave-trade through the Royal African Company.