In light of our paper due tomorrow, I thought I would write a short piece on the English Civil Wars, a very complicated topic. In his first chapter “Origins,” when describing the difference of political participation between the 1640s and previous centuries, Worden states, “Political alertness was not confined to the owners of estates.” This got me thinking about political alertness today, and throughout the course of our class. Today, being politically alert is fairly easy, especially with the internet. Turn on any news channel and you’re likely to see the most recent blunders and successes (though those are far between) of politicians and political candidates. In the early 16th Century, this was likely very different. The only way one would know about the dirty underbelly of their politicians is if it was passed down through royal decree or if gossip (or war) happened to reach their village. In all likelihood, the average village peasant probably did not know all of the intricacies of court life or political maneuvers. This begs the question, is this good or bad for the peasant? One could argue that it is for the best of the peasant, that they aren’t becoming bogged down in the unimportant drama of politics. But in reality, it also doesn’t give them much of a chance to voice their own opinions about the choices of their King or local county officials. But would this voice truly matter? Until ‘Parliament’ lops off King Charles I’s head in 1649, there was very little that the average peasant (or county official for that matter!) could do to change the direction of policy of the monarchy. It makes me wonder that if more people knew history and realized how recent our concept /version of democracy is, that maybe more people would vote, and take advantage of their rights as citizens? After all, it wasn’t too long ago that we were fighting the concept of “taxation without representation,” let alone an almost total monarchy.
4 thoughts on “The Transformation of Communication About Politics”
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Mackenzee, I think this is such an interesting topic to bring up. Although it’s definitely a modern concept, I agree with Hilary. Sorry to mention this again, but I want to discuss pamphlets again. (I don’t know why I am so interested in this topic) Pamphlets were the peoples news sources. The civil wars as Worden explains was the first time pamphlets were really brought into the picture. They were used for propaganda for both the Royalist and the Parliamentarians, preaching, news, and education. This was their CNN. Although, some remote areas didn’t have these pamphlets as soon as they were printed, they nevertheless, circulated the Isles. People had the opportunity to understand what was happening in the world for once in their lives. In the beginning of the Civil War, pamphlets weren’t as widely used, however later there was an explosion of printing. Censorship was limited in the Commonwealth and for those that wanted to weigh in on the discussion, they finally could.
In my own perspective, I would want to know what was happening in my country. Yes, I am speaking from a very biased and modern mentality, but I think that knowing what is happening in the political realm is super important. I, as a single lowly peasant, may not have had a huge opportunity to change the monarchy for the better, but amongst my people I could. The more people that agree with a particular perspective means that there is more potential to change. If these people were educated or alerted of the country’s doings, then there is a definite possibility of reform.
Perhaps there’s a bit of a danger in extrapolating the “CNN poll” model of popular governance back a few hundred years. A few times in class, I’ve quoted MacMillan’s response to the question of what a Prime Minister most feared: “Events, dear boy, events.” (As with all famous quotations, there are some folks who say that the popular memory has it wrong, cf. Mao on the French Revolution.) The idea is that the government is the thing that handles the changes in the nation, not the thing that creates them.
In times of peace, I don’t think it ever occurred to more than a handful of people that they held the power to decide the fate of a nation. Even the notion of such power seems to imply a odern way of looking at things – to the early modern mind, powers were specific, not general. The fellow with the Conque Ports monopoly kept an eye on trade, and the Archbishop made sure that some smattering of a notion of the ineffeable remained in the public life, and aside from that, there was just a large scrum in which everyone was just trying to get eggs for the next breakfast.
“Cinque Ports,” not “Conque Ports.” The Conque ports were a considerably less lucrative monopoly.
I would have to say political alertness and participation is always an issue and I would argue that even now we face many challenges even with all this new technology. Something we learned in one of my many classes related to globalization is the issue that comes with the suddenly vast source of information and political alertness. Even though we have so much information available at the tip of our fingers, it is also too easy for people to choose to only follow information that already lines up with their own political opinions. People will most likely choose the news sources that lean in the same direction of the political spectrum, ignore anything that is easily identified as following the other political party, etc. So with this issue, can we truly call it political alertness when it can be so biased?
Back to history however, that does play into the idea of was ignorance a bliss for the local peasant? My argument would be that to a certain extent it was. It was highly unlikely that a peasant was always affected by the decisions of the monarchy just because the monarchy dealt with matters that was often above the local issues. Also, I feel like that even if a peasant had some knowledge of what was going on in the King’s court and in Parliament, there is still so much intricacy with the way governance works and it would almost impossible for some low peasant to fully comprehend and make the best decision for the nation. Just like today, they were most likely preoccupied by what was happening in their own little town, their own little village, and at the end of the day would just want what’s best for themselves and for their own little world.
And to wrap this all up, I’m not saying that I don’t think people should stay ignorant, but that even when we have all this knowledge, we must take into consideration that there are probably lots of little things that we have no idea about that influence the decisions of those in positions of power. People become experts for a reason, and we shouldn’t be too quick to debase someone just because we suddenly have a source of knowledge – especially when that knowledge can be so intensely biased on purpose like nowadays.