another chance to use my Roundheads icon!

[winterbadger]

Someone on one of my wargames lists wrote:

Over here in the states, "our" Civil War is usually called just that. The Civil War. We don't often place the word American in front of it. It's just understood that if you are talking about the Civil War, it's ours. Sure, we abbreviate it ACW on forum posts, but that's just to be polite.

Along with the thread about our "common language" which separates us (thank you Winny for that most excellent quote) there has been one about 28mm Civil War. The first time I started reading that thread, I thought "Cool, the lardies are going to work on a set of rules for
the Civil War!"

Not so. Turned out you were focused on some other conflict. Which leads to my question: Do you chaps refer to "your" Civil War as The Civil War as well? And like us, you don't bother putting English in front of it, since you "know" what you're all talking about?

I would have thought that given your long history, you must have had more than just the one time that a portion of your people took up arms against another portion. And that because of this, you would have many Civil Wars, so to differentiate, you would need to give them fancier names. If they are all just called Civil War, that would be confusing, like having everyone in Australia called Bruce.

So for this total dweeb when it comes to English internal conflicts, just what is "your" Civil War - when did it happen, between whom, and why? (in, say, 100 words or less).

To which I replied:

The short answer is that they have several civil wars, but they have cool names for all the rest of them (like the Wars of the Roses or the Glorious Revolution, cf. Wikipedia list of English civil wars), leaving "the English Civil War" to mean the bust-up in the 17th century.

But even that is a bit of a misnomer as it (a) refers to several different wars and (b) was not solely restricted to England (those from abroad, like us Americans, may annoy the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Cornish when we forget that there is something north and west of the Channel other than England, but not nearly as much as it annoys them when the ENGLISH do it...)

In fact, what is generally called "the Civil War" is a series of conflicts that started up (in part) because of a war that was fought by the English in Ireland (to make the Irish into Englishmen) and a war fought between England and Scotland (to make the Scots Anglicans) and then turned into a fight about Charles I (King of England, whose dad was a Scot) wanting to be a French-style absolute monarch, eventually devolving into a conflict about Oliver Cromwell making himself a Spanish (Franco-style) military dictator. For details, see Wikipedia article on the War of the Three Kingdoms

Since, of course, no matter what the fight was about, the English eventually won and got to write the history, they've been calling them the English Civil War(s) ever since.

Except in Ireland, where no one ever wins, and the losers get to write all the good songs.

Comments

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

Getting better, slowly. We are in perfect hiking country, though, and it pisses me off that i can't go for a decent trail walk.

take care!

we'll try to post more pics tonight and more blog entries later this week.

[winterbadger]

:-( Well, despite the temptation, don't work it too hard too soon. NJS always does that and, like Ben Olsen* never properly recovers from her injuries.

*Ask Chris about this DCU reference. And tell her to cross her fingers for us tonight--playing Harbour View FC at RFK--must win to advance!