Thank you.
It is hard to evaluate the argument that to which you responded with the
passage from Hobsbawm, that some of the English marxist historians did not
give the proper emphasis to Ireland.
As far as the criticism of Hill is concerned I cannot see how it fits.
Although not centrally an economic historian, his analysis of history,
including that of ideas, is imbued with implications of the economic base
affecting the superstructure.
To accept the perspective that Proyect is promoting you would have to prove
a substantial and direct transfer of value from Ireland to England which
went into capitalist enterprises, and did not also come from other quarters.
Hill interestingly writes in the Intellectual Origins of the English
Revolution about the economic ideas of Francis Bacon:
"His own policies aimed at economic self-sufficiency. He wanted the wilds
of Scotland to be colonized, Ireland to be civilized, the Netherlands and
their empire to be annexed [footnote by Hill - The Rump did its best to
carry out this programme.] He shared Hakluyt's view that England's
over-population was only relative: a resolute policy of fen drainage,
cultivation of the wastes and commons, colonization of Ireland, expansion
of the fishing industry, overseas trade, and the carrying trade would soon
show that the problem was 'rather of scarceness, than of press of people'. "
This would fit with a more general theory that the rising bourgeoisie was
looking everywhere for all opportunities to accumulate, primitive or otherwise.
Hill's main strategic thesis is about the English revolution being a
bourgeois democratic revolution presented in religious forms.
I do not see that one would expect him to put the thesis and be able to
martial the facts that Proyect and Philip Ferguson expect.
Certainly Hill is explicit about the subjugation of Ireland by England in
the 17th century and about the massacre of Drogheda.
He does illustrate that the need for armed suppression in Ireland created
the need for repressive armies that could be turned against the English.
This is an echo of the anti-democratic consequences of the subjection of
Wales in previous centuries. However it does not directly feed into the
capitalist economic revolution; rather the bourgeois political revolution.
Thus Hill writes in "The Century of Revolution", that Thomas Wentworth was
made Lord Deputy in Ireland in 1632. "'Black Tom Tyrant' ruled in Ireland
with a heavy but efficient hand, reducing the Irish Parliament to
submission and building up an army of Papists which aroused apprehension in
England."
"In November 1641 a rebellion took place in Ireland, at last liberated from
Strafford's iron hand. ... The opposition group in Parliament refused to
trust a royal nominee with command of an army to reconquer Ireland. So the
question of ultimate power in the state was raised. "
Hill goes on to describe in terse sentences the escalation of the conflict
with the Grand Remonstrance, the King's attempts to arrest the 5 opposition
leaders, Charles abandoning London, and the inevitability of civil war.
I really do not know what to make of a criticism of the English Marxist
historians in general and including Hill in it. On the one hand Hill notes
that a great deal of Irish land passed to London merchantrs who had lent
money to Parliament. But he also notes that "Parliament passed an Act for
draining the Fens in the same month as the Levellers were put down at
Burford." and he notes such things as
"Clover seed was on sale in London by 1650. Its use, recommended by
agricultural writers, revolutionised the cultivation of barren land."
I think we can assume the distinction between primitive accumulation and
capitalist accumulation was familiar to this English group of Marxist
historians, who, as a group, were rather admirable.
Chris Burford
London
