In order to understand the history of English North America during the 1640s to the 1660s, one really needs to know at least something about the English Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts in 1661. This episode is a high level look at that period, oriented toward the events and themes most important to the history of the Americans. But there are still some great details, including a graphic description of the execution of Charles I, and an elegy of sorts, to Sir Henry Vane!

It must be said that British listeners and others who know a lot about this period will no doubt find this overview tediously shallow and rife with rank generalizations and even error.  Guilty as charged. The American analogy would be to cover the years between the run-up to our own Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South in one podcast episode. Absurd! And yet here it is.

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Selected references for this episode

(Commission received on the Amazon links)

Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689

George Bancroft, History of the United States of America (Vol 1)

Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel

Elvis Costello, "Oliver's Army" (YouTube)