Oliver Cromwell is a hardass.

Thank you for the quote. About time someone challenged Mr. Cromwell's apologists on both sides of the Irish sea. You are right. He was a bit of a bastard. If we're honest though, he was not the first or the last.

This was not entirely a bad film (mostly because of Harris) but like most of English history in film it glosses over the facts and embellishes the emotive character. Harris is brilliant as always but I am still uncomfortable with this and many other English/Hollywood historical dramas. They understandably tend to take various degrees of artistic license in dealing with historical fact but that can have dire results. Which is why the discussions boards about this film do not actually discuss the film. Rather, we find ourselves discussing the character of Oliver Cromwell himself and evaluating his actions - and this film had little or nothing to do with that reality.

I am an Irishman. But I am not always proud to be Irish. I cannot excuse our neutrality in World War 2. I cannot justify anyone blowing Warrington to smithereens in my name. But these are facts I live with and I hope to learn from them. I lived in the UK for a three years - after the Troubles were over, more or less - and I was, for the most part, treated well. However, I was shocked by the real lack of knowledge about or acknowledgement of England's less glorious past. Similarly, English academics employ the same moral blind-spot in their work. I lived outside Derry during the Drumcree stand-off and had my face punched by a kindly policeman who was busy showing some 'Tadghs' what was what when I walked by... Reading this thread has actually been a little more frightening. And I am forced to ask what versions of History are taught and learned in the UK.

Forgive this rant. Many will not like it. The reason films like this can have dire consequences is that some simpleton eventually comes along and says something incredibly stupid like "Oliver Cromwell is a hardass ... MY HERO" - which is not too different than acquiring all your knowledge and morality from a Cornflakes box. It only takes a few irrational leaps of a limited imagination before a fellow idiot says: "the Irish have always been a pain in the arse to us and the sword is the only lingo thay understand." ... And what follows is the far more insidious comments like "It's a shame because not once were we ever encouraged to take pride in our countyr or our noble history and this has turned me to really distrust our liberal-apologist government..." (from a wise, experienced and educated 16 year old).....

Would it be slightly more disturbing if German's started applying this logic to Adolf Hitler? Or would that be different because they're not British and therefore not endowed with divinely granted superiority? I sincerely doubt that Israeli historians are writing apologist histories of the Third Reich to sate German academic appetites in the way that Irish historians are re-imagining Irish history to appease British academics.

Cromwell can never really be a fluffy lovable heroic figure be it history or film (and that is where this film failed) - and that is especially true if you are Irish. He was not much different than Adolf Hitler for Ireland: A genocidal little brute who corrupted the ideals of a Republic with misguided religious zeal and was solely motivated by greed and spite in his treatment of Ireland and the Irish - as with every English administration thereafter although they were less honest about their inhumanity. I don't think he was particularly evil - just English, a bigot, a racist and inexplicably secure in his self-appointed superiority. Nevertheless, he was a brilliant and forward-thinking soldier/tactician/politician (like Hitler, largely due to his administrative ability, his ruthlessness and the men he surrounded himself with) and he was essentially right about the monarchy and class in England (in theory if not in practice). He did some things that were evil. He did some things that were good but by evil means. Yet, he was an English patriot, a rationalist and a Republican despite his fall into despotism. However, what matters to me is how Ireland is treated in these discussions. And when you add Ireland to the equation, Oliver Cromwell is not the heroic or the tragic figure depicted in this film.

Before people assume that I am yet another ignorant Mick from the bogs with an axe to grind, I studied history at an Irish university and I must confess that there is an understandable effort on the part of Irish Historians to redeem Cromwell and other English figures in history and dispense with our persecution complex - but it is considered bad manners to refer to this as historical revisionism. Sadly, that is exactly what it is: Historical Revisionism that is equally malicious as that of earlier Irish Republicans but considerably more insidious. Anybody who questions this is written off as a recidivistic Republican who has Semtex buried under the garden shed. Pity really. But it is part of a broad spectrum in Irish culture that prefers a milk-blooded approach to dealing with all Irish/English historical confluences - some people think it is better to be affable than honest. Admittedly there are exaggerations in previous Irish historiography that has been negated by more recent study of primary sources that show Cromwell to be no less vicious than his counterparts in the Thirty Years War or subsequent English military leaders. (without reference to the fact that people who were executed, Catholic, poor, illiterate or defeated tend to be very silent at such times and leave little primary historical evidence in their wake).

Personally, I feel that a bland and unthinking military history of Cromwell ignores his attempts at social and economic engineering after his conquests. Social history shows that Cromwell's re-ordering of Irish society, his 'plantation' of Ireland (for those not familiar with the term, in Irish history it meant that land, property etc. was transferred to loyal English or Protestant ownership by extra-legal means in direct contradiction of English property law as it was applied in England) and the completely partial imposition of English law had lasting consequences. Primarily, it dispossessed, ghettoized and diminished Irish Catholics within a system that was not wholly dissimilar to Apartheid - and this left the majority of Irish Catholics excluded as second-class citizens under the increasing influence of The Roman Catholic clergy. It also created the economic and social conditions that would culminate in mass migration and famine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Finally, military and social historians always neglect to mention that Cromwell and the Royalists were fighting over English politics and Ireland mattered little to either party. It's not very pleasant when foreigners bring their wars into to your backyard (If you're British, think of it like Warrington or July 2007).

Again, forgive the long-winded rant. I had assumed that we were all moving forward and learning from past mistakes. National pride should not be predicated upon a selective ignorance of the past. History (if not historical drama) should be about truth rather than adopting the most palatable truth available.