Republican Recollections

Abstract

This chapter analyses the attempts that the governments’ officials and supporters made to shape the public memory of the British Civil Wars. The republics owed their very existence to the outcome of these conflicts, and successive regimes made a concerted effort to craft a version of the recent past that would legitimate the new state. It demonstrates that, in achieving this task, three themes were particularly prevalent: the culpability of the King; the providential nature of the Parliament’s victories; and the cruel and treacherous actions of the Scots. These memories were not, however, entirely unproblematic. Remembering the recent past often conflicted with other political goals, not least the desire to engender reconciliation and the peaceful settlement of the state. Torn between these competing impulses of remembrance and reconciliation, the republics faced—and ultimately failed to resolve—a challenge that has continued to trouble post-war states down to the present day.