Lazy day

**Rhyfelwyr** · 11-10-2010, 17:32

I've done nothing but browse the .org and various forums today. I'm not used to having a whole day when I'm not at Uni/work. I wanted to do some work on my dissertation but it ain't happening.

Anyone else ever have days like this when they sit all day in front of their PC doing and achieving nothing?

I've found it's best not to fight it and just accept that you can start the work later and be ready for it when you do.

**A Nerd** · 11-10-2010, 17:37

Procrastination is a disease, it leads to sloth. I have been afflicted with it for years. :( Motivation seems to be the cure, but that is something you are born with, alas, I was not. :(

**Rhyfelwyr** · 11-10-2010, 17:39

The thing is my dissertation isn't even due until February, but I was ahead on the research so my tutor wants me to have the main body of it finished for Friday.

So charging me with procastination is a little unfair!

**A Nerd** · 11-10-2010, 17:43

So charging me with procastination is a little unfair!

Sorry. :) Just keep you laziness in check so that it doesn't become infected and yeild that procrastinatory disease of mine. Be wary, it is quite contagious!

**gaelic cowboy** · 11-10-2010, 23:11

Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

The thing is my dissertation isn't even due until February, but I was ahead on the research so my tutor wants me to have the main body of it finished for Friday.

So charging me with procastination is a little unfair!

What are you doing it on???

**Rhyfelwyr** · 11-10-2010, 23:32

Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

What are you doing it on???

I haven't actually finalised the question yet (bizarrely, since I've nearly written it), but I am doing it on the British Revolutions of the mid seventeeth century. The angle I'm taking is to expand on the British perspective of the events of the period, looking at how the events in the three kingdoms affected each other. However, I'm putting a different take on the British perspective, since historians that took that view have tended to abandon looking at longer-term factors such as socioeconomic etc change, and instead viewed events in Scotland as destabilising England, creating a bit of an unnecessary conflict. Instead, I'm looking at the importance of the longer-term factors, and trying to place them in a British context.

In a way I took my cue from Alan Macinnes, since he revived the idea of looking at long-term issues in the rise of the Covenanting movement, and placed it is a British context. I'm kind of trying to do the same for events in England, and in doing so I try to show how the socioeconomic change throughout Britain is more central in understanding the events of the period than the 'national' dynamic historians have tended to see in viewing different Scottish/English concerns.

To do this I focus more on the latter years of the conflict than other historians have. Basically, my take is that both the Covenanting and Parliamentarian causes had a fundamental split between their more conservative, and their more radical elements. For a start, I stop talking about Scotland/England as if they were somehow homogenous. I look at how Scotland's South-West was unique from the rest of the country, and how it was the heartland of Covenanting radicalism, as it's factions, first the Kirk Party and then the Western Association, backed by the 'middling sort' of society, came to challenge the more conservative and noble-led Engager faction. And I say a similar thing happened in England, between the more conservative Presbyterian led Parliament, and the more radical New Model Army.

Finally, I try to show that this conservative/radical divide is much more useful in understanding the wars of the period, than the Scottish/English divide. So I look at how the nobility dominated the early Covenanting/Parliamentarian causes, how the middling sort took over in both cases after around 1645-8, how Cromwell installed the Kirk Party regime in Edinburgh etc. With my focus on the class aspect to the factionalism with the middling sort and nobility etc, I sound almost like a Marxist at times.

As for Ireland, I must admit I do not pay it much attention! This is mainly a practical reason, with the word count being too small IMO. But also, in a way to speak of 'three kingdoms' is misleading. Scotland and England both had their own political culture, and they were relatively homogenous, besides their internal socioecnomic divisions. Ireland on the other hand is different, in a way its not just a single kingdom like the others, it had elements from all three kingdoms, with the Scots settlers in Ulster, the Anglo-Irish elite etc. My focus is on the British aspect with similarities in Scotland and England, in a way Ireland is too different to be included much.

Well that was longer than intended, but it's not a simple matter!

**gaelic cowboy** · 11-10-2010, 23:43

Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

........

So your basically trying to say some kind of proto-middle class was developing maybe????? yes/no if thats the case then I would agree in leaving Ireland out as that dynamic was not here.

Ireland has elements of the superpower chess game really if you take Spain as having an oar in it, and there is clash between the Old English and Parliament chuck in the Confederate element and to be honest twas more like Afghanistan with shifting loyalty etc and fluid alliance dynamic.

**Rhyfelwyr** · 11-10-2010, 23:46

Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

So your basically trying to say some kind of proto-middle class was developing maybe????? yes/no if thats the case then I would agree in leaving Ireland out as that dynamic was not here.

Pretty much, yeah. I'm saying the socioeconomic element drove everything else. IMO religious issues, political issues, and in a longer-term sense even national issues are all secondary to the socioeconomic ones.

Heavens above, I have all but become a Marxist! Nah I've not really, I actually devote a little bit of it to being angry at Brian Manning for rigidly viewing the class-struggle issue in England as being central to everything, and ignoring the influence of events in Scotland.