2 notes on Macaulays history of england.
Lord Macaulay points out something in describing the history of the conflict between, Catholics and Protestants in England which probably was obvious at the time but is not obvious now. Protestants and Catholics were understood to be racially separate groups for most of history. Latin speaking countries never adopted protestantism. “Teutonic” countries almost universally rejected the Latin Church. Ireland, the outlier, embraced Catholicism because they saw themselves as racially separate from the Scottish and the British, and because they hated Teutons.
By extension of this idea, you can see how the “freedom of religion” gang in early America are really quite intellectually consistent with the “anti-racism” of their atheistic intellectual descendants… It seems to me that religion would have clearly also implied race at the time. Strip away religion, and all thats left is race.
neat.
A second note.
Macaulay is basically a lib. But since he is a Lib from the 1800’s, which makes him by definition less progressive than anyone you’ve ever met, this can be difficult to see. Or at least it doesn’t cloud out the narrative of his thoughts and ideas in the way it often does when reading modern historians. However. His treatment of King James (Father of King Charles I, and second to last real king in England) is unreal. The pages about James feel like Brian Stelter jumping back in time 200 years to gossip about a republican senator. I won’t spoil it for you but Macaulay basically vividly paints a picture of a Chad King who openly mocks his deep state counterparts and reminds them that he can replace them any moment and that they serve entirely at his pleasure. The amount of Seethe this causes in Macaulay is… Very high.