Excerpt from God and Gold by Walter R. Mead, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Cromwell had another problem that would be echoed during the Cold War. The grand battle against papistry occasionally forced him into strange alliances, even into alliances with papists. Truman found himself aiding Marshal Tito, the Yugoslav Communist leader. In the case of both Nixon and Reagan, opposition to Communist Russia led to improved relations with Communist China; Cromwell found himself trying to explain why Catholic France was a worthy ally against Catholic Spain.

Once again similar problems found similar answers. As Truman and his successors noted that Yugoslav Communists were independent of Moscow, Cromwell claimed that France was in fact independent of the papacy and so able to conclude treaties on its own. Cromwell also argued that his secret correspondence with France's Cardinal Mazarin would result in improved treatment of Protestant dissidents in that country; the prospect of improved human rights in China was constantly held out by uncomfortable American presidents justifying the twists and turns of the Cold War. To make Cromwell's position even more difficult, Mazarin pointed out that his ability to improve the treatment of Protestants in France might well depend on Cromwell's success at making life more tolerable for Catholics in England.



NOTES
[1] Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Ivan Roots (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1989), 80.
[2] Ibid., 80.
[3] Ibid., 81.
[4] Ronald Reagan, The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1980-1989, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), 363.
[5] Ibid., 364.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Roots, 83.
[8] Reagan, 362.
[9] Roots, 82.
[10] Ibid., 82-83.
[11] Ibid., 84.
[12] Reagan, 362.
[13] Roots, 85.
[14] R. B. Merriam, “Some Notes on the Treatment of the English Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth,” American Historical Review 13, no. 3 (April 1908): 481.
[15] The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2, s.v. “Edward Bradshaigh.”
[16] Godfrey Davies, The Early Stuarts, 1603-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 211.
[17] Patrick Francis Moran, Historical Sketch of the Persecutions Suffered by the Catholics of Ireland Under the Rule of Oliver Cromwell (Dublin: Callan, 1903), ch 8, point 2.
[18] Thomas Burton, Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., April 1657-February 1658, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36843 (accessed February 12, 2007), 153.

Excerpted from God and Gold by Walter Russell Mead Copyright © 2007 by Walter Russell Mead. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.