1647 The Putney Debates

==Anniversary of modern republican democracy celebrated in UK (the Putney Debates - 1647)==
Upper Peruvian first to translate the "Rights of Man" into Spanish.
This week 360 years ago in a small church in Putney, South West London a debate took place presided over by Oliver Cromwell which arguably pushed the outcome of the English Civil War towards a "republican solution". Though the Republic (of the Commonwealth) was shortlived, the principles* debated eventually formed the bedrock for the US constitution. There appears to have been little influence on the Peruvian "revolutions" of the 1780's (Tupac Amaru and others) and one of the writers who had disseminated ideas of the "rights of man" to both North America and France -- Thomas Paine -- was not translated into Spanish until the "altoperuano" (born: Upper Peru - the area roughly to the East of Lake Titicaca, since 1825 Bolivia (except 1836-39 Federation) Vicente Pazos Kanki "stumbled across" Voltaire, Paine and other "enlightenment" texts in the then greatest<> library in South America at Sucre (then Cusichaca).
*the key concept of the "sovereignty of parliament" (over the King / the Executive) being derived from the people (male suffrage - women had to wait until the 1920's for the vote in Britain) lived on. Puritans and non-conformist protestants carried the message to the American colonies and many of the principles debated in 1647 became enshrined in the US constitution (but not for slaves, native Americans and women). and influenced political philosophers and writers from John Locke (1632 – 1704) to Thomas Paine. As a "young intellectual" John Locke was sent to Westminster School in that year (1647), he became the first of the major British Empiricist philosophers . . . . .
Category:Minkapedia
Category: Journal of Peruvian Studies