England

18. Black, English Nationalism (11 September 2025)

by kurto

Nationalism, though often seen to have originated in 19th-century transitions from monarchical to republican government and self-determination, dates in England to the 10th century. This older archetype of shared culture, solidarity, and cohesive leadership is far from the racist phenomenon portrayed by contemporary academics.

History not ethnicity is the decisive feature of English nationalism. Alfred’s England, comprising Angles, Saxons, Danes, Vikings, and Britons, was based on Christianity and the common law, marked by equality before the law and trial by jury. The latter’s emphasis on content, not prescription, promoted a civic character and continuity, enshrining rights and resolving disputes where no law was established. It was a vital element of government and society in pre-Norman England. During Normanization, the common law gained strength by enhancing public power, that is the government’s ability to resolve, distinguishing between the crown as benign but rulers as (potentially) bad. Whereas the Church, though not taken over by the Danes, was Latinized by the invaders; upon French conquest of Normandy in 1203-04, Anglo-Norman elites were forced to choose sides.

The English vernacular became identified with the country in the 13th century, including literature such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The end of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453, when all save Calais was recaptured by the French) and Henry VIII’s reformation (1529-36, including sales of monasteries) marked decisive breaks with continental culture. The ‘new nationalism’ of 1453-1603 then added the rise of Parliament and popular acceptance of Protestantism (for example by Foxes’ Book of Martyrs). Elizabeth rejected looking into men’s consciousness, seeking only outward conformity, such that sects needn’t flee to Europe.

In British England, 1603-1783, the political history of the Stuarts and Hanovers can been seen partly as an attempt to reconcile ethnic diversity via Parliamentary sovereignty. Commencing in earnest with Cromwell’s postwar unification, nationalism was a byproduct, not the aim of racism. For England’s religious loyalties remained divided and 1707 created a multi-confessional state, Scotland’s Episcopacy having been replaced by Presbyterianism in 1689. Further the progressive Whiggish society (frequently in debt to the Scottish Enlightenment) saw itself as premised on political and cultural traits such as the Blackstone’s understanding of the Magna Carta, Petition of Right, and common law and Burke’s Glorious Revolution and Declaration of Right – but not ethnicity. Meanwhile, patriotic Anglo-Saxonism counted for little in the residents of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, who viewed medieval history differently; Scotland retained the Roman law.

In the 18th century, stagecoaches were linking the country as never before, and then came Victorian railroads, both serving to strengthen communal ties. Speaking of Britain often meant England, albeit such works as Churchill’s History of the English-speaking Peoples were nuanced. By World War I, tensions between England and Britain fully emerged. But nationalism was also evident in the preference for the rural over the urban (especially London): manufacturing was only 150 years old, while villages dated to the Anglo-Saxon era. The decline of the British empire too rekindled English ways.

The next point of departure was 1973’s accession to the European Economic Community, though it had been presaged by the turn from the dominions to the multiethnic Commonwealth. The emphasis of the England’s latter 20th century was not empire or was but social progress and ‘diversity’. The Church of England’s decline played a substantial role in nationalism falling out of fashion. The common law too suffered at the hands of governments wanting to rule by statute as well as the invasion of EU Roman law. Regionalism rose in the 2010s, not just because of devolution but also through Cornish and Midlands resentment of London (‘leveling up’). That is, English nationalism confronts not only the Celts but also anti-southern sentiment, which again dispels simplified ethnic explanations. (Here is a reasonable plaint: why should some 120 MPs vote for England when the English cannot vote in Edinburgh, Cardiff, or Belfast?)

English nationalism is not merely a variety of anti-elitism. Black seeks to disentangle it from populism, which owes much to 20th-century Communist ideology (i.e., the supposed good of the people driven in a collective march forward – from the top downward). The contemporary left, focused on race and sex, makes no effort to unify. Englishness entails fair play, friendliness (but not intimacy) and helpfulness, individualism but concern for the less fortunate (but not communitarian), and traditionalism (settled Burkean prejudice), all toward an ideal of social cohesion and patriotism or love of one’s country. These elements, not merely disgust with unmanaged immigration – that is, no attempt at assimilation – were all evident in England’s leading the vote to exit the European union.

7. Kishlansky, Monarchy Transformed (26 April 2025)

by kurto

The long Stuart century resolved the central problems of James I’s era – religion, finance, and Scotland – albeit unexpectedly. The Anglican settlement held, though Dissent proliferated. Royal finance became the people’s responsibility to fund government. Scotland was unified if not integrated with England. Ultimately monarchy became the king-in-parliament.

Towns increasingly crossed transitioned from agricultural centers to exchange economies, most home to approximately 1,000 residents. Norwich, Bristol, York, and Exter ranged from 10,000 – 30,000. London was a world of its own. Despite decline of the traditional cloth trade, by century’s end, England had passed Holland in transshipping from the Atlantic colonies and East Indies to the European continent; cloth fell to below half, while re-export went from 0 to 33 percent.
The constitution was not only unwritten but could not be reduced to writing. The best decisions were seen to result from unanimity; Commons generally deferred to the Lords, local officers (e.g., JPs) to the lords lieutenants. Polls for the Commons were a last resort. Thus were Catholics and Puritans (ideally) excluded from politics.

The king was a singulas major universalis major, according to developing ideas of resisting the (Catholic) sovereign. Among the 20-30 privy counselors, the 3 most important offices were the lord treasurer (of the Exchequer), the chancellor (legal officer), and secretary of state. Charles I sought to reform the lord lieutenancy but the position became a life tenancy of appointed peers; peerage grew from 55 to 170 by the time of William III, James I having dispensed tithes for cash, Charles for loyalty.

In 1610 the Lord Treasurer Earl of Salisbury proposed Parliament should adopt the Great Contract, a one-time subsidy to pay off the royal debt and to commute some prerogative rights to an annual land tax. The Commons balked, wanting the specifics of transforming wardship, purveyance, and trade impositions. The failure led to retailing of titles, royal land, and an increase in royal rents. Salisbury won a legal case (the Bates case) re import tax but squandered the mystique of the king’s wisdom (i.e., the rationale of the prerogative).

In 1621 James couldn’t find a diplomatic solution to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, in which the Spanish Habsburgs claimed the Lower Palatinate, erstwhile ruled by his nephew Frederick V (the ‘Winter King’), and could not prevent the Commons petitioning for war and a Protestant marriage for Charles. In 1627 came the Five Knights Case, followed by the Petition of Right (including habeus corpus, prohibition on supra-Parliamentary taxation, the billeting of troops in peacetime, martial law). Oddly, the 1630s were remember as peaceful, in contrast to the continent, despite the slide toward civil war including religious ferment: 10,000 Catholic priests were active in the country. Meanwhile, Laud, backed by the Duke of Buckingham, was enforcing high church policy – alienating moderates and Catholics, and prompting the first wave of Puritans to leave for New England.

The Civil War effectively commenced in 1637 with enforcement of the Anglican prayer book in Scotland and consequent formation of the Covenanters; the second Bishops’ War was the formal start, leading to Scottish occupation of Newcastle. In 1641, Parliamentary attacks on Charles’ ministers were tantamount to impeaching the king. The Grand Remonstrance polarized the Commons, calling for rights to approve the King’s ministers as well as the Anglican hierarchy, thereby exacerbating Anglican-Presbyterian tensions. As events quickened, the political class faced stark choices among otherwise shared values (e.g., private property, royal prerogative). Generally, the north and west were royalist, the south and east Parliamentarian. When war was actually declared, each side enlisted 20,000. Following the failure of 1645’s Uxbridge Proposition, Parliament’s military leaders sketched plans the ‘new model’ army, combining three field forces into one, while stripping peers (lords lieutenant) of automatic command. So long as Charles was represented by Laud, Parliament focused on reforming the episcopacy, though Presbyterians were willing to sacrifice liberty to license, and the Independents to tolerate license for liberty of conscience.

The second phase of the war, commencing winter 1648, saw Charles’ English supporters join the Scots in opposing the New Model Army’s intervention in politics. Though the army was broadly disliked, Parliament retained better resources and organization. Having debated amongst itself at Putney, the army then purged Parliament and imprisoned Charles.

The king’s execution made England an outlaw nation, its people sullenly accepting the Commonwealth – prompting Hobbes to write Leviathan asserting state authority was preferable to universal civil war. The gentry withdrew from local government, leaving novices in their stead; the Commons was dependent on the army. The revolution was internally inconsistent: Puritan enthusiasm catalyzed events in the interest of conscience, the gentry’s fundamental constitutionalism acted as a check. Ireland, whose religious revolt had fairly united all sides of England, took three years to subdue, the revolutionary theorist Henry Ireton passing in the fighting. Nonetheless, the Commonwealth’s greatest successes were militaristic, notably the comprehensive union of the three Stuart realms and defeat of the Dutch navy in 1652 by result of a better (if politicized) military. The country fell further into debt. The Rump was expelled in 1653 because the populace would have voted royalist. The Instrument of Government (1653) established Cromwell as protector, contained elements on the New Model Army as well as Leveler proposals but looked like monarchy to its opponents. Cromwell ruled for the people’s good – not what pleased them but what he thought they needed. The regime was held together in his person, displaying a contradictory longing for stable constitution and hope of a millenarian vision.

The Protectorate had retained three armies, one led by Monck, who catalyzed the Commonwealth’s fall after Cromwell’s passing. Amid the Restoration, the Convention was careful to pay for disbanding soldiers, though prejudice against a standing army would last more than 100 years. Tasked with indemnity, land holdings, religious settlement, it finished its business in a rapid 5 months. The Restoration converted monarchy to a popular form of government, with the Church of England positioned as a compromise between Catholics and Puritans (later Dissenters), and the Commons as a recognized branch of government. But the Irish settlement chose Parliamentary owner-occupiers (in order not to reopen English debts) and the Scottish resolution was status quo ante bellum (i.e., control of a subordinated Parliament, control by royal privy council, and restoration of disliked episcopacy).

The Earl of Clarendon’s 1667 fall marked a return to personal rule. Fiscal problems prompted 1670’s secret Treaty of Dover: a personal subsidy and a share of the Dutch empire in exchange for a naval attack on the Netherlands and suspension of anti-Catholic laws. Anglicans and Dissenters were united by 1672. Titus Oates’ conspiratorial Popish Plot transpired over 1678-81, ironically against Charles in order to replace him with the Catholic James II, the subject of the Exclusion Crisis. Based on his past record, Charles was widely expected to relent to 1680’s Exclusion Bill but stiffened, dissolving Commons, purging judges and local officials, arresting the Earl of Shaftesbury, and persecuting Dissenters.

In issuing 1687’s Declaration of Indulgence, James set aside penalties for Catholics and Dissenters. The Anglican hierarchy refused to read it in church, protesting this was to suspend the common law, and went into opposition; six bishops went to the Tower. But Catholics and Dissenters didn’t amount to necessary support. Meanwhile, William of Orange, actively trying to prevent England from siding with France, accepted an invitation to visit England, panicking James into the fleeing the country. Parliament resolved the crisis of William and Mary’s claim in a brisk two weeks, determining the throne had been abdicated, a deliberately ambiguous view. The opposing camps then agreed the Declaration of Right, formalizing the Commons’ role, again prohibiting standing armies, requiring free elections as well as Commons’ consent if the public were to be taxed. It established the appearance of a constitutional monarchy.

An assassination attempt promoted the Oath of Association, declaring William the lawful, rightful king, driving a wedge into the Tories, who left local office. In power, William’s warfare created the need for efficient fiscal administration, leading to the creation of national (not royal) debt, and reorienting London around finance instead of commerce. In war, the security of funded debt was preferable to the risks to overseas trade. The Act of Settlement (1701) pre-established the transition from Anne Stuart to the Hanovers, also restricting government to English citizens and severing judges from royal appointment and other country prejudices. Country opposition cut across Whig and Tory: the country favored constitutional checks on monarchy and the standing army as well as fiscal restraint. William stumbled badly in Scotland, where the ‘Club’ made itself a loyal opposition and the Highlands were essentially ungoverned. James’ passing helped prompt the War of Spanish Succession, driving William away from a tilt toward Robert Harley and back to the Whigs; but soon the Dutchman passed from a riding accident.

Anne, who had acted to channel Puritan sympathies into a national reform of manners, saw her reign dominated by European war, and mostly continued William’s policies. Her administration was led by Godolphin’s treasury and Churchill’s army; Tory policy favored the Anglican church, the blue water navy, and fiscal prudence. Franco-Spanish alliance threatened trade and hence finance. The Failure of the Scottish colony at Darien – which had absorbed an estimated ¼ of Scotland’s liquid capital – drove home the country’s exposure to English trade. The Act of Settlement had not been adopted in Scotland; it approved an Act of Security for an independent choice of monarch, raising Jacobite possibilities. The English Alien Act of 1705 then established that unless the succession of the Hanovers were accepted, Scotland would be treated a foreign nation and trade with France interdicted, thereby catalyzing the 1707 Act of Union.

The Whiggish Junto, which had predominated William’s ministry, fell during Anne’s, in part by prosecuting the high Anglican Sacheverell, though Harley supplanting Godolphin, and by the Marlboroughs’ fall from favor. Harley’s courtier-like behavior supplement a ‘government above’ party message. He sought peace in the Spanish Succession war (contra Marlborough), which meant ending the peninsular war and seeking English diplomatic prizes (repudiating the Junto’s aims). The UK thus acquired Newfoundland, retained Gibraltar, and St Kitts in the Peach of Utrecht (1711), taking pole position among naval powers plus a 30-year monopoly on the Asiento.
Kishlansky overstates the formation of political parties and Whiggishly elides events into harbingers: the foreshadowing chapter’s contents is questionable. No footnotes.

8. Smith, Government of Elizabethan England (27 April 2025)

by kurto

A primer on policymaking and public administration during the second half of the 16th century. Many early-modern forms of government began taking root, though the more obvious milestones came with Stuart rule and the succeeding century’s transition to Parliamentary preeminence.

Government turned on the sovereign’s cultivated mystique. Most criticism was oral, at court, whereas the vast majority of administration was written. By economy of government, Elizabeth avoided bankruptcy; by moderate religious policy, she staved off civil war. But by the 1590s she was seen as highly conservative. The Privacy council, as a duty, followed Elizabeth around – she never went north of the midlands – undertaking an increasing workload because of private suits, the war with Spain, and the growing ties of London to local government.

Parliament was called during crises or for money, as in the 1583 Throckmorton plot, the Spanish war, or for anti-Catholic measures, though the gentry who filled Parliament expected to discuss broader issues. The Lords were more subservient, used by Elizabeth to influence the Commons via patronage. Not more than 2,500 were estimated to be active in politics, so patronage was quite manageable. Approximately 40 percent of this class held profitable office under the crown.

The main objective of government budget and expense was the defense of England against foreign powers, the preservation of law and order, and paternalism by statute. Legal administration was taking shape: the Star Chamber was for criminal justice, the Chancery for equity and to a lesser degree common law. One of the more prominent roles was the principal secretary, whose potential was exploited by the two Cecils, Lord Burghley and Walsingham, men who made the office. Essex, succeeding Leicester, lacked Burghley’s moderation, an important shortcoming in his bid to challenge the younger Cecil.

From 1572, Justices of the Peach levied a fixed tax for the upkeep of the poor. Distribution was ill-defined: another twenty years passed before the law separated those unable to work from those who were unemployed or vagrants (i.e., those who would not work). The 1563 statute of artificers sough to install high standards of workmanship, requiring apprenticeship. Taken together, these were not economic policy so much as a coherent, paternalistic view of managing social economy.

Locally, the era’s main features were the extended roles of the lords lieutenant and the introduction of (often informal) deputy lieutenants subject to lords; the expansion of the JPs, and the establishment of parish authorities. Lieutenancy was oriented around defense; often informal, the deputies were also charged with collection of forced loans to the crown, making it more prominent than patronage. The JPs displaced the medieval sheriff as local adjudicators of common law. The parish, which came into formal status during Elizabeth’s reign, was a site of factional struggle and the locus of poor law administration, the organization of roads, and of common law.

Elizabethan government was fundamentally by consent because it lacked institutional enforcement, contrasting with the command-and-control regime of faltering Spain. The era marks the beginning of transition from medieval to early modern, with control passing from the crown to its ministers and local administrators, from rudimentary numerology to more sophisticated statisticians. It also saw the beginnings of the Stuart era struggle between common law and prerogative courts (i.e., Star Chamber), and in the struggle between Essex and Cecil, the first failings of political morality that was to result in the corruption of Buckingham in the 1620s.

10. Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution (28 May 2025)

by kurto

Charles I undermined English common law by misusing the rhetoric of monarchical prerogative where custom or sometimes theology normally prevailed, thus calling into question the ‘ancient constitution’ and precipitating the Civil War.

Enshrined by common law, the ancient constitution preserved continuity, but had to account for the Saxon and Norman invasions. It defined the English realm, establishing a balance between prescriptive rights and royal prerogative, and separating England from written, promulgated Roman law. Common lawyers viewed the constitution as deeply historical, holding moral lessons; however, unlike French, Scottish, and Dutch constitutionalists who were more Protestant rebels than traditionalists, the English were evolutionary.

Aquinas had held some human laws are formal, demonstrative conclusions of natural laws, a conclusion shared by Christopher St German and Sir John Doddridge among others. Custom as law is acceptable so long as not contrary to natural law, a choice among possibilities left open, or reason applied to circumstance. ‘Artificial reason’ supports law as embodying rationality superior to positive rule (in a person), in that no one can claim higher authority; and unites custom and reason. Some Stuart thinkers emphasized more custom, some more reason. Either way, the artificial reason of lawyers largely consisted of discerning the rational core of custom.

There had never been an ancient constitution as it was in the 17th century, but its elements were demonstrable, as in John Selden’s identifying positive laws from Saxon times, land tenure after the Normal conquest, and legal officers over various dynasties had persisted in England. He assumed government was to serve its ends via accepted institutions, that long use made for the best fit – custom. Many common lawyers, notably Coke, were disquieted about changing laws, preferring to accept imperfection rather than introduce new defects, a residue of the Aristotelian view shared by Aquinas, Bodin, Machiavelli, Bacon. Custom did not have conservative overtones, however, for it was but a tool for explaining how positive law could be rational yet independent of any person or institution, drawn from natural reason alone. Common lawyers followed St German, active in the 1520s (save for Coke, who tended toward John Fortescue’s unchanging simplicity). Bacon did not go so far as Doddridge in uniting law and reason, but held common law contained laws of reason (i.e., nature), making it sufficient to rule out common law’s subordination to higher law or authorities (save common lawyers). The central tenets of Hooker’s ecclesiology, marked by Aristotelian possibilities actuating to identity, followed suit: custom provided rationality, change is best when evolutionary, circumspect of deliberate alteration, using articifical reason to elucidate matters.

During the first Stuart era, the rhetoric of the common law was one of three ‘master languages’ in England. The others were civil law, drawn from European politics and trade and focused on sovereignty (i.e., the monarch); and canon law or theology, originating in natural law but playing a lesser role following Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries. Civil law was associated with absolutism, though not only for ideological reasons, for it tended to compare itself to natural law be more highly abstract than common law. Whereas theology comprised statements of moral duty, based on theory of natural order and millenarian, and so tending to be politically unspecific. The working of these languages required users to know the time and place for employing idiom.

The problem of the right to resist in the ancient constitution required the king to be subject to common law, but not contract theory and natural rights; nor was it opposed to absolutism. In this era, monarchy was agreed to possess a ‘duplex’ character, comprising participation in the common law and simultaneously enjoying an ill-defined prerogative: the duplex conjoined the three languages. Common law was first among equals while civil law and theology were more attuned to prerogative. Hence the 17th-century elaboration of prerogative did not make it absolutist. James never asserted he could simply override the common law, even as king-in-parliament. But Charles misused the common-law rhetoric, causing distrust at the same time Laudian rhetoric was rising and the Calvinist declining. In the five Knights case, Attorney General Sir Robert Health argued the king could use prerogative to deprive habeus corpus, conflating common law powers and prerogative. Forced loans were also justified outside the common law. Ship money was not a question of absolutism versus constitutionalism but dishonest use of prerogative in the common law context.

The Petition of Right shows the common law under threat early in Charles I’s reign. His spokesmen were not advocating political ideology but using prerogative where it was unwelcome, thereby questioning the adequacy of its application to the king himself. Hence the Commons rejected the Lords’ attempt to introduce ‘sovereign power’, Coke observing it would place prerogative above the common law because the term was undefined and could not be defined according to the law: the Petition was about the liberties of the English subject, not the monarch’s reserved power. When ship money came to the courts, the judge rightly observed there were no bounds against an ‘unruly king’; but it was broken idiom which had raised the public’s fears. This was a crisis for the common law, and when the Civil War came, it was because Parliament has been taught by Charles the common law was not reliable. Charles I had been exploiting ambiguities which were better left so. The problem of the un-idiomatic speaker is not that he can’t be understood but that he loses control of the mood and nuance.

Ironically, royalists and Parliamentarians didn’t divide according to common law view; they had to choose because religious views (high church versus Protestant conscience) created another fissure. The law had turned to questions of religious liberty, and the un-idiomatic king had played his hand so badly as to lose control. ‘Legal’ no longer meant guided by custom but justified by prerogative in the interest of public welfare.

Burgess draws heavily on JGA Poock’s contention that contemporary thought is explanatory in its own right, versus a tool for understanding. Ironically, he criticizes Pocock for overstating the role of Coke, who had tried to graft Fortescue’s unchanging simplicity onto the common law, contending John Selden was closer to the majority view. In making Coke primes inter pares, Pocock underestimated the common lawyers’ acceptance of evolutionary change, and mistook the role of artificial reason (via custom).

9. Francis, ed., English Political Thought, 1640-1832 (11 May 2025)

by kurto

A series of preliminary or derivative essays, loosely unified by JGA Pocock’s thesis that public discourse has been the decisive model of political change in popular (Western) government since the Renaissance, which indicate ‘languages of political thought” are to be evaluated not in terms of timeless ideas but contemporary, limited linguistic and rhetorical frameworks.

Francis: sovereignty is the mainstay of English political thought. Other topics, for example the common law (e.g., trial by jury), natural rights, or the good life, are historical byproducts. the theory of sovereignty unique marks out 19th-century British thought. The constitutional debates of the dominions (especially Canada) chiefly regarded abstracted sovereignty and government as legitimate only when based on the birthrights of Englishmen (as transplanted); both were independent of consent. Dominion constitutions thus originated in their understanding of sovereignty, not the rights of citizenry.

Pocock: the Civil War was caused by the dissolution of government, not dissolution the war, per Harrington’s view. The political temperature of the Reformation was not merely monarchical but also ecclesiastical and Hobbesian. Restored Anglicans directed their energies against the presence of Christ in sacraments, as against Roman priests, and also the spiritual in the congregation, the ‘enthusiasm’ of Dissenters. Hume and Burke saw fanatics of religion as replaced by fanatics of political principle.

Burgess: customs which are presumed rational and localized become a particular application of natural law, even though they may become defective and thus bad law. Irish lawyers were less willing than the English or Scots to see law as rational custom. As regards constitutional debate and juristic political thought, there are two frames of reference: the boundaries of the professional class and the realm of political thought itself. They are easily entwined.

Henry de Bracton, putative author of De Legibus, was utilized by Filmer, Hobbes, Milton, and Sidney for rhetorical authority. Filmer thought the king has legislative primacy and thus sovereignty.

George Lawson countered Hobbes by concluding when subjects cease to be subjects they remain citizens, entitled to equality and liberty, a middle ground between Leviathan and Lockean constitutionalism. Toleration was the consistent theme of otherwise changing Lockean though thought over 1660-89.

Bentham saw society in terms of groups to be rationally managed. Once he admitted classes contribute to individual behavior, he acknowledged rivals to be determinative of utilitarianism’s ‘greatest happiness’. Regardless, there was no universal moral claim.

Coleridge unusually combined Tory anxiety over church-and-state reform with Parliamentary sympathies, thereby advancing historiographical debate of the Glorious Revolution. He was sympathetic to Charles I for his era’s aspiration of moral grandeur, though the Stuart caused turmoil by his insistence of sovereignty in monarchy alone. The Glorious Revolution could have been settled during the Interregnum with a ceremonial head of state; the national church too is ceremonial, allowing for separation of law and religion. (NB: ‘a republican is he who, under any constitution, hopes highly of his fellow citizen, attributes their views to their circumstances, and takes the proper means to ameliorate them’. p143)

23. Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea (25 Nov 2024)

by kurto

Following 1,000 years of naval development, England was the first European state to achieve the political and administrative sophistication necessary to operate an advanced navy and merchant marine. Precisely because the navy is more costly than a standing army, it required public support, not merely the backing of a consolidated, monarchical government, which explains why Spain in the 16th century, France in the 18th, and Germany and Russia in the 20th failed. Organizing evidence in the categories of policy, strategy and operations, finance, and administration and logistics, Rodger powerfully contradicts the consensus that modern states emerged to support armies; indeed, the new naval powers of England and the Netherlands retained their medieval constitutions.

Prior to circa 1000, English rulers saw the island as confronting three seas – the North, the Narrow (i.e., the English channel), and the Irish – which could not all be mastered, though the public thought they should be. Viking raids had preceded 865, but the Great Army was the first invasion for conquest rather than simple plunder. The invaders were highly mobile, the English based in London. Nonetheless, the resistance of Alfred (r. 871-99) was mainly fought on land: in this era, ships mainly moved troops. To take the helm (steerage) was to take command. Landowners generally provided the military.

The Norman revolution replaced unitary Anglo-Saxon England with an unstable feudal baronage, meaning independent military power. The ship-muster system fell into disuse, and Harold’s fleet withered, creating a vacuum in the Irish Sea filled by Dublin-based Vikings that lasted through the 12th century. Most medieval navigation was English coastal pilotage.

Henry II’s 1171 conquest of Dublin owes less to naval prowess than England’s growing economic/demographic advantage. Its overlordship could easily have been disrupted by
an Irish sea power. Over 1200-40 France drove for the sea, acquiring Normandy on the channel, Poitou on the Atlantic, and a Mediterranean presence, often at the expense of Angevin England whose remnants in Gascony were exposed. The Bordeaux wine trade (‘claret’) accelerated after the 1293 loss of Poitou, coming to serve as the foundation for England’s merchant marine and later naval strength. Viking fleets had receded during the 12th century, absorbed by Scandinavian wars, before returning in the 1180s and persisting as an Irish sea power through the 1260s. England’s defeat by Alexander III of Scotland led to the latter claiming the isles of Man and Hebrides. but the need to be active in western waters threatened Welsh independence, and following a pair of Welsh campaigns, England gained ascendancy in the west. Still, her lack of sea power was evident, and doctrine not yet advanced much past convoys, though ship designs were showing increased scale and other adaptions.

Medieval England was a reputable military power with a modest navy. Only Richard I (a Plantagenet, the Lionheart, 1189-99) and Henry V (a Lancaster, author of Agincourt, 1413-22) understood sea power. Edward I’s loss at Bannockburn in 1314 is normally seen to mark the rise of infantry and archers, but decisive failings were evident at sea. England could not provision Perth or Stirling and was so weak that its troops and shipping both required convoys. In 1340 Edward III defeated the French at Sluys in the Spanish Netherlands: nonetheless the continental balance of power was unchanged. Naval failure – the lack of good government at seas – contributed to popular discontent evident in the 1381 peasants’ revolt and the 1399 murder of Richard II.

All subjects were bound to support the king in wartime; there was no distinction between knights who provided horses and swords, and merchants who offered ships. But the latter rarely received compensation for losses or even usage. By the late 14th century voluntarist service was evidently failing: cash compensation was necessary. This opened the door for the Commons. Already in the prior century, the crown had summoned representatives of seaports, which group was quasi-Parliamentarian.
In the 15th century, single mast ships were replaced by three. Spanish and French ships began to carry larger artillery, an order of difference from heavy-grade crossbows, terrifying to sailors. The English ships of Henry V were smallish and dispersed: it was time-consuming to muster and provision. Though patrol and scouting were common and certain confined spaces could be dominated, the open seas were impossible to interdict. In the 1480s, convoys to Iceland were the first example of open-ocean navigation. ‘Safeguard’ or ‘safekeeping’ of the seas was the state’s protection of commercial interests. Weak kings were obliged to tolerate domestic piracy despite the diplomatic drawbacks. Admirals exercised not only disciplinary matters but disposition of piracy prizes (especially involving foreign claims). Cases were civil suits for damages, and because lucrative, were eventually divided from naval matters proper.

English ambitions on the continent effectively ended in October 1523 when Suffolk’s army abandoned its march on Paris: Henry VIII was the last to pursue the Hundred Years War. Henceforth her military goals would be naval. Henry is sometimes seen as architect of the modern navy, but in fact he was conventional, using ships for convoy escort, local patrols, and coastal raids. Strategy amounted to invading France (in conjunction with the Low Countries). Operations were limited to the East coast to the Firth of Forth, the Channel to Brest, and the southern Irish seas. Administration and provisioning was haphazard, and there was no agency for foreign trade.
By midcentury, Henry VIII’s new foreign policy became evident in naval matters: England was forced to follow Scotland in assuming it was a weak power whose enemies could only come by sea. Breaking with Rome had weakened England; he had to sell monastic lands to fund the navy, and also to encourage piracy. During Lady Jane Grey’s interregnum, Northumberland’s policies established the link between Protestantism, piracy, naval service, and foreign trade amid the Spanish and Portuguese monopolies, which position Elizabeth inherited. But her navy was premised on defending England by dominating the Channel and North Sea. In the 1540s, shipbuilding scaled to match the Spanish galleon, and accommodate forward firing, thereby merging seaworthiness and armament. Whereas turn-of-the-century Spanish warships were really armed merchantmen, English galleons were closer to pure men of war, lacking storage for long distance, were thus defensive. The country came late to carrying heavy guns, naval warfare, and oceanic voyaging, following in the wake of Scotland, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Genoa, the Dutch, and France. Rodger asserts they were not laying the basis of empire or even Nelson’s navy (e.g., establishing lines of battle), for the immediate challenge was ship design and tactics to defeat peninsular galleys. Henry VIII’s reforms commenced lasting administrative and logistical structures, unique to England (save Portugal), providing an institutional memory across reigns that proved both resilient and adaptive. the most important factor in 18th-century open-water gains stem from 16th-century advances in provisioning of foodstuffs and water.

The duel with Spain commenced prior to 1588 and extended beyond. Phillip II’s inflexible orders to make no independent landing of the Armada but to first link with the Duka of Parma in Flanders for conveyance to the Downs condemned the mission to fail. Spain hadn’t shallow-draft ships to fend off Dutch raiders. Medinia Sidonia was forced to anchor at Calais for nearly a week, with the English to windward, waiting for Parma. England attacked, eventually driving Spain into the North sea and dissolution. In 1594 Spain sought to build a fort near Brest, Brittany, which would command approaches to the channel. England and France (the latter content to ally as the converted Henry IV was enthroned) attacked and defeated Spain in a battle equally important as 1588. The Spanish war produced seasoned navigators using math and charts.

By end of century, English ministers had decided the best defense was offensive operations against the Spanish coastline or shipping. Ireland had been pacified (i.e., was not a potential enemy base), Dutch strength was growing, France unified under Henry IV, and privateering established as reliable for the crown in the east Atlantic as well as the Caribbean. The latter transformed the merchant marine and its London owners into political players. Elizabeth consciously sought to employ sea power to stave off European powers, and consequently depended on a small number of merchants, shipowners, investors, and naval officers whose interests had congealed since her father’s era, and whose privateering was difficult to separate from the crown. Men of rank (aristocrats) were now seeking to men their name at seas, somewhat at the expense of ‘professionals’.

It takes much longer to build a squadron than raise an army, though shipbuilding itself is rapid as against routinizing operations and training. The dockyards are the most complex part of administration, but the real premium is on planning. (16th century armies expend to lose one-third of strength every campaign year.) From 1577 John Hawkins dominated the Navy Board, making it relatively free of corruption. (Rodger several times says historians overuse or conflate corruption with weakness of complex, premodern systems.)

From 1600 Barbary Coast (Algerian) pirates pushed into the Atlantic: with more than 100 warships, most with 25-plus guns, they stood as Europe’s largest fleet, taking more than 400 English ships over 1609-16 alone. The business amounting to capturing men for slavery, the West country and Newfoundland fisheries suffered most.

One fragility of Charles I’s reign can be found in the competing needs to deter European rivals and to protect fishermen, traders, and coastal residents: there was no agreement of the navy’s strategic purpose, yet it was very expensive, requiring public input. Thus the weighty matters of ship money. During the Civil War, the ‘new merchants’ were independent traders and privateers, not the great chartered firms like the East India Company; were Presbyterian; and were dominant in naval administration such that the army and the navy were on opposite sides. The latter lost out during the Interregnum, and country’s naval tradition looked to be faltering.
The trajectory of the British Isles to 1650 was very much shaped by sea power or lack thereof. England, via her navy, had been ascendant until 1066, then fell back as military (land) power grew in importance. The sea is a highway as much as a barrier. English governments were overthrown by naval invasion nine times to 1688, not counting unsuccessful attempts.

19. Kenyon, History Men (5 October 2024)

by kurto

Surveys the development of English historiography to the 1980s, focusing on the distinction between literary (i.e., politically minded, aristocratic, and/or ‘amateur’) and professional (postwar, specialized university) work. New social history, inspired by Namierite prosopography, sociology, and so on is prematurely seen to have failed: Kenyon didn’t account for ideology. As the Marxists and the Annalistes never much figured in the literary specialists’ treatment of the ancient constitution or the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, so their long march through the schools was not yet evident.

Raleigh was the first to discern political uses of antiquarian writing. Whiggish history commenced with Hume, whom Macaulay sought to eclipse. The contemporaneous opposition was not Voltaire’s philosophical reflections of universal relevance, but Ranke’s emphasis on re-creation of events and ideas. William Stubbs initiated premodern academic study at Oxford over 1866-84, unusually for his time working back into the medieval era to discern the origins of the modern British nation. English professionals (i.e., Oxbridge) trailed Paris, Göttingen, and Vienna. Early 20th-century practitioners were infatuated with scientific history, lacked degrees to rival the continental schools, and were already becoming overspecialized even as new institutions such as Manchester sprung up. Albert Pollard of University College Lond was the era’s driving force.

Trevelyan was perhaps the last of the aristocratic literary men. Elton, co-star with Namier of the postwar era, was England’s most Germanic practitioners; curiously both were immigrants. The former opposed conceptual history; history is the only truly empirical discipline, in which the author starts not with a thesis or paradigm to test but criticizes evidence, asks questions, examines authoritative claims – especially when the subject moves from narrow intellectual concerns (sexuality) to political matters that concern all. Plumb contended the point of undergraduate history is to prepare for public service and statesmanship, to embrace ideas and policies, the better see through forthcoming events. The quality of an age is not the work of the common man, though they must labor namelessly to support it.

7. Scruton, England: An Elegy (2 March 2024)

by kurto

England’s 20th-century decline owes to abandoning the wisdom of culture and custom derived from the countryside, common law, and the softening of power into authority. Classical Albion was a society of people desiring of privacy who could nonetheless be relied upon to act benevolently – strangers but never foes. Governed not from above (i.e., by class) but within (self-regulating order but around shared experience and compromise), it collapsed after World II not through antiquated education and honor but because English politics and law work only in English society, through reason not rationality and compromise. Urban development, homogeneity, and Continental rationality (e.g., Roman law and EU promulgations) broke the spell of enchantment.

Law and government:
Common law developed along the lines of Kant’s view that the moral law known to all rational beings, even if not all could explain it. The point was to do justice in the individual case, regardless of interests of power or cohesive rationality. Legal proceedings were primarily discovery, not invention: what was to be discovered is the solution to the case, not the law of the land. The object was not to exercise power over people but to give people relief from abusive power.
Rights were ancient prerogatives of the people, effected by custom not granted by government. Individuals possessed rights only because they were also burdened by duties, in contrast with European positive rights granted by government. Trusteeship in law (Burke’s partnership), along with trial by jury (of peers) and the common law itself, were characteristic features enabling disinterested husbandry of shared assets particularly over time.

The English cared less for the origins of the monarch than monarch’s commitment to upholding the law of the country; Protestantism was merely an exponent of lawfulness and custom. Whereas the Local Government act of 1888 eroded local interests and identity, while centralizing and corrupting authority.

When confronting power, the English questioned whatever and whenever no authority was evident, for possessing power does not entitle or recommend its exercise. England had never suffered Weber’s transition from traditional to legal-rational forms of authority. The attitude toward officialdom was: it it’s needs doing, you yourself should. So long as government service is an honor, it will attract the best minds; but it is merely a well-paid lifestyle, it degrades to power.
Imperialism’s worst crimes were committed against the Irish, during the Interregnum when politics was self-righteous, not compromising. But though the English emerged from World War II morally exhausted, no longer willing to cultivate its inheritance – to bear duties as well as rights – and to stave off its enervating critics, it didn’t think to compare its record with its Continental peers or previous empires. As Tocqueville observed, revolutionary sentiment is not borne of oppression but weakness of the old order.

The harmonization of law discovered not promulgated, the monarch as a corporation sole representing the people, and a religion tenuous but uniting was a settlement, an enchantment – Burke’s making the country lovely to its inhabitants. The key to government is not democracy but representation of the people’s interests, which requires compromise as well as solutions across generations; the political system must intend to amplify authority while restricting power.

Society and culture:
Hume thought the mind comprised of sensations, and the soul an illusion. If so, then a propos of Thatcher, so too must society be a collection of individuals.
English honor could be extended throughout society because the trust of behaving rightly did not require intimacy – it worked among strangers – and the test of virtue was in moments of real difficulty or danger, or when no one was looking. England did not turn on Mediterranean honor and kinship but honesty, fair play, and rule of law. The primary objective in morality is to act rightly in the circumstance, not to expound the principles which color one’s view of right, even / especially when principles are elusive or obscure. This was Austen’s genius to show. The gentleman was defined by manners, culture, virtue, aloofness but independent of lineage and wealth; and could be trusted to behave rightly without reducing the distance between him and you. Class worked to advance the body politic’s social objectives and aspirations. Amongst the working class, society was not a prison but a maze potentially leading to the way out. Disquiet over immigration is not ipso facto racism but the loss of a sense of home, disrupted to what end? When your primary loyalty is locality, EU or global sovereignty acts to create a crisis of identity.
Shakespeare presented England as enchanted by ethics, justice, law, authority; and always the ideal was presented as the possibility of restoration. England simultaneously believed the sacred to be a human construct, and that some things really are sacred.

The Anglican Church was a settlement, an attempt at peace, molding Christian belief to English idiosyncrasies, thereby enabling the binding of strangers. Once synthesis was achieved, doctrine became a social benefit, a transmitter of shared ethics. The people became a corporate person. Religion was a close ally of law, government, and social institutions. Contra Linda Colley, the English understood Protestantism in terms of nationality, not nationality in terms of Protestantism.
English art and literature were premised on place, demonstrating internalization of mystified (sacralized) topography. Burke in Sublime: nature is mysterious, is internalized by imagination (not rationally deducted). (Hedges were not total enclosures but permitted continuance of footpaths.) Where the French were more concerned with rural privations than fulfillments and contentments, the English gentlemen sought not to spend their money in London but in their country seats. The countryside’s decline reduced his stature, as did the abolition of hereditary peers in the House of Lords.

English money was not rational and meant to be added, but traditional and meant to be divided, shared. Imperial and metric diction is evidence of reasonable versus rational; the English system was the product of what works in life.

English empiricism rejected the need to rationalize everything – reason can never explain morality, politics, religion, and so on a priori. Negotiation, compromise, deference to tradition are valid, helpful contributors, the latter often likely to contain the essence of things. Empiricist philosophy, allied to common law reasoning (discovery of the ancient and the essential) and parliamentary government, were expressed in the ‘concrete vocabulary and compromising syntax’ of the language.
(Relevance in education is chimerical: who can guess the student’s interests in 10, 20, 40 years? So the standard is excellent and extent of current knowledge.)

What was the apex of Scruton’s England? Were its core elements synchronized or did they separately peak? Probably he would have chosen somewhere between the Georgian and early mid Victorian eras; although Brexit would likely have been welcome. Corelli Barnett emerges as Scruton’s principal opponent for misdiagnosing the cause of England’s decline.

The Premiership’s 3pm blackout

by kurto

The gross value of Premiership broadcast rights has continued rising, but includes more contests, raising the possibility that additional games might be shown in the 1500h window when lower-division clubs play. As these clubs depend on match-day revenues, violating the window may put lower division sides out of business.

Meanwhile, having cracked the US market, the Premiership’s overseas rights dwarf the continental leagues. The lowest English club makes more from TV’s league rights, approximately £150 million per annum – than Bayern Munich, AC Milan or Paris St Germain – all but Barcelona and Real Madrid.

The overall sense one gets is that the revenue squeeze is replacing three decades of a rising tide that lifted all footballing boats with a winner-takes-all environment in which the highly competitive and expertly marketed Premier League is the clear winner. At home that may endanger smaller English clubs. Abroad it jeopardises viable competition in continental tournaments, and will only put a tighter squeeze on other European clubs and leagues as international broadcasting revenues become the scarce resource.

In a market economy, runaway success creates its own problems.

https://www.ft.com/content/a0430c7a-c8b8-4ca4-b86f-803b369a3f46?segmentId=114a04fe-353d-37db-f705-204c9a0a157b

8. Spencer, Battle for Europe (17 May 2006)

by kurto

A well-constructed analysis of 1704’s Battle of Blenheim, in which John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, defeated (and captured!) armies of Louis XIV for the first time in nearly 50 years. The book nimbly progresses from Europe’s turn-of-the-century political environment (and Britains’s since the Glorious Revolution), to the War of Spanish Succession, and finally on to campaigning and the famous battlefield. Churchill and Prince Eugene of Savoy are the protagonists. Though it would be another five years before the conflict’s denouement, the battle ended French ambitions of annexing the Holy Roman Empire (or its remnants), and led to repulse from Italy. In Britain, Blenheim reshaped the country’s military stature on the Continent, and when aligned with sea power, set the stage of the first great imperial age of the 18th century. Primarily a synthesis of leading works; needs more theater maps; highly readable.