“The Isles: A History”, by Norman Davies



1222 pages, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0195134421

 

 The Isles: A History by Norman Davies isn’t a primer; you need a nodding acquaintance with the ins-and-outs of British history before you read it or you may come away with only a partial (in both senses) view. Unkind readers might say this is a 1200-page exercise in ax-grinding; I prefer to call it a very long polemic (nothing wrong with that, provided you understand what’s going on). The spectacle is impressive if a little alarming – like watching an expert woodsman enthusiastically chopping up an ancient oak tree for firewood.

 

It’s true that Britishness is a working arrangement, not an organic growth (you can be naturalized British, but to be Scots, Welsh or English you have to be born that way). The author thinks the arrangement isn’t working any more if it ever did; and he may be right. His book starts with the Stone Age and goes up to 1999, with the main thrust being how Britishness has been invented and reinvented over the centuries to serve the interests of elites (who typically boil down to rich and royal Anglos) who also wrote all of the histories. Revisionism along these lines has been attempted before but never so comprehensively or with such loving attention to detail. If you want to hear how Bad King Edward managed to beat William Wallace thanks to Welsh and Gascon mercenaries while the English (minus the Welsh and Gascons) got their comeuppance at Bannockburn (“the flower of English chivalry perished”) well then Prof. Davies is your man.
 

There’s a lot more where that came from, most of it as interesting as it is one-sided. Coming to modern times, he thinks (in the 1^st edition, at least) that De Valera’s Republicans won the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, which has annoyed Irish purists and Michael Collins fans who thought the Free-Staters won. Some readers have detected a cavalier attitude to social and economic issues, but they miss the point: that isn’t part of the game plan. The really interesting question, though, is left hanging: why did the English, whose language and institutions spread ‘round the world, make such a botched job of cultural imperialism in their own backyard? Most of the Scots and Welsh (including Prof. Davies, in spades) are Anglophone, but they are not English. Why not?
 

It isn't a silly question. Consider France, that grand cultural monolith. Who ever heard a murmur from the Bretons, historically as distinct from the French as the Welsh are from the English; where is the Breton Prof. Davies inveighing against “Francocentric” history? Who but medievalists know or care about the Languedoc high culture destroyed by the North French invasion of the 13^th Century, and when will Hollywood be making an Albigensian Braveheart? La Grande Nation even acquired a German province in the 17^th Century, and when it was taken away in 1871 all France was outraged (fortunately, that little the injustice was put right later with a little help from the Anglo-Saxons).
 

Ultimately, this is an idiosyncratic book, one that should be read after considerable prior exposure to the history of Britain and the British sensibility. Then, one can enjoy Norman Davies’ book for what it is: a construction of how history ought to be approached as a living argument, lively argued.

 





“Europe: A History”, by Norman Davies

1424 pages, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0195209129

An enormous tome which I plodded through a few pages at a time and use to beat off muggers…A survey so surface-level that it leaves you gasping for more…A thoroughly enjoyable read…

These statements seem contradictory, but all apply to this book. This is as comprehensive a history of Europe as a single-volume can manage to be, and yet it still but skims the surface of the story of this magnificently diverse and dynamic continent. Davies is a Poland specialist and he uses his knowledge of the country’s intricacies to illuminate the experience of the whole continent, as indeed he does also with his native Oxfordshire. To my mind, this is strength rather than a weakness as long as one remembers that the specific often serves as an exemplar for the general. The contributions of small, historically peripheral and often forgotten parts of Europe are woven seamlessly into the weft of Davies' narrative – Ireland, Sicily, Latvia, Ukraine. Nor is the story of ideas, of economies and of science is not lost among the dreary procession of wars and dynasties. There is also a useful set of maps and raw data contained in the appendices.

As for criticism, while any work of this sweep is going to have difficulty separating people and concepts in the minds of its readers, I find the procession of minor royal figures and complex webs of intermarriage in medieval times particularly difficult. Perhaps Davies could have set out more clearly who ruled where and when, and what the relationships between them. Also, Davies finishes weakly after a strong book. Speculation is, naturally, mere speculation but Davies predictions for the future read too much like a senior common room conversation after a few glasses of wine. I’m not quite sure if the “capsule” idea – small deviations in the narrative used to spotlight small, little-known factoids – works; in 1992 it must have seemed very cutting edge, a harbinger of an internet still unknown to the general public, but now they seem a bit dated, and while they contain much of interest, they sometimes distract from the flow of the narrative.

There is a looseness to his narrative that is both compelling and frustrating. Europe reads easily, more like a novel than history, which at times made me wonder how much Davies bent historic events to suit his literary tastes. The later chapters in which he chronicles the 18^th and 19^th Centuries are the most compelling, tracing Napoleon’s ride through Europe like Phaethon’s ill-fated chariot ride through the cosmos to Hitler’s ignoble campaign to the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire. All the historic antecedents are here. Norman Davies charts the full width and breadth of the continent. One of the telling tests of a work such as this is how it wears, and after almost twenty years, this still reads very well.

“The Reformation: A History”, by Diarmaid MacCulloch

792 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670032969

In many ways, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s account is a useful, thorough guide to the Reformation, which starts in the aftermath of the Hussite controversy, the end of the Babylonian captivity, the rise of Humanism and the reconquest of Spain, and which ends with the Glorious Revolution, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and with the beginning of the Enlightenment. MacCulloch is careful to remind the reader to take seriously the religious passions of the period and avoid the enormous condescension of the secular present, for this was a period where both Catholics and Protestants emphasized the absolute need for faith in Jesus as well as the need for moral behavior and increased discipline. In the battle of faith over works, Protestants emphasized the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Romans, while Catholic emphasized the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle of James; whereas Catholics only had the Eucharist once a year, the Scottish Calvinists emphasized a more rational devotion, such that parishioners could now expect to take it twice; instead of obeying the Pope, Protestants emphasized their new ecclesiastical hierarchies.

For these differences and many others, people were slaughtered en masse, from Drogheda to Magdeburg.

MacCulloch’s main virtue is thoroughness: this is a history of the Reformation that covers almost all of Western Christianity. Not merely do Britain, France, the Netherlands, and what is now Germany all play their parts, but we also get special sections on the surprisingly cosmopolitan culture of late 16^th Century Poland, the Protestant redoubt that was then Transylvania, as well as accounts of the Counter-Reformation in Italy and Spain. We even get the short and unhappy history of an attempt to turn Moldova Protestant, as well as colonial efforts in Virginia, Japan, Latin American and the Philippines (Indeed, of all the countries of Western Christianity, only Slovakia, Slovenia and Finland do not make an appearance). Moreover, MacCulloch also makes clear that this was also a period of religious reform on the Catholic side. Just as the pre-1517 period was not one of religious decadence, there were new orders, new forms of discipline, new cultural forms, new theologies after the Council of Trent. In 1580, Poland, France, Bohemia, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, and Belgium were all balanced between Protestantism and Catholicism; a century later they were all clearly Catholic. A third point in MacCulloch’s favor is an amusing style and a fine eye for detail. Many people would not know that the Spanish Inquisition was one of the more level-headed groups during the witch-hunt panics, a response, MacCulloch suggests, of their long experience with paranoia. After a lucid and amusing description of medieval Aristotelian theories of transubstantiation, MacCulloch notes the irony that thousands of Protestants were burned at the stake for rejecting an idea of a man who had never heard of Jesus. Later, we will see Protestants rejecting early cures for malaria and syphilis because Catholics were the first to come up with them. Many people are aware of Luther’s hostility towards Jews, but MacCulloch notes that Erasmus could be equally venomous against them.

Having said that, this history is not definitive. The Gaelic culture of Scotland was easily absorbed into Protestantism, while the Gaelic culture of Ireland was almost completely hostile. By 1650 Catholics were tiny minorities in both England and Scotland; meanwhile, in the Netherlands a sizeable minority were (and still are) Catholic, while what is now Belgium was mostly Catholic. Why? There is no systematic explanation of why one area was Catholic and another Protestant. We only get partial explanations, such as the argument that since the cult of purgatory had never developed as far in the South, Luther’s polemics against it had much less effect. There is little discussion of what the population as a whole thought about the reformation. The Revisionist argument that the British population was underwhelmed by the Reformation for several decades is never really confronted. What did Europeans actually know about their Christian faith? Whether one uses Keith Thomas, Gerald Strauss, Christopher Haigh or Geoffrey Parker the results are not encouraging. MacCulloch emphasizes the Ottoman threat, many discussions of possible turning points and alternate endings, a discussion of the witch-hunts, and two chapters on sex and gender, even though the changes there were relatively modest. By contrast, there is little discussion of the economic causes or effects of the Reformation. In that way, it is very much a monograph of our time.

Much of the book consists of sympathetic discussions of Protestant and Catholic theology, while there is no appearance in the index of El Greco, Montaigne, Spenser, Rembrandt or Milton. In his discussion of theology, there is a certain bias for Reformed theologians over their Lutheran and Catholic rivals. Certainly Augustine is treated as if he were holy scripture, while the modern critical consensus that Jesus opposed divorce absolutely goes unmentioned. Instead, there is the patently incorrect claim that Britain has the most restrictive divorce laws in Europe.

In our secular world, we tend to view the political history of the past in secular terms (or at least in terms where religion is relegated to being merely one factor among many). MacCulloch quite rightly makes it clear that, while many factors contributed, for example, to the 30 Years’ War, in the end it was all about religion. This is a wonderful book that will illuminate and clarify history for anyone diligent enough to really read it.

“The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, & the Triumph of Anglo-America”, by Kevin Phillips

736 pages, Basic Books, ISBN-13: 978-0465013692

Political commentator Kevin Phillips has always seen unfolding events and emerging trends with remarkable clarity. Taking a break from contemporary politics Phillips has, at first glance, written a book about three wars – the English Civil War, the American Revolution and the American Civil War. However, The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, and the Triumph of Anglo-America reads less like a scholarly analysis of English and American history than a graduate student’s thesis. His basic argument is that these three wars were all battles in the same civil war: Roundhead vs. Cavalier; Merchant vs. Noble; Yankee vs. Virginian; Whig vs. Tory; North vs. South – the names might change but the opponents were essentially the same. According to Phillips, the origins of the struggles lay in geographic, religious, and socio-economic divisions in England.

On the one side were East Anglian Puritans, low-church protestant tradesmen and merchants, both those who stayed in England and those who emigrated to New England. On the other side were the bishops, high church Anglicans, aristocrats, and other loyalists, including lower-class foot-soldiers from the northern border regions of England who migrated to the inland, mountainous regions of the South and mid-Atlantic North America, while their upper-class allies became the Virginian colonial elite. Phillips evidence is strong: the towns and communities which opposed the King in the English Civil War and sent colonists to the new world also tended to oppose the King in the Revolution, and wanted to maintain America during the American Civil War. If all politics is local, as Tip O’Neill said, than the battle-lines of these three wars were always drawn by local matters: religion, economics, and geography. Thus, these wars led to the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon world of England and America, which has in turn been a blessing upon the world today.

The freshness of Phillips’ thesis for an American audience comes from his attention to the English Civil War of the mid-17^th Century. From that perspective, the main conflict of the Revolutionary War was not between Britain and the United States, but between old enemies that cut across national boundaries within the English-speaking world. Then, following that conflict through the U.S. Civil War give a fresh perspective on a war that is in need of one.

If you are fairly well versed in the American Revolution and American Civil War, this is a good book because it views those conflicts from an entirely new angle – however, I would advise against reading this book if you know little about those conflicts as there is no narrative of the events here; Phillips assumes you know the basics. It is a sympathetic account, as Phillips clearly approves of Anglo dominance, but the book is worth reading even for those who don’t.