Routledge Revivals: Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (1989)

Volume I: History and Politics

Raphael Samuel, Raphael Samuel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315450544
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

First published in 1989, this is the first of three volumes exploring the changing notions of patriotism in British life from the thirteenth century to the late twentieth century and constitutes an attempt to come to terms with the power of the national idea through a historically informed critique.

This volume deals with the role of politics, history, religion, imperialism and race in the formation of English nationalism. In chapters dealing with a wide range of topics, the contributors demystify the prevailing conceptions of nationalism, suggesting 'the nation' has always been a contested idea, and only one of a number of competing images of collectivity.

Politics

5 Were the English English? RODNEY HILTON

If one were to say ‘no’ to this question about the people who lived in medieval England, the answer could be based on several considerations. It could be argued that since prehistoric times the country had been invaded and settled by successive ethnic groups – Celts, ‘Romans’, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, Norwegians, Normans, Bretons, French – who sufficiently kept their separate identity to deprive England, during this period, of any Englishness. Stress could be laid, for instance, on the Danelaw and the evidence, even today, of its linguistic peculiarities; also on the brutal expropriation of the Old English aristocracy and higher clergy, in 1066, by Norman, Breton and French conquerors. And the answer ‘no’ could be reinforced by pointing to an indigenous population speaking one language and a ruling class speaking another, its cultural identity still outside this newly conquered land.

A perhaps stronger, because more deeply rooted (though less obvious), factor might be sought in the nature of the social and economic structure. In the overwhelmingly rural population (say 90 per cent) most people belonged to peasant families in village communities. Such communities, especially in pre-capitalist societies, are often presumed to be enclosed and self-sufficient, concerned to keep their small-scale identity, suspicious of outsiders.

Does the evidence support the answer ‘no’ as based on the above considerations? One does not need to exaggerate conscious feelings of national identity, at any rate before the fourteenth century, to be doubtful. Outside Wales and Cornwall, which did largely retain a separate Celtic identity, and apart from the ‘Romans’, the successive waves of invaders tended to settle down and become assimilated. Their own social organisation was similar to that of the agrarian society in which they found themselves and they would be able to fit in relatively easily, even if in a position of dominance. This is surely true of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Norse.

It could, of course, be argued in a contrary sense, that the advent of the Norman (and other) followers of the Duke of Normandy meant more than simply the replacement of one ruling class by another. The new ruling class not only introduced a Francophone culture, but thoroughly Latinised the administration. On the other hand, the structures of the Old English state, much stronger than those of the Duchy, were preserved and strengthened. Although the greater English landowners disappeared, the Normans still had to rely on the descendants of the Anglo-Saxon thegns and free tenants to administer the counties, the hundreds and the boroughs. The novelty of Anglo-Norman feudalism, as compared with the social and military organisation of the Anglo-Saxons, should not be exaggerated. By the end of the twelfth century, the Normans themselves were claiming identity with the English rather than separateness. Aristocratic culture remained Francophone. French continued to be the language of the law courts, very important in a society whose power structures were so linked with jurisdiction. But this French was Anglo-Norman, thought by some to be superior to the French spoken south of the Channel.

If those remaining English aristocrats intermarried with the Normans, were the subordinated classes, who (apart from some burgesses) would certainly not be Francophone, inclined to identify their rulers as foreigners, as aliens? I suspect not. The evidence for peasant discontent, resistance and rebellion is considerable. This was the most serious class conflict in medieval society. But the expressed grievances, well documented as they are, do not articulate hostility to the lords on ethnic grounds. Consciousness of the ‘Norman yoke’ was a tradition yet to be invented.

If the ethnic mix in medieval England was no obstacle to the (eventual?) Englishness of the English, can it be argued that that local or regional consciousness, from village community to county, prevented the English from feeling English, rather than, say, north country or East Anglian? Since regional identity is strong even today, there is no need to deny its existence. But this does not mean that local communities had no wider consciousness. This is difficult to document. It is true that suspicion, even hostility, to outsiders (extranei) is frequently expressed, particularly in the records of medieval English towns, but this was mainly a reaction of small mercantile cliques to incursions into their trading monopolies. One of the most striking features of these towns was, in fact, that their populations could only be sustainedby a constant flow of immigrants. It is true that most of the immigrants came from nearby, perhaps from within a 10-mile radius; but there were always some from further afield. Such people, as well as travelling merchants, officials and soldiers, prevented local communities from becoming isolated. Furthermore the scattering of aristocratic estates, and the constant movement around the country of nobles and their retinues, minimised the development of provincial separatism such as one finds in France. Finally, we must emphasise the density of the trading network, especially before the Black Death. Not only were there hundreds of small market towns but there were even more village markets and fairs. However small may have been the geographical range from which the majority of those attending the market may have come, this proliferation of market centres must both have reflected and stimulated and brought villagers into touch with a wider world.

Was the assimilation of successive groups of immigrants or invaders and the existence of constant population movement sufficient to create ‘Englishness’, a sense of national identity? Probably not. I have just minimised the significance of hostility to outsiders in medieval English communities. Nevertheless, the consciousness of national identity, in so far as it existed, almost certainly arose from the recognition of a potentially hostile ‘other’. I believe that such positive feelings of ‘Englishness’ as we can find in medieval England mainly arose from the following circumstances: the Anglo-Scottish border wars; the predatory wars waged by the English ruling class in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and the inevitable counter-raids by the French on the southern English coasts. This was the beginning of an English chauvinism which has served the rulers of England so well for so long.

There is no need to go into the details of feudal politics, arising from the continued domination, since 1066, by the Norman, Angevin and Plantagenet rulers of England, of substantial portions of western France, from the Channel to the Pyrenees. Intermittent clashes over the centuries ended up with the claim of the King of England to be the rightful heir to the Kingdom of France, now heartily backed by an aristocracy anxious to make up for falling revenues by the profits of war. To what extent did the mass of the population adopt an Englishness whose main, if not only, feature was hatred of the French?

The most vivid evidence for the development of anti-French chauvinism is literary; that is, in the writings of versifiers and chroniclers. Whatever might be the arguments for an increasing ‘middle class’ patronage of literature in this period (whatever ‘middle class’ may mean in this context), the principle patrons of versifiers continued to be the nobility and gentry, strong and self-interested supporters of the anti-French war, whose caste solidarity with French nobles in specific military situations did not override their search for plunder and ransom. But we have to guess to what extent there was a downward dissemination into the peasantry and the urban lower classes (rather than into the elusive ‘middle class’) of the violent anti-Scottish and anti-French feelings expressed by such poets as Minot. Were we to assume – and this is debated – that ballads expressed more popular attitudes than these verses of named poets, it might be worth mentioning that the few indubitably late medieval ballads (such as the early Robin Hood ballads) do not exploit anti-French themes.

If anti-French attitudes were spread among the rural and urban working populations, it is unlikely that this would be due to the influence of the chauvinist poets. The archers and the foot-soldiers (many of them Welsh) who were mustered to take part in the various campaigns, who lived off the land in France, who fought not only French troops but routiers of diverse origin, and who by the fifteenth century had to face a guerilla war of resistant French peasants, would be most likely to return with, and to spread, anti-French sentiments as a result of their direct experiences. And inevitably, the common people for whom the French menace might seem most real, were those affected by French coastal raids across the channel. The rebels of Kent in 1381 took care to leave some of their fellows behind to protect the coast; and the rebels of Kent who supported Cade in 1450 had as one of their grievances against the government that some of its military commanders had in effect abandoned Normandy, le Mans and Maine to the French.

The evidence for a widely spread ‘Englishness’ which was stimulated by consciousness of a hostile ‘other’, primarily French, is thin and uncertain. Some rebels in 1381 slaughtered Flemings, but one suspects that this was inspired by trade rivalry which concerned a very small number of people. Nationalism was no mobilising force in 1381; and though there was more of it in 1450, possibly helped by a considerable gentry presence, it was by no means prominent.

Where does this leave us? I have suggested that England, a small country, lacked strong feelings of provincial identity such as existed in France. Its population was to a certain extent homogenised by a dense trading network and much internal migration. Assimilation of successive waves of invading immigrants had been effected by the fourteenth century. Other ethnic groups who were certainly not conquerors were easily accepted. West Midland towns and villages received Welsh men and women, not only at harvest time, but as traders and settlers, without manifestations of hostility. The surnames of these settlers emphasised their origin – Waleys, Welch, Welshman – but they went about their business like others, and no doubt spoke English in doing so.

I am sure that anti-French chauvinism was important in producing a feeling of ‘Englishness’. This could hardly have happened had there not been that considerable degree of homogenisation and assimilation of the various elements which made up the population of England. But the question is when did this nationalistic type of ‘Englishness’ become generalised by downward dissemination? I suggest that, in spite of poets like Minot, it was not yet strong in the late middle ages. The poets did not write for the common people in the towns and villages. Preachers, who did address these people, were expected to pass on information about the war, victories and French wickedness, but the sermons that we know about emphasise the traditional sins and the need for appropriate penance and good behaviour. What the chauvinist poets, chroniclers and other writers did was to hand on their virulent propaganda to successors who, in the days of print, broadsides and the popular theatre, were able to reach a much wider audience.

6 National pride in seventeenth-century England^1 PETER FURTADO

The later seventeenth century was the time when the language of patriotism became firmly established in the repertoire of English political rhetoric. By the early 1700s a number of patriotic clichés and images had been fully elaborated, many of them still found in use today; and these images were wheeled out with far more regularity and in a greater variety of contexts than ever before. Patriotic appeals might be included as part of the introduction to an author’s presentation of his ideas on economic reform, or as a common means of smearing a political opponent.

It had not always been so. In Elizabeth’s reign, the often-described virulent belief in the superiority and destiny of the English people seems only rarely to have been called into play in political discourse. Undoubtedly it fuelled the hostility towards Spain and the Pope, and in times of crisis – in 1588, for instance, or at moments of serious concern about the Jesuit menace – emotional assertions of England and Englishness erupted; but they were less often heard in run-of-the-mill political debates. Instead, loyalty to the monarch herself or support for the Protestant Church tended to subsume loyalty to the nation. Despite abundant evidence that the mass of people in Elizabethan England were xenophobically convinced of the superior qualities of their blood and their land, patriotism seems to have been used more as a reserve attack in appeals of unity and obedience to the government. In ‘unofficial’ literature, such as ballads, patriotism can seldom be extrapolated as a separate theme clearly distinct from the much more prevalent and vociferous loyalty to the Queen.

This chapter seeks to establish the context for this emergence of patriotism as a separate element in English political discourse in the later seventeenth century. Its examples are mainly drawn from printed political literature, sermons and pamphlets, and therefore tend to reflect the views of those actively...