THE UNITED KINGDOM (with a brief excursion to IRELAND)
Theme:
A nation which, for most of its history, found the geographic cards stacked against it: whose situation was offsides to the main arena of "high culture" and political power in Europe, and whose foggy infertile site was ridiculously inadequate to support pretensions of political power in pre-industrial times. BUT, when Europe turned its face to the Atlantic, and turned its attention to the creation of "modern" political and economic institutions, a nation which found its site and situation admirably suited for the development of power, and the spread of its institutions to the far corners of the earth.
Sub-Theme:
How, paradoxically, the same site and the same situation can be both good and bad, depending on historic circumstances.
The moral: How geography can and does change.
The British success story: a brief summary in advance. Britain as the inventor (or at least the engineer) of the world's most admired and imitated political and economic institutions.
1. Political successes. Britain as inventor of the modern democratic nation-state
-- Absence of military invasions since 1066
-- Absence of violent revolution, and the astonishing reticence of the British military to interfere with the affairs of civil government
-- The invention of non-violent institutions for the protection of civil liberties. The English "constitution," bill of rights, and parliamentary organization
2. Economic successes. Britain as inventor and engineer of the commercial and industrial revolution which turned the country into the world's first wealthy industrial nation, and served as a model for the rest of the world, when other countries began their march toward "modernization"
3. Success in diffusion of British ideas and institutions. The British Empire: the institution that made it possible for British influence and ideas to spread across the face of the earth, destroying ancient governments and ancient traditions--and replacing them with British institutions--so that even after the Empire disappeared (1945-1960), the world found itself permanently marked by the work of imperial Britain--for better or for worse.
4. Cultural success. British institutions as world standards (and their American modifications). Law; the idea of limited government and civil rights, guaranteed by government. Organization of economic systems: businessmen, and a 'nation of shopkeepers'. British tastes. Sports, clothes, haircuts, music, and all that.
Geography, and the rise of Britain: changes in site and situation over time
Pre-industrial disadvantages:
Site:
Landforms, soils, and climate. Marine west-coast conditions. Why agriculture languished in general, but was particularly evil along the western and northern fringes. Importance of S.E. England; London
Situation:
(1) Britain's off-side location with respect to the center of events in the Mediterranean era. Caesar's rather off-handed invasion as example. Norman conquest as high moment.
(2) Britain as tag-end for European refugees. Celts as relict population
The Great Change: Age of the discoveries, conversion of the Mediterranean into a cul de sac, and the emergence of the Atlantic as center of the world Britain's "new" site and situation.
Situation (some facts):
(1) The general advantages of North Atlantic location: other countries that shared the advantage with Britain.
(2) Location with respect to the European continent.
-- The English Channel as funnel. La Manche. The "Kanal"
-- Thames and Rhine. London's special role as focus of internal and international trade.
(3) Britain as island. The enormous importance of an elementary fact. Some effects of insularity:-- Importance of a strong navy and weak army in British politics. Britain's freedom from military dominance. Contrasts with France, Germany, Poland, et al. Advantages for infant parliaments.
-- Ease of fending off invasion. Britain as safe from "infection and the hand of war."
(4) Britain's northern location, and permanent linkage with the Protestant segment of Europe. The enormous importance of Protestant attitudes toward trade and commerce. (The invidious contrast with Spain).
Site (some more facts:)
(1) Agriculture, grass, sheep, enclosures, and the rise of trade with the low countries. Effects of the religious wars, and the migration of Flemish weavers to the sheep country of East Anglia. The bucolic tradition.
(2) Industry, and its natural beginnings. Forests and charcoal; similarities with other northern European places. Waterpower. Charcoal. The discovery of coal, and hard-rock iron. Location of coal, near tidewater and the shift in British population.
Britain as mover and shaker of the world. Permanent elements in the foreign policy of an industrializing country. Emergence of attitudes toward her insular frontiers, the continent of Europe, and the world overseas.
(1) Policy toward the Celtic fringes. Similarities in treatment of Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. Permanent anti-English sentiment along the fringes. Ireland as a wildly exaggerated case. The roots of the "Irish problem." The growth of irrationalism in Anglo-Irish relations. The tar-baby effect. The I.R.A., and the Ulster extremists.
(2) Policy toward the European continent: "Glorious isolation." Hedging British bets with Europe's "second" power. Experiences with Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler. Permanent troubles with major continental powers, both on the European continent, and overseas. Britain's semi-permanent trouble with Russia.
(3) Policy overseas: Growth of the British Empire. The various forms of colonies.
-- How "Type I" colonies led to "Type II" colonies, thence to "Type III" colonies. "Type IV" colonies, and how they differ from the others.
-- The effects of imperial collapse:
-- In the ex-colonies
-- On American foreign policy
Britain's internal troubles today. A sampling.
-- Labor troubles, and the heritage of class-conflict. Heritage of the General Strike of 1926
-- Ireland; the permanent festering sore. Why not Scotland or Wales?
-- Depletion of resources. The idea of North Sea oil as end of the rainbow.
News items and miscellanea:
"The wine wasn't so bad. But '92 has been a poor year," NYT 30De92, p.a4. Talks about various problems that have befallen British society, its powerful, and its economics last year. One item is illustrative: "For Mr. Lamont [the secretary of the treasury], other tests are ahead. The National Audit Office, an independent watchdog agency said this week it would investigate the Government's decision to provide $7,000 in taxpayer money to help Mr. Lamont pay legal fees connected with the eviction of the sex therapist [who had rented his private home], a woman named Sara Dale who likes to see her name in the newspapers and calls herself Miss Whiplash. ... Sultry Sara, a specialist in female domination ... no one suggested he had the slightest idea what she did for a living until she began offering sex therapy lessons in the Lamont basement for $135 an hour."
"Le Joke" The Economist 17Oc92, p.67. With its finger as ever on the public pulse, British Rail is putting resources into the currently popular pastime of being rude about Europe. Beautifully engraved in the glass above the ticket office at London's St. Pancras Station is a series of jokes in different European languages, from Russian through Swedish to Italian. For instance:
Q: What do you call a collection of boring Swiss people?
A: Zurich
Q: Why are the Sicilians so small?
A: Because when they were little their mothers told them they would have to work when they grew up.
Q: How do you tell a French aeroplane?
A: It's got hair under its wings.
"Sick man of Europe," The Economist 26Se92, p.66. Britain is more crowded than anywhere in the EC except Belgium, Germany and Holland. It has proportionately less woodland than any places except Holland and Ireland. It is a grubby sort of country, only Germany pour8ing out more carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides and Germany's output is falling while Britain's is rising. Britain produces more urban waste per head than any of the other big countries. It is the oldest country in the EC (because of recent increases in fertility that won't be true in 30 years). It is bad at educating young adults with 15 percent of those 19-22 in school compared to 30 percent in the overall community and over 50 percent in Belgium. The British work more hours than anyone else. For those who work, things are not so bad. A couple with two children net of tax are better off than in any European community except Luxembourg.
"Time to choose?" The Economist 26Se92, pp 59-60. "Until last week, Britain seemed to have decided that its future lay wholeheartedly with Europe's 'ever closer union'. Now it is having to decide again." Talks about impacts of withdrawal of currency from the European Monetary System.
"The Chunnel at the end of the light," The Economist 13Ap91, p.66. Now that the tunnel is built the problems are just beginning. Many emphasize Britain's lack of commitment to closer ties with Europe. For instance, British Rail has not decided where to build a high speed track between the tunnel mouth and London. Also British and continental railway systems are big; Continental rolling stock is wider and higher than British equivalents. British electric trains run at different voltages. So through trains from European to British destinations and vice versa will not be possible. The trains running between Brussels, Paris and London via the chunnel will be special purpose ones.
"Britons abroad," The Economist, 26De92, pp.86-88. "Britain's greatest export is a huge, unacknowledged and probably unaffordable number of its own people." Talks about the fact that Britain is the biggest center of outmigration in western Europe and what this means. Britain's like to emigrate, they settle everywhere, and they have never stopped emigrating.
Britain seems like very familiar ground to many Americans. It is a favorite destination of American tourists because of historical and cultural links and the fact that one can get by without another language. But it has been said that the two countries are "divided by the same language." One of the many areas (no bill of rights, legality of parliamentary dictatorship, very little local autonomy) where Britain is not what it seems to be on the surface is found in language. If the accent doesn't reveal you to be non-British, what will is your pronunciation of words like Leicester (lester), Cholmondley (chumley), and Ratlinghope (ratchup).
"Slip me a beak," Economist 24Ap93,p60 discusses a bartering operation that uses a quasi-currency called the beak in Kingston-upon-Thames. Half the members of the club of 75 are "anarchists, hippies, and green idealists" but "normal" people like a postman, a car mechanic and a carpet shop owner are also members.
"Black pride," Economist 24Ap93 p.59 has a header that reads "Twenty-five years after Enoch Powell's notorious 'rivers of blood' speech, race relations in Britain have never been better. Disbelievers, read on." Bitterness over race, it says, although deepseated is mild compared with America's, Germany's or France'
"Our man in Tirana," Economist 13Fe93, p.57 talks about Britain's shrinking diplomatic representation overseas. In Tirana, Albania, offered a pick of grand old villas, the Brits have one diplomat answering to the embassy in Rome and housed in the basement of the French embassy. To reach him, you go through the French switchboard. The British ambassador in Moscow covers 11 countries, including Russia. Britain has fewer overseas missions (214, down fro 243 in 1968) than Italy (260). About 30 posts have been scrubbed in the Caribbean and the Americas and there's diplomatic representation in only 39 of 52 African countries.