Simon Schama - A History of Britain: "Dynasty"

These notes are from the third episode from the series by Simon Schama titled "A History of Britain." Moving on from the Iron Ages to the Battle of Hastings

England 1154 nearly a century after the Battle of Hastings the country has been torn apart by a savage civil war. William the Conqueror was long dead. For 30 years his grandchildren have been locked in a life-or-death struggle for the crown of England. The realm was in ruins. And then there appeared a young king brave and charismatic who stopped the anarchy. His name was Henry and he would become the greatest of all our medieval kings. He should be as well known to us as Henry the 8th or Elizabeth the 1st, but if he is remembered at all today it is as the king who ordered the murder in the cathedral or as the father of the much more famous and impossibly bad King John and the impossibly glamorous Richard the Lionhearted.

Henry II has no great monument to his reign. No horse backed statue of him stands outside Westminster yet he made an indelible mark on our country. The father of the common law; The godfather of the English state. But Henry was cursed and brought down by the church, his children, and most of all by his queen- the older, beautiful, and all powerful Eleanor of Aquitaine.



They ran Britain with a furious energy that entranced or appalled their subjects.and like many family firms they had the capacity for both creation and destruction. What their intelligence built their passions destroyed.

At the height of their power they were the masters of everything that counted in Christendom. Thier England was the linchpin of an Empire that stretched from the Scottish borders to the Pyrenees and much bigger than France itself. Not since the Romans and never again has England been quite so European. The dentist he had its roots in the civil war that was being fought between two cousins Stephen of Blois and Matilda the grandchildren of William the Conqueror. It was Stephen who seized the crown but that wasn't the end of it.

In 1128 Matilda married Geoffrey of Anjou also known as Plantagenet. His family emblem was three lions. Along with his money, power, and territory he also gave Matilda a son -Henry.

This was the age of chivalry when the myth of Arthur and Camelot was at its most popular. It was at this point that Henry was groomed by his parents to take England away from Stephen... To be a new King Arthur... His Guinevere - Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1153 Henry Plantagenet crossed the channel. His father Geoffrey had already taken Normandy from Steven so now it was up to Henry to take England. A deal was struck that Stephen would be allowed to die on his throne but Henry would be his heir. Within a year Stephen was dead and Henry and Eleanor were crowned king and queen of England.

Henry spoke virtually no English at all. What he would have grasped though if only for his coronation oath was that Kings of England we're supposed to be both judge and warlord. In fact the coronation oath preserved intact from Edward the Confessor was increasingly being held up as some sort of ideal. Monarch pretty much spelled out the job description of the king of England. One: was protect the church. Two: preserve intact the lands of your ancestors. Three: do justice. four: most sweeping of all suppress evil laws and customs.





It was vow number one though- the protection of the church- which quite unpredictably would cause Henry II the greatest grief. It was to provoke a kind of spiritual civil war. And it's was every bit as unsettling as the feudal civil war and which in its most dreadful hour would end with bloodshed in the cathedral.

Thomas Becket- the first commoner of any kind to make a mark on British history. Became archbishop of Canterbury.

Monarchs had long taken it for granted that they were directly anointed by God (and were) safely above the church. But the popes of this period begged to differ. Kings they said reported to popes and not the other way around. This wasn't just an academic quibble. This was a fight to the death.

There were two flashpoints. The first was whether lawbreaking clergymen could be judged in the king's courts like everyone else. The second was whether bishops had the power to excommunicate royal officials. By making Thomas Becket the archbishop of Canterbury, Henry believed he could depend on someone who would share his view of the subordinate relationship state of church to state. The king was in for a shock.

It all came to a head early in 1164 when Henry summoned a special counsel of the princes of the church and the most important nobles of the realm. There he demanded that they ascent unconditionally to "the customs of the realm." In the end Becket advocated for refusing Henry's demands and ordered his bishops to do the same. This is a position he never budged on.

In October 1164 Becket was brought to trial by Henry II for improper use of funds. The trial broke up with Becket storming out. Convicted on the charges, Becket fled with a small group of followers.

It took two painful years of back and forth diplomacy and increasingly impatient signals from the pope to arrange even talks about talks. After a series of abortive reconciliations in 1170 it looked like peace might finally break out. Henry and Thomas met and spoke for hours. Henry agreed to restore Thomas to his position of authority and to treat Becket's enemies as his own. Henry then told all that he was reconciled with Becket.




Soon disagreements between both men were renewed and Beckett's inability to let bygones be bygones created a deep wedge between himself in the king. Around 6 December 1st 1170, Becket excommunicated many bishops who had stayed loyal to Henry. Henry had a complete meltdown. After all, Becket was a traitor and what happens to traitors...? So be it.

December 29th 1170 around three pm. Four knights arrived at Becket's place of residence and after an ugly conversation Becket left. The knights caught up with him in the chapel and murdered him. "Let's be off," he said. "This fellow won't be getting up again."

The actual murderers got off very lightly. Hiding out in Yorkshire, excommunicated, told to go off on crusade. But the real judgement Henry reserved for himself and the verdict was guilty as charged. In 1174, Henry made a pilgrimage to Canterbury where Becket's blood was said to work miracles. Over the last miles Henry walked barefoot in a hair shirt as Becket had done four years earlier. At the tomb he confessed his sins and was whipped by the monks. However tough his punishment though the blood would never wash away. Henry the hero of the common law would always be remembered as the biggest of England's crowned criminals - the murderer in a cathedral.

Henry would rule for another 20 years. Long enough to see his embryonic legal system grow into a thriving network of courts. Up and down the land these new courts were to settle not just the usual disputes of blood and mayhem, but all matter of painful rows over inheritances, estates, and properties. How ironic then that the only family that would not accept the king's justice was his own. Because if there was one person that was likely to finger the king- not as judge but as transgressor- it was his wife.



Betrayed and alienated by Henry, Eleanor turn her formidable energy and intellect to the business of getting her justice through her children. She was now determined to do everything she could to convince them that their father was robbing them of their rightful power and dignity. Her four sons rose to the bait.

Young Henry rebelled but ended up dying of dysentery. Geoffrey also rebelled but was trampled by a horse. Richard the Lionheart and the youngest son John were left.

It was on Richard that Eleanor pinned her hopes. She was even prepared to encourage an alliance between Richard and her husband's bitterest enemy- the king of France. In 1189 Richard declared war on his father. Henry face defeat as his barons defected to Richard. He had no choice but to negotiate with Richard which humbled him before his own son. He died two days later... some suggest of a broken heart.

It appeared that few people mourned Henry II. Most had already defected to his son Richard who had already won the public-relations battle. He was already the superstar of the dynasty. To prove it- to show that the old regime had passed and a new glamour had arrived- Richard gave a show-stopping coronation.

A fear of a sinister Jewish plot which triggered a general massacre begin the first Holocaust or pogrom of the Jews. Richard did make strong efforts to forbid these massacres, but he was not around to enforce it. He vanished to the Holy Land to do God's work.

In 1192, when news arrived of Richard's capture on his way back from the crusade, Prince John quickly declared his brother dead and himself king. Eleanor struggled with grief and her inability to deal with the treacheries of her children.

Richard was later ransomed but it left the country bankrupt. On his way home Richard was shot by an arrow and the wound became gangrenous and 10 days later he had died.


Assuming disloyalty he ended up guaranteeing it.

Magna Carta. Even if the Magna Carta is filled with the moans and the bellyaching of the barons that bellyaching turned out to have profound consequences for the future of England.

A generation before the barons couldn't have cared less about the rights of men held in prison for unstated causes. That was what happened to commoners. But under John bad things had happened to them; land stolen, widows hounded, heirs made disappear...

So if it isn't exactly the birth certificate of democracy it is the death certificate of despotism. It spells out for the first time the fundamental principles that the law is not simply the will or the whim of the king. The law is an independent power onto itself. The king could be brought to book for violating it

John died on campaign and John's nine year old son was named Henry III.


pictures from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_II_of_England, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Crusade

Did the Russian State... Part V by Nils Johann (Why, and how to compare the Rule of Henry VIII with the Rule of Ivan IV?)

Maybe the best way to clear the question, of the comparability of the formation period of the Russian State, is by comparing more or less contemporary case. Noam Chomsky formulates this approach in several of his publications but the most elegant formulation stems from“Manufacturing Consent”(1992):

“Interviewer: I'd like to ask you a question, essentially about the methodology in studying 'The Propaganda Model' and how one would go about doing that?

Chomsky: Well, there are a number of ways to proceed. One obvious way is to try to find more or less paired examples. History doesn't offer true, controlled experiments but it often comes pretty close. So one can find atrocities, or abuses of one sort that on the one hand are committed by "official enemies", and on the other hand are committed by friends and allies or by the favored state itself (by the United States in the U.S. case). And the question is whether the media accept the government framework or whether they use the same agenda, the same set of questions, the same criteria for dealing with the two cases as any honest outside observer would do.”

As long as 'The Cold War' lasted, it may have seemed like there was a definite line separating “Eastern” and “Western” culture. The global political power-struggle that took place, did, or at least it seems to have, overemphasized difference. Most likely this dominantly happened as a conscious relation towards the conflict by the authors, and to a lesser degree because of the restricted opportunities to communicate and cooperate across the political divide that was formed by 'The Cold War'. It was primarily a power-political divide, but not necessarily a clear cultural divide. To most conflicts between any given parties, a certain animosity will follow. It becomes easier to dehumanize the enemy, and this is done by starting out, to look for differences, not for
commonalities. Dichotomies that support this attitude of animosity have to be found out and cultivated. When these differences are cultivated and (over)exaggerated, they will after time be held to be basic truths, and misinterpretations will happen.

Surely the period we are going to discuss; Russia, roughly from the 15th to the 17th century, is somewhat removed from the issues of the 'Cold War'. But the 'Cold War ideology' may have been lurking in the background, in the consciousness of the historians interpreting. Even if there is an honest appreciation for historical facts internalized in the scholar, this is not in itself a guarantee for an accurate assessment of the past. At least not in the environment of contagious anti-communism, before, during, and after the time of the Soviet Union.

This paper is not the first attempt at comparison. Edward Keenan already deemed it futile back in the 70's, to find any means of aligning Russian history, with its “European” contemporary counterpart. But for those who have seen his works, it becomes clear how concerned he was with “detail”. In Keenan's world there was not much room for comparing anything. Michael Cherniavsky, Halperin's mentor, however inspires an attempt at comparison, portraying the traits that make Ivan a proper “renaissance prince”. There are many traits that offer themselves as similarities.

There is no question that Russia is different from Britain during the 16th century, just like every other institution is different from the next. The biggest difference between the two units might be the size and the geographical attributes they contain. In the time, transport by boat was far more efficient than overland travel, giving a comparative logistical advantages to the English. They are surrounded by the sea, whilst the Muscovites were depending on their river-systems, to connect an area that in average was far less densely populated than England, and at least, ten times more expansive. Further difference is that far more sources have survived in England. Wooden Moscow was 'put to the torch' several times by various enemies. In addition England got its first printing press in 1476, while the first Muscovite press was set up in 1553. English sources are also more widely accessible to western scholars, than sources written in Russian variations.

Arguing for a Sonderfall still might not be the most fruitful thing one can do, even though, I must admit it could be done in any case, regarding any institution. -The refusal of the abstract concept of the forest, in favor of our favorite tree. The Crowns of both Henry and Ivan, handle their opponents and the nobility harshly, they constantly make war and their finances suffer. The way their respective parliaments function seems kindred. Behaving like prototypical Autocrats, both are good examples of the ruling-style of their period, being held up as the best form of government in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651) about a hundred years later.

Brief Thoughts on the Industrial Revolution

Almost all of us who have studied a little history have heard the term “Industrial Revolution” and have the basic concept of what that term means. What I find most interesting is what that term tends to leave out without deeper study and what it shows about us and the ways we as human beings and historians think. Because the term tends to suggest only huge alterations in 'industry' or business... and not in much else. However, during this time of changes many ways of human's lives in Europe changed in drastic ways and for the majority of people, not just a small group of few. These occurrences started to happen in society around 1750 may have started small but quickly made huge changes that could be seen in a short period of time. These changes can be easily seen and divided and described in four categories: industry, commerce, communications and agriculture. The first country in which these changes started to roll forth was Great Britain. If you look at some of the reasons that this country was able to step to the forefront, we can surmise some of the things that we need today to help other countries be able to expand – will talk about these advantages down below. :) One of the first things that seemed to start the 'revolution' was that large landowners in England started closing off their lands and as this practice became legal with the passage of Enclosure Acts, this process left hundreds of poor peasants without land to farm or work.

It was the process of removing the serfs and peasants from the lands that brought people to the cities and helped create a large, available and cheap work force. This created more demand for goods in the cities as well as work. So wealthy merchants or others could try and increase production to meet this demand which would in turn create more jobs. This also created the challenge of how to feed a large population with fewer people actually farming which had been the norm in times past. Agriculture changed a great deal with the Enclosure Acts as the large landowners could now farm very differently than has been accomplished in the past. Instead of several small plots of land farmed by families, a landowner could now farm hundreds of acres and instead of a variety of crops, the farmer could choose to focus on two or three popular and ready to sell crops. These crops could then be sold to feed people in other areas, to create other goods to sell such as cloth and also purchase a variety of foods to feed themselves and their families. As machines were invented to also make harvesting some crops easier with fewer people, many farmers began to grow cotton and other products as their major crops which were needed for making cloth, garments, etc... in the cities and could gain a good cash price. So industry was able to grow as businesses were able to increase production which also developed more work and increased profits for the investors or well off owners.

Commerce also began to increase as people started ignoring the guild policies and just began creating and selling goods for themselves to sell. In the past, guilds had helped limit how many goods could be made because there was a limit of how many people could make the goods. This had now changed and as people invented machines and found new ways – with water and coal- to move the machines to create products such as cloth, this also increased the quantity of good available, the variety of goods and brought prices down... which made purchasing goods possible for people who it would not have been financially feasible for before. As more people could buy goods, more goods needed to be made to keep up with the need which in turn would create more jobs, etc... The flood of agricultural products into cities helped entrepreneurs and other leaders of commerce to build larger businesses so that they could increase their supplies and sale-able goods... and brought the prices of food down as well. With all this growth and the need by the cities... and soon countries to move these goods to their place of sale quicker, travel and communication became significant challenges that people worked to overcome. It was during this time that trains were developed and the telegraph was invented- both of which helped move messages and goods quickly and efficiently to other areas. Soon people of moderate means could afford to use these forms of communication as well as the possibility to purchase newspapers or trips on trains that encouraged more openness and trade between the cities and countries they connected.

I see these four processes are spokes on the same wheel. Apart, none of the groups would have grown very quickly and change would have been small. Industry would have had very slow growth if any because there was not a large, legal work force without other jobs nor was there a large population who had money to buy the goods if the quantity of produced goods had increased. Large landowners couldn't have created the wealth that they did by their mono-culture crops if the majority of their lands were still leased by peasants. Commerce couldn't have grown at all without more goods at cheaper prices and people who felt like they could afford to purchase them. It was also able to grow because people could 'pool' their wealth to help develop a business and so individuals who didn't have enough assets and cash to start a business could still invest in a business which could make them more money. And the advances in communication made the growth of the later three quicker and more efficient as well as allowing most people to have more information of what was going on in the world around then.... making the world much larger and smaller indeed. :)

The European standard of living was significantly improved in many way by the Industrial revolution. Over time more people were able to live more comfortably, to own more clothing and goods and to have more options for work than people had in past generations. Heck, the ideas of the Enlightenment suggested that enjoying this life we have now was possible and acceptable and so the focus of living 'to get to eternity' that had been the past comfort to suffering masses was no longer the main belief of most people. The idea that everyone could improve themselves and their lives through education and hard work opened up people (all right... mostly men) to try and invent, learn and strive to rise through the ranks of society... something that had been impossible for most everyone for centuries. You no longer 'had' to go to church or belong to a specific church- don't get me wrong, it still helped make your life easier to be active in the 'right' church. The most significant improvements during this time came from some improvements in medicine, more work opportunities, opportunities to own more and for more people to participate in both commerce and consumption, as well as opportunities to travel and learn more about the world through newspapers, trains, and other forms of communication. For the first time in history news and knowledge could travel faster than people and ordinary people could participate if they could find the means to do so. Fewer people were always on the border of starvation – that was a great improvement indeed! Over time, sanitation was also improved and so disease would not be so rampant in so much of the city. Education was also more available and was available for more people.

Cities and towns had been fairly small and slow growing before the Industrial revolution. With the huge influx of workers from the rural areas and the growth of new businesses, buildings, etc... towns became cities and large cities grew to phenomenal sizes. Pollution from coal burning gave many cities entirely new 'atmospheres' as the air was heavier, had more fog and was darker as well. Cities also tended to have a great many more families living in them (so more children) than in the past. People in cities tended over time become more segregated into groups by ethnicity, income and community connections (such as family) and as such, city growth was not carefully planned. Buildings sprung up with in a few days and with very little planning... and were sometimes very close together and 'squished'. Lots of people coupled with the inability to be as sanitary as the country (due to proximity vs. amount of land) caused an increase of disease as well as disability and death. Cities were filled with very large businesses (such as factories) instead of the majority of small and so even children would work in the large factories... sometimes for as long as sixteen hours a day. As the population increased, it also help create a feeling of anonymity and fewer feelings of community which also caused other challenges such as upticks in certain amounts of crime, etc... Over time, smaller businesses became more permanent (the traveling salesman wasn't as popular) and smaller businesses developed ways to make shopping more attractive such as indoor light and windows.

Great Britain was uniquely situated to take full advantage of the growth during this time for a few reasons. One is that as the country had not fought a war of in soil for many decades. So the land and cities had not been as damaged and war-torn as most of Europe. Britain’s government was stable and had been so awhile so other institutions like banking and the law were pretty stable which gave investors and entrepreneurs less nervousness and more incentive to invest and create new businesses without the fear that the government might change and shut down their business... or war might destroy the buildings and worth forth. (As it was also one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, that also allowed for more investment.) As a smaller country covered in rivers and waterways, transporting goods was a lot faster than over land which also gave Great Britain an edge over some of the countries in Europe. With the Enclosure Acts, large landowners were able to force huge numbers of peasants off the lands they had been living on for generations and created a large workforce that needed jobs. As business taxes were generally lower in England and merchants and entrepreneurs were more socially acceptable in society, it is no surprise that Great Britain really surged forward in growth and development during the Industrial revolution.

What are your thoughts? Did you learn anything new? :)