Thread by @johnmilbank3

James Hawes The Shortest History of England is very good and thought-provoking. It implies a huge tension: since 1066 the English have been colonised one way or another, yet only elite rule has ever roughly united north with south England. Implications for now immense.

If the Celtic nations finally peel away, can England be United at all? The north then loses the support of the rest of outer Britain on which it has so often relied to balance greater southern power founded ultimately in gentler more fertile terrain.

Thus in an English state the Tory south rules forever but could the north put up with this.

Already the Tories have abandoned centuries of linking elite power to imperium stretching well beyond England to the cause of English nationalism. This succeeded for them only by marrying ‘northern’ anti immigration to their ultra southern project of a deregulated Anglosphere.

But this fusion has already started to come unstuck. Either one could venture England alone will not work or finally Labour has to come up with a way to unite England, perhaps via federation. Yet all this looks fraught with obstacles.

A subtle point emerging from Hawes book is that after collapse of French speaking the elite became yet more based in South in part via southern English. Thus ‘getting more English’ did not really favour the north.

Hawes notes also that the English peasantry were uniquely dispossessed. He does not though equally note how there were always more independent yeomen not so tied by ‘feudalism’ as in France. Macfarland, Tombs etc note this.

Putting those two factors together suggests to me that ‘suppressed Englishness’ under long term Norman legacy can mean *either* a sort of Thatcherite independent small owner cult (esp in south) *or* more communitarian peasant commons and cooperation (more north and edges)?

Thus here again Englishness is hugely disputed.

Also it may be that elite values tend to split between a greater (ultimately French-Norman derived) ‘feudalism’ in the north and in Scotland and something much more mercantile-financial in the South. This fits Hawes point re declining French use boosts Southern control further.

Hawes repeats the common view that the urge to become gentry destroyed Northern entrepreneurship. Is this true? Maybe, but much industry was first started by landowners and surely not all who became landowners stopped being industrialists?

More convincing might be the north to south brain drain thesis. Having made your pile in the north you or your children moved south to seats of power and involvement in still more lucrative trade and finance. In that way less talent left in the industrial belt.

There might also be debates as to Hawes reading of Britain as empire. Imperium as political unit normal in Middle Ages and many realms involved dominant ethnic elites governing people’s of quite different cultures and languages? Does he overplay England’s uniqueness here?

But a wonderful thing about this very clever book is the way it can furnish the starting point for many serious debates about who the English are and what (the hell) they should do next.

And full of entertaining apercus: eg ‘The way we say Hainault and Theydon Bois isn’t bad English French but proper Norman French’.

And controversial hints: eg that Wilson scaling back our global military involvement which led to US no longer bankrolling in a big factor in engendering our Seventies economic crisis leading to Thatcher’s ‘solution’.