History Lessons

"We need to be reiterating the benefits of Brexit. This is so important in the history of our country, it’s Magna Carta, it’s the burgesses coming at parliament, it’s the Great Reform Bill… It’s Waterloo! It’s Crécy! It’s Agincourt! We win all these things!"

Speech by Jacob Rees-Mogg at the Conservative Party conference, October 2017

"Very strange bridges are used to make the passage from one state of things to another; we may lose sight of them in our surveys of general history, but their discovery is the glory of historical research."

Herbert Butterfield, 'The Whig Interpretation of History', 1931

 

The Battle of Agincourt, 1415: one of the 'stopping places' in British history.

As Damian Le Bas has recently pointed out in his work on atchin tans in Traveller communities, the best journeys are all about ‘the stopping places’. Our love of the past is similarly rooted in particularly memorable events and turning points. These are the stopping places of history: battles and treaties, reforms and coronations. But these moments do not in themselves constitute historical analysis: we also need to understand the details of how the journey unfolded. Writing eighty years ago about the follies of ‘whig history’, Herbert Butterfield was scathing about the English tendency to pick and choose their history; alighting on moments synonymous with freedom, glory and heroism – and ignoring everything else.

In truth, whig history has never gone out of fashion, but its exponents rely on it now more ever. According to those who are enthusiastic about Britain leaving the European Union, the success of Brexit is guaranteed precisely because of Britain’s glorious past: our defiance of continental power at Agincourt, Waterloo, and Dunkirk, and our history of parliamentary reform. Heroes and pioneers exemplify the nation's entrepreneurial and independent spirit that will see us through any difficulties: as we are now almost continuously reminded by MPs who should know better: all we have to do is ‘believe’.

Belief requires some foundations – if you are basing your belief on English history, then you are best off squinting, rather than taking a clear-eyed look. For every Agincourt, there was a Castillon, for every Waterloo, a Balaklava. This kind of observation is anathema to amateur enthusiasts like Jacob Rees-Mogg, who revels in his reputation as the ‘MP for the Nineteenth Century’, but who actually can’t deploy an historical analogy without botching it. In truth, however, his supporters will forgive him. For many, the reference back to the glorious past is all that is needed to set hearts racing and passions aglow – in simplifying history for his credulous supporters, Rees-Mogg and his ilk provide them with essential vindication that cannot be found in the complexities of the present.

However, his recent claim that Theresa May’s White Paper on Brexit was ‘the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Philip II at Le Goulet in 1200’ was a real collector’s item in this burgeoning genre. Ostentatious display of historical learning – check. Reference to the evil colonising instincts of Europe – check.  Illiterate over-simplification, ignorance and misuse of history – check check check. The inaccuracy of the claim can be dealt with in a Tweet – John’s biographer Marc Morris did the honours – but the folly runs deeper than a lack of understanding of medieval diplomacy.

The bigger implication of Rees-Mogg's claim is that, in his conception of ‘our island story’, we have not endured any comparable setbacks in foreign policy in the previous eight hundred years. From 1215 onwards, English history is on its glorious journey – ‘we win all these things’. But this is the greatest falsehood of all, for we have suffered far worse, and most especially when we have lost our influence altogether in European affairs. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559 does not feature in your Brexiteer’s whistle-stop of history. It was a devastating humiliation; while the new queen Elizabeth I raged in the background, the kings of France and Spain carved up Europe between them. As part of the horse-trading, England’s last continental possession, Calais, was handed back to France, with the pleas of the English diplomats disregarded. Elizabeth threatened to behead them, but she soon had to adapt herself to a new reality: thoughtless foreign policy had left England a second-class European power. Throughout her reign, Elizabeth would be dependent on precarious alliances with more powerful states for survival. Compromise was not shameful but necessary. The propaganda of the Armada portrait tells a different, and misleading story. Elizabeth knew that isolation from Europe left her kingdom at the mercy of external events; slowly, her careful diplomacy re-established England as an influential participant in European affairs.

Would you buy a used historical narrative from this man?

Travelling through the past with Jacob Rees-Mogg is like taking an extended voyage along England’s scenic country roads in a vintage car; the driver, all tweed, motoring gloves and joie de vivre, extols the merits of the scenery that you pass through – but you are left with the nagging suspicion that he isn’t in the least concerned about where you might end up. Nor, in fact, does the driver seem to notice any of the inconveniences of the journey: the vehicle itself splutters and shudders (it has not been well-maintained) and there are several miles of badly maintained roads, sections of which are almost impassable, and so narrow that the car frequently has to reverse to let others pass. The driver is not particularly interested in your observations (let alone your concerns), instead he continues to airily extol the wonders of the landscape of this green and pleasant land. Too late in the journey, as the scenery darkens, it becomes apparent to you (the unheeded passenger), that the driver’s narcisstic ramblings are a distraction from real dangers ahead. Better hope you arrive at an atchin tan, a stopping place, somewhere, anywhere, before you find yourself in very unfamiliar territory indeed.st vassalage since King John paid homage to Phillip II at Le Goulet in 1200.Travelling through the past with Jacob Rees-Mogg is like taking an extended voyage along England’s scenic country roads in a vintage car; the driver, all tweed, motoring gloves and joie de vivre, extols the merits of the scenery that you pass through – but you are left with the nagging suspicion that he isn’t in the least concerned about where you might end up. Nor, in fact, does the driver seem to notice any of the inconveniences of the journey: the vehicle itself splutters and shudders (it has not been well-maintained) and there are several miles of badly maintained roads, sections of which are almost impassable, and so narrow that the car frequently has to reverse to let others pass. The driver is not particularly interested in your observations (let alone your concerns), instead he continues to airily extol the wanders of the landscape of this green and pleasant land. Too late in the journey, as the scenery darkens, it becomes apparent to you (the unheeded passenger), that the driver’s narcisstic ramblings are a distraction from real dangers ahead. Better hope you arrive at an ‘atchin’ tan’, a stopping place, somewhere, anywhere, before you find yourself in very unfamiliar territo