h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems with time there are less and less contributors to H2G2 - at least to askH2G2 & the science forum. Anyway good to hear you're well Cass. A week ago I spotted one of those hedgehogs on the road proving that hedgehogs must still exist in the urban area I currently habit.

Morning Stone Aart

Was the hedgehog on the road dead?

I recall a childhood experience of finding a hedgehog on our street rolled up in his defence ball in the headlights of a car-that happened to be parked.. I tried to explain/convince it that there was actually no danger. I wonder whether hedgehogs have gained any more 'street-cred' in the 60 years since. There is a process of adaptation to new norms..

And this may apply to the h2g2 adventure. Unfortunately it seems that "everything has its season' and h2g2 has long since showed the signs of being somewhat circumscribed, parochial and insecurely limited in many ways, possibly with more adventurous spirits having moved on and out.

Perhaps from the outset there was a bit too much of the French Encyclopedists about this venture to provide and guide to everything; French 'know-it-alls' who tried to fix and define the state of human knowledge at the time, which was a time (when as David Cameron touched on this week) when people in these island were actually inventing and creating a new reality, which the French approach can only really seem to grasp when it has squeezed out the vitality to reveal the life-less and skeletal structure. Thus the French version of Anthony Sampson's "The New Anatomy of Britain" (1971) was given the title "An X-Ray of England".

Cass

*ouch* that made me wince Cass, harsh and I wouldn't have used those words, least of all because I had to look some up to be sure, I can see elements of truth in them and that made me wince again

That said it is not the total sum of my experience and I still find that there are imaginative, creative people here who are generous and kind, interesting and knowlegeable

It was a former hedgehog that I spotted; if it had been in a field it would have been pushing up the daisies.

I commented a while back regarding the apparent slow but sure demise of H2G2, but I was assured at the time that h2g2 had never had it so good, that the number of hits per day for the guide was in the millions, that we shouldn't raise such concerns because volunteers were too busy trying to get the new h2g2 to work post BBC, that they felt such comments took the form of personal jibes that could drive volunteers away, that askh2g2 wasn't really important and shouldn't be used for idle chat, that the primary purpose of h2g2 was to look after and help develop the guide ... maybe that is what they would like from you ... submissions to the guide. Personally I would like to see how many non autobot hits the guide has because it doesn't seem to filter down to this level.

Hi Peanut

Sorry for the hurt.. An allotment friend a couple of days ago asked me my birthsign, thinking that I might have the same as him. We both tend to go in for blunt and frank speaking.. I think that one of the more recent h2g2 experiences that shaped/confirmed those comments was the recent re-assertion about in-House Rules re your conversation with William.. Too much system tends to squeeze out humanity.. But beyond that lies an ongoing frustration over the fact that I can not just fit-in to the h2g2 style which really is good for those who want to live in a Jonathan King world in "Everyone has gone to the Moon"- and Bowie's "Space Odyssey" increasingl looks like a form of death.

But explorers have often found people seemingly content with their little near-paradise- often "imaginative, creative people .. who are generous and kind, interesting and knowlegeable".. But I am reminded of Kenneth Clark talking of that Age of The Encyclopedists that merged into the Age of the Worship of Nature. He summed it up in the world "enclosed". It was a world that was shattered by the turmoil of revolution against its inadequacies as it walls and foundations were shattered ushering in the Age of Revolution, which the world hoped had been tamed and to some extent "played out'/exhausted by 1945..

Now with the Syrian Crisis it is the post-war "World Order" that is looking "played out"- and exhausted- because of the dirth of forward looking historical analysis, which has been central to my life's work. Interesting that next year is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. New centuries and even more new Millennia create some kind of expectation that somehow or other things will now be different than they have ever been before- but not without people being prepared and able to make the necessary changes within themselves.

Western Civilization has created a global reality before 'losing its way', and increasingly leaving the field open for age-old nasties to spread like weeds and contagions, as alreadt happened after the First World War.

Sorry if this sounds harsh. But I was born and a world that was awash and impregnated with the ashes and remains of 55 million people, as the Earth was turned into a massive charnel house.

Lest we forget and fail to learn.

Off to my allotment.

Cass

I read a piece criticising Cameron's use of WWI as a means to stoke up nationalism, requesting that people should not allow our antecedents sacrifice go to waste ... and so we should all support Camerons pledge to make the continued sacrifice to peace by dropping bombs on Syria ... as per Obama's comment not to do so would make the US look like a weak man and lose face especially after Obama red line speech.

Now the person criticising was a historian & the comment made was that WWI was an elitist war in Europe for control of a crumbling Ottoman Empire & various other issues associated with various Empires & Germany's wish to get a piece of the action (being formed only late in Europes history). It was also mentioned that sacrifice was what the elite in UK expected, as the Generals ordered the misinformed men (many without voting rights at time) up and over the trenches and towards a blizzard of machine gun bullets. If anything WWI should be a symbol against elite nationalism that Cameron appears to subscribe to (compare Russia).

High Stone Aart

Sound like just the kind of stupid historian who annoys me.. The kind who claims to speak for the common man, but has no real knowledge or understanding of how the Common people of England made this country so successful.

Two quick points (a) For at least 1200 years before 1914 England had been a country of the rule of Law in which all sections of Society were bound to rights and duties in accordance with their status and responsibility, and when it was time to "do your duty" you were expected to live up to your commitent. Belgium had been created c1830 as the small state answer to a problem that had turned this area into "The Cockpit of Europe", triggering constant wars between European powers contesting for supremacy in Europe- and when they gained control of that region likely to use it as a convenient base from which to launch an invasion of England. Queen Elizabeth had called the Scheldt Estuary "a dagger pointed at the heart of England"- and the last three great invasion attempts- by Phillip of Spain, by Napoleon and by Hitler had made use of that. This was why Lord Palmerston negotiated the creation of Belgium, and persuaded all the other powers to sign up treaties guaranteeing Belgian neutrality. German was bound by its treaty obligations, and, in the world that had emerged by 1914 if people started to just tear-up treaties and go back on their word this would lead to chaos and anarchy- of a kind that the English had rejected before 1066.. An Englishman's word was his bond, because that is how England worked. An honest man accused of a crime as long as he had not lost his "trustworthy" status had only to swear his innocence and produce a body of 'Jurors' or "swearers' who would also swear that they believed his innocence and the case against him was dismissed.. Of course once you had lost your oathworthy status it was lost and gone forever.. To most of those people who flocked to volunteer to fight Germany it was as simple a question as Great Britain had given its word to fight to help the Belgian people and to keep such a small country free and independent.

But (b) There were many other things that had built up to this idea that Britain really needed to "have it out" with Germany because of all the hardship that became increasingly associated with the rise of Germany and what it had cost to the British people before 1914, because Germany was fast overtaking Britain in economic performance. For over 40 years Britain had been in comparative decline, with Germany making spectacular advances according to British ideas of competition and fair-play playing dirty and not realle playing the game. Of course it was not just Germany, but it was Germany that was also forcing Britain to match its military spending with vast sums of money being diverted into a Naval Arms Race with the Kaiser seemingly anxious to challenge Britain's role of the police-presence around the seas of the World stamping out the slave trade and piracy, the kind of global obligations that Germany did not appear to regard in the same right, with German conduct in Africa already having used punitive genocide to wipe out whole peoples. With the developing world economy after 1870 the value of Labour went down because so many new areas and peoples were now being used to produce goods. So for example between 1870 and 1914 British Agriculture went from a brief Golden Age to massive depression and a huge flight from the land to challenge for the declining jobs in industrial sector. This meant that earnings went down from 1870 to 1900, though politicians and historians point out that because of global production things were cheaper, so Real Wages bought more. But from 1900 to 1914 Real Wages were going down too, making life for the Common People more and more challenging, with a "Submerged Tenth" of people living in really desperate poverty. In 1932 a study of the "World Chaos" in 1932 Dr. G.D.H. Cole asserted that these economic problems and the aggression and resentment that were felt by the working classes made some kind of war almost inevitable.. either an internal Class War, which was sought by the Left-Wingers along the Clyde, or a war, or some kind of other setttlement that regulated affairs with Germany.

Cass

Hi Cass

No need to apologise, if the two of us can't be blunt and honest with each other then I don't know who can.

After all I was the one who was honest on the conversation thread. I very much hope I didn't make you feel squeezed out It wasn't the intention and Willem said he hoped you would make contact on another thread or whatever and as I said I would be happy to have one with the three of us, if I was invited

How we have quite got on to the general state of h2g2 health as website/community to WW1 I don't know

Can we do what we were doing before I'll hang on to your and SA's coattails when it comes to the political and historical stuff and just peep in with 'how yours allotment going' and 'is SA's finger ok', last I heard it was splinted together with ice cream sticks.

I can chime in with h2g2 stuff, to a point, I think my concerns are well known, but I find expressing them leads to modding. As I have ben modded before that means I can be suspended and then put on pre-mod without any warning. I don't really want that it is a faff and makes me feel badly about h2g2 and I take it very personally.

Peanut

Hi Peanut

I would like to think that we have a human relationship- rather than any kind of set or systematic and inhuman one. But I think that it was a bit like "Any port in a storm"- for Stone Aart who visited h2g2 and found that the only thing actually moving in terms of "recent activity" was our Hedgehogs- and to be fair he did manage to make reference to the aforesaid creatures in both of his threads.

As for h2g2 my use of the site has perhaps always been more a case of exploitation than real engagement: and there would be no point in someone like yourself who is more of an insider jeopardising more longstanding relations.

Cass

Hi Cass

We do have a human relationship and I like it that SA is here too.

I enjoy to read what you say to each other just don't have the capacity to join in, so think of it as listening

When there are three or more people are having a conversation, then there is often more than one conservation going on in a thread at the same time.

I don't think that there is anything wrong either with going from hedgehogs, to Syria, to what the weather is doing and onto the economic crisis and climate change, whatever comes up

in fact I like it

Peanut

Agreed Peanut

The more the merrier

Humans come in all shapes and sizes etc: and all have something unique to contribute.

Have a nice evening. A bit autumnal and nice to be quietly comfortable indoors here.

Cass

Thanks for your reply Cass, it will take me a while to digest. The 1200 years before 1914 would include the feudal system that I think the Normans introduced plus the period of the Danes - Anglo-Saxons? From the little I have read about Wilhelm Kaiser he was the grandson of Queen Victoria, was resolved for Germany equalling / taking over from Britain as a leading nation / empire, and got rid of the great statesman Bismarck. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was the first cousin of the Kaiser, had ambitions to take over parts of the Ottoman Empire to gain access to the East Mediterranean.

Anyway I like your description of Belgium (that helps me towards a better understanding of Europe). Leopold II of Belgium (first cousin of Queen Victoria) also was dabbling in Africa at the same time as the Kaiser, and history seems to make him responsible for genocide in the Belgian Congo.

I think maybe Britain had to involve itself in WWI but I think the point of the article I read was that the British Generals "sacrificed" the majority of the men under their control unnecessarily (Blackadder style) & that their sacrifice shouldn't be used by Cameron to justify his own sense of grandeur on the world stage.

Peanut: I have what is called a mallet finger but it hasn't yet been x-rayed to determine whether it needs surgery (reattachment of tendon).

Just dropping in for a moment to clarify our moderation policy.

The House Rules and Transgressions Procedure sanctions are applied to all researchers the same, and never without due cause and prior warning. Only researchers who cannot or will not post within the House Rules have reason to worry about sanctions.

As you were.

Regards,
The h2g2 Moderators

Hi Stone Aart

(a) There was no "Feudal System" until Scientific Historians in the Nineteenth Century imposed the kind of generic template that Scientists like to employ to impose system and order on their view of the past..

And I was quite consciously referring to pre-Conquest times as reflected e.g. in a document written around 1000 AD. It helps to explain why tenth century England was a rich, successful and prosperous place- the kind that attracted a whole new era of Viking attention, further encouraged by the failings of the then English elite to "do their duty" by fighting the Vikings to the death of one or other party, preferring to pay protection money to the raiders/invaders.

The result of this was the English common people deciding in effect that they might as well have Viking Kings who would at least be 'fit for purpose' : and then, after eventually men of the north had settled and become "Civilized" within an area of France- the Norman Kings. But the Normans basically did what the Chinese have done since taking back Hong Kong, merely replacing the ruling elite and leaving the essentials of the English way of life for the Common People largely unchanged. Indeed the Domesday Book seems to have been prompted by William I, who ruled by legal title and according to the established contract between the English sovereign and the people, beginning to feel after 20 years that he was "being taken for a ride" with the English getting a superior defence/security system ‘on the cheap‘.

(b) Yes Kaiser Willhelm was very well-known in Britain as the Queen's grandson with lots of popular knowledge and interest in his development as rather a nasty piece of work from his infancy. Of course, it was not his fault that his birth went wrong, and as a result he spent his whole life with a crippled and useless arm, with a mother who could never give him real love and affection because of her sense of shame and guilt. Moreover being educated within the Prussian-German culture of physical stoicism, excellent physical performance especially in all aspects of the arts of war, and a determination to be the best did not help.

I always suspect that Victoria had something of a soft spot for him because of his disability and the way that his character and ambition may have reminded her of her beloved husband Prince Albert. Willhelm regularly spent his summers in the Royal home on the Isle of Wight, where (among many treasured relics) Victoria had her favourite portrait of Albert that showed him as a Knight in Shining Armour. Looking at it with his granny Willhelm can not have failed to pick up just what a disappointment his uncle Edward was to this grandmother: and, when Edward became King Edward VII and Willhelm was Kaiser ,every year he "rubbed Edward's nose in it".

Edward loved horse-racing and yacht-racing, (and ladies ,and much else). But as Prince of Wales and then even as King Edward a mere constitutional monarch, Edward was always short of funds, whereas as the Kaiser of the German Empire Willhelm was able to turn up every year for the Cowes Week, dressed in his uniform as a British Admiral of the Fleet to which he was entitled as part of the British royal family, and sailing his very latest German super-yacht with which he proceeded to prove himself a champion sailor, humiliating his uncle with evident self-satisfaction. He was actually having a sailing party on the Baltic Sea while his government started the First World War. But, as A.J.P. Taylor showed it was a case of “War by time-table”, dictated by the new railway connections that had changed the realities since the great Schlieffen Plan had been worked out almost 20 years before.

(c) The break up of the Ottoman Empire lay at the heart of "The Eastern Question" because really from the time that Peter the Great had set his sights on bringing Russia into Europe and away from Asia, there were rising anxieties about just what the huge Russian Empire would do as it got larger and larger. The possibility of some power from the immensity of Asia just swallowing up Europe or much of it has been around for a long time: at least since Greeks and Persians.

Round the time that Britain had helped to create Belgium, British support was also vital in the emergence of modern Greece not least Byron and his friends. In a Europe of reactionary Empires Britain pursuing a policy that favoured progressive nation-states rather than massive Empires that caused problems both when they expanded and contracted. In the 1850s Britain and France fought the Crimean War just to prevent the Turkish Empire from losing large tracts of land to Russian expansion, with both countries being worried about Russian ambitions.

Peter the Great having established a new Capital and port at St. Petersburg on the Baltic, and subsequent Tsars and Tsarinas had pushed towards the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the North Pacific. The expansion of Russia in fact was the great and terrifying, and now largely forgotten, unknown that lay behind the whole build up to the First World War in world affairs.

In fact the German attack on France through Belgium had been planned by Von Schlieffen as the only possible way ahead for Germany, once the Kaiser's foolish diplomacy had made it possible for France to make an alliance with Russia. Prussia/Germany had inflicted a humiliatiing defeat on France in 1870-71 and the French were arguably the only State that was actively looking for a major war in order to get revenge and win back what had been lost.

In the meantime British efforts in the Balkans in the decades before 1914, where they were ongoing wars to liberate the region from Turkish control, had favoured the creation of more small States- many of them like Belgium being normalised as monarchies by being found new Kings from Victoria's extensive family connections. The Duke of Edinburgh is connected to the Danish/Greek royal family. Meanwhile Victoria’s ‘Uncle Albert’ had masterminded her early career ,as well as her marriage to Albert: and he was rewarded with the Belgium throne, a task where the role of a constitutional monarch gave him time for private and personal ventures, so he began to get interested in African adventures promoting the idea that European States should leave it alone until that policy was replaced by a Scramble for Land, that started when Bismarck reversed his own policy and sent a force to seize the Cameroons. But, it was only after the terrible scandals connected with Leopold II’s exploitation of his family’s lands and rights in Africa in the early 20c that Belgium was persuaded to take over the government of the Congo.

(D) As for the British and the conduct of First World War:

One of the problems associated with an English tradition that has emphasized the need for peace and lawfulness has been a tradition of resistance to any attempt by the Crown to have a permanent and/or professional Army. From the time of King Alfred of Wessex the English react to the needs of a war once it is real.

Hence in the years before 1914, once Britain's new 'entente' with France raised the prospect of having to help the French to defend against a possible German thrust through Belgium, Britain did create a small professional Expeditionary Force. In a Europe of mass conscription armies with (from memory) the French and Germans able to field armies of millions, and the Russian army numbering in theory over ten million men, it was hardly surprising that the Kaiser , giving his uncle the benefit of his own military expertise, called the BEF "a contemptible little army".

But in terms of "the elite" As Vera Brittain showed in her tributes to "The Lost Generation", the people who had been prepared for war were the boys and young men, like those in her lives and loves, who had gone to public and private schools, and to Oxford and Cambridge to be educated for and prepared for lives of privilege, sacrifice and duty and Officers Training Corps, and almost to a boy they immediately volunteered and "did their duty" by leading their men "over the top" and into the Hell of No Man's Land. Douglas Hurd in a TV series on “The Lost Peace” was filmed walking past the boards with the names of all the Eton Old Boys killed in the war, and at the grave in France of one of the Hurd family.

One of those young men, in his case from St. Paul’s School was the later Field Marshall Montgomery who had come to secondary school in London from Tasmania where his father was the Anglican Bishop. In his Memoirs ’Montie’ describes how in his first battle he, as befitted an officer, had led the charge right into the German trenches, only to find himself confronted by a German and realise that he had no other weapon than his useless ceremonial sword. I tend to feel that perhaps his Aussie upbringing came to his aid, because he kicked the German in the groin.

But in general terms, however, the death toll amongst the officer class was much higher than for the rank and file: and in the decades after the war it was regularly felt that Britain had really lost "the flower of its youth" people who had been destined to be the forgers of a new and better world, something perhaps keenly felt by grieving parents and the women who would never become wives and mothers.

(E) But of course- as in wars ever since- especially after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, it had come to be thought that in this industrial and mechanical age all wars in future would be over quickly.

When the fighting really got going in September 1914 there was a widespread expectation that the war would be over by Christmas. In fact many people had suggested that war was impossible and unthinkable in this new age. So really the whole story of much of the war was really one of invention and adjusting to totally unprecedented circumstances, including, for example, at the Somme with its terrible death-toll, the problem of just what to do when the number of volunteers greatly exceeded all expectations and planning.

As survivors of the Sheffield Palls recalled, they had actually no real understanding or relevant experience of war. But the Germanic culture of Britain that time (which I have often asserted meant that they were already a Lost Generation deprived of their English roots and traditions) had tended to drum into all school-children in the new elementary schools a willingness to do what they were told and forget their traditions of common sense. The Germans were the finest soldiers and they were traned to “only follow orders”. And the raw-recruit Tommies wanted to show that they too could ‘only follow orders’. So they were told just to walk over No Man's Land, holding their rifles in the air, because some commanders saw them as so inexperienced and poorly trained that they had no confidence in their ability to actually stage a traditional charge, and in some cases far too much confidence in the machinery and equipment like the massive use if artillery barrages that were supposed to have wiped out the German positions.

But, of course, there had been no such large-scale war in Europe for almost a hundred years, with even the Crimean War in the 1850s having to drag Lord Raglan into the conflict as just about the only general left who had seen action in the Napoleonic Wars 1802-1815. The problem of the English preference for peace and democracy, rather than authoritarian government, does tend to mean that Britain often makes a disastrous start to a campaign, but then has a great capacity to learn and apply the lessons of the actual war that they are fighting. Germany, for example, had tended to start wars with a greater preparedness, but with much less flexibility and ability to develop and apply according to the new developments that the war produces. The British ended the First World War with tanks. The Germans started the Second World War with tanks: but the British and their allies ended the Second World War with the atomic bomb, Hitler having consistently refused to consider the VI and the VII until they were used as “Revenge Weapons”.

(f) Re Cameron- I may have missed something- but what I saw did not necessarily claim greatness for Britain. He merely asserted that Britain's history and significance could be compared pretty favourably with any other country in the world, past or present. It was a response to an alleged "put down" of Britain as a small island that no one listens to anymore.

And much of the hostile reaction seems to me to really reflect a crisis of confidence and self-belief in us as members of the Human Race, a crisis which seems to have only been deepened by the vote in the British Parliament, and , in fact, as I was in France at the time it was pretty clear that the British decision was listened to, and persuaded both the French and the Americans to at least have parliamentary/congressional debates on the issue.

Cass

A very interesting read, thank you. Have you / are you going to write any books in this area? Yes I do remember it being said that Britain lost many many officers during WWI. War is so damn messy ... yet despite this the human population continues to rise and rise beyond sustainability. Todays Russia is looking to be in a very good position with the enormous natural resources that can be found in Siberia.

On a separate note ... the Scottish say they are Scottish, the Welsh Welsh, the Irish Irish, the English tend to say they're British ... there doesn't seem to be a clear sense of Englishness ... maybe it's a "class" dependent factor. Any plans on returning to England ?

Stone Aart

Glad you enjoyed it.. I have written quite a lot on those themes- but have found no publisher interested, starting (as you mention Englishness) with a work that I eventually called "English Peace" because- though people now chose to forget it it was the success of England that inspired the modern world- even if it was the case as Nial Ferguson wrote in his book TV series "Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World" that it was only by learning how to operate as a United Kingdom that England was able to become the most powerful force in the world in the Nineteenth Century.

And in fact what I am currently writing and posting on h2g2 under the working title "Thoughts Around the Death of Mrs. Thatcher" is growing into a book that I will call "The Battles for Britain"- with a view to the whole Scottish Independence (and little England movement).. Because Great Britain -as the world's greatest single power, spent so much of the Nineteenth Century making it possible for small nations to survive in a dangerous and changing world, the idea emerged-especially during the First World War that it might be possible to create a whole world order out of small sovereign nation States that would not be large enough to threaten anybody and just bring them together in a talking shop League of Nations. This led directly to the World Chaos and the growth of the Nazi, Soviet and Japanese efforts to create large new "imperial" blocks, with great central powers and smaller satellites.

But the British and then British American efforts to dominate the world were based on English ideas and traditions of the Liberty and Human Rights, with a belief in Freedom and (arguably) a naive faith in a/the Natural order in which people strove to work together in harmony given a fundamental belief in a common humanity: views that were heavily influenced by the relative security and peace that people in England and North America had been able to establish. The the great American Colony created by William Penn essentially so that pacifist-Quakers could go to live there safe from the religious persecutions of the Old World had created by 1776 the second largest "English" city in the world- Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.

But as I know from my French family and connections ( I got married in Dijon in 1968) this has been a somewhat privileged existence. Dijon and Burgundy has been at the crossroads of wars and moving armies for thousands of years: and my parents-in-law spent their teens under German occupation. Such countries do worry about the state of the world, but with a sense of tragedy and disaster that already threatens them and their very survival.

When I read that a World Health Survey c2007 had found that levels of "emotional distress" in "English speaking countries" were much higher than in the countries of mainland Europe, my immediate reaction was that of course they were: and it showed how much healthier the English speaking countries were than those of mainland Europe. "We" won the Second World War and most of mainland Europe was defeated and conquered one way or another, so they do not have so much "heart" left to feel for the problems of other people and the wider world, whereas the English tradition since at least the Wilberforce campaign for the abolition of slavery, is that within our relative comfort and security, however humble that may be, we should care about the state of the world and Humanity in general. Historians accept that the Anti-Slavery Campaign launched a new force in British History- that of the deliberate arousal the powerful human emotions of "Moral Indignation".

But of course President Putin's theory is that -not for the first time- there has been a conscious and deliberate attempt by rebels in Syria to trigger that sense of moral indignation in "the Anglo-Saxon" world in order to get them to win their greater struggle- as happened in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, when, as happened in Iraq, ex-pats and exiles managed to convince great powers that the regime was so unpopular that any invading force would be welcomed as Liberators.

Cass

Hi Stone Aart

As for your question- We came back to Norwood last Tuesday.

Cass

I thought you were an expatriate living in France - not sure where I got that impression.

I have been thinking about what you mentioned regarding the Normans ... I had seen them as "foreign" invaders ... taking over ownership of the land systematically (estates, forests - for privileged hunting, "England", then Wales, Ireland ... Scotland, in time common lands were taken & "enclosed", methods included forms of genocide as has been mentioned to me in the "harrowing" - scorched earth policy - of the North ... on a separate note I know that the Normans had lands elsewhere & played an important role in the Crusades).

... but what you're saying is that it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day they were replacing one form of elitist rule with another ... and that if it hadn't have been the Normans it would have been some other invading group or maybe the Dane-Anglo-Saxon elite ... but there seemed to have been popular (?) resistance to the Norman rule (leading to the draining of the Fens etc) ... but maybe as you say the resistance may have just been the former elite forcing / persuading others joining in to rebel ...

With regard to getting your work published - have you been given any reasons why your work has so far not been accepted ... can you modify your work accordingly in order to make it more amenable to publication ... can you send it out to perceived experts (academic etc) that might endorse your work ... give you feedback ... maybe you could slice the work up and send it to journals / societies dealing with historical issues, relevant local newspapers ...

Stone Aart

Well "national histories" have tried to create that 'them and us' idea..

But a crucial part of the English tradition has been that the English (especially in London- where a critical mass of humanity was achieved) have felt quite prepared to go out into the world, and accept that the world may wish to come to London. In fact the strength of London over the last 1000 plus years has been one of the longstanding causes of resentment within England and Britain- especially because London eventually became the capital of the "Angleland" = England- where the English law ruled.

Then the conquest of what became "England" started with the reconquest of the "Danelaw" region that had been granted to the invading Vikings in the time of Alfred the Great. The Danelaw regions were allowed to preserve their own laws and traditions : and still seem to preserve a tradition of war and conflict between families and communities, with the duty of the Blood Feud and vengeance being handed down from generation to generation. This seems to have been directly related to the North/South divide within England, where that culture still seems to be more powerful both in the North of England, and in England's neighbours- the Welsh, Irish and Scots, whose pride in their greater belligerence comes to the fore whenever England plays matches against any of these countries in those major English sports- which were developed as part of a process of promoting social cohesion.

You mention the famous Harrowing of the North by William I, but that was a punitive action taken two years after 1066, when, though William had negotiated his way to the throne, and had been crowned lawful King in Westminster Abbey, some of the former warrior elite, which had not yet been totally displaced, staged a rebellion with confused objectives: possibly to put the teenage Edgar the Atheling on the throne, but if so perhaps with a place within the Scandinavian Empire- since a key element had been an uprising in York- the obvious Capital City of any England ruled as part of the Viking world- which had slaughtered the Norman garrison, and had invited the King of the Vikings to come to help them to overthrow William and the Normans.

William concluded that he had been rather too much "the nice guy" Sourthern English style and made a punitive circuit throughout the Danelaw regions to show that, if they wanted to play nasty, he could outdo them in nastiness.

But as with what Mrs Thatcher called "The Scargill Insurrection", whenever people have raised the flag of rebellion in the North, calling for a fight, and coming off worst, it is seen to be the fault and blame of the South, merely fuelling old feuds and resentments. But the Southerners have been prepared to accept Norman, French, Welsh, Scottish, and German Kings and Queens- as long as they could govern effectively in accordance with the rules- that were first enshrined in the Coronation Oath of Edward the Confessor first taken in 1042, and taken by every monarch since: and the City of London has usually made sure that it provided such monarchs with the wherewithal to impose the rule of Law.

Cass

On the wider question that you raise-

In the pieces that I wrote (on Guide Entries in h2g2) I bring out the wider importance of the Normans as a major force in European History at that time. The end of the first Millennium had raised all kinds of expectations about the second coming of Christ etc- but instead of good things, the very survival of Christendom was in doubt, with Europe beset by four great waves of invaders/raiders. God seemed to have abandonned Europe, and there was a reform movement in the Papacy, with two Popes, including one who was determined to bring about the Reform. The military power of the Normans around 1060 had won the Papacy for the reforming Pope. And then, in return, this Pope ruled in William's favour in the dispute in 1066 over Harold Godwinson's right to the throne of England, sending a papal 'pallium' (standard) for William to show at the head of his forces to show that his invasion was more or less a Crusade.

The Normans then went on to "deal with" three of those great threats to the safety and security of Europe, establsihing a chain of Norman States from England, through Sicily and eventually the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with William I's eldest son taking the cross as part of the First Crusade.

But within nationalistic "English/Anglican History" this importance of the Normans as part of the wider European Roman Catholic Church and the whole story of continental Europe did not really suit the school text-book message that sought to promote nationalism and insularity.

Cass