It‘s funny and weird the rabbit holes one falls down sometimes. I heard Femi Longe earlier use the word diaspora and looked it up in wikipedia and was amazed by all the groups over the years that have ended up creating diasporas following various very difficult events. I noticed that one of them was a diaspora of anglo-saxons after the Norman conquests. They all relocated to the bizantine empire, which is basically the eastern Roman empire, which was left when the western part collapsed.
And so I started reading about the Norman conquests in 1066, William the conqueror, the french take over England, with the help of the Norwegians, and displace the anglo-saxons nobility throughout the land, so much so that people start speaking a totally different language. Back then most commoners would have been bilingual. I’ve never gotten into english history before, mostly because it’s always felt so darn complicated, but for whatever reason this time I found it much more interesting.
One thing I realised was that the reason sometimes Kings and Queens have multiple roman letters after their name, like for instance James VI and I is because they are King of two places and they have a different number in each place. Which is very complicated, but it’s not that bad when you can look it up on a big list of all the Kings and Queens. It actually sort of makes sense. But obvs not as clear as the numbering of car models, but Kings and Queens are not after all cars, so fair enough.
Firstly the Normans are basically Vikings that were allowed to stay in northern France, the idea being that they would fight off other Vikings from coming down to France. It was very successful and they intermarried the local french population, and created Normandy.
So anyway, William the Conqueror invades right after Norwegians had invaded in Northern England. They got beaten, but the english armies were exhausted from the battles in the north, but also because to move around the country they basically had to do a marathon every single day for months on end, wearing all their armour. And then have a massive fight to the death as if the marathon of marathons in body armour wasn’t enough. It’s insane. BTW, marathons of marathons seem to be trending for me at the minute.
After basically doing battles constantly for what seems like his entire life, squashing rebelion after rebelion after rebelion, from what seems like everywhere, like Ireland, Scotland, France, Holland, Wales. It's like a continuous cluster fuck of cluster fucks. He eventually imposes himself, and forces all the existing nobility to giveup their land to an entirely new nobility.
And he does this massive survey of all the lands in the kingdom, creating a thing called the Doomsday Book, which is still kept in Kew of Kew Gardens fame, lists all lands in Kingdom, who used to own them, who owns them now, and how much they are worth. It’s called that because it’s the final judgement. Whatever is in the book is truth. No arguments.
Anyway the french then rule England for ages, they double team with the Flanders for ages too, but eventually in 1120, it’s the end of the Norman kings, because Henry I has no sons. He names his daughter Mathilda as heir but his nephew Stephen of Blois shows up after he dies and does a coup d'etat. Mathilda btw is queen for a short time, first female to rule over England, but that doesn’t last long. Anyway after that is a period called The Anarchy, which is basically 20 years of everyone openly fighting and slaughtering everyone everywhere even on the continent. It’s mental.
All the people from back then sound like total badasses.
Loads of stuff happens for a few hundred years, the french are involved constantly, it’s a bit boring until 1604 when James I gets in. He’s the guy that created the world famous King James bible, an english translation from Latin which is basically the same bible we use today. Quite a huge feat. He was protestant. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, but also great grandson of Henry VII king of England and Lord of Ireland, and so is a potential successor to all three thrones, and tried to unite everyone, he was only partially successful, and that’s where Britain comes from.
The interesting thing though is what happens after that, because things were about to change massively.
James I’s son Charles I, who ruled all the countries, England, Scotland and Ireland, like his dad, was executed by Parliament, for essentially being too powerful. He was also married to a Catholic. The parliament folks really didn’t like that. There was a civil war, he had to fight the armies of both the English and Scotish parliaments, which must have really sucked. They took him captive and wanted him to agree to a constitutional monarchy, but he told them to f-off. He escaped to the Ilse of Wight for a bit, but they caught, tried and convicted him, and on Tuesday, 30 January 1649, at about 2pm, he put his head on the block, stretched out his hands, and they choped it off in one clean swoop. Then the monarchy was abolished.
So parliament ruled for a while, but then Cromwell did a coup d’etat, and he ruled for a bit, and his son was his heir, but was removed because he was innefective, and Charles II, who was in exhile since the beheading of his father, was brought back in, and restored as King, and the monarchy was back. He had been in exhile in France but I also read he was in the Hague, so not sure what that’s about. Apparently he was being helped by Louis 14th King of France. Louis then helped Charles II in the Anglo-Dutch wars. Also Charles agreed to become Catholic. He had no children officially, which is odd because he had 12 illigitimate children. His brother James II took over when he died.
During James II the struggles continued betweem those that believed in the devine right of kings and those that believed in soveraignity being held by Parliament over the crown. The pretty big plot twist here was that the Dutch basically do a takeover of England, with William of Orange from Holland getting hitched to Mary, daughter of James II, aided by Parliament, who for the first time assert sovereignty is kept by parliament and not by birth. This was made possible by them saying that James II remaining in power would cause civil war because he was Catholic. They were trying to avoid the start of a Catholic dynasty with the birth of his son who would likely remain Catholic, whereas his daughter Mary was already protestant. BTW, Orange and Mary were first cousins. So I guess Orange betrayed his uncle and Mary betrayed her father. England has remained to this day protestant.
That’s about as far as I got. But it’s totally relevant to all this churning in my head the past few days about the Core Contradiction. I think in a way, that is the origin story of all this individual vs the collective problems we are constantly bumping up against everywhere.
I find this interplay between England, the French, the Dutch, the protestants, the Catholics, monarchs and parliamentarians rather fascinating, but there is just so much it’s difficult to pull out just the relevant parts. There is likely some innaccuracies in all this, I mostly got all from Wikipedia, and I was clicking around everywhere until I my head was spinning.
Oh and isn’t it a bit weird that the day I finally get interested in all this England monarchs stuff, just so happens to be the day that Apple announce a new feature that makes the very useful app Alfred sherlocked. Alfred also known as Alfred the Great was the first King of England. I thought that was a weird coincidence. First delete Libor, then delete Alfred, the americans want to really be sure of liberation day. Better safe than sorry I suppose ¯_(ツ)_/¯. #