The English and Their History: The First Thirteen Centuries by Robert Tombs

This, for me, is the most influential book that I have read in years. It is a feelgood book for the English. It writes England’s history to show why we are as we are. And it does so in a sympathetic fashion reminding us of the things we did well, alongside those not done so well. For me, in the context of a looming referendum in the UK on continued membership of the Euro, it has an intriguing analysis of why we ended up with the EU membership we have.

There is so much that is wonderful in the book, particularly if you are English and like history. It is not chauvinistic about England in the context of the rest of the countries of the British Isles and Tombs is clear that no English history can be complete without lots of Welsh, Scottish and Irish history. He tries when possible, however, to tell the English story only straying into the history of our neighbours when you cannot tell ours without telling theirs.

It is broad and sweeping, starting with pre-Roman England and cantering through the centuries at a good pace. There are kings and queens, and wars and rebellions but Tombs is mostly concerned about the way we lived, how we thought about ourselves, and how we changed and evolved.

At the start, Tombs explores the origins of England and the English; the moment when we started to define ourselves in geographic, linguistic and cultural terms that are roughly coterminous with what we have now. Romans, Saxons and Vikings buffeted this early Englishness but there were consistent themes, amongst which were relatively well-organised government with local devolution, and a common and written language. This is the prelude to the three, or perhaps four, wrenching moments in our recorded history when there was rather more change than continuity.

The first, as Tombs makes clear, was the Norman invasion of 1066. The French newcomers did radically change the nature of the country, how it thought about itself, how it was governed and, clearly, the language spoken. Tombs is objective but I sensed a little regret at the Norman yoke and the loss of an effective co-operative, not coercive, system of government. The melding of Franco-Norman with Anglo-Saxon to create early modern England leads up the next great upheaval.

The Henrician Reformation and the hundred and fifty or so years of religious/political upheaval that followed was tumultuous to live through and led to what Tombs considers to be an enduring division between Anglican and Dissenter that has fed through to our current political geography. Anglicans dominate in the Eastern and Southern lowlands and Dissenters in the Western and Northern regions. Patterns of eighteenth and nineteenth century religious observance carry through to Conservative and Labour voting patterns.

Number three, on my list at least, was the industrialisation of England and the empire that accompanied it. While England had had avant-garde and exceptional components of its history to this point, which Tombs points out, the agricultural and industrial revolutions made England exceptional, creating a sense of ourselves that was new. Moreover, as well as growing at an historically unparalleled pace, we also exported millions of people who created the English speaking world of today. I had not realised that, despite American Independence, the majority of British emigrants went to the US.

This leads to Tombs’ intriguing and, for an Englishman, rather reassuring narrative of the twentieth century and the two wars. Tombs takes the line that Britain was pivotal in both, with the Royal Navy the most effective fighting force. He does not go down the path of Sleepwalkers in saying the first War was a terrible accident. We did the right thing. Nor does he wholly go down the Hastings path in saying that until 1916 it was all about the French. He reminds us how vital it was that the Navy kept the German navy in port and blockaded the country.

Likewise, he does not believe in the marginal contribution of Britain to the second war: the idea that the Soviet Union defeated Germany on the Eastern front and the Americans the Japanese in the Pacific. There is lots of good stuff. For a start, he questions the relative weakness of Britain in 1939. Britain out-produced Germany in lots of things. Again, the Navy was pivotal: keeping open the Atlantic, supplying the Russians, policing the Mediterranean and confronting the Japanese.

He also holds the view, putting aside the moral debate, that Bomber Harris was factually right and the revisionists factually wrong about the bombing of Germany. A great boon to the Russians was that the immensely effective German 88mm gun was largely deployed in Germany on aerial defence and not in Russia on tank-killing. On D-Day, Hollywood is wrong. It was largely an Imperial operation. Most of the troops landed were Empire troops, and far and away the majority of the shipping was British.

All of which leads seamlessly to Tombs’ narrative of declinism. He argues that, war-ravaged and indebted though it was, England was in, relatively, not bad shape in 1945. Moreover, through into the 1950s, we continued to be innovative and ahead in many technologies. Economic growth was fine. But we, somewhere between the mid-50s and mid-60s talked ourselves into believing we were in decline.

Part of the cause was relatively slow economic growth. But he points out that our European neighbours were engaging in catch-up growth. I am reminded of Thomas Piketty’s empirical observation that countries at the technological frontier (who can only grow by innovating not copying) have tended to grow at 1% a year or less. We should have been growing more slowly than Continental Europeans. But part was undoubtedly Suez. He doesn’t say it, although others have, that American unwillingness to forgive war loans was the reason we were running deficits that needed financing and therefore beholden to US approval for our foreign policy decisions. We paid for twice defeating the Germans and the US profited.

This sense of decline engendered, in turn, a desperation to join the Common Market and, when finally offered to us after de Gaulle’s departure, led us to accept a poor deal. We joined the Common Market at a low point of relative economic performance and national confidence, and so swallowed the deal available, not a good deal. So much of our relationship with the EU is not really so much about whether we should be in or out but about trying to negotiate ex post facto the deal we should have negotiated in the early 1970s.

So what of my possible fourth wrenching change? Tombs ends with where we are now. He shows how extraordinary have been the levels of immigration into the UK in the last couple of decades. He also, for me at least, has some very encouraging statistics on how quickly racial integration is occurring at its most literal level – intermarriage. Englishness is on the move.