The Albion annotator

A British history fact a day - with sources cited, or your money back!

(Please don't spend money on this, I can't afford the inevitable refunds)

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

Daily reminder!

This mighty tome sits at just over a 1000 pages of densely printed text - easily approaching 300,000 words!

But here on X, we only get 280 letters - not even enough to copy out its contents page!

Social media just can't capture the depth of a good book - or 2!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

Think of Medieval industry, and you probably think of hardy men felling trees and hewing stone. Such things as coal and iron might seem fundamentally out of place in the Middle Ages; more associated with the ravenous furnaces and roaring machines of the 19th century, than the wooden wheels and colossal cathedrals of the 15th.

Yet the production and use of both resources has in fact a long pedigree on these shores! Already by 1387, for example, Newcastle alone was shipping some 15,000 tonnes of coal a year across the country, rising to 40,000 tonnes by 1508 - a trade which served, for a time, to render her the fourth richest city in England!

Such a rising demand for coal lead in turn to a need for deeper mines, with more advanced mining equipment to boot. Thus we see the gradual opening of so called 'pillar and stall' mines, digging further down into the earth, supporting the tremendous weight above through complex frameworks - complete with horse drawn pumps to drain out the inevitable flood water, as seen in Durham by the 1480s.

Indeed, so efficient was this later Medieval mining, that the coal output of mines in the 15th century almost matched that of their early 19th century descendants - before the aforementioned age of steam allowed for drastic leaps in productivity!

Of course, coal wasn't the only industry we think of as fundamentally Victorian to have a firm footing in the Middle Ages! By the 1480s for example, Weardale (today a small village associated more with scenic Pennine trails than heavy industry) was alone producing enough wrought iron to totally displace previous imports from Spain - and only a decade later, blast furnaces fit for producing hardy cast irons were opening in Sussex!

Now while sadly today you can see little of any of these once great industries, in their either their Medieval or Victorian forms, you CAN go check out my source for today's information!

"A brief history of life in the middle ages", by Martyn Whittock - pages 38 and 39!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

Hello there Mr Sandbrook!

For whatever it's worth - in an age of relentless culture wars around British history (especially with regards to immensely emotive topics such as Northern Ireland), yours and Mr Holland's takes on the Troubles have been immensely refreshing to listen to. Exactly the kind of thought provoking, nuanced discussions we desperately need on such things!

I especially admire how you haven't just boiled it down to "the" British versus "the" Irish, and have made it clear just how many sub-factions of all stripes on all sides were involved, and ultimately how reluctant the 'big' players (the British and Irish governments) were to get involved.

Not to take away from the tragedy of it all: but this series has been tremendous listening, well worth the subscription money.

Thank you!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

From the Beatles to Black Sabbath to Blur - Britain has long (at least I'd argue!) punched well above its weight in the music scene: but the tremendous chorus erupting from these isles didn't just start in the 20th century. As far back as the 16th, England was already renown for its musical output!

Indeed, Cambridge was already awarding music degrees long before similar institutions on the continent - with Oxford catching up to its esteemed domestic rival by appointing a Doctor of Music in 1511.

Although their names have faded over the centuries; Christopher Tye, John Taverner, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd were all then famed alumni of these institutions. But musical talent ran throughout Tudor society, with both Queen Elizabeth and her father, a certain Henry, being talented musicians - the former especially with the harpsichord, which she played "Excellently well", according to one Scottish ambassador. Such skill ran in the family, it seemed: with Edward, a lyre player himself, employing no less than 65 musicians at court!

Slightly further down the social ladder, most wealthier families in Tudor England had also studied music during their school days. It was rare indeed to find a rich household which did not boast a sizeable collection of instruments: why, just a certain Sir Thomas Kitson's inventory alone included no less than...!

- Six viols
- Six violins
- Seven recorders
- Four claronets
- A bandora
- A cittern
- Two sackbuts
- Three hautboys (a real instrument, I checked)
- One bassoon
- One lysarden
- Two flutes
- 3 harpsicords
- Four lutes
- And an organ

That said, well connected Tudors didn't just keep their love of music to the land: even the famous Golden Hinde maintained its own orchestra, so the song could travel far out to sea!

Of course, whilst they might not have had the money to buy such a collection (nor the space to keep it!), the common folk of Tudor England also maintained a mass of musical talent, with barber shops of the time being known to keep lutes on hand for public entertainment while customers waited their turn for a haircut!

Such was the love of song among the masses, the author of "Praise of Musik" wrote in 1588:

- "Manual labourers of all sorts keep such a chanting and singing in their shops: the tailor on his bulk, the shoemaker at his last, the mason at his wall, the shipboy at his oar, the tiler on the house top"

Of course, while you might not hear much of all this Tudor song on the streets today, you CAN check out my source!:

"The English: a social history, 1066 to 1945", by Christopher Hibbert - pages 218 to 220!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

With respect to both Mr Polanski and his guest! If Englishness if hard to define, I would posit this is neither due to some inherent failing with the English, or with English culture at large.

Many this side of the border could easily point to the same touchstones Ms Hirsch notes -food, language, clothing, folklore- to espouse a very thorough definition of Englishness indeed! Why, we're speaking the language right now - and Mr Polanski is wearing at least part of a suit, which by all means ought to be the English national dress!

Rather, it is because for a host of factors (ranging from its own sense of understatement, to rapid globalisation) that English culture has been allowed to fall by the wayside - I think leftist cringing at/instant dismissal of Englishness (as brilliantly noted by Orwell) plays some role in this too.

As for the idea that the English have filled the void with xenophobia and empire! Bernard Porter has written wonderfully on how the empire played a surprisingly limited role in our cultural formation - and xenophobia is hardly unique to the English. It's currently rampant, for instance, in South Africa; but I doubt any would rush to say it's filling a void caused by an absence of culture!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

If you're a fan of Agatha Christie -or for that matter, the somewhat less civil Peaky Blinders- you might be of the impression that in interwar Britain, murderers came a dime a dozen!

Of course, there were some high profile cases worthy of Miss Marple herself: see one Major Herbert Armstrong, who in 1922 sought to seize his wife's fortune through the use of weedkiller - then sent arsenic laced chocolates to see off a prying solicitor.

But despite what ITV period dramas might tell you, the murder rate between the wars wasn't as high as you might think - violent crimes increased by a measly 1% from 1920 right up to 1948, and the numbers of convictions for such decreased quite sharply (though with a twist reason for why!)

See, in the years immediately prior to the Great War, roughly 70 people a year were trialled for murder - in the years immediately after the Second War, that figure reached a similar 72 a year. But between 1931 and 1938, only 56 people per annum were put before a jury for such!

This data is reflected in the number of executions for those most heinous of crimes: 120 souls went to the gallows between 1910 and 1919 - but only 83 met this fate between 1930 and 1939!

Now, of course, the aforementioned devil as to why is in the details. While there was a slight decline in successful murders, most of this comes from judges being increasingly willing to downgrade murder charges to those of manslaughter - and, especially in the case of women killers, to reduce sentences on the grounds of insanity and unfitness to plead.

This then came to mean that by the 1930s, around half of all murder suspects were declared inappropriate for trial - which made calls for the death penalty increasingly rare; again, particularly for women, who were more often than not spared this most final of punishments.

As always, here's my source in full for your own reading pleasure!:

"We danced all night", by Martain Pugh - pages 107 to 108!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

@robert_lyman @HurstPublishers Aha! What's that old internet Star Wars reference - "Two of them? This is getting out of hand!".

Thank you ever so much; I'll be sure to give the good Mukerjee a read as soon as I'm able!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

@HistoriaJack It'd get me hung, drawn and quartered in some circles but - the British Empire wasn't a cash cow, was closer to a money sink.

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

At the risk of sounding pretentious(!): when it comes to studying history, "The" might be one of the most troublesome words in the English language - especially when it comes before a noun!

Think about terms like: "the" British, "the" working class, "the" Edwardian woman currently stalking me through the woodlands (unpaid debts, long story) - all perfectly acceptable and valid as shorthand signifiers, but which in practice obscure far more than they reveal!

As Alan Lester writes in his thoughtful book on the British Empire, "Deny & disavow":

- "My first issue is with the word 'the' before British...as we have seen, how colonialism took root in each colony depended as much on tensions and debates among Britons as it did between Britons and other actors...we can no more assume a British consensus on colonialism...than we can assume consensus among Britons on any other political issue" (page 200)

That last point - about being sure to never assume consensus among peoples' long passed - is a vital one to keep in mind, for it is far too often forgotten by people who these days might speak of a "Typically Victorian" or "Typically working class" attitude to something!

For a great example on this, let's smash those two 'typicals' together by looking at the Victorian working classes, and their attitude to the Chartist movement - was it all of a piece, enabling us to talk about "the" workers and "their" attitudes?!

Of course, you know it's more complicated than that; we shouldn't be surprised that workers' opinions varied wildly!

For while in the older, less industrialised jobs (those largely undertaken in small workshops, like nail making and wool combing) we find a great deal of quite militant Chartist support - in the more modernised workplaces such as factories, attitudes were much more ambivalent!

Hence, while the Chartist call for a 3 day strike in August 1839 met with some initial enthusiasm in both camps - by 1842, factory workers generally preferred to strike for their own agenda (specifically a restoration of wages paid in 1840), rather than for the grand cause of the national Charter.

Likewise: whilst coalminers down in Monmouthshire might have briefly joined the cause, after the Newport rising of 1839, they once against lost interest, and returned to campaigning on unique, more localised grievances.

Of course, we can't even generalise between 'old' and 'new' industries when it comes to Chartist support: for while painters, shoemakers, tailors and cabinet makers were mighty vocal about the cause until 1842, after this, they too distanced themselves - leaving the work, especially after 1846, mostly to framework knitters!

Such were divisions among the working classes (yes, I'm aware of the irony of using a "the" there given what I'm trying to prove!), that hand-loom weavers in late 1830s Burnley proposed arson on the mills, in order to force factory workers out of their jobs and into more zealous support for the cause!

As for why all this was - well, this tweet is already way over word count, long enough already; so there in lies a story for another day!

For now though, as ever, my sources - two very different ones today!:

"Deny + Disavow", by Alan Lester - a brief cameo from page 200

"British social history, 1815 to 1914", by Jane Jenkins + Eric Evans - pages 242 to 243!

[The Albion annotator @AlbionAnnotated]

I know mine is an account that's supposed to paraphrase the words & ideas of people far smarter than I, rather than deliver bouts of my own assuredly dreadful hot takes - and worry not, it will remain so!

But on just this one occasion, I hope you'll permit me a round of totally unsolicited soap-boxing on the worrying data below; showing that pride in British history has all but collapsed, from 65% in 2011 to just 39% now.

Personally, I think this is a tragedy for a number of reasons: but at least to me, the real questions are, firstly why - and secondly, what can those of us who remain patriotic do to counter it?

Don't get me wrong: I'm in no way going to call here for a Trumpian style "patriotic curriculum" - I will always contest that history education should focus on how to think, not what to think.

But there has to be some kind of response to this, because unfortunately, across the internet, a lack of pride in British history isn't being replaced with a sensible nuance; but rather an utterly demeaning self-loathing. You see this in young people especially: "We're the worst, we're the most oppressive, we're the most evil", and so on.

Naturally, this bodes ill, both for our understanding of the past, and our future - for why on earth would a people with a baleful sense of their yesterday make any effort to carry on for their tomorrow?

It is akin to seeing a young Manchu, or even Chinese person, being told their entire history surmounted to nothing more than the Dzungar genocide, that every one of their ancestors was some kind of cartoonish supervillain streaming into Dzungaria armed to the teeth. This is not to say the campaigns against the Dzungar shouldn't be discussed, nor that they cannot be condemned: but do they reflect the totality of Qing era foreign policy, and show the Qing, even the Chinese more broadly, as naught but a wicked people?

In the strongest terms, they do not. Qing history, and the Qing/broader Chinese themselves, are as complex and nuanced as anyone - as were their encounters with the various peoples on their frontiers, who they interacted with in all kinds of ways, including cooperation and collaboration. But you can see why our hypothetical Manchu, presented with such the skewed telling above, would quickly seek to distance themselves from that past.

I mention all that, because such skewed, unrelentingly hostile tellings currently dominate the narrative on British history; especially on short-form content apps like TikTok and Twitter, but increasingly in the public sphere too. The less than savoury elements of British history are constantly broadcast, in the most emotive terms possible, to the exclusion of all else. No wonder, for as the wonderfully named Helene Von Bismark puts it in her book, "Fantastic kingdom":

-"It has become more and more popular..to fit perceptions and interpretations of British history into a binary world view (of) perfect heroes and ghastly villains...both right and left seem much more interested in passing judgement on the past rather than understanding it...dramatic condemnation or cynical apologies will get you much more attention that dull and intricate history lessons" (pg. 64)

Now I want to be clear: Britain's history is not without its blemishes; some of them dreadful. I'm not about to sit here and defend, say, Kitchener's use of scorched earth tactics and concentration camps in the Boer War. But, of vital importance, neither did many Brits at the time - remember the outrage they caused in parliament when the abuses were exposed?

This is something those of us who are patriotic need to remember, I think: perfectly valid criticisms of British history do exist, and we need to engage with them responsibly. But it is also something we need to point out to young Brits who see their ancestors only as villains: the British (a problematic term which lends itself to generalisation, perhaps?) have never been in one mind about anything, and were often proudly auto-critical. There in for me lies a great source of pride, in the very least.

But still: consider how many videos, with how many views, exist on such emotionally charged topics as mentioned above (most conveniently missing the controversy such tactics caused in Britain itself): compared with how many exist on much more mundane issues such as the Porter-MacKenzie debates, or "To what extent did Disraeli’s desire to 'dish the whigs' contribute to the Second Reform Act of 1867?".

How much of online history is presented as a "feel bad story", rather than as complex historiography? Are moments of genuine triumph - see the Medieval era campaigns against government corruption I discussed only yesterday! - even in the popular public awareness?

Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss the less savoury elements of empire; young people demand to know about them. I'm not saying they, and we, aren't allowed to condemn them (for what it's worth, I do).

But those of us who see patriotism as important DESPERATELY need to acknowledge them, and sympathise with the concerns, rather than just brushing them off as "woke nonsense" or such. Otherwise, we abandon the critique to those who will frame them in the worst possible terms; who will weaponise half truths to peg the English as "The most evil people in history!" (to quote one recent assailant in the culture wars) - and this is the narrative that will be internalised by our children.

Our mission must be, when these blots on our past are discussed: to address the valid concerns with admission where mistakes were made; to push back against more hyperbolic assertions (the old "India went from 25% of the world's GDP to just 4%!" claim - which thoroughly misunderstands what GDP is and why it changes!); and to add vital context/discuss the historiography around them.

We need to restore pride in our history by admitting it is not perfect (is anyone's?), but then in pulling the narrative away from those who seek only to demonise it. Through this, hopefully, we can all see our past through clearer, more analytical eyes - rather than as no more than a sideshow of shame.

Nobody should be forced to be proud of Britain's past - for better or worse, the horse of young un's bellowing "Rule Britannia!" has bolted. But at least we can show our history as worthy of more consideration and complexity than the current "Well it's all just dreadful" write off it currently receives. Perhaps in that, some patriotism might be restored?

Or, more likely, I've just spent the last hour chatting absolute gibberish.

Probably that second one; I do hope my enemies will at least admire my honesty here!

[Tom Calver @TomHCalver]

NEW: the share of people saying they are “proud to be British” has plummeted in 15 years.

A new report by Demos finds a stark fall in pride in British history among young people, while older voters have lost faith in institutions like the BBC

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