Conservative History Journal

Tory Historian has been a tad busy but has now returned with a few interesting dates to be celebrated or, at least, remembered this week. (Tory Historian also vows to keep this blog up to scratch in the coming year and, indeed, to introduce a few novel ideas, painful though that might be.)

December 16 is an important date in the history of the Anglosphere. The Americans mostly remember a certain event in 1773 when a number of colonists improbably disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships, opened the chests of tea and threw the contents into Boston harbour. Their main complaint was that tax raised on the tea trade and taxation in general. Sad to say, by the time the American War of Independence, or the Third English Rebellion was over, those who remained, the loyalists having made their way to Canada or back to England, found themselves paying more in tax than ever before. Here are some eyewitness accounts, probably somewhat over-excited by the events and here is Walter Russell Mead on the relevance of those tea-parties to present-day United States.

Mead also mentions the really important event of December 16 (though it is hard to work out from his account whether this was the old calendar or the new) - the passing of the English Bill of Rights, which ought to be the cornerstone of the British Constitution (together with such constitutional legislation as the 1701 Act of Settlement and the 1707 Act of Union as well as numerous electoral reforms and, not to be forgotten, the 1679 Habeas Corpus). Sadly, things have changed but, Tory Historian is sure, those constitutional settlements will triumph over arrogant power once again.

December 15, 1791 saw the United States Bill of Rights become the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. Based largely on the English Bill of Rights, its provisions are still part of that estimable document, despite many attempts to undermine them.

December 17, 1778 saw the birth of Sir Humphrey Davy, inventor of the safety lamp for miners, who also discovered sodium, magnesium, calcium, barium and strontium, one of the finest of England's scientists and inventors whose influence on developments in the world was incalculable.

But let us end on a more ambivalent note: on December 18, 1946 Attlee's government won the vote (unsurprisingly, given the huge Labour majority after the 1945 election) that allowed them to nationalize just about every part of British industry. A defeat for the Anglosphere? Only temporarily.

Some had been forgotten:

August 19 - 21, 1991 - abortive Soviet coup aimed at reversing developments but the result is the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the "greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century" according to Prime Minister Putin and, no doubt, various historians like Professor Eric Hobsbawm;

August 7 - 16, 2008 - war in Georgia when Russia invades actual Georgian territory;

Tory Historian is not sure the last one is as important as the others in the grand scheme of things but it might yet be. And another date which might be of some importance but how much is not clear:

July 12 - August 14, 2006 - Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon;

Enjoy the silly season.

Ah yes, Tory Historian is told, the silly season. Nothing ever happens in late July and August. Oh no? Well how about a few random events from the twentieth century?

July 23, 1914 - Austria-Hungary delivers an ultimatum to Serbia with ten extremely difficult demands;
July 28, 1914 - when Serbia acceded to eight of the demands, Austria-Hungary declared war because of the remaining two;
July 29, 1914 - Russia orders partial mobilization;
July 30, 1914 - Germany orders mobilization;
August 1, 1914 - France orders mobilization; Germany declares war on Russia
August 3, 1914 - Germany declares war on France and a few hours later France declares war on Germany;
August 4, 1914 - Britain declares war on Germany;

Hmm, some silly season that turned out to be.

Let's try a few more dates.

August 28, 1939 - Nazi-Soviet Pact is signed and World War II effectively begins;
September 1, 1939 - still in the silly season, just about Germany invades Poland though the USSR does not invade till September 17;
September 3, 1939 - Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany;

Not much of a silly season there, either.

A few other events in the silly season:

August 13, 1961 - construction of the Berlin Wall starts
August 21, 1968 - Soviet tanks roll into Prague

From the point of view of historic symmetry it would be nice to have a few events from 1989 that took place in the silly season. Alas no. The nearest is May 29, when the Hungarian border guards started dismantling the border with Austria, cutting the wire fences and lifting the mines. Perhaps, it is only important bad things that happen in the silly season.

Tory Historian recalls this day in 1975 when a major political party elected its first woman leader who went on to become a spectacular (if flawed, naturally enough) Prime Minister. After years of media speculation as to whether Shirley Williams or Barbara Castle were likely to become the first in the woman leadership stakes, it was, inevitably, the genuinely innovative party, as it has been in history, that got there first.

Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party on February 11, 1975 and responded to the question of whether she was going to celebrate in a typically robust fashion: “Good heavens, no. There's far too much work to be done.”

About five years ago Tory Historian happened to be in the lobby of the House of Lords (known as Peers’ Lobby for obvious reasons). Baroness Thatcher walked across the floor and every single head turned to follow her progress. This was not because she is particularly unsteady or because she is gaga (despite all the malicious gossip that swirls round the internet) but because, with the best will in the world nobody can think of anyone in modern politics who can rival her in personality.

Today's anniversary is particularly intriguing. On February 10, 1354 students at Oxford University fought a pitched battle with the townspeople of that fair city. Town and gown, you see, which according to the official account necessitated the creation of some primitive halls of residence that eventually became the first three colleges: University, Merton (the first college with a quad) and Balliol.

Some students fled from Oxford and founded a new university on the river Cam, where the pattern was similar - riots and running battles with townsmen, need for royal protection and for some rules being imposed.

Here is a well-written and entertaining, not to say ferocious account of the St Scholastica Day battle by Mark Edelman Boren, which also gives the date as 1354. This seems to be disputed by other sources, who prefer 1355. Students, eh? Don't know which year they are in.

Wikipedia explains that the townsfolk won the battle if for no other reason than the fact that they killed more students than lost their own people. However, it would appear that the Chancellor got to the King first and the University was declared the winner.

The dispute was eventually settled in favour of the university when a special charter was created. Annually thereafter, on February 10, the town mayor and councillors had to march bareheaded through the streets and pay to the university a fine of one penny for every scholar killed, a total of 5 s 3 d. The penance ended 470 years later, in 1825 when the mayor of the time refused to take part.

'Tis the end of January and the list of dates needs to be compiles. So this is the last call for ideas on which dates in British and world history that are essential to one's understanding of history.

Tory Historian thinks that the dates project (here, here and here) needs to be brought to an end. Therefore, suggestions will be received till the end of this week, which, happily, coincides with the end of the month. Over the following couple of days all the information and suggestions will be processed i.e. read and jotted down on a piece of paper and a more or less final list will be published next week.

However, Tory Historian knows what kind of argumentative folk read this blog and there will be another opportunity to argue with the final list in order to produce a final-final list. Can't say fairer than that, surely.

In the meantime, here is a book that might be of interest to people interested in conservative history. It has been out in the United States for a while and has caused a great deal of ... well, the polite way of putting it is discussion. A vicious argument would be more accurate but all attempts to kill it have failed. Long live American love of freedom.

It is published this week in Britain and was launched by the New Culture Forum yesterday. The books is Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism". More on that as time goes on but a couple of quotes from the Introduction, entitled "Everything You Knew About Fascism Is Wrong", may whet our readers' appetite.

The main thesis of the book is that many of what Americans call "liberal" and we call "leftie" ideas have grown out of fascist ones, fascism being a left-wing ideology with Mussolini and even Hitler remaining a hero of the left until they sold their souls to Stalin.

Here Mr Goldberg discusses "totalitarianism".

But what do we mean when we say something is "totalitarian"? The word has certainly taken on an understandably sinister connotation in the last half century. Thanks to work by Hannah Arendt, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others, it's become a catchall for brutal, soul-killing, Orwellian regimes. But that's not how the word was originally used or intended. Mussolini himself coined the term to describe a society where everybody belonged, everyone was taken care of, where everything was inside the state and nothing was outside: where truly no child was left behind.

Liberal fascism differs from classical fascism in many ways. I don't deny this. Indeed, it is central to my point. Fascisms differ from each other because they grow out of different soil. What unites them are their emotional or instinctual imnpulses, such as the quest for community, the urge to "get beyond" politics, a faith in the perfectibility of man and the authority of experts, and an obsession with the aesthetics of youth, the cult of action, and the need for an all-powerful state to coordinate society at the national or global level. Most of all, they share the belief - what I call the totalitarian temptation - that with the right amount of tinkering we can realize the utopian dream of "creating a better world".

... here are a couple of recent anniversaries that Tory Historian missed. They can both be added to the list of dates everyone must remember. Indeed, I believe at least one has been suggested in the comments.

On January 5, 1896 an Austrian newspaper reported the discovery of new kinds of radiation. In actual fact Wilhelm Röntgen's break-through experiment was begun on November 8, 1895. The influence his work has had on medical diagnosis and treatment has been more than colossal.

On January 6, 1838 Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of the telegraph.

The greatest of all history books, “1066 and All That”, famously maintained that there were only two memorable dates in English history: 55 BC and 1066. This blog is busily proving the authors wrong but we may not be representative.

On the subject of the Gunpowder Plot Sellar and Yeatman said:

There were a great many plots and Parliaments in James I’s reign, and one of the Parliaments was called the Addled Parliament because the plots hatched in it were all such rotten ones. One plot, however, was by far the best plot in History, and the day and month of it (although not, of course, the year) are well known to be utterly and even maddeningly MEMORABLE.

Over on The New Culture Forum Peter Whittle has a posting about the need to learn dates if one is to understand history at all. Readers of this blog know that Tory Historian is very much in favour of dates and marks as many of them as possible. Without knowing when things happened it is impossible to have anything but the most superficial and gooey idea of historical development.

Mr Whittle’s challenge to his readers is to put together a list of 50 dates that would be essential learning for everyone who wants to know anything about history. (And, really, essential learning for school children in their early teens.) There is no indication whether the dates have to do with British or world history but then, as Tory Historian has been told, Britain’s history is world history. Besides certain dates are so important that, no matter where the events happened, we should all know them.

Tory Historian takes up the challenge and passes it on to this blog’s readers. Here are a few ideas: 55BC – Julius Caesar’s invasion, 1066 – Norman Conquest, 1215 – Magna Carta, 1649 – execution of Charles I, 1688 – Glorious Revolution, 1689 – Bill of Rights, 1707 – Act of Union, 1805 – Trafalgar, 1807 – abolition of slave trade, 1815 – final defeat of Napoleon and Britain’s rise to the rank of undisputed world leader, 1832 – First Reform Act, 1867 – Second Reform Act, 1914–1918 – Great War and the start of decline in European hegemony and British power, 1939-1945 – the process completed, 1973 – Britain becomes part of the EEC (later EC and, even later, EU) thus abandoning the idea of sovereign legislation.

Now for some dates in the world that, nevertheless, affected Britain in various ways: 476 – fall of Rome (this is optional), 1453 – fall of Constantinople, 1492 – Columbus reaches America, 1517 – Luther nails 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, 1618-1648 – Thirty Years’ War ending with the Treaty of Westphalia, 1776 – Declaration of Independence, the natural successor event to the signing of Magna Carta and passing of the Bill of Rights, also the end of the first British Empire, 1789 – French Revolution, 1848 – revolutions across Europe, 1861 – Russian serfs freed, 1861-1865 – American Civil War and American slaves freed, 1871 – Unification of Germany, 1917 – Russian revolutions, 1922 – Ireland becomes independent, 1947 – India and Pakistan become independent (these two events herald the end of the British Empire for better or worse), 1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall, 1991 – end of the Soviet Union.

Others will think of other dates and will, perhaps, disagree with Tory Historian’s list. Let’s hear from those to whom historical dates matter.