3 - When was England?

Summary

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the current scene lies in the number of citizens of the United Kingdom who do not appear to be familiar with the basic parameters of the state in which they live. They often do not know what it is called; they do not distinguish between the whole and the constituent parts; and they have never grasped the most elementary facts of its development. Confusion reigns on every hand.

Norman Davies (1999: xxvi–xxvii)

National consciousness faces the same fate as the bourgeoisie; forever rising in the estimation of historians.

Jeremy Black (1994: 91)

Understanding the United Kingdom in time

Hegel says somewhere that it is only at the time of its dissolution that an entity reveals its principles in their true form and to their fullest extent. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of the United Kingdom. Taken vaguely for granted, unexamined and untheorized, it is only when it is faced by threats from within and without, only when there is talk of ‘the break-up of Britain’, that serious attention has turned to its character.

On turning in that direction, what scholars have discovered mostly is a conceptual hole. There is a good deal of constitutional history (though not much on constitutional law or constitutional theory); there is some excellent political, social and economic history; and there is sterling work in the history of political thought, though mostly for earlier periods.