19th September 2022
True Historians, of course, do not like periodisation.
The very notion that there can be start-dates and end-dates to periods of study are, for True Historians, anathema, heretical, and blasphemous.
Or worse.
Even dates like 1066, or 1914, or 1945 will, for a True Historian, not be anything other than something which draws us away from understanding continuities.
There is no start-date and end-date which does not mask, for a True Historian, lots of things which carried on as before, and which does not interrupt some existing trend.
But.
For rest of us mere mortals, who will never become True Historians, periodisation is a useful device – as long as not too much reliance is placed on it.
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For a good part of English history, periodisation was simple: it followed the reigns of the monarchs.
Dates likes 1485 and 1603 and 1714 were good dates to start and end a course of study or the content of a text book.
But after 1714 the dates began to slip, and the periods did not match the reigns of monarchs.
Dates like 1815 or 1865 began to be the bookends of courses and textbooks, and for the twentieth century (at least for the United Kingdom) the dates of the world wars were convenient marker dates.
But what of the post-war period?
If 1945 is seen as the start of a period of British history, when should that period end?
1990, with the end of the Cold War and the fall of Thatcher?
1997, with the coming of New Labour?
2001, with 9/11?
2010, with the going of New Labour?
2016, with the Brexit referendum?
2020, with the actual UK departure from the European Union?
Or is there a case to be made for 2022, a year where, in a single week, we had a change of Prime Minister and a change of monarch?
And a year in which Putin and Russia so obviously overreached themselves in Ukraine.
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From a constitutionalist perspective, the start-dates and end-dates are perhaps different.
For a constitutionalist, the key dates may be: 1660 (the restoration); 1688-89 (the revolution); 1707 (the union between England and Scotland); 1714 (the succession of George I); 1745-46 (with the final failure of the disputed succession); 1801 (the union of Great Britain and Ireland); 1828-32 (the collapse of the “ancien regime” with Roman Catholic emancipation and the Great Reform Act); 1867 (the extension of the vote to some working men); 1911 (the defeat of the House of Lords with the Parliament Act); 1918 (votes for women); 1922 (the Irish Free State, effectively ending the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland); and 1936 (the forced abdication).
Each one of these dates, which signal some re-configuration of our constitutional arrangements, would be a good start-date or end-date for a work of modern constitutional history.
(There are other possible dates too – but that paragraph was already long enough.)
But what more recent date would be a marker for our constitutional history?
Some would have said 1973, with our entry into the European Communities; or 2020, with our departure from the Communities’ successor, the European Union.
Others would say the various legislative changes of the first Tony Blair administration, with devolution and the Human Rights Act.
And a strong case can be made for the Good Friday Agreement.
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My own view, for what it is worth, is that – from a constitutionalist perspective – the marker date is yet to come.
The next marker date in our constitutional history will be when there is a border poll in Northern Ireland, especially if there is a vote for unification.
(Or it may be a pro-independence referendum vote in Scotland, if that is sooner.)
For that will bring to an end the constitutional history of the entity which came into its current form in 1922, with the Irish Free State.
And a good historical periodisation is always around a century-long.
(Shh, don’t tell True Historians.)
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If so, then today’s funeral provided a fascinating and highly significant piece of evidence:
Today I respectfully join leaders from Britain, Ireland & the international community at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II as she is laid to rest. It is a sad day for her family who mourn her loss, and all those of a British identity from across our community who grieve also.
— Michelle O’Neill (@moneillsf) September 19, 2022
This tweet may well be one of the most important things ever tweeted in respect of our constitutional arrangements.
For the Sinn Féin First Minister (Designate) of Northern Ireland to write in such terms means that the sensibilities and concerns of the Unionist community are not only being acknowledged but respected.
And the more the Unionists are made to feel more comfortable, the more likely there will be a united Ireland.
That tweet was huge.
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As this blog has averred before, the great achievement of Elizabeth II was to take a throne which seemed precarious, and to hand it on with more security to her successor.
And so for her monument, you could look around today at the state funeral.
Of course, in a way, with the death of Elizabeth II it can be said in general terms that the twentieth century came to an end.
She was our last major link with a good part of the twentieth century: somebody born the same year as Marilyn Monroe who died in the era of TikTok:
Somebody who served in uniform in World War II, and whose first Prime Minister – Winston Churchill – was born in 1874, lived on so that her last Prime Minister was born a century later, in 1975.
When she died, Elizabeth provided the sort of continuity at which any True Historian will clap and cheer.
She ensured that the end of her reign was not to be a start-date or end-date.
And so our start-dates or end-dates, at least from a constitutionalist perspective, will not include 2022, and so we will have to be different dates instead.
One suspects Elizabeth II would be happy with that.
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You haven’t mentioned Covid and the lockdowns, possibly because the date is indistinct. For me it marks the end of an era of assumed freedom of movement and association within the country and without. It has been profoundly more unsettling and epoch shifting than any other event this century. It marks a profound change in how we view the world, one reinforced by the increasing impact and pace of climate change on the place we live.
Good post with no right answer.
My pennyworth – it was actually 31 January 2021 – sure, we ‘officially’ left the EU on 31st December 2020 but it wasn’t until 31 January 2021 that we were no longer under EU law.
Constitutionally, in my view this was of significant importance. We were and are no longer under the ambit of EU law and, for the most part, no longer under the jurisdiction of a foreign court the ECJ/CJEU.
I’d venture to speculate that it will likely not be another 50 years, or, perhaps ever, that the UK will secede the same level of sovereignty to a foreign entity.
Just my view – but from a constitutional optic, important.
It seems to me it is somewhat sterile to argue whether we should consider history in broad sweeps or usefully digestible chunks. We can do both, while acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
There is (or at least, some try to claim there is) a similar debate in evolutionary biology: is evolution characterised by phyletic gradualism (things are changing slowly all the time) or punctuated equilibrium (things stay approximately the same for long periods, punctuated by short moments of rapid change).
That seems a false dichotomy. Some things change slowly, and others change quickly.
Perhaps we can say that – for the reasons you outline – 2022 marks the end of the “long” 20th century, which began in perhaps 1870. (For comparison, the “short” 20th century might be 1914 to 1989 – the end of the 19th century empires, to the end of the USSR). Other dates are possible, depending on what you think is important – 1917, or 2008, perhaps. We don’t need to rush to judgement – some perspective will be required to reach a balanced view.
It may be that in 50 or 100 years’ time, if there are still historians living on what remains of our polluted and despoiled planet, they might look back on the second Elizabethan period as we do now to the reign of Victoria. So near, and yet so far. We will not see the like again.
True Historians may not like periodisation. But True Statisticians will tell you that graphs have inflection points, even if they are barely visible to the naked eye. And the inflection points on the graph of history a pointer to their causes. Whether the cause or the inflection makes a better period marker is open to debate. But they do, nonetheless, exist.
I’d say we’ve had three major post-war inflection points in the 20th century. The election of Clement Attlee, the election of Margaret Thatcher, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. All of these were markers for significant changes in the course of our history.
Whether a new monarch turns out to be an inflection point as well is, of course, something we won’t know until we can look back on it.
But sometimes inflection points can be grouped. In the past few years we’ve seen our departure from the EU, the end of what had otherwise been a period of remarkable domestic political stability, a global pandemic, a new war in Europe and now the death of our longest-reigning monarch.
That may be too messy for the people who like to label periods. “Somewhere around 2016 to 2022” isn’t as snappy as a single year. But I think even True Historians will, one day, recognise this as a significant turning point.
(And before anyone asks, I didn’t include the election of Tony Blair as an inflection point as he was part of the post-1979 extended period of political stability, where governments ran to term rather than fell and power changed hands only when the incumbent eventually ran out of steam. That period ended sometime shortly after 2016).
If you like inflection points, then 2008 stands out. If you look at charts of UK productivity like here :
https://www.ft.com/content/e7a8cb3a-efcc-4d62-962b-d284545c14f6
in particular :
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBVQrbTX0BA256P?format=jpg&name=large
there’s a huge inflection – productivity had grown at 2.0% since 1990 until the financial crisis, and 0.6% since then. There’s various reasons for that, it’s been a global phenomenon but the UK has been hit much harder. That lack of productivity growth has been the underlying reason for a weak economy, which in turn led to Brexit, Trump and all the rest – they’re just symptoms of something much bigger.
Talking of which – I’m not sure I would use Brexit as a bookend for anything just yet, when it’s not clear what the final form will be. All I know is that a hard Brexit supported by 20% of the population is not stable in the long term, so we’ll see where we end up. Whereas 2008 is far enough away that we can start to see long-term effects.
I guess part of the argument over periods is that a period in say technology seldom lines up with politics or economics. But 2008 works as a red line for technology – the world’s first Android device, the T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream) was released on 20 October 2008. The first iPhone was released the year before, but it’s Android that has been the Model T that enabled kids from Derby to Dar es Salaam to have the internet in their pocket. I will leave others to say whether it’s a coincidence that productivity fell off a cliff shortly afterwards! Other technology events in 2008 were the launch of Spotify (upending the media industry), SpaceX launching the first private spaceship to reach orbit, the first Tesla car and the founding document of Bitcoin.
And at a geopolitical level, if the 21st century is to be the China century, then the Beijing Olympics was China “coming out” onto the international stage. Also Obama’s election felt like some kind of milestone for the US – race relations still have a long way to go, but it is still a significant marker of progress. Lewis Hamilton winning his first F1 championship the same week was another landmark.
And for those who play the long game in constitutional affairs, 10 December 2008 marked the end of feudalism in Europe, with the first elections on Sark.
Before that I’d go for 1989 – not only the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that, but a big one for all the BRICS countries – de Klerk’s election in South Africa which led to the end of apartheid, Tiananmen Square which led to China’s economic liberalisation, first presidential election in Brazil for 30-odd years, the end of Gandhis as PM of India. Al-Qaeda started their first cell in the US.
Also a time of technological change – the first commercial internet service, Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the WWW – and social change – the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion, world’s first civil partnership in Denmark.
Hmm…
I’m not sure that it can be entirely fair to say that true historians dislike periodisation. I’ll give you three examples of the genre which I think illustrate the value of the principle:
We define the “Jurassic Period” as commencing approximately 201.3 million years ago and ending approximately 145 million years ago – a span of years defined by the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event at the start and ends with the appearance of the ammonite species. This practice has been invaluable in helping us understand the oldest histories of our world.
A second example might be the division in our history brought about by August 6th, 1945 – the date that the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki: we might reasonably agree that the period prior to this was “pre-nuclear war” and after this date “nuclear” or “post-nuclear”.
A third example might be the period between March 12th, 1947 and December 26th, 1991, generally recognised as the period encompassing the (first?) Cold War primarily between the United States and the Soviet Union, but more broadly between western democracies and Eurasian communism.
But to return to your question, which is topical, I think we may find that our ability to discern the turning of an age or the advent of periodisation is inversely proportional to our chronological proximity to the event in question: our ability to discern whether or not we are “passing through” momentous times lacks objectivity – it is only from the perspective afforded by the separation of a few decades that we are going to be truly able to make such a judgment.
For example, I don’t suppose that many people considered there was very much special about August 12th, 1981, yet that was the day that IBM launched the world’s first “personal computer” – and how the world changed. Or October 1st, 1808, when the Ford Motor Company shipped the first “Model T” to a customer… I’m sure that, on the day, employees of those companies who had been instrumental in the development of those two products really felt that they were about to “change the world”, but somehow I doubt that many of them could have envisaged the impact even a handful of decades ahead.
Other events – and to bring us back to a royal connection – had more far-reaching effects yet are perhaps not recognised for the fulcrum they became. May 15th, 1533 might not leap off the page as particularly memorable, but it was the date that Henry VIII annulled his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, an event which not only existed as the first royal separation, but which also came about in conjunction with the Reformation and the emergence of the Protestant church. I wonder how many who witnessed the events of that age could have foreseen all that was to follow from that event?
I too was baffled by DAG’s 1865. But I was glad to be reminded of the arrival of the first Ford Model T in October 1808, in time for Wellington to make his spectacular and revolutionary use of it in the Penisular War. 1808 perhaps can’t be beaten for historical consequence.
Ta da: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-crisis-of-imperialism-1865-1915/author/shannon-richard/
I am very taken with the idea of the Model T Ford in 1808. I knew there must be something that was the vital factor in the outcome of the battle of Waterloo. Cunning of Field Marshal von Blücher to keep that secret weapon hidden.
It is a shame that, given QEII met so many of the key people of the 20th century, we do not have her first-hand accounts of these people. No-one else has ever been so close to so many epoch-defining people and situations and any insight she had has gone with her, which seems like a lost opportunity for historians. I have a forlorn hope that maybe she kept a secret diary that will emerge in years to come.
Sealed for 200 years, I believe.
“As this blog has averred before, the great achievement of Elizabeth II was to take a throne which seemed precarious, and to hand it on with more security to her successor.”
Well it was a great achievement for interests of the Windsor dynasty, at any rate.
But it was of little or no obvious benefit to anyone else.
I would start a few years earlier in 1603, the Union of the Crowns. This was the start of the UK.
Aye, Jamie the Saxt combined his twa realms into “Greater Britain”, but left oot the “-er” for reasons best kent tae hissel’. Mebbe he had a thing aboot his Virgin Auntie, like f’rinstance her gettin’ his maw’s heid chopped aff, ken? No’ nice, that. No’ nice at a’.
I should like to suggest that the post-World War era will not end until the obstacle that was the USSR / is Russia is resolved. It would be naive to think that there will be a magical moment at which the old Soviet order, now adapted to Putin’s needs, is swept away, but there does need to be a time at which the leadership of that country comes to a much belated realisation that the security they crave, and the stability and prosperity their people deserve can only be achieved as part of a co-operative, democratic Europe. With that will come an end to so mischief-making in so many forms. I think our Ukrainian friends are close to delivering that moment and hope it will be so. A cold winter or two would be a price well paid to support them in their task. I was born in 1953, at the height of the Cold War. It would be a joy to see the old order come to an end, before mine.
I would contend that none of the constitutional dates has the significance of 1712, the year that atmospheric pressure was added to the list of available sources of power to do work, previously only gravity, wind and muscle. In Tipton, of course. Where else? The consequences have been, well, consequential.
1865?
A civil war ended in some former British colony or other.
I suspect because 1865 marked the death of Palmerston.
Apropos, Wikipedia lists Palmerston as the fifth non-royal British person to have a state funeral.
The early four were Admiral Robert Blake in 1657 (yes, under the Commonwealth; but after the Restoration, Charles II had his remains exhumed and reburied in a common grave), Isaac Newton, Admiral Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington. (The ceremony for Oliver Cromwell apparently does not count as a state funeral, despite being modelled on the funeral of James I.)
And the complete list since adds Lord Napier, Gladstone, Earl Roberts, Edith Cavell, Earl Haig, Lord Carson, and Winston Churchill.
Pitt had a ceremonial funeral. Disraeli declined a state funeral. Thatcher declined a state funeral, and had a ceremonial funeral instead.
I’ve seen it suggested that Charles Darwin also had a state funeral but I do not believe that is correct.
The Dean of Westminster acceded to a request from the President of the Royal Society, William Spottiswoode, to allow Darwin’s funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey, but that was not a formal state or ceremonial occasion. See for example https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/charles-darwin
Ta da: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-crisis-of-imperialism-1865-1915/author/shannon-richard/
The end of an era for me came in 2016 with Trump in the Whitehouse and Brexit in the UK.
In 1964 we thought we had changed the world, we were fighting and winning battles for freedom, freedom from racism, woman’s rights, freedom to wear short skirts, to go on the pill, to end wars for all time. Happy days, and we relaxed into our freedoms, with our Habitat furniture, later IKEA, raised our families, thought we’d won.
And now we have populism, the far right are on the move, our liberal freedoms are on the line. How delicate our freedom was.
So my dates are 1964 to 2016.
My half-pennorth, for UK constitutional history with wider implications, is 1941, with the Atlantic Charter. It built on the previous year’s ‘destroyers for bases’ deal, and signalled the point at which the UK became ‘more or less formally’ subservient to the US. The Atlantic Charter affirmed the principle of national self-determination such that Britain was effectively committed to ending the Empire at the war’s end.
A major concession of effective sovereignty for the UK and with global impact not only for the British Empire, but for the global balance of power.
Shame about French Indo-China, speaking of empires. It could all have turned out so differently.
well, I’m not saying the self-determination stuff was sincere!
We are in an era of industrialisation, starting in the late 18th century, and continuing until the globalisation of the last decades. So the second Elizabethan age has been, in the UK, an era of both growth and relative international decline. What we saw today was a museum piece. The divine right of kings bolted onto the (very minority) Church of England and surrounded by pageant that no-one does better. The global states came in their hundreds, but were always outranked by the European Royals in a ceremony that echoed the days of the British Empire a century ago. So maybe this is the triumph or the end of the Age of Ceremony. In the hard economic world the UK’s political choices will wash it onto the lee shore of Europe, and its crew will dispute how to share its cargo for a while longer. Whether the monarchical system, without grown-up economic and political thinking to manage the economy, will survive the gradual rot is yet to be seen.
We are simply too close to events to call a date “the end of an era” or some such.
Certainly Scotland becoming an independent nation once more or the reunification of Ireland would be seismic events. I would have thought the latter is more likely first – and possibly within a decade – with demographic change baked in. Sinn Féin need to carry on in that manner. Wales would definitely be the last to leave a disintegrating UK.
And all because Mr Cameron called a referendum to deal with a party management issue.
I feel that the death of Queen Elizabeth II marks (finally) the end of the 20th Century.
Sadly, I feel the 21st century is set to become chaotic. Not really what I hoped for when my daughter was born in 2001.
A PM who seems about as stable as the last. A King who has public temper tantrums. A Justice system which barely functions. An NHS and care system underfunded for more than a decade. Hundreds of thousands of children growing up in poverty. Education in tatters unless you’re rich, or geographically lucky to have a “good” or “outstanding” school nearby.
Young children growing up porn addled, young women no longer wanting to be women as a result.
The growing trans “rights” agenda.
The growing number of permanently mutilated detransitioners.
I’m 62 and I haven’t had an easy childhood or life. But what kind of life can our children look forward to?
Those who’ve worked really hard during their education are saddled with £50-60k debt.
I genuinely despair.
I would tend to side with the “True Historians” whoever they may be.
Periodisation seems like a very simple human indulgence put in place to help political, religious or nationalist groups feel good about themselves; but in general has a negative effect on people who might want to (or should) know more about themselves, their backgrounds and the genuine narrative that brought them to this juncture. It is the thread that runs from the past to the present and in some cases, will have been the influence in setting out on a pilgrimage to London to pay homage to someone they never met but felt they “knew”.
It is this narrative which is missing or ignored in the teaching of history today; the past is condensed into something colourfully Tudor shaped with intonations of glorious Empire and the failed ambitions of some foreigners in the 20th Century. The gaps in between are chasms in which true identity is lost.
When Henry Ford rightly described history as bunk, he was describing a version which eulogised the military, politicians, kings, queens and empires: in a word, periodisation.
Henry Ford was talking mainly about tradition. The longer quote published in the Chicago Tribune in 1916 is “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
He later expanded that he did not feel a need for history, and complained that historians discuss wars and politics and territory and so on, and not important practical matters such as agricultural harrows: “I thought a history which excluded harrows and all the rest of daily life is bunk and I think so yet.”
For more discussion about what Ford might have meant:
* https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2018/01/14/fact-check-what-henry-ford-meant-when-he-said-history-is-bunk
* https://earlymodernnotes.wordpress.com/2005/08/31/is-history-bunk/
Thanks to the historians for all of their research on the context.
her roll her role
was decon struction
she did it well
selling england by the pound
shillings and pence
and what of the stone under the thrown missing replaced by
bbc polly sterein
and actor for an act all colourable if you get my drift
Don’t overlook the advent of the oral contraceptive pill first used in 1960 in the US.