British identity in 50 documents | HistoryExtra
"‘Documents might just be ordinary, they might be everyday things in their own time. Can we say that some documents have become more important parts to the British identity, to us as a nation as time has gone on?’
‘Yes, that's definitely true. Some documents have become more important over time. And not always for the, for the right reasons historically. So I think a great example, is Magna Carta, which is widely held up not only across Britain, but across the Anglosphere, you know, the English speaking world, the Americans took it on in the 1700s. And it became very important to the founding charters of many of the states as they were emerging. It has an incredible place in the jurisprudence of the common law across the English speaking world. But it's not remotely what it was.
When it was first drafted, it was a, it was a peace treaty between John and his barons to stave off Civil War. It was very fractious, there were a number of versions of it, they did finally get it signed. No one paid any attention to it, it was in the bin in five weeks, the Pope excommunicated everyone who had anything to do with it for trying to fetter the power of a Divinely Anointed King, and they went to war. It really wasn't this moment in English history when the King and Parliament decided there are certain inalienable rights which every English person should have.
It only became that much later in the Stuart period, when when parliamentarians and legal parliamentarians were trying to find historical precedents for how they could rein in the Stuart monarchs. And so we now have a completely false idea of it. Not only was it never intended to be some great democratic document, not only was it in the bin in five weeks, but also it wasn't about giving rights to every English person. I mean, it only really gave rights to the barons, to the very, very privileged Norman elite. At the time, there was almost nothing for women, there was almost nothing for unfree people, there was nothing for the average, you know, English villain working on an estate somewhere, there was nothing for people who fell entirely outside of that, the Jewish communities. So it really it, you know, we really couldn't have a more different view of what it actually was, and what we think it was.
And of course, if you look today, on the statute book, there are only about two or three clauses of Magna Carta left, and they're not the ones that you think are particularly important. And even that great principle that it that it seems to enunciate that everyone has a right to, you know, a free trial and so on. That wasn't even a new statement of law at the time, that was already the law of the land, it wasn't bringing in anything different. So yes, I think understanding how documents have been taken up in the national story can be very interesting. Because again, we often we often have a simplified view of them...
There's one document… document from the 1800s, which talks about this wicked folly of women's rights. And wouldn't it be terrible if women were allowed to unsex themselves and how disgusting a creature a woman would become if she refused to rely on the strength of a male. And you think, you know, this is this is really difficult to read. This is violent, aggressive language. And and it's upsetting to think that somebody was writing that. And then it's even more shocking when you realize that it was Queen Victoria, who was writing it. She was ruining a third of the globe, and couldn't possibly have thought that any of that was true...
Forgeries are also documents, people fabricating charters to pretend they have rights to land that they didn't have. That's also a very valid document. It's a genuine document of its age, it just happens to be that the content inside it is not true. But it's still a document, it was created in the period you're looking at. And it's effective in achieving something that the author wanted it to, to achieve. So I think, looking at documents, and understanding how they were used, that is also a very important part of it.
So one of the earliest documents is Caesar's Gallic War, because he was the first person to land on Britain's shores, who was able to read and write and did read and write, or at least as far as we know about, and he was busy composing his great political propaganda work of all of the great subjugation of the Celts, he was in the Gauls, he was undertaking in France, to boost his political career back in Rome. And so he wanted to add in that, you know, he went across the channel, he crossed the dreaded God Oceanus. But he did it because he's so brave, and he landed in England. And he saw the things that he saw. And so he writes accounts of, of the people that he found, which is really in the south and the east of England. And he says all sorts of things. They're terrifying. They paint themselves in woad. They're all polygamous. They live in these large family groups. You know, they're really very barbarous. This is very different to what you know, we would expect in civilized Rome. So it's a genuine document for the period. Yes, people, yes, people read it. Is it true? It is very hard to know. Was Caesar engaged in propaganda? Absolutely. Was he trying to magnify his own greatness? And stress would have, you know, what a phenomenal military and brave leader he was? Yes, he was...
The idea that became petrified in stone in the Victorian period of sort of stiff upper lip, and the Empire, and really epitomized by sort of royal family in the early 20th century, and very much about duty, very, very earnest about lots of things. And I think I think lots of British people do think that the world thinks that we are, you know, a very, very stiff upper lip, not very emotional kind of people who are very pragmatic. In fact, I think that's entirely wrong. I think the British are the only people who think that about themselves. Not many people in other countries have that view of the British, that's quite sort of self generated. If I really think about things that other nations might think about us, I think, actually sense of humor is something that would really, really come across, and we probably take it for for granted.
But in the World War One, for example, in the trenches, the 12th battalion of the Sherwood Foresters, you know while everyone else was getting on with, with, you know, the rigors of war, they found an old printing press, and they began printing a satirical newspaper. And this satirical newspaper is absolutely biting. It is so rude about the chain of command, about senior officers, about the purpose of the war. And early on a senior general saw this and, you know, some some individuals said, look, we have to close this down. Sir, this is absolutely terrible, you know, we can't let this happen. And that general had had the circumspection to say, actually, this is really important, you know, this is helping people get through it, we're not closing it down, we are going to completely let this carry on. And they did. And so it went through all these wonderful additions, and it's really zany, the humor. Sort of almost predates the goons and Monty Python, it is very British. It's very surreal. And it's very silly, but also very trenchant in it's observations, you know, it's quite as we got biting satire in places.
And during the Brexit referendum, Die Welt, which is a big German newspaper, published another edition of this trench newspaper. And they said that we are publishing this, they did it in the style of the original one, it was brilliant. They got they had all the sort of, you know, the hooks and the idioms and everything they do really, really well. And they said, look, please don't leave Europe, for the simple reason that life without British humor is imaginable but pointless...
Actually, there is not a vast amount of Imperial stuff in the British Museum, although people often say that there is’"
