TLIAW: För Storbritannien i Tiden

[Thande]

When it comes to British history, your average Swede probably only knows:

- Henry VIII and his five wives.
- The American Revolution and George III lost the colonies.
- Winston Churchill fought the Nazis.

1) Six wives surely
2) Most average Britons don't know that
3) Obviously.

1) and 3) together more or less sum up the usual bare minimum of historical knowledge over here, come to think of it.

 

[Makemakean]

1) Six wives surely

Dammit! I always forget Anne of Cleves!

2) Most average Britons don't know that

How can you not know that?

3) Obviously.

I actually learned about Churchill relatively late. I must have been 11-ish or something like that. I did know about FDR much earlier than that, weirdly enough. I found him a very inspirational figure when I was a kid, becoming president despite being handicapped.

1) and 3) together more or less sum up the usual bare minimum of historical knowledge over here, come to think of it.

Really? Maybe I simply have an overly romantic conception of you British people as folks who will be able to give an account on the spot of what the debates over the dispatch box between Disraeli and Gladstone were about, and be able discuss whether or not the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was justified...

 

[OwenM]

Dammit! I always forget Anne of Cleves!

Huh, we always get taught it as "six wives" and less about the individuals.
Of course, as one book of mine notes, nobody at the time would have officially considered him to have six - by law, he had two, Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr, and the Catholics considered him to have three.

How can you not know that?

It's one of the bits that never gets taught in school. At all.

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

Huh, we always get taught it as "six wives" and less about the individuals.
Of course, as one book of mine notes, nobody at the time would have officially considered him to have six - by law, he had two, Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr, and the Catholics considered him to have three.

Depends how hard-line a Catholic you were. His later marriages were CofE and therefore invalid in Catholic eyes, so he technically only had one wife for some people.

 

[Makemakean]

Huh, we always get taught it as "six wives" and less about the individuals.

I tried to count them from memory. Memory of The Tudors the TV show, not memory of any serious work of history that I've actually read.

Of course, as one book of mine notes, nobody at the time would have officially considered him to have six - by law, he had two, Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr, and the Catholics considered him to have three.

That's true.

It's one of the bits that never gets taught in school. At all.

Really? I remember when I was taught Swedish history, at one point the history teacher brought up that the Swedes actually settled Delaware and had a small New Sweden fora few decades before the Dutch chased us out.

I just assumed that British history would sort of teach about the United States as the kind of prodigal son-narrative "Oh, those rustic colonials abandoned us in 1776, but then the Second World War came, and they returned to their Old Mother Country in the hour of our greatest need!"

 

[OwenM]

The only time I can actually recall the US's existence being mentioned in my formal History lessons was when we did a year on "The American West" at GCSE.

 

[Comisario]

The only time I can actually recall the US's existence being mentioned in my formal History lessons was when we did a year on "The American West" at GCSE.

The US was mentioned when we did the slave trade and slavery in the States, but it was never mentioned that Britain owned the Thirteen Colonies at any point.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

You can thin down teaching of British history to "And then Queen Elizabeth died. Centuries later, a man was angry in Germany..."

 

[Utgard96]

Ah, yes, that was Eric XIV, who went mad, and ended his days being poisoned on order from his brother.

The one thing I always associate with Eric XIV is how at one point a continental ruler (I forget who, but I think it was the King of France) sent him a letter in Greek, which annoyed him so deeply that he wrote the reply in Finnish.

How can you not know that?

I presume it's the same reason why the average Swede doesn't know about the Deluge. Uncomfortable parts of history are terrifyingly easy to just rip out of the curriculum and forget about.

 

[Makemakean]

You can thin down teaching of British history to "And then Queen Elizabeth died. Centuries later, a man was angry in Germany..."

Christ, and I who like to complain about Swedish history education as if we are singularly poor at teaching kids our own history.

 

[Geordie]

...and yet another thread has been turned into "the British history teaching discussion thread".

 

[Makemakean]

The one thing I always associate with Eric XIV is how at one point a continental ruler (I forget who, but I think it was the King of France) sent him a letter in Greek, which annoyed him so deeply that he wrote the reply in Finnish.

I'm going to have to research this further. But I am tentatively placing it on the list of Greatest Moments in Swedish History!

I presume it's the same reason why the average Swede doesn't know about the Deluge.

Well, you know, as I've told you before, I once asked my ardent Social Democratic great aunt about how the Wartime Coalition Government more or less just handed over those poor Baltic souls fleeing Stalin's reign of terror in the aftermath of WW2 to the Soviets, and how the lot probably died painful deaths in gulags in Siberia, and she got ever so defensive about how we had no choice, we couldn't refuse Stalin, who knows what would have happened, and how she was totally sure that poor Per-Albin Hansson must have felt really, really sad and sorrowful over having to do it.

It's part of our national myth, our way of looking at ourselves, that we are nicer than other countries, that we are morally superior to other nations. Teaching kids about us slaughtering a significant fraction of the Polish people would... not really serve that narrative.

 

[Alex Richards]

How can you not know that?

Because basically nobody actually talks about the Empire. At all. Despite what many on Europe think, the average British person probably knows we had an Empire, and could rattle off a few places that were part of it (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, West Indies- mostly to do with Cricket.), but doesn't really know anything further or particularly care that we lost it.

 

[Makemakean]

Because basically nobody actually talks about the Empire. At all. Despite what many on Europe think, the average British person probably knows we had an Empire, and could rattle off a few places that were part of it (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, West Indies- mostly to do with Cricket.), but doesn't really know anything further or particularly care that we lost it.

That's weird. I always just assumed that you guys took some great sense of pride in your Empire, as in "those were the days when we were the premier super power". Hell, I thought so up until now, and I've lived for four years in your country.

 

[Mumby]

That's weird. I always just assumed that you guys took some great sense of pride in your Empire, as in "those were the days when we were the premier super power". Hell, I thought so up until now, and I've lived for four years in your country.

I didn't know about the British Empire until I read about it in a book.

When we learn about the Victorians its all POORHOUSES AND DICKENS AND CHOLERA AND MILLS

 

[Thande]

Apologies for inadvertently derailing Ares' thread, shall we take this to NPC if we want to discuss it further?

You can thin down teaching of British history to "And then Queen Elizabeth died. Centuries later, a man was angry in Germany..."

Heh, that's not bad. Not exactly true in my experience (there was a bit about the Civil War and then it went straight to what Mumby says below before we go to angry man in Germany) but not far off.

I didn't know about the British Empire until I read about it in a book.

When we learn about the Victorians its all POORHOUSES AND DICKENS AND CHOLERA AND MILLS

Also correct.

Not to blow my own trumpet, but I actually discuss a lot of this in the intro to Diverge and Conquer now available on Sea Lion Press when I say half the reason I wanted to write about the eighteenth century and the origins of America in LTTW was that it was never mentioned in school history lessons. So I got curious and read about it myself, and the rest is (haha) history.

 

[Utgard96]

It is a reference to it, but I honestly don't know how well your average Swede is knowledgeable about the actual War of the Roses, nor how many would be able to say that it is even a reference to an English conflict with the same name. It certainly never came up during my formal history education.

I mean, the people who coined the name certainly knew about the English conflict and were consciously making a reference to it, and then it probably stuck because, well, it's a good-sounding illustrious name.

I think the average Swede is far more likely to think it's a reference to Mästerdetektiven Kalle Blomkvist, rather than a reference to the thing that references.

On a completely different note, but related to Swedish history: I have finally, after years of looking, found a scholarly treatment of how elections took place in practice to the different Estates in the Unreformed Riksdag. I have long had the official laws regulating the practice, but in some aspects the laws are vague and confusing and only outlining special cases. Turns out in practice the whole mess was even more complicated than it was in theory (which I've outlined elsewhere). Among other things, I now find out, in elections to the Estate of Burghers, people were also given fractional votes evaluated on a basis of their property and income.

And the Peasants?

I'm going to have to research this further. But I am tentatively placing it on the list of Greatest Moments in Swedish History!

I found it out from Bo Eriksson's Lützen 1632, which in addition to covering its namesake battle in great detail is an excellent overview of events leading up to it, starting with the Treaty of Brömsebro in 1541 and ending with the other Treaty of Brömsebro in 1645.

Well, you know, as I've told you before, I once asked my ardent Social Democratic great aunt about how the Wartime Coalition Government more or less just handed over those poor Baltic souls fleeing Stalin's reign of terror in the aftermath of WW2 to the Soviets, and how the lot probably died painful deaths in gulags in Siberia, and she got ever so defensive about how we had no choice, we couldn't refuse Stalin, who knows what would have happened, and how she was totally sure that poor Per-Albin Hansson must have felt really, really sad and sorrowful over having to do it.

Well, I think it's worth mentioning in connection with baltutlämningen that the Balts in question were Nazi collaborators. Now, I'm not saying this really justifies us or that the treatment they faced in Russia was consistent with due process, but y'know, the treatment of the situation as though they were innocent refugees is slightly disingenuous. It also obscures the fact that besides the 164 Balts (and 3,000 German POWs) we sent back, there were also some 30,000 civilian refugees, actual "poor Baltic souls fleeing Stalin's reign of terror", who we consistently refused to extradite (although the Communists wanted them extradited too, because of course they did ).

It's part of our national myth, our way of looking at ourselves, that we are nicer than other countries, that we are morally superior to other nations. Teaching kids about us slaughtering a significant fraction of the Polish people would... not really serve that narrative.

That's certainly true now, but given how society looked when the original Swedish history curriculum was designed, I think it's even more important that we slaughtered a significant fraction of the Polish people for no gain. The entire episode reeks of futility in a way you hardly ever see outside WW1, and that doesn't fit in with the old GRORIOUS SWEDISH EMPIRE tradition either.

 

[Makemakean]

And the Peasants?

Well, it turns out that though the constitution stated that elections were to take place by First-Past-The-Post, this very rarely actually happened. What usually happened was that the few peasants in a parish that had the vote (and very few actually did), would get together in sockenstugan (how does one translate that into English? town hall makes it sound like something much more grander than what we're talking about...) and they would together, after talking the matter through, elect two or three electors (there were no regulations on how many they could elect), and they would then send these electors to the actual election of the whole hundred. The Hundred Chieftain would be the returning officer, and some 10-20 electors would show up and they would then elect the MP by FPTP.

I also read that during these elections, an incredibly important issue tended to the extent to which the different candidates would be willing to pay their own expenses, with the candidates requesting the smallest compensation for leaving his farm to spend some time engaging in the affairs of the realm often winning the election.

It's sort of strange, I freely admit, that these elections weren't really the subject to much corruption. If you had had a semi-decent party organization to provide funding and even the most minimal campaigning, you probably would have been able to ensure that your party's favoured candidate won easily. The only reason why this corruption on a massive scale didn't take place was because the quadro-cameral system made the Peasants largely irrelevant, and if you wanted to bribe Peasant MPs to vote the way you wanted (which many people of course did), it was easier to just wait for the MP to be elected and then bribe him once he arrived in Stockholm.

I am still very confused about many aspects of this, and am trying to find some Swedish historian who would agree to furnish me with further details.

 

[Utgard96]

Frank Dobson (Labour)
1994-1996
The Comeback Kid​

Dobson re-entered Downing Street to great fanfare, heralding what would be the longest period of Labour rule since the one that ended in 1978 – his voteshare gave Labour and the Communists together an overall majority, and has not been exceeded by the party since. His government featured mainly new faces – notably the Chancellor, a former local politician and Leader of Hull City Council who had originally been recruited to Cabinet in 1989 to provide a non-Whitehall perspective on government – but Roy Hattersley, one of the big heavy-hitters of the final Benn cabinet, was brought in as Defence Secretary. With the backing of the Centre Party, Dobson initiated a harsh austerity programme, intended to balance the books and in the process restore the national economy. Taxes were raised and the welfare net cut, which earned the government the TUC's ire, but by all accounts did have a palpable effect on the economy, as the situation stabilised somewhat for the first time since 1990.

Another event in Dobson's second premiership (technically his third, because of the events of 1989) was Britain's initial election for the European Parliament. Britain had been assigned 85 seats in the expanded Parliament, which were to be elected by much the same system as Parliament – proportional representation based on the home nations, with England divided into regions to make the constituency size equitable. The “euro-elections” as they were dubbed saw Labour's voteshare drop very dramatically compared with the 1994 general, as they obtained below 30 percent of the vote. The great surprise was the success of the smaller parties, with both the Liberals and Communists going well above ten percent – this can be attributed to them taking clearer stands on the membership question, as well as the much lower turnout (some 35 percent voted, compared to 78 percent in the general) which was thought to hurt big parties more. However, the Liberals found themselves in infighting between the left-leaning “Green Liberals” and the more classically liberal “Blue Liberals”, a conflict that would dominate the 1990s for the party.

As 1995 became 1996, Dobson tired of the responsibilities of the premiership, and announced that he would resign as soon as a successor could be chosen. Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman was considered the likely pick, but she caused something of a ruckus when it was revealed that she had used her ministerial expense account to purchase a number of luxury goods – including hotel rooms, rented cars and Toblerone chocolate. The latter was what the press caught on to, and the “Toblerone affair” ended up forcing Harman's resignation. Instead the task fell to Dobson's Chancellor, a divisive figure in the party and the country, who would go on to lead the country for a longer single period than anyone since Wilson.

 

[Alex Richards]

Well, it turns out that though the constitution stated that elections were to take place by First-Past-The-Post, this very rarely actually happened. What usually happened was that the few peasants in a parish that had the vote (and very few actually did), would get together in sockenstugan (how does one translate that into English? town hall makes it sound like something much more grander than what we're talking about...) and they would together, after talking the matter through, elect two or three electors (there were no regulations on how many they could elect), and they would then send these electors to the actual election of the whole hundred. The Hundred Chieftain would be the returning officer, and some 10-20 electors would show up and they would then elect the MP by FPTP.

Perhaps borrow a term off the Quakers and go for a 'Meeting house'?

And nice update there. Is that Prescott as Chancellor?