Category Archives: Culture

England was wealthy long before the Empire and the Slave Trade

Researchers at Warwick University led by economist Professor Stephen Broadberry have concluded that Mediaeval England, far from being a land of poverty-stricken peasants oppressed by a small aristocratic elite, was a prosperous land with a higher average per capita income more than double that of the poorest nations in the world today* The results are published by the University of Warwick’s Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)in a paper entitled British Economic Growth 1270-1870. www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/broadberry/wp/britishgdplongrun8a.pdf

The researchers took as a benchmark an annual income of $400 annually (as expressed in 1990 international dollars) , a measure often used as a measure of “bare bones subsistence”. They estimated English per capita incomes in the late Middle Ages were around $1,000 (again as expressed in 1990 dollars) and that even just before the Black Death, which first struck in 1348/49, they were more than $800 using the same 1990 dollar measure. This is significant because incomes rose significantly after the Black Death because of a dire shortage of labour.

In an interview with Science Daily Professor Broadberry, said:

“Our work sheds new light on England’s economic past, revealing that per capita incomes in medieval England were substantially higher than the “bare bones subsistence” levels experienced by people living in poor countries in our modern world. The majority of the British population in medieval times could afford to consume what we call a “respectability basket” of consumer goods that allowed for occasional luxuries. By the late Middle Ages, the English people were in a position to afford a varied diet including meat, dairy produce and ale, as well as the less highly processed grain products that comprised the bulk of the “bare bones subsistence” diet.”

He also said: “Of course this paper focuses only on average per capita incomes. We also need to have a better understanding of the distribution of income in medieval England, as there will have been some people living at bare bones subsistence, and at times this proportion could have been quite substantial. We are now beginning research to construct social tables which will also reveal the distribution of income for some key benchmark years in that period”

“The research provides the first annual estimates of GDP for England between 1270 and 1700 and for Great Britain between 1700 and 1870. Far more data are available for the pre-1870 period than is widely realised. Britain after the Norman conquest was a literate and numerate society that generated substantial written records, many of which have survived. As a result, the research was aided by a wide variety of records — among them manorial records, tithes, farming records, and probate records.”

Professor Broadberry further said that: “Our research shows that the path to the Industrial Revolution began far earlier than commonly has been understood. A widely held view of economic history suggests that the Industrial Revolution of 1800 suddenly took off, in the wake of centuries without sustained economic growth or appreciable improvements in living standards in England from the days of the hunter-gatherer. By contrast, we find that the Industrial Revolution did not come out of the blue. Rather, it was the culmination of a long period of economic development stretching back as far as the late medieval period.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101205234308.htm)

Broadly, there is nothing tremendously new here, although the research includes interesting work on the quantification of wealth in England before the Industrial Revolution with for the first time annual estimates of English GDP between 1270-1700. From the advent of printing, it was common for travellers in England who wrote and published their experiences there to comment on the wealth of England generally and the good condition of the poorer classes in particular. Middle English literary works such as the Canterbury Tales and Piers Ploughman (both 14^th Century) also paint a picture of an England far from poor. To those literary sources can be added the evidence of the many magnificent mediaeval cathedrals and the plentiful supply of mediaeval castles which both speak of considerable national wealth.

As for the notion that the Industrial Revolution suddenly sprang into the world newly minted around 1760, this has always been treated by serious historians as a nonsense. It was clearly the culmination of a long period of economic accretion and social, legal and political evolution. (see http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/england-and-the-only-bootstrapped-industrial-revolution-2/)

The estimates of mediaeval per capita income may even produce a false comparison between that time and place and the poorest countries today. Most would have had land to work on their own account, whether that be as a freeman or serf, and with that land would have come a place to live in. The same does not apply to the poorest countries today.

If there is nothing startlingly novel, the research is immensely valuable as an antidote to the idea constantly promoted in the mainstream media that England only became rich because of the empire and slave trade and before those events was a poor and insignificant country.

*Poorest nations today per capita income at 1990 dollar values – Zaire $249, Burundi $479, Niger $514, Central African Republic $536, Comoro Islands $549, Togo $606, Guinea Bissau $617, Guinea $628, Sierra Leone $686, Haiti at $686, Chad $706, Zimbabwe $779, Afghanistan $869

England and the only bootstrapped Industrial Revolution

Of all the social changes which have occurred in human history, none has been so profound as the process of industrialisation. The two previous great general amendments to human life – farming and urbanisation – pale into insignificance. Before industrialisation, man lived primarily from the land and animals whether from farming, husbandry or hunter-gathering. In the most advanced civilisations, the vast majority of populations lived outside large towns and cities. Even in industrialising England a majority of the population derived their living directly from the land as late as the 1830s. France did not become a predominantly urban nation until the 1930s.

With industrialisation came not merely a change in the material circumstances, but profound social alteration. There arose much greater opportunity to move from the small world of the village. The massive increase in wealth eventually made even the poor rich enough to have aspirations. Sufficient numbers of the wealthier classes became guilty enough about abject poverty existing beside great wealth that the condition of the poor was further mitigated by greater educational opportunity, welfare provision and legislation regulating the abuse of workers by employers. Political horizons were expanded by the extension of the franchise.

The industrial revolution altered the balance of power throughout the world. David Landes “In the wealth and Poverty of Nations” describes the effect succinctly: “The industrial revolution made some countries richer, others (relatively) poorer; or more accurately, some countries made an industrial revolution and became rich; and others did not and stayed poor.”(p168). Prior to industrialisation, the disparity in wealth between states, regions and even continents was relatively small. Come the Industrial Revolution and massive disparities begin to appear. For Dr Landes, it is to the success or otherwise in industrialising which is the primary cause of present disparities in national wealth.

All of this tremendous amendment to human existence occurred because the one and only bootstrapped Industrial Revolution took place in England. Why England? David Landes in the “Wealth and Poverty of Nations” sees the historical process of industrialisation as twofold. First, comes a pre-industrial preparatory period in which irrationality of thought is gradually replaced by scientific method and what he calls “autonomy of intellectual inquiry”(p201), that is, thought divorced from unquestioned reliance on authority, irrationality, especially superstition. At the same time technology begins to be something more than by-guess-and-by-God. This gives birth to industrialisation by creating both the intellectual climate and the acquired knowledge, both scientific and technological, necessary for the transformation from traditional to modern society. It is as good an explanation as any and fits the flow of England’s historical development.

It is not utterly implausible to suggest that without England the world might have had no Industrial Revolution. Those who would scoff at such a proposition should consider the cold facts: even with England and Britain’s example to follow no other nation matched her industrial development until the 1870′s and then the first country to do so was a state ultimately derived from England, namely the USA. Nor did England produce an industrial revolution only in England, they actively exported and financed it throughout the world, for example, most of the European railway building of the years 1840-70 was the result of British engineers and money.

Some may point to scientific advance in Europe from 1600 onwards as reason to believe that industrialisation would have been achieved without England. It is true that Europe advanced scientifically in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but scientific knowledge is no guarantee of technological progress. Moreover, a good deal of that scientific advance came from England. Nor does scientific knowledge have any natural connection with the severe social upheaval required for a transformation from the land-working dominated pre-industrial state to capitalism. Indeed, the landowners of pre-industrial Europe had a vested interest in not promoting industrial advance. Moreover, in many parts of Europe, particularly the East, feudal burdens became greater not less after 1500. This was so even in as advanced a country as France. Consequently, the widespread social mobility which historians have generally thought necessary to promote a bootstrapped industrial revolution simply did not exist in Europe at the beginning of the British Industrial revolution. Even the country most like England in its commercial development, the Netherlands, became socially and politically ossified in the Eighteenth century, with a bourgeoisie developing into an aristocracy and representative government narrowed to what was in effect a parliament of nobles.

There will be those – Scots in particular – who will chafe at the idea that the industrial revolution was dependent upon England. The facts are against them.

Scotland before the union with England (1707) was a remarkably poor state. Nor, despite its much vaunted educational system – supposedly much the superior of England – had it produced many men of international importance. Read a general history of Europe, either old or modern, and you will find precious few Scots mentioned on their own account before the Union. The names John Eringa and Duns Scotus with perhaps a nod to John Knox are the best the reader may hope for, and the former two had to leave Scotland to make their names. If any other Scotsman who lived before the Union is mentioned, he will be noticed only because of his connection with another country, most commonly England. It required the union with England to give Scots a larger stage to act upon. Without the union, the likes of David Hume, Adam Smith and James Watt would in all probability have been roses which bloomed unseen in the desert air. That is not to decry the talents and contributions of Scots, which are considerable, merely to describe a necessary sociological condition for their realisation.

Let me demonstrate how much of an English enterprise the Industrial Revolution was by using the example of the development of steam power. Contrary to many a schoolboy’s imagining, James Watt did not invent the steam engine. That was the province of Englishmen. The Marquess of Worcester may have produced a working steam engine on his estates in 1663; James Savery certainly did in 1698. This was improved by another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen. Their machines were crude beam engines, but the technological Rubicon had been crossed.

It is true that the Scotsman Watt’s improvements to the steam engine – the conversion of linear to rotary action and the introduction of a separate condenser – were profoundly important and provided the means to extend the use of steam engines from their limited applications in pumping water from mines. But it should be noted that he had to come to England to achieve his improvements through his association with an English entrepreneur of genius, Mathew Boulton, who at his Soho works in Birmingham had probably the best engineering facilities then in the world. It was also Boulton who pressed Watt to develop the conversion of linear to rotary action. It is worth adding that Watt was a timid, retiring personality who left to his own devices would probably have achieved little of practical consequence. Moreover, within a generation of Watt’s improvements, the English engineer, Richard Trevithick had greatly improved on Watt’s engine by producing a high pressure steam engine, arguably a more important advance than Watt’s innovations because without it steam engines would have remained large and seriously underpowered.. static installations unable to drive vehicles such as trains and ships..

But before steam could play its full role there had to be a revolution in iron production. This was accomplished by Englishmen. Until Abraham Darby began smelting iron with coke made from coal in the early 1700s, iron making was an expensive and uncertain business carried on in small foundries using charcoal to fire the kilns (an ironmaker named Dudley claimed to have used coal successfully for smelting as early as 1619 but died without establishing a business to carry the work on). Compared with coal, charcoal was in short supply. Worse, it did not produce the same intensity of heat as coal converted into coke. Darby and his son solved the basic problem of smelting with coke made from coal. Henry Cort’s puddling process allowed cast-iron to be refined to remove the brittleness. A little later Benjamin Huntsman improved steel making. In the middle of the next century the Bessemer revolutionised steel production to such a degree that its price fell dramatically enough to make steel no longer a luxury but the common material of construction. All these advances were made by Englishmen.

Large scale organisation is also intellectually demanding. If a ready and cheaper supply of iron was a necessary condition for the industrial revolution, so was the very idea of large scale manufactories using machines. Undertakings employing hundreds of men on one site were not unknown before the 18th Century – a clothier named Jack of Newbury had a factory employing 500 in Tudor times – but they were very rare. In 18th Century England such enterprises became if not commonplace, at least not extraordinary. By the next century they were the norm. Industry became for the first time geared to a mass market. Nor was this new method of manufacturing confined to the necessities and banalities of life. Factories such as Josiah Wedgewood’s at Etruria manufactured high quality and imaginative china directed deliberately at the growing middle classes. All the most successful 18th century machines for mass production were developed by Englishmen. Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s mule, James Hargreaves spinning jenny.

Once the first blast of the industrial revolution had passed, the fundamental fine tuning was undertaken by Englishmen, with men such as Whitworth leading the way with machine tools and new standards of exactness in measurement and industrial cutting and finishing. All very boring to the ordinary man, but utterly essential for the foundation of a successful industrial society.

Many vital industries since have originated in England. To take a few, George Stephenson produced the first practical railway (the railway probably did more than anything to drive the Industrial Revolution because it allowed a true national market to operate within England); Brunel issued in the age of the ocean going steamship; William Perkins laid the foundation for the modern chemical industry by discovering the first synthetic dye; the first electronic computer was designed in Britain, after the theoretical foundations had been laid by the Englishman, Alan Turing. (In the previous century another Englishman, Charles Babbage, designed but did not finished building the first programmable machine.)

Alongside the development of manufacturing ran that of agriculture. The enclosure movement was already well advanced by 1700. By the middle of the nineteenth century it was effectively finished. Not merely feudalism but the peasantry were gone. The old, inefficient open-field system was a dead letter. With enclosure came agricultural innovation. In the eighteenth century we have Jethro Tull, whose seed drill greatly reduced the amount of seed needed for sowing, Robert Bakewell whose selective breeding greatly increased the size of sheep and cattle and “Turnip” Townsend who greatly increased crop efficiency by various mean such as the marling of sandy soil. The importance of such developments cannot be overestimated because the population of Britain rose so dramatically in the next century.

The technological inventions and discoveries made by the English are legion. The list below gives some idea of their importance and range.

Thomas Savery (1650-1715). Invented the first commercial steam engine -a steam pump.

Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729). Improved Savery’s engine by introducing the piston.

Richard Trevithick (1771 – 1833). Invented the high pressure steam engine. Built the first steam locomotive.

George Stephenson (1781-1848). Made the railway a practical reality.

Abraham Darby (1678-1717). Developed the process of smelting iron using coke.

Sir Henry Bessemer, 1813-1898. Devised a process for making steel on a large scale.

James Hargreaves (1722-1778). Invented the spinning jenny.

John Kay (1733-1764). Invented the flying shuttle.

Samuel Crompton (1753-1827). Invented the spinning mule.

Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) Invented the waterframe.

Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823). Invented the power loom.

John Harrison (1693-1776) First to build watches accurate enough to solve the longitude measurement problem.

Edward Jenner (1743-1823). Developed vaccination.

Joseph Lister (1827-1912). Developed antisepsis.

Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803-1887) standardised screw threads, produced first true plane surfaces in metal, developed ductile steel.

Henry Maudslay (1771-1831). Invented the screw-cutting lathe and the first bench micrometer that was capable of measuring to one ten thousandth of an inch.

Joseph Bramah (1748-1814). Invented the hydraulic press.

John Walker (1781- 1859). Invented the first friction matches.

John Smeaton (1724-1792) made the first modern concrete (hydraulic cement).

Joseph Aspdin (1788-1855) invented Portland Cement, the first true artificial cement.

Humphrey Davy (1778-1829). Invented the first electric light, the arc lamp.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Invented the electric motor.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859). Built the first really large steam ships – the Great Britain, Great Western, Great Eastern.

Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897). Devised the most widely used modern shorthand.

Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802 – 1875). Developed an electric telegraph at the same time as Samuel Morse.

Rowland Hill (1795-1879). Invented adhesive postage stamps.

John Herschel (1792-1871). Invented the blueprint.

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) Invented the negative-positive photography and latent image shorter exposure time.

Sir Joseph William Swan (1828-1914). Invented the dry photographic plate. Invented, concurrently with Edison, the light bulb.

Sir William Henry Perkin (1838-1907). Created the first artificial dye – aniline purple or mauveine – and the first artificial scent, coumarin.

Alexander Parkes (1813-90). Created the first artificial plastic, Parkensine.

Sir George Cayley (1773-1857). Worked out the principles of aerodynamics, his “On Ariel Navigation” showed that a fixed wing aircraft with a power system for propulsion, and a tail to assist in the control of the airplane, would be the best way to allow man to fly. Also invented the caterpillar track.

Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996). Took out the first patents for a Turbojet.

Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-1999). Invented the hovercraft.

Charles Babbage (1792-1871). Worked out the basic principles of the computer.

Alan Turin (1912-1954). Widely considered the father of modern computer science – worked out the principles of the digital computer.

Tim Berners-Lee (1955-). Invented the World Wide Web defining HTML (hypertextmarkup language), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators).

England and the Enlightenment

In his book “Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world”, the historian Roy Porter remarks how peculiar it is “that historians have so little to say about the role of English thinkers in the European Enlightenment as a whole” (p3). Peculiar indeed when one considers the English intellectual personnel of the 17th and 18^th centuries and the high reputation English institutions and ideas had amongst the leading lights of the continental Enlightenment, especially in the country which is generally represented as the powerhouse of Enlightenment thinking, France. Here is the philosophe of philosophes, Voltaire, at full Anglophile admire: “The English are the only people on earth who have been able to prescribe the limits of Kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles, have at last established that wise Government, where the prince is all powerful to do good, and at the same time is restrain’d from committing evil; where the Nobles are great without insolence, tho’ there are no vassals; and where the People share in the government without confusion.” Lettres philosophiques on Lettres Anglais (1775).

A strong argument can be made for the English Enlightenment not only existing but occurring a century or so before that of any other nation and subsequently providing much of the basis for the general Enlightenment movement.

Consider these figures from the seventeenth century: William Gilbert (science, especially magnetism), Francis Bacon (philosophy and science), Thomas Hobbes (philosophy), John Locke (philosophy), Thomas Harrington (nascent economics and sociology), William Harvey (biology/medicine), Robert Hooke (polymathic scientist and technologist), John Rae (biologist), Edmund Halley (astronomy), Isaac Newton (mathematics and physics). What did they have in common other than intellectual distinction? They were all driven by the idea of reason, by the belief that the world could be understood rationally. That is the real essence of the Enlightenment, the belief in rationality, in particular, the belief that the world is subject to physical laws, that God does not intervene capriciously, that the world is not governed by magic. Such ideas did not preclude a God or prevent an intense relationship with the putatively divine, but they did encase God within a rational system of thought in which His action was limited, voluntarily or otherwise. Newton may have been utterly fixated with the numerology of the Bible but he believed the world was ordered according to physical laws. From the belief that the universe is organised rationally comes the corollary that it can be understood, that everything is governed by laws which can be discovered by men. This idea pre-dated Newton, but it was his ideas, most notably his laws of motion and theory of gravity, that elevated the idea to almost a secular religion. During the next century intellectuals took the example of Newton’s inanimate mechanistic physical world and extrapolated the idea to every aspect of existence, from biology to philosophy to social policy. If only enough was known, if only enough effort was made, then everything, of this world at least, could be understood and controlled and everything could be the subject of rational decision making.

The 18th century Enlightenment had another aspect, an association with the democratic or at least a wish that the power of kings should be greatly curtailed – the Voltaire quote given above is a good example of the mentality. This also has its roots in England. The ferment of the English Civil war not only produced proto-democratic political movements such as the Levellers, it also started Parliament along the road of being more than a subordinate constitutional player by forcing it to act as not only a legislature but as an executive. Stir in the experience of the Protectorate, simmer for 30 years or so of the restored Stuart kings, mix in the Glorious Revolution of 1689 which resulted in the Bill of Rights and established the English crown as being in the gift of Parliament and season with half a century of the German Georges and you have the British (in reality the English) constitution which was so admired by Voltaire, who thought it quite perfect, and which gave the American colonists the inspiration for their own political arrangements (president = king, Senate = Lords, House of Representatives = Commons, with a Constitution and Bill of Rights heavily influenced by the English Bill of Rights.)

Engalnd and the practice of science

England was from the seventeenth century in the vanguard of the rise of science. William Gilbert’s work on magnetism was followed by William Harvey tracing the circulation of the blood, Halley’s work on comets and Robert Hooke’s polymathic span from microscopy to a nascent theory of gravitation. Above all stood the formidable figure of Newton, neurotic, splenetic and marvellous, a man who demonstrated the composition of light and developed the powerful mathematical tool of the differential calculus, besides formulating the laws of motion which form the basis of all mechanical science and the theory of gravitation, which was the most complete explanation of the physical universe until Einstein.

Newton probably had more influence on the mental world than any man before him. Even today his importance is vast. Quantum mechanics and Einstein’s physics may have superseded the Newtonian as the most advanced explanation of the physical world, but Newton still rules as the practical means of understanding the world above the subatomic. More generally, Newton provided an intellectual engine which allowed men to make sense of the universe and to see order and predictability where before there had been an order seemingly kept from chaos, and often not that, by the capricious will of a god or gods. The psychological as well as the scientific impact of Newton was great.

To these early scientific pioneers may be added the likes of Joseph Priestly (the practical discoverer of oxygen), John Dalton who proposed the first modern atomic theory), Michael Faraday (who laid the foundations of the science of electromagnetism), J.J. Thompson (who discovered the first atomic particle, the electron), James Chadwick (the discover of the neutron) and Francis Crick (who jointly discovered the structure of DNA with his pupil, the American James Watson).

Then there is Charles Darwin, the man with a strong claim to be then individual who has most shaped the way we view the world, because natural selection provides a universal means of explication for dynamic systems. We can as readily visualise pebbles on a beach being selected for their utility in their environment (from qualities such as crystal structure, size, shape) as we can a horse. As with Newton, Darwin profoundly affected the way men look at the world.

Of all the important scientific fields established since 1600, I can think of only two in which an Englishman did not play a substantial role in their discovery and early development. . Those exceptions are Pasteur’s proof of germ theory and Mendel’s discovery of genes. The list below gives an idea of the scope of English scientific discoveries.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Gravitation, laws of motion, theory of light.

Robert Hooke (1625-1703). Wrote Micrographia, the first book describing observations made through a microscope. Was the first person to use the word “cell” to identify microscopic structures. Formulated Hooke’s Law — a law of elasticity for solid bodies.

Henry Cavendish (1731-1810). Discovered the composition of water and measured the gravitational attraction between two bodies.

Joseph Priestly, (1733-1804). Discovered Oxygen.

Humphrey Davy (1778-1829). Discovered the elements potassium, sodium, strontium, calcium, magnesium and barium nitrous oxide.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Widely regarded as the greatest ever experimental scientist. Conceived the idea of lines of force in magnetism, discovered electromagnetic induction, developed the laws of electrolysis.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Created modern evolutionary theory.

John Prescott Joule (1818-1889). Calculated the mechanical equivalent of heat.

John Dalton, (1766-1844). Created modern atomic theory.

Sir J J Thomson (1856-1940). Discovered the electron and made the first attempt to represent atoms in terms of positive and negative energy.

Sir James Chadwick 1891-1974. Discovered the neutron.

Francis Crick (1916- ). Joint discoverer of the structure of DNA.

England and the concept of science

The development of the concept of what we call science is arguably the most dramatic intellectual event in history, for it utterly changed both the way in which men viewed the world and provided them with the means to mould it ever more completely to their will.

Science is the opposite of “by guess and by God”. It is the process of not only knowing that something has worked before and replicating the event or process to achieve the same result, but of understanding the process behind an event or process.

The classic scientific experiment involves the generation of an hypothesis to be tested (for example, the behaviour of falling objects) or a defined field to be investigated (for example, an animal’s behaviour), the creation of the means of doing so and a strict observance of the rules by which the experiment is to be conducted and meticulous recording of data. That in essence is the scientific method, although in practice science is far from being as neat and regular as that. Nonetheless, it does encapsulate what science is supposed to be about: the rigorous observation and rational interpretation of what is rather than what the mind might fancy to be the case. It is inductive rather than deductive.

The beginnings of the scientific mentality can be found in the minds of two 13th Century Englishmen, the Franciscan Roger Bacon (c1214-1292) and Robert Grossteste (c1168-1253), Chancellor of Oxford then Bishop of Lincoln. Both saw the importance of experimentation and observation, Bacon advocated mathematics as the sure foundation of science while Grosseteste anticipated the idea of the scientific hypothesis. Grossteste was also the first to understood the value of falsification, namely, although any number of observed events cannot prove beyond doubt that something is generally true it can be proved false by a single case which shows it to be false. There are difficulties with the principle of falsification philosophically but it is, in Practice, a most useful tool for scientists.

Another important intellectual tool for the scientist was developed in the fourteenth Century by the Franciscan, William of Ockham. Ockham formulated the principle of parsimony which we know today as Ockham’s Razor. This is commonly expressed as “entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity” or, more bluntly, always choose the simplest explanation for something unless there is good reason not to. Apart from being philosophically important, this dictum is immensely valuable as a guide for scientists, especially those engaged in the “hard” sciences of physics and chemistry, where the simplest explanation has often been found to be the correct one.

Roger Bacon, Grossteste and William of Ockham were also responsible for a substantial amount of important philosophy related to the other aspects of the physical world and to metaphysics. In addition, Ockham was a radical political theorist who fought the conciliar case in the long schism in the papacy (which straddled the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries), arguing that authority within the Church should not rest solely with the Pope but be delegated in part to a council of the Church.

At the beginning of the Seventeenth Century Francis Bacon moved the idea of the scientific method forward in his Novum Organum (1620), in which he laid out the classic version of scientific method and reinforced the ideas of induction and the importance of falsifiability (Bacon stands as the first in the long line of important British empirical philosophers). Bacon was also responsible for the re-classification of sciences to something approaching their modern divisions in his Advancement of Learning (1625) and argued vigorously for the separation of reason and revelation.

On the practical science side there is William Gilbert with his work on magnetism (published in his De Magneto 1600), who was one of the first men, even perhaps the first, known to have conducted a controlled experiment, that is, one in which the experiment is entirely artificial and can be exactly repeated. It is the difference between simply watching falling objects which fall without human intent and creating a situation where falling objects can be observed repeatedly under the same conditions.

It would be a vainglorious exaggeration to say that science was the invention of England, but they played a great part, arguably the greatest part, in its creation.

The beginnings of English intellectual history

English intellectual history is a long one. It can reasonably be said to begin in the early eighth century with Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English, which amongst other things firmly establishes the English as a people before England as a kingdom existed (“At present there are in Britain…five languages and four nations – English, British, Irish and Picts…” Book One).

In the late ninth century comes Alfred the Great, a king whose reign was one of constant struggle against the Danes, but who thought enough of learning to teach himself to read as an adult and then engage in translations into Old English of devotional works such as Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. It is difficult to think of any other monarch anywhere who showed such a practical concern for learning.

From Alfred’s reign comes the Anglo-Saxon Journal (ASJ), a work also written in Old English. (There are nine surviving versions written at different places, eight of which are in Old English with the odd man out being in Old English with a Latin translation). The journal is a history/myth of Britain and a narrative of the settlement of Anglo-Saxons within it until the time of Alfred and then a putative record of and commentary on the great events of English life from the time of Alfred until the middle of the 12th century (like all suchmedieval works the veracity of the ASJ is questionable, but at worst it gives a flavour of the mentality of those living at the time). The work is unique in medieval Europe for its scope and longevity and is particularly noteworthy for the fact that it was written in the vernacular throughout the three centuries or so of its existence, this at a time when the normal language for writing in Western Europe was Latin.

The Norman Conquest subordinated the English politically, linguistically and socially for the better part of three centuries,but it did not kill English intellectual endeavour. Those three centuries of oppression saw the emergence of many of the ideas which were later to produce the modern world. John of Salisbury produced a work on politics (Policraticus 1159) which was “the first attempt in the Middle Ages at an extended and systematic treatment of political philosophy” (G H Sabine A History of Political Theory p246) and one which argued for a form of limited monarchy and the overthrow of tyrants, views given practical English expression in Magna Carta (1215). The period was also noteworthy for the strong showing of annals and histories, most notably those of Eadmer (Historia Novorum or The History of Recent Events – it covered the period 950-1109), Henry of Huntingdon (Historia Anglorum or History of the English 5BC-1129) an Matthew Paris (Chronica Majora). In addition, the Common Law was formed, English became once more a literary language (Chaucer, Langland), John Wycliffe laid the intellectual roots of the Reformation and, perhaps most impressively, ideas which were later to provide the basis for a true science emerged.

Quantifying English intellectual accomplishment

In his book “Human Accomplishment” the American Charles Murray calculates the contribution to civilisation made by individuals throughout history up until 1950. To give his calculations as much objectivity as possible he measures the amount of attention given to an individual by specialists in their field in sources such as biographical dictionaries – put crudely, the greater the frequency of mention and the larger the space devoted to an individual, the higher they score.

Murray quantifies achievements under the headings of astronomy (Galileo and Kepler tied for first place), biology (Darwin and Aristotle), chemistry (Lavoisier), earth sciences (Lyell), physics (Newton and Einstein), mathematics (Euler), medicine (Pasteur, Hippocrates and Koch), technology (Edison and Watt), combined scientific (Newton), Chinese philosophy (Confucious), Indian philosophy (Sankara), Western philosophy (Aristotle), Western music (Beethoven and Mozart), Chinese painting (Gu Kaizhi and Zhao Mengfu), Japanese painting (Sesshu, Sotatsu and Korin), Western art (Michelangelo), Arabic literature, (al-Mutanabbi) Chinese literature (Du Fu), Indian literature (Kalidasa), Japanese literature (Basho and Chikamatsu Monzaemon), Western literature (Shakespeare).

Objections have been made to Murray’s methodology such as the fact that many of the great achievements of the past, especially in the arts, have been anonymous, which give it a bias towards the modern period, and fears that it has a built-in Western bias – the representation of non-Western figures in the science and technology categories is minimal. Nothing can be done about anonymity – it is worth pointing out that the majority of those heading the categories lived at least several centuries ago – but Murray substantially guards against pro-Western bias with the breadth and number of his sources and it is simply a fact that science and advanced technology arose only in the past few centuries and that both are essentially Western achievements. It is also noteworthy that Murray’s method only places one of his fellow countrymen at number one in any category (Edison in technology). If any bias exists it is unlikely to be conscious. At worst, Murray’s findings can be seem as a fair rating of Western achievement.

The list of those heading the various categories (see second paragraph above) suggests that Murray’s method is pretty sound despite any possible methodological shortcomings, because those who come top are all men of extreme achievement. There might be arguments over whether Aristotle should take precedence over Plato or Kant, but no one could honestly argue that Aristotle was an obviously unworthy winner of first place in the philosophy category.

Of the 13 categories which can include Westerners (they are obviously excluded from non-European literature and art), Englishmen are indisputed firsts or share first place with one other in four: biology Darwin with Aristotle; Physics Newton with Einstein; combined scientific Newton alone; Western literature Shakespeare alone. No other nation has more than two representatives at the top of a category. The thirteen Western ncluding categories have a total of 18 people in sole or joint first place. England has nearly a quarter of those in first place and more than a quarter of the 15 who are drawn from the modern period, say 1500 AD onwards.

Apart from those coming first, the English show strongly in most of the Western qualifying categories (especially in physics – 9 out of the top 20, technology – 8 out of the top twenty – and Western literature). The major exceptions are Western art and music, where English representation is mediocre. I think most people who think about the matter at all would feel those quantified cultural strengths and weaknesses represent the reality of English history and society.

The fact that England shows so strongly in Murray’s exercise gives the lie to the common representation of the English as unintellectual. Moreover, there is much more to human intellectual accomplishment than the fields covered by Murray, most notably the writing of history and the social sciences, areas in which England has been at the forefront throughout the modern period: think Gibbon, Macaulay, Herbert Spencer and Keynes.

It isn’t “just sport”

Sport has a particular importance to England at present because sporting sides are the only source of national focus the English have. The English are denied a parliament, they are betrayed by their political elite who shudder at the idea of English nationalism, they are constantly insulted by the national media, but the national sides continue. These sporting institutions permit the English to articulate their feelings as a tribe. Even English men and women without any interest in sport should support them for that reason if no other.

Those who say “it’s only sport” should stand back and reflect on the amount of time, effort and money which is spent throughout the world on sport. Women may be generally less enthusiastic, but sports obviously speak to a deep seated desire within men.

Man is a tribal animal. If he were not it would matter not a jot whether one team won or another, unless money was on the result. But manifestly men do care and care passionately when no material advantage is to be gained or lost by the result. In fact, the relationship between a football fan and his club is probably the most enduring of his life, for it commonly begins in childhood and ends only with death.

The outpouring of joy when a goal is scored dwarfs any other public expression of positive feeling today. Those who imagine that a football club is merely a business and that selling football is no different from selling baked beans, fail to understand the game and the fan.

Sporting heroes are heroes in the literal sense for they play the role of the champion whether it be in single combat (tennis) or as part of an army (football). There is something primal about this. Watch even a powerful man in the presence of his sporting hero and the powerful man will almost certainly be unconsciously deferring to the sportsman.

Team sports are war games, a war game in fact as well where men meet in a form of direct physical confrontation which is a pretty good substitute for tribal war, war fought hand to hand with sword and shield and spear. Sport is war without the weapons. That is its primal glamour.

Because of their function as lightening rods of national feeling the existence of England sides are hated and feared by our elite. The erstwhile and now deceased Labour Sports minister, Tony Banks, persistently puffed the idea of a British football team, something that is indubitably not wanted by any of the four home FAs or the vast majority of fans.

The political dimension goes beyond the English national sides. In these politically correct times sporting crowds in England for the major sports are also disturbingly white for the liberal bigot elite. Vast amounts of time and money have been devoted to making crowds “more representative”, happily with precious little success. Football crowds in particular are a source of concern to our liberal elite because they provide the one opportunity where large numbers of the white working class can gather together and express themselves uninhibitedly without having to gain the permission of the police. This concern is amplified by the general contempt which the British elite have developed for the white working class which, in the sporting context, is especially focused on the football fan. (Margaret Thatcher more than any other individual fostered the contempt when she routinely painted English football supporters as hooligans and enthusiastically promoted the exclusion of English football clubs after the Heysel stadium tragedy at the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. )

But sport has much more to it than tribalism. It is a constant in a changing world. It is a source of aesthetic delight. It speaks to the whole range of human emotions. When a great batsman goes to the wicket when his side is in trouble and makes the bowling look easy, the whole mood of the players and spectators changes within minutes: when a football side which is 2-0 down gets a goal back the swing in moral certainty from one side to another is palpable. It is much more than being “just sport”. It is a mirror of what it is to be human.

Immigration – English sport is a mirror of English society

Sport holds up a mirror to any society. Sadly, English sport today shares the ills of English society at large. Due to the actions of the British elite professional team sport in England has been heavily infiltrated by foreign players just as the country has a whole has been left open to de facto foreign colonisation.

Cricket was the first to fall prey to the disease. In 1969 the qualification rules for foreign players appearing in county cricket were effectively thrown away. Before 1969 any foreign player had to qualify by two years residence in the county: after 1969 they could be specially registered without any qualifying period.

Since 1969 there have been various attempts to stem the number foreign players. Official overseas players – those not qualified to play for England by any route – have been at various times restricted to two per county side, then one per side before reverting back to two per side, which is the situation in 2006.

In the past few years the number of foreign players in county cricket has been greatly expanded by a ruling that any EU state national must be allowed to play in county cricket whether England qualified or not – this has resulted in many Australians and South Africans claiming EU state passports of one sort or another. The final breach in the sporting emigration wall has been the granting of the same rights possessed by EU state passport holders to people from countries which have treaties with the EU that allow them certain trading rights.

This loosening of immigration rules applies to all other sports, many of which are even more vulnerable to invasion than cricket because cricket is not played seriously on the continent. Football and rugby are played within the EU and both games in England have been substantially colonised by continentals. The situation with football has become especially serious with well over half the places in Premiership sides being filled by players not qualified for England. Following England’s exit from the 2006 World Cup the ex-England manager Graham Taylor voiced his fears that England might never again win the World Cup simply because of the lack of opportunity being given to English players (BBC R5 Victoria Derbyshire 7 7 2006). Such fears have grown in intensity since with another World Cup failure in 2010.

The other side of the foreign infiltration coin is the widespread employment of those who are not unequivocally English in English national teams. These people fall into two camps: (1) those who came to England as adults and (2) ethnic minority players either born and raised in England or at least largely raised here. Their employmentby England has been generally a failure, both in terms of their individual performances and in the performance of their respective England teams.

Take the two major English team sports cricket and football. Of the questionable players who have finished their Test careers of and played a substantial amount of cricket for England since 1980 only (Robin Smith) has managed a Test batting average of 40 and only two of the bowlers has a Test bowling average of less than 30.

As for football, the only players in the immigrant/ethnic minority category to show themselves to be of true international standard are probably Paul Ince and Des Walker. It is difficult to see the sporting justification for the repeated and extensive selection of players such as Mark Ramprakash (lowest every batting average – 27 – for a front line England batsman who has played my than 40 Tests) or John Barnes (79 England caps and a man who rarely if ever reproduced his club form for England).

Perhaps the answer lies in political correctness, a desire on the part of selectors to guard themselves against accusations of racism or simply an ideological commitment to multiculturalism. Here is Stephen Wagg writing in Catalyst, the old CRE’s propaganda magazine funded by the taxpayer: “…it is important that this team [the England cricket side] speaks for a multi-ethnic England.” (Racism and the English cricket party – Catalyst June 2006).

There is also the attitude of the players consider. Some of those who have played for England have been blunt about their attitude towards turning out for the side. Here is ex-England captain Nasser Hussain interviewed by Rob Steen:

’If anyone asks about my nationality, I’m proud to say ‘Indian’, but I’ve never given any thought to playing for India. In cricketing terms I’m English.’ Daily Telegraph 11 8 1989

Or take the black Jamaican England footballer John Barnes writing in his autobiography:

”I am fortunate my England career is now complete so I don’t have to sound patriotic any more.” (P69)

”I feel more Jamaican than English because I’m black. A lot of black people born in England feel more Jamaican than English because they are not accepted in the land of their birth on account of their colour, (P 71)

Clearly such mentalities exclude any emotional commitment to doing well for the sake of English pride. The most they could have been playing for was their own ambition. As the editor of Wisden Matthew Engel put it:

”It cannot be irrelevant to England’s long term failures that to many of their recent Test players were either born overseas and/or spent their formative years as citizens of other countries. In the heat of Test cricket, there is a difference between a cohesive team with a common goal, and a coalition of individuals whose major ambitions are for themselves…There is a vast difference between wanting to play Test cricket and wanting to play Test cricket for England.” (Editor’s notes 1995 Wisden).

In the 1990s an England cricket eleven was routinely comprised of something like five white Englishmen, two Southern Africans, a New Zealander and three West Indians. The idea that their captain could appeal to their patriotism as a team of Englishmen is risible. It is difficult to see how any English man or woman could have seen it as their national side.

Football – the world game

Football is the nearest there is to a world game. There are easy reasons for this. At its most basic football is a game which requires the most rudimentary of equipment, a ball. Its rules are simple compared with those of other games such as rugby or cricket. But it is more than that. Football is also the game which arguably best combines pure athleticism with the felicity of human thought and movement to which we give too often the bone-achingly dull description ”hand/eye coordination.”

Football was in a state of flux until the middle of the nineteenth century. Various forms existed. Some codes allowed kicking only, others handling. There were disputes over whether hacking and gouging were allowed. In 1863 the Football Association was created and stopped the confusion. It was the first national sporting association which was purely that. The MCC in practice directed English cricket and was responsible for the laws of the game, but they were first and foremost, a private club, as was the Jockey Club. The FA was the first formally constituted sporting body created to explicitly to direct an entire sport.

No sport has had such a rapid rise to popularity. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century it went from a poorly organised game, to something which was recognisable as the game we know today. Famous clubs of today were formed by Public School Old Boys, vicars, boys clubs, public houses, in the work place and by cricket clubs. The first international game took place between England and Scotland in 1872 The world’s first cup competition, the FA Cup, was born in 1872.

In 1888 the world’s first sporting league was formed, the Football League. International matches involving countries other than England were being played well before the First World War and football was an Olympic sport from early on in the modern Olympiad’s history. Not

least, football’s world governing body, FIFA, was founded as early as

1904 (with no encouragement from England it has to be said).

By 1900 the top teams had become overwhelmingly professional and club owners were often drawn from the ranks of local businessmen. The game had become much more of a business than any other sport.