This article reads rather like Tom Holland’s books. An avalanche of rather unstructured information/history followed by a somewhat questionable or tenuous conclusion that is supposed to explain or justify it all.
This brings back vivid memories of my A-Level Religious Education syllabus which I studied growing up in Derry City, Northern Ireland, in the difficult mid 1980’s: ‘The beginnings of the Celtic Church in Ireland and its missionary outreach in the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries’. As was the case with many of my peers, I used to wonder how what we were studying would ever prove useful in the context of our future daily lives; this article certainly goes some way to answering that very question. The history of the British Isles is truly fascinating.
Peter LR
3 years ago
The history of the English is fascinating really: how did a small island nation come to have a great international empire and provide the international language? I imagine it came from a combination of being a hard-to-invade island, a competent seafaring people, but also missionary zeal to spread Christianity around the world. As easy as it is to make critical judgments through 21st century moral lenses, or even indulge in Tom’s tongue-in-cheek cynicism, it has to be admired.
The international language thing comes from the USA and Hollywood. Everyone wants to be American. Kids in the UK talk with an American accent. Certainly, EFL scholars almost all talk American. Consider the word ‘research’ which was always re-search but has now become re-search. There are many others.
Some Americans might think that “Everyone wants to be an American”— and, sadly, that delusion shaped a significant part of American foreign policy during the last thirty or forty years.
Tom Holland’s point about England’s debt to Ireland is reinforced by the fact that so many of the greatest writers in our language come from that nation, with an influence and richness of speech and writing entirely out of proportion to their numbers.
International language? I well remember that, in around 1985, my boss at work, who was born in Iran and educated largely in Europe and the USA, said “The triumph of English [as the modern equivalent of Latin] is certain.”
I assumed he meant because of the world-wide spread of the British Empire and now of its successor, American political, economic and cultural influence. He acknowledged that those played a part. But he said the main reason was the unique flexibility of the English language — the facts that meaning depends almost entirely on syntax; that it has abandoned the essentials of language gender and case; that grammar can be butchered and one can still make sense of it; and that the base vocabulary necessary for simplest communication required fewer words than any other major language.
All this well before the internet, and from a man fluent in five languages.
Agree about the simplicity of the language and ease of basic communication but the internationalisation of films and music has played its part. My vet in France spoke fluent English – he explained it by his being part of the MTV generation (and I didn’t even know at the time what MTV was).
From Canada to New Zealand, Australia to Africa, plus India and many others besides, English became the national language or the language of commerce, law and as a common interchange (lingua franca).
The US has enhanced its position as the language of film, the internet, etc. and reinforced its use in Japan, South America, etc. US spelling and syntax is ‘different to’ the British (which was once ‘different from’ the former in many cases).
Much US syntax actually preserves English usage of the C18. “Meet with” as opposed to “meet”, for example. One has to be careful before condemning those doggone Americanisms.
Another factor is that the computer keyboard is designed around Western alphabets and is unsuitable for pictogram based languages. This has undoubtedly held back the spread of first Japanese and then Mandarin that might otherwise have occurred over the past 60 years.
The international language thing comes from America and Hollywood. Everyone wants to copy the Americans. Kids in the UK today often speak with an American accent and many Chinese speak American. Consider the word ‘research’ which has always been research but is now research. There are many, many others.
English was established as the “voice of authority” well before the birth of Hollywood and the pernicious influence it has subsequently developed.
In 1902, the British Empire encompassed a quarter of the World’s population and a quarter of its land surface area.
Maritime Law was defined in English, the 0 degree Meridian went through Greenwich, and but for 1914-18 there would have been a ‘Scramble for China’ from which ‘we’ would have emerged with the Lion’s share.
Coterminous with Hollywood was the birth of the BBC World Service, the ‘cultural jewel in the crown’ of Empire by any standards, and a massive disseminator of the English language for the benefit of all.
Most people in the world don’t speak English but if they want certain careers such as finance or trade they will learn English/American, just as Scottish , Irish & Welsh who wanted to ‘get ahead’ learned it as well.This coincided with the British Empire, so from about 18th century English became a more important language than French .The Americans, though breaking away from us, still retained the language, which is why Declaration of Independence is written in English , not French ( who were their financial benefactors)
‘God’, if such a thing exists may possibly be English. ‘He/She could do far worse.
Boris on the other hand is not English.
Had he stood up for the Northern Ireland Veterans I might’ve thought differently about him but he didn’t. Thus I am not an admirer of Mr Johnson, contrary to your opinion.
Gods are usually made in the image and with the morality of their creators, unfortunately. At least the Ionians had a sense of ideal human beauty and awareness of the Fibonacci sequence, so their gods were beautiful, if terrible.
Boris may not be English, I know not, but but he is a perfect combination of English and American buffoonery, false bravura and arrogant self importance that seems to appeal to the decedents of British and American rednecks, where pride is valued more than knowledge; belief more than thought; arrogance more than self awareness; and image more than honesty.
You are correct.
In fact as Tacitus* might have put it:
“Consensu omnium capax imperii nisi imperasset” = ‘Everyone agreed that he was capable of ruling until he actually got the job’.
Looks like you edited out the “offending” sentence, but left the original in tact …. so now I agree with the sentiment of the “super spreader” that Hollywood turned into … 🙂
“but also missionary zeal to spread Christianity around the world”
Certainly not in the beginning*, at least not with the wonderful East India Company, who specifically banned ‘God botherers’. Profit & Plunder was the driving force of Empire until at least the mid nineteenth century, when the pernicious arrival of the Oxford Movement started to change things into a Evangelical Crusade, with appalling results.
The only exception being the bunch of East Anglian Puritan nutters who established the settlements in New England in a futile attempt to establish a new Sion. In other words a land where they could practice their ‘religious freedom’ by persecuting others! (Salem etc).
Two possibly more important factors were the establishment of the Bank of England under William III, and the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the 18th century initially in Great Britain.
My theory is the geographical accident of being an island of a certain size, more conducive to stability and homogeneity than land borders resulting in easier development of government and prosperity.
Then, it was generally fertile (hence sheep), and with a good number of harbours encouraging fishing and trade, initially coastal, but easily extended.
Finally, it found copious coal and iron ore, to add to the tin and copper already exploited for hundreds of years.
Maybe God played a small part, too.
One should add that communication and transport via sea was a lot faster and more economical than by land, so Britain was a well-connected country.
Eamonn Toland
3 years ago
After Latin and Greek, Irish is one of the oldest written vernacular languages in Europe. From the 6th to the 9th century, roughly half of all literary output in western Europe was written by Irish monks, which is one reason why Ken Clarke argued they had saved western civilization. Johannes Scotus Eriugena was the only philosopher from this era to make the cut in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.
One might also argue that it was the Arabs, or Islam that “saved” what we have today of ancient Greek writing and who advanced science during Europe’s long winter of war and religious myopia. The Arab part of Spain around year 1000 had seventeen universities, the rest of Europe only two, where the students probably studied little but religion. It was not until the flowering of Humanism and the rediscovery of ancient knowledge that the European mind awoke. The church fought back, of course, as Galileo knows, and we are still not free of Religion’s blinkers.
Oddly things have completely reversed. It is now the Arabs who are completely under the stifling religious yoke. It is now they who must look outside their own world, to the west, or east, to get the best enlightened education.
Great point on the contribution of Islamic scholars to western civilization and thought, and not just in conserving classical texts. Where would we be without algebra or algorithms?
Yes, the decimal system 0-9 and the golden ratio, 1:1.61803 were brought to Europe by Leonardo da Pisa in early 1200s from North Africa. The so called Fibonacci sequence is the very structure of Nature, known in ancient times.
A. was and arrogant B word “Natural child”. Writing down his thoughts observations and ideas, as if anyone would ever be interested. May Cronus’ son Hades torment him for all eternity.
Oh ye Gods, protect us from all knowledge. Teach us to tremble again at the bolts from Zeus, from the ire of Poseidon and from the treachery of the Fates. Replace our burning desire to know and our arrogance to understand with fearful obedience to the all powerful deities.
I remember it well.
Clark was one of our best, although personally I preferred the incomparable Alec Clifton-Taylor.
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
If the English (British) owe a debt to Africa because of slavery, they have the same debt to Ireland now. If the problems of Arabia are wholly caused by Sykes-Picot, then Britain owes a debt to all of the lands in Arabia. We joined a stupid war with Iraq so we owe Iraq for that one. In fact, England (Britain) is probably responsible for all of the problems in the USA and Australia. The French, too, have a lot to pay for.
But wait. Our problems arose because we were one of the first to subscribe to democracy and that came from the Greeks. So, when the Greeks pay us, we will pass it on to the rest.
Encouraging article. Many thanks Mr Holland. A welcome reminder of how good relations between the peoples of these great islands once were, with the hope that they will be again. It’s easier perhaps to discern what went wrong since Bede’s time. Part of the solution therefore might be to rediscover what made things so right between Irish and English in his time.
Paul Whiting
3 years ago
Holland’s Anti English bias shines through everything he writes. Patrick was captured by Irish pirates and sold into slavery there. Dublin subsequently became the largest slave market in Europe. Where is the balance? The English are always portrayed as mindless savages in need of “civilising”
Eh! Unfortunately for you, there was no Dublin until about five centuries after St. Patrick … Sooo …
You’re right though, there was plenty of slavery on both sides of the Irish Sea during his time. Patrick was a slave taken by Irish traffickers, but so too his earliest surviving writing is the ‘Epistola contra Coroticum’, a letter of excommunication directed at a British warlord and slaver (Ceredig?) who was taking many, young women especially, from Ireland, including some of Patrick’s own recent converts. Hence the rage in the letter.
Colin Elliott
3 years ago
I would not say that relations between England and Ireland are a nightmare. Yes, there is a conflict between Irish Republican sentiment and United Kingdom sentiment, which sadly was not avoided by the actions of some, especially around 1914, and still persists, but my personal experience is that English and Irish get along very well.
It is also remarkable that you never mention Scotland, although there is a passing reference to the Clyde and the Picts.
They no longer are ‘a nightmare’, thank God (who does exist). Relations are now very good between both countries. Relations between ‘ordinary’ Irishmen and Englishmen (‘men’ not excluding women, children, assorted others, etc.) have always been good. Relations have improved relative to the extent to which England has (almost, nearly, finally) left Ireland to her own devices. Weird, isn’t it?
Outside, there be monsters, they talk funny, want to steal our money, our women … etc. Outside be Rome, Spain, pope, antichrist, Napoleon, Brussels, Strasbourg …. Yada, yada. Ireland was forcibly cut off from contact with the rest of Europe for three centuries, isolated and forcibly impoverished, economically and culturally by our nearest neighbours. We learned our lesson. That will not be happening again, thank you.
So you would welcome the end of the common travel area?
I cannot think of another country in the entire world that gets the benefit at no cost that Ireland gets from the CTA.
Speaking as an Irishman, yes I would be happy to see the Common Travel Area scrapped. It enables a brain drain of our educated citizens and it helps to keep us partly assimilated in the UK over a century after our revolution to break away from British rule. Irish individuals do benefit from it but it damages Ireland in a broader sense.
I love the way the CTA is assumed a gift bestowed on us ungrateful Paddys, by our benign overlords. When will this ignorance and faux superiority ever end, I ask? In any case, it was made obsolete by FOM under the EU. Now that Brexit has taken place, it is likely to become even less relevant. It was also arguably a brain-drain on the population of Ireland for many decades. You forget my friend that the UK, London especially, benefitted considerably in the 19th and 20th centuries from a ready supply of cheap (desperate) Irish labour. I won’t get into what the cause of the desperation was in the first place. We’re all (hopefully) trying to move on from those darker days. But lose the snooty, nobody’s buying it anymore.
Steve Hall
3 years ago
How anyone who calls himself a historian can speak about Anglo-Irish relations – and even mention Patrick’s ‘kidnap’ – without mentioning the Viking settlements in Ireland and their role in the North African slave trade is a travesty.
Last edited 3 years ago by Steve Hall
Alan Osband
3 years ago
She wasn’t selling the Pope this time ,rather some ‘cheap’ internet course to sensitise people to the emotional anguish of the kiddywinkies.She’s possibly working for Camila Batmanghelidhj and the SNP
Actually I read something about the Iran government using twitter trolls to promote the break up of the UK and influence the election in Scotland.The timing of Odone’s lovefest for Wee Krankee can’t be a coincidence
Last edited 3 years ago by Alan Osband
Spiro Spero
3 years ago
The comment section on this article today sounds uncannily like the “what did the Romans ever do for us” Monty Python sketch. Lols.
Peter LR
3 years ago
Actually, does anyone agree with me here: I have found the English quite like the Irish, Scots and Welsh, but for some reason lots of those three nations hate the English! Or is it just the rugger?
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
The English barely existed then in the way we understand them today. Probably more like invading Saxons or Normans or Vikings from the continent. Throw in a few pagans, Romans and Celts. This bizarre contemporising of acts and people hundreds of years ago when people thought the earth was flat, and leeches cured all, is frankly bizarre. So the answers to the OP question… What do you mean by English and Irish exactly? What relevance is it today? And what makes you think we ‘owe’ anyone anything???
Michael Upton
3 years ago
During the devolution debates of the 1970s a correspondent to a newspaper – wasn’t it the Times? – proposed a new constitutional relationship for the peoples of Ireland and Britain, under a new national name: Islands of the North Atlantic, or ‘IONA’ for short. A long shot, but who shall say it couldn’t work?
Jonathan Ellman
3 years ago
Nothing.
Sam Cel Roman
3 years ago
wow, didn’t realize Unherd was now teaching Catholic school part-time
So is the Spectator. Cristina Odone turned up today.
Corrie Mooney
3 years ago
Bravo Tom.
CHARLES STANHOPE
3 years ago
Thanks to the idiotic Edict of Milan (1066AUC/313AD), the cancer of Christianity rapidly spread across the Roman Empire, even to the remote Province of Britannia.
By the process of osmosis, long before the arrival (St) Patrick, the benighted Irish were also infected, thus destroying a thousand years or more of vibrant Gaelic Culture, for the dubious benefits of a ‘Land of Saints & Scholars’.
The fact the Irish managed to reinfect our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors can only be regarded with deep regret.
Such a shame England was reinfected. The country could have still had druids, human sacrifices, and wicker men instead of those loathsome vicars, beetle drives, and church fetes.
There was plenty of human sacrifice or whatever you want to call it under Mother Church.
Until a few years ago when you ordered a steak in the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, you were invariably asked “ how do you want it cooked Sir, Latimer, Cranmer or Ridley?
You could also argue that the Romans, who gave human sacrifice as an additional reason for stamping out Druids, had a form of human sacrifice of their own, in gladitorial games and the like – and, indeed, that a form of human sacrifice existed under various forms of communism (from the USSR to Cambodia) and the Nazjs. Possibly harking back to celtic druidry, there was even a strand of blood sacrifice to Mother Ireland in some Irish republican “theology”. Killing seems endemic to human nature.
However, the teachings of Christianity are a valuable corrective to this human tendency to violence and murder, even if they are not always followed. Even with the historical abuses of Christian Churches, it does not compare in savagery with Druidism as practiced by the Celts. As Julius Caesar put it, the Druids “believe that the gods delight in the slaughter of prisoners and criminals, and when the supply of captives runs short, they sacrifice even the innocent” – Gallic Wars, Book 6, as I recall.
This article reads rather like Tom Holland’s books. An avalanche of rather unstructured information/history followed by a somewhat questionable or tenuous conclusion that is supposed to explain or justify it all.
This brings back vivid memories of my A-Level Religious Education syllabus which I studied growing up in Derry City, Northern Ireland, in the difficult mid 1980’s: ‘The beginnings of the Celtic Church in Ireland and its missionary outreach in the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries’. As was the case with many of my peers, I used to wonder how what we were studying would ever prove useful in the context of our future daily lives; this article certainly goes some way to answering that very question. The history of the British Isles is truly fascinating.
The history of the English is fascinating really: how did a small island nation come to have a great international empire and provide the international language? I imagine it came from a combination of being a hard-to-invade island, a competent seafaring people, but also missionary zeal to spread Christianity around the world. As easy as it is to make critical judgments through 21st century moral lenses, or even indulge in Tom’s tongue-in-cheek cynicism, it has to be admired.
The international language thing comes from the USA and Hollywood. Everyone wants to be American. Kids in the UK talk with an American accent. Certainly, EFL scholars almost all talk American. Consider the word ‘research’ which was always re-search but has now become re-search. There are many others.
Not remotely “everyone” …..
Additionally, wanting to have a standard of living as high as America is not remotely the same as “wanting to be American”
Some Americans might think that “Everyone wants to be an American”— and, sadly, that delusion shaped a significant part of American foreign policy during the last thirty or forty years.
Tom Holland’s point about England’s debt to Ireland is reinforced by the fact that so many of the greatest writers in our language come from that nation, with an influence and richness of speech and writing entirely out of proportion to their numbers.
International language? I well remember that, in around 1985, my boss at work, who was born in Iran and educated largely in Europe and the USA, said “The triumph of English [as the modern equivalent of Latin] is certain.”
I assumed he meant because of the world-wide spread of the British Empire and now of its successor, American political, economic and cultural influence. He acknowledged that those played a part. But he said the main reason was the unique flexibility of the English language — the facts that meaning depends almost entirely on syntax; that it has abandoned the essentials of language gender and case; that grammar can be butchered and one can still make sense of it; and that the base vocabulary necessary for simplest communication required fewer words than any other major language.
All this well before the internet, and from a man fluent in five languages.
Splendid, spot on, bravo!
Agree about the simplicity of the language and ease of basic communication but the internationalisation of films and music has played its part. My vet in France spoke fluent English – he explained it by his being part of the MTV generation (and I didn’t even know at the time what MTV was).
From Canada to New Zealand, Australia to Africa, plus India and many others besides, English became the national language or the language of commerce, law and as a common interchange (lingua franca).
The US has enhanced its position as the language of film, the internet, etc. and reinforced its use in Japan, South America, etc. US spelling and syntax is ‘different to’ the British (which was once ‘different from’ the former in many cases).
Much US syntax actually preserves English usage of the C18. “Meet with” as opposed to “meet”, for example. One has to be careful before condemning those doggone Americanisms.
Another factor is that the computer keyboard is designed around Western alphabets and is unsuitable for pictogram based languages. This has undoubtedly held back the spread of first Japanese and then Mandarin that might otherwise have occurred over the past 60 years.
The international language thing comes from America and Hollywood. Everyone wants to copy the Americans. Kids in the UK today often speak with an American accent and many Chinese speak American. Consider the word ‘research’ which has always been research but is now research. There are many, many others.
English was established as the “voice of authority” well before the birth of Hollywood and the pernicious influence it has subsequently developed.
In 1902, the British Empire encompassed a quarter of the World’s population and a quarter of its land surface area.
Maritime Law was defined in English, the 0 degree Meridian went through Greenwich, and but for 1914-18 there would have been a ‘Scramble for China’ from which ‘we’ would have emerged with the Lion’s share.
Coterminous with Hollywood was the birth of the BBC World Service, the ‘cultural jewel in the crown’ of Empire by any standards, and a massive disseminator of the English language for the benefit of all.
Thanks be to God.
Yo, Dood!
Sadly, you are correct Sir!
You is right too ….
I’m not sure I agree. In the days I used to travel Eastern Europe and the Middle East it was our footballers people would ask about.
Nevertheless, English comes from England………
And Germany, and Norway and France and …
It is the ultimate mongrel.
Most people in the world don’t speak English but if they want certain careers such as finance or trade they will learn English/American, just as Scottish , Irish & Welsh who wanted to ‘get ahead’ learned it as well.This coincided with the British Empire, so from about 18th century English became a more important language than French .The Americans, though breaking away from us, still retained the language, which is why Declaration of Independence is written in English , not French ( who were their financial benefactors)
So God was (sorry “is”) English. Now I can make sense of your love of Boris.
‘God’, if such a thing exists may possibly be English. ‘He/She could do far worse.
Boris on the other hand is not English.
Had he stood up for the Northern Ireland Veterans I might’ve thought differently about him but he didn’t. Thus I am not an admirer of Mr Johnson, contrary to your opinion.
Gods are usually made in the image and with the morality of their creators, unfortunately. At least the Ionians had a sense of ideal human beauty and awareness of the Fibonacci sequence, so their gods were beautiful, if terrible.
Boris may not be English, I know not, but but he is a perfect combination of English and American buffoonery, false bravura and arrogant self importance that seems to appeal to the decedents of British and American rednecks, where pride is valued more than knowledge; belief more than thought; arrogance more than self awareness; and image more than honesty.
You are correct.
In fact as Tacitus* might have put it:
“Consensu omnium capax imperii nisi imperasset” = ‘Everyone agreed that he was capable of ruling until he actually got the job’.
(*Tacitus on Galba)
Looks like you edited out the “offending” sentence, but left the original in tact …. so now I agree with the sentiment of the “super spreader” that Hollywood turned into … 🙂
British children more often speak with faux Jamaican patois rather than American.
“but also missionary zeal to spread Christianity around the world”
Certainly not in the beginning*, at least not with the wonderful East India Company, who specifically banned ‘God botherers’. Profit & Plunder was the driving force of Empire until at least the mid nineteenth century, when the pernicious arrival of the Oxford Movement started to change things into a Evangelical Crusade, with appalling results.
The only exception being the bunch of East Anglian Puritan nutters who established the settlements in New England in a futile attempt to establish a new Sion. In other words a land where they could practice their ‘religious freedom’ by persecuting others! (Salem etc).
(* the first decade of the 17th century ).
Two possibly more important factors were the establishment of the Bank of England under William III, and the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the 18th century initially in Great Britain.
To which one MUST add the industrial revolution, and the consequent export of technology.
My theory is the geographical accident of being an island of a certain size, more conducive to stability and homogeneity than land borders resulting in easier development of government and prosperity.
Then, it was generally fertile (hence sheep), and with a good number of harbours encouraging fishing and trade, initially coastal, but easily extended.
Finally, it found copious coal and iron ore, to add to the tin and copper already exploited for hundreds of years.
Maybe God played a small part, too.
One should add that communication and transport via sea was a lot faster and more economical than by land, so Britain was a well-connected country.
After Latin and Greek, Irish is one of the oldest written vernacular languages in Europe. From the 6th to the 9th century, roughly half of all literary output in western Europe was written by Irish monks, which is one reason why Ken Clarke argued they had saved western civilization. Johannes Scotus Eriugena was the only philosopher from this era to make the cut in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.
One might also argue that it was the Arabs, or Islam that “saved” what we have today of ancient Greek writing and who advanced science during Europe’s long winter of war and religious myopia. The Arab part of Spain around year 1000 had seventeen universities, the rest of Europe only two, where the students probably studied little but religion. It was not until the flowering of Humanism and the rediscovery of ancient knowledge that the European mind awoke. The church fought back, of course, as Galileo knows, and we are still not free of Religion’s blinkers.
Oddly things have completely reversed. It is now the Arabs who are completely under the stifling religious yoke. It is now they who must look outside their own world, to the west, or east, to get the best enlightened education.
Great point on the contribution of Islamic scholars to western civilization and thought, and not just in conserving classical texts. Where would we be without algebra or algorithms?
Yes, the decimal system 0-9 and the golden ratio, 1:1.61803 were brought to Europe by Leonardo da Pisa in early 1200s from North Africa. The so called Fibonacci sequence is the very structure of Nature, known in ancient times.
What a pity it wasn’t the duodecimal system – so much more flexible.
Science has proved the God that Failed, …as we are about to go over the cliff. Better had we been never to learn of Aristotle.
A. was and arrogant B word “Natural child”. Writing down his thoughts observations and ideas, as if anyone would ever be interested. May Cronus’ son Hades torment him for all eternity.
Oh ye Gods, protect us from all knowledge. Teach us to tremble again at the bolts from Zeus, from the ire of Poseidon and from the treachery of the Fates. Replace our burning desire to know and our arrogance to understand with fearful obedience to the all powerful deities.
Are you referring to Kenneth Clark (Baron Clark, OM etc)?
Yes I am – the first part of Civilization, The Skin of our Teeth, alludes to the contribution of Irish monks to European scholarship.
I remember it well.
Clark was one of our best, although personally I preferred the incomparable Alec Clifton-Taylor.
If the English (British) owe a debt to Africa because of slavery, they have the same debt to Ireland now. If the problems of Arabia are wholly caused by Sykes-Picot, then Britain owes a debt to all of the lands in Arabia. We joined a stupid war with Iraq so we owe Iraq for that one. In fact, England (Britain) is probably responsible for all of the problems in the USA and Australia. The French, too, have a lot to pay for.
But wait. Our problems arose because we were one of the first to subscribe to democracy and that came from the Greeks. So, when the Greeks pay us, we will pass it on to the rest.
Can’t we just be responsible for all the troubles in the world and they can send us the bill?
‘They’ already have!
Encouraging article. Many thanks Mr Holland. A welcome reminder of how good relations between the peoples of these great islands once were, with the hope that they will be again. It’s easier perhaps to discern what went wrong since Bede’s time. Part of the solution therefore might be to rediscover what made things so right between Irish and English in his time.
Holland’s Anti English bias shines through everything he writes. Patrick was captured by Irish pirates and sold into slavery there. Dublin subsequently became the largest slave market in Europe. Where is the balance? The English are always portrayed as mindless savages in need of “civilising”
Eh! Unfortunately for you, there was no Dublin until about five centuries after St. Patrick … Sooo …
You’re right though, there was plenty of slavery on both sides of the Irish Sea during his time. Patrick was a slave taken by Irish traffickers, but so too his earliest surviving writing is the ‘Epistola contra Coroticum’, a letter of excommunication directed at a British warlord and slaver (Ceredig?) who was taking many, young women especially, from Ireland, including some of Patrick’s own recent converts. Hence the rage in the letter.
I would not say that relations between England and Ireland are a nightmare. Yes, there is a conflict between Irish Republican sentiment and United Kingdom sentiment, which sadly was not avoided by the actions of some, especially around 1914, and still persists, but my personal experience is that English and Irish get along very well.
It is also remarkable that you never mention Scotland, although there is a passing reference to the Clyde and the Picts.
They no longer are ‘a nightmare’, thank God (who does exist). Relations are now very good between both countries. Relations between ‘ordinary’ Irishmen and Englishmen (‘men’ not excluding women, children, assorted others, etc.) have always been good. Relations have improved relative to the extent to which England has (almost, nearly, finally) left Ireland to her own devices. Weird, isn’t it?
They’re taking another downturn as the Irish side with mainland European authoritarianism, once again reigniting the danger the more liberal UK faces.
Outside, there be monsters, they talk funny, want to steal our money, our women … etc. Outside be Rome, Spain, pope, antichrist, Napoleon, Brussels, Strasbourg …. Yada, yada. Ireland was forcibly cut off from contact with the rest of Europe for three centuries, isolated and forcibly impoverished, economically and culturally by our nearest neighbours. We learned our lesson. That will not be happening again, thank you.
Ok, if you feel safer under the Germans.
So you would welcome the end of the common travel area?
I cannot think of another country in the entire world that gets the benefit at no cost that Ireland gets from the CTA.
Speaking as an Irishman, yes I would be happy to see the Common Travel Area scrapped. It enables a brain drain of our educated citizens and it helps to keep us partly assimilated in the UK over a century after our revolution to break away from British rule. Irish individuals do benefit from it but it damages Ireland in a broader sense.
I love the way the CTA is assumed a gift bestowed on us ungrateful Paddys, by our benign overlords. When will this ignorance and faux superiority ever end, I ask? In any case, it was made obsolete by FOM under the EU. Now that Brexit has taken place, it is likely to become even less relevant. It was also arguably a brain-drain on the population of Ireland for many decades. You forget my friend that the UK, London especially, benefitted considerably in the 19th and 20th centuries from a ready supply of cheap (desperate) Irish labour. I won’t get into what the cause of the desperation was in the first place. We’re all (hopefully) trying to move on from those darker days. But lose the snooty, nobody’s buying it anymore.
How anyone who calls himself a historian can speak about Anglo-Irish relations – and even mention Patrick’s ‘kidnap’ – without mentioning the Viking settlements in Ireland and their role in the North African slave trade is a travesty.
She wasn’t selling the Pope this time ,rather some ‘cheap’ internet course to sensitise people to the emotional anguish of the kiddywinkies.She’s possibly working for Camila Batmanghelidhj and the SNP
Actually I read something about the Iran government using twitter trolls to promote the break up of the UK and influence the election in Scotland.The timing of Odone’s lovefest for Wee Krankee can’t be a coincidence
The comment section on this article today sounds uncannily like the “what did the Romans ever do for us” Monty Python sketch. Lols.
Actually, does anyone agree with me here: I have found the English quite like the Irish, Scots and Welsh, but for some reason lots of those three nations hate the English! Or is it just the rugger?
The English barely existed then in the way we understand them today. Probably more like invading Saxons or Normans or Vikings from the continent. Throw in a few pagans, Romans and Celts. This bizarre contemporising of acts and people hundreds of years ago when people thought the earth was flat, and leeches cured all, is frankly bizarre. So the answers to the OP question… What do you mean by English and Irish exactly? What relevance is it today? And what makes you think we ‘owe’ anyone anything???
During the devolution debates of the 1970s a correspondent to a newspaper – wasn’t it the Times? – proposed a new constitutional relationship for the peoples of Ireland and Britain, under a new national name: Islands of the North Atlantic, or ‘IONA’ for short. A long shot, but who shall say it couldn’t work?
Nothing.
wow, didn’t realize Unherd was now teaching Catholic school part-time
So is the Spectator. Cristina Odone turned up today.
Bravo Tom.
Thanks to the idiotic Edict of Milan (1066AUC/313AD), the cancer of Christianity rapidly spread across the Roman Empire, even to the remote Province of Britannia.
By the process of osmosis, long before the arrival (St) Patrick, the benighted Irish were also infected, thus destroying a thousand years or more of vibrant Gaelic Culture, for the dubious benefits of a ‘Land of Saints & Scholars’.
The fact the Irish managed to reinfect our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors can only be regarded with deep regret.
Deep regret by some, delight by others!
It wasn’t St Patrick who destroyed the ‘vibrant Gaelic Culture’.
Not singlehanded I’ll grant you.
Such a shame England was reinfected. The country could have still had druids, human sacrifices, and wicker men instead of those loathsome vicars, beetle drives, and church fetes.
There was plenty of human sacrifice or whatever you want to call it under Mother Church.
Until a few years ago when you ordered a steak in the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, you were invariably asked “ how do you want it cooked Sir, Latimer, Cranmer or Ridley?
You could also argue that the Romans, who gave human sacrifice as an additional reason for stamping out Druids, had a form of human sacrifice of their own, in gladitorial games and the like – and, indeed, that a form of human sacrifice existed under various forms of communism (from the USSR to Cambodia) and the Nazjs. Possibly harking back to celtic druidry, there was even a strand of blood sacrifice to Mother Ireland in some Irish republican “theology”. Killing seems endemic to human nature.
However, the teachings of Christianity are a valuable corrective to this human tendency to violence and murder, even if they are not always followed. Even with the historical abuses of Christian Churches, it does not compare in savagery with Druidism as practiced by the Celts. As Julius Caesar put it, the Druids “believe that the gods delight in the slaughter of prisoners and criminals, and when the supply of captives runs short, they sacrifice even the innocent” – Gallic Wars, Book 6, as I recall.
More nauseating hagiography from Mr Holland.