Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T19:07:44.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Local History and National History: The Quest for the Peoples of England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Charles Phythian-Adams
Charles Phythian-Adams
Affiliation:
Department of English Local History, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is arguable that what has most bedevilled the recent academic practice of history in Britain has been the triumph over integrative history - or that mode of history which seeks to reconstitute and to explain the multi-dimensional nature of past experience - of what might be called the disintegrative historical approach, that is, specialised thematic history. The former mode includes local history, national history (by which here is meant much more than the political or constitutional history of the Nation State), international history - even histories of ‘civilisations’ or of the world - and takes ‘society’ as the central organising principle over time. The latter mode comprises, for example, political history, demographic history, economic history and so on through to such exotic sub-species of the so-called new social history as the histories of class, gender, sex, crime or leisure. Put crudely, if this second type of historical approach concerns itself with particular categories of persons or activities, with pre-selected processes and with highly specific tendencies in the relatively short term, then the first has to do with the fluctuating development of recognisable social entities in the round, and with their changing interrelationships usually over longer time scales. Instructive and fascinating as is undoubtedly the detailed thematic approach, and vital as it continues to be as the indispensable technical preliminary to the accurate reconstruction of the past in a multi-dimensional sense, it is hardly deniable that - as the Victorians recognised - it is the broader interdisciplinary approach which should represent the ultimate aspiration of the historical practitioner, simply because it is that which is most culturally relevant to the education of the citizen. It is equally clear, however, that few professional historians today are seeking either to construct their undergraduate syllabuses on such lines or to write connectedly for a wider public about such matters over periods much longer than a century or two.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1991 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

2 Phythian-Adams, Charles, ‘Local History, English’, Cannon, John et al. (eds.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians (Oxford, 1988), pp. 250–2Google Scholar. This theme is further elaborated in my Helen Sutermeister Memorial Lecture, ‘Territory and Belonging”, to be published by the University of East Anglia.

3 Phythian-Adams, Charles, Re-thinking English Local History, Department of English Local History Occasional Papers, 4th ser., I (Leicester, 1987), pp. 1–14.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., pp. 15–26.

5 Hechter, Michael, Internal Colonialism: the Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Pocock, J.G.A., ‘The limits and divisions of British history: in search of an unknown subject’, American Historical Review 87 (1982), pp. 311–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kearney, Hugh, The British Isles: a History of Four Nations (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Robbins, Keith, Nineteenth-Century Britain: England, Scotland, and Wales; the Making of a Nation, (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Davies, R.R., Domination and Conquest: the Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1110–1300 (Cambridge, 1990).Google Scholar

6 Phythian-Adams, , Re-thinking, pp. 38–42.Google Scholar

7 Langton, John, ‘The industrial revolution and the regional geography of England’, Institute of British Geographers Transactions, New series, X, 2 (1984), 145–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hudson, Pat (ed.), Regions and Industries: a Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 McKinley, Richard, The Surnames of Lancashire, English Surnames Series, IV (London, 1981), pp. 402–21.Google Scholar

9 Alan Everitt, ‘River and wold: reflections on the historical origin of regions and pays”, Everitt, Alan, Landscape and Community in England (London, 1985), pp. 41–59Google Scholar; Fox, H.S.A., ‘The people of the wolds in English settlement history’, Aston, Michael, Austin, David and Dyer, Christopher (eds.), The Rural Settlements of Medieval England: Studies Dedicated to Maurice Beresford and John Hurst (Oxford, 1989), pp. 77–101.Google Scholar

10 Davies, W. and Vierck, H., ‘The contexts of Tribal Hidage: social aggregates and settlement patterns’, Frümittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974), pp. 223–93.Google Scholar

11 This matter is discussed in more detail in my Sutermeister Memorial lecture; see note 2 above.

12 Phythian-Adams, Charles (ed.), The Norman Conquest of Leicestershire and Rutland: a Regional Introduction to Domesday Book, Leicester Museums Publication 73 (Leicester, 1986), pp. 9–10, 18.Google Scholar

13 As in note 11 above.

14 Wilson, James, ‘Introduction to the Cumberland Domesday, early Pipe Rolls, and Testa de Nevill’, V.C.H., Cumberland, I, pp. 308–11Google Scholar; Stenton, F.M., ‘Pre-Conquest Westmorland’, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Westmorland, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (London, 1936), pp. xlviii–iv.Google Scholar

15 Finberg, H.P.R., The Local Historian and his Theme, Department of English Local History Occasional Papers, I (Leicester, 1952), p. 9.Google Scholar

16 Higham, Nicholas and Jones, Barrie, The Carvetii (Gloucester, 1985), pp. 9–14Google Scholar; cf. Higham, Nick, The Northern Counties to A.D. 1000 (London and New York, 1986), pp. 145–9.Google Scholar

17 Higham, and Jones, , Carvetii, pp. 22–34, 106–10.Google Scholar

18 Higham, , Northern Counties, pp. 250–6Google Scholar. The known facts about Rheged are conveniently tabulated in Clarkson, T.J., Rheged: a Brief Guide and Introduction, the Mithil Society (Manchester, 1988).Google Scholar

19 Fellows-Jensen, Gillian, Scandinavian Settlement Names in the North-West, Navnestudier udgivet af Institut for Navneforskning 25 (Copenhagen, 1985), maps on pp. 268 and 272.Google Scholar

20 This has been challenged by Kapelle, William E., The Norman Conquest of the North: the Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 (North Carolina and London, 1979), pp. 148–57.Google Scholar

21 Bailey, Richard N. and Cramp, Rosemary, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture, II, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands (Oxford, 1988), p. 4Google Scholar; Bailey, Richard N., Viking Age Sculpture (London, 1980), pp. 223–9.Google Scholar

22 Quoted in Poole, A.L., From Domesday Book to Magna Carta 1087–1216 (Second edition, Oxford, 1955), p. 265Google Scholar; Kapelle, , Norman Conquest, pp. 200, 268, n.39.Google Scholar

23 Colvin, H.M. (ed.), The History of the King's Works, II, The Middle Ages, (London, 1963), pp. 595–6.Google Scholar

24 Barrow, G.W.S., ‘The Anglo-Scottish border’, Northern History 1 (1966), pp. 21–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Bouch, C.M.L., Prelates and People of the Lake Counties: History of the Diocese of Carlisle 1133–1933 (Kendal, 1948), chapt. IVGoogle Scholar; Winchester, Angus, Landscape and Society in Medieval Cumbria (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 44–7Google Scholar; Graham, T.H.B., ‘The Debateable Land’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archœological Society 12, 33–58Google Scholar; Colvin, (ed.), The History of the King's Works, IV, 1485–1660 pt.ii (London, 1982), p. 613 and plate 49.Google Scholar

26 Williams, Penry, ‘The northern borderland under the early Stuarts’, Bell, H.E. and Ollard, R.L. (eds.), Historical Essays 1600–1750 Presented to David Ogg (London, 1963), pp. 1–17.Google Scholar

27 Provost, W.A.J., ‘The turnpike and custom post at Alisonbank’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society 73, N.S. (1973), pp. 282–98.Google Scholar

28 Beresford, Maurice, New Towns of the Middle Ages: Town Plantation in England, Wales and Gascony (London, 1967), pp. 83, 415–16Google Scholar; Caine, C., ‘The fair at Ravenglass”, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society 21, N.S. (1921), pp. 237–52.Google Scholar

29 Collingwood, W.G., Elizabethan Keswick: Extracts from the Original Account Books, 1564–1577, of the German Miners, in the Archives of Augsburg, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society Tract Series, 8 (1912), pp. 93, 79, 104.Google Scholar

30 Wood, Oliver, West Cumberland Coal 1600–1982/3, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society E.S. 24 (1988), pp. 3–64Google Scholar; Beckett, J.V., Coal and Tobacco: the Lowthers and the Economic Development of West Cumberland 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Hughes, Edward, North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century, II, Cumberland and Westmorland 1700–1830 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 22–3, chapts. V, VI, XIGoogle Scholar; Defoe, Daniel, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London, 1974), pp. 315–16.Google Scholar

32 Mawson, D.J.W., ‘The canal that never was: the story of the proposed Newcastle/Maryport canal 1794–1799’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society 75, N.S. (1975), pp. 300–26Google Scholar; Parsons, William and White, William, A History, Directory and Gazetteer of Cumberland and Westmorland (Leeds, 1829), pp. 150–1Google Scholar; T. Bulmer and Co., History, Topography, and Directory of Cumberland (Preston, 1901), pp. 840–3, 214–15Google Scholar; Wood, West Cumberland Coal, chapts. III, IV, V; Lancaster, J.W. and Wattleworth, D.R., The Iron and Steel Industry of West Cumberland: an Historical Survey (Workington, 1977)Google Scholar; Marshall, J.D. and Walton, John K., The Lake Counties from 1830 to the Mid-twentieth Century: a Study in Regional Change (Manchester, 1981), chapter 2.Google Scholar

33 Parsons, and White, , Directory, pp. 45–6, 405Google Scholar; Widdup, Henry L., The Story of Christianity in Cumbria: a Geographical Appraisal (Kendal, 1981), pp. 110–11, 122.Google Scholar

34 Marshall, and Walton, , Lake Counties from 1830, pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

35 Price, Glanville, The Languages of Britain (London, 1984), p. 170.Google Scholar

36 Marshall, and Walton, , Lake Counties from 1830, pp. 84–6.Google Scholar

37 Tomlin, R.S.O., ‘Non Coritani sed Corieltauvi’, The Antiquaries Journal 63 (1983), pp. 353–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salway, Peter, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981), pp. 43–4.Google Scholar

38 Dumville, David, ‘Essex, Middle Anglia, and the expansion of Mercia in the southeast Midlands’, Bassett, Steven (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989), pp. 131–4.Google Scholar

39 Phythian-Adams, (ed.), Norman Conquest of Leicestershire and Rutland, pp. 20–1.Google Scholar

40 Beckett, J.V., The East Midlands from A.D. 1000 (London and New York, 1988), pp. 156–62, 191–4, 224–5Google Scholar; Patterson, A. Temple, Radical Leicester: a History of Leicester 1780–1850 (Leicester, 1954)Google Scholar; Simmons, Jack, Leicester Past and Present, II, Modern City 1860–1974 (London, 1974), pp. 1–61Google Scholar; Robbins, , Nineteenth Century Britain, pp. 82–3, 93, 118–20, 123, 163.Google Scholar

41 Simmons, J., ‘Communications and transport’, Pye, N. (ed.), Leicester and its Region (Leicester, 1972), pp. 315–18Google Scholar; Patterson, Temple, Radical Leicester, chapts. II, XIV; pp. 276, 278.Google Scholar