Yes, I quite agreed with Carlyle’s thoughts on that. By 1066, a new form of leadership and structure was needed if the Anglos were to do anything great. The Normans provided it
First, your observation about the Duke of Orleans inspired me to look up the current heads of the House of Orleans and the House of Bourbon. It seems that the apples didn't fall far from their respective trees.
Second, if you really consider the Anglo-Saxons to be as you described, then you need to spend more time with Beowulf, The Wanderer, and Caedmon's Hymn. You are missing half of your cultural heritage by disparaging them so.
I think the Anglo-Saxons had many good qualities, most notably their sense of personal honor. However, they did need the Normans to mold them into a great and explosive people, to do something more than rule Albion. Left to their own devices, they never would have conquered India.
This is the full referenced Carlyle passage:
For I have remarked that, of all things, a Nation needs to be drilled; and no Nation that has not first been governed by so-called " Tyrants," and held tight to the curb till it bocame perfect in its paces and thoroughly amenable to rule and law, and heartily respectful of the same, and totally abhorrent of the want of the same, ever came to much in this world. England itself, in foolish quarters of England, still howls and execrates lamentably over its William Conqueror, and rigorous line of Normans and Plantagenets; but without them, if you will consider well, what had it ever been? A gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering about in potbellied equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance, such as leads to the high places of this Universe, and the golden mountaintops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn. Their very hallotboxes and suffrages, what they call their "Liberty," if these mean "Liberty," and are such a road to Heaven, Anglo-Saxon highroad thither--could never have been possible for them on such terms. How could they? Nothing but collision, intolerable interpressure (as of men not perpendicular), and consequent battle often supervening, could have been appointed those undrilled Anglo-Saxons; their potbellied equanimity itself continuing liable to perpetual interruptions, as in the Heptarchy time. An enlightened Public does not reflect on these things, at present; but will again, by and by. Looking with human eyes over the England that now is, and over the America and the Australia, from pole to pole; and then listening to the Constitutional litanies of Dryasdust, and his lantation son the old Norman and Plantagenet Kings, and his recognition of departed merit and causes of effects, --the mind of man is struck dumb!
The sale of peerages, baronetcies and knighthoods was normal throughout the entirety of modern British history. It was undertaken by kings and prime ministers alike.
The connection between cash and status was acknowledged directly by the great antiquarian John Selden in the 17th century when he said that nobility was essentially "ancient riches".
There is a case to be made for aristocratic values, but it needs to be done realistically and without exagerration.
And the Foreign and Colonial Office detested Rhodesians because of their modest social origins in England, which formed a contrast with the British settlers in Kenya who were invariably from the upper classes.
This is an oversimplification. Peerages were mainly sold under the first two Stuarts, enough to be about a third of the peerage, before the attrition of war. That then didn’t really return at any scale until Lloyd George; most of those families promoted into the peerage or promoted with in it during the 18th and 19th centuries were old families
The Kenyan group was largely dissipated, and so doesn’t embody the spirit here described. The modest origin Rhodesians who remained modest were always around, but that was mainly a 1950s phenomenon. The country was also full of Virginia-style large farmers, whether self made in the Byrd and Morkel mold or already established like the Lees and Duke of Montrose/Barons Plunkett. Either way, they much better embodied the spirit of excellence, and were largely Anglo in origin
I stand corrected. Presumably the Court Whigs were less venal than the Stuarts. One would never have imagined.
As for alleged dissipation in Kenya, you give the game away with your choice of words: ‘spirit here described’. The settlers in Kenya were from the ruling class at the peak of imperial power. If you remove them from consideration on the grounds that they somehow failed to embody an abstract ‘spirit’ you are playing a game. And ‘dissipation’ is hardly unaristocratic at least amongst real life aristos.
The larger question, which you have not addressed, is what exactly is ‘aristocratic’ about commercial agriculture in the colonies. Agriculture in the colonies was typically a commercial enterprise. Large scale agriculture produced for the global market.
It might help to read more Defoe and less Mallory. Just a suggestion.
PS I love your work but the earnest tone in this piece is just a bit too much.
You are being very unfair to the late-imperial crowd in Kenya. Regarded by whom? American readers of gossip columns, movie-goers, tik-tok influencers? Why would anyone place any value on the prejudices and small-minded assumptions of such people.
I yield to no one in my admiration of the Rhodesians. But no one in Rhodesia or Northern Rhodesia ever made claims about forming an aristocracy. That is simply not how they saw themselves or how they were regarded by Westminster/Whitehall at the time. People went there to better themselves. Rhodes saw colonial expansion as an opportunity for strivers in England, not toffs.
And I have known a few ex-Africans myself. They’d laugh at the claims that you are making on their behalf.
The Minister of Colonial Affairs, for one, thought this of the Kenyan elite. As recorded of him in The Serpent and the Stag: “The Duke's radical conscience was disturbed by what was happening in Kenya. He was surprisingly well-informed on the subject. He had known and admired Lord Francis Scott, one of the pioneer settlers in Kenya, and another settler, Mervyn Ridley, had been his A.D.C. in Canada. From men like these he had heard about the new wave of rich, irresponsible, European playboy settlers, some of whom would later form the notorious "Happy-Valley Set" in Kenya. Such people represented exactly the sort of smart, indefensible society of which the Duke had always strongly disapproved; and according to Harold Macmillan, with whom he discussed the issues at the time, "he thought it intolerable to agree to turning Kenya permanently into a playground for the dregs of the British upper classes."
Similarly, Ron Morkel, a successful Rhodesian farmer and soldier, notes, in his history of the region: “In general, the Kenyan farmer was born in England and went out to the "colonies" to make a better life; "back home" to him meant "good old England." When Kenya experienced the "Mau Mau" (the equivalent of Rhodesia's freedom fighters or ter-rorists) uprisings that would bring independence, most of the white farmers went "back home." There was no "back home" for us Rhodesians. We were home.”
Stuarts are basically the modern era. The golden age was over. The crown being capable of giving *anyone* a peerage was what led to their downfall. Do you know how the liberals forced through the Parliament Act of 1911? The PM threatened to appoint as many peerages as possible until the House of Lords complied.
That skips over a good bit of important history. The post-medieval golden age was the 18th century until the end of the 19th century. That's when they really accomplished the most. A few new peers were created. Most came from established families. Generally, they had the right spirit and did exciting things abroad while stewarding their heritage and patrimony at home well.
Yes, George V was awful in allowing that threat to hold water, and the aristocracy should have fought back harder against it. The older families did, with the resistance led by Bendor, of the Norman Grosvenor line, and Lord Willoughby de Broke.
I wonder if part of what doomed the British was the legislative power usurping the executive power via the "Prime Minister". Montesquieu said that the British would lose their liberty once the legislative power became more corrupt than the executive power.
Yes, I suspect so. I think also the belief in law as an arbiter of right and wrong, and thus impediment to action, rather than just knowing what is right based on culture/heritage/etc plays into this. The old Normans would have just gutted Churchill and Lloyd George and been done with it
The Normans truly are underrated. I get annoyed by the "Norman yoke" mentality - as if Anglo-Saxons are the real oppressed minority.
Yes, I quite agreed with Carlyle’s thoughts on that. By 1066, a new form of leadership and structure was needed if the Anglos were to do anything great. The Normans provided it
A couple observations:
First, your observation about the Duke of Orleans inspired me to look up the current heads of the House of Orleans and the House of Bourbon. It seems that the apples didn't fall far from their respective trees.
Second, if you really consider the Anglo-Saxons to be as you described, then you need to spend more time with Beowulf, The Wanderer, and Caedmon's Hymn. You are missing half of your cultural heritage by disparaging them so.
Yes they’ve been rotten for awhile
I think the Anglo-Saxons had many good qualities, most notably their sense of personal honor. However, they did need the Normans to mold them into a great and explosive people, to do something more than rule Albion. Left to their own devices, they never would have conquered India.
This is the full referenced Carlyle passage:
For I have remarked that, of all things, a Nation needs to be drilled; and no Nation that has not first been governed by so-called " Tyrants," and held tight to the curb till it bocame perfect in its paces and thoroughly amenable to rule and law, and heartily respectful of the same, and totally abhorrent of the want of the same, ever came to much in this world. England itself, in foolish quarters of England, still howls and execrates lamentably over its William Conqueror, and rigorous line of Normans and Plantagenets; but without them, if you will consider well, what had it ever been? A gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering about in potbellied equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance, such as leads to the high places of this Universe, and the golden mountaintops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn. Their very hallotboxes and suffrages, what they call their "Liberty," if these mean "Liberty," and are such a road to Heaven, Anglo-Saxon highroad thither--could never have been possible for them on such terms. How could they? Nothing but collision, intolerable interpressure (as of men not perpendicular), and consequent battle often supervening, could have been appointed those undrilled Anglo-Saxons; their potbellied equanimity itself continuing liable to perpetual interruptions, as in the Heptarchy time. An enlightened Public does not reflect on these things, at present; but will again, by and by. Looking with human eyes over the England that now is, and over the America and the Australia, from pole to pole; and then listening to the Constitutional litanies of Dryasdust, and his lantation son the old Norman and Plantagenet Kings, and his recognition of departed merit and causes of effects, --the mind of man is struck dumb!
The sale of peerages, baronetcies and knighthoods was normal throughout the entirety of modern British history. It was undertaken by kings and prime ministers alike.
The connection between cash and status was acknowledged directly by the great antiquarian John Selden in the 17th century when he said that nobility was essentially "ancient riches".
There is a case to be made for aristocratic values, but it needs to be done realistically and without exagerration.
And the Foreign and Colonial Office detested Rhodesians because of their modest social origins in England, which formed a contrast with the British settlers in Kenya who were invariably from the upper classes.
This is an oversimplification. Peerages were mainly sold under the first two Stuarts, enough to be about a third of the peerage, before the attrition of war. That then didn’t really return at any scale until Lloyd George; most of those families promoted into the peerage or promoted with in it during the 18th and 19th centuries were old families
The Kenyan group was largely dissipated, and so doesn’t embody the spirit here described. The modest origin Rhodesians who remained modest were always around, but that was mainly a 1950s phenomenon. The country was also full of Virginia-style large farmers, whether self made in the Byrd and Morkel mold or already established like the Lees and Duke of Montrose/Barons Plunkett. Either way, they much better embodied the spirit of excellence, and were largely Anglo in origin
I stand corrected. Presumably the Court Whigs were less venal than the Stuarts. One would never have imagined.
As for alleged dissipation in Kenya, you give the game away with your choice of words: ‘spirit here described’. The settlers in Kenya were from the ruling class at the peak of imperial power. If you remove them from consideration on the grounds that they somehow failed to embody an abstract ‘spirit’ you are playing a game. And ‘dissipation’ is hardly unaristocratic at least amongst real life aristos.
The larger question, which you have not addressed, is what exactly is ‘aristocratic’ about commercial agriculture in the colonies. Agriculture in the colonies was typically a commercial enterprise. Large scale agriculture produced for the global market.
It might help to read more Defoe and less Mallory. Just a suggestion.
PS I love your work but the earnest tone in this piece is just a bit too much.
Then Kenyan elite you are describing was specifically regarded as being a collection of drunks and ne’er-do-wells who went there to rot.
Aristocracy is rule by the best. The Rhodesians, like the Virginians, embodied that far better
You are being very unfair to the late-imperial crowd in Kenya. Regarded by whom? American readers of gossip columns, movie-goers, tik-tok influencers? Why would anyone place any value on the prejudices and small-minded assumptions of such people.
I yield to no one in my admiration of the Rhodesians. But no one in Rhodesia or Northern Rhodesia ever made claims about forming an aristocracy. That is simply not how they saw themselves or how they were regarded by Westminster/Whitehall at the time. People went there to better themselves. Rhodes saw colonial expansion as an opportunity for strivers in England, not toffs.
And I have known a few ex-Africans myself. They’d laugh at the claims that you are making on their behalf.
The Minister of Colonial Affairs, for one, thought this of the Kenyan elite. As recorded of him in The Serpent and the Stag: “The Duke's radical conscience was disturbed by what was happening in Kenya. He was surprisingly well-informed on the subject. He had known and admired Lord Francis Scott, one of the pioneer settlers in Kenya, and another settler, Mervyn Ridley, had been his A.D.C. in Canada. From men like these he had heard about the new wave of rich, irresponsible, European playboy settlers, some of whom would later form the notorious "Happy-Valley Set" in Kenya. Such people represented exactly the sort of smart, indefensible society of which the Duke had always strongly disapproved; and according to Harold Macmillan, with whom he discussed the issues at the time, "he thought it intolerable to agree to turning Kenya permanently into a playground for the dregs of the British upper classes."
Similarly, Ron Morkel, a successful Rhodesian farmer and soldier, notes, in his history of the region: “In general, the Kenyan farmer was born in England and went out to the "colonies" to make a better life; "back home" to him meant "good old England." When Kenya experienced the "Mau Mau" (the equivalent of Rhodesia's freedom fighters or ter-rorists) uprisings that would bring independence, most of the white farmers went "back home." There was no "back home" for us Rhodesians. We were home.”
Stuarts are basically the modern era. The golden age was over. The crown being capable of giving *anyone* a peerage was what led to their downfall. Do you know how the liberals forced through the Parliament Act of 1911? The PM threatened to appoint as many peerages as possible until the House of Lords complied.
That skips over a good bit of important history. The post-medieval golden age was the 18th century until the end of the 19th century. That's when they really accomplished the most. A few new peers were created. Most came from established families. Generally, they had the right spirit and did exciting things abroad while stewarding their heritage and patrimony at home well.
Yes, George V was awful in allowing that threat to hold water, and the aristocracy should have fought back harder against it. The older families did, with the resistance led by Bendor, of the Norman Grosvenor line, and Lord Willoughby de Broke.
I wonder if part of what doomed the British was the legislative power usurping the executive power via the "Prime Minister". Montesquieu said that the British would lose their liberty once the legislative power became more corrupt than the executive power.
Yes, I suspect so. I think also the belief in law as an arbiter of right and wrong, and thus impediment to action, rather than just knowing what is right based on culture/heritage/etc plays into this. The old Normans would have just gutted Churchill and Lloyd George and been done with it