Is history just there to amuse us? Flickr\/Elliott Brown. Some rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
Waterloo? Yes, I remember it well, not Technology by making everything This may account for the habit we have Easter 2016 and October 2017 will see The Easter Rising presents Britain with There was one fairly recent bicentenary This important history has been The facts clearly offer a different Actuality is not what is sought in these The myth of our lifetimes is that, The delusive complacency of this myth Napoleon had a sense of historical destiny The victory at Waterloo reduced the Since 1815 the \u2018scum of earth\u2019 [that\u2019s Is history just there to amuse us? Flickr\/Elliott Brown. Some rights reserved. Waterloo? Yes, I remember it well, not the actual battle but the museum. I thought it would prove apocryphal, but there really was on display an English newspaper with the headline Corsican Uprising Defeated. Some things never change. Yet, if we truly remember…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe actual battle but the museum. I thought it would prove apocryphal, but there
\nreally was on display an English newspaper with the headline Corsican<\/em> Uprising<\/em> Defeated<\/em>. Some
\nthings never change. Yet, if we truly remember past things, we remember them because
\nthey were so different. Waterloo was perhaps the last great world event before
\ntechnology could record how things looked. A midshipman sketched Napoleon on
\ndeck before he sailed to St Helena. Otherwise it was personal recollections,
\nDavid\u2019s idealized portraits and Madame Tussaud\u2019s waxwork. That was all that was
\navailable. Waterloo signified not only the end of an international war and the restoration
\nof the propertied classes in Europe. It marked the end of human memory as the
\narbiter of history. Thereafter history was to be written by electricity.
\nTechnology would conquer every wilderness and cross every continent. <\/p>\nEndless
\ncommemoration<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\navailable and immediate has made nonsense of history. People now often find it
\ndifficult to imagine the world as it was. Museums theme exhibits so that the
\nexperience is not left to our personal intellect and imagination. It is
\npresented to us as spectacle. It is history as entertainment, a selective
\nrecollection spoon fed to us. The past is no longer another country. It is no
\nlonger the record of events in times past. It is something immediate and
\navailable as a participatory experience, a highly selective nostalgia.<\/p>\n
\nacquired of relentless commemoration. There\u2019s always going to be an anniversary
\nof something. So the act of recollection never rests for long. Some
\nanniversaries are worth celebrating as an occasion for serious assessment and a
\nrevival of interest.<\/p>\n
\ncentenaries worth our attention. It may be timely then to correct popular
\nmyths, as it has been opportune to establish at last the undeniable fact that Napoleon
\nwas not small in stature. He did think not of himself as Corsican.<\/p>\n
\na problem. Although the rebels surrendered, the subsequent history has been one
\nof concessions to a cause that cannot be defeated militarily. A century on there can be no doubt who the victors are. The inheritors of
\nthe Rising are in positions of command throughout Ireland. It will not be easy
\nfor Britain to set a counter-intuitive agenda. On the other hand, the myths
\nwoven round the October Revolution are likely to be aired once more, especially
\nas this commemoration will be one of triumphalist grins and sneers.<\/p>\nWars
\nthat never happened<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nthat was not remembered by the British. And that is a telling omission. Nobody
\nthought to mention the War of 1812. No, I don\u2019t mean Napoleon in Moscow. I mean
\nthe British invasion of the United States. It is astonishing how few people in
\nBritain, whatever their general level of awareness, know anything of this war.
\nIt never happened. Or if it really did happen \u2013 and I\u2019m not sure whether to
\nbelieve you \u2013 it can\u2019t have been serious. In fact it was no mere skirmish. The
\nredcoats reached Washington and burned down the White House. The Siege of New
\nOrleans was the USA\u2019s Stalingrad, and it has not been forgotten in American
\nminds. The British came close to regaining their lost colonies. There followed
\nfurther conflict in years to come. It was not until the Spanish-American War –
\nwhere Britain was an ally of the USA – that hostility ceased.<\/p>\n
\neradicated from British folk memory, and from serious public discourse. The
\npresumption is that Britain and the United States have been allies, culturally
\nand politically, well ever since Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The defeat
\nwas accepted with a good grace, and a harmonious special relationship soon
\nfollowed.<\/p>\n
\nnarrative. The dust took a very long time to settle. Lincoln was born in 1809,
\nlong after the Revolution of 1776. The elderly Thomas Jefferson was President.
\nJefferson remained all his life in British eyes a traitor under sentence of
\ndeath. But, of course, all was forgiven and forgotten when Lincoln made his
\nspectacularly successful visit to London in what year was it, now? Never. It
\ndidn\u2019t happen. In actuality Lincoln very nearly declared war because of British
\nsupport for the Confederacy. [Victoria, incidentally, was all for abolition,
\nunlike her government.]<\/p>\n
\ncommemorations. The intention is to make myth out of history. At times we are
\nthe small, brave island, at other times the mighty empire. These are not
\ndifferent phases in a long narrative of development: they are contradictory
\nversions of how we are intended to see ourselves. Reason demands that we choose
\neither to be the island that stands alone when the world is in conflict, or
\nthat we ruled a good deal of that world until the day before yesterday. The
\nfacts are with the latter. But a perverse patriotism prefers to have it both
\nways in being proud of the civilizing influence of teaching the natives how to
\nmake tea, while not forgetting that we are an island apart from the main.<\/p>\n
\nhaving transformed enlightened colonial rule into a commonwealth of
\ndemocracies, we are now the respected, admired partner of the USA in a
\nrelationship so close we are almost one. Dream on, Britannia.<\/p>\n
\ncomplements the general air of nostalgia. History is there to amuse us. It is
\nthere to assure us of our superiority. We live in better times,\u00a0enlightened times. Until recently the
\nworld was in chaos and history was a chronicle of madness. Now, a few stubborn
\nimpediments aside, we have answered all the questions and solved all the
\nproblems. For as far as the eye can see \u2013 and today it can see into infinity \u2013
\nthere is no further conflict between what is possible and what is right. The
\ncourse is so obvious that it must be followed. All ideological dispute and all
\nmoral doubts have clear and evident resolutions. We are at the end of history.
\nWhat happens now is all that matters. And if it matters now it will matter for
\never. Look on our works, ye mighty.<\/p>\n
\nthat makes him one of the most interesting figures in history, though not
\nnecessarily an admirable one. His relation to history was complex. Although he
\ngenerated history, he was also its creature. The Revolution released him from
\nsubservience to make him master of his fate. Ability had eradicated privilege. Talent
\nwas the new coinage. The capable aspirant might conquer the world. The
\npossibilities were open.<\/p>\n
\npossibilities. Industry was going to need ability. But ability was to be
\nsubservient to the counting houses who were in their turn subservient to
\nproperty and power. Wellington had no regard for democracy, and no sympathy for
\nthe dispossessed. He was not defeating a tyrant. He was teaching a vulgar
\nupstart to mind his manners. Only the very rich and very powerful had anything
\nto gain from Waterloo. With the defeat of Napoleon went down the challenge
\nposed by the Romantics to the political and moral order. The clock did not turn
\nback. But bourgeois progress was promoted by a hierarchy of obedience that
\ndiminished what it did not destroy of the liberated imagination.<\/p>\n
\n99% of us] have faced many cavalry charges metaphoric and actual. The Battle of
\nWaterloo was won indeed on the playing fields of Eton. The Duke was genuinely
\nshocked by the carnage. But, by thunder, it was a price worth paying. We are
\nstill paying for it. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"