Gavin Esler’s “How Britain Ends” is a highly readable account of the UK’s deep political problems. I often hear it said that the U.K. is heading for a constitutional crisis. Indeed as I learnt from this book, the U.K. doesn’t even have a written constitution unlike every other major democracy in the world. While the country has muddled through for hundreds of years without one, Scotland’s push for IndyRef2, English nationalism, Brexit, and the recovery from coronavirus, could well push its political system to the brink. As Esler explains, wide ranging reforms at the highest level will be needed if the U.K. is to survive in its current (albeit fractured) whole. Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and until the 11th century, when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom, and all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries. In recent years, several institutions have begun to evaluate their own links with slavery. For instance, English Heritage produced a book on the extensive links between slavery and British country houses in 2013, Jesus College has a working group to examine the legacy of slavery within the college, and the Church of England, the Bank of England, Lloyd's of London and Greene King have all apologised for their historic links to slavery. [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] Dresser, Madge; Hann, Andrew. (2013). Slavery and the British country house. English Heritage. ISBN 978-1-84802-064-1. OCLC 796755629. a b c d e f g "Modern Slavery: National Referral Mechanism and Duty to Notify statistics UK, end of year summary, 2021". GOV.UK. Home Office. 3 March 2022. Archived from the original on 21 July 2022.

How Britain Ends: English Nationalism and the - AbeBooks How Britain Ends: English Nationalism and the - AbeBooks

Toussaint died in 1803 but the wheels of change were in motion. The rebel forces continued to fight for their freedom and on 1 January 1804 Haiti was declared an independent republic. Jessica Brain is a freelance writer specialising in history. Based in Kent and a lover of all things historical. Pijper, Frederik (1909). "The Christian Church and Slavery in the Middle Ages". The American Historical Review. American Historical Association. 14 (4): 681. doi: 10.1086/ahr/14.4.675. JSTOR 1837055.The campaign in Britain was led by significant Quaker anti-slavery groups who made public their concerns and brought it to the attention of politicians who were in a position to enact real change. Wright, Gavin (Summer 1987). "The Economic Revolution in the American South". The Journal of Economic Perspectives. 1 (1): 161–178. doi: 10.1257/jep.1.1.161. JSTOR 1942954. Zdanowski, Jerzy (2011). "The Manumission Movement in the Gulf in the First Half of the Twentieth Century". Middle Eastern Studies. 47 (6): 863–883. doi: 10.1080/00263206.2010.527121. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 23054249. S2CID 144351013. Eaton, Clement (1964). The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South. New York: Harper & Row. pp.39–40. Somerset’s cause was taken up by three godparents, John Marlow, Thomas Walkin and Elizabeth Cade who made an application to the courts to determine whether there was a legitimate reason for his detention.

The revolt of the English - New Statesman The revolt of the English - New Statesman

Esler presents a strong argument for claiming that nationalism is behind the current surge in the direction of both Northern Irish and Scots wanting independence (and arguably Welsh too). But it isn't their nationalism he's talking about: it's English nationalism. He's absolutely on the nail here. The English have never given up their colonial instincts and superior elitism. We like to pretend we're the fairest, most welcoming, tolerant and non-judgemental of people. The truth is, we're anything but those things and we've always told ourselves these lies. Esler points out that this extends as far as using the term 'British'. There's nothing British about being British. We mean English almost every single time and the other nations are, understandably, getting annoyed about it. Who can blame them when we have such abhorrent extremist behaviours which are now so commonplace white English people don't bother to hide it much any longer? We really don't represent who the Scots, Welsh or Irish are. We never have. A thoughtful, articulate and important book about the rise of English nationalism and the impending breakup of the United Kingdom from one of the finest BBC journalists of the last twenty years. Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations". www.dango.bham.ac.uk . Retrieved 11 October 2016. Eltis, David, and Stanley L. Engerman. "The importance of slavery and the slave trade to industrializing Britain." Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 123-144. online That started to change in 2014 though with the Scottish Independence Referendum and it was won narrowly by those wishing to remain a part of the Union. Part of what helped that was the promise that the UK would remain part of the EU. Two years later, partly as a response to the rise of UKIP in local elections and to placate a section of the Conservative party that had lurched to the right, the Prime Minister of the time called a Referendum about our place in the EU. We voted to leave by the narrow margin of 52% versus 48% and from that moment on the union was under threat. In Esler’s eyes, this was the point where the rise of English nationalism became a real threat to the union rather than just a low-level concern.a b Gillingham, John (Summer 2014), "French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?", The Historian, pp.8–9

How Britain Ends: English Nationalism and the [PDF] [EPUB] How Britain Ends: English Nationalism and the

Guasco, Michael (2014). Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic. University of Pennsylvania Press. Anstey, Roger (1975). "The Volume and Profitability of the British Slave Trade, 1675–1800". In Engerman, Stanley; Genovese, Eugene (eds.). Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp.22–23. ISBN 978-0691046259.

The uprising would play a crucial role in making Saint Domingue the first Caribbean island to declare its independence and only the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere. When incensed English swing voters – not only susceptible Ukip supporters, but also otherwise middle-of-the-road Lib Dems – envisaged a scenario in which the SNP imposed a Labour government on the UK for which England hadn’t voted, they expressed a willingness to lend their votes to the Conservatives. The chief Tory strategist Lynton Crosby had hit upon a recipe for success. Instead of the hung parliament the polls had predicted, the Tories won outright, and Cameron was unexpectedly compelled to make good on his promise of a Brexit referendum. Olaudah Equiano: I was enslaved for many years in the West Indies and America. I bought my freedom in 1766 and settled in Britain. I became friends with many of the British abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. They encouraged me to write my autobiography and I travelled the country giving talks about my experiences and telling people first-hand about the horrors of slavery.

Boris Johnson Is How Britain Ends - The New York Times Boris Johnson Is How Britain Ends - The New York Times

In 1815, a rumour had swept through Barbados that the governor would soon provide the enslaved population with papers to emancipate them. This didn’t happen. In 1816, a man named Bussa led 400 men to fight for their freedom. In the aftermath, 300 enslaved people were taken to Bridgetown for trial. 144 were executed, and 132 sent to other islands for fear that they might begin another rebellion on Barbados. He then reported from countries as diverse as China, Peru, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Russia, Jordan, Iran, Saudia Arabia and from the Aleutian Islands, as well as all across Europe. He won a Royal Television Society award for a TV documentary about Alaska and a Sony Gold award for a BBC radio investigation into the case of Sami al Hajj, who was detained without charge in Guantanamo bay, but released shortly after the radio programme was broadcast. Taylor, Michael. "The British West India interest and its allies, 1823–1833." English Historical Review 133.565 (2018): 1478-1511. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cey336 Drescher, Seymour. Econocide: British slavery in the era of abolition (U of North Carolina Press, 2010).

British merchants were a significant force behind the Atlantic slave trade between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, [1] but no legislation was ever passed in England that legalised slavery. In the Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield ruled that, as slavery was not recognised by English law, James Somerset, a slave who had been brought to England and then escaped, could not be forcibly sent to Jamaica for sale, and he was set free. In Scotland, colliery (coal mine) slaves were still in use until 1799 where an act was passed which established their freedom and made this slavery and bondage illegal. [2] [3] The abolition of slavery in the British Empire thus brought in a new era of change in politics, economics and society. The movement towards abolition had been an arduous journey and in the end many factors played a significant role in ending the slave trade. Esler is, however, right about one aspect of English nationalism: it is comparatively unexplored. If it does exist, it’s hidden away in the statistics, in the rising number of people who identify as English rather than British in recent censuses. According to the Institute of Public Policy Research, there’s a discernible sense of resentment among their English – especially in the North, home to all of the UK’s fastest declining towns with populations bigger than 100,000 – that Scots have greater political clout and get comparatively more money from the public purse. But that IPPR report was written in 2012, and if there have been any mass demos in favour of an England-only parliament since then, I must have missed them. Gospel-book with added Cornish records of manumissions ('The Bodmin Gospels' or 'St Petroc Gospels')". The British Library . Retrieved 18 May 2017. a b c d "Modern slavery in the UK: March 2020". www.ons.gov.uk. Office for National Statistics. 29 March 2022. Archived from the original on 20 September 2022.