The English and their history

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1. AromasinMar 2022
   Agreed. I just finished reading "the English and their history" by Robert Tombs, along with many of the references he uses, and I was frankly shocked at how little revenue from the colonial era was generated abroad. I highly recommend the book to everyone.

   All of my modern education left me with the idea that we, like postit mentions, had squeezed every colonial nation for everything it was worth and left nothing but husks; producing little to nothing of value ourselves. In actual fact, with the exception of British India in the 1700/1800s, the revenue made from colonies was a fraction of a percentage of Britain's GDP. The same can be said of much of Europe.

   Europeans became and stayed wealthy by producing goods internally and trading between themselves, and England particularly by the invention of steam power, mechanised factories, improved tooling, and better iron and chemical processes. It's difficult to fathom in the modern era such a technological leap.

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2. jfmercerDec 2016
   "The English and Their History" by Robert Tombs. This isn't simply another "here's what happened" history book. Rather, it focuses not simply on what happened and why it happened, but more so on the stories the English tell themselves about their own history and how that formed and continues to form their complex ethnic, national, and historical identity. For example, the Henry V that impressed itself on the English imagination was not so much the real, historical Henry V, but rather the hero of Shakespeare's "Henriad": Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V. (Cf. the St. Crispin's Day speech: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers," etc.) Dr. Tombs is the Professor of French at Cambridge. Ironically, after devoting a lifetime to studying the civilization on the opposite side of the Channel, he has written a masterpiece on the history of his own people.

   If you're looking for a book on the British Empire, this isn't it. Of course, the Empire is an essential topic in the book; however, Tombs focus remains centered on Britain, and, more specifically, England itself. For example, when discussing the Seven Years War, Tombs emphasizes how events abroad affected domestic politics without going into great detail about the international events themselves.

   I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in English history.

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3. strlenOct 2016
   For those who are more curious, I found that "The English and their History" talks in depth about the post-Conquest society and emergence of the written English language, and some of the more distinctive English (and later Anglo-American) institutions: https://www.amazon.com/English-Their-History-Robert-Tombs-eb...
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4. inopsMar 2021
   A big reason why the Roundheads wanted to make Cromwell king was to limit his power. His status as Lord Protector was not King, and therefore had none of the constraints on power that the kingdom had evolved over the centuries.

   He wasn't widely popular outside the parliamentarians, who were the ones in power. The "godly", who made up the majority of the Roundheads were reviled by a substantial portion of the British. Cromwell held the Commonwealth together, that's for sure, but the cohesion amongst the Roundheads dried up once he died.

   Source: The English and their History by Robert Tombs

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