3. ‘You Will See Who They Are that Revile, and Lessen Your . . . Glorious Deliverance’. The ‘Memory War’ about the ‘Glorious Revolution’
Revolutions tend to create new pasts, or, in the words of Melinda Zook: 'Revolutionaries of modern times often imagine themselves not only as creators of a new future, but also as constructors of a new past'. Memories of the Revolution itself and of the events immediately preceding it soon became the subject of memory politics and of controversy. The newly established regime of William III and Mary II sought legitimacy by influencing memories. This chapter analyses attempts of state as well as pressure groups to shape public memory of Glorious Revolution. It examines how distinct narratives of the Revolution refer to different political and/or religious identities. In the course of a 'memory war' that began during the reign of Anne (1702-14), memories of 1688-89 were used as political weapons by rival parties. It is important to note that this development took place within the camp of supporters of the Revolution.Keywords: 'memory war'; Anne; Glorious Revolution; Mary II; Melinda Zook; religious identities; William III
The 1688 Landing of William of Orange at Torbay: Numerical Dates and Temporal Understanding in Early Modern England*
In 1932, the eminent English historian Sir Charles Firth (1857–1936) addressed some remarks to schoolteachers about the importance of dates to the study of the past. While conceding that memorizing “important dates” was perhaps “old-fashioned,” Firth nonetheless argued that familiarity with them supplied the “pegs upon which larger pieces of knowledge can be suspended.” One technique he recommended was to use “the anniversary of a great event [as] it is possible to make a class realize it better and remember more about it.” An even more useful aide-memoire was where anniversaries coincided; to illustrate this point Firth gave the example of Prince William of Orange (later England’s King William III) for whom “4 November 1650 was the date of his birth, 4 November 1677 the date of his marriage, and 4 November 1688 the date when his fleet anchored in Torbay.”1 Yet the established and widely accepted date of “William the Deliverer’s” arrival and landing on the south coast of England was actually November 5, 1688, not November 4.2 Given that Firth was only a day out, and that, as his fellow historian A. L. Rowse later said of him (quoting Horace), even “Homer occasionally nods,” it might be wondered if the faulty mnemonics of a self-confessedly “old
European Neutrality in Historical Perspective
This chapter places the neutrality policies of the established European neutral states—Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland—in historical context. It explores the origins of neutrality in the idea of non-belligerency in war and the history of neutrality in modern European international politics, highlighting the way in which quite a wide variety of states were or sought to be neutral at various points in the nineteenth century or the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter then shows how the Cold War division of Europe resulted in Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland (along with Yugoslavia) emerging as a distinctive neutral group of states between the two blocs. The chapter also reviews how the European neutral states’ foreign and security policies have adapted since the end of the Cold War. It finishes with some conclusions about neutrality in general and the neutrality of the established European neutral states in particular.