A History of Britain

I started reading this book with some reluctance. In general,I find Schama (both as an author and lecturer -- I sat in on oneof his courses 20 years ago) to be so fond of supposedly illuminating anecdotes that the flow of the history he discusses gets lost.However, in this book it works. The history is vivid -- hisportrayal of James I, Charles I, Cromwell, Charles II and JamesII are rich -- and the anecdotes work to illuminate theircharacter.

I certainly concur with the previous reviews. But why is this book such a page-turner, besides the author being such a great narrator? I'll add some things not mentioned so far.Well, he introduces the names well; he doesn't just "drop" them.He writes indicating how the choices of the participants in the events mattered; he's not a historicist or inevitablist.When he offers value judgments, they are not a priori, at the service of some pet theory of his own devising by which he judges the history. (But he gently pokes fun at Macaulay's Victorian grid, and the "imperialist" historians, doesn't he?)For example, he contrasts the pursuit of the "right empire" and the "wrong empire" -- the chief value judgment of the book. In breathtakingly great narrative fashion he shows how the American colonies took the principles of liberty that they learned from the very previous period of British history, and went with them, while the Brits basically ignored them in setting up control over India. But he doesn't subject you to a long moralism about it. He simply mentions the crucial decisions and how momentous they would turn out to be. He even contrasts that with how the decisions seemed to those who made them at the time. (The momentous Stamp Act! The Tea Tax! and many other examples....)The only reason you might not like this book is if you're looking for a particular slant and only things that "prove" your slant. For example, if you're looking for a history that whitewashes the Church of England, or the various other religious views, you won't get that. (I find a slight, slight anti-Calvinism in his descriptions a couple places myself. Not entrenched, but perceptible. I even wrote him about it!) Similarly, if you're looking for a uniformly negative view of the Whig or the Tory sides of things, you won't get that. He seems very uninterested in griding his own axe.I certainly like how he points out the beginnings of things: the beginnings of a daily-informed electorate; the beginnings of "shopping"; (an earlier review mentioned the tiny little reference to the beginnings of condoms); the beginnings of scientific explanation.I think you'll love this book, and it will get you proud(er) of the love of history.

Simon Schama has written a fabulous book that takes the reader from the England that was merely an archipelago up to the time it becomes an empire. The time period of 1603-1776 is many times ignored or at best passed over quickly in your typical English history class or text. Here,the decidedly bloody English Civil Wars are given their due; the foundations of individual liberty and representative government were established during this time period and then exported to colonial America. The role of religion in politics (17th century version) is explored by the author as Oliver Cromwell's true influence on the nation. A must read for any anglophile.

I could not put this book down. As an american, it gave me a whole new context in which to understand my country's origins (we were a continuation of a larger story, not the inventors of a radical new concept). Schama consciously focusses on this period as the time and place where democratic liberal capitalism was born, and so reading this book will show you the developments which led to the creation of the political system which now seems to be the standard around the world. Schama portrays it as a good thing, but he also shows how the struggles which produced it were not between good guys and bad guys but just different ideologies which all had their pros and cons. The book thus tempers the self-congratulatory spirit of the USA today.

Simon Schama's second volume in his ongoing project with BBC-TV on the history of Great Britain is another splendid introduction to British history. Here he chronicles the rapid rise of Great Britain's first empire, primarily in North America, and the bloody wars fought over its creation and subsequent demise. Although this is an introduction to 17th and 18th Century British history on a grand scale, it does manage to clear a few cobwebs and misconceptions, most notably, noting whom the intended victims were during Oliver Cromwell's savage campaign against Stuart loyalist forces in Ireland. Much to my amazement, the native Catholic Irish suffered lightly from Cromwell's butchery; only later, during James II's unsuccesful attempt to hold onto his crown, would Irish Catholics become victims of brutal warfare waged by Protestant forces. Most of the book is devoted to the English Civil War and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688/1689, yet Schama devotes considerable time to the two major 18th Century conflicts whose origins were in North America; the Seven Years War (In North America known as the "French and Indian War") and, of course, the American Revolution. The final chapter anticipates the rise of the second British Empire with an overview of British efforts in regulating, eventually dominating, trade in India.