Making of England: From Rome to Reformation

The Making of England seeks to challenge the established narrative of the inevitable rise of the unified Christian state. England was not exceptional in its governance, parliaments, religion or monarchy: it was a European state.
The Making of England places the history of early England firmly within the European sphere of influence. It is intended for a wide but discerning audience drawing upon the latest peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary research and debates from science, archaeology, literature and documentary evidence with an eye on contemporary concerns and perceptions of English history, presented in an accessible manner. It demonstrates the impact of the continuous continental interaction across the period c410-1534 in the shaping of England, from the early pan-Germanic to the Scandinavian, Norman-French, Angevin and Gascon. Crucially, there was no inevitability in the emergence of a single, unified state in the Anglo-Saxon period and after 1066 the English state was bound to the continental possessions by trade or war; baronial rebellion, not popular demand, led to devolving powers from the Crown via Magna Carta and parliament but this was not part of a manifest destiny of ‘exceptional’ English freedom. Literacy and learning was exclusively Christian, to the detriment of Viking and pagan cultures and achievements, and thus the first historians wrote only from a singular perspective, that of the Christian supremacy. English culture was subsumed into the new Norman hegemony, along with attempts to rewrite or obliterate Welsh, Scottish and Irish history. This book will make you think again about what it means to be English.