{"id":2945,"date":"2019-10-31T11:13:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T11:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2945"},"modified":"2019-10-31T11:13:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T11:13:59","slug":"britain-europe-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2945","title":{"rendered":"Britain, Europe, and liberty in uncertain times"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"cb-itemprop\" itemprop=\"reviewBody\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Brexit Britain attempts to recalibrate its relationship with Europe, there has been a whirlwind of mythmaking concerning the history of Britain and Europe, and \u2018British\u2019 ideas of liberty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These\nmyths have impeded meaningful debate (not to mention meaningful votes) about\nBritain\u2019s current relationship with Europe. In this context, scholars\ninterested in history and politics have a critical role to play in helping us\nthink differently about Britain, Europe, and liberty in uncertain times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>\u2018The\ndead past is your neighbour\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than a century ago, British scholars and commentators\nstationed in southeastern Europe were impressed by the weight of history in the\npolitics of the region. Writing from Macedonia in 1905, the radical\ninternationalist Henry Brailsford noted how \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/macedoniaitsrac00braigoog\">the centuries jostle in the contemporary crowd and the dead\npast is your neighbour<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Balkans were the land of the walking dead. British\npolitical life was far removed from the region, occupying a far more advanced\nplace in the ladder of progress, and offering a template for others to emulate.\nOr so it appeared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A century later, eastern Europe, so scapegoated during the\nBrexit referendum campaign, seems to be taking its revenge. In Brexit Britain,\ntoo, the dead past is your neighbour. As the past and the present converge,\nghosts are shaping the country\u2019s future \u2013 be it the Irish Question, obscure\nrules of parliamentary process, or the conflict between parliament and the crown.\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So many moments in British politics have been called \u2018historic\u2019\nrecently that historians should start protesting about the abuse of the term.\nIndeed, historians have been at the forefront of debunking myths about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/oct\/09\/brexit-crisis-global-capitalism-britain-place-world\">Britain\u2019s place in the world&nbsp;\n<\/a>and\nshowing, as Robert Saunders has noted, how history \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/politics\/uk\/2019\/10\/myths-small-island-dangers-buccaneering-view-british-history\">serves as a proxy for ideology<\/a>\u201d in much of current political\ndebate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Renewed interest in the history of Britain and Europe <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At present, there is a resurgent interest in academia in the\nhistory of British-EU relations, and the trajectory of British-European\nrelations in the longue dur\u00e9e. This includes re-examining the diplomatic and\npolitical history of British-EU relations, and undertaking wider surveys of\nBritain\u2019s place in the European system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This resurgent interest poses an important question to academics\ninterested in the circulation of people and ideas across time and space. How\ncan we conceptualise the intellectual exchanges between Europe and Britain in\nthe age of the politics of control? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Britain as a home of European liberty <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This question framed the logic of <a href=\"https:\/\/researchmap.jp\/?action=cv_download_main&amp;upload_id=268305\">a workshop I recently organized<\/a> in Durham University on the\nquestion of Britain as a home of European liberty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the EU referendum campaign, a view of liberty as\nfreedom from the shackles of a dynastic and bureaucratic European Union became\none of the main talking points of the Brexiteer camp. Xenophobic and racist\narguments against migration from eastern Europe drove the debate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This negative understanding of liberty as \u2018freedom\u2019 from the confines\nof an undemocratic superstrate and from the obligations with regard to the\nmovement of people was supplemented by a more positive (and delusionary) vision.\nHaving regained its freedom by leaving the EU, Britain would be at liberty to\nrecover its true place in the world by regaining control of its borders and pursuing\nfree trade agreements. These assessments of freedom link with core features of\nEnglish nationalism, the progressive varieties of which Brailsford did so much\nto recover in his history of the Levelers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;The workshop aimed to\ncut across these ideological conceptions of freedom and scrutinize historically\nsome of the assumptions underpinning current references to liberty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a triangular relationship between Britain, Europe\nand liberty. By that, I mean that Britain has traditionally acted as a refuge from despotism and\ntyranny in the continent. This has been a defining feature of Britishness and\nhas shaped imaginary understandings of Britain\u2019s place in Europe and the world.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the workshop, some academics analysed the conditions that\nrendered Britain hospitable to radicals and refugees fleeing persecution from\nthe continent. Their papers drew a distinction between these historical\nconditions, and the self-congratulatory assessments made by the British about\ntheir \u2018special relationship\u2019 with liberty. Such self-deception is reinforced by\nthe ideal of the ancient constitution,\nits parliamentary tradition, enlightened imperial rule and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sooner\nor later, Britain will not only reconfigure its position towards Europe, but it\nwill re-negotiate the union between the four nations comprising the United\nKingdom. But Brexit fatigue is already creeping in. If there is not renewed\ndebate on Britain, Europe, and liberty, ghosts will shape this country\u2019s future\ninstead. <\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Brexit Britain attempts to recalibrate its relationship with Europe, there has been a whirlwind of mythmaking concerning the history of Britain and Europe, and \u2018British\u2019 ideas of liberty. These myths have impeded meaningful debate (not to mention meaningful votes) about Britain\u2019s current relationship with Europe. In this context, scholars interested in history and politics [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":2947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1390,1395,1417,1396],"tags":[1868],"coauthors":[1865],"class_list":["post-2945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","category-comment","category-europe","category-uk","tag-liberty"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Britain-Europe-and-liberty-in-uncertain-times-dylan-nolte-t_j9CcArkiI-unsplash-2947-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2945"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}