Watching a recent documentary about the events of 1066, I was reminded how pivotal the Norman Conquest was in changing the face of England.
Prior to William the Conqueror's victory over Harold (Godwinson), England had been ruled by an Anglo-Saxon nobility. For much of the previous two hundred years, England had been a victim to the privations of Viking raids, culminating in a thirty-year period of direct Viking rule, that had only ended around twenty years before the events of 1066.
The overall effect of this was that Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, had its geopolitical interests drawn from the influence of Scandinavia, with continental Europe to the south less of an immediate concern. This was evident even in the Battle Of Hastings, where the Anglo-Saxon army used battle tactics honed from centuries of fighting the Vikings, and the Norman army's use of cavalry in battle was something unfamiliar to the English; yet equally, the Normans were unfamiliar with the Anglo-Saxons' battle tactics as well. In this way, 1066 really was a clash of cultures: Anglo-Saxon England and Norman France.
The Norman Conquest thus totally reshaped England, both in terms of its society (where the Normans completely replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility) and in terms of geopolitics, where Norman England's interests lay on consolidating on its holdings in France as well as in Britain. In this way, Norman England was a "continental power" in a way that Anglo-Saxon England never could be.
This historic link that the Normans had created between England and the continent became something that was built on over the centuries. The successors to the Normans, the "Angevins" (later called the "Plantagenets"), had even more extensive French lands, effectively creating a a joint "empire" across both sides of the channel. While these French lands declined in scope over time (with John "Lackland" being the most at fault), the existence of a still-residual English foothold in France by the time of Henry VIII's coming to power had a strong effect on Henry's perception of the country's strategic interests and alliances in Europe.
The Norman and Angevin legacy of English lands in France meant that an alliance against the French king was essential. This had resulted in alliances through marriage to the rising power of Spain to the south, and an accord with the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire to France's east. However, by the time of Elizabeth's reign, the Reformation and England's break from Rome had seen both of those alliances collapse, leaving England diplomatically-isolated from all of the major European powers. By the 17th century, the reign of the Stuarts saw a change of tack, and England sought an "understanding" with both Spain and France. As time progressed, some in England saw the Stuarts as seeming more inspired by the autocratic rulers of France and Spain, resulting the bloody interregnum of the "Commonwealth". While England's French domains were now a memory, its interests in European affairs didn't prevent it from intervening with mutual allies like the Germans to limit French designs, like during the War Of Spanish Succession. Outside of Europe, such as in North America and India, England's interests began to prosper, and when the Stuart dynasty was replaced by the House Of Hanover in the early 18th century, England's continental interests re-emerged once more in a different guise.
Like with the early Norman rulers of England, the first Hanoverians seemed at times more interested in their German lands than in Britain. These new "English" monarchs now having a sizable tract of territory in the heart of Europe also gave them a different perspective. While the later generations of the House of Hanover became increasingly "British", they all took German wives, with Victoria taking a German prince as her husband. Thus up to the last decade of the nineteenth century, England and Germany were closely-linked, with Victoria's daughter married to the German Emperor Frederick, and - for different reasons - both powers had a mutual antagonist in France. By contrast, Britain's alliance with France against Russia that existed during the Crimean War had been a rare piece of strategic joint-interest; an example of Britain's alignments with the different European powers to achieve its interests at any one moment in time. During that conflict with Russia, Britain's and France's aims had been temporarily aligned to protect Turkey. Afterwards, the former rivalry resumed.
The fact that, by 1914, Britain had been in alliance with both France and Russia - hitherto its two historic rivals - was a quirk of fate that was largely the fault of German Emperor Wilhelm II, Frederick's son (and Victoria's nephew), which has been expanded on elsewhere. In part, this was just another chapter in the merry-go-round of England's relations with Europe, that had ensured that, since 1066, England had rarely been without one ally or another on the continent.
And yet, it was true to say that by 1914, Britain's relations with Europe had become more semi-detached; its involvement in the Crimean War was Britain's last major European involvement, while its later alliance with France and Russia was more of global than European interest to them (and in fact, calling it an "alliance" on Britain's part was overstating the country's own view of its obligations to European affairs; Britain saw it more as an "understanding" that allowed it to feign a more ambiguous approach). Britain's strategic imperative was to its empire rather than continental allegiances. The physical barrier of the channel was still a strong psychological barrier, too. Today, the same "moral ambiguity" about its commitments has been seen in the current government's Brexit negotiations.
The system of European alliances collapsed with the fall of the different European monarchies at the end of the First World War. Henceforth, it would be "ideology" (either economic or political) that would be the main drive for strategic alliances. As the two main "victors" of the war, Britain and France sought to emasculate Germany (which planted the seeds for the next war) and also (failing) to destroy Bolshevik Russia. In doing so, both these strategic blunders set up the eventual collapse of both their empires in the future.
France and Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. With France overrun the following year, by 1941 Britain was forced into being kept alive by convoys from the USA. In this way, Britain effectively surrendered it strategic independence to the USA in 1941 to prevent it being starved into submission by Germany. The price of American vassalage was the dismantling of the empire after the war. And with the gradual dismantling of the empire after the war, there came a realization that Britain needed to reacquire its historic bonds with Europe. It was this that led to the eventual accession of the UK in the EEC.
Blunder or realignment?
This is the lengthy context that places "Brexit". As we have seen, Britain has almost always had some kind of relationship with Europe that has involved allegiances, often to defend strategic interests if not physical territory. It is true that for much of the nineteenth century, Britain's involvement with European affairs was often at arm's length. After the Treaty of Vienna after the war with Napoleon, Britain took little interest in the continent - the notable exception being the Crimean War. Before 1870, Germany didn't exist, and Britain's concern about France and Russia was about their global spheres of influence rather than in Europe.
But Britain today in 2018 has no empire, and, on leaving the EU in the antagonistic manner it is taking, can rely on no European powers to back up its strategic interests. In short, everything that it could do wrong, it is doing wrong. This leaves Britain in arguably the weakest strategic position it has known in living memory, a potential blunder of historic proportions. Parts of the government who pursue "Brexit" from an ideological position see it as taking Britain out of alignment with Europe, and into an alignment with the USA, both economically and politically. Seen in this light, these ideologues pursue their path as "righting a wrong" of Britain's accession to the EU, and putting Britain back into a position of virtual vassalage to the USA, like in 1941. The "empire" might be long gone, but there are those that still have a nostalgia for the days when totalitarian Europe was seen as the antagonist and the USA was seen as holding Britain together in the face of enemy attacks.
The Conservative Party can in many ways be called the "aristocratic party", as it was created (as the "Tories") in the late 17th century to defend aristocratic and monarchical interests. This deference towards the establishment is matched with a deference for wealth and power. Looking at England's history, we see that it was the Normans who became the establishment in 1066, and their successors have remained in place ever since. Indeed, many aristocratic families can trace their roots back nearly a thousand years for that very reason. This also may explain why some of them behave like an occupying power and treat their fellow citizens as "serfs".
They have remained in place thanks to a combination of guile and adaptability. War in 1914 came close to bringing down the whole show, while after declaring war on Germany in 1939 led by 1941 to Churchill having to accept American vassalage to keep Britain alive, at the price of the empire. With the collapse of the empire after the Second World War, a broken and defeated Europe saw in the USA a strong power, stronger than the doddering empires had even been at the height of their power. It would seem that the British establishment then became seduced by the power and wealth across the Atlantic, and many of them became "Libertarians".
It is this ideological postwar movement that explains "Brexit": a historic realignment of Britain away from the European "social democratic" model that had been adapted to Britain as the "postwar consensus. The ideological movements that first swept through Europe in the aftermath of the First World War are now reaching their evolutionary next phase; where once ideology was about dismantling empire, now Libertarian ideologues seek to dismantle the apparatus of the state itself. "Brexit" can be seen in this light as a "fire-sale" of the British nation-state, its assets prepared for dissolution to the highest bidder after a period of post-Brexit "national renewal".
The antagonistic approach of the government's relations with Europe today may well be part of that Libertarian agenda: to isolate Britain from Europe by making Europe seem as the enemy. That way, there will seem no other choice to the British people than to go along with the realignment to American vassalage (e.g. by eventual entrance into NAFTA).
Such a strategy can only see Britain's emasculation. As with what happened to Germany after the First World War, the same - in a contemporary manner - could happen to Britain.
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