British History Quotes - Page 5

• The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery.

  Ronald Syme

  Vitality, Aristocracy, Empires

  6 Copy quote

• These developments - a massive transfer of land by way of inheritance and purchase, an unprecedented rise in the profitability of land and increasing intermarriage between Celtic and English dynasties - helped to consolidate a new unitary ruling class in place of the more separate and specific landed establishments that had characterised England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland in the Tudor and Stuart eras.

  Linda Colley

  Land, Class, Tudors

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.161, Yale University Press

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• For women to be supplying the soldiery with banners, flannel shirts and other material comforts was, superficially, all of a piece with their ministrations to their menfolk at home. Such contributions to the war effort were socially acceptable because they could be seen as an extension into the military sphere of the traditional female virtues of charity, nurture and needlework. Yet in reality what the women were doing represented the thin end of a far more radical wedge. Consciously or not, these female patriots were staking out a civic role for themselves. And many of them relished it.

  Linda Colley

  Military, War, Home

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• Can it be entirely accidental that the most famous fictional spy of them all, James Bond, Number 007, deadly marksman, intriguer, the ultimate man behind the curtain, sexual athlete and ruthless patriot, is also a Scot, as was the author, whose wish-fulfilment he was?

  Linda Colley

  Athlete, Men, Numbers

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.132, Yale University Press

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• An unprecedented number of uniformed males, marching, parading and engaging in mock battles in every region of Great Britain brought a pleasant frisson of excitement into many normally quiet and deeply repetitive female lives.

  Linda Colley

  Numbers, Battle, Males

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• In Great Britain, woman was subordinate and confined. But at least she was also safe.

  Linda Colley

  Safe, Britain, Subordinates

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• Girls must be thwarted early in life.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Girl

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• In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.

  Linda Colley

  Country, Men, Ideas

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.177, Yale University Press

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• Today a Scot is leading a British army in France [Field Marshall Douglas Haig], another is commanding the British Grand Fleet at sea [Admiral David Beatty], while a third directs the Imperial General Staff at home [Sir William Roberton]. The Lord Chancellor is a Scot [Viscount Finlay]; so are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary [Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour]. The Prime Minister is a Welshman [David Lloyd George], and the First Lord of the Admiralty is an Irishman [Lord Carson]. Yet no one has ever brought in a bill to give home rule to England!

  John Hay Beith

  Home, Army, Sea

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• Human beings are many-layered creatures, and do not succumb to the hegemony of others as easily as historians and politicians sometimes imply. Those Welsh, Scottish and Anglo-Irish individuals who became part of the British Establishment in this period did not in the main sell out in the sense of becoming Anglicised look-alikes. Instead, they became British in a new and intensely profitable fashion, while remaining in their own minds and behavior Welsh, or Scottish, or Irish aswell.

  Linda Colley

  Fashion, Mind, Hegemony

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• Recognising that an ostentatious cult of heroism and state service served an important propaganda function for the British elite does not mean, of course, that we should dismiss it as artificial or insincere. All aristocracies have a strong military tradition, and for many British patricians the protracted warfare of the period was a godsend. It gave them a job, and, more important, a purpose, an opportunity to carry out what they had been trained to do since childhood: ride horses, fire guns, exercise their undoubted physical courage and tell other people what to do.

  Linda Colley

  Strong, Horse, Jobs

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• The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Pain, History, Religion

  "History of England". Volume I, Chapter II, 1849-1861.

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