ASK JUDE: “Jude – why do you always say the British Isles?”

C.W.: Contains references to UK Politics, Brexit, and one reference to murder.

Less Serious C.W: Contains references to Eurovision.

TL/DR Included at the bottom of the post.

I have been asked this question a few times by fellow researchers, and by other students, so I thought I would write a short explanation of why I am particularly given to multiple descriptions of th is type and why when I am setting out the geographic boundaries of a study I try to avoid using the names of specific countries – instead referring to the physical geography of the area.

British Library digitised image from page 947 of "Gazetteer of the British Isles, statistical and topographical. Edited by J. Bartholomew. With appendices and special maps and plans"

When the Eurovision Song Contest introduced telephone voting, a number of people – many in a unique subset who were both fans of Eurovision and of statistics – noted that while some traditional back and forth awarding of points continued, there were certain shifts within countries voting patterns.  Was it to do with international relations – as Eurovision is often comedically described as being focused on?  Unlikely.  In several of these first events in televoting two particular tendencies stood out.  Great Britain awarding points to Ireland, and Germany (and later Great Britain) awarding points to Poland.  And the most logical explanation?  Demographic change.  In the early 2010s Britain experienced a wave of migration from Poland.  Economic migrants taking advantage of gaps in the UK jobs market and the relative strength of currency.  Many came to work in construction, and with them came additional businesses catering to the needs of Polish communities.  In one example, in Eastbourne, in East Sussex, a large number of Polish migrants moved in to one particularly run down street, and several businesses moved into previously boarded up shops setting up Polish grocery shops, and cafes with bilingual menus, specialising the Polish and Eastern European food.  These communities were met with a mix of racism, and respect.  The work ethic of some Polish builders was well known enough to be a punchline the BBC Radio 4 satirical programme The Now Show.  This demographic shift – the increase in a migrant population who were both happy to be living somewhere where they could work and earn enough money to support both themselves and their families back home – was reflected in minor ways in things like Eurovision.  Now, the shift is partly being reversed, as Polish and other EU migrants seek to return to their former homes particularly since the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, both due to the outcome which saw Britain leave, and the storm of xenophobia and scare tactics which, in the words of comedian Adam Hills ‘lowered the tone of political debate {…} to somewhere between Donald Trump and Mein Kampf’ [the full 'rant', directed at former UKIP and current Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, which contains this line and strong language / adult humour from the start can be found here (NSFW) ] and which resulted in the murder of Labour Party MP Jo Cox.  However that shift, during that period, changed the demographics of Britain and in some ways the identity in Britain. 

The concept of countries having fixed borders is not as old as you might think.  The doctrine that national borders were something which was agreed and that the violation of them is  unacceptable is often referred to as ‘Westphalian sovereignty’ – which arose out of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) – at the end of the Thirty Years War.  This set out basic principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states – and almost formalised borders.  A simple explanation of the concept, and it’s impact on the complexity of European borders by Tom Scott can be found here.   The idea of nations and geography being tied together, rather than nations to rulers is one which it could be argued emerges in the Middle Ages as kingdoms become geographical entities to an extent distinct from their governance.

Gerard ter Borch - The Peace of Westphalia at Muenster - The ratification of the Treaty of Münster, part of the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years' War.

During the later part of what we might call the Early Middle Ages and the early part of the High Middle Ages a notable transition took place in the way in which national leaders described themselves.  In the earlier part of the 10^th Century Cnut describes himself in royal proclamations as King of the English – and later King of the English, King of the Dane.  Note here the emphasis – Cnut describes himself as the king of the people rather than the geographic territory.  Historians would later label the territories ruled by Cnut as the North Sea Empire.  

The North Sea Empire.  Red denotes where Cnut was king, orange areas were vassal states, and yellow were nations allied to Cnut through various treaties.

Rulership in some cases expanded by the addition of peoples rather than geographical territory.  This is not to say that geographical territory was less significant or lacked a significant identity – Northumbria held to an Anglo-Scandinavian identity even after it was subjugated by the alliance of southern kingdoms centred on Wessex.  When the Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic tribes arrive to settle in territories that would become England, Gildas, in terms perhaps not so different to those of a particularly xenophobic columnist for the Daily Mail, writes of the Ruin of Britain..  The very name of Wales and the Welsh people spring from the Anglo-Saxon/Old English word ‘Wēalas’ for which had a more general meaning of foreigner – and was used by the Anglo-Saxons for any people associated with the Brythonic tribes.  When Harold Godwinson, and a large part of the house of Godwin, fall near Hastings in 1066, it takes William I several years to subjugate the remaining country before turning first to some efforts in the reform of the church in 1070, and then to the conquest and subjugation of Wales and Ireland.  Even the name Great Britain could be argued to be adapted from a terminology from outside the islands themselves – Britannia Superior – which was the name of one of the Roman provinces in Britain.  The island of Ireland was known in Latin as  Hibernia – which was a loanword from Greek – the later names both Ireland and Gaelic Eire come from Ériu, a goddess in Irish mythology first recorded in the 9^th century.  The Norman nobility thought of themselves as just that – Norman – speaking the Norman language – one of angues d'oïl, as distinct from the d’oc languages of the southern region near the modern border with Spain.  Indeed this linguistic distinction gives us the name Languedoc – geographically more or less equating the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis, the area was a Visigothic kingdom in the 5^th to the 8^th centuries, before being briefly part of the Emirate of Corduba in the 750s, before it was conquered by the Franks in 759.  The area, which Occitan was spoken became known as Languedoc because of the use of Occitan.  Both are defined by their particular word for ‘yes’ – ‘oil’ or ‘oc’. Thus a literal translation might be – the place where the people say Oc.  

Rulership and in some senses identity were tied to multiple origins – geographical, familial, and political.  The concept of the nation-state is not generally considered to have emerged until the 15^th century at the earliest, and is generally considered to be a 18^th century European phenomenon. 

During the Middle Ages states expanded, shrank, emerged, and collapsed – borders shifted and disputed territory was conquered, annexed, subjugated, or liberated in both diplomacy and war.  However perhaps due to a general human desire for narrative consistency we have a tendency to treat countries and their predecessors as part of the continual progression with little distinction between the two.  The existence of such distinctions is over passed over unremarked except where particular political factors come into play.  This was the case during the campaigns leading up to the Referendum on Scottish Independence in 2014 when there was some discussion over the position of the Queen – with there being some suggestion that the situation would revert to that prior to the Act of Union in 1707 which Queen Elizabeth II remaining head of state of both the remainder of the United Kingdom and of the newly independent Scotland.  Of course, this reality did not take place, and the potential shift has probably fallen out of the general public consciousness. 

Terminology can also shift.  For example during the Cold War countries were often divided into the First World (Western capitalist economies), the Second World (Soviet style command economies), and the Third World (made up of states which were not aligned to either the NATO or the Warsaw Pact).  The term Third World became synonymous with developing countries – sometimes referred to as the Global South.   It must be noted that this model originated in the capitalist West and has the ideological fingerprints of a Western, NATO-centric, concept all over it.  The term Third World became particularly associated with former colonies of Western states after they had either won their independence, or be granted it by the states they had been subjugated by in the past.  The attitudes prevalent within a Western colonial mindset were equally responsible for the split of the Third World with the least developed countries sometimes pejoratively being referred to as the Fourth World.  The concept of the Fourth world has existed within extensions of the Three Worlds model previously – though not widely accepted – since the 1970s to discuss the relationships between ancient, tribal, and non-industrialised nations which are either marginal states or stateless.  It is sometimes summarised as ‘nations without states’ – and is often used in relation to First Nations in the Americas, indigenous tribes in South America and some islands which fall territorial within other states but have no links with them or communication, and nomadic populations such as the Berbers (or Amazighs, which includes the Tuareg people for example) and the Roma.  These populations do not map to state boundaries.

The Berber Flag used since the 1970s, and formally adopted in 1998.

The Roma Flag adopted in 1971 (some variants exist) 

The summation of these points is that while states may retain the same name, and many claim a direct lineage from earlier states, kingdoms, etc, the geography of the past forms and the present may not overlap and may be greatly different to the conceptualisation of the nation or state at a given point in its history.  To the nobility of the Norman England – lands on both sides of the cancel were part of one kingdom – and were referred to as such – in some sources creating overlap between the descriptions of the Kingdom of England, and the Kingdom of France – a matter complicated in itself by the repeat claims of each royal family to throne of the other.  The Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of the Franks occupy similar spaces but are distinct entities.  Nomadic populations may move across geographic regions while retaining a distinct identity as a nation – even if only as a loosely linked collection of clans and tribes.  The Brythonic kingdoms which occupied the British Isles before the arrival of the Germanic tribes, and the Scandinavians, were distinct from those groups, however that did not stop the Germanic tribes from referring to any group associated with the Britons ‘Wēalas’ , or the Normans for referring both as ‘English’.  Of course there are lineal links between these nations as they form states, and these ‘seams’ as it were between them become of less and less significance over time – due in part, in my belief, to the creation of romantic, idealised, national identities – and we cannot and should not separate ourselves from the deeds, and the misdeeds, of these previous incarnations of countries.  However when considering the  medieval period, and indeed most time periods before it, using the existing country names is a cause potential cause of confusion and misindentification.  It also allows space for the incorporation of national myth into historical inquiry – which should be based upon the evidence we have, rather than on conjecture of evidence which might have been (The long standing debate around the concept of Celtic Britain – in any sense other than the linguistic, is evidence of the problems that can occur when relying on what we might now call ret-conned national history).  As a result when placing events both chronologically and geographically I tend to use broad geographical terminology – the British Isles – rather than using solely country names.  It is also, in my view, good practice when locating a particular event, or geographic feature, to give both it’s historical location (i.e. which country it was considered to be part of at that point in the chronology), and it’s current one.  The best example of the need for this in modern history is in those territories which were part of the Russian Empire, or Alsace-Lorraine, or indeed the Kaliningrad oblast (the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania which had historically been part of Prussia and then of the German state).  It is also useful when referring to territories the possession of around which there are disputed claims. 

The short summary is that due to the fact that the nation-state is a relatively recent concept, that it cannot encompass many human populations, and the fluidity of national boundaries and identities using broader geographic terms when establishing the boundaries of studies avoids confusion around both political and cultural boundaries and identities.  Once this is established, then locations and areas can be mapped to both contemporary and modern locations in terms of geopolitics in an easy to understand way.