 I think never is enough, yeah, never gonna do that stuff...
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Mar. 2nd, 2009 @ 11:54 am 
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I thought my SNAP access had somehow broken today, but it turned out it was just the SNAP deadzone around ALR 8 and 9. (Which I have already reported to a relevant authority. *cough*) Ended up going to the library to download lecture recordings, where, at SISO, I had the reassuring presence of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) cthulhubitch to keep me from panicking.
I've been kind of high-anxiety the last couple of days. (Originally, typoed as "king of...". It almost works.)
The previous class is in progress in ALR8 still. 9am Monday in an ALR; it's gotta be a first-year class. (I'll check when I have internet again, am currently back in the deadzone.) I just saw a student walk out and back in again ten minutes before the end of class. That's just not done.
My history class's lectures are set to streaming only. This makes me sad and distressed. I may speak to the lecturer about it. In the meantime, after class I shall be listening to the lecture while on-campus. It's just so much easier to do that kind of thing as local traffic. (For example, downloading my Linguistics lectures, my transfer rate got to about 1500k/sec over wireless.)
Class has opened up/entered. I snagged a seat by a powerpoint, and my lecturer is surprisingly young and seems very pleasant. My network list shows SNAP at two bars but can't connect; I'll live. I'm sitting right at the back, but: powerpoint! For a two-hour lecture when I've already been running my laptop off battery for a while this is reassuring, especially since it means I can run in full performance instead of battery-saving mode, which means my desktop background returns. It's currently a very, very pretty picture of Mizushima Hiro looking swoony DON'T JUDGE ME.
And now, both by request and because until I get ADHD meds it's relevant to my ability to focus:
9:51: Class hasn't started yet. I'm one of four people with laptops out, one of two who took advantage of the powerpoints on the back wall. The other person is a young woman with a tiny, tiny white netbook. Netbooks are cute but those tiny keyboards would drive me nuts.
First slide is up:
British National Identity in the
in the 18/Early 19 C: Myth or
Reality?
[sic]
9:55: Hmm, someone's just come in to announce a talk tomorrow by Amir somebody, author of My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn't. I'll get a flyer on my way out, that's way above the usual standard of pre-class student activist talkage.
9:57: OMG he has the best Scottish accent ever. Note to self, must concentrate, not be distracted by the fact that he just got about 100% hotter and and is near my age and uh I am too old for university or at least for university classes taught by really young, Scottish Ph.D.s.
Best transfer ever. *cough*
10:00 Here we go.
Today we're looking at British national identity, a controversial and complicated subject.
Huh, in the 1707 union Scottish Parliament was abolished immediately. No wonder they were so pissy. Great Britain established then, 1707 (after unification with Wales happened in 15360, United Kingdom 1801 when Ireland was brought in. And oh how United they were.
Oh, I like this guy. He sets out the structure of the lecture at the opening, and does a really nice overview starting with the Historiography.
It's really interesting that we're getting this lecture on the sense of unified British identity from a Scot. If this lecture includes the word "sassenach" I will laugh far too hard.
Colley argued that in the course of the 18th Century that Scotland, England and Wales developed a common British identity. Other scholars disagree.
We just did an interesting exercise in word association: he asked us for things we associate with Scottish, Irish, British and English identity, in that order: whereupon the room falls somewhat silent when we get to English, as people struggle for a distinction between British and English.
Contextual background: The long history of conflict and England and Scotland. Mention of Braveheart, which I recall Fred Macauley talking about, with a joking reference to it being shown daily in Scottish schools.
"What will they not get, children?"
"Miss! Miss! Miss! Is it 'freedom'?"
1320, Declaration of Arbroath (Scottish Independence). Note to self, look up more about that. "For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any condition be brought under English rule..." yet less than 400 years later, unification.
Why:
Scotland - was on the verge of bankruptcy, having lost its fortunes trying to establish a Scottish Empire, while England was a superpower at the time and the Scottish merchants wanted access to English markets.
England - Succession crisis. In 1603, Union of the crowns - they share the same monarch. There was fear that with Queen Anne not giving birth to a male heir, the Scots might appoint an unpopular Catholic king. (Note to self, learn more about this.)
It was a marriage of convenience, not overly desired in either country, and rather unpopular in both.
Even from the outset, visible in early designs for the Union Flag: one version minimises the Scottish flag to the position of the Union Jack in the Australian, another has the Scottish flag superimposed over the English. Um.
Apparently London broke a lot of the promises included in the Act of Union, especially the ones about taxation. Shocker.
Wow, Glasgow Rangers didn't sign a Catholic for over a century. They defined themselves as a Protestant club. Colley makes an argument that Protestantism pulled Britain together.
Now discussing the British Constitution - the Revolution Settlement - which defines that the British Head of State can not be Catholic. Heh, goes back to the Stuarts, deposed due to unpopularity caused by flirting with Catholicism and by acting as absolute monarchs.
Huh, the Glorious Revolution, inviting William of Orange to be king - I thought the Glorious Revolution was Cromwell's Republic.
Why was Catholicism hated so?
Catholicism was associated with arbitrary, despotic rule. And also to do with continental Europe; most of the European monarchies were Catholic, and were absolute monarchies, who hadn't undergone parliamentary reform. (It's worth noting that those monarchies ended worse than the British one has.) And Catholic monarchs didn't swear their allegiance to the Crown, they swore it to the Pope. This unsettled the Protestant aristocracy rather, for fear of betrayal and undermining.
We're looking at the flag of Glasgow Rangers, showing the British and Northern Ireland flag. I got a grin and a "Good question! Anyone know?" when he asked what was significant about the flag and I asked what the red hand represents. Red Hand of Ulster. (He elaborated but I'm falling behind.)
The point is, it's basically a flag showing more allegiance to Protestantism than Scotland, presented as an argument by Colley for British identity.
War
Britain fought six wars between 1707 and 1839. They had one common factor: France. All of them were against Catholic, despotic, anti-parliamentarian France, which is 24 miles away and kind of scary. Colley argues that war united the British against a common enemy and encouraged them to look for what they had in common, and allowed them to define themselves as British against the "bloody foreigner".
It also encouraged the development of loyalist patriotism. In 1793-1815 especially there is a wealth of government propaganda, all emphasising the the threat that Catholic France presented and making the call for the need for national unity. This helped prop up the war effort, but also fostered national unity.
Scots were disproportionally represented in the British Army. They were 10% of the population and 36% of volunteers (I think in the Napoleonic Wars particularly?). Colley argues that this showed Scots had a sense of British loyalty, and that this also brought the Scottish soldiers into contact with English/Irish/Welsh soldiers and would help to strengthen sense of kinship and heal old wounds. She also argues that this made Scottish part of British imperial ambition.
We're now looking at the effect of war on Austrlaian national identity for parallels/divergences. Was Gallipoli a turning point in Australian history?
Economic
Scottish merchants get more and more access to British markets, especially with the rise of transatlantic trading with the Americas. Glasgow, for example, becomes an industrial powerhouse.
Industrialisation united people - bringing people literally, physically together, with roadways, railways, canals, etc, and increasing interdependence for commercial and trading purposes.
The Empire offered Scots advantages for employment etc. The "Scottish diaspora" - disproportionate number of Scots taking up imperial jobs, because there was a lot of opportunity, hence the widespread SCottish populations worldwide.
Scottophobia
Also making political gain - at one point 130 English and Welsh parliamentary seats were represented by Scots. This provoked resentment in England. Satirical cartoon on The Caledonians in Money-Land - anti-Scot resentment at the sense that the Scots were taking jobs that "belonged" to the English. Reference to the mean and greedy stereotype of the Scots.
It's worth noting that the satirical cartoon he showed us is really reminiscent of 1930s-era Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda.
Quotation of some anti-Scottish propaganda. There was some anti-Scottish activism, in turn very reminiscent of the kind of thing Stormfront types say about non-whites.
Heh, ant the sullen resentment of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister because he's from Glasgow. Also the agitation against Scotland still being represented in the British Parliament what with the existence of the Scottish parliament.
The Case against Britishness
Those who disagree point out the prevalence of regional identities. In Scotland, Highland vs Lowland. 18th-century Highland was strongly Catholic, tended to be Gaelic speakers rather than English.
Meanwhile, in England, there were strong county-based allegiances/identities rather than a national English identity. People from 18th-century Yorkshire, for example, would see themselves first as Yorkshiremen rather than Englishmen. Even today, it persists; a recent survey showed that most English people would rather their local club win the English Premier League than England win the World Cup.
Colley conveniently omits predominantly-Catholic Irelend from her thesis of Protestant Britishnesss.
Institutional factors: Under the terms of the Act of Union, Scots retained their own legal, educational and church system.
Even today, most Scots regard themselves as Scottish rather than British. (nb: This came up in an episode of the Bugle.)
Huh. Scotland, during this period, invested much more in the universities and education in general than England did.
The argument: British identity was simply the imposition of English identity.
Huh, no second lecture today. All done, time to pack up.
OH GOD THE CO-OP *cries* And I couldn't even get my course reader, I just had to order one 'cause they were sold out of the one I need. But I also bought Dear Fatty by Dawn French.
Due to getting held up at the co-op and leaving as early as I did, I was over four hours from breakfast by the time I got to UniSFA - and was shaking and queasy and feeling terrible. After I got here I slammed most of a can of Apple Isle for quick transmission to bloodstream.
Time to post.
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Hey Sami, I'm glad you like your new lecture(r) :) I hope you are feeling better now?
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| Date: |
March 2nd, 2009 04:42 am (UTC) |
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Much. And I will definitely be sure to eat again before I go to my tutorial.
I'm going to the 3pm one, because he said to choose which I wanted, and the 12pm one offers me three consecutive hours of classes which is hypoglycaematically problematic.
I hope you are well-rested and enjoying your public holiday. :)
:nods: sounds like a plan. And the 3pm one also lets you spend the interim in a social way which should generally be a good thing for you, you like spending time with people :)
I am indeed enjoying my public holiday, although I've only been up for about an hour. Mumi has invited me to have dinner with her tonight, so that will be nice :)
I'm not surprised, given I know what time you went to bed!
Yay for dinner with your Mumi. (Boo, I need to work out my own dinner myself. >.>)
I do like spending time with people, even inappropriately attractive freshers. (17 IS TOO YOUNG.)
I'm waiting for my tutorial to start now, and wondering why my computer didn't go back to the proper settings when I switched it off battery-saving mode.
Out of interest, around how late are you likely to finish up at your parents'? >.>
ahahaha. well at least you know your weakness! Just think, in winter you will be immune! ;P
idek. Somewhere around 9/10 I would imagine. Late enough that you would have to field several meals at uni by yourself...
Yeah, which is hassle. I'll probably head back before that late, realistically. (I have a bunch I want to get done at Reid before I leave, is all.)
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