The Isles: A History [Paperback]

Norman Davies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2001

Written by one of the most brilliant and provocative historians at work today, The Isles is a revolutionary narrative history that presents a new perspective on the development of Britain and Ireland, looking at them not as self-contained islands, but as an inextricable part of Europe.
This richly layered history begins with the Celtic Supremacy in the last centuries BC, which is presented in the light of a Celtic world stretching all the way from Iberia to Asia Minor. Roman Britain is seen not as a unique phenomenon but as similar to the other frontier regions of the Roman Empire. The Viking Age is viewed not only through the eyes of the invaded but from the standpoint of the invaders themselves--Norse, Danes, and Normans. In the later chapters, Davies follows the growth of the United Kingdom and charts the rise and fall of the main pillars of 'Britishness'--the Royal Navy, the Westminster Parliament, the Constitutional Monarchy, the Aristocracy, the British Empire, and the English Language.
This holistic approach challenges the traditional nationalist picture of a thousand years of "eternal England"--a unique country formed at an early date by Anglo-Saxon kings which evolved in isolation and, except for the Norman Conquest, was only marginally affected by continental affairs. The result is a new picture of the Isles, one of four countries--England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales--constantly buffeted by continental storms and repeatedly transformed by them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When did British history begin, and where will it all end? These controversial issues are tackled head-on in Norman Davies's polemical and persuasive survey of the four countries that in modern times have become known as the British Isles. Covering 10 millennia in just over a thousand pages, from "Cheddar Man" to New Labour, Davies shows how relatively recently the English state was formed--no earlier than Tudor times--and shows, too, how a sense of Britishness emerged only with the coming of empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. A historian of Poland, and the author of an acclaimed history of Europe, Davies is especially sensitive to the complex mixing and merging of tribes and races, languages and traditions, conquerors and colonized that has gone on throughout British history and that in many ways makes "our island story" much more like that of the rest of Europe than we usually think. Many myths of the English are dispelled in this book, and many historians are taken to task for their blinkered Anglocentrism. But the book ends on an upbeat note, with Davies welcoming Britain's return to the heart of Europe at the dawn of the new millennium. --Miles Taylor, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Following his acclaimed Europe: A History, British historian Davies has written a wondrous, landmark chronicle of the British Isles--already a bestseller in the U.K.--that challenges conventional Anglocentric assumptions throughout. Davies situates prehistoric Britain as part of a Celtic world stretching from Iberia to Poland to Asia Minor. Unlike most historians, who stress Britain's Anglo-Saxon heritage, Davies shows that the isles' fourfold division into England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales arose from a complex mixing of peoples in a constantly fluctuating patchwork of ethnic communities, statelets and kingdoms. Bursting with fresh insights on nearly every page, this magisterial narrative, scholarly yet down-to-earth and engrossing, reveals Davies at his iconoclastic best. He declares that the Viking legacy is much greater than traditional historians admit, and that the Battle of Hastings in 1066 was not a famous showdown between the English and French, but an intricate scramble for the final Viking spoils in England (valiant English King Harold II was leader of the Anglo-Danish party). The dense narrative really hits its stride with serial wife-slayer Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and Davies gives full play to the distinctive yet intertwined cultural, economic and political affairs of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Plumbing the roots of English (and British) prejudice, parochialism, xenophobia and imperialism, Davies includes vastly illuminating mini-essays on such sundry topics as class divisions, the loss of empire, race relations, the rise of organized sports, and the steady advance of a standardized English language. He closes with a provocative forecast: "The breakup of the United Kingdom may be imminent," a prediction he bases on the resurgence of nationalist consciousness and the fact that what he sees as the U.K.'s raison d'etre--the perpetuation of empire--has vanished. An advocate of Britain's full integration into the European Union, he chastises the U.K. for clinging to America's apron strings, yet he adds that a fuller embrace of the Continent might only hasten the U.K.'s breakup. No one who cares about Britain's past or future should miss this superb book. Color and b&w photos, maps. 50,000 first printing; author tour. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1296 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 29, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195148312
• ISBN-13: 978-0195148312
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #820,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Norman Davies C. M. G., F. B. A. is Professor Emeritus of the University of London, a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and the author of several books on Polish and European history, including God's Playground, White Eagle, Red Star, The Isles, Europe, and Microcosm.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A flawed masterpiece, March 3, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Isles: A History (Hardcover)

Mr Davies' book is an excellent introduction to the history of the British Isles. The author is at pains to use terms like "British" and "English" only in their proper contexts, and is so careful to avoid anachronism that he refers to historical figures and places only by the names current at the time. King William I, for example, is "Guillaume" in the book. The separate and inter-dependent histories of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales are treated in depth. Unfortunately, the book is marred by several egregious errors of fact; notably the assertion on page 905 (hardback) that the Irish civil war was won by Eamon de Valera's anti-treaty forces. The edition I read also suffered from a lack of proofreading that showed up on almost every page. The concluding chapter on the "Post-Imperial Isles" consists of a series of essays documenting various strands of modern society. These essays are very strongly informed by events of the late 1990s and are somewhat out of keeping with the overall scope of the work. All in all however, for the tolerant reader this book is a most enjoyable route to a solid knowledge of British history.

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Isles - The last dregs of the English empire, March 25, 2000

By 

Mike Wheeler (Birmingham, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Isles: A History (Hardcover)

Davies writes a superb book which is a wonderful antedote to all the horrendous old anglocentric histories I remember reading years ago. In my opinion Davies correctly emphasises the importance of all the constituent parts of the Isles. The book begins by examining the prehistory of the isles and I note that one other reviewer states that he felt this chapter to be a waste of time, concentrating on the minutae of an obscure academic argument. The opening chapter and its discussion readily puts over the point that when talking about place names etc. we cannot remove ourselves from a preconception of history and inevitably produces bias. If that reviewer had persisted with the book I suspect he/she may have got the point by the end. However the book then enters a more traditional history beginning with the Celtic domination of the Isles and proceeding through Roman, Saxon, Norse, Norman and Plantagenet eras of (attempted) domination. With each period there is a three part chapter consisting of a "scene setting" episode, the meat of the history and then a review of conceptions, misconceptions and previous views on those eras. The first part of the chapters are always excellent, the second as good but the third parts tend to be inconsistent, some good some rather tedious. Overall though the layout is good and the appendices at the end are wonderful, having the lyrics and music to various "nationalistic" tunes is a wonderfully original idea. Criticisms of the book are minor in comparison to its overall impact, but here goes. There appeared to me numerous typos in the book ranging from mis-spelling to factual inaccuracies. Whilst this can be forgiven, they did seem to get more frequent towards the end as if the proofreader had gone to sleep. There were inaccuracies and omissions in some of the genealogies notably the suggestion that James II and VII was the son of Charles II, that the old pretender was Charles and many others. The other criticism is that I would have preferred to see more on the more modern history of the non-English parts of the Isles (a large part of the tradition of South Wales for example depends on its mild rebelliousness, eg. Chartist rebellion (Chartism got one sentence), Rebecca riots (never mentioned) and the rise of the unions. These aspects of modern history are far more resonant to the people of South Wales than the musings of early 20th century Welsh language poets important as the language issue is. The history of the struggle to free Ireland is also much too brief. Overall though I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in afair history of the Isles.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well, it's certainly long...., June 11, 2001

By 

Mark Robson "MER" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Isles: A History (Hardcover)

This 1000 plus page opus by Norman Davies purports to be an examination of the history of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, both in relation to each other and to the rest of the world, from the beginning of human habitation to the present day. If that sounds like a tall order, I'm afraid it is. The Isles is largely fun to read and even educational, but the work as a whole suffers from diffuseness and poor organization. Perhaps this was inevitable. After all, as noted by the previous reviewers, Professor Davies' main point appears to be that the four areas that made up the United Kingdom at its greatest extent are historically and politically distinct entities, and that the development of the history of the Isles is not solely the history of England. Furthermore, Professor Davies is at pains to point out, the birth of the modern United Kingdom was in no way the clean, orderly, almost linear process that it is often made out to be. Therefore, in the development of these ideas, there is, almost by definition, a fragmentary quality to the narrative with a lot of jumping from one region to another, and, in the later (Imperial and post-Imperial) sections of the book, from one topic to another, usually without a clear transition. For the last third of the book, only a semblance of linearity is preserved, with the author hopping from subject to subject, seemingly without a clear direction. While much of the information presented is enormously interesting, I was left with a sense that Professor Davies had overreached, gotten lost within his organizational scheme (or lack thereof), and just couldn't find his way out.

So, The Isles is an interesting read, but it could've used a firmer editorial hand. I would definitely turn elsewhere for a survey of the history of the nations of the Isles. In addition to the organizational deficits described above, a number of signal events are only mentioned in passing (as also noted by the previous reviewers), as though familiarity with the basic historical facts were assumed as a prerequisite for understanding the further development of the central themes. For those raised on the history of the region, this assumption may be correct. Most American readers, however, are likely to get a sense of being a stranger at a party where everyone else knows each other.