One of the excitements of studying this period is to realise how much of the Britain that we know today had its origins so long ago. Many of the fundamental characteristics of Western society took shape in these centuries. Out of the collapse of Roman civilization, new forms of social and religious organization emerged. The forging of ethnic and political identities brought into being the entities that we now call England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This paper will look the makeup of Britain in this period, considering the influences of the Celts, Picts, and Vikings to name a few. It will also consider the developing artistic, literary and religious culture that was growing in Britain and what influenced it.

By 600, less than half of Britain was under English control. The West and North still comprised Celtic states, which remained Christian, literate and in contact with the Mediterranean world. The Irish, still in many respects an Iron Age society, were developing a remarkable artistic, literary and religious culture; their overseas impact involved the colonization of western Scotland and missionary activity in much of Western Europe. The conversion of the English to Christianity was associated with the building of kingdoms, and with an extraordinary interchange between Germanic, British, Irish, Gallic and Mediterranean cultures which produced such outstanding works of art as the Sutton Hoo treasures and the Lindisfarne Gospels. With the growth of continental trade, ports were established and coinage reintroduced. Prosperity financed a rich monastic culture, both in Ireland and, rather later, among the English. During c.680-750, north-east England became one of the intellectual centres of Europe, and the English launched missions to their still-pagan relatives abroad. Kingship and government operated on an ever-widening scale, though tempered by the enduring realities of warrior societies: marriage alliances, gift-giving, plunder and the blood-feud. In 850 Britain was still divided between several British and English states, while in Ireland provincial kingships were forming. But soon the political map was transformed by Viking invasions. The countryside and its inhabitants were being organised into more self-contained farming and parish communities, often under an emergent class of small proprietors. To a large extent, it was during 900-1100 that market towns, villages and local churches came into existence. Important though it was, the Norman Conquest of 1066 changed little of this fundamentally.

Historians have debated for centuries whether the Norman Conquest was a turning point in English history, and the controversy shows no sign of slackening. Yet part of the enduring fascination of the topic is that larger changes were transforming Europe in this period, in politics, the economy, society, culture and religion. As historians adopt new approaches to old questions, they continue to generate historical exploration and debate. It has long been obvious, for instance, that medieval England cannot be studied in isolation: the Conquest immersed England in the continent politically and culturally, while the pope’s jurisdiction expanded throughout this period (a reminder of a former EU). Yet recently historians have opened up more comparative perspectives by foregrounding the other occupants of the British Isles. The ‘English’ attempted to dominate the very different societies of Wales, Ireland and Scotland, reaching a climax with Edward I: was this ‘the first age of English imperialism’? Colonial themes have also informed the central concept of medieval lordship, through an emphasis on aristocratic aggression and expansionism, and on the nature of frontier societies.

Our view of the aristocracy has also been influenced by the recent cultural dimension in historical writing, through investigation of their lifestyle and ideals – ‘Chivalry’. The physical manifestations of kingship have also come under the spotlight, as the Plantagenets sought to reflect a dominant ideology partly through buildings (notably Westminster Abbey). A cultural concept long central to this period, the ‘twelfth-century renaissance’, in fact describes a range of changes, from the evident transformation of art and architecture (seen in the great cathedrals), through the revival of learning (and foundation of Oxford), to the spread of practical literacy, the law and social regulation and governance. A key component in the cultural approach to history is the study of perception, of the assumptions and attitudes which make up much of social life. And this raises the key chicken-and-egg question of whether changes in perceptions merely arise from or can cause more tangible changes. The position of women is a case in point: how were their lives affected by increasingly misogynistic religious ideology, and how did they respond both ideologically and practically? Or was it economic and political changes which changed family structures and thus women’s social position? Women’s history has broadened into that of gender, including patriarchy, and study of the family now extends to childhood.

Certainly these were centuries of social and economic diversification and transformation. More land was settled by an expanding population, markets and towns proliferated, and increasing trade created a more commercialized mentality (or vice versa?). How far were these processes driven from above, by lords, and how far by private enterprise& amongst settlers, townspeople and peasants? Had economic growth ended before the Black Death? – this question continues to be debated by historians adopting different approaches. The history of the church has also been subjected to a more cultural approach; while issues about the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authority remain important (most obviously focused on Thomas Becket), historians increasingly investigate religion anthropologically, from the point of view of its consumers. How were miracles understood and experienced? Why were saints important to people? What were the stories, ideas and practices which structured social experience? The history of religious practice and belief has become a central part of social history.

All these perspectives have enriched political history, and older themes have appeared in a new light, especially the constitutional relationship of king and people. The growth of the crown’s power provoked its subjects into setting safeguards on government, notably in Magna Carta; and the period ends with the deposition of a king, Edward II, on the basis of a sophisticated political ideology of royal accountability to ‘the community of the realm’.

This period presents the opportunity to study political, religious, economic, social and cultural history across the British Isles in an age often seen in terms of turbulence and transition. The era of ‘the expiring middle ages’ was one of social and political ferment, borne out in the depositions and murders of kings, the long sequence of popular revolts, and the coups, plots, demonstrations and battles that mark the political history of every part of the British Isles Yet even before the age of ‘Reformation’ and ‘Renaissance’, of ‘peace, print and protestantism’, the societies of the region were maturing fast, government reaching more deeply into the population, ethnicities solidifying and mixing, architecture, commerce, craft and the arts of communication developing strongly. There is ongoing debate among historians, many of them teaching here in Oxford, about virtually every aspect of the period – both its large-scale changes and its detailed dynamics. The paper thus poses challenging questions of historical interpretation about issues as diverse as the effects of the Black Death on rural and urban society and on the status of women, the origins and persistence of academic and popular heresy, the rise of vernacular literature, the nature of aristocratic power, the qualities needed for success in English and Scottish kingship, the growth of courts, parliaments and judicial systems and the causes of the Reformation. Even the period itself is in question – is it one period or two? Medieval or early modern? An age of decline, or of growth, or of something else besides?

Reformation, Revolution, Restoration: this is a period rich in exciting events. Throughout, political and religious authority were contested, challenged, and re-imagined afresh. The paper begins in the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, with the Tudor dynasty consolidating a precarious grip on the English throne and a fragile hold on parts of Ireland, with a delicate peace between Scotland and England. Two hundred years later, the whole of Britain would be transformed, brought together into a Union with social and religious consequences no less important than the political implications. The long contested process of Reformation unleashed a wide variety of religious ideas and encouraged new ways of understanding identity, community, and even family relationships. A period of sustained economic growth brought unimagined luxuries and new technologies to the growing cities, changing the social fabric of the country in complex ways. Literature, music and art flourished; Shakespeare’s plays, Tallis’s motets and Holbein’s portraits all express the grandeur and the individual anxieties of the period. And by 1700 Britain had moved from the fringes of Europe to become one of its leading powers, with a growing Empire in the Americas.

Students taking this paper have the opportunity to examine a wide range of social, political and religious developments across all three British kingdoms. The period is rich in source material, with texts and pamphlets ranging from royal proclamations to scurrilous, ‘tabloid’ newsbooks are easily accessible in libraries and online. But opinions and policies were not only formed through texts; historians are increasingly aware of the sophisticated political and religious culture which developed in this period, involving art, music and carefully staged rituals. Traces of the rich visual and artistic culture of the period can be seen across the city, in the Ashmolean and in many of the colleges, and students are encouraged to consider these sources alongside more traditional ones. Moreover, such a crucial period in British history has attracted some of the most passionate and engaged historians, and controversy over the nature of the Reformation, the flow of court politics, the causes of the civil war, and the events of the Glorious Revolution continues to arouse heated debate. No less important are questions of social and economic change, and historians now use the vast range of source materials in new and increasingly sophisticated ways. The paper offers students the opportunity to examine the central events and ideas of this period, but the flexibility of the tutorial system allows each student to spend time focusing on particular aspects of it, in consultation with their tutor.

The Revolutions of 1689 had profound consequences for the British Isles. The Glorious Revolution entrenched the Westminster Parliament at the heart of government and political life in England and Wales, and established a limited form of religious toleration. Commerce and manufacturing flourished. The British and then United Kingdom state were, very largely, a creation of this period, which saw union with Scotland (in 1707) and then Ireland (in 1801). Large-scale urbanization was a very visible feature of change, with profound effects on social identities and social order, habits and patterns of association and leisure, and cultural life. Britain by as early as 1714 had become one of Europe’s major powers and a rising imperial power. The combination of economic progress, English/British liberty, and new-found European and global influence, made eighteenth-century Britain an object of fascination – at times, admiration – for a growing number of continental Europeans.

Yet Britain’s growing dynamism, power, and influence were also associated with multiple tensions and conflicts at home and overseas. Britain was at war for almost half this period, as it sought to maintain and extend its European and global interests and, at certain moments, to defend itself from invasion. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Jacobitism was the main spectre at the feast, casting a lengthy, menacing shadow over the Protestant and (from 1714) Hanoverian succession and the future of the Anglo-Scottish union. After 1760, the claim that Britain had achieved an enviable balance between liberty and order was called into question by the noisy disturbances associated with that most notorious gadfly of eighteenth-century politics, John Wilkes and British defeat in the War of American Independence 1775-1783. A new, richer world of goods may have brought greater comfort and amenity, for some at least, but anxieties that luxury and corruption were subverting the political and social order, and producing a political and social elite unsuited to leadership, intensified. The expansion of British influence in India provided a new focus for debates about empire, while the morality of the slave trade, dominated by Britain, and of slavery in the plantation colonies came under unexampled scrutiny in the later eighteenth century.

The period covered by this paper was characterised by rapid and wide-ranging changes to the political, social, cultural and economic fabric of the United Kingdom.

For many of those living through these transformations, the possibilities for change and improvement seemed boundless. While those living in industrial cities endured terrible conditions, and the population of Ireland was devastated by the famine, many more prosperous Victorians conceived of themselves as the harbingers of progress. This self-confidence was reflected in ambitious building projects for schools, hospitals and civic buildings, which still stand in many British cities, towns and villages. 

In the early twentieth century, new ideas about national efficiency and social welfare prompted the development of projects for social insurance, education reform and the protection of workers which would underpin the development of the welfare state during and after the Second World War. Alongside these changes to civil society, the period saw smaller scale shifts in family dynamics. Children were accorded increasing importance within family life and new ideas about the role and responsibilities of mothers and fathers shaped conceptions of masculinity and femininity.

The paper covers a period which is today regarded by journalists and sentimentalists as epoch of British ‘greatness’. That it was a very remarkable epoch is certain, and its most obvious defining feature is provided by a history of political and institutional change which appears in retrospect like a blaze of technicolor. To say this is not just a comment on heroic individuals such as Gladstone and Disraeli; rather it is reflection of what all ordinary Britons (though not necessarily Irishmen) really thought: politics lay at the centre of their historical world. The centrepiece of political struggle lay in the attempts variously to reform and to preserve England’s ‘ancient constitution’. How could it be made more compatible with modern ideas about political representation, perhaps with ‘democracy’ even? But how at the same time could one preserve those unique historic features, such as traditional English liberty under the sovereignty of Parliament, which had served Britain so well since 1688 features which (it was alleged) would continue to protect her from foreign perils such as despotism, revolution, and dictators? The paper thus invites students to consider how satisfactory and how complete were the ‘Victorian’ reforms which still supply the basic structure of our political institutions today. Why were they so seemingly successful in Britain and so troubled in Ireland? It also asks how these notoriously insular institutions functioned in Europe and as the ultimate rulers of a large and expansive empire. Could one have both empire and liberty?

However, it is a guiding principle of this paper – and one reflected in the introductory lecture provision – to make equal provision for the study of politics and society, where ‘society’ is broadly defined to include culture and the economy. In considering British society students will be able to draw on rich and established traditions of writing on the working classes and on the traditional landed élite, alongside a more recent and open-ended body of writing on gender, to say nothing of that elusive residuum the ‘middle classes’. Of course social class can no longer be seen simply as a material fact, or as a reflection of the workplace, important though this dimension undoubtedly was. Social situation also requires a consideration of social cultures and mentalities. Of these some were class bound and some were not, and here the histories of religion and of ethnicity occupy a prominent place in the focus of the paper, both of them relatively new and expansive areas of research inquiry. In social history, too, students are invited to reflect on features which render England and Britain unique in a European context. For example: a notorious preoccupation with wealth creation; a religious geography based on the peculiarly Anglo-Saxon polarity between established Churches and Dissenters, and the absence of any tradition of a prestigious state bureaucracy on the Continental model. Were these distinctive traditions a source of comparative advantage,or did they render the British Isles merely backward and provincial? Both points of view were advanced with much enthusiasm by Britons and Europeans alike over the lifetime of this paper.

The human body, gender, and sexuality each have histories. Pioneering studies since the late-1970s have shown how what bodies mean has changed over time as societies have idealised, represented, and regulated the body in distinct ways. The experience of being male, of having sex, of desiring someone of the same gender, of speaking with a feminine voice, of growing old in a relationship, or of changing gender was not the same in 1600, 1800 and 2000.  This paper asks how, why and with what consequences people have made gender and sexual identities from embodied experience in the British Isles since 1500.

The paper examines how state, religious, medical and cultural authorities have categorised and regulated bodies including, most powerfully, in establishing binaries of gender identity and of sexual orientation. What made certain appearances, acts and relationships normative? How did ideas of bodily ‘deviance’ change over time?

The paper also examines how people accepted, negotiated, subverted or rejected these categories through their everyday actions and sense of self. How did people’s experiences of their bodies, desires and relationships change over five-hundred years? What circumstances enabled individuals or groups to alter what bodies might do, how they looked, and what they meant? How did gender and sexual identities interact with each other and with identities founded, for instance, in class, race, health, or religion? These, more archivally demanding, questions allow us to think about how individual, social and cultural change happened across more than five-hundred years.

This paper examines experiences and ideas that people formed from, and about, bodies. Evidence about the past – and therefore the possibility of historical study – is often the product of violence, abuse and distress, including graphic descriptions of people’s experiences. In addition, many primary and secondary sources use language and express attitudes that are not acceptable in Britain today. We have an ethical responsibility as historians to make sense of these past experiences and viewpoints while communicating in ways that are sensitive and appropriate to our society. This material is thought-provoking, controversial, and important for us all, but we will each be affected in different ways when we interrogate these topics as historians. Please be aware of the content of this paper before choosing to study it, but do not hesitate to talk to a tutor at any point if any of the topics you study are raising particular concerns for you.

Although the Scots voted, albeit more narrowly than generally anticipated, to remain within the United Kingdom in the referendum of 2014, the result and unfolding repercussions of the 2016 referendum on British membership of the EU have only underlined the uncertainty that hangs over the configuration, nature, and future of the Union state. This course examines the creation and key episodes and themes in the histories of the two unions out of which the United Kingdom was formed. It starts with the Union of Crowns in 1603, although debates over British union go back considerably further, and then takes up the parallel stories of the fortunes of the incorporating Anglo-Scots union of 1707 and the relationship between the British state and Ireland, a crucial moment in which was the forging of the Anglo-Irish union in 1800 and thus the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Key focuses are the attempts to fashion, first, a workable British union state and then a workable British-Irish union, attempts which had starkly contrasting outcomes, although the British-Irish Union endured for 120 years. In the more recent period, issues to be tackled include the place of Northern Ireland in the politics of the United Kingdom, devolution, and the dramatic rise of the Scottish National Party to its current position of political dominance in Scotland. This course strongly emphasizes the importance of locating current debates about the condition and future of the Union state in a broad and deep historical context. It offers students the opportunity to think in a sustained manner, and across a long period, about shifting relationships between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the interactions between British and other national identities within the British Isles, and, more broadly, the institutions, experiences, and leadership which serve to illuminate the changing character and longevity of the Union state, and also its vulnerabilities, past and present.