Saturday 10 July 2010

322 Years of Hurt

Not that I have any great interest, but I am supporting Spain: the Spanish invasion of these shores in 1588 was prevented, whereas the Dutch invasion of these shores in 1688 was fully successful.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous10 July 2010 at 19:46

    Not at all surprised to see you sympathising with James II.

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  2. David Lindsay10 July 2010 at 20:33

    I take it that you do not approve of universal religious toleration, and therefore would have welcomed the foreign invasion that put paid to any prospect of it?

    Still, see a couple of recent posts as to the roots of the American Republic, of the campaign against the slave trade, of Radical action against social evils, of the extension of the franchise, of the creation of the Labour Movement, and of opposition to the Boer and First World Wars, back to Catholic, High Church (and thus first Methodist and then also Anglo-Catholic), Congregationalist, Baptist, Quaker and other disaffection with the Whig Revolution of 1688, such that within those communities, long after any hope of a Stuart restoration had died, there remained a sense that the Hanoverian State, its Empire, and that Empire's capitalist ideology were less than fully legitimate, a sense which had startlingly radical consequences.

    It is also worth pointing out that the Navy that defeated the Spanish Armada was not in fact commanded by El Drac, still the bogeyman used to frighten children to sleep in Spain and Latin America, but rather by Lord Howard of Effingham, a Catholic (though probably forgotten just because he was less colourful than Drake) as loyal to his Queen Elizabeth as I am to mine.

    And that the first verse of the Dutch national anthem, the oldest in the world, has William of Nassau declare that "To the king of Spain I've granted/A lifelong loyalty". As, indeed, he had. That things had become more complicated is why there are ten more verses.

    But the present point is this: there has never been a successful Spanish invasion of this country, or even an unsuccessful one, although one was attempted in 1588. However, a century later, there was a successful Dutch invasion, which overthrew the King and replaced him with one of Dutch devising, indeed himself a Dutchman.

    As I write, it is half time, and the score stands at 1-1. Uruguay was created by Britain through the Treaty of Montevideo in 1828, and has always had particularly warm relations with us. The other country playing is Germany.

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