Impeachment at the root of Brexit, and the Dutch are to blame

Impeachment is at the root of Brexit and the Dutch are to blame

Brexiting. A series on being English. #06

There are striking parallels between Trumpian events in the USA, Mayan events in Great Britain and what happened in the 17th century in England. Only, the English have remained consistent in their forward motion on the time stream, while the Americans seem to back up against the current. Freedom and justice for all are not a natural given but have to be fought for constantly. We see these fights now emerging in the USA as a kind of cold civil war and in Great Britain, especially England, as Brexit, which is in essence a fight for freedom from continental supervision. And all this flows from a series of events in 1588 and 1689 that firmly established what it meant to be English.

The deepest roots of what it means to be English may be found in
the earliest known history of the British isles and the invasions of the Vikings, especially the Danes. Both the inhabitants and the invaders were people steeped in the lores of personal freedom and individual heroism. This differs from the belief systems in Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern countries where people have accepted absolute dominion from their rulers and priests since time immemorial. Roman Catholicism is a perfect example of voluntary subjugation to a microscopically small elite that is stable and has now lasted for 1,684 years to be precise. There is nothing in the Northern European countries that even vaguely parallels that. But let us concentrate on the English.

A king or a tribal chief used to find himself in a predicament. He was for his position dependent upon the agreement of his people that he deserved the crown. But people are wily and many of them are easily influenced by persuasive talk of characters that go unnoticed until it is too late. The position of the king was not stable (regardless of what Francis Fukuyama had to say about it ☺). Eventually, kings, emirs, sheiks, chieftains and their kind found it prudent to take the foundations of their legitimation of their elevated positions away from popular consent and to base the legitimacy of their unique position upon religious beliefs. Fear and uncertainty of the future and the need to see some order and sense in the world, are the foundations of many a religion. It is an emotional thing and fearful emotions tend to take rank over rational thinking. This makes religion a more stable bedrock for political power than popular opinion, which, as we see in the four-year election cycles, can be swayed one way or the other with great ease. So the kings thought it wiser to build their position on religious beliefs. The price they had to pay for that was heavy but tolerable: the high priest had to be placed above the king, otherwise, there was no-one to bestow kingship upon the king. All of a sudden, the king and the priest had strong mutual interests. The king wanted to keep the religion in place to legitimise his position of power and the high-priests wanted to keep the king in place to protect their religion from competing belief systems. For priests as well as kings, this mutual benefit has proven to be one of the most stable mechanisms to stay in power. See how this works? It is its simplicity that makes it effective.

However, this idea of being a king by divine right has always been a moot point with the races of Northern Europe and England is no different. The first watershed had been the Magna Carta of 1215 where it was agreed that the English king could only rule if he observed a certain list of freedoms for the ruling class and the people of the realm. This concession to barons and other land owning elites was an additional price to pay to remain king of England on top of the the concession to the priests.

The second big step was unique to England. And that step was the absolutely novel idea that a king could be king on merit. The idea may have started in the head of King Henry VIII whom his contemporaries considered to be an attractive, educated and accomplished king. But it was the shattering defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 that proved to be an unexpected turning point. Apart from the usual attribution of the victory to favourable divine intervention, there was also widespread admiration for the competent and inspiring leadership of Queen Elizabeth. Her famous Tilbury speech contained the words "I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too" inspired the men a great deal. It has been recorded that, for a week, "the cheers did not stop" all along the coast.

This novel idea - that a king should also have some merit to the nation - was put into practice on the 5th of November, 1688, when on the secret invitation of an admiral and eight senior officers of the English Royal Navy, the Dutch ruler, Prince William of Orange, landed in Sussex with 463 ships and 40.000 men to claim the English throne in a peaceful series of events that is still celebrated as The Glorious Revolution. Although the English had fought three terrible wars against the Dutch, which they had all lost, this Dutch prince and his men were cheered all the way to London as the one hope for England. Just like Donald Trump was cheered in 2015 - 2016 as the only hope for the Americans to restore order and decency in Washington, D.C. Contrary to Trump, however, this prince was well-bred, well-read and a decent fellow altogether. But just like Trump, he knew how to win the hearts of the English from the outset. The mottos of the Dutch monarchy are "Je maintiendrai" (I will maintain) and "Pro Religione et Libertate". William had these mottos displayed on huge flags on his ships and wagons. This statement of "I will maintain the Liberty of the English and the Protestant Religion" made him instantly popular. These two values had been put in contention by the preceding English kings, especially the one who was king in 1689, James II, who was an arrogant, inconsiderate and therefore incompetent and useless man. To top it all, James was a devout catholic who tried to ally with arch-enemy Spain and install the Spanish system of government, just like Trump tries to ally the USA with Russia and install some kind of family rule while demanding absolute loyalty. It led to the impeachment of James II and his replacement by a competent Dutchman, the Prince of Orange, called King William III of England.
Today, these events are seen as the beginning of the modern parliamentary system of Great Britain.

But there was much more to it than a change of kings.
At that time, the Dutch ruled the waves and almost drowned in their wealth. Samuel Pepys once inspected one ship captured from a line of 263 ships of the Dutch East-Indian fleet returning home. He stepped on board and heard a crushing sound. He looked down and saw some cloves (illustration) trailing on the well-scrubbed planks of the deck. He immediately reprimanded the sailors and officers for being so careless. Around 1640, cloves were more valuable than diamonds. Then he descended into the hull of the ship to inspect its cargo. He found himself up to his knees in cloves, spilled from torn sacks stacked high. Stunned by so much riches, he started to cry. For he realised why the Dutch always beat the English. This one ship sufficed to finance the English Navy. And the Dutch had returned with 262 more such ships.

The English had been wise to impeach James II whose fossilised brain was full of the Spanish culture of incompetence and corruption (still rampant in the former Spanish colonies that adopted the Spanish language and lifestyle), and put this competent and honest Dutch prince on their throne instead (see illustration left). They quickly learned "all them Dutch tricks at sea" like building faster and stabler ships and using cannons with longer ranges. This time they were not up against the Dutch but sailed together with them. Modern historians also consider the novel and sophisticated Dutch ways of financing fleets and wars as crucial factors. The English were fast students and the Dutch quickly faded away from the scene, partly because they had no defence against their own knowhow, technology and Prince.

And so it came to pass that the English commenced on a journey that would give them dominance of the seven seas for two centuries and make them, by ruling the waves, the largest, most powerful, and richest nation the planet has ever seen.
It has been this gargantuan success as a nation that has instilled an indelible kind of self-consciousness and feelings of superiority that are so strong and run so deep that the English are incapable of cooperation on equal footing with anyone else.
It has led to a vote for Brexit and will make the negotiations of 2017 and 2018 for Brexit a tedious affair for the people from Brussels. Frankly, I believe the English would prefer not to negotiate about anything at all, happy to be 'liberated from the pettiness of continental think'.

So there it is.
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