A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (German title: "Geschichte", literally " A History of the English-Speaking Peoples ") is a historical work in four volumes by Sir Winston Churchill .

Creation and publication history

The "History of the English-Speaking Peoples" was begun by Churchill in the 1930s before the Second World War and excerpts were preprinted in magazines. After the end of the war (1945) and the completion of his war memories ( The Second World War, 1945–51 ), Churchill continued work on his broad-based account of the genesis of the English-speaking peoples in the early 1950s and finally published the work in its entirety in the years 1956 to 1958.

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The Birth of Britain

The history of the English-speaking peoples - Churchill's last literary work - begins in 55 BC. BC, in which the British Isles first came into focus of the civilized world of that time. That year Caesar landed on the Channel coast of Celtic settled England . In the first volume, The Birth of Britain , he deals with the history of the Roman province of Britannia , the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries, the consolidation of England during the years of the heptarchy of regional kingdoms and Christianization . Churchill pays great attention to the reign of Alfred the Great (871–899), who was the first to hold the title of "King of the English" and who successfully fought against the Vikings and Danes. After the conquest of England by William of Normandy , which was completed in 1071 , the section of English history begins that Churchill calls The Making of the Nation . When describing the internal consolidation and integration of the Norman upper class, he also particularly goes into the expansion of the financial, legal and administrative system under Henry I and Henry II . His portrayal of the Wars of the Roses - haunting and clear at the same time - met with the approval of numerous specialist historians. The infamous Richard III. , with whose death in the Battle of Bosworth (1485) this volume ends, he clearly regards it as a negative figure.

The New World

The second volume, entitled The New World , summarizes the most important developments in the golden era that followed the age of English feudalism: the spread of humanism and the Reformation and the great voyages of discovery. In this part Churchill deals with the beginnings of the English world power position under Elizabeth I , the beginning settlement of North America , the development of parliament from an advisory institution to a governing body, the seizure of power by Oliver Cromwell , the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the one for the settlement of the religious differences so significant the entry into government of William of Orange . The turn from the 17th to the 18th century is described in a particularly knowledgeable and committed manner. This is probably also because John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough , an ancestor of Churchill, was a central figure of this time as the political leader of the Allied powers in the War of the Spanish Succession .

The Age of Revolution

The presentation of the historical course of development in the third volume is dominated by the conflict between England and France. Churchill also goes into detail on the uprising of the thirteen American colonies , the success of which put an end to the First Empire. In addition to the history of England, there is now that of the second great English-speaking nation, the USA.

The Great Democracies

Volume four outlines the development in the 19th century after the defeat of Napoleon, especially the regaining of world power through the admission of Australia , New Zealand and South Africa to the Empire. The title of the volume - The Great Democracies - already indicates the growing importance of the United States . Churchill sees the vanishing point of nineteenth-century history in the joint struggle between Great Britain and the USA in World War I. After the development of the USA, which was slowed down by the civil war, “the First World War was to finally and inextricably link America with the fate of the Old World and Great Britain.” Anglo-Saxon democratic sense of mission resonates in the final sentences, in which it says that the two nations are allies Waged "terrible but victorious wars" in the 20th century and that this "alliance of outstanding virtues" might soon be called upon again to "maintain peace and freedom".

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Churchill relies on numerous sources from Caesar to the present day - not least on his own study “Marlborough. His Life and Times ”(1933-1938). His work, which shows an unbroken sense of the great tradition of England, represents a kind of historical approach that is rare in Germany. It is not the work of a professional historian, but the rousing portrayal of a politician who, in addition to an astonishing knowledge of history, has a confident eye for power relations, personalities, dramatic political situations and strategic requirements, who feels the spirit of history and understands it, great historical moments to revive.

Although Churchill primarily recapitulates national history in his work, he does not shy away from robbing certain events of their legendary greatness by soberly addressing their real significance and their historical consequences (for example in the case of the victory over the Armada ), or to call unpleasant things by their name (such as the slave trade , "from which Great Britain has benefited so shamelessly in the past", the cruel policy towards Ireland or the measures taken in the Boer War ). On the other hand, he also takes into account uncertain, often rather poetic, traditions that have entered the historical consciousness of the English. Not infrequently he lapses into a slightly transfigured, heroic tone. But this tone also belongs to the unmistakable style of the writer Churchill, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 , of which Golo Mann said: “A golden, a flourishing style, we want to admit it. He can't come back. In any other hand it would have been an anachronism , only not in this one. "

The response to Churchill's work has been largely positive. His political rival Attlee mocked that the work should have been better called “Things in history that interested me”, since it revolves primarily around those historical topics that suit Churchill's nature - like war and adventure, while other important events like that social changes or cultural development are hardly taken into account. For example, the industrial revolution or the social question are only mentioned in passing. Nevertheless, he could not refuse to recognize the "history of the English-speaking peoples". The historian Alan JP Taylor called the work "one of the cleverest and most exciting representations of history".

Sebastian Haffner pointed out that the history of the English-speaking peoples might fall apart from Churchill's other works, but that he nevertheless “knew how to make the complicated transparent, the abstract plastic and tangible and everything and everything that he tackled. exciting. (...) Once you start reading, you can't stop. (…) [His story is] a very subjective story that does not meet scientific standards and does not want to meet them at all. It reads more as if Churchill had wanted to prove Goethe's dictum: 'The best thing about the story is: The enthusiasm it wants to arouse'. "

Adaptations

In the 1970s the BBC produced a series of 26 radio plays, each 50 minutes long, under the title "Churchill's People", based on Churchill's work.