The love affair of the British with their national institutions is no limp romanticism but an appreciation of the way that institutions embody and pe… - J. C. D. Clark

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The love affair of the British with their national institutions is no limp romanticism but an appreciation of the way that institutions embody and perpetuate, as well as symbolise, a certain way of doing things. That is why a predilection for hereditary peers and against high inheritance taxes is an affirmation of family integrity. That is why an established Church is widely endorsed, even by other Christian denominations, as an official acknowledgement that law is more than technical convention. That is why the national history curriculum has become a potent symbol of society's right corporately to affirm a vision of itself.

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About J. C. D. Clark

Jonathan Charles Douglas Clark (born 28 February 1951) is a British historian of both British and American history. He was an undergraduate at Downing College, Cambridge. Having previously held posts at Peterhouse, Cambridge and All Souls College, Oxford into 1996, he has since held the Joyce C. and Elizabeth Ann Hall Distinguished Professorship of British History at the University of Kansas.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: J C D Clark Jonathan Clark Jonathan Charles Douglas Jonathan Charles Douglas Clark
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Additional quotes by J. C. D. Clark

County studies have succeeded in proving that there was no self-sufficient impetus to rebellion (let alone revolution) within the English counties. The English Civil War, we can then see, was the result of a "domino effect" produced by successful rebellions in Scotland and Ireland.

Far from being uplifted by their history, the Scots have over many centuries been strikingly bad at maintaining and developing a useful sense of national identity. Worse, Scotland lost much of the self-image it once possessed. Medieval Scotland was a considerable achievement of dynastic politics over poverty and localism. It boasted four universities to England's two, and into the 16th century, Scottish culture was famous across Europe. This mental world of renaissance latinity sustained a Scots identity built around dynastic history and religion rather than the folk culture of Robert Burns. It was this which went disastrously wrong...
The Glorious Revolution, ardently espoused by Scots Presbyterians, began the break-up and suppression of this high culture of latinity, episcopalianism and dynastic legitimacy. With dour thoroughness, episcopalians and nonjurors were expelled from their posts as clergy, schoolmasters and academics, and were subjected to lasting and effective persecution.
Presbyterians hailed William III, and later the Hanoverians, as saviours of their religious and civil liberties; but, far more than in England, Scots were divided. Presbyterianism survived at the cost of sacrificing a national identity which had grown up in another mental world.

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The model of the atomised, acquisitive individual, dealing with others only through secularised market relations regulated by self-interest, is disastrously inadequate as an account of how real men behaved in real societies, as real historians ultimately discerned.

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