Macrobius
Megaphoron
The Origins of English Individualism
THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH INDIVIDUALISM is an investigation into what separated English society from the Continent; the findings are not so controversial once considered. The author, Macfarlane, seeks to demonstrate English society was “individual” in nature: it was different to the Continent, to...
THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH INDIVIDUALISM is an investigation into what separated English society from the Continent; the findings are not so controversial once considered.
The author, Macfarlane, seeks to demonstrate English society was “individual” in nature: it was different to the Continent, to its Celtic neighbours, to the world, and was not “peasant” in its nature, and had not been (at least) since the 13th Century.
The word “peasant” is used in the sense of a society reliant upon the family as the primary unit of production. Throughout the work, he illustrates how English society was individual in its approach to law, property, family, work, wealth.
What led him to this work was his research seemed increasingly at odds with the idea that England was a “peasant” society. Witchcraft was one area that was notable for the difference of the English and Continental witch.
The English witch lacked the sexual motif: the Continental witch, with the sordid details of orgies with the Devil, was sexualised, worked in groups, and had a habit of attacking the nouveaux riches.
The imagined English witch was individual, not a deviant, but decorous, and did not steal food (there was no hunger motif, no cannibalism unlike the Celtic and Continental witches) – rather, they preyed on the lower classes who begged their neighbours for help.
This kind of difference served only to illustrate a wider gulf between England and the Continent that the likes of Marx, Weber and others had not sufficiently explained, or explained in a manner that did not make sense beyond the immediate comprehension, to Macfarlane.
There are many areas that we can trace today that separate us and elsewhere, and explain the nature of the Anglo-Saxon race and its colonies (England, North America, Australasia, etc).
Property was individual. The concept of “joint-ownership” of property, or the father being shuffled off in favour of the son once the father had become surplus to requirements, was an absurdity in England. England did not consider property as belonging to the family. The property belonged to the individual, and sons could be disinherited by the father at will.
Likewise, once title had been passed on, the idea that the father could take the property from the son was a legal absurdity.
It follows that there was a lack of attachment to the land – or to the family, compared to elsewhere.
Land was regularly sold: it was not unconscionable to do so because there was no attachment to the land as being “familial”, and this was done with regularity by all classes.
Rather than the family’s reproduction being the main source of labour for the farm, England relied heavily upon the mobile labourers who were hired for their labour: sons, who may be expected to remain on the family farm in Russia, were shuffled off until they may – perhaps – inherit the farm.
As Macfarlane writes, families “shed some of their younger or less talented children”. By 1380, research of East Anglian villages noted that 50 to 70 percent of males were employees, designated as servants or labourers – not a “peasantry” at all, but a mobile workforce who worked primarily for themselves rather than their family.
What this led to create was the division into the impoverished labourers and the wealthy landowners. Class remains a defining feature of England, more so than elsewhere, and this type of class-consciousness undoubtedly stems from the perspective that such a culture breeds. English culture, since this early time, cared most of all for the individual above the family or the “collective”. Certainly, England became a high-trust society, but I’d wager that was largely motivated by self-interest than one’s own care for the collective.
There was not the attachment to the family, such as is still borne out today in the Anglo-Saxon world. The family, even back to the 13th century, was largely considered to be the nuclear family, plus grandparents. The family, once left, was to be visited – not to be attached to. The wandering labourer was a feature of England.
It is little wonder that pubs, associations and sports clubs would arise as a result of this, as others have mentioned in the past. Macfarlane uses one particular example that aids with this point: the village of Earls Colne, for the period of 1560-1750, approximately one-third were both baptised and buried in the village. The considerable migration of people throughout England necessitates the existence of pubs and other establishments in order to serve the wandering labourer, and also provide some sense of belonging which they did not possess given the lack of attachment to land and family.
But that is not to say that England was an impoverished nation. The Englishman lived the true life of leisure compared to the typical myth peddled.
The Englishman’s diet was full of meat and alcohol: the above table only gives a taste. The amount of animal and alcohol in its diet was the rival of any nation on earth, let alone the Continent. Merry England was no lie!
Rather than break his back in the field, relative to his French or Italian counterparts, the Englishman enjoyed a life of leisure. The Englishman enjoyed ale instead of water: the haughty attitude that the Englishman adopted was well-deserved because of his material wealth. The little Englander, hateful of foreigners, cared only for himself is borne out of the wealth that this individualist society brought with it.
Attitudes of foreigners are illustrated by one Italian who in 1548 wrote:
“The English are commonly destitute of good breeding, and are despisers of Foreigners, since they esteem him a wretched being and but half a man who may be born elsewhere than in Britain, and far more miserable him whose fate it should be to leave his breath and his bones in a foreign land…”
Sound familiar?
Fundamentally, England was different to its counterparts, even its most direct Germanic counterparts (see: https://archive.ph/DSOf8). Northern Germans were obedient to their landlord and served as labourers to large landowners – whilst there is similarity in that they both laboured, the obedience was not the same, for there was a great deal of mobility in where the English laboured.
Further, the lack of attachment to land seemed to have the positive effect of encouraging expansion and conquest. The difficulty Russia had in settling its new lands seem to stem, at least partly, from this fact, whereas Englishmen pursued land on the basis of whatever would enrich them and lead to their greater prosperity, and were far more willing to do so.
The book is an excellent explanation of the Anglo-Saxon civilisation, and aids in explaining its descendants well. Americans would do just as well to read this work as Australians or Englishmen.
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