Steven G. Ellis. Defending English Ground

Defending English Ground: War and Peace in Meath and Northumberland, 1460–1542, Steven G. Ellis’s latest foray into frontier studies, bears an ironic title that complements its significance. Sponsored partly by the European Commission’s “Europe of the Regions” initiative, the author explores “the wider European context of English frontiers” (ix), freeing two geographically disparate border shires from their national historical narrative. The “county communities” historiographical school, steeped in Englishness and (implicitly) British historical determinism, consolidates itself within the new Europe. Defending English Ground eschews the all too familiar historical origins of the nation in favor of resonances and commonality with a broader Europe. Completed in October 2014, the monograph was published in August 2015 amid the growing provincial disenchantment that compelled Brexit. The referendum of June 23, 2016, then unloosed currents of nationalism that deepened and broadened the English Channel. Brexit simultaneously eroded cohesion between the polities that comprise the United Kingdom and among England’s shires. Political decentralization, including English devolution, reveals its centuries-old pedigree in Ellis’s inquiry. Microcosmically, Tudor administrative reform failed in its obligation to defend the subject and provide justice within England’s northernmost frontier. Macrocosmically, the author exposes anachronistic assumptions about the progressive nature of the nation-state.

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