1066: does the date still matter?
1066 was once regarded as the date everyone knew. It remains widely known among the large numbers of the general public with an interest in history. This article suggests that popular perceptions of 1066 are a range of at times confused memories and that so-called academic history has in the last fi...
| Publicado en: | Historical Research Vol. 78; no. 202; pp. 443 - 465 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Nov2005
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | 1066 was once regarded as the date everyone knew. It remains widely known among the large numbers of the general public with an interest in history. This article suggests that popular perceptions of 1066 are a range of at times confused memories and that so-called academic history has in the last fifty years had little impact on them. It acknowledges that revolutionary changes in contemporary historians’ approaches to the past have made 1066 less significant as a date, yet argues that the date's very popularity with the general public and the centrality of change to historical analysis makes a clear perception and extensive dissemination crucial. It suggests that 1066 was ultimately an act of legitimated and purposefully directed violence and needs to be discussed as such. It is necessary to guard against automatically associating every change in the decades after 1066 with the impact of the Conquest and to see them instead as often being aspects of wider processes. It is also crucial to see 1066 as an event of European significance and to set it within the multicultural history of the British Isles. It had consequences which fundamentally shaped English and British history. Perhaps surprisingly, new information and new interpretations of long familiar sources are possible. |
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