British History? You needn't bother (British History)

[Ishmael]

Turns out it's all made up or twisted about at best. All the way from Henry Tudor right up to George III!!! Yes. That late! This is my tentative conclusion reached after conducting an in-depth survey of the history of this entire period.

It is my current hypothesis that history was not invented until the rise of Napoleon. There simply were no history books prior to the 19th century. Most of those that were written in that century were filled with straight-up lies. The rest with distortions---often purposeful distortions.

It appears to me that, prior to the 19th century, there simply was no way of "remembering" the past except through living memory. The past was not something people thought of as WORTH remembering. Genealogies and inheritances and claims to property mattered, but events beyond the lifetime of a man did not matter. Not anymore. And what was remembered even within a man's lifetime of course was limited to those events and decisions to which they themselves had been witness.

My evidence for these claims is lengthy. I've been compiling it over years though I've not yet assembled it. Of course, my case is easier to believe the farther back in time we go. But I myself desperately wished to find a point in time at which I could be certain that British history was, at last, something fixed and immovable. That time simply doesn't arise until the age of Napoleon, at the earliest.

How could history consist of so much fakery to so late a date? It seems impossible. And I cannot myself explain it. I am prepared and eager to push the date of history's beginning backward if I can. I hope in coming years we can examine the evidence together. I have a great deal of material to present.

[Ishmael]

BELIEVE IT OR NOT...

The practice of History began as a cover-up operation. There were no historians until very recently -- when someone needed to record a lie.

A big lie.

[Mick Harper]

That's better. All that theory!

[Wile E. Coyote]

The practice of history began when scribes saw the advantage of merging chronicling and divination. Divination was not just a imperfect predictor of new events, it was a useful explanation of how the past became the present. These fuzzy explanations were, and still are, history.

[Ishmael]

I don't have the guts to post this stuff. I know it's absolute madness.

But you can start with this question...

When did George the III go mad?

[Mick Harper]

Please, Sir! Me, Sir! 1788, Sir.

[Ishmael]

Anything about that date that sparks your imagination?

Really just curious if anyone else might twist an ankle in the same rabbit hole.

[Mick Harper]

US Constitution goes into effect and Americans can start carrying guns.

[N R Scott]

[Mick Harper]

Well it's true you never saw them on the same continent together but I think you're forgetting that everybody active in politics at the time

1. Powdered their hair white
2. Were born in the 1730's
3. Were landed gentry
4. Lived in whitewashed houses
5. Had wooden teeth
6. Watched the eighteenth century equivalent of the Simpsons, Gillray cartoons.

But I didn't know they had prosthetic tongues.The OED says that's the origin of the phrase 'silver tongued' though both were famously inarticulate.

[Ishmael]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Wile E. Coyote]

Despite his madness, and his by the standards of today, unorthodox treatments, George always got well again, (until the end) normally after a few weeks. It seems that his much maligned physician was much more successful than your moderns who practise pill popping and cognitive behaviour therapy.

[Hatty]

When investigating the Goring Gap we learned George means earthworker, i.e. farmer

[Mick Harper]

i.e. megalith builder, I think you mean.