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timeletsTIL
It seems like we live in a world dominated by institutional arrangements established back in 1688.
Professor Keith Wrightson: When I was at school we were often told that one of the great things about British history was that the country had never been successfully invaded by a foreign power since 1066 when William the Conqueror and the Normans conquered the Saxon kingdom, and this was part of the national story as we got it. There was a great deal of emphasis upon successfully resisting foreign powers, the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, Hitler, whatever. So no successful foreign invasion since 1066, and this makes a good story, but unfortunately it's not actually true. Britain was very successfully invaded in November 1688 by a largely Dutch army under William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Netherlands.
... 1688 cleared the way. It cleared the way for the establishment of a stable constitutional monarchy; cleared the way for political liberty. It cleared the way for religious toleration and cultural pluralism, the triumph of Whig principles in that respect; and security of property and growing economic opulence and the formation of the United Kingdom by the Union of England and Scotland, and finally the successful assertion of national power internationally and the growth of an overseas empire.
http://openmedia.yale.edu/projects/iphone/departments/hist/hist251/transcript24.html
It seems like we live in a world dominated by institutional arrangements established back in 1688.
