British History Seems Easy…

On this journey I have been struck by how easy British history seems compared to that of some of the countries through which I have travelled (don't they say that 55BC and 1066 are the only dates you need to know?). Yes, we had the occasional invasion - including Romans, Vikings and Normans - and no end of historical migration has shaped our population, but we have always been hemmed in by an island's shore. Here not only people, but borders too, ebb and flow under the shaping influence of history.  Countries have come and gone, been repopulated and reshaped and often all in the space of only a few generations, a testament to this region's insecurity and impermanence and our own nation’s relative stability.

For the last few weeks I have cycled the Danube, the natural border between countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, Serbia and Romania and Romania and Bulgaria. However, the castles at Ram and Golubac tell other stories and demonstrate the historical fluidity of political boundaries in this region. Those castles may be from a far flung century but to bring that story to the modern era I only have to think of Vukovar or one of the videos I watched in Bratislava where a resident of German descent (in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), had to declare himself Czechoslovakian after the reorganisation of Europe's border post WW1 and - had he still been living - would now be Slovakian. And that narrative ignores any additional influence from when the area fell under the umbrella of Russia through the USSR after WW2. 

These roads I have been cycling have been swept by a tide of history that has affected countries, cities and individuals. It will have shaped people and cultures - both historically and more recently - creating an unsettled mix of trust, resentments and identities, especially as so much change has taken place in only two or three generations. It is easy to see why things have sometimes boiled over. And it is also easy to see why our nation, often at the centre of things politically despite being tucked away in the corner of Europe, and removed geographically from the turmoil of small states and big Empires, has had such relative stability. We may have issues, but we have mostly chosen our moments to intervene depending, more often than not, on our own interests rather than any existencial threat to the nation. In this respect we are lucky although I can't help but wonder if the resulting national mindset might fail to properly appreciate the more complex influences on other nations.