Regarding multiculturalism - Iām falling into old habits so Iād better change the subject (but suffice to say that I have the greatest sympathy with the post of my old friend [tag]corpselight[/tag] on that thread. Thereās bits in it Iād like to unpack ā because I know that multiculturalism as an ideology has sometimes had some very bad unintended consequences, very bad indeed ā and I know this from first hand professional experience as well as thought reading the academic data and scrutinising the media debates from several angles)) But multiculturalism meaning people from different cultures living together in amity is strongly to be desired - and it sometimes happens well in London these days, the neighbour love across divides and difference as opposed to distrust and fear sometimes leading to blind hatred or even charitable hatred ā and it sometimes happens very well. Weāve come a long way since the 1970s when fascist marched openly and unchallenged in English streets and vicious attacks upon āPakisā by skinheads were epidemic. But it doesnāt happen at all well in France these days or in some other European countries ā and sometimes it is those countries that see immigrants as a threat to their āliberalismā where the most hatred is being stirred up.
Regarding Elizabeth and what happened with the Catholics in her reign and in Jamesās reign ā well the Catholics were from a different culture ā an older culture that was passing away. It is instructive to look at their fate and the wise and unwise ways in which the real and terrible general Catholic threat was dealt with by Elizabeth and James. Culture can also mean power blocks with different ideologies. Power block culture is mixed up with cultures in the softer sense of the word but not identical with it. Cultures in terms ofā cooking, language, contributions to human knowledge etc tend to enrich each other; whereas power blocks seek to annihilate each other.
[tag]Caleb Fogg[/tag], [tag]DaveB[/tag], and [tag]ChrisB[/tag] ā you who are my current regulars for chats here ļ If you want to think a bit more about how historians go about their work ā so that you questions me more closely for one thing and pin me down to details of evidence moreā¦ Well I posted my old lecture notes on Source Criticism at EU some time ago here ā
Look at the OP and the notes on source criticism (if you want to). They are pretty accessible and are actually the skills that any participant in a democracy with a free press needs to be trained in ā and I wish some here had more knowledge of these skills After the OP I did start to range more widely in a few posts about the nature of History as a field of research ā but there was too much else going on
If you are really, really, really interested in this ā an excellent short book available in the USA is -
amazon.com/Pursuit-History-J ā¦ sh+History
A slightly longer book by my old and now dead Professor of History where I used to work is this one
amazon.com/Nature-History-Ar ā¦ ur+marwick
And an excellent essay on Church History and the reasons why it is important to us is this one