Dan Snow's History Hit - The Fens

Episode Date: September 6, 2020

James Boyce joins me on the pod to discuss the indigenous population of the Fens of eastern England. Between the English Civil Wars and the mid-Victorian period, the Fens fought to preserve their homeland against an expanding empire. After centuries of resistance, their culture and community were destroyed, along with their wetland home – England’s last lowland wilderness. But this was no simple triumph of technology over nature – it was the consequence of a newly centralised and militarised state, which enriched the few while impoverishing the many.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Antinode's History here. On the eastern edge of the British Isles, of the North Atlantic Archipelago, there lies the Fens. Well, they used to lie, in fact. Well, they still kind of lie. The Fens, one of the last great wildernesses in England. These were systematically drained, enclosed, brought under the plough, and turned into arable land through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Now, to go there, you wouldn't believe that they'd once been a giant delta, river delta, full of bird life and other kinds of flora and fauna. It's still a wonderful place to go,

but it can feel like a fairly sterile industrial agricultural setting now. On this podcast, I'm actually thrilled to have James Boyce. He's a multi-award winning Australian historian, but he used to live a long time ago on the edge of the Fens, so he's got a personal connection with it as well. And he makes these fascinating comparisons between the colonisation, the eradication of native life and practices in the Fens and what was going on in the rest of the world as well

as European imperialists stretched their reach across the globe. This is such a fascinating book. It's's a fascinating topic i hope you enjoy this podcast if you want to go and watch programs about the early modern period there's plenty on history hit.tv it's like netflix for history you just sign up history hit.tv a small subscription all of it goes on the amazing programs we're producing at the moment we got several in production there's too many in production it's gonna be quite a busy few weeks. Lots of new programs coming up, lots of new podcasts. So please head over there. If you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free and your second month for just one pound, euro or dollar. So please enjoy this podcast

with James Boyce. James, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Dan. There's so many people listening to this podcast in the UK and around the world who won't know about the fens. Tell me what they would have looked like 1,000 years ago and their scale. Yes, well, even if you visited the fens, you might not know what they looked like even 200 years ago.

I mean, they were the last lowland wilderness of England, a vast wetland area of a million plus acres in eastern England. The rivers of central England used to, well they still do, they flow into the wash in the North Sea but up and before the drainage occurred they used to become like a delta perhaps I mean if you imagine images of the Amazon you're probably closer to to what the fens was like than the tamed ordered agricultural landscape it is now the rivers would all sort of form into a vast wetland marsh, losing their way, meandering this way and that. The largest lowland lakes in England. So it was, the waters would recede often in the summer months. So you'd have beautiful, rich summer pastures would form.

And in the winter, those areas would flood again. There were always small islands, so we still remember them by the name, so people might have heard of Eerley, the Isle of Eerley, which is now still a beautiful cathedral town. It's called the Isle of Eerley because it used to be an island. So those areas were only just above sea level, where the villages were.

Most of the country was around at sea level. These days a lot of it's below sea level ironically enough but it's kept dry and it's now one of the richest farming districts in England. A transformed land that we really that was drained before photography, so we only know what it's like from the descriptions of it and from paintings, of course, and from poetry and other forms of literature, and to some extent from cultural memory. But it was a vast wetland wonderland, one of the... a landscape...

I mean, the largest lake in England, Dan, was Whittlesea Mere, only drained in the early 1850s. But that was one of the last parts of the fens that was lost, was Whittlesea Mere. But there is attempts at reclamation these days. So now, if you're looking for fenlands now, it was a million acres, is there anything left? There's over 99% of the fens has been drained, but there are, you still get snippets and you can still,

I mean, most of the water is gone. The rivers themselves have been tamed into what are effectively canals, but there are one of the earliest nature reserves in England is there, that was preserved back in the late 19th century, but also there's attempts at restoration going on, as I alluded to briefly before, to reclaim only a small area, but ecologically significant area. But it's not only about water. I think what's left, I mean, the people who live in the Fens

talk about the atmosphere of the place that's been preserved. It's the vast skies. It's very different from other areas of England because of the flatness, so the feeling of vast open space, the feeling of the sky being all around you. I mean it still has, I would say that the soul of the place is still there, and the waters, it's always been a sense of provisional landscape, and the waters are coming back in certain areas because of, you know, we can talk about later, but certainly environmental realities.

It's no longer, technology is no longer all powerful and all triumphant, and people are having to learn again, as they've always done in this area, to live with the waters. as they've always done in this area, to live with the waters. So there's a sense of that relationship with the land that you have to have in that area is still there. There's some fascinating Bronze Age archaeology from there with Cranachs, people living on stilted communities and dog outposts. And do we need to think of this delta area?

When do we start having sources for this? What do the Romans, what do the Anglo-Saxons, the early medieval period, what do they make of this land? And is it tamed or is it considered wild and wilderness? Well, it's... The Romans

do attempt some drainage attempts. It has a history through all the famous invasions, if you like. The Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, the Vikings, they all leave their presence in the area. One of the things we need to remember, we carry certain negative associations with the idea of the swamp still in our culture to this day and think that that must have been a sort of fairly barbaric sort of area.

But most of human civilisations have actually emerged in wetlands. If you think of the Euphrates, you think of the Nile, you think of the Yangtze, you think in India as well. you think of the Yangtze, you think in India as well. And it's not by coincidence, because wetlands are very rich, diverse food sources. So it's not, you're just not relying on one food source. And there's a whole variety, fish and game, and also farming. Farming coexists. I mean we used to think

that human beings progressed from hunter-gatherer through to farmer and that there was some sort of stage of progress but of course we're understanding now that the richest societies, the most culturally rich societies, usually combine hunter-gathering and farming. And the two, there's not some sort of sharp line between the two in human progress. And wetlands are perfect for that. So that in these areas like the Fens, going back thousands of years,

you have farming and you have hunter-gathering, and you have stable, secure food supplies, which support large human populations with a good standard of living. But they were also very good for defence, of course. So when these different invading groups come through, they're not easy to conquer. So you have this continuity of what I would call indigenous culture. So sure, the Romans come, sure, the Anglo-Saxons come. We have the great movement into the fens of the great monastic houses as well, through the Middle Ages uh very famous monasteries set up there um but the these people don't

penetrate that far into the remote marshlands where you can see a continuity of culture so it's not like oh the romans come and then when we start again and then the anglo-saxons come and then we start again that that there's there's a lot more emphasis now, and what I explain in the book, on the continuity of local people. Ordinary people actually adapt, they resist, they accommodate, they do deals with, they benefit from, sometimes they resist, you know, these different series of invasions. And you have this remarkable Indigenous culture that carries on through these different invasions. History's not just made by the invader.

It's, you know, we need to remember the agency of the local people. And the people who are adapted and know the land and know how to live with these waters are obviously in the best place to survive these different invasions. Just hugely important is the fact that just across the North Sea there, you've got this other massive riverine estuarial. I don't know if that's a word. I like it, though. Culture. I looked at a map of Holland, the coast of Holland 500 years ago,

and it is unrecognisable to today. It's completely insane, isn't it? So I guess these two great estuaries facing each other and there was communication there so when does everything check is there there's a continue is there a particular sort of jumping off point for the for the assault on this natural environment on this space yeah well the what happens in the 17th century is very different from whatever's happened what's happened before um and the dutch as you allude to, are the key. They've developed sort of new drainage techniques. But the other thing that's central is the rise of the centralised state, the power of the English central government. Because you know even though we talk about

England before that and as we talk about other nation states starting to emerge the reality for ordinary people living in the in various regions is that the the national state doesn't mean all that much at that point. Their primary identity and belonging their primary loyalties um is at much more local regional level but as this as the national state starts starts to increase in its power with the stewart kings are looking for new sources of revenue. And they do deals, seek to do deals with, well, basically,

they're sort of early capitalists. They're called adventurers and some of the major landowners to drain the fens or drain big parts of the fens. And in return, the associated associated process it's drainage and it'll also be enclosure and enclosure in English history of course doesn't mean just putting up a fence or a hedgerow what it means is removing all the traditional customary rights over the use of that land and turning them essentially into private property in the modern sense of the word. I'm the owner, I've got full rights over it, you local people can no longer

access the land without my permission, it's mine now. If you're going to farm it, you're going to be my tenant. So this process of effectively privatisation of the fens goes hand in hand with drainage of the fens and is pursued by the Stuart Kings with some powerful local landowners basically doing a deal with each other. And this is fought, this is resisted by the local people. The story gets very complicated because the English Civil War breaks out and

people might not know that Oliver Cromwell came from the Fens. And Cromwell, in this great dispute between the Stuart Kings and Parliament that we know broke out into war, the Fens become a major part of that conflict because the local people are so angry at their dispossession, at the invasion of their land. I mean, it's a story of empire, really. I mean, it's quite interesting that this year, it's 400 years since the Mayflower departed Plymouth for the New World. It's the 400th anniversary, that famous departure of the Pilgrim Fathers. And what was happening in terms of the conquest of the New World was also happening internally in England. The dispossession of traditional people through enclosure.

And in the Fens, it's most noticeable because you do have this war of resistance by the commoners to defend their common rights, to defend their food sources, to defend their community. And they fight it in all the way Indigenous people fight it. I mean, they destroy the drainage works. They seek allies where they can find them, whether that's initially in parliamentary forces or others.

They use the courts. They use legal processes, the same as Indigenous people do around the world. It's not just a case of armed resistance. So you get this multifarious forms of resistance and in certain areas they're very successful. It's not all a complete failure. In other areas those who are draining the land and enclosing the land win out and the struggle goes on in other forms. But it's a... I mean, I'm an Australian historian. I mean, I've studied the frontier in Australia.

I'm more familiar... And the similarities, though, just struck me. I mean, it was... I mean, just because these people are English, I mean, it does make a difference to be English. I'm not saying there's no difference between having a white skin and being Aboriginal. I mean, all these different contexts do matter.

But there are also many more similarities than is normally recognised between the story of empire. between the story of empire. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows,

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There are new episodes every week. So we're looking at the gigantic number of Scottish prisoners that were taken prisoner at the Battle of Dunbar by Cromwell, kept in Durham Cathedral, which was deconsecrated. It was used as a prison. You can still see the urine stains on the floor. And apparently many of them were then sent to the Fens and their names survived. So they were taken part as forced labourers in the enclosure project. Forced labourers, partly because they couldn't get the local people

to do the work. So that was one of the most effective forms of resistance because of course in the 17th century this drainage work, digging these new channels, you know, these new straightening the rivers, basically they're digging it out by hand and it's very labour intensive and the local people are refusing to participate and they actually do help some of those Scots escape as well. It's quite hard to keep them at the task with... I mean, this sort of landscape is not easy to subdue.

I mean, effectively, it's forms of guerrilla warfare that are going on. I mean, during the... under the cover of darkness, I mean, all sorts of destruction, all sorts of, the drainage works can be filled in, you know, the waters can be let out. They know the way the waters work. They can reflood areas. They can send cattle into the new farmlands. You know, they can destroy crops with their animals.

They can use arson, fire. It's a pretty ferocious struggle. And Cromwell effectively sort of changes sides, really. The radical wing of the English Civil War backed the commoners. People might have heard of the Levellers, this more radical wing of the English Civil War that Cromwell suppresses. And the parliamentary troops are stationed in this area to try and assert order. But the struggle goes on right through.

And in some areas um the commoners reclaim the land destroy the drug drainage works settlers are brought in colonizers so the parallels with the new world are carried even further because again the local people don't want to be these good tenant farmers paying the rent and they bring in, ironically enough, Protestant religious refugees from France and Flanders who are seeking the persecution by their Catholic overlords, and they come in to be the sort of Calvinist tenant farmers, much like the pilgrim fathers are being over in the new world they're seeking religious freedom and they're seeking to sort of civilize the land as as and and the people that

the the local fit uh the local people of the fens are being described as savages disorderly the the land and the people are seen in need of redemption. So there's so many parallels between this story going on in eastern England and what is going on across the Atlantic. When is the real, I mean, presumably 18th and 19th century, they can start to get industrial on it and the fens start disappearing even quicker, do they? When is the period of maximum destruction? The fens turns out to be a little bit different from Holland.

period of maximum destruction? The fence turns out to be a little bit different from Holland. The Dutch engineers don't know the country as well as they think they do because the waters start to return. And the reason is because the rich peat that the fens are famous for, this beautiful, deep, rich peat soil that meters down which of course so highly productive and turns it into you know the grows the crops so well the problem is that this peat when it's dried out when it's exposed to the air it decomposes and it starts to sink so the land literally subsides and that means

that you do need to do more and and more pumping to get the water out because it was only so marginally above sea level before. It soon sinks below sea level. So by the end of the 17th century, a lot of these areas are starting to flood again. And so they bring in, of course, windmills, but windmills during the course of the 18th century are not proving up to the task either. during the course of the 18th century are not proving up to the task either. So the area is sort of turning into, a lot of it is turning into mixed farming marsh area.

And it's really not until the steam power comes in in the early 19th century and then more and more powerful steam engines are developed during the course of the 19th century that they finally achieve a victory, or what seems to be a permanent victory over the waters. But the paradox of the fens, that the more successful the drainage, the more successful you are at keeping the waters out, the greater the problem becomes, the greater the subsistence becomes, and the greater the energy costs and also of course the fertility of the soil declines over time as you lose more of the peat so you have less

productive land and higher energy costs. So it's the 19th century when they, steam power, when they believe they achieve a permanent victory but I don't think there'd be too many engineers uh working in the fens now local farmers or local people who would quite depict it in that way well and the ultimate paradox is yeah there is the is the carbon emissions of the energy causing sea level rise so there's many paradoxes yes it's a it's a circular that's a really interesting point dan and it's one that um didn't occur to me so much when I was writing it, but someone was pointing out since as well,

that the industrial revolution, which seems to solve the problem, has also caused the rising sea levels, which is going to make, ultimately, we have to learn to live with the waters. There's not going to be... And that's what's happening. I mean, there's some terrific projects like the Great Fen Project, which is the largest of the restoration work, and they're drawing on traditional knowledge.

It's scientific knowledge, certainly, and they're working with engineers and the scientists and the ecologists, but they're also looking back at how people traditionally lived with these waters. It's always been a human-managed landscape, so certain areas are allowed to be flooded at certain times of the year, reeds are being cut at certain times of the year, certain areas are being grazed at certain times of the year. And you have the... They're trying to learn again...

So it's not a case of some areas being returned to to to nature and some areas um being farmed but how do you integrate these how do you create a landscape that works for nature and that works for people and you know so in this way it's a microcosm of what we've got to do um as a planet as as uh, as human beings, of how we've got to learn to live with nature rather than trying to defeat the waters. How do we live with these natural forces? And that's always been how the Indigenous people of the Fens have lived in this area over thousands of years,

and that's what we're learning to do again um so it's sort of a it's a work in it's a non it's not like that history's come to an end in the 19th century with these with these great super powerful steam engines and the draining of whittle sea mere in in in the early 1850s which seemed to symbolize the end of the fens so if you go to the fens today, those big, huge, sweeping farmlands that are so famous, are there massive pumps just pumping water out of those the whole time? Yeah, they're having to. So there's massive pumps working.

It's a very sophisticated operation. I mean, it's quite amazing to walk in. It's a highly industrialised agricultural landscape, much of it. I mean, still the beautiful traditional, the beautiful old villages are still there and Ely Cathedral's still there. But to walk in those fields and you see, you look up, you can't even see the river because it's metres above your head.

It's flowing above your head it's flowing above your head and there's a whole series of drainage ditches and and and dykes and systems that really are getting the water from that ground level up into those rivers which can be as I say a few meters above your head it's very strange very's very strange to be standing in a field and not actually able to see the water in the river flowing above your head. But obviously the energy costs of this are significant, and as the North Sea is in that area, that's the old land bridge across to Europe.

I mean, it's only 10,000 years ago that you could walk across there. So the wash is quite shallow where these rivers drain into. So getting the water out is not straightforward. It involves high energy costs. And while agricultural food prices are high and they can afford that, straightforward. It involves high energy costs and while agricultural prices, food prices are high and they can afford that, that's one thing. But you know we've also got the uncertainty of course in Britain of leaving the EU and some of those agricultural subsidies that farmers will

have to adapt to that. It's a very uncertain time. Do you build a sea wall all around the coast? But what's exciting I think is that, is again like what we're having to do in Australia here with the bushfires. We're looking at Aboriginal, I mean people are going back in the history, they're talking to Indigenous people, they're looking at how they lived with the reality of fire in this environment, how they did bushfire management, how do we live in this particular piece of earth, yes, in a time of rising temperatures, but also drawing on traditional knowledge as well as scientific knowledge.

And that's what's going on in the Fens as well. So it's a story of challenges, but also a story of inspiration and history, I think. To know that people have cared for country and defended country and resisted the destruction of the country, cared for their home over thousands of years, this is not something new that we're having to do, not something that's just a 21st century challenge. We can draw on that ancestral memory, that ancestral knowledge in the enormous struggles that we're facing

today. I mean what matters to me very much and what I've tried to do in the book is that not to write sort of technologically determinist history. It's sort of often this resistance to the drainage in history books has been written as, oh, these old-fashioned country folk not, you know, not adapting to the modern times. It might have been unfortunate to lose this landscape, but it was always going to happen in the end. Progress was always going to win out. The history's not like that. These people were not just victims of an all-powerful imperial state or just victims of the power of technology. I mean, in some areas they resisted the drainage for 200 years.

You know, that's not a bad effort. And we can draw encouragement and strength from that story. Well, amazing. Thank you very much. I feel encouraged and strengthened. And I want to go and visit. I haven't been to the Fens for a while and I'm going to go and visit now. So thank you, you've inspired me. Your book is called?

It's called Imperial Mud, The Fight for the Fens. And I call it Imperial Mud because I do position the story in this context of empire. What's going on in eastern England has so many parallels with what was going on across the New World. And I present the people as indigenous people caring for their country in relationship to their country. I talk a lot about the common, what the common meant, which was much more than just certain rights. I talk about relationship to the land, relationship to each other.

Again, something that's familiar in Indigenous stories around the world. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps and basically boosts up the chart,

which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't want to subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't want to buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.