Visit to Earls Colne, Essex in August 2006 - description of various projects

Visit to Earls Colne Church: the work on Josselin and individualism. We visited Earls Colne Church and talked about Ralph Josselin’s Diary which we had edited to the present Vicar. I explained how Origins of English Individualism was based on this work on Earls Colne and the sense of continuity it gave. The main theme of the diary was the anxiety of Josselin, and much of the emot

Anthropology, the need for comparison and the absence of English peasants. Alan talks about the effects of moving from history to anthropology and the effects of working as an anthropologist in a Himalayan community in Nepal in 1968. It changed everything and altered the way I saw things. Looking at Earls Colne through the experience of having worked in a real peasant society broug

Feudalism in England and Japan and its central features. The nature of feudalism in England; Maitland’s definitions, that England was the most and least feudal of societies; all ownership of land was from the Crown; types of land-holding, dissolution of the State feudalism as defined by Marc Bloch. The similarity to Japan, England almost identical to Japan in certain respects, an

How landed property worked in England. Types of property, all owned by the King; how the manorial system works and what it was. The Earl of Oxford, demesne and copyhold property and its nature; how copyhold tenure works and its security, though no absolute property; the complexity of the English property system with simultaneous rights and layers of ownership; rights in trees and m

How the Earls Colne project was organized and run. A description of the Earls Colne project and how it was undertaken. The enjoyment of group research, the role of the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council). How the work was done, the computing associated in the project and why it was also important from the computing point of view. Some of the difficulties faced, and the imme

How the English legal system altered the family and created individualism. The effects of feudalism on the family system; impartible inheritance, primogeniture and the similarities between England and Japan in terms of single heir inheritance; the absolute right to do what one likes with property and the effects of this on children; no automatic right of inheritance. This is the op

Japan and China and their differences. Reasons for studying Japan, Japan and China compared; China never feudal in the full sense, but patrimonial, not full devolution of power in China.

Going away in order to see England in perspective. Sarah Harrison talks on the value of getting England into perspective by going out of the country. There is so much old material in England that one can forget the extraordinary nature of such a heritage.

Modifications to the original argument in ‘Origins of English Individualism’. What I find I had got wrong in Individualism; the timing was wrong and the reasons for this. Later I understood, as I explained in ‘Riddle’ and ‘Making’ which finished off the story. What the story really was; a uniformity in the tenth and eleventh century and then a great divergence.

Private, public and semi-private property in England. The difficulty of understanding English private and also simultaneous public rights, as in King’s College Cambridge which is a trust; nested rights. Most cultures make a strong distinction between private and public property. The meaning of the village commons and householder’s rights. The importance of this for the British