Alan R. H. Baker, Mark Billinge, eds. Geographies of England: The North-South Divide, Material and Imagined. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xi + 216 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-82261-9.
Reviewed by Jon Stobart (Geography and Environmental Sciences, Coventry University)
Published on H-HistGeog (March, 2005)
Us and Them; Here and There; Now and Then
Recent years have seen a growing interest in regions, regionalism, and regional geographies. Within this trend, the perennial debate about the existence and importance of a North-South divide in England has slowly been simmering away. That it has never quite come to the boil reflects the difficulties in defining consistent boundaries, agreeing on and assembling a range of suitable measures, and determining whether it is the reality or perception of the divide which is most important. The volume under review--an edited collection of six essays on the reality and imagination of North and South--rather cleverly sidesteps many of these issues and thus allows a more constructive debate to take place. While it is slightly frustrating that there is little attempt to draw precise boundaries--leaving us to assume that the usual line from the Wash to the Severn is being taken as read--we are treated to a detailed consideration of not just the "what" and "where," but also the "when," "how," and even "why" of the North and South divide.
It is the long time period covered by this book which is, at first glance, its most novel and valuable feature. In place of the usual focus on the twentieth century, the notion of a North-South divide is explored over a whole millennium. This not only helps to provide a better picture of the antecedents of any present day divide; it also illustrates the way in which such divisions are temporally as well as spatially informed. Moreover, beginning with the present and working back through time forms a refreshing change from the usual notion that a narrative must be told from the start to its conclusion (in the present). However, this approach brings with it the danger that we project onto the past those concepts and geographies which are important today, but which had little resonance with people in earlier ages. As we shall see, this seems especially true of the notion of a North-South divide. While differences between the two regions are apparent whenever we look for them, the idea that this amounted to a significant spatial or psychological divide becomes less certain as we move back in time.
This point is important, because of the editors' and contributors' conscious intent to explore both the reality and imagination of North-South divisions. Such ambition is highly commendable since it not only means that a wide range of evidence is explored (from census material to literary accounts, and from contemporary maps to settlement patterns), but also that the debate is broad and meaningful. The project embodied in this book does not simply involve drawing lines on a map or identifying economic or social differences. Rather, it is an attempt to discover something of the roots of perceptions of place, self and other. This is significant as it highlights the constructed and relational nature of North and South: it is impossible to have one without the other. Divisions and differences, especially in terms of the geographical imagination of writers, academics, and ordinary people, are thus built around notions of "otherness." It is this which becomes increasingly problematical as we move back into the early modern and medieval periods. Assembling data which might be used to reveal "real" divisions is one thing, reconstructing the thoughts and imaginations of people who lived a thousand years ago is quite another, especially when the vast majority of them left no written record.
So, how do the various contributors--an assemblage of eminent geographers--fair in their attempts to grapple with such issues? In the opening chapter, Ron Martin discusses the current state of debate over and reality of the North-South divide. Drawing on a wide range of economic, social and political data, he outlines the stark contrasts between the two halves of the country, but devotes most attention to the underlying causes of difference and division. He argues persuasively that the re-emergence of the divide in the last 30 years is linked to a shift in Britain from an industrial to a post-industrial society. Crucially for the central theme of the volume, he concludes that this was a period when reality and image became closely mapped onto one another.
Somewhat contradicting Martin's assertion of the recent strengthening of the divide, Danny Dorling sees the middle decades of the twentieth century, and especially the 1920s and 1930s, as the period when the division between North and South ran deepest. Carefully reworking the census data of the time, he presents a series of stark contrasts in health, employment and work. Dismissing the writings of contemporary commentators as "travelogues" of elite literati, and failing to find regional differences in voting behaviour, Dorling concludes that people at the time were largely unaware of the chasm that apparently divided the country. This, though, seems to overplay the point. It certainly ignores the wide range of literature (hinted at by Howell in the following chapter) which set out to explore what was clearly recognised as a deep and, at least in part, socially-constructed divide.
Besides acting as a welcome counterweight to Dorling's reliance on re-interpretation of contemporary statistical evidence, Philip Howell's analysis of "the North-South divide and the geography of belonging" (p. 64) in the period 1830-1918 seeks to assess critically the assumption that this divide was a product of Northern de-industrialisation. He argues that economic and political power never shifted from the South and especially London, which remained the core of the English economy. Moving on from this, he further argues that North and South formed alternative versions of Englishness, with the latter becoming increasingly dominant. There is an elegant symmetry to these economic and cultural readings of North and South, but perhaps a danger in (over-) interpreting the past through twenty-first-century textual analysis.
Again, as we move from one contribution to the next, we see certain contradictions emerge: Mark Billinge seeing a shift in the balance of power towards the industrialising North sufficient to challenge the traditional economic hegemony of the South. Yet what emerges most strongly from his analysis is the complexity of English regionalism (London and the Midlands both cutting across a neat North-South divide) and identity (urban-rural and class divisions emerging strongly). It is perhaps surprising then, that Billinge can so readily identify North and South, and the differences between them, as widely perceived and accepted geographical imaginings by the late eighteenth century.
The problems of identifying a coherent and strongly differentiated North and South appear to become more severe as we move back in time. John Langton's survey of early-modern England is equivocal on the existence of a "real" divide: levels of wealth diverged, yet population growth was more patchy and linguistic and political divides were local. Imagined geographies, meanwhile, emphasised the nation, "part of a deliberate political project to 'write England' as a cohesive unitary realm" (p. 137). If such unity was, Langton argues, a complete fiction, it was localism, not regionalism, which prevailed as the dominant conception of space. Following from this, Bruce Campbell argues that many apparent manifestations of a North-South divide in medieval England were, ironically, the result of attempts to construct--both in reality and in the collective consciousness--an English nation. The truly important North-South division lay between Scotland and England: the "other" in English identity was the foreigner, not the northerner/southerner. This is not to say that broad economic and social divisions were absent from medieval England. There were stark contrasts in settlement patterns, wealth, and power, but North-South distinctions were blurred by those of upland-lowland; London-provinces and core-periphery. In the latter, it was Cornwall rather than the North that formed the extreme periphery, underpinning Campbell's assertion of an East-West as much as North-South divide.
Individually, then, each chapter offers a fascinating account of English development, regionalism and identity. The various contributors bring their detailed expertise to bear on each period under scrutiny and offer their own perspective on North and South. Yet the ambition of the book clearly stretches beyond the presentation of a series of 'snap shots'; it aims to explore the extent of and reasons behind the changing realities and imaginings of North and South. This requires the tracing of themes and concepts from one chapter to the next. Here, the diverse approaches and standpoints of the contributors can become problematic in that comparisons through time are sometimes difficult to make. Are changes real or apparent: the product of shifting economic and political power, and a reflection of developing spatial identities; or do they arise from different data, approaches and readings of North and South?
There is generally unity of intent, but this does not necessarily translate into uniform conclusions about the geography, reality or imagination of North and South, nor about the relationship between these two regions. Dorling suggests that we find what we are looking for. Thus, the various authors present voluminous evidence of the social, economic, cultural and political differences between North and South. Indeed, it would be remarkable if we could not construct data to support the thesis of difference. However, while the existence of such differences appears indisputable, whether they amount to a divide is more problematic. From the evidence presented in this volume, it is this idea of division which appears to have hardened through time, especially during and after the industrial revolution. Martin, Dorling and Howell are clear about the existence and strength of a North-South divide, whereas Langton and Campbell seem far less certain that this is what they have found.
Indeed, it is striking that the chapters covering the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, early modern and medieval periods all consider other ways of dividing the real and imagined space of England. It is for these earlier ages, for example, that ideas of core and periphery are more rigorously explored. This could, of course, be taken as short-hand for South and North, and this is how Baker and Billinge treat the concept in their useful and effective conclusion. Yet it could also be interpreted as a divide between London and the provinces. The idea of Metropolitanism is briefly discussed by Billinge, who identifies the "problem of London" (p. 96) as the dissonant identities cutting across allegiances to North or South. (The Midlands is another, yet it is striking that only Billinge identifies this intermediate zone--in spatial, economic and cultural terms--as problematical in the dichotomy of North and South). One problem with London, as Martin concedes, is that it has experienced de-industrialisation and suffers social deprivation similar to that of the North, yet is manifestly in the South. Another, highlighted by Billinge, is that London's functions linked it to, but set it apart from both North and South. A third, emphasised by Langton and Campbell, is that London formed the spatial and functional locus for a project of nation building which characterized successive monarchies from the time of the Norman conquest. This project, they argue, was more important and more influential than "any contemporary awareness of, or debate about, a North-South divide" (p. 178). The obvious, yet striking, conclusion that emerges from this is that internal spatial divisions can only (be allowed to) emerge once there is a strong national identity. This links to the somewhat contentious assertion by Baker and Billinge that the North-South divide was "produced essentially by the ... metropolitan South as a way of differentiating itself from northern 'others'"(p.182). In others words, the North-South divide can be seen as a political project, embarked upon once national borders and identities were secure, which had the intent of (re)establishing the superiority and dominance of power in the core.
Whether this is how we choose to read and understand North and South, this exploration of the changing realities and imaginings of this most contentious of socio-spatial divisions serves to challenge what we think we know about England's past and present. We are invited to reconsider ideas of us and them, here and there, now and then.
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Citation:
Jon Stobart. Review of Baker, Alan R. H.; Billinge, Mark, eds., Geographies of England: The North-South Divide, Material and Imagined.
H-HistGeog, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10368
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