G. M. Trevelyan quotes
G. M. Trevelyan was a prominent British historian and academic known for his influential works on English history. His writings combined narrative flair with rigorous scholarship, making history accessible to a wide audience. He helped shape the modern discipline of historical study and inspired generations of historians. Here are 34 of his quotes:
One outcome of the Norman Conquest was the making of the English language. ...the speech of Alfred and Bede, was exiled from hall and bower, from court and cloister, and was despised as a peasant's jargon... It ceased almost, though not quite, to be a written language. ... Now when a language is seldom written and is not an object of interest to scholars, it quickly adapts itself in the mouths of plain people to the needs and uses of life. ...it can be altered much more easily when there are no grammarians to protest. During the three centuries when our native language was a peasant's dialect, it lost its clumsy inflexions and elaborate genders, and acquired the grace, suppleness, and adaptability which are among its chief merits.
G. M. Trevelyan
She regarded it as a first charge of her slender war-budget to see that French and Dutch independence were maintained against Philip. This was secured, partly by English help and by the holding of the seas, and partly by domestic alliance of the Calvinists with Catholic 'politiques' averse to Spanish domination; it followed that an element of liberality and toleration very rare in the Europe of that day made itself felt in France and in Holland in a manner agreeable to Elizabeth's eclectic spirit.
G. M. Trevelyan
The Charter was regarded as important because it assigned definite and practical remedies to temporary evils. There was very little that was abstract in its terms, less even than later generations supposed.... A King had been brought to order, not by a posse of reactionary feudalists, but the community of the land under baronial leadership; a tyrant had been subjected to the laws which hitherto it had been his private privilege to administer and to modify at will. A process had begun which was to end in putting the power of the Crown into the hands of the community at large.
G. M. Trevelyan
In the Stuart era, the English developed for themselves, without foreign participation or example, a system of Parliamentary government, local administration and freedom of speech and person, clean contrary to the prevailing tendencies on the continent, which was moving fast toward regal absolution, centralized bureaucracy, and the subjection of the individual to the State.
G. M. Trevelyan
Linguistic ignorance and racial isolation are our greatest national dangers in the new era opened out by the War. We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them. Foreign policy is merely an outcome of our other international relations, and can only give official expression to our national ignorance or our national understanding of other races. The League of Nations is not a substitute for mutual understanding; rather it assumes that such understanding exists, and if that cannot soon be brought into existence, the League will fail, and with it the hopes of mankind.
G. M. Trevelyan
As regards "predominance in Europe," whether "Germany wished" it or not, she would have got it, if she had once more overrun France. And she would have overrun France as well as Belgium if England had not intervened. Then there would have been an end of the independence of all Continental States in face of Germany, and in face of such a Europe British independence could not have been maintained. German predominance would have been just as fatal to us whether it had been intentionally or unintentionally acquired. Such at least was Grey's view, and it will always be the view of many Englishmen.
G. M. Trevelyan
I read with regret that the authorities intend to remove the statue of Gordon from Trafalgar Square and send it down to Sandhurst. I hope the decision is not irrevocable. His memory is not specially suited to inspire young officers with zeal for discipline and obedience to orders.
On the other hand, he is a true national hero; his strange and tragic story is deeply written across our political and imperial annals; his personality and genius were unique, and will always remain a source of pride to Englishmen.
G. M. Trevelyan
A British officer in Flanders in 1918, transplanted to a British messroom in the same country in 1793, would be more at home than in a foreign messroom of to-day. Though he would find the drinking too heavy for him, he would be surrounded by presumptions indefinably familiar. He would be critical of much, but he would understand from inside what he was criticising. Most of us would be at home taking tea at Dr. Johnson's, hearing the contact of civilised man with society discussed with British commonsense and good nature, with British idiosyncrasy and prejudice. Only we should be aware that we had stepped back out of a scientific, romantic and mobile era into an era literary, classical and static.
G. M. Trevelyan