The Fens
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. Welcome to Ansono's history here on the eastern edge of the British |
| 0:04.7 | House of the North Atlantic archipelago. Their lives, the fed, well, they used to lie. In fact, |
| 0:10.0 | well, it's not kind of lie. The feds, one of the last great wildernesses in England. |
| 0:15.3 | These were systematically drained, enclosed, brought under the plow and turned into arable land |
| 0:21.6 | through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Now, to go there, you wouldn't believe that they'd |
| 0:26.4 | once been a giant delta, river delta, full of bird life and other kinds of flora and fauna. |
| 0:34.9 | It's still a wonderful place to go, but it can feel like a fairly sterile industrial agricultural |
| 0:39.1 | setting now. On this podcast, I actually thrilled to have James Boyce, he's a multi-wardwinning |
| 0:43.2 | Australian historian, but he used to live a long time ago on the edge of the fence, so he's got |
| 0:47.4 | a personal connection with it as well. And he makes these fascinating comparisons between the |
| 0:52.5 | colonization, the eradication of native life and practices in the fence, and what was going on |
| 1:00.2 | in the rest of the world as well as European imperialists stretched their reach across the globe. |
| 1:04.0 | This is such a fascinating book. It's a fascinating topic. I hope you enjoy this podcast. |
| 1:08.4 | If you want to go and watch programmes about the early modern period that's plenty on historyhit.tv. |
| 1:13.2 | It's like Netflix for history. You just sign up, historyhit.tv, a small subscription. |
| 1:18.2 | All of it goes on the amazing programmes we're producing at the moment. We got several |
| 1:21.3 | in production. I do many in production. It's going to be quite a busy few weeks. |
| 1:24.8 | Lots of new programmes coming up. Lots of new podcasts. So please head over there. |
| 1:28.3 | If you use the code pod1, POD1, you get a month for free and your second month for just one pound |
| 1:33.0 | euro or dollar. So please enjoy this podcast with James Boyce. |
| 1:43.6 | James, thank you very much coming on the podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Dad. |
| 1:46.9 | There's so many people listening to this podcast in the UK and around the world who won't |
... |
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