European Nationality, Race and Commonwealth in the Writings of Sir Francis Palgrave, 1788–1861

Abstract

‘Man must be classed according to his blood, and not according to his habitat’.1 The words were those of the young Francis Palgrave, future editor for the Record Commission and from 1838 to 1861 Deputy Keeper of the Public Records. Palgrave, in addition to his editing work and to the series of Reports which he wrote as Deputy Keeper, was the author of three works of medieval history – the History of England. Anglo-Saxon Period (1831), The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth (1832), and The History of Normandy and England (from 1851 onwards but incomplete at his death) – in addition to a series of fictional dialogues with medieval settings, some 40 historical and literary articles in the periodical press, many of them on medieval subjects, and other miscellaneous writings. In this enormous and somewhat repetitive oeuvre race and nationality are recurrent themes.