12
The creation of the “official” version of English history, as concocted by Henry
VIII’s ministers, fits well into Breuilly’s idea that the state-sponsored creation of a
national identity may arise for political purposes. If the myth of the English nation
originally sprang from Henry’s desire to secure an annulment from Catherine, the
proposal of being free from the control of the papacy also appeared to hold political
advantages for the king. After all, without the pope meddling in the affairs of the state
Henry would have full control over his kingdom and its inhabitants. The myth was
devised as a way to separate the minds of the English from a thousand years of being an
integral part of the greater Christian entity united under Catholicism.
30
Henry and his
ministers, therefore, exploited the split with Rome over the annulment question as a way
to gain more political power.
31
However, while this idea supports some of the arguments
made by Breuilly, Gellner and Hobsbawm, it undermines their theory that nations,
national identities and nationalist movements only occur in modern societies, thereby
creating a need for an alternative explanation as to when these concepts, in general, first
appeared; as noted earlier, they can defend their theory only by arguing that the modern
concept of the nation is not the same concept which existed in the sixteenth century.
The perennialist view of national identity quickly undermines the notion that
nations and nationalist movements are modern manifestations. Perennialists believe that
some nations and their corresponding national identities have been in existence for a
number of centuries,
32
in contrast to the modernist view which normally dates the
30
Edwin Jones, The English Nation: The Great Myth (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998),
1.
31
Ibid., 40.
32
Hastings, 5.
Convention