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Visiting the Elmbridge Diggers Trail.
Be it in the United Kingdom or in Brazil, every time I tell people about the topic of my PhD they pose me the same question: what made a Brazilian historian decide to research British history? And why the Diggers, of all things?
Ironically, the more people ask me this, the more my replies tend to be ‘honestly, I don’t really know’. Because this didn’t begin when I applied for my PhD at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in 2017, or even when I started my MA degree at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) in 2015.
It began much earlier, when I was around nine or ten years old.
Christopher Hill and members of Cobham Labour Party dressed in 17th century costume. The photograph was taken when Dr. Hill gave a speech to Cobham Labour Party in 1999. Hill is 4th from the right.
From that age onwards, I started developing a passion and a genuine interest in British history that neither me nor my parents really know what triggered. I often joke that it was probably because I was an avid Harry Potter reader as a child (and that might just as well be one of the reasons!). Either way, my interest kept growing and started to encompass other aspects besides history, such as British political culture, folklore, literature, mythology and the particularities of identity formation in the British Isles.
Then, when I was doing my bachelor’s in history at the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC), on our reading list for the Early Modern History module was Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down.
Even though nowadays it is a work that has sustained much (needed) criticism, it was definitely the book that impacted me the most during my early years as a history student. Hill’s passionate depiction of the so-called English Revolution and the various radical groups that disputed it filled me with a renewed interest in what I consider to be one of the most intriguing periods of English history: the time when the English beheaded their king and created a Commonwealth.
My research into the Diggers and print culture often brings me to archives in London.
I've visited the National Archives in Kew to research original documents associated with the Digger Movement in Surrey.
I attended the famous Wigan Diggers Festival to gain an insight into modern interpretations of the Diggers.
I often get to study primary sources in the archives as part of my research.
My work with Elmbridge Museum has also brought me to see Cobham, the original home of Gerrard Winstanley and the start of the Diggers Trail.
A trip to the National Archives in Kew as part of my ongoing PhD research.
When I was undergoing my MA interview with my prospective supervisor, he asked me why I was interested in the Diggers. ‘Why not the Levellers instead?’, he said.
At the time, I made the historiographical argument to defend the relevance of my research: that compared to the Levellers – another very significant radical group at the time of the Civil War – the Diggers had been understudied, that I had not found anyone in Brazilian academia researching them, and that I felt like there were still many questions to be asked that hadn’t been satisfactorily answered by the existing scholarship.
But as I left the interview, I started thinking about many other reasons why the Diggers had attracted my interest.
Growing up in Brazil, deep social inequality is perhaps the first characteristic that comes to my mind when thinking about my country. A place of great beauty, tragic history, rich in culture and diversity, but with a bottomless gap dividing people when it comes to social reality and survival.
Land has always been at the centre of Brazil’s struggles with inequality. Ever since the Portuguese invasion in 1500, great amounts of land have been owned by few, both in terms of agricultural land as well as housing. It is no coincidence that perhaps the biggest organised social movement that we have in Brazil is the MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers Movement), which fights for the right of access of rural workers to the land, against big monoculture owners and the agribusiness, as well as for the preservation of Brazil’s ecosystems, such as the Amazon Forest. Hence, disputes around the matter of property are still very much alive in Brazil, as in the whole of Latin America as well.
I think that when I came across this group of people, that were speaking so passionately about access to the land in 17th century England, my young, certainly impressionable, self, found them not only very intriguing, but also their story one that was worth understanding and sharing. As a historian, my perspective is that the stories of the average, common people, who somehow tried to promote change, and the ways they engaged with the world around them, are just as important, just as necessary to be told as the stories of queens, great scientists, politicians and the like.
Visiting the Diggers memorial stone at Cobbetts Hill, part of the Diggers Trail.
Even if nowadays my interest in the Diggers is not grounded on such naïve terms as they were when I first started researching them, I still strongly believe that their story matters, and I also think that it is not told widely enough.
So, what inspired me to reach out to Elmbridge Museum and inquire as to whether I could contribute to their work was this: to help, in any way I can, to disclose the story of the Surrey Diggers. I wanted to make more people aware of their existence, to promote their historical relevance and, most important of all, to do all of this in the most accessible way possible. For I fear that sometimes we fail, within academia, to remember the importance of sharing the scholarly progress we make with those who are beyond our universities’ walls. And it is my belief that history is just as important as any other scientific field for the development of a healthy society. Fortunately, the Elmbridge Museum team shares my views, and thanks to their incredible support, together we have created a project that encompasses all of this, for which I will be forever grateful (and I think Gerrard Winstanley would have been too).
Lastly, I hope you find this humble contribution to the Diggers’ legacy both helpful and enjoyable. May their struggles and ideas inspire us to think critically about the world. Stand up now, Diggers all!
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We'd love to hear your thoughts!Very interesting. Made me want to know more about the Diggers.
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