Of Orange Men and Green Beer

I wore orange today because it was St. Patrick’s Day. That’s the proper color for an ethnic Hollander to wear in celebration of King William’s (of Holland and England) defeat of James the Second of England and James the Seventh of Scotland in Ireland (same chap).
After all, King William belonged to the Dutch House of Orange (whose actual color is the white carnation, but no matter that; it was still the House of Orange). Pro-English, Protestant Northern Irish still call themselves “Orangemen”.
Oh yes, let’s make it even simpler. James II, the Catholic champion, was allied with France against the Pope, and William, the Protestant challenger, was allied with the Pope against France. A good part of William’s army consisted of Catholic Hollanders carrying a Papal banner.
It gets even more fun when you remember that about a thousand years before this fight, an Irish tribe called the “Scots” invaded the land of the Picts—that part of Great Britain north of Hadrian’s Wall. These Irishmen conquered it so thoroughly that they gave it their own name—and we call it Scotland to this day.
That’s a good part of the fun of history. Everything eventually turns inside out and upside down. Of course I have to protest that, while they dye rivers and beer green—and even fast food places serve green milkshakes—no one serves orange shakes or beer.
The fuss all started in 1603 when the first Queen Elizabeth died without bothering to leave an heir. The best claim anyone had to the throne of England was the King of Scotland, James VI. There was a problem: James’ mom—Mary Queen of Scots.
She was a pretty lady—stood 5’ll”, an appalling female height in those days—who had become queen of Scotland at 9 months old, been spirited to France to escape an English invasion where she briefly became Queen Consort of France at seventeen.
France was England oldest and most deadly enemy. When Mary was widowed, she returned to Scotland and married a second time—giving birth to James, who never saw his mother again after he was one—who, because Mary was descended from a close cousin of Henry VIII, had the best claim to England’s throne.
(Is this all clear?) Elizabeth cut off Mary’s head and, fifteen years later, proclaimed Mary’s son as King of England. James didn’t do so badly in England but his son, Charles 1 got his head cut off, too. A dozen years later HIS son, Charles II was restored to the British throne.
Charles was suspected of being a Catholic—unacceptable in a politically protestant nation—and his brother who succeeded him was in fact Catholic. In 1688, after a three year rule, the English threw him out and he ran for France. The French sent him to Ireland to raise a pro-French, nominally pro-Catholic revolt among the Catholic Irish against England.
The English had meanwhile picked a new king—William of Holland whose wife Mary was a descendent of Henry VIII—and he took a Dutch and English army to Ireland in 1689 to defeat James and his Irish followers. Even with this defeat, the French continued to support James and his son (the “Old Pretender” and the “Young Pretender) for another seventy years.
And Ireland always remained a threat—leaning toward whatever enemy England had at the moment. When France was the danger, Ireland (and Scotland, for that matter) allied with France. Later as Germany became the foe to watch, Ireland rioted against England in 1916 and, as an independent nation, became a tacit ally of Nazi Germany in 1940.
If you’ve followed me this far, you’re probably saying that was a very long time ago—who cares? The Irish and the pro-English Protestant Northern Irish who killed each other with a jolly good will for the last three decades of the Twentieth Century seem to. (And they just had a murder or two the other day.)
The ill-will actually goes back to the 1200s. We Americans, who by and large began our cultural memories when we landed at Ellis Island, miss a lot of nuances in other lands. Many European Americans I ask can’t begin tell me where their families came from in Europe. Very few blacks know what part of Africa they came from. They often got off the boat not wanting to remember their history.
But people who live in places like Bosnia, Iraq, Pakistan, Darfur, Nigeria, Vietnam (fearing the ancient Chinese enemy more than they resent the Americans), Basque Country, the Walloons and Flemings—the Quebecois and the English Canadians, they don’t forget what happened centuries ago.
I admit I remember the Spanish rape of Holland (1580s), and on St. Patrick’s Day—even though I dated an Irish-American girl for years and have had friends from Ireland—I can’t help but avoid the green on March 17 and let slip the ancient cant, “King Billy was OURS”.
Half of our problems in places like Iraq and Afghanistan stem from the simple fact that our thoroughly Americanized policy makers in Washington have forgotten that other tribesmen remember. Then it takes us awhile to figure out why “friends” are shooting at us.
Recently we have accidentally stepped into ancient quarrels—ones we may never even have heard of. We have to learn that sometimes the wearing of an “orange shirt” means more than a color preference. We may even have to stop to figure out who the local “King Billy” was back a few hundred years.