Britons Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 |
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Author:
| Colley, Linda |
ISBN: | 978-0-300-05737-9 |
Publication Date: | Oct 1992 |
Publisher: | Yale University Press
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Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | USD $45.00 |
Book Description:
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In this book, Linda Colley recounts how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the Act of Union between England and Wales and Scotland in 1707. She describes how a succession of major wars with Catholic France, culminating in the conflict with Napoleon, served as both a threat and a tonic, forcing the diverse peoples of this Protestant culture into a closer union and reminding them of what they had in common. She also shows how their world-wide empire gave men and women from...
More DescriptionIn this book, Linda Colley recounts how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the Act of Union between England and Wales and Scotland in 1707. She describes how a succession of major wars with Catholic France, culminating in the conflict with Napoleon, served as both a threat and a tonic, forcing the diverse peoples of this Protestant culture into a closer union and reminding them of what they had in common. She also shows how their world-wide empire gave men and women from different ethnic and social backgrounds a powerful incentive to be British. In the process, she not only demonstrates how an over-arching British identity came to be superimposed onto much older regional and national identities but she also illuminates why it is that these same older identities - be it Scottishness or Welshness or Englishness or regionalism of one kind or another - have reemerged and become far more important in the late 20th century.