Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837

Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837

thumb Britons, 3rd edition
Author	Linda Colley
Language	English
Subject	British History, Nationalism
Genre	Academic History
Publisher	Yale University Press
Publication place	United States
Pages	xxxi, 442, illus.
ISBN	978-0300152807
Dewey Decimal	941.07 C
LC Class	DA485.C65 2009

Linda Colley’s Britons charts the emergence of British identity from the Act of Union in 1707 with Scotland and Wales to the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837. British identity, she argues, is the result of four features that both unite the Britons and set the nation apart from others: Britain is a Protestant state defined against a largely Catholic Europe; it is an island nation with a strong navy rather than a massive army; it is a metropole; and it is a direct rival to France. Colley's analysis of the source of British identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries lead her to wonder whether British identity will survive in the future, now that so much of what made the Britons British – religion, Empire, disaffiliation from the Continent – has been lost. Britons won the Wolfson History Prize in 1992.

Methodology

Colley’s methodology focuses more on the cultural and social history of Britain than on the political or military in order to explain what being British meant to the Britons themselves. She draws heavily on visual sources – such as paintings, political cartoons, and even military uniforms – in order to reconstruct the formation of British identity. While Britons is a thematic rather than narrative history, the book follows a rough chronology and employs illustrative anecdotes throughout.

Chapter Summaries

Protestants

This chapter describes the period after the 1707 Act of Union, when the diverse peoples of the British isles developed a sense of “Britishness” based largely on their perceived differences from Europeans. A common commitment to Protestantism provided Britons with a unifying history and a constant enemy in Catholic France for over a century. This identification manifested itself in the image of Britain as Jerusalem, a nation elect but perenially embattled.

Profits

This chapter explores the ways the growth of British trade and mercantilism contributed to the development of British identity. Though the landed gentry dominated politics and traders depended on the ruling class for domestic stability and naval protection overseas, merchants served as the engine of state growth and as national creditors, fostering a new unity between the middle and upper classes. Colley contends that the Jacobite insurrection of 1745 against the Hanoverian government was unsuccessful because the twin forces of Protestantism and the financial interests of the merchant class motivated Britons to stand firmly against a Catholic Stuart uprising and the economic destabilization it would bring.

Peripheries

This chapter describes how British unity was shaken after the overwhelming success of the Seven Years' War, which left Britain with a huge, foreign empire to rule, turning Britain into a military power and forcing her citizens to re-examine their definition of Britishness and empire. In this tumultuous time, John Wilkes took up the mantle of "Englishness," as another source of identity, based mainly in opposition to the Scots. Losing the American Revolutionary War served to strengthen British identity, making the country more patriotic and attached to ideas of monarchy, military, and empire.

Dominance

This chapter continues the story of Great Britain’s response to defeat in the American Revolution. Colley argues that the British governing elites' failure to lead the nation to victory made the public question its utility; however, over the next half century, the aristocracy managed to recover its prestige, growing in size, homogeneity, and power. It did so by shifting its allegiance from cultural forms associated with France to native one, such as such as grand military uniforms and fox-hunting, thereby cementing its value to the populace as a mainstay of authentic British culture.

Majesty

Picking up from the reformation of the British aristocracy, this chapter traces the evolution of the monarchy in Britain from the Hanoverian succession of 1714 to death of George III in 1820. The British monarchy, unlike other European monarchies during this time, faced significant political, financial, and geographic constraints. In addition, both George I and George II were widely disliked due to their continued loyalty to the German language and culture and their support for the Whigs. George III, however, was more attentive to the royal image than his predecessors and carefully cultivated a domestic persona as a husband and father as well as monarch. During a period of wars and political reforms, he came to be beloved by his people and y the end of his reign, the monarchy was more British, more splendid, and more economically secure than ever before.

Womanpower

This chapter charts the development of women's engagement in politics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century n Britain. Patriotic shows of support during the war with Napoleonic France provided women an opportunity to establish a larger place, however limited, for themselves in the public sphere.

Manpower

This chapter argues that as war transformed women's participation in public and political life, so too did it lead to increased political power for men. Because of its need for increased military participation during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the government supported a mass arming and mobilization campaign that while fairly well supported by the populace encountered pockets of resistance, primarily due to the need to garner support from a broad social and geographic base. Colley asserts that factors such as changing cultural views on war, economic necessity, and self-interest increased the number of volunteers from certain groups, as did patriotic idealism and youthful desire for adventure.

Victories?

This chapter describes the 1830s as a period of unprecedented debates over citizenship and of changes in the character of British identity and power. The unity of the British nation was challenged by three reform crises: the expansion of the rights of Catholic citizens, the movement for parliamentary reform, and the abolition of slavery. The expansion of rights to Catholics under the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 called into question the distinctively Protestant character of the nation. The extension of rights to British citizens under the First Reform Act of 1832 . . . . The abolition movement . . . At the same time that these reform efforts provided a great number of Britons their first opportunity to engage directly in the political life of the nation, the majority of British subjects were still not citizens, calling into question the degree to which Britain was a nation of Britons.

Conclusions

Colley begins by reviewing the forces that united Britain as an island nation since 1707--war, free trade, urbanization, and most importantly, in Colley’s eyes, Protestantism--and made the British populous active and patriotic participants in the nation, even as regionalism remained in the British consciousness, creating a sense of dual identity. Debates about British identity have resurfaced today, especially in regard to the European Union, and, Colley notes, the influences that originally bonded Britons are now largely gone, leading to a resurgence of English, Scottish, and Welsh identity. Colley wonders whether Britain might splinter, unify with Europe, or continue in its current uncertain relationship with the United States, and is ultimately uncertain about the future of the nation.

Reactions

Britons has been highly praised both for its argument and the style in which it was written. One critic called it "dashingly written and firmly unsentimental."

References

Linda Colley (2009). Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, revised ed. Yale University Press.

External links

• Yale University Press's Britons page