The Rise and Fall of the British Nation

by David Edgerton

From the acclaimed author of Britain's War Machine and The Shock of the Old , a bold reassessment of Britain's twentieth century. It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, from building a welfare state to coping with decline. Nobody would dream of writing the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union in this way. David Edgerton's major new history breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to redefine what it was to British, and to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to huge disruptions. This was not simply because of the world wars and global economic transformations, but in its very nature. Until the 1940s the United Kingdom was, Edgerton argues, an exceptional liberal, capitalist and anti-nationalist, at the heart of a European and global web of trade and influence. Then, as its global position collapsed, it became, for the first time and only briefly, a real, successful nation , with shared goals, horizons and industry, before reinventing itself again in the 1970s as part of the European Union and as the host for international capital, no longer capable of being a nation. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history which takes business and warfare seriously, and which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, British Literature, European History, 20th Century

720 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2018

About the author

David Edgerton FBA was educated at St John's College, Oxford, and Imperial College London. After teaching the economics of science and technology and the history of science and technology at the University of Manchester, he became the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, London, and Hans Rausing Professor. He has held a Major Research Fellowship (2006–2009) from the Leverhulme Trust. In 2013, he led the move of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine to the Department of History of King's College London.

Reviews

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A breathtaking, highly materialist, macro-economic history of Britain's 20th century. This book would sit well on a shelf next to E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class or Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes.

Whether or not the author would appreciate being placed in such close proximity with these prominent Marxist historians is unclear. The text has all the soot and smoke materialism of a classic marxist tract as well as a highly developed and economistic view of class as a driver of political change. However, although the text has a rich and assertive argument, its hardly a political polemic in the traditional leftist sense.

Late capitalist discourse goes to great pains to separate the economic and political, the wealth makers and wealth redistributers, to make the consumer the political subject to the exclusion of the producer. What makes this text so thrilling for me is that it dusts off and brings back to light the dialectical relationship between the political and productive nature of the state-economy.

The book demolishes the Thatcherite and Blairite myth of 20th century Britain being one great failed experiment ending in a calamitous 1970s (with the exception of WWII). It also thoroughly interrogates the cliche which attributes Britain's post-war settlement to the Labour Party: it contains some fantastic insights into what the Labour Party did and did not achieve. Similarly it makes a very thorough investigation into the Conservative Party and its relationship with free trade in the early and latter parts of the century.

For a comprehensively materialist analysis of the British nation, state and economy since 1900, I've never read anything better.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good macroeconomic history of the 20th century Britain from a writer who sounds like he is from the center of the Labour Party. The level of detail makes it a challenging read sometimes but very informative still. The book helped me to understand the roots of "declinism" in the UK and the possible intellectual, political and economic trauma the British nation may have gone through when the British Empire dissolved in the 1950s.

Do not expect a Marxist critique of British capitalism nor an anti-imperialist view on the British oil and arms industry though. Edgerton is your average social democrat who swings between something like "we could have done much better if it weren't for Thatcher and Blair" and "Britain had nothing to do but lose significance in a world where there were multiple and bigger centres of growth" and who laments the destruction of "an entrepreneurial state" of the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet, it was enlightening to learn that the industry within the United Kingdom is "nearly all foreign owned", that all the major British car producers are sold to the foreign companies. He says, "In no other major capitalist economy was there no approximation to a national major car firm, chemical firm, electrical engineering or electronic firm operating on its territory. Nor did it have any large 'technology' companies like Facebook or Google".

It is telling that the British microchip manufacturer ARM, which in the book Edgerton names as the only British high-tech startup, has very recently been sold to Nvidia, an American company. Has the UK become the niche colony of international capital looking for a pool of highly educated and highly skilled labour? That's probably not true, at least yet; but it is impressing nonetheless to see a country get transformed from the largest capital exporter of the globe into "a tax haven attracting it" in 150 years. Imperialism of the free trade was a British invention and now it is Britain's turn to taste the medicine.

How the turn tables.

[Bettie]

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation and These Islands review – the fate of 'bullshit Britain' . Even a historian identified with optimism about the UK despairs about the country’s current predicament. Is revival possible?

The culprits who have enabled this

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, quite simply, a remarkable revisionist history. Although ideas about 'decline' have been challenged before, Edgerton presents a uniquely clear take-down of them here, noting that this was merely relative decline for most of the twentieth century. His great point about the post-war British state being better characterised by warfare than welfare was a revelation to me. And of course, the now famous critique of New Labour is exhilarating. Economic and political history isn't my usual focus, but this book is an engaging way into a hundred fascinating debates in modern British history. I recommend this one highly.

[Jarvo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book which is by turns fascinating and deeply infuriating. It is a self-consciously revisionist history of Britain in the twentieth century, and as such it works much better if you are already familiar with the theories he sets out to disprove. In my case this means that the second half of the book, which deals with the period from 1950 to 2000, works much better than the material on the earlier period, although I did find much here fascinating, especially the discussions around the liberal internationalism on the one hand, and empire and protection on the other.

In the second half of the book Edgerton's arguments verge on the deliberately provocative. His claims that the importance of the welfare state has been exaggerated sound plausible, but his argument that Britain's commitment to war was at least as important as its commitment to welfare seem, at best, to only be true for part of the time. However it is his emphasis on the role of a 'developmental state' in successfully developing Britain as a manufacturing power between, about 1950 and 1975, that has drawn most attention. Here Edgerton takes aim at 'declinist' accounts, which emphasise Britain's relative economic decline. This is challenging but ultimately not altogether convincing. I do feel the book would have benefitted from more comparative material, as it seems to me that Britain is lauded for undertaking changes that were common in all advanced industrial nations. And it remains possible that Britain achieved these less successfully than other countries: Britain went from being the world's largest exporter of cars in the 1950's to having a car industry that collapsed as soon as it was exposed to international competition in the 1970's. If that constitutes success I'd hate to see failure.

The closing sections of the book are the most vivid, although it is here that the author shows his ideological spots most clearly. He is infatuated with militant tendency-era labour, and seems to believe that because the Labour Party in 1983 was at its most ideologically coherent we should overlook the fact that it had a lower share of the vote than in any other election since the war. After all he says, labour is fundamentally a party of critique and protest, so what does making a practical difference to people's lives mean?

All theories are wrong, some are useful. There is a danger with revisionist history that you replace one set of incomplete theories with another less useful set. In this case I'd say that the author has definitely changed my mind about what the relative priorities of British government were for much of the post war period, but I am less convinced by the argument that we executed well on all of those priorities.

[Ish Tominey-Nevado · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars in spite of my /major/ issues with it because it did change my understanding of postwar economic history, particularly vis a vis the productivism and militarism of the British postwar left. I learnt a lot from his insights on R&D and science & tech industries too

the whiteness of the historiography he engages with and the absence of much discussion about race, immigration, and white supremacy in a book about the the British nation and declinism is a huge shame though. & his points about the nationalism of the British left are reserved and would have been vastly improved by reading Stuart Hall or A. Sivanandan, or the Dadzie in the Heart of the Race for instance. this book could have been outstanding if the arguments about welfarism and productivism spoke more directly to postwar imperial and racist politics beyond free trade and protectionism imho!

the way he shows that the so called ‘postwar welfare state’ was a very limited reworking of the Tory welfare system for the working class in the 20s and 30s was really interesting, but would have been so much richer if he even touched on how citizenship structured the provision of support. that’s pretty central to understanding the national myth making about the NHS’s and welfare state’s origins that he seems to be focused on countering, so was v. disappointed to see it neglected like that.

[Sam Tornio · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather daunting read for an American seeking little more than an entry point into 20th Century Britain. Edgerton assumes the reader is comfortable with certain conventional narratives and charges ahead without much preparation on a revisionist campaign of all out dissection and dismissal. Rather unfortunately, his erudition and reflective diligence often surpass the facility of his rather convoluted, academic prose; but, then again, he’s not here to keep things tidy.

For a dive into the deep end of modern British history, this was a bracing, fruitful submersion.

[Laura]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Edgerton's survey of 20th century British history is not a book for the general reader. It is, rather, a deeply researched and profound overview of British 20th century history that overturns many conventional wisdoms, not least that most conventionally wisdomed of all British historical events, the Second World War. The passages on the war and on US and British relations post-World War II alone are worth the price, but much of the rest of the book is largely for the specialist.

Edgerton brings his book right up to the Tony Blair era and the last chapter of the book descends from the lofty heights of academic history to what is often little more than journalism. Whether you agree or not with his view, stated on the final page, that "Tony Blair, meanwhile, was making money working for some of the vilest torturers and dictators on earth", its sweeping, judgemental and journalistic tone is striking in its dissonance with the calm, considered, and carefully researched historical assessments that preceded it and stands as an illustration of the need of history for distance.

[Amy Carver · Rating 3 out of 5]

In between 3 and 4 stars for this!

A heavyweight account that certainly contains sections of illumination, particularly in dispelling the notion of a post-war consensus in the UK across the political spectrum. Handles (dis)continuities between (anti)imperial and (non)nationalistic political and cultural mobilisation especially well.

For all Edgerton’s productive work in arguing for a reassessment of 1945-1970 (and thus the periods that came before and after), I nonetheless struggled with the fact that he never actually defined what a nation IS outside of characteristic/particularities in the iterations he discusses. Also the last chapter on New Labour was very short and out of proportion with the rest of the book. I agreed with what he was saying but the tone was also quite moralising in a way the rest of the book was not? An important contribution that I will make use of but not without its limitations (which I can only feel comes with a 500+ page account of 100+ years of history!)

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a formidable work which analyses the British nation state through concepts such as the contrast between a welfare state and a warfare state. In so doing, David Edgerton challenges many long-held views about the way in which Britain developed during the last century.

The analysis is supported by an extensive and impressive bank of data. For an academic work, it is highly accessible and entertainingly constructed. There is important information about the development of industry and business, and overall the book digs beneath the often superficial accounts of Britain's journey through a turbulent period.

A thought-provoking work that is strongly recommended.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the title of this work, one might expect a history of Britain’s time as the world hegemon. That is, one that begins from the low point of the defeat in the American revolutionary war, follows through the highpoint of pax britannia during the 19th century and then ends with the Suez crisis and the transfer of hegemon status to the USA.

This would be a complete mistake however. The operative term in the title is in fact ‘nation’, a term that is developed by the author to have a specific economic meaning and which he shows was true in our country for not even the entirety of the 20th century.

A nation is something like this: a largely autarchic capitalist state with its own capacity for reproducing itself materially and mentally without recourse to trading relationships or foreign lines of credit. That is to say it has primary industries such as agriculture and mining, manufacturing in machinery, tools and consumer goods, and research and educational institutions. And most importantly perhaps it has its own army which it can rely on to protect itself.

Crucially the British state did not have all of these or even most of these things prior to the 20th century. It produced coal and machinery and cloth which it sold to the world in exchange for food and other raw materials, all according to the principles of classical political economy. Even its landowners were in favour of free trade, as most of them did not get the majority of their income from farming. It had a navy, but not an army.

The turning point, when the ‘liberal empire’ turned inwards, is given as the first world war. The author quotes from the wartime coalition “One of the lessons which has been most clearly taught us by the war is the danger to the nation of being dependent upon other countries for vital supplies on which the life of the nation may depend.’”

The changes, caused perhaps by a certain maturation of the global capitalist system, predated the war and were true to different extents in all of the developed capitalist economies which all experienced an expansion of the state into municipal services, pensions, benefits, the civil service (no longer an amateur affair) etc. Popular history is often not aware of this history and often locates the beginning of the “welfare state” with the post-WWII era.

The author relishes puncturing historical myth and this is no exception. He points out that the welfare state was not an invention of the Atlee government but rather the post WWI conservative government of the 1920s. There was no disagreement between parties on whether this was necessary, only how it should be funded. The only Labour innovation was in pensions and in combining the scattered healthcare institutions of the UK in the NHS (the period 1945-50 saw no great investment in hospitals which only really picked up in the 60s under the conservatives). The major increase in spending during this period was on warfare.

The popular conception of the central political and economic cleavage of the age being between Keynesians and orthodox liberals is also blown apart by the author. Rather he views it as being between free trade and protectionism. In the early 20th century this was a conflict between tariffs and income taxes with Conservatives supporting the former and Liberals and Labour supporting the latter. After WWII the Labour party became the party of national production and planning whereas the conservatives became more market orientated (and therefore pro EEC). A major contradiction in the Labour party was between the left who wanted more national production and nationalisation (and were therefore anti EEC), and the right who were more internationalist and therefore also in favour of redistribution through welfare.

According to the author the end of the nation came about during the 70s. A combination of events such as the oil price shock, the entry into the EEC, had convinced many politicians of the benefits of free trade and the folly of a national protectionist economy. It is perhaps no coincidence that many western European dictatorships fell during the same decade. The popular causes of this decline: militant trade unions, the habits of the british capitalists to shirk their responsibilities to invest and british workers having too many tea breaks are criticised as unfounded. Productivity growth while slower than some places, was still growing and this reflected the already relatively high wealth of the nation rather than its backwardness. Nevertheless there were many white elephants. From the groundnut scheme in Kenya, to public housing, to British nuclear reactors, concorde and hovercrafts, Britain failed again and again in its attempts to be world-beating when it came to technology. Against the Weiner thesis (It could be called the Wilson thesis!), rather than being a nation of romantic, ancient greek learning, luddites, if anything Britain was too futuristic, modernist and forward thinking for its own good!

The post war period had seen a major shift, in part due to the nationalist policies of previous governments, from a coal powered food importing nation to a electrified and motorised one. The oil powered economy was international, not national. There were no longer industrial centres employing tens of thousands of workers. There were just transport nodes with unorganised skeleton crews. The City became a financial hub rather than the centre of British industry. UK owned companies became a miniscule fraction of the FTSE 100. The UK became a ‘consumer society’ of coffee shops, fast food chains, and high street shops. Manufacturing was still there, but it no longer commanded enough labour for its workers to have the capability to bring British Industry to its knees if it desired. Again, puncturing another myth, the author provocatively points out that state expenditure has ballooned massively during the “neo-liberal” era as surplus workers have been moved onto benefits. Through these two movements, the marginalisation of manufacturing, and the expansion of benefits, the British state has avoided the social turmoil of the 70s.

So goes the rational and potentially positive part of the story. It is one that seems to be attractive to the author who laments the ways we have lost our ability to plan and to innovate in the UK. It is a position that seems to share something with that of Mariana Mazzucato and the remnants of the Labour left for an “entrepreneurial state”. Indeed, in an article for the Guardian from 2024, he calls for a “creative” state to combat the rentier friendly policies of the Conservatives.

There is a darker side to the story as well, which somewhat upsets the previous narrative. This is the history of British Facism, which is shown to anticipate many of the nation-building exercises of the mainstream parties which elsewhere he seems to be nostalgic for. One is left with a sour taste reading passages like the following on Oswald Mosely’s new party: “The party articulated the thesis that the City of London had as its main business investment overseas, which brought a return in the form of imports into the United Kingdom and which therefore under- mined the economic nation. This was to become the standard thesis of economic nationalists of the left, too”

Does the author see a through line from fascism to the nation building state of the post-war era? And does he think this is a good or bad thing? Although references to the fascists (and Communists) abound in the book, they are scattered and not brought together into a clear narrative that could let us understand the author’s thinking on this point. To extrapolate from things left unsaid, it would seem to me personally that there is a throughline, and a strong, yet subterranean, one at that. The concept of ‘corporate bias’, initially established by Lloyd George where employers associations, trade unions and the government collaborate to set sector wide pay agreements, has obvious parallels to fascist ‘corporatism’. ‘Industrial self government’ talked about as well in the book is similar. There are also slightly more anecdotal links. Like Charles Bedaux, a developer of “work measurement” and “scientific management” of the labour process being a friend of the royals and a nazi sympathiser. Or Arthur Bryant, a popular historian who was a favourite of Harold Wilson, again being a nazi sympathiser. Either way, the effect is unsettling.

The fall in the “rise and fall” is also under theorised in its international dimension. Britain suffered from a much more dramatic deindustrialization than other western european countries it is true, but the others still suffered it. And the social turmoil of the 70s was just as violent (or arguably even more) in other places. The whole book is based on an assumption that technological innovation and implementation leads to economic growth. But it is not obvious why that should economically be the case. This is important because the author assumes that the reason why the British economy grew during the “post-fordist” and post-”British Nation” era was because a financialised economy was coasting on the foundations that the “British Nation” built. Perhaps. But this is a period of a full three decades of secular growth. Against the minute detail of the first eight decades of the 20th century, the last two (three if you consider the 2000s as part of the long-twentieth century) feel a little bare.

[Tom Gil]

Other's Review
Reviewer: Professor Scott Newton
Cardiff University
Professor Scott Newton, review of The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: a Twentieth Century History, (review no. 2307)
DOI: 10.14296/RiH/2014/2307
Date accessed: 15 February, 2019

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation
www.history.ac.uk
These are genuine criticisms of the book but they do not detract from its very considerable quality. There can be no doubt whatever that Edgerton has performed a great service not just for professional historians working in the Academy but for all thinking people who are concerned with the business of History in general and Britain's own story in particular. He had produced a powerful and compelling, at times magisterial and masterly text. We can only hope that will be the inspiration for many others keen to follow up the ideas and leads in his work with their own accounts.

[1] The key text is P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2015, 3rd edition (London, 2016).

[2] See for example David Thomson, Europe Since Napoleon (London, 1966), pp. 425-7; and Scott Newton, The Reinvention of Britain: a Political and Economic History (London, 2017).

[3] For example, A. S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-51 (London, 1984); and The European Rescue of the Nation-State, 2nd edition (London, 2000).

[4] 'Neoliberalism is a Political Project', interview with David Harvey, Jacobin (23 July 2016)
[5] Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism: (Oxford, 2005) is an invaluable introduction to the subject.

[6] Karl Marx, Capital: Volume III (London, 1991), ch. 27, pp. 566-74.

Author's Response
David Edgerton
Posted: Thu, 14/02/2019 - 11:19
I am immensely grateful to Scott Newton for his generous review of my book. I am pleased too that he has used it not so much to mark some points of disagreement but to take forward a discussion, and I will respond in kind. He makes four criticisms which I will address in turn, and then reflect a little on aspects of the book he does not touch on and which bear on his points.

His first criticism is that I indulge in a straw man criticism of the brilliant work of Cain and Hopkins. I am of course aware that they appreciate that British capitalism was a matter of ships and factories and so on. Who wouldn’t note that empirical reality? But they put finance and commerce not ships and production at the centre of their picture, for good reasons. It do not criticise them for this, rather I criticise their thesis, and the tradition they stand in, in a very general way. I see them as the most accomplished, by far, exponents of the view that foreign financial and commercial entanglements weakened the national productive economy, and challenge that. I also criticise their thesis by noting the very great importance of the politics of the national debt as opposed to the overseas debt which is central to their story.

The second criticism is that I underplay two key innovations of the 1940s welfare state – free medicine, and the ending of the means test. I do note the specificities and significance of the free to use NHS, but I follow specialist scholarship in pointing out that before the NHS lots of people could and did see the doctor for free. That free medicine was no longer a mark of poverty was indeed crucial but it was the universalism of the free medicine, not that medicine became free which was the crucial change. As to the means test, its humiliations did go away in the history books, but not in reality. The household means test had gone earlier, but the mean test did not disappear. It was the basis of the whole National Assistance system. That said it is true that had there been more unemployment among insured workers after 1945 they would not have been forced onto means tested benefits so soon as had happened in the inter-war years, but then it is worth noting that the means test most certainly did not apply to all benefits before the war. Indeed in my sections on welfare I go out of my way to discuss the differences between insurance and means-tested benefits. But the broader point is that the really big change in welfare across the second world war were not going from little welfare to the welfare state, but rather from a welfare state for the working class to a universal one, and one in which benefits financed by taxation (NHS, family allowances) were crucial.

The third criticism is that I don’t see that social democracy everywhere was necessarily national. I was rather assuming this to be the case, broadly speaking. But what was interesting in the British case was the British social democracy was not generally nationalist and protectionist before the 1930s – on the contrary, it was devoted to free trade! As far as Alan Milward is concerned, again I could not agree more. In fact as I hope was evident my account of the UK was decidedly Milwardian, indeed my book is one of the very few general texts which takes his distinctive account of UK accession seriously and attempts indeed to expand on it.

On the origins of Thatcherism again I certainly don’t disagree that it was not a purely British phenomenon, and hoped that I had implied as much. I don’t think I implied Thatcherism was attacking paper tigers. Indeed I see some force in the Thatcherite point that they sought to reverse changes of the 1960s and 1970s, rather than the 1940s or 1950s. I also make the point that there was a decidedly systematic move to enforce the rule of property and to downgrade the power of labour – and in many dimensions. Indeed, one reason I don’t like the term neo-liberalism is that it focusses on ideology not practice and on markets not on capital/labour relations. In my account, the post-1979 story connects back to the pre-1945 story especially with respect to the relative power of capital and labour and the openness of the economy. Opening the economy, controlling trade unions, and privatisation, did indeed weaken and de-legitimate national social democratic action.

In short, his criticisms and observations are I think already essentially in my text, though obviously not clearly enough. But I think there may be an underlying issue which is worth highlighting.

Newton, like most reviewers, sees my book as focussed on the years from 1945, and take its central point to be the nationalism of the period to the 1970s. Yet a very large chunk of the book is about the very different world that preceded it. And here I think I make, and report, many distinctive arguments which give a new picture of what changed between the inter-war and post-war years. My pre-1945 story stresses the power of global British capitalism. Indeed that part of the book especially is effectively a history of British capitalism. For example, contra the implications both of most histories and the gentlemanly capitalism theses I show that the strength of industrial businessmen in the House of Commons and in power. I also argue for the significance of the working class welfare state created in the 1920s. The story I tell runs counter to what I see as the nationalist critiques of liberalism (and imperialism) which are central to the historiographies of the British nation which emerged in the 1960s and which still structure our understanding. Indeed my book is as much a critique of these nationalist historiographies as it is a description of the post-war nation in which they emerged. What does this mean concretely? It means I reject the assumptions of the great New Left historiography emerging from the 1960s (including Cain and Hopkins) and also the welfarist national histories of the centre left. Indeed I very much hope that my book will stimulate a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of the historiography of modern Britain.

https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/rev...

[John Bleasdale · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a good corrective. But pretty depressing.

[Ken MacIntyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received view challenged

David Edgerton has produced a rapid survey of 20th century Britain that challenges many assumptions about its history. The post war 'consensus' around an enlarged welfare state, full employment and Keynesian economics is taken apart. The Attlee government of 1945 built on inter war Conservative welfare reforms but did not add significantly to spending other than pensions. The NHS centralised a pre-war patchwork of pre-war charity and municipal services without adding to spending. Military - what he calls 'warfare' - spending was at high levels, with unprecedented peacetime conscription, overseas bases including an army in Germany and secret work on an atomic bomb. Above all, the 50s and 60s, not the 19th century, were the golden age of British manufacturing, protected and supported by the state. Without public investment in nationalised industries and council house building plus state intervention in the North Sea oil industry, the Thatcher revolution could not have happened. Without British Leyland's nationalisation (the term is significant) the company could not have been privatised. The dominant 'declinist' narrative of sluggish growth, industries hampered by overmighty unions and inflation caused by 'Keynesian' economics is shown to be without foundation. The picture is of a wealthy, powerful and successful country which forged the British nation during the Second World War and after. Before, there was the Empire or 'England'. Edgerton is weaker on how this economic nationalism broke down under wider international economic integration. But his insight that the Labour Left's economic programme and hostility to the EEC was an expression of British nationalism is shrewd. Aneurin Bevan's resignation speech of 1951 has the nationalist conceit of 'this little island'. (Britain is the world's ninth largest.) He is damning about 'New Labour', essentially a Conservative party that left almost all the Thatcher reforms untouched and abandoned the productionist ethos of the post war Labour Party and the legacy of nationalists such as Hugh Gaitskell. In its place were vacuous concepts such as the 'knowledge economy'. 'Surfball', a new exciting computer game promised for the Millenium Dome in 2000 - itself an uninspired attempt to emulate the 1951 Festival of Britain which flopped - turned out not to exist, which just about sums it all up.

However the book lacks a wider understanding on how Britain came to enter the EEC or how the 'financialisation' of the economy under the Thatcher reforms brought foreign ownership to City banks and manufacturing, gradually undermining any distinctive national economy. That latter issue - the creation of money as debt by private banks is essential to understanding these developments. Nevertheless, this is a welcome and refreshing take on recent history with fascinating anecdotes such as when in 1987, the left wing Labour nationalist MP and ex-miner Dennis Skinner was taunted as a 'grammar school boy' (Tupton Hall, passing the 11 plus a year early) by a group of braying Tory MPs, he politely pointed out that Margaret Thatcher who was sitting with the group, also attended grammar school. Thatcher said nothing.

[Fred Clough · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an original, meticulously researched and thoroughly convincing piece of historical writing. We may tend to think of the 'British nation' as centuries old; but Edgerton argues that, until the 1940s, the meaningful political description of these islands was its role as the hub of an empire. Only when it lost this global reach in the years after the second world war did it become a largely self-sufficient nation, deliberately developing its national resources, with a nationalistic 'British is Best' culture to match. Then in the 1980s, among the many profound changes in the economy and society of these islands, was a loss of its national industrial base and an increasing globalisation of its economy, such as the 'British nation' as it had been developed for the previous thirty to forty years, virtually ceased to exist.

This book punctures many of the assumptions which I for one had inherited from an unthinking historiography of the twentieth century: the idea, for example, that the welfare state was established by the Labour government after WW2, whereas they simply developed and consolidated quite widespread previous provisions; the notion that development of the welfare state was the most important feature of post-WW2 British society – whereas in fact defence expenditure remained, then as throughout most of the twentieth century, far more of a national priority, thus making it above all a 'warfare state'; and the notion that British industry had failed to innovate after its remarkable success in the nineteenth century: all the facts tell a different story, and show that the comparatively faster development of the industries of foreign countries was largely because they started from a much more undeveloped state.

The book presents its evidence thoroughly and scrupulously, with an abundance of tables and graphs, but Edgerton is not afraid to draw conclusions from the evidence presented and to make judgments. The last chapter ends with a fine flourish when the author suggests that, at the time of Margaret Thatcher's funeral in 2013, 'In the old and distressed pit villages of England, of Scotland and of Wales, forgotten former miners celebrated bitterly. Tony Blair, meanwhile, was making money working for some of the vilest torturers and dictators on earth.'

[Nikhil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a decent effort to describe the British 20th century. It focuses on a mix of economic, political, and social (ordered by relevance) factors that shaped the "British nation" as a coherent economic unit. Edgerton's prior work on the military, the welfare state, empire, science and technology, and the economic and social consequences of the great 20th century wars loom over this one. He definitely has an axe to grind; this book unabashedly challenges everything ranging from widespread myths to the numerous declinist essays published in the NLR over decades. He's usually right.

Where I might disagree with him on the big questions: British economic decline during the postwar years was essentially relative, but this doesn't exclude the possibility of missed opportunities (key supporting references of his argue as much); industrial relations was probably more of an issue than he makes out; and it's not obvious why the "economic nation" matters so much when identity is much more central. British identity certainly goes further than the 20th century too.

There are a number of great moments where he discusses topics that go beyond economic performance and the warfare-welfare distinction. These range from the (presently) unheralded success in mid century science and technology to an outline of British intellectual life in the 1930s. If there was one socio-cultural topic I wish he touched on more though, it would have to be religion. The transformation of an essentially Protestant country with a strong historical attachment to Protestantism at the start of the century to one which was deeply secular (with a quasi-Catholic PM) at the end of it was underdiscussed, as were its implications.

Certainly worth a read.

[Daniel Clemence · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most comprehensive and well thought out book of Britain in the 20th century. The book is a history of the UK particularly from the view of politics and political economy. The argument in the book is that British decline has been overstated and that Britain had punched above its weight for many years.

It contrasts the assumption that the British Empire was as important as development to its country as many would argue. Britain's history as a trading nation has been highlighted. What I really found interesting is how political-economy dominated the debates of British politics right up until the 1980s when the fundamental position of market liberalism under Neo-Liberalism became the major political assumption.

I do think that some of its claims are wrong. For example it claims that its history was a right-wing history of focusing on production and producers, but it had enough information on the left to make this claim seem unfounded. I also found it fascinating that on political-economy, there was consensus among all sides of the political aisle. For example, Conservatives and Communists were concerned with declining coal exports in the 30s.

A stimulating interesting book of 20th century Britain.

[Cyffin Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Includes many really interesting arguments, very well written and lots of new and interesting facts - lots of new insights for me on Labour Party views on the British economy from 1920 to 1970.

I felt it sometimes engaged insufficiently with arguments about whether large changes to political economy (e.g. the shift to protectionism in the 1930s, the rise of a British 'national' economy post-WWII, or it's liberalisation/destruction by Thatcher) are the cause of economic necessity, political choice, or wider global pressures. It feels as though the author views the latter as purely political choice (without explaining why 'There is No Alternative' is wrong) and the former are driven by economic reality (trade balance) which I'm happy to believe but just wanted a little more discussion of this.

I would have also liked a little more on the role of the rise and fall of a "British economic nation" on British national identity - especially in Wales, Scotland, and NI.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really nice macro economic history of 20th century Britain. Dispels with a number of myths that we and the British intellectual and literati class take for truisms. I was particularly shocked at just how industrial Britain was and could be well into the post-war years (until basically it wasn't). Does an excellent job of diagnosing the particular illnesses that Thatcherism and New Labour imparted on the country. Suggests that the turbulent labour and strike years of 1984-5 were only won and lost by a hair's breadth, and if John Smith hadn't died in 1994, things might have played out differently in the post-Thatcher years. These are things I would be interested in reading more about: the lack of resistance on the part of the Labour Party which effectively culminates in Tony Blair and by extension the current British government.

[Olan McEvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly remarkable history of Britain’s 20th century, told through the lens of the coming of age of the “British nation” in the post-war period, as Edgerton chooses to call it. This is a no-nonsense materialist retelling of a story which many know well, but few understand.

There’s a lot in here, so I may have to come back and write a proper review at some point, but I think it is an exceptional iconoclastic history, which is of huge relevance to both the 21st century mess which Britain finds itself in, as well as the understanding of the internal change which occurs in declining world powers.

I reckon that even people who think the topic isn’t of interest to them would find something in the way Edgerton tells this story to be worthwhile.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting view of British history from 1900 - 2000. There are some acute insights and a different view of the course of British history during the period covered. This a basically an objective account of some of the key events and personalities and a sincere attempt to discover exactly how "imperialism" morphed into "empire" and thus into "nation". The distinctions are important and colour the events that occurred during the relevant phases of the history of the British Isles, and lead directly to the absurdity of Brexit.

This is a clear and well written piece of history supported by a large bibliography. An excellent effort.

[Vincent Breen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. A sweeping history of 20th Century Britain with a focus on the construction of a British nation after 1945. This British nation is social democratic in nature and has more in common with central EU countries like Netherlands, France and Germany. However an obsession to punch above its weight and a general view that the UK is in a decline leads to Thatcherism and the Left setting the agenda after 1979. It’s a great read and puts into context how we are in the situation we find ourselves now. Reading this book we gave never got over Empire and the ghosts of Empire continue to haunt us.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, but also depressing read. Sometimes a dense read, but never a dull read.

I was born just after WW2, so half the book is my history and he lays bare some of the changes, meant or accidental of the Thatcher revolution.

Also interesting have been the changes in trade patterns following the World Wars and the loss of Empire. You may not agree with the author, but your opinions will be challenged.

[Josh Cowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly dense, very detailed but difficult to read all of the past three months I've been trying. Some large assumptions in knowledge for the punter like me. But a lot of interesting insights into primarily political, business and economical, warfare and welfare sides of Britain through the twentieth century.

[Asoka · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book but heavy going to read through all the stats. However, these are used to illustrate the relative economic decline of Britain post war and empire. At the start of the 21st century looks like some of the nation have not learned history nor care about it.

[Adam Dayan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting new framing of 20th C British history but Edgerton does not do enough work to evidence some of his attacks on the historiographical consensus, particularly re the failures of left-nationalist economics in the 1970s. Also he is very mean to Blair.

[Huseyin Efe Ornek · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is plenty of information especially regarding economy of the era the book describes. I liked how detailed it was, about politics as well. I was looking for more brief chronological history of the UK, but I enjoyed getting detailed information about the characters, events and ideas.

[Ivan Krsnik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative, but peppered with seriously dubious reasoning. Overall, it has some value as an overview of Britain through the twentieth century, but I remain unconvinced by the majority of the author's "refutations" of popular economic/political beliefs about that period.

[Ettore Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant revision of British history in the twentieth century, offering key insights and instrument for further analysis.