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Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837
In this compelling 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. Skillfully interweaving political, military, and social history, Colley enlivens her story with colorful vignettes of the heroes and politicians, artists and writers, and ordinary women and men who helped forge a British national identity. Her book is a major contribution to our understanding of Britain`s past and to the contemporary debate about the shape and identity of Britain in the future.
440 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Linda Colley
16 books39 followersLinda Colley is Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a Long Term Fellow in History at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. She previously held chairs at Yale University and at the London School of Economics.
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May 8, 2019The current, and ongoing for the foreseeable future, business of Brexit adds a further facet to this book. Identity, group identity, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities Colley agrees is a contingent thing and created, encouraged and developed rather than inevitable or natural. The dates she chooses to begin and end her study tell the whole story - if you can read them, which she tries to do, the first is the Act of Union between England and Scotland, the second the accession to the throne of Queen Victoria, hidden just before that Catholic Emancipation in 1828 and the First Reform Act of 1832.
Once England and Scotland were politically unified the old group identities were no longer sufficient, a new one was needed, a new thing, a British national identity, a key component of this was Protestantism, or perhaps more precisely anti-Catholicism, or established Churchism, others included the monarchy and not being French.
The connection to Brexit in my mind is that in 1975 two-thirds of the UK population voted in favour of joining the ECC while in 2016, just over half voted to leave the EU. Naturally in the Eighteenth century there was no thought of asking the population as a whole to approve or disapprove the union (it was considered sufficient for the Scottish Parliament to vote to dissolve itself), Colley's point was that the creation of identity is not accidental and that it cannot be relied upon to come about by itself without assistance and effort. People don't change that much (if at all) and the fears and anxieties caused by Union in the eighteenth century were the same as in the twentieth and twenty-first, there is uncontrollable migration across the border, the incomers are taking all our jobs and they are sexually voracious, a risk to all our women. In the earlier era the anxieties could be defected onto anti-papalism and anti-French feeling, assisted by a string of wars against the French (and occasionally the Spanish), war itself united the elites of England and Scotland - there were no shortage of jobs for the boys under the colours.
However the new British identity was problematic as well as successful, it is all well and good being anti-Catholic but when the new Imperial state includes a substantial number of Catholics, one notices that eventually there will be a problem. Attempts were made to defuse it through Union with Ireland, Catholic Emancipation, and the hope of Home Rule, Colley ends her account in 1837 , but (spoiler alert) you can notice that there was a failure to adapt the British notion of identity sufficiently to avoid Independence for a republic of Ireland in the 1920s or one could say that a separate notion of Irish independence proved to be more convincing than one of British unity.
One sees from Colley's book that fixed, certain and natural looking phenomena like flag waving group identities are contingent, changing, uncertain and continually under negotiation, one can watch the people who make the claims and assertions that push the boundaries of identity in their desired direction and can wonder how much they hope to gain by doing so.
Once England and Scotland were politically unified the old group identities were no longer sufficient, a new one was needed, a new thing, a British national identity, a key component of this was Protestantism, or perhaps more precisely anti-Catholicism, or established Churchism, others included the monarchy and not being French.
The connection to Brexit in my mind is that in 1975 two-thirds of the UK population voted in favour of joining the ECC while in 2016, just over half voted to leave the EU. Naturally in the Eighteenth century there was no thought of asking the population as a whole to approve or disapprove the union (it was considered sufficient for the Scottish Parliament to vote to dissolve itself), Colley's point was that the creation of identity is not accidental and that it cannot be relied upon to come about by itself without assistance and effort. People don't change that much (if at all) and the fears and anxieties caused by Union in the eighteenth century were the same as in the twentieth and twenty-first, there is uncontrollable migration across the border, the incomers are taking all our jobs and they are sexually voracious, a risk to all our women. In the earlier era the anxieties could be defected onto anti-papalism and anti-French feeling, assisted by a string of wars against the French (and occasionally the Spanish), war itself united the elites of England and Scotland - there were no shortage of jobs for the boys under the colours.
However the new British identity was problematic as well as successful, it is all well and good being anti-Catholic but when the new Imperial state includes a substantial number of Catholics, one notices that eventually there will be a problem. Attempts were made to defuse it through Union with Ireland, Catholic Emancipation, and the hope of Home Rule, Colley ends her account in 1837 , but (spoiler alert) you can notice that there was a failure to adapt the British notion of identity sufficiently to avoid Independence for a republic of Ireland in the 1920s or one could say that a separate notion of Irish independence proved to be more convincing than one of British unity.
One sees from Colley's book that fixed, certain and natural looking phenomena like flag waving group identities are contingent, changing, uncertain and continually under negotiation, one can watch the people who make the claims and assertions that push the boundaries of identity in their desired direction and can wonder how much they hope to gain by doing so.
September 16, 2014
In the past three decades the historical discipline has seen a shift away from issues of political strife and economics to less concrete questions such as identity, nationalism, and ideology. This example is a well-written and thought-provoking attempt to challenge historiographic paradigms, but weakened by overstatements and some serious omissions.
Colley sets herself a challengingly expansive task, attempting to cover major themes such as religion and empire from the Act of Union (1707) to the reign of Victoria and how each contributed to the formation of British (as opposed to earlier, more local) identity. She places a great deal of weight on Protestantism as the core of this identity, portraying the British as xenophobes who saw themselves as superior to all foreigners, especially those depraved Catholics. Prolonged wars with France obviously would have reinforced this attitude, and subsequent prosperity in England was attributed to divine favor.
This works as a generalization, but ignores the marked internal divisions of British "Protestantism," which in fact consisted of many sects with Anglicans not always the majority. There was considerable internal tension between religious groups. Colley also leaves out Ireland completely, and does not discuss British Catholics (whom primary source documents indicate to have considered themselves British and patriots even though Protestants may not have seen them thus).
A usefully thought-provoking study, but one that needs to be read with some skepticism.
Colley sets herself a challengingly expansive task, attempting to cover major themes such as religion and empire from the Act of Union (1707) to the reign of Victoria and how each contributed to the formation of British (as opposed to earlier, more local) identity. She places a great deal of weight on Protestantism as the core of this identity, portraying the British as xenophobes who saw themselves as superior to all foreigners, especially those depraved Catholics. Prolonged wars with France obviously would have reinforced this attitude, and subsequent prosperity in England was attributed to divine favor.
This works as a generalization, but ignores the marked internal divisions of British "Protestantism," which in fact consisted of many sects with Anglicans not always the majority. There was considerable internal tension between religious groups. Colley also leaves out Ireland completely, and does not discuss British Catholics (whom primary source documents indicate to have considered themselves British and patriots even though Protestants may not have seen them thus).
A usefully thought-provoking study, but one that needs to be read with some skepticism.
May 14, 2008
The first time I read through this book I was floored. Colley's writing challenged me, made em e look at colonialism in different ways, and really made me want to study the disparate British identities that existed within the empire. It gave me my master's thesis topic, which studied the development of eighteenth century "Britishness" and its context in both the metropole and the colonial site.
However, upon second and third reads, the book is problematic. Her discussion of Britain as a primarily Protestant construction is spot on, but her racial theory isn't very top notch, nor is her gender theory. She works on a primarily political/cultural construction of Britain, and leaves out critical aspects of Britishness. Now, when I read it, I tend to see the flaws in her analysis, but I still have a soft spot for the book that encouraged me to study what I'm doing now. I blame her for my PhD research.
However, upon second and third reads, the book is problematic. Her discussion of Britain as a primarily Protestant construction is spot on, but her racial theory isn't very top notch, nor is her gender theory. She works on a primarily political/cultural construction of Britain, and leaves out critical aspects of Britishness. Now, when I read it, I tend to see the flaws in her analysis, but I still have a soft spot for the book that encouraged me to study what I'm doing now. I blame her for my PhD research.
July 30, 2010
Linda Colley wrote this book to address certain questions: First, how did the diverse peoples of the British Isles go from being several "nations" to one? Beyond that, what is this "British" identity which the English (themselves of Anglo and Saxon origin), the Welsh, and the Scots created? Finally, Colley asks why women and men chose to become patriotic to Britain, and with what results?
To address these questions, Colley applies Benedict Anderson’s concept of an “imagined community” as a means to understand the re-definition of separate ethnicities as parts of a new national grouping. As she argues, “most nations have always been culturally and ethnically diverse, problematic, protean and artificial constructs” (5), and Britain is far from exceptional. Her answers to the questions above hinge on the sense that individual Britons had that the unified kingdom protected their personal interests, and was therefore worth promoting and preserving.
The story begins with the Act of Union of 1707 and proceeds to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, making a neat (if somewhat unusual) period of 130 years to study, and crossing the usual boundary between “Early Modern” and “Modern.” As Colley points out, during this period the British state was frequently at war, nearly always with France, and she argues that these conflicts and the creation of a “continental Other” were important in the building of British identity. Two of the wars Britain fought during this time, against the insurgent American colonies (with the help of the French) and the revolutionary Napoleonic regime, Colley describes as vital turning-points in British self-perception.
Surprisingly, Colley further argues that the glue which held Britain together as a nation was religious identity. Eschewing arguments that what differentiated the modern nation-state from earlier forms of transnational government was its secular nature, or that economic modernization is fundamentally “antipathetic to religion” (43), she sees Protestantism as “the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible" (54). She does acknowledge the importance which material conditions played in reinforcing this, but ultimately the argument is based in ideas rather than economics.
Colley concludes her argument with statement that: “The growing involvement in politics of men and women from the middling and working classes that characterized British society at this time was expressed as much if not more in support for the nation state, as it was in opposition to it” (371). This emphasizes the basic historiographic position she takes, which is to argue that too much emphasis on class conflict and opposition movements during the sixties and seventies had obscured the actual development of national consciousness in Britain (and, by extension, elsewhere in Europe). Her book stands as a successful corrective to this trend, and was largely received as such by reviews at the time of its original release.
To address these questions, Colley applies Benedict Anderson’s concept of an “imagined community” as a means to understand the re-definition of separate ethnicities as parts of a new national grouping. As she argues, “most nations have always been culturally and ethnically diverse, problematic, protean and artificial constructs” (5), and Britain is far from exceptional. Her answers to the questions above hinge on the sense that individual Britons had that the unified kingdom protected their personal interests, and was therefore worth promoting and preserving.
The story begins with the Act of Union of 1707 and proceeds to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, making a neat (if somewhat unusual) period of 130 years to study, and crossing the usual boundary between “Early Modern” and “Modern.” As Colley points out, during this period the British state was frequently at war, nearly always with France, and she argues that these conflicts and the creation of a “continental Other” were important in the building of British identity. Two of the wars Britain fought during this time, against the insurgent American colonies (with the help of the French) and the revolutionary Napoleonic regime, Colley describes as vital turning-points in British self-perception.
Surprisingly, Colley further argues that the glue which held Britain together as a nation was religious identity. Eschewing arguments that what differentiated the modern nation-state from earlier forms of transnational government was its secular nature, or that economic modernization is fundamentally “antipathetic to religion” (43), she sees Protestantism as “the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible" (54). She does acknowledge the importance which material conditions played in reinforcing this, but ultimately the argument is based in ideas rather than economics.
Colley concludes her argument with statement that: “The growing involvement in politics of men and women from the middling and working classes that characterized British society at this time was expressed as much if not more in support for the nation state, as it was in opposition to it” (371). This emphasizes the basic historiographic position she takes, which is to argue that too much emphasis on class conflict and opposition movements during the sixties and seventies had obscured the actual development of national consciousness in Britain (and, by extension, elsewhere in Europe). Her book stands as a successful corrective to this trend, and was largely received as such by reviews at the time of its original release.
March 17, 2016
Upshot= Britain forged by war with France and Protestantism. Lower class men and all women effected as much change in becoming part of the political establishment by working within the system as against it. Colley says this far better, however, and it is absolutely worth reading it in its entirety.
September 23, 2022
I found this to be a concise and compelling distillation of eighteenth-century British history, centred around the emergence of the idea of Britishness. Colley sees British identity as forming especially against the ‘Other’ of Catholic France, and thus around a shared emphasis on Protestantism. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution moulded this dynamic, bringing forward monarchism as a less politically partisan expression of Britishness, as well as a self-consciously nationalist discourse to match the nationalism of Revolutionary France. Much of this could undoubtedly be contested — and I’m certain much has — but this is delightfully and thought-provokingly written.
May 3, 2024
the absolute conundrum (don't ask how long it took me to spell that word) I had trying to decide what nationality shelf to put this book on after Colley set the notion of Britishness in an empty can of Campbell's tomato soup and shot it with a 704 calibre muzzle-loading percussion rifle at close range. I disagree at times with her generalizations (what is British Protestantism by the 19th c? Certainly not static. Also, what about patriotism as a genre, rather than a wholehearted political expression?) but she made me think and I enjoy her writing.
July 8, 2023
this is a cry for help btw
December 25, 2018
Reading The Penguin History of Britain, I finally came up to volume 7, Colley’s A Wealth of Nations, only to discover that not only did I not own it as I thought, but not a single copy was for sale on Amazon. What I DID own was two other of her books on overlapping periods including this one which also starts in 1707 but ends a bit later. I do wonder if the books are versions of the same book.
This is a great look at how Great Britain came to form an idea of itself as a nation. She never ignores the examples that sometimes prove the rule. But her main points stand up. Facing the “other” either in the form of Frenchmen and/or Catholics, helped the English, the Scottish and the Welsh see more of what they had in common than what separated them.
Instead, Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the Other. 6
Not so much consensus or homogeneity or centralisation at home, as a strong sense of dissimilarity from those without proved to be the essential cement. 18
As one clergyman put it in a sermon delivered in celebration of the Act of Union: ‘We are fenced in with a wall which knows no master but God only.’ 18
Importance of newspapers. Usually included news from London papers. “made it easier to imagine Great Britain as a whole.” 43
Protestantism was the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible. 58
Civil war would have led to violence and financial upheaval. Debts unpaid. Trade going to France. Jacobites sold war to France in part on this. Religion also huge part.
The Laudable Association of Anti-Gallicans founded in 1745. 95
“Becoming a patriot was a political act, and often a multi-faceted and dynamic one. We need to stop confusing patriotism with simple conservatism, or smothering it with damning and dismissive references to chauvinism and jingoism.” 392
This is a great look at how Great Britain came to form an idea of itself as a nation. She never ignores the examples that sometimes prove the rule. But her main points stand up. Facing the “other” either in the form of Frenchmen and/or Catholics, helped the English, the Scottish and the Welsh see more of what they had in common than what separated them.
Instead, Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the Other. 6
Not so much consensus or homogeneity or centralisation at home, as a strong sense of dissimilarity from those without proved to be the essential cement. 18
As one clergyman put it in a sermon delivered in celebration of the Act of Union: ‘We are fenced in with a wall which knows no master but God only.’ 18
Importance of newspapers. Usually included news from London papers. “made it easier to imagine Great Britain as a whole.” 43
Protestantism was the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible. 58
Civil war would have led to violence and financial upheaval. Debts unpaid. Trade going to France. Jacobites sold war to France in part on this. Religion also huge part.
The Laudable Association of Anti-Gallicans founded in 1745. 95
“Becoming a patriot was a political act, and often a multi-faceted and dynamic one. We need to stop confusing patriotism with simple conservatism, or smothering it with damning and dismissive references to chauvinism and jingoism.” 392
December 7, 2023
Since getting to Oxford I read like 500+ pages of history a week, but I literally never finish an entire book. I read a whole lot of this one though and I really liked it. Very accessible, if contestable, arguments and theses. Touches at least a bit on like every major theme of 18th century British history.
April 9, 2012
It was rather dry and tedious but I definitely learned a lot about the British national identity. It is clear the Colley's knowledge is extensive. It is also clear that much research went into this work. This is definitely not a bed time read novel.
September 22, 2021
Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 was very refreshing. I've grown up viewing 'Britishness' as a pejorative term, and viewing the British flag to be a shameful emblem of Empire and Brexit. This book allowed me to see 'Britishness' in a different light - whereby the term is used to refer to our common identity as an island - a mismatched but beautiful affinity between people of different classes, nations, genders.
The main objectives of the book is to understand why, during this period (1707-1837), 'Britishness' as an identity was shaped to a large degree, with a particular emphasis on the growing unity between England, Scotland and Wales (and to a lesser extent Ireland), and find out what exactly it meant to be 'British' as a result of these changes. I believe this is a particularly important discussion to be had in light of recent events, such as the growing nationalism in Scotland and the changing relationship England has with Wales and Northern Ireland (devolution), as well as, but to a lesser extent, Great Britain's exit from the European Union.
Throughout the book Colley makes a really strong case that Protestantism and the relentless wars with the French both played a crucial role in forging unity between England, Wales and Scotland. Colley states, 'time and time again, war with France brought Britons, whether they hailed from Wales or Scotland or England, into confrontation with an obviously hostile Other and encouraged them to define themselves collectively against it.' Taking note of the fact that France was Catholic, whilst England, Wales and Scotland were all strongly Protestant. Colley's point is corroborated strongly by her contention that the decline of religion, the formation of the European Union, the decline of the British Empire and the lack of any major war (for Great Britain) since the Second World War has caused internal divisions in Great Britain to resurface. She argues that these developments have caused the fear of this 'hostile Other' to melt away, thus explaining the recent rise of disunity between nations in Great Britain and nationalism within these nations.
Likewise, the book is organised very clearly in its categorisation, helping the reader to build a real image of what it meant to be British. Colley explains that the amalgamation of three nations was not the only layer to Britishness which had formed in this period. She also explains how attitudes towards the monarchy changed during this period 'away from anger at the institution' towards' mockery of individual royals' which 'helped- and still helps - to preserve it'. Colley explains how the vital role men of all backgrounds and nationalities had played in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with France in this period had led to the incorporation of Ireland into the United Kingdom, which in turn led to Catholic emancipation, as well as parliamentary reform in the form of an unprecedented expansion of the franchise- all of which came alongside a growing political participation of Britons via petitions and demonstrations in this period. However, these are just a few of the many ways in which the British identity took shape during this period.
Colley also describes the interplay between factors that worked together to shape 'Britishness' in this period, for example the growth of trade in Britain had changed the priorities of British men- in trying to protect their commercial interests they encouraged an ethos of peace and tolerance towards men of different nationalities within Britain to avoid tensions/wars, thus forging a closer relationship between the nations of Great Britain. Likewise, in this period, the landed elite of England, Wales and Scotland had experienced a demographic crisis, whereby their families had in many cases failed to produce male heirs to the family fortunes. This not only led to their being a smaller and richer elite in Great Britain, but had the knock on effect of leading to intermarriage between the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish, because of the Welsh/Scottish/Irish gaining much more influence and money as a result- making them more attractive allies.
These are only a few of the interesting points Colley made in her book Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. I guess you'll just have to read the book to find out more...
The main objectives of the book is to understand why, during this period (1707-1837), 'Britishness' as an identity was shaped to a large degree, with a particular emphasis on the growing unity between England, Scotland and Wales (and to a lesser extent Ireland), and find out what exactly it meant to be 'British' as a result of these changes. I believe this is a particularly important discussion to be had in light of recent events, such as the growing nationalism in Scotland and the changing relationship England has with Wales and Northern Ireland (devolution), as well as, but to a lesser extent, Great Britain's exit from the European Union.
Throughout the book Colley makes a really strong case that Protestantism and the relentless wars with the French both played a crucial role in forging unity between England, Wales and Scotland. Colley states, 'time and time again, war with France brought Britons, whether they hailed from Wales or Scotland or England, into confrontation with an obviously hostile Other and encouraged them to define themselves collectively against it.' Taking note of the fact that France was Catholic, whilst England, Wales and Scotland were all strongly Protestant. Colley's point is corroborated strongly by her contention that the decline of religion, the formation of the European Union, the decline of the British Empire and the lack of any major war (for Great Britain) since the Second World War has caused internal divisions in Great Britain to resurface. She argues that these developments have caused the fear of this 'hostile Other' to melt away, thus explaining the recent rise of disunity between nations in Great Britain and nationalism within these nations.
Likewise, the book is organised very clearly in its categorisation, helping the reader to build a real image of what it meant to be British. Colley explains that the amalgamation of three nations was not the only layer to Britishness which had formed in this period. She also explains how attitudes towards the monarchy changed during this period 'away from anger at the institution' towards' mockery of individual royals' which 'helped- and still helps - to preserve it'. Colley explains how the vital role men of all backgrounds and nationalities had played in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with France in this period had led to the incorporation of Ireland into the United Kingdom, which in turn led to Catholic emancipation, as well as parliamentary reform in the form of an unprecedented expansion of the franchise- all of which came alongside a growing political participation of Britons via petitions and demonstrations in this period. However, these are just a few of the many ways in which the British identity took shape during this period.
Colley also describes the interplay between factors that worked together to shape 'Britishness' in this period, for example the growth of trade in Britain had changed the priorities of British men- in trying to protect their commercial interests they encouraged an ethos of peace and tolerance towards men of different nationalities within Britain to avoid tensions/wars, thus forging a closer relationship between the nations of Great Britain. Likewise, in this period, the landed elite of England, Wales and Scotland had experienced a demographic crisis, whereby their families had in many cases failed to produce male heirs to the family fortunes. This not only led to their being a smaller and richer elite in Great Britain, but had the knock on effect of leading to intermarriage between the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish, because of the Welsh/Scottish/Irish gaining much more influence and money as a result- making them more attractive allies.
These are only a few of the interesting points Colley made in her book Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. I guess you'll just have to read the book to find out more...
October 2, 2021
Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 was an amazing book to read for me. I enjoyed it so so so much. I had to lead a discussion on it in class for two weeks and Colley's writing style is very enjoyable. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 can appeal to a general audience and historians. One of her central arguments is Britons in the past dealt with multiple identities. She talks about how pan-Britishness is a shadow of what it once was and how Britishness has de-evolved over time.
Covering the struggle with France and Francophobia, Colley shows how the competition with France caused Great Britain to evolve. The binding together of Scotland, Wales, and England is shown throughout the book. The idea of religion, specifically Protestantism, being a general binding agent for the people and a separating influence to the Brits from the rest of Europe. Protestantism was a backbone for Britons, but it also shows national identity was bound up with self-interest. Protestantism was patriotism and Patriotism brings profits. Colley covers how mercantilism helps with the growth of Great Britain, its trained navy, and its international prestige.
War helps to bind the Scots and Welsh to the English. Linda Colley shows how the seven years war and the American War helped to bring Great Britain together again. The Scots play a huge part in making British imperialism move towards political style, post-American War. While I was in class, we talked about the view of George the III from the American perspective versus the British perspective and it is crazy how two nations can spin history to fit their narrative. Seeing how the Hanover dynasty brought monarchy's popularity up and George III left the monarchy more British and a rule book for every other monarch after him to follow up until World War I.
The Battle of Waterloo was the culminating point of the British empire helping it grow to its pinnacle under Victoria. The Catholic Emancipation shifts the binding forces of Great Britain and how the Reform Act of 1832 and the Emmanicapation of slavery throughout the British empire helped unite Great Britain again under one common banner. Colley shows The Hanover dynasty ushered in Nationalistic thought and united people together but Welsh, Scottish, and English still had divides; regionalism was still a thing. There's a lot more information Colley covers but this really hit me. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 is a great read.
Covering the struggle with France and Francophobia, Colley shows how the competition with France caused Great Britain to evolve. The binding together of Scotland, Wales, and England is shown throughout the book. The idea of religion, specifically Protestantism, being a general binding agent for the people and a separating influence to the Brits from the rest of Europe. Protestantism was a backbone for Britons, but it also shows national identity was bound up with self-interest. Protestantism was patriotism and Patriotism brings profits. Colley covers how mercantilism helps with the growth of Great Britain, its trained navy, and its international prestige.
War helps to bind the Scots and Welsh to the English. Linda Colley shows how the seven years war and the American War helped to bring Great Britain together again. The Scots play a huge part in making British imperialism move towards political style, post-American War. While I was in class, we talked about the view of George the III from the American perspective versus the British perspective and it is crazy how two nations can spin history to fit their narrative. Seeing how the Hanover dynasty brought monarchy's popularity up and George III left the monarchy more British and a rule book for every other monarch after him to follow up until World War I.
The Battle of Waterloo was the culminating point of the British empire helping it grow to its pinnacle under Victoria. The Catholic Emancipation shifts the binding forces of Great Britain and how the Reform Act of 1832 and the Emmanicapation of slavery throughout the British empire helped unite Great Britain again under one common banner. Colley shows The Hanover dynasty ushered in Nationalistic thought and united people together but Welsh, Scottish, and English still had divides; regionalism was still a thing. There's a lot more information Colley covers but this really hit me. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 is a great read.
July 23, 2017
This was a good book but I couldn't concentrate on it. I kept putting it down and picking it up again. I think I read the first two chapters three or four times. I did finally finish though. All year, every time I saw it on my desk, the first thing to pop into my head was Monty Python - "I am Arthur, King of the Britons!"
"Who are the Britons?"
"WE are! We're all Britons. And I am your King!"
"I thought we were an autonomous collective."
Anyway, there was a lot of food for thought here. I can see why historians have been picking at this this thesis for a while, because it does seem like there must have been more to the making of Britishness than Protestantism and profits. Her arguments do make sense though - this is one of those books where you find yourself agreeing with her and then immediately thinking, but wait, what about this other thing? I dogeared a lot of pages.
It also kept me thinking about my work (which is the reason I read it in the first place). What were the people in the American colonies thinking at the same time? Or Canada, after the Revolution? What was their Britishness about? Because it can't just have been defined as anti-French, since the American revolutionaries made friends with the French in about five minutes once the war broke out, and the Canadians after the war had to share their colony with French people. And all Colley's stuff about the pageantry of the crown doesn't really work for Britishness in the colonies either.
"Who are the Britons?"
"WE are! We're all Britons. And I am your King!"
"I thought we were an autonomous collective."
Anyway, there was a lot of food for thought here. I can see why historians have been picking at this this thesis for a while, because it does seem like there must have been more to the making of Britishness than Protestantism and profits. Her arguments do make sense though - this is one of those books where you find yourself agreeing with her and then immediately thinking, but wait, what about this other thing? I dogeared a lot of pages.
It also kept me thinking about my work (which is the reason I read it in the first place). What were the people in the American colonies thinking at the same time? Or Canada, after the Revolution? What was their Britishness about? Because it can't just have been defined as anti-French, since the American revolutionaries made friends with the French in about five minutes once the war broke out, and the Canadians after the war had to share their colony with French people. And all Colley's stuff about the pageantry of the crown doesn't really work for Britishness in the colonies either.
October 19, 2018
Took me a while, not because Colley’s book was uninteresting and difficult, but more because I kept starting and stopping to read other things for class!
What Colley has written is an intriguing insight into the creation and current state of the British identity! As an American studying British history, it has been an indispensable resource for my research. She writes about complex ideas of nationality and politics in a way that even someone not well versed in this discussion can understand.
I would love to come back to this book another time and do a quick read through, because there is so much I feel I just haven’t absorbed from it. I think it also has become increasingly relevant since the Scottish Referendum in 2014 and the Brexit vote in 2016. And with each passing month becomes even more intriguing when intertwined with the present situation.
What Colley has written is an intriguing insight into the creation and current state of the British identity! As an American studying British history, it has been an indispensable resource for my research. She writes about complex ideas of nationality and politics in a way that even someone not well versed in this discussion can understand.
I would love to come back to this book another time and do a quick read through, because there is so much I feel I just haven’t absorbed from it. I think it also has become increasingly relevant since the Scottish Referendum in 2014 and the Brexit vote in 2016. And with each passing month becomes even more intriguing when intertwined with the present situation.
January 31, 2021
Well-written, with a strong argument and good source analysis. The deliberate neglect of the role of Ireland is pretty glaring though.
August 10, 2017
Excellently written, fascinating subject!
+15 sassenach: highlander term for lowlander and english alike; welsh north & south divide; defoe poem about ethnic diversity of english
16 northumberland: over 1/4 adults literate, equal to Lowlands, higher than Midlands; 'raw, high-boned faces & the same thin, angular physiques'
19 catholics treated as potential traitors while Dissenters indulged, Anglican conformity being hoop for holding public office
21 Protestant Almanack image
23 Gordon Riots as 1st major protest in which English & Scottish artisans openly collaborated, anti-Catholic
30 weird confluence of England under fire and Jerusalem, Biblical imagery, Blake poem
66 system of credit: 'even prosperous farmers & landed gentry might only settle their bills once a year when rents came in''small masters, craftsmen & farmers raised money by signing short-term bonds or mortgaging...local attornies encouraged widows to lend to those in need of capital, shopkeepers allowed their customers to pay 'on tick'...'
105 john wilkes avoided duel in paris with john forbes
115 cartoon image portraying Scots as arbitrary
116 wilkes argument that scots tyrants & slaves
120 'scotland...was no longer an expensive nuisance. it had become the arsenal of the empire'
128-9 ''the rawest frontiers of the empire attracted men of 1st-rate ability from the Celtic fringe bc they were usually poorer than their English counterparts w/ fewer prospects on the British mainland' e.g. go to Tibet (Bogle) or India, accumulate money, pay of home debts--> 'a case of comparative Scottish poverty spurring on aggressive Scottish interest in British imperial expansion'
140 'anti-war activism did exist in scotland, among the Presbyterian clergy, among the legal fraternity, among Edinburgh's intellectual elite, & in Glasgow, where there was an abortive attempt to petition for conciliation'; 'many influential scots...seized on the American war as a means to underline their political reliability to London'
151 in Treasury, fiscal demands of war doubled workload; in Parliament, quintupled from 1761-1813; landowner had their civil defense duties as well
173 'north wales, Lake District, & Highlands...less industrialied amd urbanised..lesslikely to be infected with radical ideas, & far more willing...to know their place and keep to it'
237 'a procession: the army & navy veterans, the volunteer corps, the civic dignitaries & clergymen, the schoolchildren, and the trade groups; tailors, stonemasons, coal carriers, carpenters, printers & the like'
253 Richard Polwhele: 'the crimsoning blush of modesty, will be always more attractive than the sparkle of confident intelligence.'
257 'william rowbottom, an observant & literate weaver who lived & worked in Oldham near Manchester, was forever noting..'
298 'in england & in wales, though not in scotland, it was the more urbanised & industrialised regions that supplied the largest proportion of volunteer soldiers' ... it is yorkshire...that supplies much of the evidence for mass alienation during the napoleonic wars in edward thompson's...the making of the english working class'
302 bristol's volunteer infantry corps: few booksellers, school-teachers, luxury traders, maritime industries, many 'wine merchants, grocers, butchers, innkeepers, bakers...shoe-makers, linen-drapers, haberdashers, tailors, woollen-drapers, hatters & hosiers...hairdressers.'
308 'defence of the Real returns: 'give me a sword & pistol', urges a carter from exeter...'will crip [sic] the wings of the French frog-eaters' says a man who digs gardens for his living...in real life, few working men ever had the chance of handling a sword, never mind of learning how to use one' 'a chance for fantasy & wishful thinking'
309 'in organisational terms, the contrast between 1745 & 1803 was owing to the increased reach & sophistication of the authorities in London...& local knowledge & authority of lords lieutenant, deputy lietenants & landowners throughout W & S...'
329 militant popular Protestantism shrinking in 1800s except in areas where increased immigration from Ireland tweaked economic noses: Glasgow, Liverpool, Dundee, Manchester, Paisley
349 progression of disenchantment with Reform Bill of 1832--united to get it passed, took time to realize did not raise tide for all boats
372 'in the Scottish Highlands, in central Wales, in Cornwall, East Anglia & much of the North Country, intense localism remained the norm' until the railways, and until conscription for WW1 'every morning an old man, aged about 70, goes into Midhurst for the letters. he charges a penny for every disatch he carries...his letter-bag for the whole village contains on an average from 2-3 letters daily, including newspapers. The only newspapers which enter the parish are 2 copies of Bell's Weekly Messenger a sound old Tory Protectionist much patronised by drowsy farmers.'
+15 sassenach: highlander term for lowlander and english alike; welsh north & south divide; defoe poem about ethnic diversity of english
16 northumberland: over 1/4 adults literate, equal to Lowlands, higher than Midlands; 'raw, high-boned faces & the same thin, angular physiques'
19 catholics treated as potential traitors while Dissenters indulged, Anglican conformity being hoop for holding public office
21 Protestant Almanack image
23 Gordon Riots as 1st major protest in which English & Scottish artisans openly collaborated, anti-Catholic
30 weird confluence of England under fire and Jerusalem, Biblical imagery, Blake poem
66 system of credit: 'even prosperous farmers & landed gentry might only settle their bills once a year when rents came in''small masters, craftsmen & farmers raised money by signing short-term bonds or mortgaging...local attornies encouraged widows to lend to those in need of capital, shopkeepers allowed their customers to pay 'on tick'...'
105 john wilkes avoided duel in paris with john forbes
115 cartoon image portraying Scots as arbitrary
116 wilkes argument that scots tyrants & slaves
120 'scotland...was no longer an expensive nuisance. it had become the arsenal of the empire'
128-9 ''the rawest frontiers of the empire attracted men of 1st-rate ability from the Celtic fringe bc they were usually poorer than their English counterparts w/ fewer prospects on the British mainland' e.g. go to Tibet (Bogle) or India, accumulate money, pay of home debts--> 'a case of comparative Scottish poverty spurring on aggressive Scottish interest in British imperial expansion'
140 'anti-war activism did exist in scotland, among the Presbyterian clergy, among the legal fraternity, among Edinburgh's intellectual elite, & in Glasgow, where there was an abortive attempt to petition for conciliation'; 'many influential scots...seized on the American war as a means to underline their political reliability to London'
151 in Treasury, fiscal demands of war doubled workload; in Parliament, quintupled from 1761-1813; landowner had their civil defense duties as well
173 'north wales, Lake District, & Highlands...less industrialied amd urbanised..lesslikely to be infected with radical ideas, & far more willing...to know their place and keep to it'
237 'a procession: the army & navy veterans, the volunteer corps, the civic dignitaries & clergymen, the schoolchildren, and the trade groups; tailors, stonemasons, coal carriers, carpenters, printers & the like'
253 Richard Polwhele: 'the crimsoning blush of modesty, will be always more attractive than the sparkle of confident intelligence.'
257 'william rowbottom, an observant & literate weaver who lived & worked in Oldham near Manchester, was forever noting..'
298 'in england & in wales, though not in scotland, it was the more urbanised & industrialised regions that supplied the largest proportion of volunteer soldiers' ... it is yorkshire...that supplies much of the evidence for mass alienation during the napoleonic wars in edward thompson's...the making of the english working class'
302 bristol's volunteer infantry corps: few booksellers, school-teachers, luxury traders, maritime industries, many 'wine merchants, grocers, butchers, innkeepers, bakers...shoe-makers, linen-drapers, haberdashers, tailors, woollen-drapers, hatters & hosiers...hairdressers.'
308 'defence of the Real returns: 'give me a sword & pistol', urges a carter from exeter...'will crip [sic] the wings of the French frog-eaters' says a man who digs gardens for his living...in real life, few working men ever had the chance of handling a sword, never mind of learning how to use one' 'a chance for fantasy & wishful thinking'
309 'in organisational terms, the contrast between 1745 & 1803 was owing to the increased reach & sophistication of the authorities in London...& local knowledge & authority of lords lieutenant, deputy lietenants & landowners throughout W & S...'
329 militant popular Protestantism shrinking in 1800s except in areas where increased immigration from Ireland tweaked economic noses: Glasgow, Liverpool, Dundee, Manchester, Paisley
349 progression of disenchantment with Reform Bill of 1832--united to get it passed, took time to realize did not raise tide for all boats
372 'in the Scottish Highlands, in central Wales, in Cornwall, East Anglia & much of the North Country, intense localism remained the norm' until the railways, and until conscription for WW1 'every morning an old man, aged about 70, goes into Midhurst for the letters. he charges a penny for every disatch he carries...his letter-bag for the whole village contains on an average from 2-3 letters daily, including newspapers. The only newspapers which enter the parish are 2 copies of Bell's Weekly Messenger a sound old Tory Protectionist much patronised by drowsy farmers.'
November 14, 2019
In the field of political history, the turn toward “political culture,” toward the study of parades and badges and election day rituals, and of how patricians and plebes used these public performances to conduct politics by other means, often favored the viewpoint of the elite rather than the rank-and-file. Elites have long understood the usefulness of political theater in securing their hegemony, which one may define as the widely-held faith in the immutability of the status quo. Such was certainly the case with the English elite in the era of the French Revolution. England’s irresponsible, inbred, and inebriated ruling class should have gone to the wall a dozen times in the glory days of Napoleon and Madame Guillotine. Instead they approached the Victorian era at the height of their power, and at the head of a nation vastly enlarged by the integration of Celtic elites. One may deplore the triumph of this old oligarchy, but one cannot but admire (if only slightly) the creativity and energy they applied to their own reinvention in an anti-aristocratic age.
Such is the central story of Linda Colley’s brilliant if misleadingly titled BRITONS. The island elites who comprise her book’s protagonists received their opportunity for regeneration from France, which fought a long series of wars with the United Kingdom from 1689 to 1815. These conflicts proved a “godsend” to British aristos, “giving them a job and, more important, a purpose, an opportunity to carry out what they had been trained to do since childhood” (178). During the pre-Revolutionary wars, highborn parents turned their sons to muscular pursuits on the school playing fields and in rural hunting preserves, while artists portrayed young uniformed lords and gentlemen as saviors of Britain from dastardly Frenchmen (not to mention wicked Spaniards and uncouth American rebels). Came the French Revolution, and British toffs began subjecting not only their sons but themselves to a new kind of social discipline. They traded in their wigs and silks for somber clothes, and replaced their conspicuous partying with conspicuous churchgoing. Their desire for glitz and pomp they transferred to the monarchy, which had become a rather threadbare and defensive institution under the earlier Hanoverians. George III now became the subject of lavish jubilees and, following the onset of his mental illness, the focus of much public sympathy, some of it possibly genuine. The wealthy and privileged oligarchs who still held the real power in the kingdom became the colorless (but still rich and powerful) functionaries hiding behind a glittering throne.
Colley’s book proves less persuasive in its argument that the British people wholeheartedly accepted the elite cult of militant nationalism. The author argues that women supported the kingdom’s wars through uniform-sewing and fund-raising, and aligned themselves with the monarchy by their expressions of sympathy for the wicked Prince Regent’s hapless daughter Charlotte and estranged wife Caroline. Ordinary men, meanwhile, risked their lives or at least sacrificed their comforts by joining Britain’s half-million-strong militia force during the Napoleonic Wars. As E.P. Thompson observed in his 1993 review of BRITONS, however, feminine support for the armed forces appears to have concentrated in the ruling class, and the kingdom’s militia drew most of its rankers from the gentry and petit bourgeoisie, not (as in America) from the commoners. Perhaps there was genuine affection for the royal family, but in an aristocratic society, monarchism can also support opposition to the status quo; tenant farmers, laborers, and servants can imagine that the king, the notional “father” of all his people, is really their ally in their struggles against their local masters. Orwell noted that in the poorer parts of London, during George V’s silver jubilee, one could see signs reading “God save the King and down with the landlord.” I imagine the same sentiment pertained a century earlier, in the era of the third and fourth Georges.
Such is the central story of Linda Colley’s brilliant if misleadingly titled BRITONS. The island elites who comprise her book’s protagonists received their opportunity for regeneration from France, which fought a long series of wars with the United Kingdom from 1689 to 1815. These conflicts proved a “godsend” to British aristos, “giving them a job and, more important, a purpose, an opportunity to carry out what they had been trained to do since childhood” (178). During the pre-Revolutionary wars, highborn parents turned their sons to muscular pursuits on the school playing fields and in rural hunting preserves, while artists portrayed young uniformed lords and gentlemen as saviors of Britain from dastardly Frenchmen (not to mention wicked Spaniards and uncouth American rebels). Came the French Revolution, and British toffs began subjecting not only their sons but themselves to a new kind of social discipline. They traded in their wigs and silks for somber clothes, and replaced their conspicuous partying with conspicuous churchgoing. Their desire for glitz and pomp they transferred to the monarchy, which had become a rather threadbare and defensive institution under the earlier Hanoverians. George III now became the subject of lavish jubilees and, following the onset of his mental illness, the focus of much public sympathy, some of it possibly genuine. The wealthy and privileged oligarchs who still held the real power in the kingdom became the colorless (but still rich and powerful) functionaries hiding behind a glittering throne.
Colley’s book proves less persuasive in its argument that the British people wholeheartedly accepted the elite cult of militant nationalism. The author argues that women supported the kingdom’s wars through uniform-sewing and fund-raising, and aligned themselves with the monarchy by their expressions of sympathy for the wicked Prince Regent’s hapless daughter Charlotte and estranged wife Caroline. Ordinary men, meanwhile, risked their lives or at least sacrificed their comforts by joining Britain’s half-million-strong militia force during the Napoleonic Wars. As E.P. Thompson observed in his 1993 review of BRITONS, however, feminine support for the armed forces appears to have concentrated in the ruling class, and the kingdom’s militia drew most of its rankers from the gentry and petit bourgeoisie, not (as in America) from the commoners. Perhaps there was genuine affection for the royal family, but in an aristocratic society, monarchism can also support opposition to the status quo; tenant farmers, laborers, and servants can imagine that the king, the notional “father” of all his people, is really their ally in their struggles against their local masters. Orwell noted that in the poorer parts of London, during George V’s silver jubilee, one could see signs reading “God save the King and down with the landlord.” I imagine the same sentiment pertained a century earlier, in the era of the third and fourth Georges.
January 2, 2025
In the decade preceding Linda Colley’s publishing Britons in 1992, a class-based ‘Marxist’ methodological arsenal was utilised to create many works on ‘identity’ in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. The results are inextricably attached to the name E.P. Thompson. In such works as The Making of the English Working Class (1962) and Customs in Common (1991), Thompson in varying ways stressed that British society in these centuries was characterised by the formation of distinct class-based identities. From the 1980s, however, work on identity in Britain assumed a markedly national character, as well as shifting focus from England to the British Isles as a whole. Dubbed by J.G.A. Pocock as “The New British History,” this historiographical tradition generally sought to craft analyses of the “Atlantic archipelago” in its entirety – rather than merely England – by focussing on identity, language, culture, as well as politics and empire. It was in this light that Colley wrote Britons.
Having authored her debut monograph In Defiance of Oligarchy (1982) in the ‘high political tradition’, Britons reflects a radical shift in Colley’s – and, indeed, the field itself’s – methodological development. Seeking, in her words, to marry the “domains of military and imperial history with the broad political and social history of Great Britain,” Britons is a remarkably comprehensive work. Colley’s work expertly pulls on divers, often hitherto separate, historiographical threads to state its case. What is its case? A large aspect of it is that ‘ordinary’ people and elites alike rallied against “The Other” – chiefly Catholic France and the Jacobites – to forge ‘Britishness’ during the ‘long eighteenth-century’, while not losing grip on their pre-existing local identities. Giving E.P. Thompson, as it were, a taste of his own rhetorical medicine, Colley is at pains to “rescue these [ordinary] people, the seeming conformists, from the condescension of posterity”.
That Britons is compelling is largely due to its stressing that this ‘forging’ was never an easy, uncontested process. This was the case because the ‘forging’ of Britishness was driven by fear, a point upon which Colley insists throughout the book. For Colley, Britishness ironically strengthened in times of apparent crisis. For her, the threat of Jacobite or French invasion during the early eighteenth century strengthened the relationship between ‘Britishness’ and Protestantism, a general animosity towards the French, and the belief that Britons possessed certain liberties and sanctities that other nationalities did not. However, these ‘mythologies’ did not endure long before they were “unsettled” by the gargantuan territorial gains the nascent British Empire achieved after the Seven Years’ War. Many such territories were Catholic, like Quebec, or expounded frightful “Asiatic principles of government,” as one peer put it in 1770, thereby threatening the hegemony of the Protestant, liberty-abundant British state. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, Colley notes that the American Revolution still too unsettled the notion that Britishness could be forged by juxtaposing Protestantism against Catholicism: the vast majority of the Americans against whom the British were fighting between 1775 and 1783 were Protestants. Indeed, the wars Britain waged between Revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1793 and 1815 reignited the fears created by the Jacobite scares of old: the effect was a widening participation by ‘ordinary’ women and men in civic and military affairs designed to defend Britain against France, the latter of which – as Stephen Conway has recently shown – drew together people from across the Atlantic Archipelago, including Ireland, in an unprecedented way. This same spirit of widening civic participation, moreover, re-emerged in the crises surrounding Catholic Emancipation, abolitionism, and the extension of the franchise in the 1820s and 30s. What emerges from this messy and uncertain picture is the crucial notion that national identity does not develop in a linear fashion. Rather, Colley contends that, with fear or vulnerability in the driving seat, “the patriotism of the past requires flexible, sensitive, and above all, imaginative reconstruction”.
But is Colley’s work as flexible, sensitive, and imaginative as she claims it is? It most certainly is imaginative, for the diverse base of sources Colley commands allows her to stress the non-linear, multifaceted nature of Britishness. The most potent are those sources that seek to portray an Andersonian ‘imagined community’, such as patriotic songs and Hogarth’s prints. These aesthetic sources are peppered throughout the work, with an image appearing every few pages in certain chapters. They range from the patriotic ‘imagined community’ in William Hogarth’s The March to Finchley, to the ‘radical’ yet patriotic ballads of the 1820s that used “we ne’er shall be slaves” in a different way to Rule, Britannia. The invocation of Hogarth by Colley is particularly apt, for not only did he utilise many ‘patriotic’ symbols in his work, but his work – particularly after 1750 was also widely dispersed and cheaply reproduced in other formats. The March to Finchley (1750), for example, is used by Colley to argue that the Rising of ‘45 cemented the juxtaposition between Britishness and Roman Catholicism in the ‘popular imagination’. The significance of this source usage not only lies in its ability to tap into understandings of what ‘Britishness’ or the ‘British nation’ meant to different people at different times, but also in terms of its setting a precedent for further research on the topic. Such works as Tamara Hunt’s Defining John Bull or J.R. Moore’s Representations of France and the French in English Satirical Prints have satisfied Colley’s “hope that in the future others will” explore what “fine art, or literature, or music can tell us about this subject” as a result of her work.
This notwithstanding, Colley’s use of these sources points towards an issue with Britons: its emphasis upon the role of ‘the external other’ in shaping conceptions of Britishness. It seems that Colley emphasises the cruciality of ‘the external Other’ to such a large extent that other factors, like internal strife, feel underrepresented. This has been noted by such historians as Moores and Marc Baer, the former of whom arguing that popular print culture in the later eighteenth century stoked intra-British rivalries as much as extra- rivalries. Moores notes, for example, that satirists like Gillray or Cruikshank depicted numerous ‘others’ within, which were juxtaposed with Englishness: the Jews were depicted as greedy bankers or suspect roadside businesspeople, the Welsh were depicted as poor mountain-dwellers and weary, and – despite many Scots remaining loyal to the Hanoverian regime – Highland Scots were portrayed as pestilent immigrants and papists as late as 1779 by Gillray. Colley indeed states her awareness of these internal divides, arguing that they could co-exist with Britishness during wartime. However, save discussion of John Wilkes’ anti-Scottish rhetoric in Chapter 3, discussion of the impact of the ‘internal other’ is elided by Colley.
Such eliding is tied to Britons’ overemphasis on the role of Protestantism in shaping Britishness during this period. Colley, of course, recognises that there were significant theological and liturgical differences between Protestants in Britain during this period, but nevertheless contends that these differences were inconsequential when compared to the threat of Catholicism. This, however, will not do. Finlay, MacBride and Claydon all identify that differences among British Protestants hindered the growth of national identity. Finlay argues that the differing visions held by episcopalian Jacobites, moderate presbyterians, and covenanting presbyterianism in Scotland during the eighteenth century prevented the Scots at large from uniting with English Protestants. MacBride and Claydon, moreover, contend that dissenters – like Quakers – were isolated from the Protestantism of the Established Church, which, being closely connected to government, was more likely to maintain a guise of overarching Protestant unity to distance itself from the Catholicism of its rivalling states. In this connexion, it seems that Britons were not so much united by Protestant theology as their hatred of ���popery’, a point which Moores has stressed.
As J.C.D. Clark, Conway and Moores have noted, even prior to the American Revolution Britain waged war with (and vilified) overtly Protestant states. Conway, for instance, uncovers how during the War of the Austrian Succession resentment toward the Sardinians, the Dutch, and the Hanoverians proliferated. Indeed, in the satirical prints he studied Moores discovered that the Dutch in particular were vilified to a great degree: in various prints, like THE BENEFIT OF NEUTRALITY (1745), the Dutch appear as more maleficent than even the French or the Spanish. Contrariwise, Colley’s argument about Protestantism is complicated by the fact that Britain allied with such Catholic or Orthodox states as Portugal, Russia, and even France. What is more, Moores finds that, while there was much anti-Catholic sentiment toward France, there was a lack of “Protestant symbolism,” hinting at the notion that anti-Catholicism, rather than Protestantism’s qualities, aided the development of Britishness.
Moores’ (and Hunt’s) satirical prints, as well as many of Colley’s, either contrast Englishness, rather than Britishness, with “The Other”, or equate Britishness with Englishness. This truth connects to another shortfall of Colley’s theses: its underestimation of the extent to which the language and symbols of Britishness was derived from those of Englishness. As Clark and Hastings have argued, English histories and legal concepts – particularly Whig narratives of English liberties and the ‘free-born Englishman’ – were deeply embedded in eighteenth-century British thought. However, unlike these two, Colin Kidd has explored how this Englishness-Britishness dynamic was used by those outside of Albion, namely by educated “North Britons” in Scotland. He contends that such “North Britons” as David Hume or the Earl of Bute embraced union by embracing English legal traditions like the common law and the liberties granted by the 1688 revolution settlement, rather than deriving it from native “Scottishness”. This may be dismissed as elite condemnation of ‘heathen culture’. Yet, Colley’s failure to flesh out the relationship between Englishness and Britishness, despite England featuring so prominently in her sources, is disappointing.
What is also disappointing is Colley’s neglect of Ireland. Given her focus on the island of Great Britain, her omission of Ireland is at least comprehensible. However, her argument that Ireland was “rarely able or willing to play a satisfactory part” in the creation of Britishness by way of Protestantism, war with France and imperial development is unduly dismissive. Firstly, before union in 1801 the Irish, ruled by the Hanoverian dynasty, did in varying ways shape Britishness in wartime. This contribution includes the 27 Anglo-Irish gentlemen who served in the HEIC / Indian Army alone between 1700 and 1824, the 40% of members of eleven British regiments stationed at Nova Scotia in 1757 who were Irish (including some Catholics), and – surprisingly – the glorified “IRISH PEG [woman] in a RAGE” depicted by Carington Bowles in 1773, who was attacking a British ‘macaroni’ character.
Secondly, Irish Protestants – including Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster – embraced Britishness in a similar way to Kidd’s Scottish “North Britons”: while they both asserted their Irishness when they felt aggrieved by the actions of Westminster, they nonetheless both relished in the liberties, histories and customs of the English and defended the British Empire. For example, while attempting to argue for a union between Britain and Ireland in 1729, episcopalian Scotsman-turned-Ulsterman Arthur Dobbs argued that such a union would “unite our Affections with our Brethren in England, and make us heartily concur in promoting the Power, Wealth, and Glory of the British Empire.” That a Scot residing in Ireland wished to unite with the English and promote the British Empire as early as 1729 demonstrates how Colley’s argument would have been enriched by focussing on Ireland more directly.
These shortfalls, however, do not detract from the historiographical significance of Colley’s work. Given that its target audience is not solely an academic one, it is only natural that it fails to account for certain nuances: in 1993, Colley was awarded the Wolfson History Prize due to this work, an award given to works that are both scholarly and accessible to a wider audience. Britons exists, then, as a monumental initial sketch of British national identity from both a ‘high political’ and sociocultural view, a sketch scholars will (and do) paint and correct in generations to come.
Having authored her debut monograph In Defiance of Oligarchy (1982) in the ‘high political tradition’, Britons reflects a radical shift in Colley’s – and, indeed, the field itself’s – methodological development. Seeking, in her words, to marry the “domains of military and imperial history with the broad political and social history of Great Britain,” Britons is a remarkably comprehensive work. Colley’s work expertly pulls on divers, often hitherto separate, historiographical threads to state its case. What is its case? A large aspect of it is that ‘ordinary’ people and elites alike rallied against “The Other” – chiefly Catholic France and the Jacobites – to forge ‘Britishness’ during the ‘long eighteenth-century’, while not losing grip on their pre-existing local identities. Giving E.P. Thompson, as it were, a taste of his own rhetorical medicine, Colley is at pains to “rescue these [ordinary] people, the seeming conformists, from the condescension of posterity”.
That Britons is compelling is largely due to its stressing that this ‘forging’ was never an easy, uncontested process. This was the case because the ‘forging’ of Britishness was driven by fear, a point upon which Colley insists throughout the book. For Colley, Britishness ironically strengthened in times of apparent crisis. For her, the threat of Jacobite or French invasion during the early eighteenth century strengthened the relationship between ‘Britishness’ and Protestantism, a general animosity towards the French, and the belief that Britons possessed certain liberties and sanctities that other nationalities did not. However, these ‘mythologies’ did not endure long before they were “unsettled” by the gargantuan territorial gains the nascent British Empire achieved after the Seven Years’ War. Many such territories were Catholic, like Quebec, or expounded frightful “Asiatic principles of government,” as one peer put it in 1770, thereby threatening the hegemony of the Protestant, liberty-abundant British state. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, Colley notes that the American Revolution still too unsettled the notion that Britishness could be forged by juxtaposing Protestantism against Catholicism: the vast majority of the Americans against whom the British were fighting between 1775 and 1783 were Protestants. Indeed, the wars Britain waged between Revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1793 and 1815 reignited the fears created by the Jacobite scares of old: the effect was a widening participation by ‘ordinary’ women and men in civic and military affairs designed to defend Britain against France, the latter of which – as Stephen Conway has recently shown – drew together people from across the Atlantic Archipelago, including Ireland, in an unprecedented way. This same spirit of widening civic participation, moreover, re-emerged in the crises surrounding Catholic Emancipation, abolitionism, and the extension of the franchise in the 1820s and 30s. What emerges from this messy and uncertain picture is the crucial notion that national identity does not develop in a linear fashion. Rather, Colley contends that, with fear or vulnerability in the driving seat, “the patriotism of the past requires flexible, sensitive, and above all, imaginative reconstruction”.
But is Colley’s work as flexible, sensitive, and imaginative as she claims it is? It most certainly is imaginative, for the diverse base of sources Colley commands allows her to stress the non-linear, multifaceted nature of Britishness. The most potent are those sources that seek to portray an Andersonian ‘imagined community’, such as patriotic songs and Hogarth’s prints. These aesthetic sources are peppered throughout the work, with an image appearing every few pages in certain chapters. They range from the patriotic ‘imagined community’ in William Hogarth’s The March to Finchley, to the ‘radical’ yet patriotic ballads of the 1820s that used “we ne’er shall be slaves” in a different way to Rule, Britannia. The invocation of Hogarth by Colley is particularly apt, for not only did he utilise many ‘patriotic’ symbols in his work, but his work – particularly after 1750 was also widely dispersed and cheaply reproduced in other formats. The March to Finchley (1750), for example, is used by Colley to argue that the Rising of ‘45 cemented the juxtaposition between Britishness and Roman Catholicism in the ‘popular imagination’. The significance of this source usage not only lies in its ability to tap into understandings of what ‘Britishness’ or the ‘British nation’ meant to different people at different times, but also in terms of its setting a precedent for further research on the topic. Such works as Tamara Hunt’s Defining John Bull or J.R. Moore’s Representations of France and the French in English Satirical Prints have satisfied Colley’s “hope that in the future others will” explore what “fine art, or literature, or music can tell us about this subject” as a result of her work.
This notwithstanding, Colley’s use of these sources points towards an issue with Britons: its emphasis upon the role of ‘the external other’ in shaping conceptions of Britishness. It seems that Colley emphasises the cruciality of ‘the external Other’ to such a large extent that other factors, like internal strife, feel underrepresented. This has been noted by such historians as Moores and Marc Baer, the former of whom arguing that popular print culture in the later eighteenth century stoked intra-British rivalries as much as extra- rivalries. Moores notes, for example, that satirists like Gillray or Cruikshank depicted numerous ‘others’ within, which were juxtaposed with Englishness: the Jews were depicted as greedy bankers or suspect roadside businesspeople, the Welsh were depicted as poor mountain-dwellers and weary, and – despite many Scots remaining loyal to the Hanoverian regime – Highland Scots were portrayed as pestilent immigrants and papists as late as 1779 by Gillray. Colley indeed states her awareness of these internal divides, arguing that they could co-exist with Britishness during wartime. However, save discussion of John Wilkes’ anti-Scottish rhetoric in Chapter 3, discussion of the impact of the ‘internal other’ is elided by Colley.
Such eliding is tied to Britons’ overemphasis on the role of Protestantism in shaping Britishness during this period. Colley, of course, recognises that there were significant theological and liturgical differences between Protestants in Britain during this period, but nevertheless contends that these differences were inconsequential when compared to the threat of Catholicism. This, however, will not do. Finlay, MacBride and Claydon all identify that differences among British Protestants hindered the growth of national identity. Finlay argues that the differing visions held by episcopalian Jacobites, moderate presbyterians, and covenanting presbyterianism in Scotland during the eighteenth century prevented the Scots at large from uniting with English Protestants. MacBride and Claydon, moreover, contend that dissenters – like Quakers – were isolated from the Protestantism of the Established Church, which, being closely connected to government, was more likely to maintain a guise of overarching Protestant unity to distance itself from the Catholicism of its rivalling states. In this connexion, it seems that Britons were not so much united by Protestant theology as their hatred of ���popery’, a point which Moores has stressed.
As J.C.D. Clark, Conway and Moores have noted, even prior to the American Revolution Britain waged war with (and vilified) overtly Protestant states. Conway, for instance, uncovers how during the War of the Austrian Succession resentment toward the Sardinians, the Dutch, and the Hanoverians proliferated. Indeed, in the satirical prints he studied Moores discovered that the Dutch in particular were vilified to a great degree: in various prints, like THE BENEFIT OF NEUTRALITY (1745), the Dutch appear as more maleficent than even the French or the Spanish. Contrariwise, Colley’s argument about Protestantism is complicated by the fact that Britain allied with such Catholic or Orthodox states as Portugal, Russia, and even France. What is more, Moores finds that, while there was much anti-Catholic sentiment toward France, there was a lack of “Protestant symbolism,” hinting at the notion that anti-Catholicism, rather than Protestantism’s qualities, aided the development of Britishness.
Moores’ (and Hunt’s) satirical prints, as well as many of Colley’s, either contrast Englishness, rather than Britishness, with “The Other”, or equate Britishness with Englishness. This truth connects to another shortfall of Colley’s theses: its underestimation of the extent to which the language and symbols of Britishness was derived from those of Englishness. As Clark and Hastings have argued, English histories and legal concepts – particularly Whig narratives of English liberties and the ‘free-born Englishman’ – were deeply embedded in eighteenth-century British thought. However, unlike these two, Colin Kidd has explored how this Englishness-Britishness dynamic was used by those outside of Albion, namely by educated “North Britons” in Scotland. He contends that such “North Britons” as David Hume or the Earl of Bute embraced union by embracing English legal traditions like the common law and the liberties granted by the 1688 revolution settlement, rather than deriving it from native “Scottishness”. This may be dismissed as elite condemnation of ‘heathen culture’. Yet, Colley’s failure to flesh out the relationship between Englishness and Britishness, despite England featuring so prominently in her sources, is disappointing.
What is also disappointing is Colley’s neglect of Ireland. Given her focus on the island of Great Britain, her omission of Ireland is at least comprehensible. However, her argument that Ireland was “rarely able or willing to play a satisfactory part” in the creation of Britishness by way of Protestantism, war with France and imperial development is unduly dismissive. Firstly, before union in 1801 the Irish, ruled by the Hanoverian dynasty, did in varying ways shape Britishness in wartime. This contribution includes the 27 Anglo-Irish gentlemen who served in the HEIC / Indian Army alone between 1700 and 1824, the 40% of members of eleven British regiments stationed at Nova Scotia in 1757 who were Irish (including some Catholics), and – surprisingly – the glorified “IRISH PEG [woman] in a RAGE” depicted by Carington Bowles in 1773, who was attacking a British ‘macaroni’ character.
Secondly, Irish Protestants – including Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster – embraced Britishness in a similar way to Kidd’s Scottish “North Britons”: while they both asserted their Irishness when they felt aggrieved by the actions of Westminster, they nonetheless both relished in the liberties, histories and customs of the English and defended the British Empire. For example, while attempting to argue for a union between Britain and Ireland in 1729, episcopalian Scotsman-turned-Ulsterman Arthur Dobbs argued that such a union would “unite our Affections with our Brethren in England, and make us heartily concur in promoting the Power, Wealth, and Glory of the British Empire.” That a Scot residing in Ireland wished to unite with the English and promote the British Empire as early as 1729 demonstrates how Colley’s argument would have been enriched by focussing on Ireland more directly.
These shortfalls, however, do not detract from the historiographical significance of Colley’s work. Given that its target audience is not solely an academic one, it is only natural that it fails to account for certain nuances: in 1993, Colley was awarded the Wolfson History Prize due to this work, an award given to works that are both scholarly and accessible to a wider audience. Britons exists, then, as a monumental initial sketch of British national identity from both a ‘high political’ and sociocultural view, a sketch scholars will (and do) paint and correct in generations to come.
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September 28, 2015An in depth social study of the population of Britain from the Union between England and Scotland until the reforms of the 1830s and their relationship with Britain and the development of a British identity.
June 17, 2016
If you are crazy about George III and 18th and 19th century British culture and politics, then this book is for you. It is the best history I have ever read.
September 10, 2008
Major Thesis: how the dis-separate nations of England, Scotland, and Wales forge themselves into Britain? (hint: economics)
a "history" textbook; not for the amateur.
a "history" textbook; not for the amateur.
September 3, 2023
SJC Review: 5.07
Colley has produced a superb blend of robust scholarship and narrative power to provide the definitive account of the rise of British identity through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In so doing, she has shifted the focus on to the historical currents which forged both unstinting mass allegiance to the national identity and the existing political order during this period, covering the Act of Union in 1701 to the accession of Victoria in 1837. The root-cause for these attitudes was the succession of wars waged with France across this period, and as the author explains, the 'threat from the other' helped define 'us', and helped to offset internal differences. Moreover, this prolonged struggle gave birth to the Bank of England and the fiscal system together with the emergence of the military machinery. Colley is determined to stress the effect this extended threat from overseas had on the British population - a point previously, largely, ignored. These wars were principally religious by nature, in support of the Stuart claim to the throne. Yet from the Seven Years' War onward the struggle became focused on political and trade rivalry as both countries sought to extend their imperial and commercial ambitions. The political entity of Great Britain was established by the Act of Union in 1707, which was the result of political need rather than common affection, as it was felt such a bond would cement Scotland to formal union. As such, with the recent death of the childless Queen Anne, there would be less opportunity for support for Stuart claims ahead of the favoured option of importing a Protestant dynasty from Hanover. The Hanoverian succession in 1714 was an unquestionable break with dynastic succession, passing over 50 stronger claims due to Catholic beliefs. Not only had political links between England and Scotland been consolidated over the previous century, but by 1700 English customers constituted half of all Scottish exports. Furthermore, the Union would provide Scottish representation at Westminster, but also give them a share of taxes and custom duties, as well as offering opportunities for the Scottish elite in London. A further enticement was the Union's protection of Scottish rights to preserve their religious and social structures, as well as their legal and educational systems. Therefore, this was far from English political ambitions being foisted on their northern neighbours, and, indeed, there was great discontent south of the border at such a flexible agreement and at any impact on the availability of positions, never mind continued fears of Jacobite uprisings. Colley does not ignore that regional differences still persisted, but faith served as unifying principle. Catholics were treated as scapegoats on which to vent anger during times of unrest, such as the Gordon Riots in 1780. Such prejudice was enshrined in law, as from the late seventeenth century to 1829 Catholics were excluded from holding offices of state and the vote, were subject to punitive taxation, and discriminated against with regards education, property ownership, and freedom of worship. This religious fervour can also be evidenced by the fact that John Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' remained a popular publication during the eighteenth century enjoying several reprints. Thus, Protestantism served to unify those from all areas of the country against perceived internal and external enemies. The second aspect which forged nationalism was the fact that the newly invented nation provided those across the social divide with opportunities to further their ambition, and even the landed gentry accepted that trade was indispensable to the security of the realm - as long as those involved in it knew their place. Such attitudes are unveiled by the outrage produced by a statement from Pitt the Elder in the Commons in 1758 that he would be prouder to be an alderman of London than a peer of the realm. Yet, the durability of the social order is revealed by the fact that Pitt himself would purchase an estate in Kent and accept two peerages. The importance of trade to the state's wealth and its connection to power is shown by the fact that London, the hub of the commercial wheel, and seat of government and court, was home to 1 out of every 12 Britons. Moreover, the East India Company would serve as one of the government's most substantial creditors, their loans providing 30% of war expenditure after 1688, while customs & excises would raise 60-70% of government revenue until the end of the eighteenth century. A third factor was the dependence of the Royal Navy on manpower who had acquired its skills within mercantile fleets. The mutual inter-dependency of government and trade also stemmed from tradesmen's need for protection from the state abroad and to avoid domestic disorder affecting the wheels of commerce. In addition, one positive lasting influence of the Glorious Revolution on trade was the introduction of annual parliaments, which gave rise to lobbyists seeking an end to monopolies, and standardisation in weights and measures, while ensuring legislative changes helped foster trade. Colley disagrees with earlier historians' assertions that Continental Europe remained the strongest market for British products, stating that 95% of the growth in commodity exports stemmed from captive colonial markets. Moreover, 40% of British exports to the Continent were colonial products. Thus, the need to acquire greater imperial advantages against other competitors unified the attitudes of social strata involved in commerce. This is highlighted by the fact that commercial and manufacturing centres rallied to the existing order during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and played a significant role in its defeat as the Jacobites' own perceptions of a lack of popular support led them to withdraw after reaching Derby rather than push on to London. Despite the fact the rebellion had been a close-call and led to a sort of national moratorium on the malaise affecting the national spirit, the Jacobites were defeated by the vested interests of British society long before the field at Culloden. The authorities then attempted to quell future rebellions by extending such vested interests into Highland communities by a combination of 'stick and carrot' policies to ensure greater loyalty north of the border. Firstly, they undertook to undermine the socio-cultural distinctiveness of the Highlands by banning the wearing of tartan on pain of imprisonment, and replacing the rule of chieftains for royal jurisdiction. Yet, incentives were also offered in terms of the revenue from confiscated Jacobean estates being invested into Highland communities, subsiding local industry, and widening access to education. The rise of Scottish influence triggered by the Act of Union with plum positions offered to the cream of Scottish society was extended in the wake of the failed rebellion, and heightened by the fact that the Scottish economy outpaced that of England from 1750. Subsequent continued mistrust of those north of the border and resentment at Scottish advancement led to a rise in patriotic fervor. One to take advantage of this was John Wilkes whose attacks on government were couched with patriotic slogans - leading Samuel Johnson to declare that 'patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel'. Early in his political career, Wilkes had seen a position he himself sought, Governor of Quebec, be given to the Scot, James Murray. His stoking of anti-Scottish sentiment would lead to him being challenged to a duel while on sojourn in Paris in 1763 - escaping creditors and a brush with the libel laws back at home - and the discovery of an armed Scottish marine in his London rooms later that same year. Such resentment also gave rise to the lampooning of Scottish Prime Minister, Lord Bute, as lover of George III's mother. In the face of such hostility many Scots sought opportunities in two arenas which held less attraction for their southern neighbours; namely the military and the Empire. As such, the Crown and state were able to profit from Scottish military prowess - in the previous century many Scots had served as paid mercenaries in European armies. Such profitable service did not prevent Warren Hastings from coming under attack from Edmund Burke for the prominent positions he provided to his countrymen in the East India Company, and his subsequent impeachment trial which dragged on from 1788 till his acquittal in 1795. The loss of the American colonies, which Colley firmly attributes to the failure of Britain to establish stout machinery of imperial control, and to formalise alleigance to the Crown through a counterpart to the Act of Union, only served to renew nationalist fervor in a common feeling of 'backs against the wall'. Yet, together with the threat from Revolutionary France, these events took their toll on the ruling elite. Pitt the Younger would die at the tender age of 47 due to the ravages of an incessant workload and compensatory binge drinking, while prominent suicides included that of Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh in 1822 due to the demands of public life. Colley reveals the astonishing statistic that between 1790-1820 nineteen MPs committed suicide while a further 20 succumbed to insanity. The loss of the colonies and the seemingly continuous conflicts with Revolutionary France meant that whereas previous occasional directed criticism at the actions of one party or leader from the likes of Wilkes transformed into open questioning of the power structure of the landed elite, and became, from the 1780s onwards, a characteristic of mainstream political discourse. As such, the ‘status quo’ came under heavy attack from the writings of Tom Paine and William Cobbett. Another influential publication on informed public attitude to the elite was John Wade’s ‘Black Book: Or Corruption Unmasked’ which detailed the abuses of power and position selling 50,000 copies in 1819. The monopoly of power in the early nineteenth century is revealed by the fact a quarter of all MPs were married to a daughter of another, while ahead of the first Reform act of 1831 just 90 members of the British peerage controlled the election of more than a third of all MPs. Yet, no major revolutionary clamour swept the British streets, and the elite were reinvigorated by two socio-economic developments. The first of these was the integration of the landed aristocracy at the Celtic fringes into the centre of the power structure to forge a more unified, patriotic, and financially stable hierarchy. This occurred either through intermarriage or the purchase of estates of families who had died out to consolidate possessions across county and country borders. The second factor was the soar in the profitability of land and rents as a huge population increase in the last third of the eighteenth century led to a surge in demand for crops. Another factor which bolstered the elite resulted from the ‘culture’ of war and public service. In ostentatiously presenting its military traditions and ‘service’ to the nation, the elite could be perceived as a major bulwark of national defence and honour. One concrete piece of evidence of their realisation of the power of this image was the decision by Parliament in 1790 to use state revenue to erect statues of military heroes in St Paul’s – something which had never been done before. Furthermore, between 1790 and 1820 around a fifth of MPs served as officers in the regular army, a further hundred in the navy, and another fifth as volunteers in local militias. As part of this drive to highlight their contribution to the glory of the nation, the elite were also prepared to accept into their ranks those select few from lower birth who had displayed such military prowess such as Lord Nelson. Victories such as those at Trafalgar and Waterloo over the self-styled Emperor and their revolutionary enemies merely served to vindicate their position and their right to rule. The author does not deny that internal dissent did occur during this period, and required use of brutal suppression, such as at Peterloo in 1819. Yet, as Colley states quite clearly, such use of military force and state machinery would not have preserved the social order in the long term, and that this was only achieved through the elite’s persuading of the masses of their right to rule. With regard to the monarchy, it also, counter-intuitively, enjoyed an upturn in popularity in the wake of the loss of the American colonies. This was due largely to the fact that the constraints placed upon it, as opposed to its European counterparts, in terms of its rights to declare war, nor make appointments to key positions, helped distance it from the ignominious defeat. Another factor was George III’s popular appeal as opposed to his namesake predecessors. Both George I and II had been overtly conscious of their lack of dynastic continuity and had sought stability in support of one party, by anchoring themselves to successive Whig administrations. Moreover, the Jacobite threat led to their seclusion at court, and periodic escapes to their Hanoverian homeland. In George I’s case, he would not only do so on five occasions after 1714, but also died and was buried there. His successor would return on twelve occasions while never venturing to either Scotland or Wales. By contrast, George III was born and bred in Britain, and inherited his father’s refusal to pin his future to one party. In addition, he also was aware of the monarchy’s majestic and patriotic appeal. Yet, these factors only proved truly fruitful after the crushing surrender at Yorktown. Perceived as possessing limited powers, the scapegoat for the defeat would become Lord North and his administration. This is illustrated by the fact that between George’s succession in 1760 and 1781, ‘God Save the King’ was only performed on four occasions, while over the subsequent 20-year period it was played 90 times. A further factor in his increased esteem was the sympathy evoked by his long illness over the winter of 1788. Finally, the monarchy benefitted from political notions stemming from the work of Edmund Burke. In his ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, published in 1790, Burke attacked any representation of the monarchy as merely serving a civic role, nor as divinely ordained. Rather, he emphasised the distinctive majesty of the position, while presenting the monarch as an individual beset by difficulties as affect us all. Thus, rather than undermine patrician power and the established order, defeat at the hands of America served to reassert them. This is surprising, given that this period witnessed the arming of the masses across Europe, leading Clausewitz to state that war had become ‘the business of the people’, and panic amongst the nobility. Therefore, the author poses the intriguing question of how the masses could be perceived to come to the defence of an established order that denied them active citizenship. Once again Colley highlights the unifying factor of the threat from ‘the other’, and emphasises the astonishing fact that the Napoleonic wars menaced these shores with the threat of invasion, or an economic blockade, for a period more than twice as long as the First and second world wars combined. Both factors served to boost numbers of volunteers and recruits through fear and hardship, leading to an increase in British soldiers from 40,000 in 1789 to 250,000 in 1814. Despite the fears arising from mobilising men of all ranks, the elite were prepared to run the risk of engendering future calls for political change for the immediate benefit of preserving the realm. Thus, Colley asserts the main opponent to revolutionary France was willing to pursue revolutionary methods to stem the tide. Once the threat from ‘the other’ was removed, the country faced exhaustion at the costs of such a prolonged conflict, combined with a slump in the domestic economy which had been geared to the war effort, and increased unemployment and social unrest from mass demobilisation of more than a third of a million men. Thus, three issues came to the fore in the period up to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. The first was the movement for political reform aiming at both the extension of the franchise, and the redistribution of seats. Despite later alienation of working class activists, its falling far short of universal male suffrage leaving 80% without the vote, and continued lack of representation at the peripheries of British society, the 1832 Reform Act served to widen the franchise from the narrow patrician class to the commercial middle classes, while shifting greater weight of the electoral system to the commercial centres of the north. The second issue resulted from the spread of the empire as a result of military victories, and the troubling concern of the rights of colonial subjects, leading to calls for the abolition of slavery and the Emancipation Act of 1833. The third, and final, factor touched on the issue of Ireland and Catholic Emancipation. Since Culloden, Catholic recruits had been successfully recruited into the armed forces, and had resulted in less concern over their perceived greater loyalty to Pope than country. Thus, the Act which was passed in 1829 was not driven by the question of Ireland alone as public attitudes to British Catholics had softened. Yet, it is also reality that in ensuring less likelihood of Ireland being used as a launch-pad for future invasion, no extension of civil rights could be given to Irish catholic subjects without equal liberties being enjoyed by their British counterparts. There is no question that the election of Daniel O’Connell to a seat in County Clare on a Catholic ticket in 1828 helped determine the exact timing of the passing of the Act, but Catholic Emancipation could not have occurred without a significant shift in public attitude. All three of these developments served to present Britain, rightly or wrongly, in the minds of the majority of the population, as the true home of liberty, thereby echoing the words of william Blake's 'Jerusalem', written in the early 1800s, which resonated with the long-held belief that England was the new Promised Land.
Colley has produced a superb blend of robust scholarship and narrative power to provide the definitive account of the rise of British identity through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In so doing, she has shifted the focus on to the historical currents which forged both unstinting mass allegiance to the national identity and the existing political order during this period, covering the Act of Union in 1701 to the accession of Victoria in 1837. The root-cause for these attitudes was the succession of wars waged with France across this period, and as the author explains, the 'threat from the other' helped define 'us', and helped to offset internal differences. Moreover, this prolonged struggle gave birth to the Bank of England and the fiscal system together with the emergence of the military machinery. Colley is determined to stress the effect this extended threat from overseas had on the British population - a point previously, largely, ignored. These wars were principally religious by nature, in support of the Stuart claim to the throne. Yet from the Seven Years' War onward the struggle became focused on political and trade rivalry as both countries sought to extend their imperial and commercial ambitions. The political entity of Great Britain was established by the Act of Union in 1707, which was the result of political need rather than common affection, as it was felt such a bond would cement Scotland to formal union. As such, with the recent death of the childless Queen Anne, there would be less opportunity for support for Stuart claims ahead of the favoured option of importing a Protestant dynasty from Hanover. The Hanoverian succession in 1714 was an unquestionable break with dynastic succession, passing over 50 stronger claims due to Catholic beliefs. Not only had political links between England and Scotland been consolidated over the previous century, but by 1700 English customers constituted half of all Scottish exports. Furthermore, the Union would provide Scottish representation at Westminster, but also give them a share of taxes and custom duties, as well as offering opportunities for the Scottish elite in London. A further enticement was the Union's protection of Scottish rights to preserve their religious and social structures, as well as their legal and educational systems. Therefore, this was far from English political ambitions being foisted on their northern neighbours, and, indeed, there was great discontent south of the border at such a flexible agreement and at any impact on the availability of positions, never mind continued fears of Jacobite uprisings. Colley does not ignore that regional differences still persisted, but faith served as unifying principle. Catholics were treated as scapegoats on which to vent anger during times of unrest, such as the Gordon Riots in 1780. Such prejudice was enshrined in law, as from the late seventeenth century to 1829 Catholics were excluded from holding offices of state and the vote, were subject to punitive taxation, and discriminated against with regards education, property ownership, and freedom of worship. This religious fervour can also be evidenced by the fact that John Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' remained a popular publication during the eighteenth century enjoying several reprints. Thus, Protestantism served to unify those from all areas of the country against perceived internal and external enemies. The second aspect which forged nationalism was the fact that the newly invented nation provided those across the social divide with opportunities to further their ambition, and even the landed gentry accepted that trade was indispensable to the security of the realm - as long as those involved in it knew their place. Such attitudes are unveiled by the outrage produced by a statement from Pitt the Elder in the Commons in 1758 that he would be prouder to be an alderman of London than a peer of the realm. Yet, the durability of the social order is revealed by the fact that Pitt himself would purchase an estate in Kent and accept two peerages. The importance of trade to the state's wealth and its connection to power is shown by the fact that London, the hub of the commercial wheel, and seat of government and court, was home to 1 out of every 12 Britons. Moreover, the East India Company would serve as one of the government's most substantial creditors, their loans providing 30% of war expenditure after 1688, while customs & excises would raise 60-70% of government revenue until the end of the eighteenth century. A third factor was the dependence of the Royal Navy on manpower who had acquired its skills within mercantile fleets. The mutual inter-dependency of government and trade also stemmed from tradesmen's need for protection from the state abroad and to avoid domestic disorder affecting the wheels of commerce. In addition, one positive lasting influence of the Glorious Revolution on trade was the introduction of annual parliaments, which gave rise to lobbyists seeking an end to monopolies, and standardisation in weights and measures, while ensuring legislative changes helped foster trade. Colley disagrees with earlier historians' assertions that Continental Europe remained the strongest market for British products, stating that 95% of the growth in commodity exports stemmed from captive colonial markets. Moreover, 40% of British exports to the Continent were colonial products. Thus, the need to acquire greater imperial advantages against other competitors unified the attitudes of social strata involved in commerce. This is highlighted by the fact that commercial and manufacturing centres rallied to the existing order during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and played a significant role in its defeat as the Jacobites' own perceptions of a lack of popular support led them to withdraw after reaching Derby rather than push on to London. Despite the fact the rebellion had been a close-call and led to a sort of national moratorium on the malaise affecting the national spirit, the Jacobites were defeated by the vested interests of British society long before the field at Culloden. The authorities then attempted to quell future rebellions by extending such vested interests into Highland communities by a combination of 'stick and carrot' policies to ensure greater loyalty north of the border. Firstly, they undertook to undermine the socio-cultural distinctiveness of the Highlands by banning the wearing of tartan on pain of imprisonment, and replacing the rule of chieftains for royal jurisdiction. Yet, incentives were also offered in terms of the revenue from confiscated Jacobean estates being invested into Highland communities, subsiding local industry, and widening access to education. The rise of Scottish influence triggered by the Act of Union with plum positions offered to the cream of Scottish society was extended in the wake of the failed rebellion, and heightened by the fact that the Scottish economy outpaced that of England from 1750. Subsequent continued mistrust of those north of the border and resentment at Scottish advancement led to a rise in patriotic fervor. One to take advantage of this was John Wilkes whose attacks on government were couched with patriotic slogans - leading Samuel Johnson to declare that 'patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel'. Early in his political career, Wilkes had seen a position he himself sought, Governor of Quebec, be given to the Scot, James Murray. His stoking of anti-Scottish sentiment would lead to him being challenged to a duel while on sojourn in Paris in 1763 - escaping creditors and a brush with the libel laws back at home - and the discovery of an armed Scottish marine in his London rooms later that same year. Such resentment also gave rise to the lampooning of Scottish Prime Minister, Lord Bute, as lover of George III's mother. In the face of such hostility many Scots sought opportunities in two arenas which held less attraction for their southern neighbours; namely the military and the Empire. As such, the Crown and state were able to profit from Scottish military prowess - in the previous century many Scots had served as paid mercenaries in European armies. Such profitable service did not prevent Warren Hastings from coming under attack from Edmund Burke for the prominent positions he provided to his countrymen in the East India Company, and his subsequent impeachment trial which dragged on from 1788 till his acquittal in 1795. The loss of the American colonies, which Colley firmly attributes to the failure of Britain to establish stout machinery of imperial control, and to formalise alleigance to the Crown through a counterpart to the Act of Union, only served to renew nationalist fervor in a common feeling of 'backs against the wall'. Yet, together with the threat from Revolutionary France, these events took their toll on the ruling elite. Pitt the Younger would die at the tender age of 47 due to the ravages of an incessant workload and compensatory binge drinking, while prominent suicides included that of Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh in 1822 due to the demands of public life. Colley reveals the astonishing statistic that between 1790-1820 nineteen MPs committed suicide while a further 20 succumbed to insanity. The loss of the colonies and the seemingly continuous conflicts with Revolutionary France meant that whereas previous occasional directed criticism at the actions of one party or leader from the likes of Wilkes transformed into open questioning of the power structure of the landed elite, and became, from the 1780s onwards, a characteristic of mainstream political discourse. As such, the ‘status quo’ came under heavy attack from the writings of Tom Paine and William Cobbett. Another influential publication on informed public attitude to the elite was John Wade’s ‘Black Book: Or Corruption Unmasked’ which detailed the abuses of power and position selling 50,000 copies in 1819. The monopoly of power in the early nineteenth century is revealed by the fact a quarter of all MPs were married to a daughter of another, while ahead of the first Reform act of 1831 just 90 members of the British peerage controlled the election of more than a third of all MPs. Yet, no major revolutionary clamour swept the British streets, and the elite were reinvigorated by two socio-economic developments. The first of these was the integration of the landed aristocracy at the Celtic fringes into the centre of the power structure to forge a more unified, patriotic, and financially stable hierarchy. This occurred either through intermarriage or the purchase of estates of families who had died out to consolidate possessions across county and country borders. The second factor was the soar in the profitability of land and rents as a huge population increase in the last third of the eighteenth century led to a surge in demand for crops. Another factor which bolstered the elite resulted from the ‘culture’ of war and public service. In ostentatiously presenting its military traditions and ‘service’ to the nation, the elite could be perceived as a major bulwark of national defence and honour. One concrete piece of evidence of their realisation of the power of this image was the decision by Parliament in 1790 to use state revenue to erect statues of military heroes in St Paul’s – something which had never been done before. Furthermore, between 1790 and 1820 around a fifth of MPs served as officers in the regular army, a further hundred in the navy, and another fifth as volunteers in local militias. As part of this drive to highlight their contribution to the glory of the nation, the elite were also prepared to accept into their ranks those select few from lower birth who had displayed such military prowess such as Lord Nelson. Victories such as those at Trafalgar and Waterloo over the self-styled Emperor and their revolutionary enemies merely served to vindicate their position and their right to rule. The author does not deny that internal dissent did occur during this period, and required use of brutal suppression, such as at Peterloo in 1819. Yet, as Colley states quite clearly, such use of military force and state machinery would not have preserved the social order in the long term, and that this was only achieved through the elite’s persuading of the masses of their right to rule. With regard to the monarchy, it also, counter-intuitively, enjoyed an upturn in popularity in the wake of the loss of the American colonies. This was due largely to the fact that the constraints placed upon it, as opposed to its European counterparts, in terms of its rights to declare war, nor make appointments to key positions, helped distance it from the ignominious defeat. Another factor was George III’s popular appeal as opposed to his namesake predecessors. Both George I and II had been overtly conscious of their lack of dynastic continuity and had sought stability in support of one party, by anchoring themselves to successive Whig administrations. Moreover, the Jacobite threat led to their seclusion at court, and periodic escapes to their Hanoverian homeland. In George I’s case, he would not only do so on five occasions after 1714, but also died and was buried there. His successor would return on twelve occasions while never venturing to either Scotland or Wales. By contrast, George III was born and bred in Britain, and inherited his father’s refusal to pin his future to one party. In addition, he also was aware of the monarchy’s majestic and patriotic appeal. Yet, these factors only proved truly fruitful after the crushing surrender at Yorktown. Perceived as possessing limited powers, the scapegoat for the defeat would become Lord North and his administration. This is illustrated by the fact that between George’s succession in 1760 and 1781, ‘God Save the King’ was only performed on four occasions, while over the subsequent 20-year period it was played 90 times. A further factor in his increased esteem was the sympathy evoked by his long illness over the winter of 1788. Finally, the monarchy benefitted from political notions stemming from the work of Edmund Burke. In his ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, published in 1790, Burke attacked any representation of the monarchy as merely serving a civic role, nor as divinely ordained. Rather, he emphasised the distinctive majesty of the position, while presenting the monarch as an individual beset by difficulties as affect us all. Thus, rather than undermine patrician power and the established order, defeat at the hands of America served to reassert them. This is surprising, given that this period witnessed the arming of the masses across Europe, leading Clausewitz to state that war had become ‘the business of the people’, and panic amongst the nobility. Therefore, the author poses the intriguing question of how the masses could be perceived to come to the defence of an established order that denied them active citizenship. Once again Colley highlights the unifying factor of the threat from ‘the other’, and emphasises the astonishing fact that the Napoleonic wars menaced these shores with the threat of invasion, or an economic blockade, for a period more than twice as long as the First and second world wars combined. Both factors served to boost numbers of volunteers and recruits through fear and hardship, leading to an increase in British soldiers from 40,000 in 1789 to 250,000 in 1814. Despite the fears arising from mobilising men of all ranks, the elite were prepared to run the risk of engendering future calls for political change for the immediate benefit of preserving the realm. Thus, Colley asserts the main opponent to revolutionary France was willing to pursue revolutionary methods to stem the tide. Once the threat from ‘the other’ was removed, the country faced exhaustion at the costs of such a prolonged conflict, combined with a slump in the domestic economy which had been geared to the war effort, and increased unemployment and social unrest from mass demobilisation of more than a third of a million men. Thus, three issues came to the fore in the period up to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. The first was the movement for political reform aiming at both the extension of the franchise, and the redistribution of seats. Despite later alienation of working class activists, its falling far short of universal male suffrage leaving 80% without the vote, and continued lack of representation at the peripheries of British society, the 1832 Reform Act served to widen the franchise from the narrow patrician class to the commercial middle classes, while shifting greater weight of the electoral system to the commercial centres of the north. The second issue resulted from the spread of the empire as a result of military victories, and the troubling concern of the rights of colonial subjects, leading to calls for the abolition of slavery and the Emancipation Act of 1833. The third, and final, factor touched on the issue of Ireland and Catholic Emancipation. Since Culloden, Catholic recruits had been successfully recruited into the armed forces, and had resulted in less concern over their perceived greater loyalty to Pope than country. Thus, the Act which was passed in 1829 was not driven by the question of Ireland alone as public attitudes to British Catholics had softened. Yet, it is also reality that in ensuring less likelihood of Ireland being used as a launch-pad for future invasion, no extension of civil rights could be given to Irish catholic subjects without equal liberties being enjoyed by their British counterparts. There is no question that the election of Daniel O’Connell to a seat in County Clare on a Catholic ticket in 1828 helped determine the exact timing of the passing of the Act, but Catholic Emancipation could not have occurred without a significant shift in public attitude. All three of these developments served to present Britain, rightly or wrongly, in the minds of the majority of the population, as the true home of liberty, thereby echoing the words of william Blake's 'Jerusalem', written in the early 1800s, which resonated with the long-held belief that England was the new Promised Land.
December 31, 2024
Colley's book is more a general history of the Hanoverian period and Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars than a focused treatment of the emergence of a specifically British consciousness and identity. She argues cogently that Britain was held together by its Protestantism, and a sense of itself as a 'New Israel'--which helped it hold itself to a high standard, as in the socially broad movement leading to the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1806 and the West Indies in 1833. This relaxed into a more inclusive Britishness some sixty years after the Act of Union, with the service of the apparently warlike Scots both in a more or less continuous series of wars with the French and as agents of empire tending to weaken Wilkesite English Chauvinism and anti-Catholicism. Colley demonstrates how the three movements of parliamentary Reform (which came to disappoint working men seeking a fuller part in the affairs of the nation, as the Whigs self-imposed a property-owning qualification), anti-slavery and anti-sectarian prejudice were linked. More than half the male population of Manchester signed petitions in favour of the slaves' emancipation. The huge upswelling of political participation in this period, both male and female, through petitions, Volunteer associations and militia, and marches and demonstrations like Peterloo, evinced a politically multi-layered patriotism and both depended on and precipitated a dynamic nationhood.
Colley is judicious and not politically partisan, though obviously a liberal. She is critical of the condescension of the left towards popular loyalism and of contemporary figures like the cartoonist James Gillray to the unknown, supposedly sottish and self-interested patriot. The 'obscure' are sniffed at by the Yale academic and British media public figure. Many of her examples, of Turner's Slave Ship and Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners, are plums. Her best points tend not to be original research
Colley is judicious and not politically partisan, though obviously a liberal. She is critical of the condescension of the left towards popular loyalism and of contemporary figures like the cartoonist James Gillray to the unknown, supposedly sottish and self-interested patriot. The 'obscure' are sniffed at by the Yale academic and British media public figure. Many of her examples, of Turner's Slave Ship and Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners, are plums. Her best points tend not to be original research
August 29, 2020
I am fast becoming a Colley groupie. Her history is so clear and accessible; her evaluations measured and free of the stale condemnation and ahistorical judgments that pervade even professional work in the field. She allows her actors conflicting motivations and her interpretations are rich in multidimensional causes and provocative contingencies. In this book Colley argues that the idea of a British identity is a misleading one in the sense that it was superimposed over a deeply fractured field of multiple rival ethnic identities among the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, and the English. Without Catholicism and the French (as well as most of the rest of continental Europe) as convenient foils against which to construct a unified identity, the old fissures have risen to the surface once more, and the Brits are now being forced to reassess what "British" actually means and if there's anything substantive left to uphold it.
September 29, 2017
An excellent book that brings to life a topic that is so easily overlooked. Britons brings together dense and nuanced material seamlessly, while also being accessible.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in pre-modern history. Britons not only reinformed my understanding of Georgian Britain and England but also helped make sense of modern Britain. This book has been and will continue to be relevant. Recent events including the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 and the Brexit are illuminated by this book.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in pre-modern history. Britons not only reinformed my understanding of Georgian Britain and England but also helped make sense of modern Britain. This book has been and will continue to be relevant. Recent events including the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 and the Brexit are illuminated by this book.
November 10, 2018
Excellent history of the formation of the modern British state. Linda Colley shows how Protestantism and a fear of invasion united the Welsh, English, and Scots under a new British identity, opposed in war and culture to the French and Spanish Catholics. She notes that present-day diversity (1992, when Colley published this book) threatens those Britons who would prefer that the traditional Protestant, exceptionalist outlook survive. Colley's attention to the pitfalls of nationalism is well worth reading as Brexit approaches.
February 9, 2020
Linda Colley's "Britons" is a classic requiring careful study by any attempting to understand the origins of British nationalism in the aftermath of the passage of the Act of Union in 1707. That being said, classic though it may be, and sound though Colley's research is, the book suffers from a few pacing issues in arguing its case. Colley's final argument, however, rings true today far more than she likely ever could have anticipated when writing the volume in the early 1990's.
March 17, 2020
An amazing anaylsis of British nationalism, with chapters divided in ways that make sense both in terms of theme and are connected primarily to a partcular time period. The author manages to skillful weave individual timbits of facts into an over arching narrative that is easy to understand, while also sparkling in the odd bit of dry humour. If you are interested in British history or good non-fiction history books in general, I would highly recommend this book.
March 20, 2018
Solid academic history of how the notion of a British nation emerged. Colley looks at it through a number of factors including embattled Protestantism, the shift in an aristocracy from many local ones to a single larger one and the role of women. I found this engaging and enlightening and especially interesting from my parochial view, to see how it lines up with the creation of American identity.
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