Boone Ayala’s Reviews > Ideological Origins of the British Empire, The. Ideas in Context: 59 > Status Update

Armitage asks why the idea of a “British Empire” emerged in the early modern period, and how it relates to the British state. He says that the Empire had 4 major characteristics: Protestant, commercial, mercantile, and free. The ideas used to describe the pan-Atlantic political community of the Empire were then picked up in the metropole to define the British state. In essence, the empire shaped the state.