British National Identity (british + national_identity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

English and British National Identity

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2006
Krishan Kumar
National identities in the British Isles have been a neglected subject of study for a long time, though interest has been growing recently. Why the neglect, and why the new interest? This article proposes that much of the puzzle has to do with the peculiar, and dominating, position of England historically within the United Kingdom. This has led to a relative indifference to questions of national identity on the part of the English, and, by a defensive reaction, a corresponding increase, over time, with such questions on the part of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. The English developed a largely ,non-national' conception of themselves, preoccupied as they were with the management of the United Kingdom and the British Empire; the ,Celtic' nations followed a more familiar pattern of developing national consciousness, as shown elsewhere in Europe. With the loss of the British Empire, large-scale immigration, the call of Europe, and renewed nationalist movements that threaten the ,break-up' of Britain, it is the English who find themselves most acutely faced with questions of national identity. Hence the new interest in national identity, especially among the English but also generally throughout the United Kingdom as other groups seek to imagine alternative futures for themselves. [source]

Defining British National Identity

THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2000
Biku Parekh
First page of article [source]

We were the Trojans: British national identities in 1633

RENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 1 2002
Lisa Hopkins
In 1633, several significant works of literature were published for the first time. These included Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland, Jasper Fisher's Fvimus Troes, George Wither's Iwenilia, Charles Aleyn's The Battailes of Crescey and Poictiers, while John Ford's Perkins Warbeck, though not published until 1634, was probably first performed in 1633. In the same year, Charles I rode north to his Scottish coronation, calling forth the celebratory poem Scotland's Welcome by William Lithgow, and Ben Jonson also wrote The King's Entertainment at Welbeck to entertain the king when he broke his journey at the earl of Newcastle's great house, Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. The year also saw the appointment of Strafford as Lord Deputy in Ireland, Thomas Stafford's Pacata Hibernica, and Geoffrey Keating's History of Ireland, and the centenary of Henry VIII's first declaration of England as an empire in 1533. This essay argues that these events and publications are linked by their concern with questions of what it meant to be English, Scottish, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, with the occasion of Charles I's Scottish coronation, coupled with his growing political unpopularity, provoking a collective soul-searching on the subject of national identities. [source]

Religion, Power and Parliament: Rothschild and Bradlaugh Revisited

HISTORY, Issue 305 2007
DENNIS GRUBE
The British parliament in the nineteenth century reflected the increasingly democratic stability of the British state in a century that saw numerous convulsions on the European continent. It embodied the majesty of British law, the idea that all adult males who dwelt in Britain shared the universal rights of a true-born Englishman, including the right to speak on the affairs of the nation. The repeated attempts of the Jewish Baron Lionel de Rothschild and the atheist Charles Bradlaugh to take their seats after having been lawfully elected to parliament showed, however, that barriers remained against those who were in some way considered ,un-British'. The debates that the perseverance of both men engendered inside the parliament reveal how strongly the conservative British establishment clung on to what it considered to be the Protestant national character. To make British laws, one had to be British in more than citizenship. In essence, it was a debate about British national identity in an increasingly ,liberal' world. The eventual inclusion of both Rothschild and Bradlaugh marked a further shift away from religious conformity as a measure of ,Britishness' as the century drew to a close. [source]

Despotism without Bounds: The French Secret Police and the Silencing of Dissent in London, 1760,1790

HISTORY, Issue 296 2004
SIMON BURROWS
Through an examination of the policing of dissident French refugees in London between 1760 and 1790, this article contends that recent historians have tended to over-emphasize the reforming nature of the Bourbon government in the decades prior to the French Revolution, especially under Louis XVI, and overlooked the more repressive and ,despotic' aspects of the regime. It reveals that the Paris police or French secret agents adopted a variety of clandestine methods in their attempts to silence dissident exiles, including attempts at kidnap, and allegedly murder. As much of this police activity was reported in the British press and French printed texts, both before and during the French Revolution, and several of the exiles were celebrated writers or future revolutionary leaders, it was widely known among informed contemporaries. The article therefore contends that the French revolutionaries' allegations of despotism and suspicions of monarchic conspiracies were more deeply rooted in experience than recent historiography has tended to suggest. At the same time, reports of the attempts of the ,despotic' French government to suppress the activities of Frenchmen on British soil helped to reinforce a British national identity based on the celebration of the liberties France lacked. [source]