ABSTRACT

In Uniting the Kingdom? a group of the most distinguished historians from Britain and Ireland assemble to consider the question of British identity spanning the period from the Middle Ages to the present.
Traditional chronological and regional frontiers are broken down as medievalists, early modernists and modernists debate the key issues of the British state: the conflicting historiographies, the nature of political tensions and the themes of expansion and contraction.
This outstanding collection of essays forms an illuminating introduction to the most up-to-date thinking about the problems of British histories and identities.

chapter 1|9 pages

Introduction

The enigma of British History

chapter 2|19 pages

British History as a ‘new subject’

Politics, perspectives and prospects

chapter 3|17 pages

The United Kingdom of England

The Anglo-Saxon achievement

chapter 8|14 pages

Composite monarchies in early modern Europe

The British and Irish example

chapter 3|23 pages

Three kingdoms and one commonwealth?

The enigma of mid-seventeenth-century Britain and Ireland

chapter 11|15 pages

Varieties of Britishness

Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the Hanoverian state

chapter 13|21 pages

Englishness and Britishness

National identities, c. 1790–c. 1870

chapter 14|11 pages

An imperial and multinational polity

The ‘scene from the centre’, 1832–1922

chapter 15|22 pages

Letting go

The Conservative Party and the end of the Union with Ireland

chapter 17|11 pages

Conclusion

Contingency, identity, sovereignty