ABSTRACT
The introduction’s first part outlines the themes of our contributors’ chapters, which are arranged in five sections. Some of the key ideas and realities of union in nineteenth-century discourse are then explored by the editors in an essay in the second part. The editors examine definitions and usages of the opposing terms, noting traditions of representation and interpretation already established. The essay ranges over the treatment of union and disunion in artistic and literary representations; Christian theology; the impact of the war of independence in shaping the way the keyword ‘union’ was treated in the United States; aspirations to union in a variety of nineteenth-century fields from science and language; and the particular resonances of ‘union’ and ‘disunion’ in British radical and anti-radical politics.
