ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s there has been a sense of crisis about what it has meant to be British. But not only British. Far from being constants, as had been presumed to be, national identities have been recognised as constructed and reconstructed. This is not to say that national identities are ‘false’ or ‘artificial’, but this idea of the ‘making of national identities’ has opened them up to academic study, not least by historians, who are keen to locate continuities and changes in their historical context. National identities in many countries other than the United Kingdom have seemed to be more obviously contested. Disputes over borders in Europe have been frequent, and often bloody. Alsace-Lorraine was ceded by a militarily defeated France to Germany in 1871 and returned to France in 1919 after the Allies had defeated Germany. The collapse of the AustroHungarian Empire at the end of the First World War produced numerous new nations, and the reshuffling of Europe in 1945 again changed the nature of many nations. Poland, for example, was created, contracted, and expanded at the military and diplomatic whim of its neighbours, allies and enemies. Belgium has made great efforts to contain Flemings and Walloons within a single polity, as Spain has sought to enable autonomous government to its regions while maintaining national-political unity. In Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, pluralism (of sorts) failed, with bloodshed as a consequence, in the 1990s. After 1945, decolonisation in Africa and Asia saw the foundation of new nations and national identities: sometimes formed against the backdrop of war, as in Rwanda, sometimes through more peaceful transformation, as in South Africa. The Americas too have experienced contests over what it means to be national. In Canada, French-Canadians have urged autonomy for Quebec, and after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, US American identity has been redefined. The list of ‘national’ problems is as universal as the nation as a political and cultural form.1 The apparent stability of the United Kingdom across much of the twentieth century has made its current ‘crisis’ appear profound. Being British is no longer seen as innate, static and permanent. Indeed, it is seen as under threat. In this book I examine the definition and redefinition of national identities within the United Kingdom since the 1870s. This period embraces the ‘new’ imperialism from the 1870s onwards, around which conservative political forces constructed claims to a monopoly on
patriotism and versions of national identity, and also includes the decades since the Second World War when notions of Britishness have been challenged by the end of Empire, Commonwealth immigration, ‘Americanisation’, European integration and the re-emergence of Celtic nationalisms. The book, therefore, seeks to locate the current perception of crisis in its historical context.
