ABSTRACT
Hebrides)—were settled by various groups and then invaded and briefl y conquered, in part, by several more. Imperial Rome controlled much of (what is now) England for centuries, Viking invasions hit nearly every region of the archipelago, and the Norman Conquest of 1066 ended Anglo-Saxon rule in England. French, not English, was the elite language of England for centuries, part of a politicized cultural division between the conquering French and the conquered Saxons. Trade and military support circulated across the British Isles, part of a complicated and shifting array of political allegiances in the medieval era. English border skirmishes with Wales and Scotland and the invasion of parts of Ireland (then divided into various kingdoms) followed well into the Early Modern period. With the rise of interest in the past motivated by romantic nationalism, all of this became the subject of both antiquarian scholarship and literary treatment. Sir Walter Scott in particular returned again and again to the “national” divisions within the British Isles in his poetry and his historical fi ction, but he was joined in this literary enterprise of imagining the meaning of “nation” and national diff erence by scores of others.4 is British Isles patchwork of confl ict and competing interests up to about 1500 was followed by consolidation: fi rst Wales and England formally unifi ed in 1536; Scotland joined the “union” in 1707; and Ireland was incorporated via the Act of Union (1800) after a failed uprising in 1798. At each step, this consolidation led to parliamentary representation for the absorbed region in the pre-existing Parliament in London, defi ning political union through centralized government and uniform laws-dominated not generally by the English but specifi cally by the wealthy elite based in London. is centralization was supported through the location of other key institutions in London: banking, much of the print industry, and trading groups (including those that built the foundations of the Victorian-era British Empire, such as the East India Company). Disentangling a distinctively Scottish, Welsh, Irish, or Welsh (or Manx or Cornish) “nation” with a unique history, language, and culture as well as a clearly delineated “land” for the people is no easy feat in this context.
