ABSTRACT
In a memorable scene in the 2001 satire Mike Bassett: England Manager, the historic tensions of the Atlantic archipelago are played for darkly comic effect. The England football team, spying Scotland's representatives walking through the arrivals lounge before an international tournament, initiate the encounter. National rivalry, which often finds its focal point in sporting endeavor, is the most obvious characteristic of the engagement. Casual racism and denigration are in evidence too. Yet the fraught interchanges all revolve around identity and its problematic conceptualizations. Fittingly, within this climate of interrogation of what constitutes nationhood in a political aggregation of nations, scholars of the early modern period have been drawn to re-examine the foundations of the discussion. This takes full advantage of the fact that the focus of their studies coincides with a period of centralizing of political power within the British nation state.
