The Cultural Making of “Great Britain”

The development of a robust print marketplace in the eighteenth century, including the evolution of the periodical press, allowed for a greater circulation of representations of the nation-state to a wider and more anonymous audience than ever before. At the same time, however, performative, oral and scribal mediations continued to play important roles in both confirming and challenging a hegemonic national identity, especially within Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Welsh-language traditions. This chapter examines the forging of “Great Britain” across the eighteenth-century media landscape from multiple acts of remembering and forgetting.