ABSTRACT
Elite integration provides a useful means of exploring state formation in the early modern era. One reason for the success of the British state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the homogenization of the aristocracies of the constituent parts of the state. The impact of colonization on Ireland, creating new wave of English and Scottish elites who were competition with the native Irish and Old English elites, created a fragmented Irish aristocracy, but one which did, nevertheless, find some common Anglo-Irish identity. The post-Restoration courts also threw up opportunities for aristocratic elites to meet and form relationships and alliances shaped by the political and economic circumstances of the new era. The treaty of Union itself guaranteed that Scots Law, a Scottish education, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the heritable rights of the nobility would all continue to ensure that Scotland's aristocratic elite remained sufficiently distinct for Samuel Johnson to find material for his anti-Scottish jokes two generations later.
