ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a reappraisal of Tudor responses to the problem of state formation. Tudor officials were accustomed to think of England as an island, rather than simply that part of Britain colonized by the English before 1066. Traditional English claims to empire throughout the British Isles meant that instead of cooperation and mutual recognition, England's relations with these polities were usually poor. International frontiers were commonplace throughout Europe, but these were not normal frontiers, nor were England's relations with Scotland and Gaelic Ireland. Power in Gaelic Ireland was so fragmented that there was no one figure with whom the king's deputy could negotiate: Ireland was indeed 'a land of many marches', in each of which the balance of power was constantly shifting. Even the comparatively stable Scottish monarchy, however, was frequently too weak to control its border subjects. In effect, the Tudor Reformation marked the extension to the religious sphere of the existing policies of centralization and cultural imperialism.
