ABSTRACT
This chapter constitutes a brief survey of the major forces that shaped the contours of religious and national life in Britain and Ireland in the period leading up to the mid-nineteenth century. It is designed to provide essential background and context for subsequent more detailed analysis of later developments. In the first two sections an account will be given first of evangelicalism and then of Catholicism. These were the most dynamic varieties of official Christianity in the early nineteenth century, and, both in positive and negative respects, they had a particularly formative impact on the period that followed. In the final section of the chapter the preceding discussion will be set in the context of the wider development of religious and national life in the early nineteenth century.
