Introduction

Modern studies of British identity are more apt to focus on the present multicultural United Kingdom or to assume that a specific English identity is representative of the whole. "Nationalism is a state of mind". Print culture often created and almost always articulated, shaped, and communicated a transcendent ideology. The print media-newspapers, books, periodicals, pamphlets, and broadsides-presented many variations on the national British story. Linda Colley, in Britons, argues most strongly for the existence of an Other as an important factor in determining national identity. Change was inherent in the emigration experience. The English-speaking residents of British North America were almost entirely of Scots, Irish, or English origin. In political discourse the rhetoric of monarchy versus republicanism was fundamental in the British North American colonies. The slavery of African Americans was a mark against the United States and Punch was vociferous in its condemnation.