Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837

Professor Colley has written an insightful and coherent history of how the English, Welsh, and Scots imagined and defined themselves and their nation in the course of the long eighteenth century. This fine work is organized along major themes, rather than strictly chronological lines, such as the first two chapters on Protestantism and Profits. The following chapter tells how many Scots became major actors in overseas colonialist expansion, by joining imperial institutions such as the East India Co. and the British military. Later chapters examine ways that British society evolved and redefined itself during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The author makes effective use of visual arts, from William Hogarth of 1749 to David Wilkie of 1822, to illustrate her conclusions about British self-image and values. Colley makes an especially strong argument for the central role of militaristic Protestantism in defining Britishness, manifested as both fear of and contempt for the French, anxiety about Catholics within Britain and abroad, and the belief that Protestant Britons were God's elect, uniquely blessed by Providence with wealth and uniquely free. Readers familiar with American colonial history will find much in this volume that is disturbingly familiar, and also food for further thought about the intellectual inheritance of the U.S.A. before independence and since.

Linda Colley's Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 leans heavily on the understanding of a nation as an imagined political community of culturally and ethnically diverse peoples. Once the reader accepts this premise, Colley's central argument that religion and war served as primary movers in the creation of the British nation becomes palpable. Under this guise, Colley credits the Act of Union in 1707 that linked Scotland to England and Wales with creating the political framework into which Protestantism and persistent war with France supplied cultural coagulant and national bond. Colley crafts a convincing argument that the world's most dominant nation of the eighteenth century was essentially established to be against something else, as opposed to being itself. To the reader's delight, Colley does not shy away from the complexities of British nationhood. She interacts with individual loyalties of Scottish, Welsh, and English villagers and concludes that "Great Britain was infinitely diverse in terms of the customs and cultures of its inhabitants" (17). In light of this glaring situation, the peoples' collective difference from the "Other" made the emerging sense of Britishness possible. Throughout the eighteenth century "men and women came to define themselves as Britons...because circumstances impressed them with the belief that they were different from those beyond their shores, and in particular different from their prime enemy, the French" (17). One of the book's more interesting arguments appears in the opening section, in which Colley engages the role of religion in supplying Britons with a strong sense of shared identity. The Scots, English, and Welch positioned themselves over and against the Catholic French as the Other. Colley demonstrates a strong command of eighteenth-century British thinking on the Reformation, Catholic British monarchies, Catholic plots against Protestant British sovereigns, and French persecution of Huguenots. The history of Catholic atrocities, albeit somewhat distorted for effect, facilitated a British self-image as God's elect against the popish French. "The prospect in the first half of the eight century of a Catholic monarchy being restored in Britain by force, together with recurrent wars with Catholic states, and especially with France, ensured that the vision that so many Britons cherished of their own history became fused in an extraordinary way with the current experience" (25). Colley appreciates that the modern view of Protestantism in Britain creates an uphill challenge for this significant pillar of her overall argument. She, nevertheless, stands firm that "Protestantism was the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible" (54). War served as the second major eighteenth-century cohesive of Britishness. For Colley, Great Britain "was an invention forged above all by war" (5). This characterization, at first glance, may seem overly simplistic. Yet, Colley brill

The topic of "identity," especially national identity, isn't exactly the sexiest topic when it comes to writing History for non-Historians. That is why Linda Colley's "Britons" deserves so much praise; it takes a topic as seemingly mundane as 18th century British Identity and writes about it in such an engaging fashion that this book is hard to put down. Colley skillfully weaves together the issue of constructing a "British" national identity (one that superimposes itself above English, Scottish, and Welsh identity)with the history of Great Britain in general from 1707-1837, so that one walks away from "Britons" with the feeling that the events of the 18th century were the critical in the idea of what it means to be "British." I have to admit I wasn't the biggest fan of historical studies of the construction of national identity, but Linda Colley's "Britons" certainly demonstrated just how fascinating a topic it can be- when written properly.

This is an excellent read, combining many aspects of 18th Century British society. Colley advances the view that the English aristocracy incorporated fellow Protestant from Scotland, Wales and to some extent Ireland in the aftermath of the loss of the American War. This re-invention, combined with the expansion of the mercantile class spurred the re-emergence of an renewed Empire. As the Century turned this Empire viewed itself as morally correct by abolishing slavery, reforming Parliamentary electoral politics and eventually re-incorporating Catholics into the political class. Along the way she gives convincing descriptions of the waning of Protestantism as a political force, the emergence of the Hanoverian dynasty and its(successful) efforts to achieve mass popularity in Britain, the status of women in society among other things. All this is achieved with an accessible style. I think the books great strengths are its description of the aristocracy, and the early Hanoverian kings (George I,II and III), it goes into great depth about Protestantism and the growth of trade. I believe the weaknesses of the book are in its dealings with the post 1800 years - the reign of George IV and William are glanced over, and sometimes contradictorily. The Regency period is described as a period in which public morality became a concern of the ascendancy classes, however, George IV's behaviour would seem to contradict this.Overall an exceptional read, a tremendous summary of the times, very thought provoking and well worth the time spent.

Linda Colley demonstrates her abilities as a top-shelf social historian in "Britons." Her command of widely diverse source material is remarkable--her presentation of popular ballads, cartoons, and broadsheets is both delightful and interesting. However, in her rush to demonstrate the consensual nature of "Britishness," she glosses over some very difficult issues (like the deliberately omitted question of how the Irish never became "British") and assumes away some others (she exaggerates the importance of the Stuart threat after 1746, and attributes Catholic Emancipation too much to 'popular demand' and too little, as Wellington understood as Prime Minister, to the fact that the Irish would surely fight for it). Although this is an admirable piece of scholarship, it fails to recognize that the peoples of the 'Celtic fringe' were generally dragooned into being British; their early participation in empire-building was more a result of escaping the poverty of Ireland or Scotland than of some newly minted transcendent patriotism. Nevertheless, this book is well worth the read, albeit with a large grain of critical salt.