Four Nations Approaches to Modern 'British' History: A (Dis)United Kingdom?

Description

This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars to evaluate the viability of four nations approaches to the history of the United Kingdom from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It recognises the separate histories of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and explores the extent to which they share a common, ‘British’ history. They are entwined, with the points at which they interweave and detach dependent upon the nature of our inquiry, where we locate our ‘core’ and our ‘periphery’, and the ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ of our subject. The collection demonstrates that four nations frameworks are relevant to a variety of topics and tests the limits of the methodology. The chapters illuminate the changing shape of modern British history writing, and provide fresh perspectives on subjects ranging from state governance, nationalism and Unionism, economics, cultural identities and social networking. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 A New Plea for an Old Subject? Four Nations History for the Modern Period (Naomi Lloyd-Jones, Margaret M. Scull)....Pages 3-31 J.G.A. Pocock and the Politics of British History (Ian McBride)....Pages 33-57 ‘A Vertiginous Sense of Impending Loss’: Four Nations History and the Problem of Narrative (Paul O’Leary)....Pages 59-82 Front Matter ....Pages 83-83 The Eighteenth-Century Fiscal-Military State: A Four Nations Perspective (Patrick Walsh)....Pages 85-109 The Scottish Enlightenment and the British-Irish Union of 1801 (James Stafford)....Pages 111-134 Celticism and the Four Nations in the Long Nineteenth Century (Ian B. Stewart)....Pages 135-159 The Beefeaters at the Tower of London, 1826–1914: Icons of Englishness or Britishness? (Paul Ward)....Pages 161-187 Regional Societies and the Migrant Edwardian Royal Dockyard Worker: Locality, Nation and Empire (Melanie Bassett)....Pages 189-214 Four Nations Poverty, 1870–1914: The View from the Centre to the Margins (Oliver Betts)....Pages 215-239 Wales and Socialism, 1880–1914: Towards a Four Nations Analysis (Martin Wright)....Pages 241-265 Back Matter ....Pages 267-274