Books in the British Identities Since 1707 series

This edited collection focuses on the negotiation of national, geographic and cultural identities during the Second World War among the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Adopting a four nations approach, it contributes to understanding of how pluralistic identities within Britain informed the functioning of Britishness during the war.

The book is a selection of essays from the author's work since the early 1980s. It presents an analysis of political and cultural trends based upon a series of case studies drawn from the North West of England, covering mainly the years between the Third Reform Act (1884) and the outbreak of the Second World War. The region was a heavily industrialized one, seen by many as in the vanguard of changes that gave rise to what is often referred to as 'modern' society. In politics the emergence in North West England of a new labour consciousness is plainly evident, but so too is the survival and adaptation of older political allegiances, notably popular Toryism. The region is also renowned in cultural terms for the emergence of modern sport, examined here in relation to both association football and cricket. Keenly aware of the general political, social and cultural developments in Britain and elsewhere during these years, the author is also alert to their impact in particular localities. The theme of locality has been a recurring one in the author's research, and the composition of this book reflects his changing approaches to it and to other, related issues of identity.

This book seeks out the origins of contemporary English nationalism. Whilst much academic and political attention has been given to England's place within the United Kingdom since devolution, the author argues that recent English nationalism actually derives from Britain's troubled relationship with European integration. Drawing on political evidence from the former Empire, the debates surrounding EEC accession and the United Kingdom's ongoing membership in the European Union, the author identifies the foundations of contemporary English nationalism. In doing so, he adds an important corrective to the debate about nationalism in England, pulling our gaze out from the United Kingdom itself and onto a wider field. Far from being 'absent', English nationalism as we know it today has been driven by resistance to European integration since the end of Empire in the 1960s.

London's Trafalgar Square is one of the world's best known public places, and during its relatively short history has seen violent protest, imperial and royal spectacle and wild national celebration. This book draws together scholarship on national identity, cultural geography, and the histories of Britain and London to ask what role the Square has played in narrating British national identity through its many uses. The author focuses on a series of examples to draw out her arguments, ranging from the Suffragettes' use of the site in the early twentieth century to the Fourth Plinth contemporary art scheme in the early twenty-first. The book explores how different users of the Square have understood national identity, and how the site itself has shaped this narrative through its built elements and history of use. Ultimately, Trafalgar Square and the Narration of Britishness, 1900-2012 uses the Square to explore the processes by which urban public place can help to construct, maintain or transform national identity.

Britishness, Identity and Citizenship

There are many detailed accounts of nineteenth-century emigrants, of their journeys and settlements abroad - but what of those they left behind? This book delves into the heart of Georgian Britain to explore the role that the men and women of the Scottish Borders played in the mass emigration of the early nineteenth century. Although most never departed themselves, their perceptions of wealth, poverty, morality and community shaped the flow of emigrants from the rural south to the wide and expanding British Empire, as well as its North American rival, the United States. Scouring the records of grand estates, humble Kirks, flamboyant newspapers and family correspondences, the author returns the Scottish Borders to the centre of Scotland's agricultural, industrial and demographic revolutions. Standing on the sharp edge of rural transformation, the Borders played both archetype and exception, pioneering the way from a regional past to an imperial future.

Combining traditional archival with innovative digital research, this book narrates global integration and imperial governance through individuals, from Boy Scout founder Robert Baden-Powell and imperialist Alfred Milner to Canadian Mountie Sam Steele, and, foremost, thousands of SAC men.

Offers a study of the treatment of New Zealand's German-speaking settlers during the course of Great War. This book examines public, press and political responses to their presence, and describes how patriotic associations, and journalists undertook a vigorous anti-alien campaign resulting, in a number of instances, in anti-German riots.