British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800

✍ Scribed by Colin Kidd

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 312
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book examines the status and uses of ethnicity in political debate during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the era that immediately preceded the onset of modern racialist and nationalist thinking. Ranging widely across the political cultures of England, Scotland, Ireland and revolutionary America, it also considers European influences and comparisons as well as engaging historically with current debates over nationalism and identity.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Note......Page 9
Abbreviations......Page 10
1 Introduction......Page 11
Part I Theological contexts......Page 17
2 Prologue: the Mosaic foundations of early modern European identity......Page 19
The rise and fall of ethnic theology......Page 20
Sacred genealogies......Page 37
3 Ethnic theology and British identities......Page 44
Chronological foundations......Page 45
The resilience of orthodoxy......Page 48
British beginnings......Page 69
Part II The three kingdoms......Page 83
4 Whose ancient constitution? Ethnicity and the English past, 1600–1800......Page 85
From immemorialism to Saxonism......Page 93
5 Britons, Saxons and the Anglican quest for legitimacy......Page 109
The significance of the British church......Page 119
The making of early modern Scottish identity......Page 133
The politics of the Kirk......Page 138
Whigs, Jacobites and the ancient Gaelic constitution......Page 141
Civil religion......Page 146
Lowland identity and the politics of legitimacy......Page 149
7 The weave of Irish identities, 1600–1790......Page 156
Catholic ethnogenesis: the Old English, the Milesians and the pre-Milesian kingdom......Page 161
Protestant ethnogenesis: the New English, the Old English constitution and the Old Irish church......Page 172
Comparisons: ancient constitutionalism, gentry patriotism and colonial regnalism......Page 187
Part III Points of contact......Page 193
8 Constructing the pre-romantic Celt......Page 195
Classification......Page 198
‘British’ origins......Page 203
Ossian and the Picts......Page 210
The divorce......Page 215
9 Mapping a Gothic Europe......Page 221
The European components of English Gothicism......Page 226
The Commonwealth tradition......Page 233
The eighteenth-century mainstream......Page 237
‘Britons’ and the European‘ other’......Page 239
The limits of Francophobia......Page 243
Gothick Asia......Page 256
10 The varieties of Gothicism in the British Atlantic world, 1689–1800......Page 260
The Gothic identities of the Protestant Irish nation......Page 261
Defending Saxon America......Page 271
The Scottish Enlightenment and the rediscovery of a Gothic North Britain......Page 289
11 Conclusion......Page 297
Index......Page 302