British national identities in 1714

1. British national identities in 1714 Gabriel Glickman

2. Theories of nationhood • Anthony Smith – nationhood requires common ethno-cultural core: ethni • Benedict Anderson – ‘imagined communities’ - Nationhood a phenomenon of the modern world: distinction between early modern kingdom and modern nation state.

3. State before nation? • AJP Taylor – ‘British history not a meaningful concept before 1707. • Linda Colley – ‘forging’ of the nation after 1707. • Eric Hobsbawm– nations created by power elites: subsequent ‘invention’ of national histories and national traditions. • c.f. Dennis Mack Smith on C19th Italy

4. The ‘New British History’ • Pocock, Russell – ‘British history’ is a meaningful concept pre-1707, even in the absence of a British state. • British Isles/ ‘Atlantic archipelago’ an ancient zone of cultural/ social/ commercial interaction. • Level of interaction intensified through shared experience of the Stuarts’ composite monarchy • Composite monarchies create structures whereby events in one kingdom ramify to affect other kingdoms that are part of the same royal domain. • Therefore – key events of C17th English/Scottish/Irish history = only comprehensible in a British context.

5. Creation of the composite monarchy • Increases level of interaction between peoples of the British Isles. • Scottish and English monarchs develop designs on each other’s thrones 1545-1603. • Cultivate parties of supporters in each country. • National conflicts involve movement of Gaelic soldiers across maritime borders between Scotland and Ireland.

6. Royal objectives • Level of pan-British interaction increased by attempts to centralise the composite monarchy. • Sir John Davies, Discovery (1612) – James I attempting to make English, Scots and Irish ‘grow up together in one Nation’. • Union of English and Scottish parliaments proposed in 1603-08, 1653, 1670, 1680, 1704-07. • Charles I and Scottish Covenanters similarly attached to principle of British religious uniformity (but differ in idea of the correct church).

7. Creation of British literature • ‘British’ themes increasingly central to works of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Michael Drayton. • Appeal to common history – Bacon: ‘reduce these two kingdoms of England and Scotland into the unity of their ancient mother kingdom of Britain’ • William Camden - to restore antiquity to Britaine, and Britaine to its antiquity’ • British identity interwoven with Protestant religious narrative • Bishop Richard Davies – Protestant Reformation = recovery of ancient forms of British Christianity.

8. Constraints on British identity • Retention of national prejudices / xenophobia e.g. English attacks on Stuart court for promotion of Scots and Irish. • National economic conflicts e.g. over access to Empire, imposition of Navigation Acts. • Religious conflict • Catholics vs Protestant esp. in Ireland • Conflicts between conservative and Calvinist Protestants.

9. Creation of separate national identities • Literature of English patriotism e.g. Aylmer, ‘God is English’, Spenser, ‘a kingdom of our own language’. • Spenser, View of the Present State of Ireland – unification of kingdoms = product of English imperialism. • Creation of an Irish Catholic identity defined against English colonisation – works of Geoffrey Keating.

10. Constraints on British identity – the motivations of monarchs • A genuine desire to foster s British nation or a concern to increase English/ dynastic security against foreign enemies? • Bacon – Ireland a potential ‘postern gate’ for the Spanish into England. • Charles II – aim to keep English and Scottish elites separate in order to strengthen his authority e.g. sponsoring of separate honours systems. • Result = retention of separate national cultures. - Robert Harley (1707) ‘no more of Scotch business than of Jappan’.

11. Influence of continental Europe • Places checks on growth of British identity by introducing alternative network of allegiances. • Engagement with Europe through international religious loyalties. • Protestantism – English support for Huguenots, Scots in Swedish armies. • Catholicism – representatives of Catholic Europe invited into Ireland in resistance to English authority. • Importance of European affinities confirmed by settlement of the crown on foreign monarchs in 1689 and 1714.

12. George I and the British inheritance • A limited union – concessions made in 1707 confirm separate Scottish legal system. • Scotland and Ireland ruled through trusted local magnates. • Immediate threat from Jacobitism – Stuart cause a vehicle for Scottish anti-Unionism in rebellions of 1715 and 1745. • Diaspora of c. 40,000 Jacobite exiles.

13. Survival of the union • Significance of internal English/Scottish/Irish divisions – Union survived because it appealed to political and religious interests of certain key communities. • Scottish Presbyterians prepared to support union in preference to rule by Stuarts or Episcopalians. • William Carstares - ‘The desire I have to see our Church secured makes me in love with the Union as the most probable means to preserve it’. • Irish Protestants accept subordination of Dublin Parliament as cost of retaining protection against Catholic majority. - Sir Richard Coxeon Anglo-Irish relations: ‘we are... bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh; and have no interests distinct from theirs’.