Seminar 1: Britishness and identity
Seminar Questions
- How strong is your national identity?
- What is Britishness?
- What other identities do you have and how do they overlap with your national identity?
Supporting Documents
- Bill of Rights
- Montesquieu, Notes on England (1729/30)
- Hogarth, Gates of Calais 1748 - This painting was inspired by Hogarth’s ill-fated trip to France in 1748. While waiting in Calais for a boat home, he was seized by a French soldier as he sketched the old city gate. Having convinced his captors that he was an artist rather than a secret agent, he was summarily despatched to England. Hogarth expended all his Francophobic vitriol into the creation of this image, which is dominated by an English sirloin steak being slavered over by a gluttonous friar and a pair of half-starved soldiers. Famously, Hogarth inserts a self-portrait into the painting on the left, in which he is shown just on the point of being captured.
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- Gordon Brown's speech on 'Britishness'
- John Bull images - see sub page via tab on left hand of page
Key Reading
- Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, (Introduction and Chapter 1)
Further Reading
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L. Brockliss and D. Eastwood, A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles 1750-1850 (1997)
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L.Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness’, Journal of British History (1992)
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E. Evans, ‘English identity in the18th century’ in C.Bjorn, A.Grant and K.Stringer (eds), Nations, Nationalism and Patriotism in the European Past (1994)
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G. Newman, The rise of English Nationalism: a Cultural History 1740-1830 (1987)
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M. Pittock, Inventing and resisting Britain : cultural identities in Britain and Ireland 1685-1789 (1997)
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J. Smyth, The Making of the United Kingdom 1660-1800 (2001)
