Seminar 9: The Break-Up of Britain?

1. What held the United Kingdom together and what divided it over the course of the twentieth century?
2. To what extent was British national identity under threat in the post-Second World War era, and from which directions?
3. How did the British attitude towards Europe change in the second half of the twentieth century?
4. Should the history of twentieth-century Britain be a story of four nations or one?

Seminar Reading

Richard Weight, Patriots.

Further Reading

Geoff Eley, ‘Culture, Britain and Europe’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 390-414

J. Ellis, ‘Reconciling the Celt: British National Identity, Empire, and the 1911 Investiture of the Prince of Wales’, Journal of British Studies, 37 (1998)

Aled & Bill Jones, ‘The Welsh World and the British Empire, c. 1851-1939’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31 (2003)

Rebecca Langlands, ‘Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain’, Nations and Nationalism, 5 (1999), 53-69.

B. Crick, National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom (1991)

Norman Davies, The Isles: A History (1999)

Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism (1977)

A. Grant & K. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (1995)

S. Greenwood, Britain and European Integration since the Second World War (1996)

Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism (2000)

James Loughlin, Ulster Unionism and British National Identity since 1885 (1995)

R. Merfyn Jones, ‘Beyond Identity? The Reconstruction of the Welsh’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 330-57

H. Kearney, The British Isles: A History of Four Nations (1989)

Krishan Kumar, ‘English and British National Identity’, History Compass, 4 (2006), 428-47

Tony Kushner, We Europeans? Mass-Observation, ‘Race’ and British Identity in the 20^th Century (2004)

Andrew Marr, The Day Britain Died (2000)

A. May, Britain and Europe since 1945 (1998)

Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain (1977)

Kathleen Paul, ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity: The Irish in Postwar Britain’, International Journal of Labour and Working-Class History, 49 (19996), 116-42

Keith Robbins, ‘Insular Outsider? British History and European Integration’ and ‘Images of the Foreigner in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Britain’, in his History, Religion and Identity in Modern Britain (1993)

Neil Rollings, ‘Britain and Europe’ in Carnevali & Strange (eds.), 20^th Century Britain, 339-53

Raphael Samuel, ‘Four Nations History’, and ‘Unravelling Britain’, Island Stories, pp. 21-73

Richard Weight, ‘Losing the Peace: Germany, Japan, America, and the Shaping of British National Identity in the Age of Affluence’, in Lawrence Black & Hugh Pemberton (eds.), An Affluent Society: Britain’s Post-War Golden Age Revisited (2004)

Gwyn Williams, ‘When was Wales?’, in The Welsh in their History (1982)

Stuart Woolf, ‘Britain and Europe: Off-Shore or On-Board?’, History Today (January, 1999), 8-15

Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (1998)

J.W. Young, Britain and European Unity, 1945-1999 (2000)