Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Britishness since 1870 is an academic history book which seeks to show how
Britishness has been a more adaptable and resilient (rugalmas) national
identity than is sometimes thought.
Paul Ward disagrees with those historians and commentators who have tried to
define or capture the 'essence' of Britishness. Ward is not interested in the ways in
which an 'unchanging Britishness, forged long in the past' (172) has been passed
down from one generation to the next; rather, he is interested in how the
meaning of Britishness has changed and evolved throughout the course of
the twentieth century. He is interested in how 'people have been actively
engaged in the construction of British national identity', and how this 'has made
Britishness a resilient force' (9). His book attempts to rebuff (visszautast) those
advocates of the 'end of Britain' who tend to assume that the inhabitants of the
United Kingdom 'ought to be acting in particular ways, that they should be becoming
more Welsh, Scottish or Irish' (169).
The book is organised thematically, with each chapter focusing on a particular
theme to show how Britishness has continued to be redefined in a number of
different contexts. The seven chapters cover the issues of 'monarchy and empire',
'gender and national identity', 'rural, urban and regional Britishness', 'spare time',
'politicians, parties and national identity', 'ethnicity and Britishness', and 'outer
Britain' (which looks at the strength of Britishness among the unionist communities
in the 'Celtic fringe'). Each chapter emphasises the resilience of the forces which
have operated to ensure that the inhabitants of Great Britain continue to consider
themselves to be - at least in part - British.
Analysis
For the past two decades politicians and journalists have been predicting the
collapse of the United Kingdom and with it the decline of British national identity.
Ironically, these anxieties about the imminent end of Britain have stimulated
historians to take a deeper interest in the history of Britishness and national identity.
In general, historians have followed politicians and journalists in charting the decline
of British national identity from a perceived heyday in the period between the two
world wars. It is significant that the foundational text of British national identity
Chapter five argues that the emergence of political parties with a national reach and
appeal have served to reinforce a sense of unity among the inhabitants of the
Britain and Ireland.
Chapter six, which looks at the relationship between ethnicity and national
identity, shows how the belief that Britishness is a fixed identity (revolving around
ideas of respectability, the home and the 'quiet' suburban neighbourhood) was
steadily developed during the course of the twentieth century. Ward argues that
immigration has challenged this closed and fixed idea of national identity,
forced the British to reconsider 'who they are', and opened up space for
the articulation of a civic, rather than cultural Britishness that recognises
and encourages diversity. To what extent these ideas or the Britishness issue is a
concern of non-white and white immigrant communities more generally is not
addressed in any depth.
The final chapter argues that Britishness was never an English imposition, but
instead it has been a positive identity which those on the 'Celtic fringe' have held
simultaneously with other regional identities.
Britishness since 1870 therefore encourages us to think about the instability of
British national identity. What he is most interested in is showing how people have
been engaged in the construction of British national identity, and how this has
'made Britishness a resilient force' (9). The fact that many immigrants and their
descendants desire what Tariq Modood calls a 'hyphenated Britishness' (i.e. to be
black-British and black-Indian), indicates that Britishness will continue to be reimagined and reconstructed into the future.