Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. - book reviews

National Review, March 29, 1993 by Jeffrey Hart

In this absolutely magnificent book, Professor Linda Colley of Yale argues that the idea of being British was a cultural invention that took place between the Act of Union in 1707 and Waterloo in 1815. Britishness amounted to a new identity superimposed upon the much older nations of England, Scotland, and Wales.

In rich historical detail, Professor Colley shows that the main elements of Britishness were Protestantism, deeply held, and reinforced by a century of wars against an initially more powerful Catholic France, and an ethic of commercial enterprise and imperial expansion in which Scots played an important - and often resented - hardfisted role. Professor Colley loads every crevice with ore, and virtually every page brings intellectual discovery. I had not known, for instance, how devastating to British morale was the loss of Protestant America, a wound in the heart that led to a shivering of nerve, even a sense of sin, which in turn energized moral and political reform. This is a dazzling work of imaginative scholarship.