This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars to evaluate the viability of four nations approaches to the history of the United Kingdom from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It recognises the separate histories of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and explores the extent to which they share a common, British history. They are entwined, with the points at which they interweave and detach dependent upon the nature of our inquiry, where we locate our core and our periphery, and the cause and effect of our subject.
The collection demonstrates that four nations frameworks are relevant to a variety of topics and tests the limits of the methodology. The chapters illuminate the changing shape of modern British history writing, and provide fresh perspectives on subjects ranging from state governance, nationalism and Unionism, economics, cultural identities and social networking.
PART I: METHODOLOGY.-
1. A New Plea for an Old Subject? Four Nations
History for the Modern Period; Naomi Lloyd-Jones and Margaret Scull.- 2.
J.G.A. Pocock and the Politics of British History; Ian McBride.- 3. A
Vertiginous Sense of Impending Loss: Four Nations History and the Problem of
Narrative; Paul OLeary.- PART 2: PRACTICE.- 4. The Eighteenth-Century
Fiscal-Military State: A Four Nations Perspective; Patrick Walsh.-
5. The
Scottish Enlightenment and the British-Irish Union Of 1801; James Stafford.-
6. Celticism and the Four Nations in the Long Nineteenth Century; Ian B.
Stewart.-
7. The Beefeaters at the Tower of London, 1826-1914 - Icons of
Englishness or Britishness?; Paul Ward.-
8. Regional Societies and the
Migrant Edwardian Royal Dockyard Worker: Locality, Nation and Empire;
Melanie Bassett.-
9. Four Nations Poverty 1870-1914: The View from the
Centre to the Margins; Oliver Betts.-
10. Wales and Socialism 1880-1914:
Towards a FourNations Analysis; Martin Wright.- Index
Naomi Lloyd-Jones researches responses to Irish Home Rule in Britain. Margaret M. Scull writes on the Catholic Church during the Northern Irish Troubles. They are both based at King's College London, UK, and are co-founders of the Four Nations History Network.
