Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theological contexts
- Part II The three kingdoms
- 4 Whose ancient constitution? Ethnicity and the English past, 1600–1800
- 5 Britons, Saxons and the Anglican quest for legitimacy
- 6 The Gaelic dilemma in early modern Scottish political culture
- 7 The weave of Irish identities, 1600–1790
- Part III Points of contact
- Index
4 - Whose ancient constitution? Ethnicity and the English past, 1600–1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theological contexts
- Part II The three kingdoms
- 4 Whose ancient constitution? Ethnicity and the English past, 1600–1800
- 5 Britons, Saxons and the Anglican quest for legitimacy
- 6 The Gaelic dilemma in early modern Scottish political culture
- 7 The weave of Irish identities, 1600–1790
- Part III Points of contact
- Index
Summary
The identity of the English nation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fits neatly into neither of the main categories of classification identified by political scientists, being neither indisputably ethnic nor exclusively civic-territorial. Although early modern Englishness drew heavily on the inspiration of the nation's Anglo-Saxon past, it was far from straightforwardly ethnocentric. Rather, ideological imperatives shaped a troubled legacy of repeated conquests and new ethnic settlements into an irreducible ‘story’ of England. This myth was well adapted to the rigours of contemporary political discourse but its chameleon qualities defy modern definitions of national identity. Englishmen enjoyed both an ethnic identity as the descendants of the libertarian Anglo-Saxons and an institutional identity derived from the historic laws and mixed constitution of the realm, a long regnal history which encompassed the ancient Celtic Britons, the Gothic Saxons who displaced them from the fifth century onwards and the Normans who arrived in the eleventh century. Anglo-Saxonism predominated as the core identity of the English people, but, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the ‘aboriginal’ ancient Britons enjoyed significantly more than a walk-on part in the national pageant. The Normans too, although often cast as villains, played an integral (and sometimes positive) part in the unfolding history of English liberty.
This rich ethnic diversity was a minor ingredient of English national identity.
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- Chapter
- Information
- British Identities before NationalismEthnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800, pp. 75 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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