National Identity In Great Britain And British North America 1815 1851

Examining the complex and rapidly expanding world of print culture and reading in the nineteenth century, Linda E. Connors and Mary Lu MacDonald show how periodicals in the United Kingdom and British North America shaped and promoted ideals about national identity. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, periodicals instilled in readers an awareness of cultures, places and ways of living outside their own experience, while also proffering messages about what it meant to be British. The authors cast a wide net, showing the importance of periodicals for understanding political and economic life, faith and religion, the world of women and children, the idea of progress as a transcendent ideology, and the relationships between the parts (for example, Scotland or Nova Scotia) and the whole (Great Britain). Analyzing the British identity of expatriate nineteenth-century Britons in North America alongside their counterparts in Great Britain enables insights into whether residents were encouraged to identify themselves by country of residence, by country of birth, or by their newly acquired understanding of a broader whole. Enhanced by a succinct and informative catalogue of data, including editorship and price, about the periodicals analyzed, this study provides a striking history of the era and brings clarity to the perception of British transcendence and progress that emerged with such force and appeal after 1815.

Examining the complex and rapidly expanding world of print culture and reading in the nineteenth century, Linda E. Connors and Mary Lu MacDonald show how periodicals in the United Kingdom and British North America shaped and promoted ideals about national identity. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, periodicals instilled in readers an awareness of cultures, places and ways of living outside their own experience, while also proffering messages about what it meant to be British. The authors cast a wide net, showing the importance of periodicals for understanding political and economic life, faith and religion, the world of women and children, the idea of progress as a transcendent ideology, and the relationships between the parts (for example, Scotland or Nova Scotia) and the whole (Great Britain). Analyzing the British identity of expatriate nineteenth-century Britons in North America alongside their counterparts in Great Britain enables insights into whether residents were encouraged to identify themselves by country of residence, by country of birth, or by their newly acquired understanding of a broader whole. Enhanced by a succinct and informative catalogue of data, including editorship and price, about the periodicals analyzed, this study provides a striking history of the era and brings clarity to the perception of British transcendence and progress that emerged with such force and appeal after 1815.

This, the third volume to appear in the New Oxford History of England, covers the period from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the dramatic failure of Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. In his magisterial study of the mid-Victorian generation, Theodore Hoppen identifies three defining themes. The first he calls `established industrialism' - the growing acceptance that factory life and manufacturing had come to stay. It was during these four decades that the balance of employment shifted irrevocably. For the first time in history, more people were employed in industry than worked on the land. The second concerns the `multiple national identities' of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Dr Hoppen's study of the histories of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Empire reveals the existence of a variety of particular and overlapping national traditions flourishing alongside the increasingly influential structure of the unitary state. The third defining theme is that of `interlocking spheres' which the author uses to illuminate the formation of public culture in the period. This, he argues, was generated not by a series of influences operating independently from each other, but by a variety of intermeshed political, economic, scientific, literary and artistic developments. This original and authoritative book will define these pivotal forty years in British history for the next generation.

How did British colonists in Victorian Montreal come to think of themselves as “native Canadian”? This richly illustrated work reveals that colonists adopted, then appropriated, Aboriginal and French Canadian activities such as hunting, lacrosse, snowshoeing, and tobogganing. In the process, they constructed visual icons that were recognized at home and abroad as distinctly “Canadian.” This new Canadian nationality mimicked indigenous characteristics but ultimately rejected indigenous players, and championed the interests of white, middle-class, Protestant males who used their newly acquired identity to dominate the political realm. English Canadian identity was not formed solely by emulating what was British; this book shows that it gained ground by usurping what was indigenous in a foreign land.

A study of the emergence of community among African Americans in Nova Scotia.

This book illustrates the diversity of the Irish experience by reference to studies of specific towns and regions which have hitherto received little attention from historians of the Irish in Britain during the Victorian period.