Adams, Matthew, Ph.D. (2002) Imagining Britain : the formation of British national identity during the eighteenth century. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the supposed development of an 'imagined community' of
the British during the eighteenth century. Responding in particular to Linda
Colley, it aims to show that her use of Benedict Anderson's well-known
definition of the nation is both inappropriate and misleading. Taking as its
evidence the substantial genre of contemporary historical writing about pre-Norman Britain, it attempts to develop an account of that genre's relationship to
the growing reading public in Britain, its capacity to provide the imaginative
terrain in which that public might consider itself to possess a shared identity, and
the limits and obstacles to such a project. In doing so, it also explores the nature
of the historical genre in this period, and finds its development to be tightly
bound up with developments in print culture more generally, but especially with
the rise of the novel and of the newspaper (the very genres lying at the heart of
Anderson's account of nationalism).
Later chapters concern themselves with developing the arguments brought
out in the first half of the thesis, using different forms of evidence: histories of
the common law, the debate on population, and the debate over the French
Revolution. Here I deal variously with issues of custom, tradition, commerce and
improvement, and their purchase upon notions of truth, as well as with the
position of marginal figures - women, 'the mob' - in the supposedly national
imagination. I conclude by arguing that the nation represented by Anderson is
fundamentally utopian in character, that it did not and does not meet the
essentially elitist 'imagined community' which my thesis uncovers, and should
not be used to describe it.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, National characteristics, British, British -- Books and reading, Great Britain -- History -- To 1066 -- In literature
Official Date:	February 2002
Dates:	Date Event February 2002 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Wahrman, Dror ; Jones, Colin, 1947- ; Steedman, Carolyn
Sponsors:	Arts and Humanities Research Board (Great Britain) (AHRB)
Extent:	v, 362 leaves
Language:	eng

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