Historiography

We are frequently asked for recommendations on books and articles which engage with four nations history. Below is a list we have compiled but we’re hoping the Four Nations History Network community will help us add to it! Please comment below if you can recommend any additional titles to this list, which is by no means exhaustive.

Books:

• Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (Yale, CT, 2009).
• R. Colls, Identity of England (Oxford, 2004). 
• R.R. Davies, The first English empire : power and identities in the British Isles, 1093-1343 (Oxford, 2000).
• Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development (New Jersey, 1999 edn.).
• Alvin Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707-2007 (Oxford, 2011).
• Hugh Kearney, The British Isles: A History of Four Nations (Cambridge, 2014).
• Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s past. Scottish whig historians and the creation of an Anglo-British identity, 1689-c.1830 (Cambridge, 1993).
• Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000 (Cambridge, 2008).
• Graeme Morton, Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830-60 (Edinburgh, 1999).
• C. Parry-Jones, The Jews of Wales (Cardiff, forthcoming).
• Keith Robbins, Nineteenth-Century Britain. England, Scotland, and Wales: The Making of a Nation (Oxford, 1998).
• Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990).
• A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (Oxford, 2001 edn.).

Chapters in Edited Collections:

• Ronald Asch, ‘“Obscured in whiskey, mist and misery” The role of Scotland and Ireland in British History’, in R.G. Asch (ed.), Three Nations – A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History, c.1600-1920 (Bochum, 1993).
• Toby Barnard, ‘British History and Irish History,’ in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London, 1999).
• Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts, ‘Introduction’ in B. Bradshaw & P. Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and Identity. The Making of Britain, 1533-1707 (Cambridge, 1998).
• Keith Brown, ‘British History: A Sceptical Comment,’ in R.G. Asch (ed.), Three Nations – A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History, c.1600-1920 (Bochum, 1993).
• Keith Brown, ‘Seducing the Scottish Clio: Has Scottish History Anything to Fear From The New British History?,’ in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London, 1999).
• Glenn Burgess, ‘Introduction – The New British History’, in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London, 1999).
• David Cannadine, ‘British History as a “new subject.” Politics, perspectives and prospects’, in A. Grant and K.J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London, 1995).
• Nicholas Canny, ‘The Attempted Anglicization of Ireland in the Seventeenth Century: an exemplar of “British History,” in R.G. Asch (ed.), Three Nations – A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History, c.1600-1920 (Bochum, 1993).
• Tony Claydon, ‘“British” History in the Post-Revolutionary World 1690-1715’, in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London, 1999).
• Bernard Crick, ‘The English and the British,’ in B. Crick (ed.) National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1991).
• Rees Davies, ‘In Praise of British History,’ in R.R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles 1100-1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections (Edinburgh, 1988).
• Neil Evans, ‘The Changing Context of Welsh Historiography, 1890-2000’, in H. Brocklehurst and R. Phillips, History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain (Basingstoke, 2004).
• Adrian Grant and Keith Stringer, ‘Introduction: The enigma of British history,’ in A. Grant & K.J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdoms? The Making of British History (London, 1995).
• Tim Harris, ‘Critical Perspectives: The Autonomy of English History?,’ in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London, 1999).
• Joanna Innes, ‘What would a “Four Nations” Approach to the Study of Eighteenth-Century British Social Policy Entail?’, in S.J. Connolly (ed.) Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500. Integration and Diversity (Dublin, 1999).
• Hugh Kearney, ‘Four Nations History in Perspective’, in H. Brocklehurst and R. Phillips, History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain (Basingstoke, 2004).
• Hugh Kearney, ‘Four Nations or One?,’ in B. Crick (ed.) National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1991).
• Sabine Krumwiede, ‘The Home Rule Crisis before the First World War,’ in R.G. Asch (ed.), Three Nations – A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History, c.1600-1920 (Bochum, 1993).
• Robert McCreadie, ‘Scottish Identity and the Constitution,’ in B. Crick (ed.) National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1991).
• John Morrill, ‘The Britishness of the English Revolution, 1640-1660’, in R.G. Asch (ed.), Three Nations – A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History, c.1600-1920 (Bochum, 1993).
• John Morrill, ‘The British Problem’, in B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds.), The British Problem, c.1534-1707: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (Basingstoke, 1996).
• John Morril, ‘The War(s) of the Three Kingdoms,’ in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London, 1999).
• Paul O’Leary, ‘Accommodation and Resistance: A Comparison of Cultural Identities in Ireland and Wales, c.1880-1914’, in S.J. Connolly (ed.), Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500. Integration and Diversity (Dublin, 1999).
• Gordon Pentland, ‘By-elections and the Peculiarities of Scottish Politics, 1832 – 1900 in By-elections in British Politics, 1832 – 1914, ed. P. Readman and T. Otte (Boydell, Woodbridge, 2013).
• J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Conclusion: Contingency, identity, sovereignty,’ in A. Grant & K.J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdoms? The Making of British History (London, 1995).
• Keith Robbins, ‘An imperial and multinational polity. The “scene from the centre,” 1832-1922’, in A. Grant & K.J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdoms? The Making of British History (London, 1995).
• Duncan Tanner, ‘Introduction: devolution, identity and British politics’, in D. Tanner, C. Williams, W. Griffith & A. Edwards (eds.), Debating nationhood and governance in Britain, 1885-1945. Perspectives from the ‘four nations’ (Manchester, 2006).
• Dafydd Elis Thomas, ‘The Constitution of Wales,’ in B. Crick (ed.) National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1991).
• J. Vernon ‘Border crossings: Cornwall and the English (imagi)nation’, in G. Cubitt (ed.) Imagining Nations (Manchester, 1998).

Articles:

• D. Armitage, ‘Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?’, American Historical Review, 87:2 (1999). 
• Richard Bourke, ‘Pocock and the Presuppositions of the New British History’, Historical Journal, 52, 3 (2010), pp. 747-770.
• David Cannadine, ‘British History: Past, Present – and Future?’, Past and Present, 116 (1987), pp. 169-91.
• J.C.D. Clark, ‘English History’s Forgotten Context: Scotland, Ireland, Wales’, Historical Journal, 31, 1 (1989), pp. 211-228.
• Tony Claydon, ‘Problems with the British Problem,’ Parliamentary History, 16:2 (1997), pp. 221-7.
• L. Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness: An Argument’, Journal of British Studies, 31:4 (1992).
• Patrick Griffin, ‘Defining the Limits of Britishness: The “New” British History and the Meaning of the Revolution Settlement in Ireland for Ulster’s Presbyterians,’ Journal of British Studies, 39 (July 2000), pp.263-287.
• Martin Johnes, ‘Wales, History and Britishness’, The Welsh History Review (2011) 25, pp. 596-619.
• Colin Kidd, ‘Wales, the Enlightenment and the New British History’, The Welsh History Review (2010) 25, pp. 209-230.
• Naomi Lloyd-Jones, ‘Liberal Unionism and Political Representation in Wales, c.1886-93’, Historical Research (2015).
• Naomi Lloyd-Jones, ‘Liberalism, Scottish Nationalism and the Home Rule crisis, c.1886-93’, English Historical Review (2014).
• John MacKenzie, ‘Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English Worlds? A Four-Nation Approach to the History of the British Empire’, History Compass (2008) 6, pp. 1244-1263.
• J. Ohlmeyer ‘Seventeenth-Century Ireland and the New British and Atlantic Histories’, American Historical Review, 104:2 (1999).
• J.G.A. Pocock, ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’, Journal of Modern History (1975) 47:4, pp. 601-621.
• J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The Limits and Divisions of British History: In Search of the Unknown Subject’, American Historical Review (1982) 87:2, pp. 311-336.
• J.G.A. Pocock, ‘History and Sovereignty: The Historiographical Response to the Europeanization in Two British Cultures’, Journal of British Studies, 31:4 (1992). 
• Conrad Russell, ‘The British Problem and the English Civil War,’ History, 72:236 (October 1987), pp.393-415.
• Jan Rueger, ‘Nation, Empire and Navy: Identity Politics in the United Kingdom, 1887-1914’, Past & Present (2004), 185.
• Raphael Samuel, ‘British Dimensions: ‘Four Nations History’’, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, pp. iii-xxii.
• Jenny Wormald, ‘The Creation of Britain: Multiple Kingdoms or Core and Colonies?’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6, 2 (1992), pp.175-194.