British History: A Plea for a New Subject

Britishness and Australia: Some reflections

“…Pocock's clarion call for a new subject called 'British History', which began the whole enterprise, was issued from Christchurch, New Zealand in 1973. 8 He, as a New Zealander, has subsequently confessed that the lecture was composed and delivered after the great divorce which occurred when you [the British] told us that you were now Europeans, which we as New Zealanders were not … What you did, of course, was irrevocably and unilaterally to disrupt a concept of Britishness which we had supposed that we share with you … In effect, you threw your identity, as well as ours, into a condition of contingency, in which you have to decide whether it is possible to be both British and European …, while we have to decide in what sense if any we continue to be British or have a British history. 9 British scholars, in reacting to Pocock's plea and the problems of identity raised by Britain's entry into the European Community have, however, confined their research and writing to the history of the United Kingdom and Ireland and to its connection to British North America.…”

Reinventing the British world

“…9 It was therefore with the purpose of re-evaluating the notion of a British world that a conference was held in June 1998 at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, on the theme of 'The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity since circa 1880'. In total 22 papers were presented and 70 people attended.…”

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Debate over Irish Home Rule: The Dominion of Canada, Irish Home Rule, and Canadian Historiography

“…Pocock, Raphael Samuel, and Linda Colley pioneered thought on what the British national identity is and what Britishness actually means (Pocock 1975(Pocock , 1982Samuel 1989;Colley 1992). In more recent years, this inquiry has expanded to consider the concept of British national identity in the empire beyond the British Isles, the importance of which is increasingly recognized by Canadian historians.…”