British National Identity Research Articles

The Creation of State Anniversaries: James VI and I and the Politics of Thanksgiving

Abstract Religious anniversaries ordered by the state—by the monarch, royal council or parliament—were observed in England and Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. These have been studied chiefly as occasions for special sermons and popular festivities, the expression of English or Irish Protestant national identity, or the pursuit of party controversies. But examination of both the original establishment of state anniversaries by James VI and I, with three appointed during the short period from 1600 to 1605, and the principal documents published for these occasions, the orders and the forms of prayer, brings different perspectives. The anniversaries were British in scope. The first was originally ordered in Scotland, where James developed a politics of thanksgiving that he subsequently re-applied in England and Wales, with anniversaries which were later duplicated in Ireland. The king’s immediate purposes were to assist the management of political and ecclesiastical difficulties, and to advance a closer union of his Scottish and English kingdoms. His long-term aim was to increase the authority and the godly claims of the Stuart dynasty. This promotion of a divine-right British monarchy remained central to the special English and Irish church services which were conducted each year during the following centuries. In so far as the anniversaries came to be concerned with national identities or party causes, these were in tension with the texts and meanings of their religious services.

Mourning and orienting to the future in a liminal occasion: (Re)defining British national identity after Queen Elizabeth II's death.

In this paper, we conceptualize the days of mourning that followed the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. as constituting a liminal occasion, a moment of in-betweenness through which we can explore sense-making in times of transition. How do people navigate through liminal occasions, and are they always transformative? Through a rapid response ethnography (Ninterviews = 64, Nparticipants = 122), we were able to capture the raw moments within which a collective comes together, as part of a national ritual, to transition from 'here' to 'there'. In our data, liminality prompted participants to strategically define British national identity and its future by positioning the Queen as representative of Britishness, her loss as a national identity loss. No longer taken for granted, participants reasserted the value of the monarchy as an apolitical and unifying feature in an otherwise divided society, characterizing the continuity of the institution as an essential part of British identity and society. The analysis illustrates how liminality offers a useful conceptual tool for addressing how temporality and change are negotiated in relation to a shared identity, and how navigating transitional moments brings with it political implications for the future.

Unearthing Identity: the Role of Archaeology in Shaping English National Identity and Heritage Interpretation

ABSTRACT This study examines the significant impact of archaeology on English national identity and heritage interpretation, focusing on key sites like Stonehenge, Sutton Hoo, and Hadrian’s Wall. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we analyze how archaeological discoveries shape national narratives, emphasizing continuity, rootedness, and cultural uniqueness. Through qualitative methods, including interviews and focus groups, we find that public perceptions of these sites highlight themes of engagement, inclusivity, and the need for more comprehensive interpretations. Our results reveal that archaeological interpretations evolve with societal values and political agendas, often reinforcing or challenging notions of national identity. This study underscores the dynamic relationship between archaeology, nationalism, and cultural memory, advocating for a more inclusive and nuanced approach to heritage management and public engagement.

Nothing but a Humbug: P.T. Barnum, Charles Dickens, and the Construction of National Identities in a Living Archive

Abstract: Even as the Victorians attempted to stabilize British national identity through institutional ownership of cultural property, Britishness remained a protean, imagined construct. This essay shows, through a new narrativization of the auction of Shakespeare's birthplace in 1847, that the purportedly kitschy and fake aspects of Barnumesque, new-money America were paradoxically also constitutive of Britain's own nationalism. In the spring of that year, newspapers advertised that Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon would soon go up for public auction. Rumours immediately began circulating that the American showman P.T. Barnum, who had recently barnstormed through England with the "Greatest Show on Earth," was intent on purchasing the birthplace for his menagerie of cultural oddities. In opposition to this foreign threat, a full-blown rescue campaign, driven by British media fearmongering, was launched in order to save Shakespeare's home "for the nation." Soon, these efforts drew in Britain's own premier showman of the 1840s, Charles Dickens. The nineteenth-century popular press's mythologization of these events, and the myth's subsequent recapitulation in the twenty-first century, is emblematic of the way national-infused archives wind and unwind in a double-spooled temporality. As I renarrativize archival materials associated with the auction of Shakespeare's birthplace, I proffer a different model of American and British nationalisms that points to their symbiotic development and perpetual reinvention. Ultimately, I suggest, we can learn from the Victorians' reinvention of their own history that the nineteenth-century archive is not a stable point of origin but rather a point of departure for questioning our national heritage and understanding the ways in which we inscribe the past with our present.

Civil Service Rules: (Post)Colonial Memoir and the Raj Revival, 1970–1985

In the 1970s, the India Office Archive within the British Library began inviting the last generation of the Indian Civil Service and Indian Political Service to commit their experiences to written record. Running until the mid-1980s and eventually producing 135 manuscript memoirs, this archive offers a unique insight into the end of the British Empire, as seen a generation hence. This article argues that these memoirs, generated in a time of crisis and fracture within British national identity, are not only vital historical sources but are a significant body of creative work within the context of acute cultural production of narratives of Empire known as the ‘Raj Revival’. Moreover, in their acknowledgement, inclusion and direct dialogue with colonial fictions from Kipling to Forster, as well as their own aesthetic form, these memoirs are part of the long tendency towards the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and life writing within the historical publishing cultures of British India.

Brexit’s Illusion: Decoding Islamophobia and Othering in Turkey’s EU Accession Discourse among British Turks

The warnings about Turkey’s not-so-near accession to the EU are explored as a strategic tool in the Brexit campaign, linking concerns about sovereignty and immigration compounded with the anxieties surrounding Islam and the threat of terrorism. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Edward Said’s Orientalism and the unique perspectives gathered from British Turks, this paper sheds light on their nuanced responses. It uncovers strategies of disbelief and denial in the face of the constructed narrative that portrayed Turkey as an undesirable ‘Other’ with its predominantly Muslim population. A closer analysis of some British Turks’ narratives is premised not only on the sacralised defence of the principles of Turkish westernisation but also on the socio-political reputation of the Islamic Ottoman past as almighty. The article equally contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between British national identity and discourses surrounding immigration, sovereignty, and Islamophobia within the context of Brexit, as well as the principles by which the privileges of modern, secular Turkey, as well as the demise of the mighty Ottoman image, are maintained. In a paradoxical manner, the act of denial only serves to affirm the Brexit campaign’s narrative depicting Turkey as an undesirable ‘Other’ with a predominantly Muslim demographic.

The discursive formation of British national identity: the lexical aspect

British national identity has been in the zone of constant study by scientists for a long period of time, but after Brexit, interest in this topic has increased significantly. The British nation, especially the part of it that was on the side of the Eurosceptics, after Brexit was aimed at strengthening the British identity and completely destroying any influence of globalization on the British nation. But despite the expectations of the British, many scientists agree that the national British identity is still in crisis. Thus, the object of this research is the culture-bound lexical elements of the English-language political discourse of online mass media, and the purpose is to identify the current state of British national identity through the analysis of the words-realities of the British political discourse. Current works (not older than five years) by Russian and foreign scientists in the fields of political discourse and national British identity form the methodological basis of the research. The analysis of the culture-bound lexical elements of English-language political discourse is carried out on the basis of online media texts for the period January–April 2024, which makes the study innovative and reflects the trends of modern linguistic science. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the national British identity is in a state of crisis. Brexit and subsequent events gave the British nation hope for the ascent of national identity and the return of its former imperial greatness, but analyzing the current articles of British online publications on political topics, it becomes evident that international processes still prevail over the British identity. The further perspective of the research lies in the field of studying the discursive formation of British identity from the point of view of syntactic, grammatical, and social aspects.

‘Mamie Djihad’ and ‘the white widow’: constructing French and British national identities in terrorist times of crisis

ABSTRACT This article considers the media representation of two women who left the west for Islamic State (IS) in the mid-2010s: from France, Christine Rivière, nicknamed “Mamie Djihad” (Granny Jihad); and from Britain, Sally Jones, known as “The White Widow”. Both were white, middle-aged mothers, born and raised in their respective countries, who converted late in life and left behind established lives and (adult) children to join IS. While much has been written on the migration of western women to IS territory, scholarship has focused on younger women and girls who have been represented as groomed and vulnerable to IS propaganda. These two “unlikely jihadists” profoundly unsettled commonsense ideas about who was vulnerable to radicalisation, and, more troublingly, their defections could potentially be read as statements on the desirability of life in the west vis-à-vis IS’s model. Using Critical Discourse Analysis of leading French and British news media, the article demonstrates how journalists represented both women as always-already outside their respective nations through two key narratives: a gendered discourse of abject motherhood and an intersectional discourse that constructed them as abject inside Others. These narratives worked to suture the ideological rupture caused by these women, who were at first glance typically French/British, by demonstrating that they had actually always been on the margins of the national community and had always been dangerous to the nation.

We will fight them on the centre ground, we will never remember: the Second World War, psychocultural repression and liberal configurations of modern British identity

ABSTRACT This article argues that a form of what Sigmund Freud termed ‘abnormal repression’ [(2014). Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Read & Co. (Originally published in 1910] writ large onto British cultural memory is essential to understanding several phenomena: firstly, the UK’s popular amnesia about the Second World War, a process that echoes Michael Billig’s proposition that ‘Historians creatively remember ideologically convenient facts of the past, while overlooking what is discomfiting’ Billig, M. [(2014). Banal nationalism. Sage, p. 38]; secondly, how such repression has informed contemporary political debates about British imperial and neo-imperial actions to Brexit to ‘rising anti-Semitism’ [Lentin, A. (2020). Why Race Still Matters. Polity]; and thirdly, how a dialectic between these first two phenomena are patterning a British national identity proposed by the political centre. As Ernest Renan observes, mass-forgetting is ‘a crucial element in the creation of nations’ [(1990). What is a nation? In H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and narration (pp. 5–22). Routledge, p. 11].

Uncivil and unruly Englishness: mythologies of England recast in the work of Jez Butterworth and Angela Carter

ABSTRACT Written eighteen years apart Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem (2010) [Jerusalem. Nick Hern Books] and Angela Carter's final novel Wise Children (1992) [Wise children. Vintage Classics] both attempt to recreate a sense of Englishness for the marginalised ‘under-class’ of post-imperial England without falling prey to nationalist interpretations. The two texts present raucous, vulgar protagonists who force an alternative rebellious form of proudly proletarian English identity into being. Where Carter’s work is seen against the post-war backdrop of industrial decline, Butterworth’s work is connected to a renewed interest in vernacular rural English culture. The action of both texts take place on one day, 23 April, making use of the fact that the day of national celebration, St George's Day, coincides with that of Shakespeare's birthday. Both texts, in fact, reclaim the mainstays of English national identity, Shakespeare and the myth of St George and recast them with characters who revel in the enactment of their anti-establishment identities. This paper will argue that the purposefully unruly behaviour of the protagonists of these texts continue the tradition of incivility as a form of social resistance in England, allowing the creation and assertion of an alternative Englishness that emanates from the margins and sees its roots in Shakespearean bawdiness and England’s pagan past.

English Patriotism and the Implicit Nation: Homelands and Soldiers’ National Identity during the Great War

Abstract This article explores the patriotism and national identity of English soldiers during the First World War. Using this conflict as a case-study, it draws together work on Great War mentalities and scholarship on Englishness. It argues that individuals’ national identity focused on and formed around the ‘implicit nation’, which was primarily concerned with communities and parochial local (or regional) spaces. There was no ‘essential’ England: the homeland could be rural or urban, natural or human. English national identity embraced this plurality. Using published material, soldiers’ newspapers and private letters, diaries and postcards, this article highlights the ways in which allegiance to an ‘implicit nation’ was nurtured by a military that championed local and regional identities. As subjects, not citizens, soldiers naturally centred their attention on the communities and landscapes of their homeland. The war did not diminish men’s emotional connections to these homelands; in fact, it made them all the stronger. In concentrating on the subjective and emotional features of patriotism, this paper suggests that Englishness was inherently heterogeneous and drew its strength from this. Rather than a commitment to abstract structures such as the state, or theoretical political principles, it argues that English national identity embraced a composite, or patchwork, of mutually supporting patriotisms attached to particular homelands. It was a sense of these homelands that underlay men’s identification with Britishness, the Empire and the monarchy. Importantly, soldiers’ experience of the First World War gave this a new (or at least more vocal) articulation.

‘We all just want a flag to get behind’: the politics of English national identity

ABSTRACT This paper explores English national identity through qualitative interviews with English-identifying voters in rural South-West England, amidst post-Brexit and COVID-19 uncertainties. Analysing 16 in-depth interviews, the study uncovers micro-level foundations of English identity, revealing a multifaceted view where participants consider it an absent identity. As members of the dominant cultural group, they define Englishness by their perceived 'normal,' distancing anything diverging from their norms as foreign. The study suggests a connection between English identity and reactive resentment towards perceived asymmetrical identity norms compared to neighbouring devolved nations. These findings shed light on the nuanced nature of English identity in rural areas and contribute to discussions about fostering a progressive and inclusive English identity.

Eastern Premise: Writing the East of England in the Novels of Graham Swift

ABSTRACT This article is a critical exploration of how three of Graham Swift’s novels - Waterland (1983), Last Orders (1996), and Here We Are (2020) – offer a literary representation of the (south) east of England, and how his engagement with the locations of Norfolk, Kent, and Sussex in these books informs their themes, characterization, and narrative form. Recognizing how space and place is integral to his writing across the course of his career, the article illustrates how, for Swift, the east means the embodied experience of the past, and is where memory and history coincide within his writing. Through evaluation of how Swift’s work is informed by these critical currents of place, the article argues that his repeated focus on eastern spaces guides his portrayal of English national, regional, and individual identities. The emptiness of the Fens, the historical legacy of Kent, and the spectacle and carnivalesque of Brighton create an interrelated geographical portrait of eastern England that spans the twentieth century and beyond, encompassing changes in shared meaning and cultural signification in both place and time during this period of social and political change.

Anglo-British exceptionalism and the European “Other”: white masculinities in discourses of British national identity

ABSTRACT Gender as a concept is essential for understanding British/English national identity. Feminist and queer scholars note that gender and sexuality are central to politics, yet frequently omitted from political analysis. Some scholars have highlighted the hegemonic masculinities that underpinned Brexit campaigns, but the role of gender in the construction of national identity in Europe has not been analyzed in depth. Combining the literature on national and European identities with feminist theories of gender and nationalism, I outline four discourses of Anglo-British exceptionalism: (1) British sovereignty and military power; (2) the British as defenders of liberty; (3) Britain as a global trading nation; and (4) England as a white Protestant “island nation.” Constructed in relation the European “Other,” these discourses are underpinned by gender-based hierarchies that intersect with class, race, and sexuality. These findings demonstrate the need for feminist and gender analysis not only of the UK’s relationship with the European Union (EU) but also more broadly within political science and EU studies.

Britanya Mitinde Yer Alan Robin Hood ve Kral Arthur’un Folklorik İncelemesi

King Arthur and Robin Hood, as two main folkloric figures, play an important role in British national identity especially in the nineteenth century. Throughout centuries, these mythical stories became well-known in the cultural heritage of other countries besides Britain. The lore and depictions of these two characters were not limited to the written and oral literature but came into existence through different mediums such as television, cinema, and computer games. Both the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood have topical themes reflecting the political, social, and cultural issues and conflicts in societies and shape the future as timeless artefacts. In this sense, the major aim of this paper is to present and analyze the evolution of these two folk legends by using various historical and cultural sources to demonstrate the validity of the two characters across time, place, and medium. King Arthur and Robin Hood: The History and Folklore of England’s Most Famous Folk Legends by Jesse Harasta (2009) is used as the basis of the evolution of the lore of the two folkloric characters. The stories and the characters, the subjects of various myths and legends throughout centuries, have also been adapted and used in a variety of works and products transmitting local history of the lore of King Arthur and Robin Hood into global folklore. The political, social, and cultural use, adaptation, and evolution of King Arthur and Robin Hood will be traced starting from their emergence in the medieval ages through the twentieth century when the lore of King Arthur and Robin Hood is transformed through story-telling and added to different structures by using different media. As will be exemplified per the aim of the study though some changes in the presentation of the folkloric characters are present; the major dichotomic human characteristics are preserved. The article follows the trajectory of evolution of two legends into myths, literature, and finally products of popular culture. The work questions whether the divisive line between what is local and authentic versus that which is globalized and thus international is as clear as is presupposed.

Концепт POWER в мифологической культуре английской национальной идентичности (на материале романа Дж. Р. Р. Толкина “The Lord of the Rings”)

The study aims to identify the specifics of the linguocultural paradigm of the POWER concept as a marker of the mythological component of the English national identity in the formation and evolution of the unreal world in the fantasy genre in terms of dynamic synchrony. The paper is devoted to the study of the POWER concept in J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel “The Lord of the Rings” from the standpoint of linguistic and national-cultural continuity. The study is original in that it is the first to propose the author’s interpretation of the POWER concept as a construct represented by a hierarchy of mythological macro- and micro-concepts from the standpoint of dynamic synchrony in the fantasy genre. As a result, it has been proved that the POWER concept is presented as a construct of the corresponding mythological cultural code of the English conceptual sphere; the cultural matrix of the POWER concept of the modern English ethnic group is determined to a large extent by the change in the structure of the concept and, in particular, by the change in the connotative sign of the ‘power’ lexeme from positive to negative evaluation; the relevance of the identified linguocultural features is due to the mythologisation and demythologisation processes during the formation and functioning of the analysed concept in the general cultural and national context.

British Imperialism, National Identity, and Scotland’s Built Environment

British Imperialism, National Identity, and Scotland’s Built Environment

“Fear” as a disintegration factor: conceptual view on British-European relations in light of Brexit

The article aims at contributing to discussions on British national identity and its impact on the state’s foreign policy, with British-European relations used as an example. The author provides a concept of “fear” within the constructivist approach as a tool to explain withdrawing from the integration organisation. According to it, the logic of state’s behaviour can be explained with the help of four impulses that cause fear for one’s own identity. These are generalised categories that make it easier to analyse and describe actions taken by actors while interacting with their counteragents. Given the results of the research on British-European relations, one can conclude that deeper integration and gradually empowered supranational bodies provoke conflict between national and transnational identities. For fear of being deprived of its identity, which is of paramount importance, the United Kingdom was trying to securitise the threat by leaving the Union. Accordingly, the concept of “fear” facilitates defining reasons why politicians turn to politicising a problem and developing a security scenario, which is Brexit when it comes to British-European relations. Yet, it doesn’t guarantee identity restoration and can only aggravate internal issues, which is proved by the case of Great Britain.

English Phraseological Units as Representatives of National and Cultural Specificity

The article investigates the national and cultural aspect of phraseological units of the English language. This field is underdeveloped, but attracts more and more attention of linguists. This article focuses on highlighting the national and cultural specificity of phraseological units in such areas as cooking, weather, sports, social inequality and history. Each of the above areas is represented by several examples of phraseological units, with an explanation of the meaning and analysis of the cultural component. Understanding the cultural aspect of idioms is important for effective intercultural communication. Each phraseological unit has its own history and influence on modern culture around the world, as English remains the main international language of communication. The article expands the understanding of the relationship between language and culture, emphasizing that culture has a significant impact on both the language of its people and global communication in the world. Each phraseological unit analyzed in the article carries important information about the history, development and formation of the nation as such. Each phraseological unit connects the modern life of the British with their historical past. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to explore and deepen the understanding of the cultural aspect of phraseological units for better communication in international discourse. The study has highlighted the close relationship between language, culture and British national identity.

‘The True Food of the Brain’ : protéines et constructions raciales en Angleterre, 1840-1910

In the eighteenth century, meat became strongly associated with English national identity and was often used in discourses about national differences. This article seeks to analyze how, from the 1840s to WWI, the development of food chemistry—a science then primarily concerned with the importance of proteins—contributed to strengthening this discourse. The article thus shows how science gave a renewed legitimacy to discourses establishing strong fault lines and hierarchies between different peoples or ‘races’, depending on their diets. The second part of the article shows, however, the evolutions and complex uses of this scientific discipline which eventually contributed to a relative weakening of ideas linking a meat diet and national or racial supremacy.