Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837
Linda Colley
 Britons begins with the period after the 1707 Act of Union, when the diverse peoples of the British isles developed a sense of “Britishness” based largely on their perceived differences from Europeans. A common commitment to Protestantism provided Britons with a unifying history and a constant enemy in Catholic France for over a century, reinforced by the growth of British trade and mercantilism. Colley contends that the Jacobite insurrection of 1745 against the Hanoverian government was unsuccessful because the twin forces of Protestantism and the financial interests of the merchant class motivated Britons to stand firmly against a Catholic Stuart uprising and the economic destabilization it would bring. British unity was shaken after the overwhelming success of the Seven Years' War, which left Britain with a huge foreign empire to rule, turning Britain into a military power and forcing her citizens to re-examine their definition of Britishness and empire. Losing the American Revolutionary War made the country more patriotic and set the ideas of monarchy, military, and empire at the center of British identity. George III was more attentive to the royal image than his predecessors and came to be loved by his people. Total war with Napoleonic France provided women an opportunity to carve out their own niche, however small, for themselves in the public sphere, working in support of the war effort and the royal family. Just as war transformed women's participation in public and political life, so too did it lead to increased political power for men because the government needed mass military participation during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. During the 1830s, the unity of the British nation was challenged by three reform crises: the expansion of the rights of Catholic citizens, the movement for parliamentary reform, and the abolition of slavery. These reform efforts gave a great number of Britons their first opportunities to engage directly in the political life of the nation; the majority of British subjects were still not citizens, however, but subjects, calling into question the degree to which Britain was a nation of Britons.' Britons closes by taking note of debates over British identity today, especially with regard to the European Union, and the influences that originally bonded Britons are now largely gone, leading to a resurgence of English, Scottish, and Welsh identity.