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Unmasking Britannia: The Rise and Fall of British National Identity
Author(s) -
McCrone David
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1354-5078.1997.00579.x
Subject(s) - sword , national identity , loyalty , state (computer science) , politics , identity (music) , political science , spanish civil war , history , political economy , law , sociology , economic history , art , engineering , aesthetics , mechanical engineering , algorithm , computer science
. British national identity is a supranational identity deriving from an imperial past. Warfare created Britain in the eighteenth century, and at first glance mass war in the twentieth century seemed to reinforce it. War, however, was a twoedged sword. On the one hand, it dominated the lives of Britons between 1900 and 1945, yet war and its social‐political demands weakened the fabric of the British state which was designed to be a nation‐state, rather a state‐nation. The more it demanded loyalty to its national icons, the more it became clear that these were not ‘national’ at ail. In many ways war forged state and nation but in a way that has led to its possible break‐up.