A floating commonwealth : politics, culture, and technology on Britain's Atlantic coast, 1860-1930 / Christopher Harvie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harvie, Christopher, 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain--History--19th century.

Great Britain.

History.

Great Britain--History--20th century.

National characteristics, British.

Physical Description:

xii, 319 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Christopher Harvie offers a new portrait of society and identity in high industrial Britain by focusing on the sea as connector, not barrier. Atlantic and 'inland sea'-from Cornwall to the Clyde-Harvie argues, together created a 'floating commonwealth' of port cities and their hinterlands whose interaction, both with one another and with nationalist and imperial politics, created an intense political and cultural synergy. At a technical level, this produced the freight steamer and the efficient new railways which opened up the developing world, as well as the institutions of international finance and communications in the age of 'telegrams and anger'. Ultimately, the resources of the Atlantic cities, their shipyards and engineering works, enabled Britain to withstand the test of the First World War.

Meanwhile, as Harvie shows, the continuous attempt to make sense of an everchanging material reality also stimulated the discourses on which social criticism and literary modernism were based, from Thomas Carlyle to James Joyce, although the ultimate outcome-revolt in Ireland, slump and emigration-would leave enduring problems in the years to come.

Contents:

I Places and Voices

1 Sacred Lambencies and Thin Crusts: The Metaphors of Identity 35

2 Garron Top to Westward Ho! The Inland Sea 57

3 MacAndrew: The Engineer and the Celtic Fringe 86

II Ourselves together

4 Anglo-Saxons into Celts: The Scottish Intellectuals, 1760-1930 111

5 The Folk and the Gwerin 128

6 Contrary Heroes: Catholicism, Carlyle, and Ireland 153

III In Time of the Breaking of Nations

7 Muscular Celticism: Sport and Nationalism 177

8 John Bull's Other Irishman: Bernard Shaw, Capitalism, and the Celts 197

9 Men who Pushed and Went: West-Coast Capitalism, War, and Nationalism 219

IV Aftermath

10 'Night's Candles are Burnt Out' 251.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198227830

0198227833

OCLC:

185095687