Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The History of British Political Thought: a Field and its Futures
- PART I BRITISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND HISTORY
- 2 Thinking about the New British History
- 3 The Matter of Britain and the Contours of British Political Thought
- 4 The Intersections Between Irish and British Political Thought of the Early-Modern Centuries
- 5 In Search of a British History of Political Thought
- PART II BRITISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND LITERATURE
- PART III BRITISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND POLITICAL THEORY
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Thinking about the New British History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The History of British Political Thought: a Field and its Futures
- PART I BRITISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND HISTORY
- 2 Thinking about the New British History
- 3 The Matter of Britain and the Contours of British Political Thought
- 4 The Intersections Between Irish and British Political Thought of the Early-Modern Centuries
- 5 In Search of a British History of Political Thought
- PART II BRITISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND LITERATURE
- PART III BRITISH POLITICAL THOUGHT AND POLITICAL THEORY
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Almost every historian believes but struggles to prove that knowledge of the past helps us to understand the present. It is so much easier to see how experience of the present helps us to understand the past. It is therefore no surprise that interest in the British past as against the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish pasts has grown exponentially over the past 25 years. In part this recovery of a sense of the integrity of the ‘British’, ‘British and Irish’, ‘archipelagic’ past (the instability of nomenclature is itself revealing of the contended nature both of the process of recovery and of what is recovered) is the result of the debate that is raging about the future shape of the United Kingdom, in the face of devolutionary (and separatist) political and cultural movements in Scotland and Wales (even England), and in the face of uncertainty about the future relationship between the North of Ireland and (a) Britain (b) the Republic of Ireland. In part it is also a result of the soul-searching that has been going on across Britain and Ireland about whether their future destiny lies primarily as part of ‘Europe’ or in relation to the Anglophone diaspora, not only (or not particularly) the British Commonwealth but in a special relationship with the United States. In part it also results from the natural desire of historians to move on from worked-out seams to open up new ones: for example, from theories of historical causation rooted in the dynamics of class dialectic and conflict to ones based on ethnic and cultural conflict (itself connected with the previous points).
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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