British Scholar: Davies

The Isles: A History
Norman Davies (London: Papermac, 2000), 1078 pages

Identity in the component nations of the United Kingdom forms the overarching theme of The Isles.
Davies believes that many people have come to mistake Great Britain, which consists of three
nationalities (English, Scottish, and Welsh), simply with England. His task throughout the rest of the
book, in addition to giving the reader a comprehensive historical lesson on the United Kingdom and
the Republic of Ireland, involves keeping the imagined identities of the four major nations distinct.
Overall, Davies demonstrates that the Scots, English, Welsh, and Irish do not constitute ethnically
homogeneous nations but, instead, share a more similar ancestry than leaders of nationalist
movements would ever readily admit. At the very least, all four groups could, if called upon, trace
their lineages to Celtic and Germanic peoples. In fact, during the fifth century A.D. four distinct
peoples inhabited Scotland: the Picts, British, Irish, and the Angles. By the early ninth century the
groups could call themselves by the single name of Scots, derived from the Roman word for Irish
immigrants: Scotti.

The evolution of identity in England until the Act of Union of 1707, when a British patriotic identity
dominated by the English supplanted the older national myths, offers a persuasive look into the power
of elites in creating national distinctiveness. For Davies, the formation of a separate English identity
commenced with the West Saxon elite in the tenth century. In the fourteenth century King Edward III
forcibly imposed English as the official language of his kingdom. This drastic move constituted the
first step in isolating the Isles from the Continent. Following Henry VIII’s split with Rome, Thomas
Cromwell reinforced the separation from the Continent through religious-based propaganda written in
English and the conscientious progression towards mass literacy. The works of great playwrights like
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and others buttressed the idealistic dream of the English nation.
Overall, while Davies sees the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a twentieth
century construct, fragmenting once again into its component mythical nationalities, he takes solace in
the fact that the European Union will save the people from elite manipulators and their ingrained
nation-based hallucinations.