How was the history of nationalism in Britain unlike the rest of Europe?

The model of the nation or the nation state, some scholars have argued, is Great Britain.

(i) In Britain the formation of the nation-state was not the result of a sudden upheaval or revolution. It was the result of a long-drawn-out process. There was no British nation prior to the eighteenth century.

(ii) The primary identities of the people who inhabited the British Isles were ethnic ones-such as English, Welsh, Scot or Irish. All of these ethnic groups had their own cultural and political traditions. But as the English nation steadily grew in wealth, importance and power, it was able to extend its influence over the other nations of the islands.

(iii) The English Parliament, which had seized power from the monarchy in 1688 at the end of a protracted conflict, was the instrument through which a nation-state, with England at its centre, came to be forged.

(iv) The Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland that resulted in the formation of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’ meant, in effect, that England was able to impose its influence on Scotland. The British parliament was henceforth dominated by its English members.

(v) The Catholic clans that inhabited the Scottish Highlands suffered terrible repression whenever they attempted to assert their independence.

(vi) The Scottish Highlanders were forbidden to speak their Gaelic language or wear their national dress, and large numbers were forcibly driven out of their homeland.

(vii) Ireland suffered a similar fate. It was a country deeply divided between Catholics and Protestants. The English helped the Protestants of Ireland to impose their dominance over a large Catholic country.

(viii) Catholic revolts against British dominance were brutally suppressed. After a failed revolt led by Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen (1798), Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801.

(ix) A new ‘British nation’ was forged through the propagation of a dominant English culture. The symbols of the new Britain – the British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble King), the English language - were actively promoted and the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union.