Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene) Review

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Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene) ReviewLinda Colley's Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 leans heavily on the understanding of a nation as an imagined political community of culturally and ethnically diverse peoples. Once the reader accepts this premise, Colley's central argument that religion and war served as primary movers in the creation of the British nation becomes palpable. Under this guise, Colley credits the Act of Union in 1707 that linked Scotland to England and Wales with creating the political framework into which Protestantism and persistent war with France supplied cultural coagulant and national bond.
Colley crafts a convincing argument that the world's most dominant nation of the eighteenth century was essentially established to be against something else, as opposed to being itself. To the reader's delight, Colley does not shy away from the complexities of British nationhood. She interacts with individual loyalties of Scottish, Welsh, and English villagers and concludes that "Great Britain was infinitely diverse in terms of the customs and cultures of its inhabitants" (17). In light of this glaring situation, the peoples' collective difference from the "Other" made the emerging sense of Britishness possible. Throughout the eighteenth century "men and women came to define themselves as Britons...because circumstances impressed them with the belief that they were different from those beyond their shores, and in particular different from their prime enemy, the French" (17).
One of the book's more interesting arguments appears in the opening section, in which Colley engages the role of religion in supplying Britons with a strong sense of shared identity. The Scots, English, and Welch positioned themselves over and against the Catholic French as the Other. Colley demonstrates a strong command of eighteenth-century British thinking on the Reformation, Catholic British monarchies, Catholic plots against Protestant British sovereigns, and French persecution of Huguenots. The history of Catholic atrocities, albeit somewhat distorted for effect, facilitated a British self-image as God's elect against the popish French. "The prospect in the first half of the eight century of a Catholic monarchy being restored in Britain by force, together with recurrent wars with Catholic states, and especially with France, ensured that the vision that so many Britons cherished of their own history became fused in an extraordinary way with the current experience" (25). Colley appreciates that the modern view of Protestantism in Britain creates an uphill challenge for this significant pillar of her overall argument. She, nevertheless, stands firm that "Protestantism was the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible" (54).
War served as the second major eighteenth-century cohesive of Britishness. For Colley, Great Britain "was an invention forged above all by war" (5). This characterization, at first glance, may seem overly simplistic. Yet, Colley brilliantly lays out a narrative that illustrates how the British nation found itself in war throughout its first century. The book does not contain an independent section on war; but, just as Colley argues that war spread over the book's examined period, war pervades every section of the book.
Colley devotes the book's second section to how the country's near-constant state of war affected the economics of British patriotism. For most of the century, the landed ruling class and a broad commercial community sustained a mutually beneficial relationship that, together, wielded influence over the legislature and policy-making. Though reigns of power remained firmly in the hands of the landed elite, the increased profits from imperial commerce granted the traders enhanced status, bringing together different regions of Great Britain and fattening the state's revenue. The rise in merchant clout against the ruling landowners provoked the creations of voluntary associations as a means for these powerful moneyed groups to coexist without creating new social and governmental structures.
Britons also offers an informative section on women. Great Britain throughout the century developed as a masculine culture opposed to an effeminate France. Within this culture, "woman was subordinate and confined" (256). But, Colley argues, as Mary Beth Norton has shown throughout the British American Colonies, in her brilliant work Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society, when eighteenth-century patriarchs confined women to a particular space, British and colonial American women showed uncanny ability to transform relegated space to spheres of influence. One important area where women demonstrate collective power was their support for the anti-slavery movement. Female skills--such as fund-collecting and detailed knowledge of how communities worked--"were drawn on to raise support for ending British participation in the slave trade, and then in the struggle to abolish slavery in the British colonies" (278). Colley weaves together a conclusion of how woman (political) power and the need of Britons to embrace anti-slavery as an emblem of national virtue after their American defeat came together to push the nation in favor of policies for the less fortunate peoples abroad. In British civil and military affairs, Colley points to a mutually binding contract between the sexes: "I, as a woman, will do my duty. But you, as men, must do yours" (263).
One can come away from Britons with the impression that without Catholic France constantly furnishing Great Britain with reasons for war, the British nation of the eighteenth century may not have survived. This is most likely not Colley's intent, but there is little evidence to the contrary in the book. The French nation makes cameo appearances in almost every section, driving the book's argument as a menacing counterweight. Colley, however, resists the temptation to purport French history. As fascinating as her argument is that British Protestantism led to constant war with the cross-channel Catholic neighbor, the argument remains unsatisfying. Moreover, Colley's decision to not address Ireland allows the analysis to hold together without a host of complications that a majority-Catholic country would bring to the idea of a nation forged together as Protestants against a Catholic foe. This editorial decision, nonetheless, may be unsatisfying for some.
The scope of Britons is impressive, and Colley's handling of massive amounts of historical material is nothing short of mastery. The effectively targeted use of eighteenth-century art and literature to complement sermons and trade figures provides the reader with an expanded view of the period. Colley demonstrates professional ingenuity and scholarly courage in this work, providing an essential read for scholars, undergraduates, and general historians who want a full view of British nation-building from its inception.Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene) OverviewHow was Great Britain made? And what does it mean to be British? In this prize-winning book, Linda Colley combines imperial, political, social, and cultural history to analyze the evolution of Britishness, evoking its enduring tensions as well as its powerful characteristics. Hailed at its publication as "the most dazzling and comprehensive study of a national identity yet to appear" (Tom Nairn), Britons is now reissued with a new Preface by the author commenting on the book's genesis and critical reception and on recent political developments.

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The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America Review

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The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America ReviewThis was required reading for a graduate course in American history.
In his book The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America, author James N. Gregory proceeds thematically, rather than chronologically. His intent is to use a stereoscopic method (stereoscopes set two similar but different images next to each other, thus tricking the eyes and the brain into fusing the images in a way that makes them three dimensional) in order to achieve a third dimension (page 8): not only to examine the great internal movements of black and white peoples from the American South to the American North and West, but also to examine the social, cultural, economic, and political impact that this massive internal movement of peoples had on the history of America during the twentieth century.
Gregory's The Southern Diaspora is divided into nine chapters: Chapter 1, "A Century of Migration," is an overview of the of the migration cycles and the changing economics and demography of these migrations over the course of the twentieth century, concluding that the Southern Diaspora was numerically larger than previous scholars have understood; Chapter 2, "Migration Stories," surveys the public meanings of the two sets of exoduses and highlights the unique role that media institutions and social scientists played in shaping the expectations and interactions of southerners on the move; Chapter 3, "Success and Failure," answers questions about the economic experience of black and white southerners, dismantling the maladjustment paradigm that had been so prominent in previous scholarship while also showing the critical differences in the opportunity structure facing black and white southern migrants; Chapter 4,
"The Black Metropolis," examines the communities that African Americans built in the major cities, resurrecting the label "Black Metropolis" and mapping the new and powerful cultural apparatus of those communities; Chapter 5, "Uptown and Beyond," examines the very different community formations of white southerners who spread out through suburbs and rural areas as well as big cities, struggled with confusing issues of social identity, and developed cultural institutions of historical import (e.g., diaspora country music and the white diaspora literary community would help to reshape understandings of both region and race); Chapter 6. "Gospel Highways," explores the diaspora's impact on American religion as both racial groups built Baptist and Pentecostal churches and helped to revitalize and spread evangelical Protestantism, with important political as well as religious implications for America; Chapter 7, "Leveraging Civil Rights," develops the issue of black political influence, demonstrating how important geography was to the initial phases of what ultimately became the civil rights movement;
Chapter 8, "Re-figuring Conservatism," brings the white migrants into the story of race, class, and regional transformations, exploring contributions to white working class conservatism on the one hand, and to new formulations of white liberalism on the other. Chapter 9, "Great
Migrations," brings te diaspora to a close in the 1970s and 1980s, and summarized some of Gregory's major findings (pages 8 and 9).
One important point made by Gregory is that for as long as there was something called the American South, southerners in significant numbers had been leaving; the South itself expanded through migration as white southerners in the early 1800s carved out new states for cotton and
slavery, while others moved to places north and west that today are understood to be regionally separate from the South. White out-migration was especially heavy in the two decades after the Civil War, with many leaving for farming opportunities and others settling in the North's big
cities-New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago-where the nation's commerce was concentrated. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were more than 1 million southern-born whites living outside their birth region. Census takers also counted more than 335,000 southern born African Americans living in the North and West in 1900 (page 12).
African Americans had left the South in the nineteenth century for different reasons and in different directions. Before the Civil War, some had been taken west by slaveholders who dared to move their human property into places like California and Kansas; others had escaped
northward, typically to Ohio, upstate New York, Massachusetts, and Canada. There was also something of an exodus of free black people from the South after 1830, with many of them settling in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Emancipation increased out-migration among black southerners, much of it directed toward northern cities (New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago were key destinations for freed people from Virginia and Maryland after the Civil War), but rural destinations were also and equally important: black southern migration, frequently organized by "colonization" or "emigration" societies, moved north into Indiana and west into Kansas from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee in the 1870s and 1880s (pages 12 and 13).
The central thesis of Gregory's Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America, is threefold. First, the size of the black and white southern diaspora was much more substantial than previously reported: over the course of the
twentieth century, close to 8 million black southerners, nearly 20 million white southerners, and more than 1 million southern-born Latinos participated in the diaspora (page 14). Second, the twentieth century southern diaspora can be divided into two periods: the first phase of migration . starts during the initial decade of the century, grows in the second decade when at least 1.3 million southerners leave home, reaches a peak in the 1920s with 2 million new black and white southern migrants, then tapers off in the 1930s; a much bigger second wave begins with World
War II when more than 4 million southerners move north or west, grows even larger in the 1950s when at least 4.3 million leave the South, remains near that level through the 1960s and 1970s, and then declines in the 1980s and 1990s (pages 14 and 15). Third, white southern out-migrants
outnumbered black southern out-migrants during every decade of the twentieth century, and usually by a large margin. But the southern black exodus had the more important impact: blacks were leaving the South at much higher rates than whites, and many were going to geographic
regions that had known little racial diversity (pages 15 and 17). The largest number of black migrants lived in the Great Lakes states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin); they were also the key destination for white southerners. The Middle Atlantic states (New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey) were second as a destination for African Americans, but-with the exception of New York City-much less popular with whites. The Pacific states was the third important area of settlement for both groups, especially California: by 1970, more than 1.6
million white and 571,000 black southerners lived in that state. California was also the chief destination for Tejanos and other southern-born Latinos, 213,000 of whom had settled there by 1970; Hispanic southerners had also migrated to Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana (pages 18 and 19).
Gregory challenges the image that southern migrants in the north and west were merely helpless and poor. While they faced many cultural, social, and economic challenges from within and without their culture, these migrants also had a substantial support system of family relations, organizations, and institutions that enabled them not just to survive, but even to thrive and succeed in differing environments despite tremendous odds. Financially, the majority of southern migrants did much better than their contemporaries who chose to remain in the South.
Whites and blacks left the South for related but somewhat different reasons, and found very different opportunities in the North and West. Those differences turned on the central issue of race, and from that flowed other significant differences derived from geography, class dynamics, and community formation patterns. Racial privilege granted southern white migrants significant economic and spatial advantages (i.e., the choice of where, how, and with whom they settled) over their black counterparts; that advantage was used to choose the best housing they could afford in the least dense neighborhoods, often in outlying, rather than central, urban areas. The fact that black and white southerners settled in different sorts of places, in different
concentrations would have implications not just on southern individual and group experiences, but on the North, the West, and the nation as a whole. Despite the fact that white migrants had greater numbers, black migrants gained capacities to influence cultural and political institutions that would ultimately dictate profound historical changes; The fact that whites chose dispersion over concentration, and opted for places that initially would not be centers of political and cultural power, worked against the construction of physically defined southern white communities. The loyalties and activities of elites and middle-class migrants became a key resource for African American communities, while white, middle class expatriates kept their distance from working class migrants, limiting the possibilities for group institution building and political influence. White southern migrants were influential in the promotion of evangelical churches, the development and spread of country music, and in the particular brand of racial...Read more›The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America OverviewBetween 1900 and the 1970s, twenty million southerners migrated north and west. Weaving together for the first time the histories of these black and white migrants, James Gregory traces their paths and experiences in a comprehensive new study that demonstrates how this regional diaspora reshaped America by "southernizing" communities and transforming important cultural and political institutions.
Challenging the image of the migrants as helpless and poor, Gregory shows how both black and white southerners used their new surroundings to become agents of change. Combining personal stories with cultural, political, and demographic analysis, he argues that the migrants helped create both the modern civil rights movement and modern conservatism. They spurred changes in American religion, notably modern evangelical Protestantism, and in popular culture, including the development of blues, jazz, and country music.
In a sweeping account that pioneers new understandings of the impact of mass migrations, Gregory recasts the history of twentieth-century America. He demonstrates that the southern diaspora was crucial to transformations in the relationship between American regions, in the politics of race and class, and in the roles of religion, the media, and culture.

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