British Identity

One of the great merits of Britain is that Britishness is not principally an ethnic but rather a civic identity. The four home nations are ethnic realities finding subsidiary juridical expression within the civic whole of the United Kingdom. It is of course quite possible for immigrant populations to acquire Welsh, Irish, Scottish or English ethnic identity through intermarriage and cultural assimilation (hopefully not a one sided assimilation), but this is a natural process taking a few generations or a lifetime at least. One can become British in an instant by swearing an oath of loyalty to Elizabeth II and receiving British citizenship. It is far preferable (as I believe Pius XII said during one of his war-time Christmas Addresses) that civic and ethnic units not coincide exactly. In some ways it would seem that Britain is the opposite of the United States: four nations in one state rather than fifty states in one nation. But this does not quite do justice to the matter. Britain, though composed of nations, is also a nation itself. 

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I was discussing this yesterday with someone who thinks that the nationhood of Britain can be justified simply on the basis of the shared civic tradition since 1603 and (more intensely) 1707. It seems to me that this would not be enough to justify the term nation. Mere dynastic or legal union of ethnic nations does not produce a composite national identity of itself. This, it seems to me, is illustrated by inter alia the Austrian and Russian dominions. 

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The British case is closest to that of Spain. Here we have a basic ethnic and geographical unity interrupted by barbarian invasion in late antiquity. This invasion led to the splitting of Spain into many different realms which in turn were reunited in the early modern period. The split, however, lasted so long that many of the subsidiary identities became felt as national identities and in the end, through the vicissitudes of Habsburg decline in the seventeenth century, one of the Spanish kingdoms broke away and became independent – Portugal. 

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Britain too has a basic ethnic unity. The term Britain originally referred to the entire island group with the largest island called Albion and the second largest Erin. This is the original sense recorded as far back as the fourth century BC. One of the earliest uses of the term (by Diodorus) is a reference to the second island. I am reliably informed by a expert on the subject from Edinburgh University that the P and Q Celtic languages of Albion and Erin were probably still essentially the same language and certainly mutually intelligible at the beginning of the Christian era. The beginning of the distinction into four nations comes with the Roman invasion. Agricola was completing the conquest of Albion and was planning the conquest of Erin when he was recalled to Rome by an envious Domitian. This fateful event created the first division between the far north of Albion, never incorporated into the Roman Province, and between Albion and Erin. Further confusing matters the Romans, as was their custom, named their province after the whole of the region they had originally intended to conquer – Britannia. This led to the confusing use of Britain to denote merely Albion. This was partially resolved later in the middle ages when the term Great Britain arose to distinguish Albion from the other Islands and Armorica (which had been renamed after its ex-pat British population). The Q Celts called the remaining portion of the larger Island by the term originally used for the Island as a whole – Alba.

 

 

The second stage in the distinction came in the Roman province itself through the withdrawal of regular troops in 410. The Anglo Saxon invasions drove the British inhabitants to the west of the island of Albion. It seems from modern DNA testing hat the ‘English’ are still mostly of British descent but they have lost their language and identify themselves with the Germanic military aristocracy that conquered most of the Roman Province. This is eerily confirmed by the fact that all orally transmitted English folk stories whose origins precede the Norman Conquest are Welsh in origin, with the sole exception of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Those Roman Britons who retained their language and remembered who they were became the Cymry (Citizens) or Welsh (Foreigners).    So began the process of solidification into four home nations. The Picts (un-Romanised Britons) were eventually assimilated by Irish invaders (Scoti) and lost their original identity as the English had done. Nevertheless the older identity survived in various ways and occasionally looked capable of political revivial. The chief Anglo-Saxon ruler still called himself Bretwalda (Latin: Rex Britanniae). Oswy of Northumbria exercised almost as wide a dominion as James VI. Bede begins and ends his History by talking of Britain not England. But, partly because of Bede’s famous ‘Non Angli sed Angli’ story, when England was finally united into a single kingdom it was called the Regnum Angliae not the Regnum Britanniae. The legends of King Arthur which were such an important part of insular (and wider mediaeval) culture insured that the idea of Britain could not be wholly forgotten. . 

The Papal grant of Ireland to Henry II (later confirmed as a royal title under Philip and Mary), the English conquest of Wales and the accession of the Maid of Norway could have combined to create a political Britain hundreds of years early. Margaret’s death and Edward I’s attempt to annex Scotland by force made this impossible. .

The accession of a Welsh dynasty with Arthurian pretensions (the Tudors) coincided with the Marriage (Margaret Tudor and James IV) which ultimately actually accomplished what James VI called “the blessed Union, or rather Reuniting” of Britain. The Union Jack and the style ‘King of Great Britain’ date from this moment not from the Hanoverian Union of the Parliaments in 1707 (though James VI desired a parliamentary union). After the Union of 1801 George III took the royal style Britanniarum Rex and dropped the ‘Great’ in recognition of the complete parliamentary union of Britain. This remains the royal style in Latin. The Latin title of the United Kingdom as it appears on the Great Seal is Regnum Britanniarum. The proclamation of 1801 also added the St Patrick’s Cross to the Union Jack. The St Patrick’s Cross is not (as is often alleged) a Hanoverian invention. It appears very clearly on the seal and arms of Trinity College Dublin as the flag of Ireland. Trinity was founded before the Union of 1603 and its arms were certainly in use by 1612. 

Thus the various Unions of 1603, 1707 and 1801 are not the basis of the national claims of Britain as an entity. Aristotle says that the earliest societies are hereditary monarchies because they grow out of the family. This tends to pass away as such units federate into ‘Cities’. We owe our parents obedience and honour as children but honour and respect as adults. The development from Monarchical government to a Constitutional Monarchy is not perhaps so unnatural. Only a universal empire can possess a purely civic identity. The hereditary monarchy which actually accomplished the union of the British Isles fittingly expresses the ethnic identity of Britain which preceded and defines the ethnic identities of the four nations and creates the space for the civic concept of British patriotism which prevents the much stronger ethnic identities of the four nations degenerating into racial nationalism. The existence of Britain insures that even in the emotional moments of patriotic feeling for one’s own nation and/or state one is reminded that “men should brothers be and form one family the wide world o’er”.