Defining Britishness: A new guide to an old country

Who are the British? It used to be an easy question to answer. Indeed, for two centuries and more it was a question Britons hardly needed to think about at all. Go back to the early 18th century and Britons were ‘the bulwark of the Reformed Religion’. They had won freedom while others groaned under absolute monarchs. They defied Louis XIV while others surrendered; from one point of view Britain could be described as the most enduring legacy of the Sun King.

Then came victories and conquests overseas, as the under-achiever of the 17th century began to construct a global empire. A note of triumphalism crept in as Thomas Arne’s ‘Rule Britannia’ became the nation’s unofficial anthem and ‘God Save the King’ the official one. With Jacobitism defeated in 1746, the Union flag became one in which most Britons were proud to wrap themselves. And, the loss of America notwithstanding, the victories continued, the conquests multiplied and the Empire spread ever further. There was no need to ask who were the British when a quarter of the map was coloured pink. The historic stresses within the British Isles could be forgotten when their disparate nations had a vast empire to govern.