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Linda Colley

Other affiliations: Yale University, Girton College, Southern Cross University  ...read more
Bio: Linda Colley is an academic researcher from Central Queensland University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Public service & Public sector. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 87 publications receiving 3998 citations. Previous affiliations of Linda Colley include Yale University & Girton College.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, Colley explains how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union, and how this new national identity was nurtured through war, religion, trade and imperial expansion.
Abstract: How was Great Britain made? And what does it mean to be British? In this prize-winning book, Linda Colley explains how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union, and how this new national identity was nurtured through war, religion, trade and imperial expansion. Here too are numerous individual Britons - heroes and politicians like Nelson and Pitt; bourgeois patriots like Thomas Coram and John Wilkes; artists, writers and musicians who helped to forge our image of Britishness; as well as many ordinary men and women whose stories have never previously been told. Powerful and timely, this lavishly illustrated book is a major contribution to our understanding of Britain's past and to the growing debate about the shape and survival of Britain and its institutions in the future. \"The most dazzling and comprehensive study of a national identity yet to appear in any language.\" Tom Nairn, Scotsman \"A very fine book ...challenging, fascinating, enormously well-informed.\" John Barrell, London Review of Books \"Wise and bracing history ...which provides an historical context for debate about British citizenship barely begun.\" Michael Ratcliffe, Observer \"Controversial, entertaining and alarmingly topical ...a delight to read.\"Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph \"Uniting sharp analysis, pungent prose and choice examples, Colley probes beneath the skin and lays bare the anatomy of nationhood.\" Roy Porter, New Statesman & Society

1,352 citations

Book
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: In this paper, Colley explains how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union, and how this new national identity was nurtured through war, religion, trade and imperial expansion.
Abstract: How was Great Britain made? And what does it mean to be British? In this prize-winning book, Linda Colley explains how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union, and how this new national identity was nurtured through war, religion, trade and imperial expansion. Here too are numerous individual Britons - heroes and politicians like Nelson and Pitt; bourgeois patriots like Thomas Coram and John Wilkes; artists, writers and musicians who helped to forge our image of Britishness; as well as many ordinary men and women whose stories have never previously been told. Powerful and timely, this lavishly illustrated book is a major contribution to our understanding of Britain's past and to the growing debate about the shape and survival of Britain and its institutions in the future. "The most dazzling and comprehensive study of a national identity yet to appear in any language." Tom Nairn, Scotsman "A very fine book ...challenging, fascinating, enormously well-informed." John Barrell, London Review of Books "Wise and bracing history ...which provides an historical context for debate about British citizenship barely begun." Michael Ratcliffe, Observer "Controversial, entertaining and alarmingly topical ...a delight to read."Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph "Uniting sharp analysis, pungent prose and choice examples, Colley probes beneath the skin and lays bare the anatomy of nationhood." Roy Porter, New Statesman & Society

1,228 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Macartney, Viscount Macartney of Dervock in the county of Antrim, had been up since four o'clock, making final preparations for his audience with the emperor of China at his summer palace at Jehol, just north of the Great Wall as mentioned in this paper, standing waiting in the large, silken tent for over an hour before Ch'ien-lung eventually arrived, “seated in an open palanquin, carried by sixteen bearers, attended by numbers of officers bearing flags, standards, and umbrellas.
Abstract: There is no more effective way of bonding together the disparate sections of restless peoples than to unite them against outsiders. [E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 91]Britain is an invented nation, not so much older than the United States. [Peter Scott, Knowledge and Nation (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 168]The morning of Saturday, September 14, 1793, was bitterly cold, and George Macartney, Viscount Macartney of Dervock in the county of Antrim, had been up since four o'clock, making final preparations for his audience with the emperor of China at his summer palace at Jehol, just north of the Great Wall. He stood waiting in the large, silken tent for over an hour before Ch'ien-lung eventually arrived, “seated in an open palanquin, carried by sixteen bearers, attended by numbers of officers bearing flags, standards, and umbrellas.” To the fury of the watching Chinese courtiers who had wanted him to execute the full kowtow (three separate kneelings and nine knockings of the head on the floor), Macartney went down on one knee only and presented the emperor with a letter from George III in a gold casket covered with diamonds. He followed this with other gifts—pottery, the best that Josiah Wedgwood's factory in Staffordshire could produce, a diving bell patented by the Anglo-Scottish engineer John Smeaton, sword blades from Birmingham, an orrery, a telescope, and some clocks.

305 citations

Book
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: Captives as mentioned in this paper is an exploration of what happened to these aggressor-victims and why, and what these overseas captivities reveal about British relations with and attitudes towards non-European peoples - and vice versa.
Abstract: Linda Colley's latest book is at once a grand saga, a remarkable detective story, and a major work of revisionist British and imperial history. Ranging in setting from white slave markets in North Africa, to imperial conflicts and catastrophes in North America and India, it recovers the experiences of a vital but forgotten category of individuals. The captives in question are those hundreds of thousands of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers, soldiers, sailors, traders and travellers seized and subordinated by different non-European peoples in the course of Britain's early imperial enterprise and expansion. At one level, Captives is an exploration of what happened to these aggressorvictims and why. Here are the tales of Sarah Shade, a camp follower in the East India Company's army who became a captive in Mysore; of Joseph Pitts, seized by Algerian corsairs and the first Briton ever to complete the pilgrimage to Mecca; and many more. But Colley also uses these captivity tales to investigate Britain's imperial story far more broadly, re-assessing the depth and quality of British power. She investigates what these overseas captivities reveal about British relations with and attitudes towards non-European peoples - and vice versa. The result is a book that raises questions both about the impact and meanings of British empire in the past, and about this empire's legacies and successors today. Illustrated throughout, and evocatively written, Captives will change the way in which the British empire is looked back on, both amongst those who still retain some admiration for it, and amongst those to whom it remains profoundly controversial and troubling.

190 citations


Cited by
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MonographDOI
TL;DR: The argument of ethnic cleansing in former times is discussed in this article, where two versions of 'we, the people' are presented. But the argument is not applicable to the current world.
Abstract: 1. The argument 2. Ethnic cleansing in former times 3. Two versions of 'we, the people' 4. Genocidal democracies in the New World 5. Armenia, I: into the danger zone 6. Armenia, II: genocide 7. Nazis, I: radicalization 8. Nazis, II: fifteen hundred perpetrators 9. Nazis, III: genocidal careers 10. Germany's allies and auxiliaries 11. Communist cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot 12. Yugoslavia, I: into the danger zone 13. Yugoslavia, II: murderous cleansing 14. Rwanda, I: into the danger zone 15. Rwanda, II: genocide 16. Counterfactual cases: India and Indonesia 17. Combating ethnic cleansing in the world today.

930 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Two very powerful stories structure the history of the changing roles of English women as mentioned in this paper : the tale of the nineteenth-century separation of the spheres of public power and private domesticity relates principally to the experience of middle-class women.
Abstract: Two very powerful stories structure the history of the changing roles of English women. The tale of the nineteenth-century separation of the spheres of public power and private domesticity relates principally to the experience of middle-class women. The other story, emerging from early modern scholarship, recounts the social and economic marginalization of propertied women and the degradation of working women as a consequence of capitalism. Both narratives echo each other in important ways, although strangely the capacity of women's history to repeat itself is rarely openly discussed. This paper critically reviews the two historiographies in order to open debate on the basic categories and chronologies we employ in discussing the experience, power and identity of women in past time.

709 citations

Book
18 Sep 2008
TL;DR: The authors examined the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK) using opinion surveys, as well as newly collected data on election campaigns.
Abstract: Over the past three decades the effects of globalization and denationalization have created a division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in Western Europe. This study examines the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK) using opinion surveys, as well as newly collected data on election campaigns. The authors argue that, as a result of structural transformations and the strategic repositioning of political parties, Europe has observed the emergence of a tripolar configuration of political power, comprising the left, the moderate right, and the new populist right. They suggest that, through an emphasis on cultural issues such as mass immigration and resistance to European integration, the traditional focus of political debate - the economy - has been downplayed or reinterpreted in terms of this new political cleavage. This new analysis of Western European politics will interest all students of European politics and political sociology.

666 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined how government policies affect ethnic relations by comparing outcomes across two nearby districts, one in Kenya and one in Tanzania, using colonial-era boundary placement as a "natural experiment".
Abstract: This article examines how government policies affect ethnic relations by comparing outcomes across two nearby districts, one in Kenya and one in Tanzania, using colonial-era boundary placement as a “natural experiment.” Despite similar geography and historical legacies, governments in Kenya and Tanzania have followed radically different language, education, and local institutional policies, with Tanzania consistently pursuing more serious nation building. The evidence suggests that nation building has allowed diverse communities in rural Tanzania to achieve considerably better local public goods outcomes than diverse communities in Kenya. To illustrate, while Kenyan communities at mean levels of diversity have 25 percent less local school funding than homogeneous communities on average, the comparable figure in the Tanzanian district is near zero. The Kenya-Tanzania comparison provides empirical evidence that serious reforms can ameliorate social divisions and suggests that nation-building should take a place on policy agendas, especially in Africa.

590 citations