How was Great Britain made? And what does it mean to be British? This brilliant and seminal book examines how a more cohesive British nation was invented after 1707 and how this new national identity was nurtured through war, religion, trade, and empire. Lavishly illustrated and powerful, Britons remains a major contribution to our understanding of Britain’s past, and continues to influence ongoing controversies about this polity’s survival and future. This edition contains an extensive new preface by the author. “A sweeping survey, . . . evocatively illustrated and engagingly written.”—Harriet Ritvo, New York Times Book Review “Challenging, fascinating, enormously well informed.”—John Barrell, London Review of Books “Linda Colley writes with clarity and grace...Her stimulating book will be, and deserves to be influential”—E. P. Thompson, Dissent

A History of British Elections since 1689 represents a unique single-volume authoritative reference guide to British elections and electoral systems from the Glorious Revolution to the present day. The main focus is on general elections and associated by-elections, but Chris Cook and John Stevenson also cover national referenda, European parliament elections, municipal elections, and elections to the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies and the Scottish parliament. The outcome and political significance of all these elections are looked at in detail, but the authors also discuss broader themes and debates in British electoral history, for example: the evolution of the electoral system, parliamentary reform, women's suffrage, constituency size and numbers, elimination of corrupt practices, and other important topics. The book also follows the fortunes not only of the major political parties but of fringe movements of the extreme right and left. Combining data, summary and analysis with thematic overviews and chronological outlines, this major new reference provides a definitive guide to the long and varied history of British elections and is essential reading for students of British political history.

This comprehensive five-volume set contains readable essays that describe and interpret the most important global events since the European Renaissance, some accompanied by related document excerpts and primary source materials. What were the effects of the Age of Exploration on today's ethnic groups and social structure? How did the development of moveable type pave the way for Facebook and Twitter? Why is the Reformation so critical for understanding today's religious controversies? This set will help readers answer these questions by exploring the most significant historical events of the modern world. This five-volume set covers times from the Renaissance to the present. Each volume focuses on a specific historic period and examines 12 events within those time frames that changed the world. Each entry provides an introduction that lays out factual material in a chronological manner, an in-depth essay interpreting the event's significance, and an annotated bibliography of the most important current works on the topic. Select entries are followed by primary sources pertaining to the event under consideration, such as diary entries. Targeted to both general readers as well as entry-level university students, this book also directly supports high school and undergraduate curricula, allowing students to identify and contextualize events in order to think critically about their causes, aftermath, and legacy.

Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688–1928 explores the history of citizenship in Britain during a period when admission to the political community was commonly thought about in terms of gender. Between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 the key question in British politics was what sorts of men – and subsequently women – should be admitted to citizenship, particularly in terms of parliamentary suffrage. This book makes new links between the histories of gender and politics, and surveys exciting recent work in these areas. By examining central topics such as political masculinity, electoral culture, party politics and women’s suffrage through this lens, it expands not only the remit of gender history but encourages the reader to rethink how we approach the history of politics. It explores the close connections between gender, nation and class in Britain, and advocates a new cultural history of politics for the period between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688-1928 is essential reading for students of early modern and modern British history, gender history and political history.

This book brings together the articles of J.R. Dinwiddy to show both the coherence and importance of his contribution to British history in this period. His work covers the spectrum of political activity and thought from the Whigs to the Luddites and from Burke via Bentham to Marx.

Mark Knights offers the first overview of Britain's history of corruption in office in the pre-modern era, 1600-1850. Drawing on extensive archival material, Knights shows how corruption in the domestic and imperial spheres interacted, and how the concept of corruption developed during this period, changing British ideas of trust and distrust.