Chapter 5: British History, 1660-1832

Abstract

The essence of what happened to the idea of Britain in the eighteenth century is that it mutated from an essentially sectarian idea into one founded on ideas of empire and racial superiority.’ Part of this process was the secession of the inhabitants of the pre- 1763 anglophone colonies on the mainland of North America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and their replacement, at the centre of imperial activity outwith Britain by the Scots and to a certain extent by the Irish, so that the Britain of 1829 (Catholic Emancipation) or 1832 (Parliamentary Reform) or 1837 (the Accession of Queen Victoria) was well and truly a very different construct from that of 1707 or even 1763.