student presentation

1. Week 9: Britain in a
Global Context
A presentation By Liv and Mani

2. A Natural Confusion
-There is confusion as to what constitutes being English and how closely aligned this is
with ‘Britishness’ or being British
-In the 1800s, just over 50% of the UK’s population were English — this has increased to
four fifth of the population ( N Davies 1999)
-Britain has become more diversified in terms of the social divisions that lie in societal
structures today — for example, race, religion, class and so on. Society becomes
stratified
-But ‘these are particular exceptions to the general rule, which is to see all the major
events and achievements of national life as English.’ - p.g. 2

3. Britain and the British
-Location and accent or language are key characteristics in identifying
Britishness
- There is supposed coldness towards the term British — as there are now
nationalist movements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — a
political conflict — ‘The use of “England” except for a geographic area,
brings protests, especially from the Scots’
- The British Broadcasting Corporation is abbreviated to BBC to
conveniently help the English and the foreigners, to ignore the fact that it
was headed by a Scottish individual — we may often associate the BBC
with British culture.

4. Historical context
- Historically, ‘Britain seems to be the most ancient of the relevant terms. It was first
recorded by the Greeks of the fourth century BC as the name of the Celts who lived in
Western Europe’s largest off-shore island.’ — p.g 5
- ‘When the Angles and the Saxons invaded the islands in the fifth century AD, they did
not associate themselves with Britannia or its inhabitants, they've called the piece of the
island they settled ‘Engla-land’, and ignored the rest.’
- ‘James I proclaimed himself king of ‘Great Britain’, in efforts to promote Britain as an
overarching identity
- Charles II(1665), ‘ tried to reconcile the Scots and English, he did this by replacing the
old emotive names England and Scotland with South Britain and North Britain, with the
overall framework of ‘Great Britain’ — arguably this is still prominent in society today.
- Although Great Britain may seem unified, it is clearly identified by its surrounding
regions, segregated (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland— ‘Four kingdoms p.g. 14)

5. Summary
In summary, K Kumar explores the interchangeability of
the relationship between being British and English.
He seeks to defend the modernist view of England and
to describe and explain English modern nationalism
In order to understand the definitions of ‘British’ and
‘English’, we must consider the historical context of
Great Britain to identify how the connotations of the
definitions have changed and have debatably become
pejorated.