What has the four nations and empire model achieved?

Mackillop, A. (2019) What has the four nations and empire model achieved? In: Barczewski, S. and Farr, M. (eds.) The MacKenzie Moment and Imperial History. Series: Britain and the World. Palgrave MacMillan: Cham, Switzerland, pp. 261-283. ISBN 9783030244583 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-24459-0_12)

Abstract

The reinvention of British imperial studies over the last twenty-five years has occurred in a number of productive ways. The ‘decentring’ of previous frameworks which stressed dichotomous dynamics of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, ‘coloniser’ and ‘colonised’, ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, ‘European’ and ‘Other’, to name but a few, has resulted in an intellectual landscape where historical assumptions about the nature of empire have been thoroughly dismantled. This article explores one such moment of decentring by considering the development of a four nations perspective on the British Empire. It charts the origins of Professor John M. MacKenzie’s espousal of such an approach and stresses how it represents a telling example of the way in which histories of the empire remain acutely sensitive to current and contemporary issues. The chapter considers and reflects on the successes and limitations the four nations and empire model and argues that its real potential remains as yet unfulfilled, not least through a tendency for historians of Britain and Ireland to compare the various polities and societies of the British-Irish Isles in consistently partial ways. It notes few genuine four nations and empires studies exist as yet, and ends by suggesting that one way round this might be to use the model’s recalibrating of the ‘national’ to develop new comparative family, network, regional and locality studies that can fully explore the many and manifold ways the empire remade Britain and Ireland through the centuries of its existence.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Mackillop, Dr Andrew
• Authors: Mackillop, A.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > History
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• ISBN: 9783030244583