A Union of Multiple Identities: the British Isles, c.1750-c.1850. Edited by L Brockliss and D Eastwood. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Pp. xviii + 222; £40.00 hb. ISBN 0 7190 5046 4

If the quality of a publication can be measured in terms of the volume of notes taken, then this will be remembered as a very useful study indeed. The main theme is the development of Britishness as a composite identity in conflict with local and national counterparts in the fifty years either side of the 1800 Act of Union. Such is not a new topic - Linda Colley and Keith Robbin both have prior claims. The charm of this collection, however,  is not the amount of new information which is on display (though there is plenty enough here to recommend the book on that basis alone) but the clarity and consistency of the contributors in placing it into a British Isles context, to the benefit of all. While some authors have recently begun to bring an awareness of the British Isles into their regional studies (James Loughlin providing a fine example in his recent book on Ulster Unionism), most collections have turned out to be episodic and loosely strung together. It is to the particular credit of the editors, then, tat this one feels, in retrospect, like it was written by a single author.
Although the layout and proof-reading are of a very high standard, the fact that the first sentence in the Foreword is incomplete means that this study gets off to the worst possible start. Thereafter, matters improve. In the Introduction, the editors argue that British identity was accepted because it could be recognised as different to the local and national counterparts. This is a point which historians of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will understand implicitly, but it is one worth making because it challenges notions of imagined community as something which is singular. Such is the view from Whitehall rather than Wigan - and here it justifies a sustained critique of Linda Colley's work on the grounds that 'the only Britons for whom Britishness was a primary and permanent identity comprised the small proportion of the educated and well-to-do who operated in an all-British context'. Later, the editors flatly contradict her assertion that Britons derived their identity from hatred of the continental other. Intellectual security blankets form targets for these writers - and rightly so - so readers should prepare themselves for the refreshing (or unedifying) shock of the argument that Union provided the finance which saved Connacht (like the Highlands) from otherwise certain desertion, allowing it to survive and become a nationalist dream-base.
Lawrence Brockliss also contributes a chapter arguing that the popular appeal of Britishness should be measurable by monitoring the development of the new professions of the nineteenth century. His basic premise is that, if Britishness had