Diplomarbeit

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Diplomarbeit View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OTHES DIPLOMARBEIT Titel der Diplomarbeit „Scottish National Identity: the Case of Irn Bru“ Verfasserin Stefanie Gattringer angestrebter akademischer Grad Magistra der Philosophie (Mag.phil.) Wien, 2012 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 343 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Anglistik und Amerikanistik Betreuerin: Assoz.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl Acknowledgements I would like to thank my family and friends for their support during my studies and during the time I spend on writing this thesis. My gratitude goes especially to Eva H. for her valuable comments. Many thanks also go to my supervisor, Dr. Susanne Reichl, who enabled this research project and provided me with helpful feedback. Furthermore my gratitude goes to the Erasmus scholarship programme. The Erasmus scholarship enabled me to study at the University of Aberdeen and thus to enrich my academic life. It sparked my interest in Scotland and was the inspirational source for the topic of this thesis. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my parents, Renate and Stefan Gattringer, in order to thank them for their inestimable support and encouragement throughout the years. And the good thing is that as we arrive at a position where Scottishness, and especially Scottish identity, is neither perceived nor defined in any narrow way, we are no longer looking towards a series of ideas or symbols, far less searching for a hero, this kind of work is entirely suited to the spirit of the times, offering a sense of optimism and hope through experimentation and imaginative freedom that shows no sign of diminishing. (MacDougall 2001, 270) Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................. 1 2. Historic Outline............................................................................ 4 2.1 Key dates .............................................................................................................. 4 2.1.1 Declaration of Arbroath ....................................................................................................... 4 2.1.2 Jacobite rebellions ............................................................................................................... 5 2.2 Relationship to England ......................................................................................... 6 2.3 Scotland as nation within the UK ........................................................................... 8 2.3.1 Devolution .......................................................................................................................... 13 2.3.2 The role of the Scottish National Party .............................................................................. 15 3. National identity ........................................................................ 19 3.1 Setting the scene ................................................................................................. 19 3.2 Theories of national identity ............................................................................... 24 3.2.1 Benedict Anderson ............................................................................................................. 25 3.2.2 Anthony Smith ................................................................................................................... 27 3.3 Scottish National Identity .................................................................................... 30 3.3.1 General aspects .................................................................................................................. 31 3.3.2 History ................................................................................................................................ 35 3.3.3 Myth ................................................................................................................................... 37 3.3.3.1 The Stuart Myth ........................................................................................................ 39 3.3.4 Place ................................................................................................................................... 41 3.3.5 Language ............................................................................................................................ 43 3.3.6 Britishness versus Scottishness .......................................................................................... 47 3.3.7 Inferiorisation..................................................................................................................... 52 3.3.8 Images and symbols of Scottishness .................................................................................. 56 3.3.8.1 The Highlands ........................................................................................................... 59 3.3.8.2 Tartanry .................................................................................................................... 63 3.4 Regional identities .............................................................................................. 67 3.5 Performance of national identity ........................................................................ 71 3.5.1 Tartan Army ....................................................................................................................... 73 4. Popular culture and national identity ......................................... 76 4.1 The Braveheart effect ......................................................................................... 77 4.2 Scottish Newspapers ........................................................................................... 79 4.3 Advertising ......................................................................................................... 80 4.4 Irn Bru ................................................................................................................ 84 4.4.1 Irn Bru and advertising ....................................................................................................... 85 4.4.2 Irn Bru If –TV advertisement .............................................................................................. 93 4.4.2.1 Barrowland Ballroom ................................................................................................ 98 4.4.2.2 Celtics vs. Rangers .................................................................................................. 100 4.4.2.3 Romance in defeat .................................................................................................. 101 4.4.2.4 Foreign beach ......................................................................................................... 103 4.4.2.5 Sleet ........................................................................................................................ 104 4.4.2.6 Kilt ........................................................................................................................... 105 4.4.2.7 Midges .................................................................................................................... 106 4.4.2.8 Skinny dipping/ Forth Bridge .................................................................................. 108 4.4.2.9 Charity..................................................................................................................... 110 4.4.2.10 Language ................................................................................................................. 111 4.4.2.11 Jock ......................................................................................................................... 113 4.4.2.12 Phenomenal ............................................................................................................ 114 4.4.3 Irn Bru Snowman/ Christmas campaign –TV advertisement ........................................... 115 4.4.3.1 The Snowman ......................................................................................................... 118 4.4.3.2 Falkirk Wheel .......................................................................................................... 119 4.4.3.3 Forth Bridge, Glenfinnan viaduct and Eilean Donan castle .................................... 120 4.4.3.4 Loch Ness & Nessie ................................................................................................. 123 4.4.3.5 Edinburgh: Princes St Gardens Ice Rink .................................................................. 124 4.4.3.6 Glasgow: Royal Concert Hall and George Square ................................................... 125 4.4.4 Irn Bru “Ginger girl” – spoof advertisement..................................................................... 128 4.4.5 Irn Bru Can Clan ............................................................................................................... 131 5. Conclusion .............................................................................. 136 6. Bibliography ............................................................................ 138 6.1 Primary Sources ................................................................................................ 138 6.2 Secondary sources ............................................................................................. 138 6.3 Online Sources .................................................................................................. 143 German Abstract ..........................................................................
Recommended publications
  • 1 Sarah Sharp Exporting 'The Cotter's Saturday Night': Robert Burns
    1 Sarah Sharp Exporting ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’: Robert Burns, Scottish Romantic Nationalism and Colonial Settler Identity Abstract: A Scottish literary icon of the nineteenth century, Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ was a key component of the cultural baggage carried by emigrant Scots seeking a new life abroad. The myth of the thrifty, humble and pious Scottish cottager is a recurrent figure in Scottish colonial writing whether that cottage is situated in the South African veld or the Otago bush. This article examines the way in which Burns’s cotter informed the myth of the self-sufficient Scottish peasant in the poetry of John Barr and Thomas Pringle. It will argue that, just as ‘The Cotter’ could be used to reinforce a particular set of ideas about Scottish identity at home, Scottish settlers used Burns’s poem to respond to and cement new identities abroad. Keywords: Scottish Romanticism, Settler Colonialism, Robert Burns, Thomas Pringle, John Barr, John Wilson. 2 Exporting ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’: Robert Burns, Scottish Romantic Nationalism and Colonial Settler Identity. In 1787, reviewer John Logan commented of Robert Burns’s Kilmarnock edition that ‘“The Cotter’s Saturday Night” is, without exception, the best poem in the collection’.1 His opinion was echoed by many contemporary and subsequent reviewers. In 1812 George Gleig was able to confidently assert that ‘The “Saturday Night” is indeed universally felt as the most interesting of all the author’s poems’ (Bold, 217). This view of Burns’s poem of common life has not endured. The image of Scotland presented in the poem has become at best a stereotype and at worst a source of cultural cringe.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Observation (1937-2017) and Life Writing: an Introduction
    THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF LIFE WRITING VOLUME X (2021) MO1–MO15 Mass Observation (1937-2017) and Life Writing: an Introduction T. G. Ashplant King's College London Abstract Mass Observation (MO) was formed in Britain in 1937 as an innovative research project, to develop new methods for accurately gauging public opinion, thereby contributing to a more democratic form of politics and public policy formation. The archive of its first phase (1937-49) was transferred to the University of Sussex in 1970. In 1981 it was revived as the Mass Observation Project (MOP), which continues to the present. The documentation which MO and MOP together generated includes a significant body of life writings. The purpose of this cluster of articles is to introduce the ways in which the interaction between the aims and approaches of MO's founders and its later MOP refounders, and the responses of its contributors, produced specific forms of life writing; and to explore aspects of the 'afterlife' of these texts – their contextualisation, publication, and interpretation. This introduction situates the original, multifaceted and idiosyncratic, MO project within wider political and cultural trends of the 1930s, and then examines MO's methods, which aimed at 'the observation by everyone of everyone, including themselves'. Keywords: Mass Observation, life writing, 1930s, social enquiry Copyright © 2021 T.G. Ashplant https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.10.37403 This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) T.G. Ashplant - Mass Observation (1937-2017) and Life Writing: an Introduction 2 Mass Observation (MO) was formed in Britain in 1937 as an innovative research project, with the aim of developing new methods for accurately gauging public opinion, and thereby contributing to a more democratic form of politics and public policy formation.1 Its subsequent history falls into three phases.
    [Show full text]
  • Moral Sentiment from Adam Smith to Robert Burns Donald Wesling
    Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 30 | Issue 1 Article 16 1998 Moral Sentiment from Adam Smith to Robert Burns Donald Wesling Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wesling, Donald (1998) "Moral Sentiment from Adam Smith to Robert Burns," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 30: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol30/iss1/16 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Donald Westing Moral Sentiment from Adam Smith to Robert Bums Reconstructing from the 199Os, I shall attempt to think back from the 1780s to attach Robert Bums's moral premises to a line of Scottish Enlightenment phi­ losophy. I say attach to and not derive from, because along the way I will argue that in the famous Kilmarnock volume (Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786) Bums wrenches and exceeds the Francis Hutcheson-David Hume-Adam Smith philosophy of approbation, or judgment of the propriety of passions, where the moral agent is seen by the eyes of the community. After 1789 and the events in France, Bums enters the insurrectionary politics of a new era, though more obliquely and hesitatingly than the unknown William Blake and the infamous Thomas Paine. Now, say in 1795 when Bums versifies Paine in 'The rank is but the guinea's stamp, / The Man's the gowd for a' that,"} he is more concerned with exposing the inequities of rank in his Scottish community than with defin­ ing-also aggressively defying-a reputation as a man of correct and modest virtue.
    [Show full text]
  • Did the Scottish Enlightenment Emerge in an English Cultural Province? Roger Emerson
    Document generated on 09/24/2021 11:17 p.m. Lumen Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Travaux choisis de la Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle Did the Scottish Enlightenment Emerge in an English Cultural Province? Roger Emerson Volume 14, 1995 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1012505ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1012505ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle ISSN 1209-3696 (print) 1927-8284 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Emerson, R. (1995). Did the Scottish Enlightenment Emerge in an English Cultural Province? Lumen, 14, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.7202/1012505ar All Rights Reserved © Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Société This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle, 1995 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 1. Did the Scottish Enlightenment Emerge in an English Cultural Province? When I sat down to write this paper I had in mind a rather straightfor• ward piece on Robert Wodrow and Cotton Mather as virtuosi in distinc• tive but comparable towns. I thought that Wodrow and Mather, Boston and Glasgow, Massachusetts and Scotland all might be usefully com• pared to shed light on the origins and differences of two quite dissimilar enlightenments emerging in what John Clive and Bernard Bailyn in 1954 described as 'England's cultural provinces/1 As I worked on this essay, I realized that what I was doing was mainly setting out my reasons for believing Clive and Bailyn were wrong.
    [Show full text]
  • Memory, the Great War, and the Rise of Scottish Nationalism Brooke Krancer University of Pennsylvania
    Penn History Review Volume 26 Issue 1 Penn History Review: Journal of Article 3 Undergraduate Historians 6-6-2019 “Winning Little aB nnockburns”: Memory, the Great War, and the Rise of Scottish Nationalism Brooke Krancer University of Pennsylvania This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/phr/vol26/iss1/3 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Memory, the Great War, & the Rise of Scottish Nationalism “Winning Little Bannockburns”: Memory, the Great War, and the Rise of Scottish Nationalism Brooke Krancer On June 20, 1914, at the sexcentenary celebration of the Scottish defeat of the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, for- mer British prime minister Lord Rosebery addressed the youth of Scotland: Do you children feel that you, too, might grow up to be heroes like them; to be ready, if necessary, to die for your country, your freedom, and your King; and if that chance do not come, as I hope it may not, to be heroes, as you may all be in your daily lives, winning little Bannock burns for yourselves over the forces of evil? Try.1 Mere weeks later, Britain was embroiled in the First World War. The sort of rhetoric used by the English Lord Rosebery was ex- ceedingly common during the war, appropriating the memory of Bannockburn and Scotland’s martial history of victory against England in the Wars of Independence to reinforce the idea of a British rather than Scottish identity and encourage Scottish peo- ple to die for a British king and country.2 After the conflict, the Great War itself would be folded into this mythologized memory of Scotland’s history and likewise used for ideological and politi- cal reasons by different groups with varying goals.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Reviews
    Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 27 | Issue 1 Article 20 1992 Book Reviews Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation (1992) "Book Reviews," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 27: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol27/iss1/20 This Book Reviews is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Book Reviews Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Ed. Thomas Preston. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press. 1990. liv + 500 pp. After too many years of inaction, the edition of Smollett's works, now under the dynamic care of the general editor, Professor Jerry Beasley, is certainly doing remarkably well, with three excellent volumes produced in three successive years, Beasley's Ferdinand Count Fathom (1988), R. A. Day's History and Adventures of an Atom (1989), and Thomas Preston's much awaited Expedition of Humphry Clinker (late 1990). The textual edi­ tor, O. M. Brack, Jr., the technical editor, Jim Springer Borck, and the Uni­ versity of Georgia Press, must all be congratulated for helping to produce such a fine volume, meeting the most exacting technical, textual and biblio­ graphical standards. But pride of place must remain to Preston, whose diligent labors, care­ ful, learned and abundant annotations contribute to shed light on hitherto ob­ scure allusions-and Humphry Clinker, along with Ferdinand Count Fathom and the Atom, is certainly one of Smollett's most topical novels referring to the 1763-8 period.
    [Show full text]
  • Dossiers Lord Byron
    Dossiers lord Byron N°7 Le Byron Journal Sommaire : Introduction. (p. 3) Entretien avec Alan Rawes (p. 5) Sommaire des numéros : Première série (p. 7) Deuxième série (p. 17) Troisième série (p. 29) Quatrième série (p. 34) Index byronien (p. 47) Dossiers lord Byron. ISSN 2496-3569 N°7, novembre 2011 (mise à jour bisannuelle). Rédaction et traduction : Davy Pernet. Mise en page et iconographie : Éditions Fougerouse. Publié en France. Site : www.editionsfougerouse.com / contact : [email protected] . Tous droits de traduction, de reproduction, et d’adaptation réservés. Note éditoriale On trouvera dans ce Dossier la liste complète des sommaires de tous les numéros du Byron journal depuis sa création, liste qui sera complétée régulièrement. Afin d’apporter plus de clarté, nous avons regroupé les textes en quatre principales rubriques : Articles, Lettres, Comptes rendus de livres évidemment (Books reviews), ainsi que des Notes, regroupant tous les petits textes qui n’entraient pas dans les autres catégories (nécrologies, rapports de conférences, activités des sociétés, mais aussi de très courtes études). Les an- nonces (pour des conférences, par exemple), ou la liste des sociétés, présente à chaque numéro, n’ont pas été indiquées. Les titres des articles, ainsi que les noms de leurs auteurs, sont orthographiés tels qu’ils apparaissent dans le journal. Un index bilingue complète la liste des numéros. Nous remercions Alan Rawes pour son aide. Abréviations utilisées : Anon. : anonymous (anonyme). Coll. : collective (collectif). Ed. : editor (éditeur scientifique) / gen. ed. : general editor (éditeur scientifique général). IBS : International Byron Society / BS : Byron Society. Int. : international. Intr. : introduction. Pref. : prefacer (préfacier). Tr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Impact of the Second World War PAUL ADDISON
    ACB1 2/19/05 9:56 AM Page 3 Chapter One The Impact of the Second World War PAUL ADDISON What difference did the war make?1 The question is one historians are bound to ask, but few of the answers are certain. Some of the immediate consequences of the war are measurable and the figures virtually beyond dispute: the number of civilians killed in the Blitz, for example. But others, like the emotional and psychological effects of the war, will always be difficult to estimate. Most problematical of all is the significance of the war in the long-term perspective of twentieth-century British history. It is no easy matter to disentangle changes initiated by the war from trends that were evident long before 1939. Would the British welfare state have come into existence without the Second World War? Would Britain and the United States ever have developed a ‘special relationship’? There is more than enough evidence to suggest the answers, but never enough to prove them. No less tantalizing is the ques- tion of the significance of the war for post-war developments. On the one hand it would be a fallacy to assume that everything that happened after the war was a result of the war. On the other it is clear that the British were confronted in 1945 with new realities both at home and abroad: bridges had been burnt and a retreat to 1939 was impossible. The impact of war, therefore, is a problem that hinges on probabilities, possibil- ities, and counter-factual speculation. Add in the bias and preconceptions that all his- torians bring to bear on the evidence, and a fertile field of argument and debate opens up.
    [Show full text]
  • The Voice of the People Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics Corey Gibson Chapter 1
    THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE HAMISH HENDERSON AND SCOTTISH CULTURAL POLITICS COREY GIBSON CHAPTER 1 The Flytings It is perhaps ill-mannered for a visitor to intervene in a debate between two such masters of ‘flyting’ (surely a folk-art in itself) as Mr Henderson and Mr MacDiarmid. (Thomas Crawford, letter to The Scotsman, 25 January 1960) (TAN, p. 99) From late 1959 through to early 1968, Hamish Henderson and Hugh MacDiarmid engaged in a series of public debates on Scottish literature, folk art, and politics that were to become known as their ‘Flytings’. They com- prised three separate disputes: ‘The Honour’d Shade Flyting’ (1959–60), ‘The Folksong Flyting’ (1964), and ‘The 1320 Club Flyting’ (1968). Though other contributors were involved, Henderson and MacDiarmid were the most prom- inent participants, and their particular conflicts provided the debates with their most dynamic and resonant episodes. Other notable parties included academ- ics and authors such as the Marxist literary critic, David Craig; the nationalist, classicist, and poet, Douglas Young; the critic and pioneer of modern Scottish literary studies, Thomas Crawford; the poet, Stewart Conn; and Scots lan- guage poets, Tom Scott and Sydney Goodsir Smith. Yet this series of impas- sioned debates has garnered almost no critical attention.1 Existing material on the ‘Flytings’ comes substantially from those whose remit is simply to survey Henderson’s long and varied career. As such, the ‘Flytings’ are approached, straightforwardly, as the public dimension of his complex relationship with MacDiarmid. The debates have become part of Henderson’s reputation as a ‘folk-hero’ and are seen – like most of Henderson’s creative and critical work – in biographical terms, as context for the political and cultural vision of this ‘father’ of the Scottish folk revival.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 P404 David Morrison, Poet and Painter
    P404 David Morrison, Poet and Painter RECORDS’ IDENTITY STATEMENT Reference number: P404 Alternative reference number: Accessions 420, 1067, 1113 and 1117 Title: David Ralston Morrison, Poet and Painter Dates of creation: 1968-2014 Level of description: Fonds Extent: 6 boxes Format: Paper, slides and photographs RECORDS’ CONTEXT Name of creators: David Ralston Morrison Administrative history: Summary: Librarian, poet, artist and founder-editor of Scotia Review, David Morrison made his home in Caithness, where for many years he ran the Wick Festival of Poetry, Folk and Jazz. Full Biography: David Morrison was born in Glasgow in 1941, and educated at Glasgow High School for Boys and Hamilton Academy. After leaving school he worked as a library assistant with Lanarkshire County Libraries, then attended Glasgow College of Commerce and Strathclyde University to qualify as a professional librarian. A position in the library of Edinburgh College of Art, when he was 24, afforded him the opportunity to frequent the city's pubs, in the company of John L. Broom, inevitably meeting many of the poets of the time. In 1965 he and his wife (the 'Glenna' of the poems) moved to Caithness, an area which became his spiritual home. He was appointed County Librarian in 1972, becoming Area Librarian for Caithness and Sutherland by the time he retired. Morrison's life away from libraries was devoted to literature and the arts. The Nucleus: The Nuclear and Caithness Archive 1 term 'literary agitator' seems to sum up his activities. He started the radical literary journal Scotia in 1970; when it was succeeded by Scotia Review in 1972 (which carried the subtitle 'For the Scottish muse and nation', suggested by the poet Tom Scott), Morrison gave warning of his editorial stance, saying that he was confident the Review would be 'an even greater thorn in the flesh of those who wish to deny Scotland her independence on both a political and cultural level'.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of Stevenson Studies Volume 8
    Journal of Stevenson Studies Volume 8 Stevenson8.indb 1 01/10/2011 16:04 ii Journal of Stevenson Studies Stevenson8.indb 2 01/10/2011 16:04 Journal of Stevenson Studies iii Editors Professor Linda Dryden Professor Emeritus Centre for Literature and Roderick Watson Writing English Studies School of Arts and Creative University of Stirling Industries Stirling Napier University FK9 4LA Craighouse Scotland Edinburgh Tel: 01786 467500 EH10 5LG Email: [email protected] Scotland Tel: 0131 455 6128 Email: [email protected] Contributions to volume 10 are warmly invited and should be sent to either of the editors listed above. The text should be submitted in MS WORD files in MHRA format. All contributions are subject to review by members of the Editorial Board. Published by The Centre for Scottish Studies University of Stirling © The contributors 2011 ISSN: 1744-3857 Printed and bound in the UK by Antony Rowe Ltd. Chippenhan, Wiltshire. Stevenson8.indb 3 01/10/2011 16:04 iv Journal of Stevenson Studies Editorial Board Professor Richard Ambrosini Professor Gordon Hirsch Universita’ di Roma Tre Department of English Rome University of Minnesota Professor Stephen Arata Professor Katherine Linehan School of English Department of English University of Virginia Oberlin College Dr Hilary Beattie Ohio Department of Psychiatry Professor Barry Menikoff Columbia University Department of English Professor Oliver Buckton University of Hawaii at School of English Manoa Florida Atlantic University Professor Glenda Norquay Dr Jenni Calder Department of
    [Show full text]
  • Which People's War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939-1945
    Published on Reviews in History (https://reviews.history.ac.uk) Which People's War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939-1945 Review Number: 2033 Publish date: Thursday, 8 December, 2016 Author: Sonya O. Rose ISBN: 9780199255726 Date of Publication: 2003 Price: £88.00 Pages: 342pp. Publisher: Oxford University Press Publisher url: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/which-peoples-war- 9780199255726?q=Which%20People%27s%20War%3F%3A%20National%20Identity%20and%20Citizenship%20in%20Wartime%20Britain%201939- 1945&lang=en&cc=gb Place of Publication: Oxford Reviewer: Laura Beers Sonya Rose’s initial interest in national identity was sparked by the patriotic fervor that burst forth following the declaration of the first Iraq War (1990–1). ‘I wondered at how easily patriotic sentiment and the sense of belonging to a nation under threat – even if that threat was so far away – could be aroused’ (p. 285). This interest informed her research for Which People’s War? and its development from an initial investigation of women’s sexual activity on the home front during the Second World War into a broader exploration of the contested and often contradictory articulations of Britishness and citizenship that emerged during the conflict. Rose finished working on the book shortly after 11 September 2001, and, as she writes in her conclusion, the book went into production just as ‘the US, abetted by Britain, threatens a new war with Iraq and again the drums of patriotism are beating loudly and persistently’ (p. 285). More than 13 years later, both Americans and Britons are again confronted with an upsurge in nationalist rhetoric in the form of Donald Trump’s calls to ‘Make America Great Again’ and Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’s appeals for referendum voters to make June 23rd ‘Britain’s Independence Day’.
    [Show full text]