Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English Worlds? A Four‐Nation Approach to the History of the British Empire

Abstract A four‐nation approach to the history of the British Empire is becoming increasingly necessary. For a number of years, it has been accepted that the domestic history of the British and Hibernian Isles (sometimes known as the Atlantic Archipelago) can only be understood in terms of an analysis on the basis of the four constituent ethnicities of those islands (Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English). Even these four conceal further ethnic breakdowns, but they are the main categories which help to facilitate such an approach. The British Empire was supposed to act as a solvent for these different ethnicities and identities, but it can now be suggested, from recent work, that the reality was very different. The four nations each had separate relationships with empire and each identity was developed and enhanced rather than destroyed by the imperial experience. So far there have been separate studies of aspects of Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English empires. But there is now a need to bring them together to recognise the fact that the British Empire was merely a name which obscured many more complex phenomena. Members of each ethnicity interacted with empire, and its indigenous peoples, in different ways. Moreover, simple bilateral metropole‐periphery relations can no longer be sustained as a basis for analysis: empire constituted sets of multilateral relationships which help to explain both the expansion, settlement, and patterns of dominance of the imperial connection and also the pressures towards decolonisation.