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A Floating Commonwealth
Politics, Culture, and Technology on Britain's Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930
Christopher Harvie
336 pages
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10 b/w illustrations
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234x156mm
978-0-19-822783-0
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Hardback
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27 March 2008
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- The author uses a transnational and original viewpoint.
- The book's clear chronology connects intellectual change to technical innovation and politics.
- Christopher Harvie is a journalist as well as a historian and his books have been praised for their readability.
Christopher Harvie offers a new portrait of society and identity in high industrial Britain by focusing on the sea as connector, not barrier. Atlantic and 'inland sea' together, Harvie argues, created a 'floating commonwealth' of port cities and their hinterlands whose interaction, both with one another and with nationalist and imperial politics, created an intense political and cultural synergy.
At a technical level, this produced the freight steamer and the efficient types of railways which opened up the developing world, as well as the institutions of international finance and
communications in the age of 'telegrams and anger'. And ultimately, the resources of the Atlantic cities, their shipyards and works, enabled Britain to win withstand the test of the First World War.
Meanwhile, as Harvie shows, the continuous attempt to make sense of an ever-changing material reality also stimulated the discourses on which social criticism and literary modernism were based, from Carlyle to James Joyce - although the ultimate outcome, of slump and emigration, would leave enduring problems in the years to come.Readership: All those interested in modern British social, cultural, and intellectual history.
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Christopher Harvie, Professor of British Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany
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"Harvie is especially good at selecting an economic or artistic personality, and using his furiously allusive scholarship to place them at the heart of historical change." - Pat Kane, The Independent "the tremendous wit and humour of Harvie's writing.... Then there is Harvie's scholarship and his seemingly limitless knowledge of all sorts of areas of historical inquiry" - Bill Knox, Times Literary Supplement "Harvie has provided a new mental and historical map for these islands, which could have more than scholarly consequences." - Pat Kane, Times Higher Education Supplement "He examines the concept of Celticism in its various aspects with more accuracy and fewer histrionics
than we often encounter in other works. Look at his index, and marvel at the number of creative talents identified, testimony to the painstaking and devoted energy which he brought to his researches. Then go back to the text and appreciate what fruitful use he has made of his discoveries." - James Halliday, Scots Independent "The book is a celebration of the Scottish technological intellect and the inland sea that linked the west coast of Britain. It was a hugely successful collaboration between English capital and Scottish brains and really made Britain great. It is intoxicating stuff." - Iain Macwhirter, Sunday Herald "There is at all levels, a kind of elegiac poignancy to the book which only adds to its authority and its power. I
recommend you read it twice, once at speed and without pause for the footnotes or to jot down the flurries of reference, and once with pencil and notebook at hand. Impossible to fault... its an intellectual masterwork and one of the most important books of the present decade." - Brian Morton, The Scottish Review of Books
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Prelude: Behold The Sea!
I: 'Behold The Sea!'
II: 'The Writing and Acting of History'
III: The Atlantic Moment
IV: Perspectives
V: Nationalizing History
VI: Basins
VII: Covenants
VIII: Mediations
IX: 'L'Invitation au Voyage'
I Places and Voices
I.1 Sacred Lambencies and Thin Crusts: Culture, Danger and Industry
I: Natura Maligna
II: A Patriot for Whom?
III: Auld Scotia - Who She?
IV: 'A Thin Crust'
V: Enlightenment and Uncertainty
VI: Galatea
I.2 Garron Top To Westward Ho!: The Inland Sea
I: The Irish Boat
II: A Country the Poets have Imagined
III: 'The Antechamber of Britain'
IV: Money and Migrants
V: 'Traffics and Discoveries'
VI: 'But Westward look!'
VII: Civic Empires
I.3 McAndrew: The Engineer on the Celtic Fringe
I: 'The Forgiving of the Anchor'
II: The Uses of Rhetoric
III: Breakthrough
IV: 'Lives of the Engineers'
V: 'Work and Question not'
VI: Prussians and Asiatics
II Ourselves Together
II.1 Anglo-Saxons into Celts: The Scottish Intellectuals
I: Enlightenment and Deception
II: An Infinite Religious Idea
III: Revivals
IV: Geddes and Synergy
VII: 'The Genius of the Gael'
II.2 The Folk and the Gwerin: Religious Democracy in Scotland and Wales
I: The Persistence of Faith
II: State, Religion, People
III: 'Godly Commonwealths'
IV: Religious Rebels
V: The People's William
VI: Legacies
VII: Schools and Schoolmasters
II.3 Contrary Heroes: Industry, Ethnie, and Ireland
I: Measuring Distances: Ireland, Industry and Theory
II: 'Creative Chaos', Victims and Gastarbeiter
III: Machines and Heroes
IV: Carlyle and Ireland: Positivist-Protestant
V: Carlyle and Ireland: Celtic-Catholic
VI: The Ultramontane Opportunity
VII: Where were the Hero-Sisters?
VIII: Hidden Ireland or Plain People?
III In Time of the Breaking of Nations
III.1 Muscular Celticism: Sport and Nationalism
I: Sport and Statehood
II: Homo Ludens
III: Sport and Sociologists
IV: The Civic Mode
V: To the Tailteann Games
VI: Spieltrieb: a Diversion?
III.2 John Bull's Other Irishman: Shaw, Geddes, and the Geotechnic Movement
I: The View from Baker Street
II: The Intelligent Fabian's West Britain
III: The Road to Rosscullen
IV: Earthquake
V: Passionate Dreaming
VI: 'Order the guns and kill!'
III.3 Men Who Pushed and Went: West Coast Capitalism, War and Nationalism
I: Frontism and Remembrance
II: Expectations, Actualities, the Wizard: August 1914-April 1916
III: 'The Workshops are our Battlefield'
IV: From Reconstruction to Victory
V: The University of Frongoch: Ireland escapes
IV Aftermath
'Night's Candles Are Burned Out'
I: Dynamic Forces
II: Into the Doldrums
III: 'A General Unsettlement'
IV: Inquests
V: After Ireland
VI: American Dreams
VII: Nationalism Redux
VIII: The Big Ship Goes Down
IX: Episodes, Epiphanies, Imperium?
X: The O' on Olympian
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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