Loyal and substansial Catholic service on the battlefield undermined one of the most longstanding objections to emancipation: namely, … - Linda Colley

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This was the first time in my life that so many things would never happen again.

Linda Colley

Loyal and substansial Catholic service on the battlefield undermined one of the most longstanding objections to emancipation: namely, that since Catholics owed religious allegiance to a foreign authority in the person of the Pope, their political and patriotic allegiance must necessarily be suspect.

Loyal, Objections, Patriotic, Political, Religious

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Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation - it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise.

Aggressive, Commercial, Insular, Military, People, Taken

It would be wrong to interpret the growth of British national consciousness in this period in terms of a new cultural and political uniformity being resolutely imposed on the peripheries of the island by its centre. For many poorer and less literate Britons, Scotland, Wales and England remained more potent rallying calls than Great Britain, except in times of danger from abroad. And even among the politically educated, it was common to think in terms of dual nationalities, not a single national identity.

Abroad, Centre, Identity, Islands, Scotland, Thinking

Most Britons still lived and died without encountering anyone whose skin colour was different from their own. Slaves, in short, did not threaten, at least as far as the British at home were concerned. Bestowing freedom upon them seemed therefore purely an act of humanity and will, an achievement that would be to Great Britain's economic detriment, perhaps, but would have few other domestic consequences.

Achievement, British, Detriment, Home, Humanity, Slaves

A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

Bears, Empire, England, Imperium, Islands, Way

At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery.

18Th, Britain, Christian, Doctrine, Like, Three