Pulling the devil's kingdom down

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Keith Robbins

The twentieth century has not been kind to Britain. The great empire of the Victorian Age now seems a distant echo. The transformation in status and power has inevitably been accompanied by a pervasive questioning about the very nature of 'British' history. How are its characteristics determined? The essays, written over the past twenty-five years, in History, Religion and Identity in Modern Britain can all be said, in one way or another, to be concerned with the 'Identity of Britain' in the modern period. They complement and elaborate themes developed in Keith Robbins' books. In the first group, as a former editor of History and President of the Historical Association, the author considers how British historians have themselves reflected and shaped the national understanding of the British past. He discusses the implications of such debates for the present. Have we reached the end of British history in the age of European integration? In the second group, attention is concentrated on beliefs and values, ranging from aspects of Edwardian religion to the problems posed for the churches by the rise of Nazism. This section also includes a discussion of religion and national identity in modern Britain. Another essay takes 1940 as its reference point for a searching enquiry into contemporary understandings of 'Christian Civilization'. What kind of Christian country was Britain? The third group, reflecting the author's teaching experience in England, Scotland and Wales, approaches the puzzling problem of the nature of 'Britishness' from distinct angles.

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Jude V. Nixon

"This collection of essays addresses the disparate personal, historical, and critical ways religion informs the literature and culture of nineteenth-century England. The volume presents Victorian religious discourse not as monologic but as dialogic. It makes available new understandings of nineteenth-century British literature, shows how prominent Victorians negotiated its impress, and elucidates the extent to which religious discourse is vested in Victorian cultural thought and practice."--BOOK JACKET.

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John Ferling

Traces the political disputes that surrounded America's 1776 Declaration of Independence, offering insight into the views of Parliament sympathizers and colonists who stayed loyal to Britain.

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Sandra M. den Otter

'Community' - how to define and to secure it has become a topic of lively discussion. This endeavour also struck a deep chord among Victorians encountering the urban, industrial culture that had emerged by the end of the nineteenth century. In this original and stimulating study, Sandra den Otter explores the idealists' search for 'connection', for a sense of community that fitted the new forms of society, characterized for many concerned observers by dislocation, a loosening of traditional bonds, and intense individualism. Idealist responses to these problems dominated social theory until the Great War. . This book illuminates the idealists' place in the vigorous contemporary debate about a new science of society. Idealist links to German thought, the teaching of philosophy in mid-century Oxford, and idealist criticisms of the naturalist underpinnings of much current social theory are assessed. Dr den Otter argues that idealists constructed an interpretive social theory which adopted various strands of positivist and even naturalist manners in its attempt to frame a social theory suited to the dilemmas of their age. Tracing the dialogue between idealists and sociologists like Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim, the study analyses idealist reinterpretations of the individual, the state, and community.