British Historians and National Identity

Book excerpt: Can historians shape national identity and how does this change over time? Two eminent scholars of historiography examine the concept of national identity through the medium of the key multi-volume histories of the last two hundred years. Starting with Hume’ ; s History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (1754– ; 62), Brundage and Cosgrove devote separate chapters to the work of Catharine Macaulay, John Lingard, Henry Hallam, Thomas Babington Macaulay, James Anthony Froude, Edward Freeman, William Stubbs, John Richard Green, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, George Macaulay Trevelyan and Winston Churchill. The work of these writers had a wide readership and an even greater influence by becoming the authorities on which other authors based the textbooks used by succeeding generations of British children. By contemporary standards many of these historians’ ; conclusions have not endured but their impact on how the British view themselves still remains.