A Floating Commonwealth: Politics, Culture, and Technology on Britain's Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930

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.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
Christopher Harvie is Professor of British Studies at TübingenUniversity, Germany, having previously taught at the Open University. He is Honorary Professor of Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and also at Strathclyde University, Glasgow.

Review :
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 wriring... 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