The Center Cannot Hold

Linda Colley doesn’t think that the United Kingdom can remain united. In Acts of Union and Disunion, she following Benedict Anderson’s lead in claiming that nations are Imagined Communities, formed from myths and, as Colley says, “an attractive idea of what they are.”

As summed up by the Economist reviewer, Colley identifies several English myths: “the idea of Britains ‘liberty-drenched ancient past.’ This began with the Magna Carta, a document that was signed in 1215 in an attempt to limit the monarchs power and included such terms as ‘free man’” and the idea of islandhood.” Despite the stretch of water separating Britain from the Continent, “from the early Middle Ages until the 19th century Britainanyway a compound of islandsshared monarchs with Europe, and cultural and religious references too. Exchanges across the sea influenced the countrys identity in other ways as well, from its 18th-century naval dominance to the maritime trade and imported tea, cotton, tobacco and other goods that shaped habits and lifestyles. Now, in an age of mass air travel, islandhood and the seas proximity are ever less relevant.”

In the end, Colley thinks, it was not hope, myth, or friendship that kept the U in UK. It was fear: “”Each union was forged in a time of conflict with Europe. By contrast, ‘periods of protracted peace have repeatedly presented the most profound threats.’” Now in an extended half-century of (mostly) peace, the union is wobbly.