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Abstract
The Age of Revolution was an age of nation-building. From the late-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, national identities were formed throughout Europe and its colonies. In most cases, the violent overthrow of an established order was followed by the creation of a new government based around radical political ideas. The United Kingdom was not immune from these trends. As on the continent, Britons experienced a tide of radical politics and the patriotic identity-building it provoked. Yet in the British case, the convulsions of the 1790s strengthened the preexisting order. By the early nineteenth century, British culture was more conservative, patriotic, and self-consciously national. How did Britain manage to follow a conservative path to modern national identity? In part, Britain’s unique experience during the period was due to the bourgeoise reading public. During the 1790s, members of this group wrote and read novels which promoted “traditional” British values and denigrated radical ideas. Edmund Burke had provided the intellectual impetus for the British response to revolution. By spreading, condensing, and distorting the ideas of Burke through the accessible medium of literature, authors equated the rejection of revolutionary principles to being a good Briton. Although radical authors also tried to communicate to readers through popular as well as intellectual means, their output was overwhelmed by the popularity of conservative fiction. Novels were not a major source of causation during the 1790s. For the historian, however, they provide insight into the effects events on the continent had on British contemporaries. How did the French Revolution influence how people imagined the nation? In Britain, evidence for how people conceived of their national identity is recorded in literature. Whereas radical novels tended to stress the individual, principles, and utopic futures, conservative novels were more successful in appealing to less intellectual allegiances with which more people were more familiar. More importantly, the conservative novelist tended to unite these pre-revolutionary allegiances through appeals to a greater national allegiance. By building loyalty to the nation around traditional beliefs, Britons contributed to the foundation for a unique form of nineteenth century nationalism.