| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.4

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.4 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century. By Kathleen Wilson (London and New York: Routledge, 2003, xvi plus 282 pp. $80/$24.95).
	1
This book is about many things, some obvious, others less so. First and foremost it is about England's evolving (or to quote the author, "unstable") national identity and what happened during the eighteenth century to change it. Wilson suggests numerous elements—empire, gender, class, politics, and race—for inclusion in a new composite. Of these empire and gender prevail. To use her words: "the overarching theme is the heterogeneous and unstable nature of national identity in eighteenth-century Britain and its first empire; its subtopics explore the impact of empire and gender on productions of national identity and its failures"(Preface, p ix). It is not inconsequential that Wilson embeds "production" in this definition, for "performance", which occupied a very special place in the behavior of the citizenry of a "polite and commercial society", was reflected in the nation's identity as well.	. . .

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