Reviewed by Sarah M. S. Pearsall | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WMQ online. About 439 words from this article are provided below; about 895 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the William and Mary Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Reviewed by Sarah M. S. Pearsall | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century. By Kathleen Wilson . (London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xvi, 282. $80.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.) Reviewed by Sarah M. S. Pearsall , St. Andrews University
Kathleen Wilson's dazzling new book on Englishness, empire, and gender is not one for those who prefer the safe and dutiful. An intriguing vision linking gender and nation animates the work. While emphasizing the instability of national (and other) identities, Wilson argues that islands and empire informed eighteenth-century Britons' sense of national character. Although readers may question some of Wilson's assertions, this is a rich and intelligent book that makes sometimes audacious connections. Literary scholars in particular should find it valuable.	1
The intellectual journey has all the wonder, and a bit of the dizzying sensation, of island hopping, as the reader is catapulted from England to Jamaica to Tahiti. Wilson notes that the book is a "monograph masquerading as a book of essays" (p. ix), but at times the reverse seems true. While the introduction sets up intriguing questions, it does not detail the course of the individual chapters in ways that might have helped the reader to navigate them, noting only that the first two chapters deal with the "articulations of hegemonic national identities and their consequences" and the next three with "appropriations and resistances to them" (p. 26). Discerning the overall argument can prove difficult. The epilogue similarly does little to draw out central themes explicitly. It would therefore be difficult to assign to undergraduate classes, although individual chapters may prove of use.	2
In the introduction's dexterous discussion, Wilson describes national identity as a process, not an outcome, and so traces its evolution over the eighteenth century. She also addresses the ways in which contemporary authors attributed national character both to essential and inherited aspects and to climatic and geographical configurations. Nation was thus both race and place. As the British empire grew and increasingly included different sorts of people, Britons were forced to re-consider what "nation" meant. This tension informed many crucial discussions of nation, empire, and race. As in Linda Colley's recent work, Captives, Wilson's premise is that "empire mattered to ordinary people in eighteenth-century England" (p. 15).¹ At the same time, the book is also in line with Joyce E. Chaplin's recent call for scholarship that unites theory and evidence.² A strong sense of eighteenth-century history underpins Wilson's theoretical reflections, although many historians will not be reassured when she identifies some of her sources as "unreliable and unverifiable within traditional historiography" (p. 26).	. . .

There are about 895 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.