TY  - BOOK
AU  - Edgerton,David
TI  - The rise and fall of the British nation: a twentieth-century history 
SN  - 9781846147753
U1  - 941.082 
PY  - 2018///
CY  - London
PB  - Allen Lane, and imprint of Penguin Books
KW  - Capital
KW  - Great Britain
KW  - Economics
KW  - History
KW  - 20th century
KW  - Militarism
KW  - Politics and government
N1  - Part I. 1900-1950 -- 1. The country with no name -- 2. Mightier yet! -- 3. Globalization to nationalization -- 4. Kingdom of capital -- 5. British capitalism -- 6. Knowledge and power -- 7. Tomorrow, perhaps the future -- 8. A mirror of the nation at work -- 9. From class to nation -- Part II. 1950-2000 -- 10. A nation in the world -- 11. Building the future -- 12. National capitalism -- 13. Warfare state -- 14. Two classes, two parties, one nation -- 15. Social democracy, nationalism and declinism -- 16. Possibilities -- 17. Defending the nation -- 18. Rulers' revolt -- 19. A nation lost -- 20. New times, new labour.
N2  - "It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, from building a welfare state to coping with decline. Nobody would dream of writing the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union in this way.

David Edgerton's major new history breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to redefine what it was to British, and to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to huge disruptions. This was not simply because of the world wars and global economic transformations, but in its very nature. Until the 1940s the United Kingdom was, Edgerton argues, an exceptional place: liberal, capitalist and anti-nationalist, at the heart of a European and global web of trade and influence. Then, as its global position collapsed, it became, for the first time and only briefly, a real, successful nation, with shared goals, horizons and industry, before reinventing itself again in the 1970s as part of the European Union and as the host for international capital, no longer capable of being a nation.

Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history which takes business and warfare seriously, and which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future."
ER  -