Module Information

This module will provide students with an overview of the history of the British Isles during the period known to historians as the long eighteenth century. It will offer a broad perspective on the history of the British Isles, and the relations between its constituent countries, and explore major themes and developments over a comparatively long sweep of history.

This survey will offer students a political, social and cultural history of the British Isles in the long eighteenth century, focusing upon the making of the British nation. Students will also study Britain's component parts and tensions between them. The key political points of crises like the Jacobite rebellion, the impact of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution and the Irish revolt of 1798 will be examined. Students will also explore the culture developments in the period, such as the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The eighteenth century saw Britain become the world's first industrial nation, and in this light students will examine the nature of urban and rural life, the growth of the British working class, and the development of the middling sorts. Finally, this module will place Britain within the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, looking in particular at imperial problems and the campaign to abolish slavery.