The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century

Rooted in a period of vigorous exploration and colonialism,The Island Raceis an innovative study of the issues of nation, gender and identity. In the rapidly expanding eighteenth-century world, English perceptions of origin and heritage became altered--the question of national identity emerging as a particularly troubled and ambiguous issue. Wilson bases her analysis on a wide range of case studies drawn both from Britain and across the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Creating a colorful and original colonial landscape, she considers topics such as sodomy, theatre, masculinity, the symbolism of Britannia and the role of women in war. Wilson shows the far-reaching implications that colonial power and expansion had upon the English people's sense of self, and argues that the vaunted singularity of English culture was in fact constituted by the bodies, practices and exchanges of peoples across the globe. The Island Raceprovides the reader with a new kind of history-innovative, readable andrich in historical imagination and theoretical sophistication, it will demonstrate how culture travels, identity is transformed and the eighteenth century is still with us.

Kathleen Wilson is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.