The Idea of English Ethnicity

The Idea of English Ethnicity “Robert Young has written a compelling and thorough textual history of English ethnicity and its discursive relation to the history of racial theory. Comprehensive, carefully considered, and clearly written, this book sets the standard against which any future study of Englishness will be assessed. The bar has been lifted a couple of notches higher.” David Theo Goldberg, University of California “What is Englishness?, Robert J. C. Young asks, and in The Idea of English Ethnicityhe offers an impressively well-researched and eminently readable answer.” Werner Sollors, Harvard University

Preface. Introduction: Exodus. 1. Saxonism. 2. ‘New Theory of Race: Saxon v. Celt’. 3. Moral and Philosophical Anatomy. 4. The Times vs. the Celts. 5. Matthew Arnold’s Critique of ‘Englishism’. 6. ‘A Vaster England’: The Anglo-Saxon. 7. ‘England Round the World’. 8. Englishness: England and Nowhere. Notes. Index