Author Description

In 1660 the four nations of the British Isles were governed by one imperial crown but by three parliaments. The abolition of the Scottish and Irish Parliaments in 1707 and 1800 created a UK of Great Britain and Ireland centered upon the Westminster legislature. This book address questions about how this monolith affected identities in the four nations. From a wide variety of perspectives, it shows how the parliaments at Dublin, Edinburgh and, especially, Westminster, were seen and used in very different ways by people from very different communities. Parliament may have been conceived as a repository of "the" national interest, but in practice it was the site of four national and multiple cross-national identities.