English Patriotism and the Implicit Nation
Homelands and Soldiers’ National Identity during the Great War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9737490 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anne Mayhew (0000-0003-3124-2486, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author), Alex Mayhew (0000-0002-2125-9383, London School of Economics and Political Science) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 138 |
| Issue | 594-595 |
| Pages | 1277-1306 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The English Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ehr/cead180 |
| OpenAlex | W4392077129 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
This article explores the patriotism and national identity of English soldiers during the First World War. Using this conflict as a case-study, it draws together work on Great War mentalities and scholarship on Englishness. It argues that individuals’ national identity focused on and formed around the ‘implicit nation’, which was primarily concerned with communities and parochial local (or regional) spaces. There was no ‘essential’ England: the homeland could be rural or urban, natural or human. English national identity embraced this plurality. Using published material, soldiers’ newspapers and private letters, diaries and postcards, this article highlights the ways in which allegiance to an ‘implicit nation’ was nurtured by a military that championed local and regional identities. As subjects, not citizens, soldiers naturally centred their attention on the communities and landscapes of their homeland. The war did not diminish men’s emotional connections to these homelands; in fact, it made them all the stronger. In concentrating on the subjective and emotional features of patriotism, this paper suggests that Englishness was inherently heterogeneous and drew its strength from this. Rather than a commitment to abstract structures such as the state, or theoretical political principles, it argues that English national identity embraced a composite, or patchwork, of mutually supporting patriotisms attached to particular homelands. It was a sense of these homelands that underlay men’s identification with Britishness, the Empire and the monarchy. Importantly, soldiers’ experience of the First World War gave this a new (or at least more vocal) articulation
Aesthetics · Allegiance · Britishness · Empire · Homeland · Identity (music · Media studies · National identity · Nationalism · Patriotism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Law · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |