Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismPure Briton?What would that mean? The Act of Union on 1707 undertook to forge British identity from a motley alliance of Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and Welshmen. It must have worked, since by the end of the eighteenth century almost everyone seemed ready to die for the greater good of Great Britain. [2] But how pure was British national identity? How white? If the case of no less a personage than Queen Charlotte is representative, British whiteness was a national ruse. Her African ancestry was an open secret, clearly observable in portraits and political cartoons when circumstances warranted. Racial identity was less a biological than a political issue. Part of the purpose of the nation was to purify it. [2] Black and British? Never! Notes1. As Linda Colley argues in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale up, 1992). 2. See David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State (London: Blackwell, 2002). Navigation |