This is a new portrait of society and identity in high industrial Britain, focusing on the sea as connector, not barrier. It argues that the port cities and their hinterlands formed a 'floating commonwealth' whose interaction with one another and with nationalist and imperial politics created an intense political and cultural synergy.

Christopher Harvie is Professor of British Studies at TübingenUniversity, Germany, having previously taught at the Open University. He is Honorary Professor of Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and also at Strathclyde University, Glasgow.

• Prelude: Behold The Sea!


• I: 'Behold The Sea!'


• II: 'The Writing and Acting of History'


• III: The Atlantic Moment


• IV: Perspectives


• V: Nationalizing History


• VI: Basins


• VII: Covenants


• VIII: Mediations


• IX: 'L'Invitation au Voyage'


• I Places and Voices


• I.1 Sacred Lambencies and Thin Crusts: Culture, Danger and Industry


• I: Natura Maligna


• II: A Patriot for Whom?


• III: Auld Scotia - Who She?


• IV: 'A Thin Crust'


• V: Enlightenment and Uncertainty


• VI: Galatea


• I.2 Garron Top To Westward Ho!: The Inland Sea


• I: The Irish Boat


• II: A Country the Poets have Imagined


• III: 'The Antechamber of Britain'


• IV: Money and Migrants


• V: 'Traffics and Discoveries'


• VI: 'But Westward look!'


• VII: Civic Empires


• I.3 McAndrew: The Engineer on the Celtic Fringe


• I: 'The Forgiving of the Anchor'


• II: The Uses of Rhetoric


• III: Breakthrough


• IV: 'Lives of the Engineers'


• V: 'Work and Question not'


• VI: Prussians and Asiatics


• II Ourselves Together


• II.1 Anglo-Saxons into Celts: The Scottish Intellectuals


• I: Enlightenment and Deception


• II: An Infinite Religious Idea


• III: Revivals


• IV: Geddes and Synergy


• VII: 'The Genius of the Gael'


• II.2 The Folk and the Gwerin: Religious Democracy in Scotland and Wales


• I: The Persistence of Faith


• II: State, Religion, People


• III: 'Godly Commonwealths'


• IV: Religious Rebels


• V: The People's William


• VI: Legacies


• VII: Schools and Schoolmasters


• II.3 Contrary Heroes: Industry, Ethnie, and Ireland


• I: Measuring Distances: Ireland, Industry and Theory


• II: 'Creative Chaos', Victims and Gastarbeiter


• III: Machines and Heroes


• IV: Carlyle and Ireland: Positivist-Protestant


• V: Carlyle and Ireland: Celtic-Catholic


• VI: The Ultramontane Opportunity


• VII: Where were the Hero-Sisters?


• VIII: Hidden Ireland or Plain People?


• III In Time of the Breaking of Nations


• III.1 Muscular Celticism: Sport and Nationalism


• I: Sport and Statehood


• II: Homo Ludens


• III: Sport and Sociologists


• IV: The Civic Mode


• V: To the Tailteann Games


• VI: Spieltrieb: a Diversion?


• III.2 John Bull's Other Irishman: Shaw, Geddes, and the Geotechnic Movement


• I: The View from Baker Street


• II: The Intelligent Fabian's West Britain


• III: The Road to Rosscullen


• IV: Earthquake


• V: Passionate Dreaming


• VI: 'Order the guns and kill!'


• III.3 Men Who Pushed and Went: West Coast Capitalism, War and Nationalism


• I: Frontism and Remembrance


• II: Expectations, Actualities, the Wizard: August 1914-April 1916


• III: 'The Workshops are our Battlefield'


• IV: From Reconstruction to Victory


• V: The University of Frongoch: Ireland escapes


• IV Aftermath


• 'Night's Candles Are Burned Out'


• I: Dynamic Forces


• II: Into the Doldrums


• III: 'A General Unsettlement'


• IV: Inquests


• V: After Ireland


• VI: American Dreams


• VII: Nationalism Redux


• VIII: The Big Ship Goes Down


• IX: Episodes, Epiphanies, Imperium?


• X: The O' on Olympian