Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

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imperialists in a wider context, a state of consciousness which has
been termed a ‘special ambiguity’. 31 The unity of the British
Empire was real, unlike the period 1714–1837 when Hanover was
ruled by British kings but each state was a distinct national unit
and the Crown of Hanover was not indissolubly linked with that of
the United Kingdom, each being held on a separate tenure. In the
case of the white settler colonies, there was no diversity in the
tenure of the Crown, for the Dominions had never been wholly
separate kingdoms. 32
The Crown allowed British national identity to be elastic and to
allow the development of multi-layered national identities. A
multilayered British identity, such as Scots-Britishness, was
possible because the United Kingdom was a composite of older
nations, that is communities of people with a distinctive social
identity and distinctive political institutions also; to describe the
United Kingdom as a multi-national state was to call attention to
those things that differentiated its parts. 33 The manifestation of a
homogeneous British nation was noticeable by its absence. In
defining Scottishness, for example, one might make a distinction
between national self-consciousness, the awareness of belonging
to a Scottish nation, and nationalism, the desire for the Scottish
national community alone to control the state. Scots identity
was not automatically in opposition to British identity; British
citizenship was understood to supplement the primary Scottish
nationality. 34 Welsh national consciousness, in the absence of any
institutional basis—which Scotland retained—had long been less
secure, relying upon linguistic and literary qualities in opposition
to English cultural dominance. 35 The determination of the English
to maintain the power, independence and welfare of the British
state they created and dominated has been shared by the majority
of the peoples of Scotland, Wales and what became Northern
Ireland. 36 As part of this process, however, it has been suggested
that England has virtually seceded from the original concept of
Britishness, producing not a dual identity, as with Scots-
Britishness, but a fused identity of Greater England, with England
equalling Great Britain in the consciousness of the English. 37
The nature of Britishness in the United Kingdom and the wider
British Empire was flexible enough to accommodate other
identities within it. Britishness was assimilative rather than
exclusive. 38 It allowed for a multitude of identities to develop
under its umbrella, providing for different interpretations of
Britishness, all defined by their own environmental influences.
Britishness allowed an accommodation with other, older and