The rise and fall of the British nation : a twentieth-century history / David Edgerton.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Part 1. 1900-1950 : -- 1. The country with no name -- 2. Mightier yet! -- 3. Globalization to nationalization -- 4. Kingdom of capital -- 5. British capitalism? -- 6. Knowledge and power -- 7. Tomorrow, perhaps the future -- 8. A mirror of the nation at work -- 9. From class to nation -- Part 2. 1950-2000 : -- 10. A nation in the world -- 11. Building the future -- 12. National capitalism -- 13. Welfare state -- 14. Two classes, two parties, one nation -- 15. Social democracy, nationalism and declinism -- 16. Possibilities -- 17. Defending the nation -- 18. Rulers' revolt -- 19. A nation lost -- 20. New times, New Labour.

"David Edgerton's major new history breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to redefine what it was to British, and to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to huge disruptions. This was not simply because of the world wars and global economic transformations, but in its very nature. Until the 1940s the United Kingdom was, Edgerton argues, an exceptional place: liberal, capitalist and anti-nationalist, at the heart of a European and global web of trade and influence. Then, as its global position collapsed, it became, for the first time and only briefly, a real, successful nation, with shared goals, horizons and industry, before reinventing itself again in the 1970s as part of the European Union and as the host for international capital, no longer capable of being a nation."--Publisher's description.