When was Britain? Answers from Scotland and England

Abstract

What do we mean when we say ‘Britain’? Is Britain an island formed 8000 years ago by rising sea levels in the English Channel? Or is ‘Britain’ a multi-national state united by a single government in London? The answer is, of course, both – although the latter is too simple, since there are governments at least three of the UK’s four component jurisdictions.[1] Nevertheless, the contexts in which the term ‘Britain’ is favoured over, say, ‘England’, ‘Scotland’ or ‘the UK’ reveals much about the assumptions underlying this use. In this article, we explore this use in the context of the examination syllabuses of England and Scotland and find that the concept ‘Britain’ is called-up in different times in different places.