The project Fashioning Georgian Englishness: Race, National Identity, and Codes of Proper Behaviour (FaGEng) examines the interconnectedness of nationality, race, and conduct within a colonial perspective. It argues that race played a vital but ambiguous role in the construction of the nascent English national identity in the Georgian era (1714–1830); however, since race was a fluid and heterogeneous concept, devoid of the biological foundation it went on to develop in the nineteenth century, the racial and/or national status of English subjects was constructed through a nexus of variables, including religion, language, legal status, property, and political rights, in addition to skin colour—and, as this project argues, especially through manners and conduct.
The study shows national character and race were mutually constitutive and performatively constructed within the Georgian English and colonial context, and that the liminal space of Britain’s Caribbean colonies played a crucial role in both destabilizing and enforcing increasingly racially authorised conceptualisations of Englishness. White English citizens were imagined to be ‘corrupted’ through colonial travel, and upon their return to the metropole their status as both English and white was questioned. Their foreign manners, speech habits, and especially their failures to engage in genteel polite sociability were considered to be an indication of their racial degeneration, and West Indianism carried an ambiguous racial taint in the Georgian English imagination. This shows that race was a fuzzy concept that was articulated through the vocabulary and practices of gentility, decency, refinement, and politeness. Articulations and practices of class- and gender-based ‘proper behaviour’ were thus used to create a naturalised English national character that had a racial foundation. The project also shows that whiteness was not in any way a stable characteristic an individual possessed, but that it could be lost—and possibly also regained.
As a whole, the research makes a substantial and original contribution to the study of English nationalism within a colonial context, and engages with interdisciplinary discussions, particularly those between cultural and intellectual historians, postcolonial researchers, and literary scholars. The project calls to question many previously held scholarly viewpoints and proposes new, highly fruitful openings to the historical study of nationalism and race. The questions and themes the research addresses also offer a highly fruitful point of comparison to recent processes of cultural interaction and exchange, and the structures of racism and nationalism in present-day Europe. The recent scholarly interest in the history of race and ethnicity, as well as the recent European developments caused by globalisation and immigration make the proposed project both highly relevant and timely.
