This set of essays is based on two colloquia held in Japan in 2006 and 2007 and concerns various peoples or, as the title states, nations in medieval Britain and Ireland. A number of experts, mostly from the United Kingdom but in one case from the United States, presented papers on specific peoples and specific encounters between groups. The resulting volume, therefore, provides the reader with a variety of views of assimilation or the failure thereof, acculturation and cultural interaction, and the construction of national identities in premodern Britain and Ireland. Collectively, the essays provide the reader with the distillation of much recent scholarship on these subjects.

Hirokazu Tsurushima, the organizer of the colloquia and the editor of the volume, starts the ball rolling with an introductory essay that frames the other essays, discusses issues of terminology, and emphasizes the importance of religion and of politics (specifically kingdoms) to the medieval identities of nations or peoples. Tsurushima also provides some brief but very useful analyses of two specific subjects: terminology in Bede and the use of the term “Anglo-Saxon” in charters by members of King Alfred’s dynasty. Ann Williams explores relations between invading Anglo-Saxons and the existing inhabitants, asking, “Why are the English not Welsh?” Rather than giving specific arguments about why the inhabitants of much of Roman Britain ended up English, along the lines of Brian Ward-Perkin’s 2000 piece on that subject in the English Historical Review, Williams provides an intelligent overview of the factors separating Welsh from English identity. Like most modern scholars, she rejects the belief that a large migration replaced the Britons, arguing instead for the integration of invaders and locals in many areas, accompanied by the construction of separate identities. David Roffe explores the impact of the Danes on England. In the first part of his article, he synthesizes much scholarly work (including some of his own) on the direct impact of the Danes. In the second part, he discusses how the organization of the Danelaw, as conquered by the West Saxon kings, may have formed the model for the shire organization of England as a whole. He follows most recent scholarship in arguing that the Danes largely influenced England as a conquering elite rather than because of mass migration. William Aird discusses late Northumbrian history and the division of that kingdom between England and Scotland. He uses this concentration on Northumbria to challenge any belief about the “naturalness” or inevitability of England, pointing out that this land, the birthplace of Bede and therefore arguably of Englishness, was by no means irrevocably fated to end up as part of England. After all, part of it did not. Emily Albu, who has written on Norman identity, ably summarizes recent scholarship on the overall impact of the Norman Conquest, the process of assimilation thereafter, the decline of Norman identity, and the survival and recovery of Englishness.

The later essays in the book concern peoples associated with Celtic languages. Bronagh Ní Chonaill investigates the identity of the Welsh, a politically fragmented but culturally united people. She focuses on the law, which formed one aspect of Welsh cultural unity and presupposed another, namely, linguistic unity. More important, Welsh law included the concept of the alien, which helped demarcate the Welsh from outsiders. Law also served as a major mark of distinction between the Welsh and the English, even after the English had conquered the entirety of Wales in the thirteenth century. Dauvit Broun, drawing on very recent work, including his own, studies the creation of a unified Scottish identity out of diverse peoples living in a kingdom that had earlier been seen as including not just Scotland but also part of England (Lothian) and even what had been considered part of the Welsh lands. He places an emphasis on kingship, although not with the impact of initial conquests of the Scottish kings, since divisions between peoples persisted into the thirteenth century. Instead, Broun stresses the impact of royal institutions. Specifically, he views the spread of a unified system of property law under royal dominance in the thirteenth century as crucial. Ultimately, allegiance to the king of Scots made various peoples Scottish. Broun also argues that the emergence of a highland/lowland divide in the thirteenth century (far earlier than once imagined), allowed the previous association of Scottishness with barbarity to be shunted onto the highlanders alone. This shift of the stigma of barbarity from the Scots in general to the highland Scots eased acceptance of Scottish identity by other groups. Marie Therese Flanagan traces identities in Ireland. She links the united Irish identity of the politically fragmented inhabitants of the island to religion, specifically to the view that they formed one of many chosen nations that converted to Christianity. She emphasizes the overwhelmingly English identity of the invaders and settlers who arrived from 1167 onward. Perhaps her main contribution is to show how politics in the modern period encouraged scholars to adopt largely anachronistic terms such as Norman or Anglo-Norman rather than English for those invaders and settlers.

Any reader looking for overviews of the history of identity formation among various peoples of medieval Britain and Ireland will find this to be a very useful volume. The fact that it covers a wide range of peoples and periods makes it particularly helpful. Because the papers were originally designed for a Japanese audience, scholars familiar with western medieval history might find more general background than they would expect. However, this background makes the essays particularly useful for students. Overall, this collection provides a good set of syntheses, leavened by some original research and new points, by a group of excellent scholars.