The Isle of Man in English historical literature, c.1648–1776

Historiography has long been recognized as fertile ground for political thought concerning England, ‘Britain’, and their dependencies. This thesis explores historical literature about the Isle of Man written between c.1648 and c.1776. It argues that the island played a significant role in early modern conceptions of the British Isles. Man maintained independent political, legal, and cultural institutions, and witnessed familiar contests, and metropolitan and peripheral tensions, being raised in uncanny ways. English historical writers projected fears and fantasies onto the island, imagining it as a refuge, exemplar, strange space, or legitimate dominion amongst others. Wider languages and traditions – of ancient constitutions, suzerainty, ecclesiastical forms, patriotism, parties, and empire – were imposed on and adapted to its past; they were mediated by writers’ relationships with Man’s Lords/landlords, metropolitan government, ‘people’ and indigenous institutions, and church. The island’s Gaelic population was portrayed analogously with other plebeian and indigenous peoples, although this ultimately led to diverse appreciations. This thesis argues that thought about the island represented an exception within and an exemplification of Britain’s problems. In doing so, it questions several tendencies in British historiography: the marginalization of peripheries and foreign lands; the separation of local, national, and imperial-colonial stories; and the relative deprecation of material factors in the history of ideas. The Manx historians appropriated intellectual inheritances but, perhaps in a way more immediately apparent but no less pertinent than elsewhere, adapted them in response to shifts in geography and political economy. Sociopolitical agendas, primarily concerning landholdings, trade, and jurisdictional boundaries, overflowed from other geographical contexts and played a persistent role in perceptions of the Isle. The Manx case ought to provoke interest in other ‘anomalies’, the spread of domestic ideologies in new settings, and the material underpinnings of historiographical debates, in both their provenance and subject matter.