Roundtable: Michael Hechter's Internal Colonialism at 50

This roundtable asks a range of scholars to reflect on the influence of Michael Hechter's Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 on both their own work and the development of their field since its appearance in 1975. It takes up questions of historical narrative, literary imagination and political context to assess how the book has been received and critiqued. In doing so it germinates a conversation about the current state of the field of Irish and Scottish Studies and its place in the ongoing debates surrounding British identity and state formation, and well as the cultural and literary resistances offered to those centrifugal forces across the archipelago. This is the first part of a conversation which is to continue in Studies in Scottish Literature and is convened by the editors of the two journals.