The Empire in Crisis and the Search for British Identity

As the British Empire faced the seismic shock of the American Revolution in 1775, an unlikely figure embarked on a journey that would redefine what it meant to be British. Thomas Pennant, a Flintshire naturalist and antiquarian, set out to explore the wild landscapes of Wales and Scotland, not to conquer but to discover. His quest was for something far more elusive than territory: the soul of Britain itself.

Pennant’s travels coincided with a period of profound national introspection. The loss of the American colonies forced Britons to question their imperial identity. While redcoats battled colonial rebels across the Atlantic, Pennant wandered through the misty valleys of Merionethshire, convinced he had found remnants of Britain’s “pure aboriginal inhabitants” – people whose simple lives seemed untouched by modern corruption.

The Antiquarian’s Pilgrimage: Documenting a Vanishing Britain

Pennant’s meticulous documentation created the first comprehensive portrait of Britain’s Celtic fringe. At Llyn Idwal, he examined mysterious stone circles he believed to be Druidic relics. Nearby, he encountered Evan Llwyd’s family, who welcomed him with traditional Welsh hospitality: strong beer, wind-dried mutton (coch yr wdre), and cheese made from sheep’s milk. Their heirloom – a ceremonial cup fashioned from a bull’s scrotum – symbolized the unbroken connection to ancient British customs.

The naturalist’s journals reveal a Britain far removed from London’s coffee houses. In Penllyn, he sought out 90-year-old Margaret uch Evan, the legendary “Welsh Diana” who remained, even in extreme old age, a master fisherwoman, boatbuilder, harpist, and champion wrestler. Though he missed meeting this living relic of Celtic vigor, her story became central to his vision of British authenticity.

The Paradox of “Improvement”: Clearances and Cultural Erasure

Pennant’s 1772 Tour in Scotland captured a society in violent transition. The Highland Clearances were displacing thousands as landlords replaced subsistence farms with profitable sheep pastures. Islanders lived in windowless huts surviving on oatmeal, milk, and occasional fish, while many chose emigration over starvation. Yet amidst this upheaval, Pennant found moments of breathtaking beauty: herring fleets crowding Barrisdale Bay, the golden peaks of Beinn-an-Oir in the Paps of Jura, and panoramic views stretching from Ben Lomond to Northern Ireland’s Antrim coast.

His contemporary Thomas West, a Jesuit scholar, similarly championed Britain’s wild places. West’s 1778 guide to the Lake District rebelled against the prevailing fashion for artificially “improved” landscapes filled with faux Roman temples. Both men argued that Britain’s true character lay not in imitation of Mediterranean classics, but in its own untamed nature.

The Politics of Walking: Radical Tourism in an Age of Revolution

This new appreciation for Britain’s wilderness carried revolutionary implications. To experience “authentic” Britain required leaving carriages behind – both literally and metaphorically. Walking became an act of political and moral significance during the 1780s-90s, as radicals like John Thelwall traced the footsteps of rural laborers while German pastor Karl Moritz faced suspicion for his pedestrian travels. Even fashionable society adopted the practice, though often reducing it to genteel strolls between landscape follies.

The most dramatic embodiment of this philosophy was John “Walking” Stewart, who traversed India, Arabia, and North America on foot before returning to Britain as a celebrity pedestrian. His extreme travels demonstrated how physical exertion could forge a new relationship between Britons and their land.

Rousseau’s Shadow: The Cult of Sensibility Takes Root

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s influence permeated this movement. His 1782 Confessions (particularly the appendix Reveries of the Solitary Walker) became scripture for British nature enthusiasts. Rousseau’s disastrous 1766-67 English exile – including his paranoid retreat to Derbyshire wearing Armenian robes – ironically cemented his reputation among the “Men and Women of Feeling” who gathered at Brooke Boothby’s Lichfield salon.

Joseph Wright of Derby’s 1781 portrait of Boothby cradling Rousseau’s writings epitomized this fusion of radical politics and nature worship. The Derbyshire landscape itself became sacred ground, inspiring everything from geological treatises to a 1779 West End spectacle The Wonders of Derbyshire featuring mechanical “mountain spirits.”

Educating the New Britons: Thomas Day’s Radical Experiment

The most extreme attempt to create Rousseau’s “natural man” occurred in Lichfield, where Thomas Day adopted two orphan girls as potential wives to be raised according to Emile’s principles. His cruel experiments (including pouring hot wax on their arms) ended in failure, but his 1783 novel Sandford and Merton became a runaway success, outlining an educational philosophy where rural virtue triumphs over aristocratic corruption.

Day’s eccentric life – he died in 1789 attempting to tame a horse through kindness – reflected the movement’s contradictions. Could modern Britons truly return to primal innocence? His contemporary Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) believed science and nature could coexist, establishing botanical societies that celebrated both industrial progress and natural wonder.

Legacy: How the Romantics Reinvented Britain

Pennant’s antiquarian tours planted seeds that would blossom in Romanticism. By the 1790s, Wordsworth and Coleridge were walking the Lakeland fells that West had mapped, while Walter Scott transformed Scotland’s bloody history into romantic nationalism. The Celtic revival flourished, with Welsh eisteddfods and Ossianic poetry creating new myths from old fragments.

Most significantly, this movement redefined British patriotism. No longer solely about naval supremacy or colonial expansion, national identity now encompassed everything from Neolithic stone circles to Highland clearances. In losing an empire, Britain had indeed found itself – not as a monolithic culture, but as a mosaic of ancient traditions, wild landscapes, and resilient communities. The paradox Pennant uncovered remains vital today: that a nation’s strength often lies not in its power to conquer others, but in its capacity to understand itself.