Introduction: British Contested History—Place and Space

This chapter introduces the issues relating to British contested history by considering how it came to be constructed, how it developed, and how, over time, attitudes are beginning to change towards it. The history began when the nation’s grand narrative was being written. What it created is a difficult trajectory for a modern nation. Adding to this complex situation is the relationship between British history and the past. Why this is problematic is because the words history and the past are sometimes used interchangeably to mean the same thing, when they are not. To unpack these different positions this interdisciplinary research is underpinned by spatial relations. Why? Following the third post-pandemic spatial turn, place was repositioned alongside space which brought new insights into the academic field concerning questions of location and mapping. This research, therefore, considers the sometimes antagonistic relationship between the places of history and the spaces of the past. The corresponding research questions are: what role does place and space play in historical constructions of the past? How do place and space contribute to contested history? Can contested historic places and spaces be re-mapped and endowed with new meanings? Conclusively, it asks is there another way to address the fact that Britain is no longer rooted to the idea of one history and one past?