"In this intriguing book, Jackson (history, Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland) elucidates the centrifugal and centripetal forces marking the history of efforts to form "united kingdoms" out of relatively distinct national, ethnic, and religious cultures. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- Choice"Alvin Jackson's original slant on the history of Irish and Scottish unions is decisively expanded in United Kingdoms: Multinational union states in Europe and beyond, 1800-1925 (OUP) - illuminating the once British Isles by means of Scandinavia, the Netherlands and, above all, the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy (whose "ramshackle" nature was nostalgically admired by James Joyce). Jackson's taxonomy of modern union states raises influences, parallels and cross-fertilizations, exhumes forgotten theorists and analyses monarchy and federalism: comparative history at its best." -- Roy Foster, TLS Books of the Year (2023)"The great virtue of Alvin Jackson's deeply learned and perceptive book, United Kingdoms: Multinational Union States in Europe and Beyond, 1800-1925, is the compelling case it makes for seeing union states not as an exceptional but a typical form of nineteenth-century polity: no less prominent or persistent than the unitary nation state." -- Philip Harling, Victorian Studies"In 2023, another Ulsterman and distinguished historian and author, Alvin Jackson has published a scholarly and lucid volume revisiting this [multinational union] terrain .

careful precise narrative . many subtle observations along the way." -- Paul Bew, Irish Times"Alvin Jackson . is a key historian who has made important contributions to the understanding of union relations over the past couple of hundred years . Jackson casts a comparative look at similar legal-political arrangements, namely united kingdoms of various kinds . it is in itself an advantage that it is examined by an outsider who can place this union in an international landscape of other united kingdoms. In this way, the book provides new perspectives on a well-known topic . Jackson's book is a useful reminder that the nation-state was not a natural entity in the 19th century .

Jackson very successfully brings his concept of united kingdoms into the analysis of European state histories, and in doing so he brings out interesting features from the complexity of this political landscape." -- Dag Michalsen, Historisk tidsskrift.