This thesis is concerned to discover the nature of regional identity in Furness and Cartmel, also known as Lancashire North of the Sands, in the 50 years around 1800, and explore the relationship between the essential regional qualities, geographical and cultural, of the area, and the way it was viewed by the human inhabitants. The methodology is heavily biased towards a thorough survey of surviving archival material in the county record offices and public libraries of Cumbria, Lancashire and Cheshire and the integrating of these sources into a coherent narrative of the period, which is then analysed. Attempts have been made to quantify wherever possible, but the sophistication of the statistical manipulation is kept in proportion to the reliability of the gathered data. Chapter 1 surveys the ways in which regions within England have been defined and the uses to which a regional approach can be put. Chapter 2 provides an introductory overview of the society of the area, concentrating on the degree of population mobility. Chapter 3 examines the development of various economic sectors in the period, and the way in which those sectors were spatially organised, both as a result of natural topography and under the influence of human actors. Chapter 4 studies the way in which the manorial administrative system of the area was replaced by a more rationalised system mediated by lawyers, and the influence of statutes and enclosure on this process. Chapter 5 is concerned with the degree of local distinctiveness from national patterns in the administration of the Poor Law, and in the way the authorities reacted to the problems of crime and popular politics. Chapter 6 looks at the factors affecting religious observance, and the reference of both Anglican and dissenting churches to authorities from without the area. Chapter 7 inquires into the ways in which patterns in education, recreation and sexual practices mark either the exclusivity of the area or its absorption into national trends. Chapter 8 concludes that although the area had many distinct regional characteristics, both of ecotype and of culture, and although these are important in explaining many aspects of development in this period, the most distinctive quality of the area was the way in which it lent itself to reinvention by individual human actors, particularly outside colonisers. The originality of the thesis lies in its genuinely integrated study of an area of town and country, and its application of extra-disciplinary ideas (particularly the distinctions between essence and imagination, and material and information) to an English local study of this period.