The British (1603- ) were Europeans who lived on the islands of Britain and Ireland off the north-west coast of mainland Europe.
The British lived in the United Kingdom, made up of four kingdoms. Since each kingdom had its own language, “British” is more a political term than a cultural one.
The four kingdoms were:
- English
- Welsh
- Scottish
- Irish
Most of the Irish left about 1922, though northern Ireland stayed. English was the language used for Kingdom affairs.
Among Germanic-speaking peoples:
- Those who did not join: the Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroese and Swedes.
- Those once under the British crown: the Dutch, Frisians, Afrikaners, overseas English-speaking peoples (Americans, Australians, Jamaicans, etc) and some Germans.
After hundreds of years of fighting, the four kingdoms were united in 1603 when the English crown fell to the Scottish king, James VI, King of Scots, who made all decisions about war and peace for the United Kingdom. Over time a senate of the 1,436 top men from the four kingdoms grew to have most of the power. There was no constitution.
Women: were not the head of the family or clan. They could not choose (or remove) men who held positions of power, certainly not those in the Kingdom senate.
Marriage: A married man lived alone with his wife apart from her people. His wife could divorce him only if she could prove he committed adultery as well as incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion.
Property: Held in private. Many were poor. They were a model in capitalist circles. Women could not own property.
War: A standing army and navy. Many prisoners of war died, very few became British.
Food: Raised cows, pigs and sheep, grew wheat, barley and potatoes. Drank tea. Many had never tasted meat.
Religion: These days many have no religion though most follow the teachings of the prophet Jesus Christ of 2,000 years ago. In the old British religion priests fought the evil in men with words, water and bread, prayer frightened away evil spirits and the high god Jehovah created and ruled all things.
Dreams: Not taken seriously, which is why they had few prophets. They knew little about the subconscious.
Decline and fall: The United Kingdom, which reached its height from 1815 to 1939, robbing a fourth of the world with guns and ships, was weakened by a shocking lack of industry in its empire and, worst of all, spending much of its wealth fighting Germany.
Some stuff White Americans got from the British: their base culture (see above) complete with bad cooking, a North American piece of the British Empire, an example of bad government not to follow, tennis.
How I wrote this post: I copied the post on the Iroquois and changed it up for the British, keeping:
- the ahistorical past tense freezing a people at their military height (the 1800s in the case of the British),
- an out-of-date map,
- the interest in housing and clothing in pictures,
- using “real” photographs,
- throwing in chance bits of history and ethnography
See also:
Nice.
AmeriKlan is still very much a British nation complete with the oppressiveness. Nothing has really changed except the accents.
Interesting post about the United Kingdom. Like the youtube “What Song Are You Listening To.
“Those once under the British crown: the Dutch, Frisians.”
I guess that is not entirely correct. A shared head of state does not make one entity subordinate to another.
The wording of this post makes it sound like the Irish are British.
They are not.
I once made the mistake of thinking that this distinction was a boring waste of time.
I once addressed an envelope to Northern Ireland and wrote down “Northern Ireland, Britain” on it. Big mistake.
The post mistress saw it….. and she screamed at me, telling me that good people, like her grandfather, had paid with their lives to make their country their own and NOT BRITISH. :-0
The English always wanted to own Ireland, and Henry 8th went there to claim it. The whole of the island of Ireland was only merged with the British for about 120 years, and was extremely resented by most of Ireland’s people.
The Irish are not British! Ireland is not part of Britain! Northern Ireland is not the same as the Republic of Ireland…! The map at the top of the post features 2 sovereign lands of Britain and Ireland, including over 6,000 much smaller islanders around them . The islands have different names, such as:
- The Anglo-Celtic Isles
- The Atlantic archipelago
- The British-Irish Isles
- The British Isles and Ireland.
Calling them the “British Isles” is common enough, but controversial because it’s unacceptable and even offensive to many, many people. It gets complicated because these 2 sovereign states also have some lasting political overlaps. This is the legacy of conquest, colonization, the national liberation, and also the Peace Process.
Most of Ireland is the Republic of Ireland.
But the country is divided because not all of the island was won back and unified during the wars of liberation..
As a result, the northeastern corner is called “Northern Ireland” and forms part of the United Kingdom, with the Queen as its Head of State. Nevertheless, Northern Ireland has its own devolved government.
The Republic has no such connection.
It’s head of state is the President of Ireland.
There are many close and unusual arrangements between to the 2 nations, but they are 2 separate states: people are pretty sensitive about that I have found.
@abagond
What’s the date of the map you use?
tennis is a nice punchline!
The simplicity of language for religion blends well to explain the poverty and domination.
[...] The British (1603- ) were Europeans who lived on the islands of Britain and Ireland off the north-west coast of mainland Europe. The British lived in the United Kingdom, made up of four kingdoms. Since each kingdom had its own language, “British” is more a political term than a cultural one. The four kingdoms were: EnglishWelshScottishIrish [...]
“The United Kingdom, which reached its height from 1815 to 1939, robbing a fourth of the world with guns and ships, was weakened by the lack of industry in its empire and, worst of all, spending much of its wealth fighting Germany.”
Well put. Thanks for being frank about the cause of UK’s rise to power– robbery. As the old adage goes, you live by the sword you die by the sword.
Hmmm. And there’s any wonder why the U.K. and U.S. are practically clones of each other today?
I read in college the the second war was the main reason Britain pulled its tentacles away from India and not so much the activism from the Indian nationalist movement led by Mahatma Gandhi.
Abagond, Just a question. What is your evidence that they don’t take dreams seriously? I personally think you are wrong there. All humans have dreams, and some people take them serious in all cultures.
You should have called this “The British in a very small nutshell”
I agree with Bulanik…the Irish have never been British. Not sure if it’s a mistake americans make in general when taking about Europe or any other part of the world except North America, or is it part of the satirical nature of this ‘mockumentary’, a kind of an anthropological National Geography article written by Alan Partridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Partridge) …not getting the facts right on purpose, mimicking uneducated and unaware people who write about places and cultures they don’t know very well. If it is an honest mistake, then it’s a HUGE mistake. If it’s intended as a satire, it could’ve been a lot juicier by choosing even more obscure facts about them. I do appreciate the idea of writing such an article though, and it made me read the post which it was, the Iroquis and The Five Nations, which I had read about before, but I always like to learn more and refresh the things I’ve forgotten.
The British Empire was based on plunder and pillage, no doubt. I have absolutely no love for empires of any sort, since they are based on conquest, genocide and exploitation, stripping its subject countries off of means to sustain themselves. People often (British themselves, of course) want to write off the sins of the empire by claiming that they brought civilization to the far corners of the world. Not realizing that they were already civilized, the Brits just valued their own culture above all else.
@ abagond
@ Hannu
Ireland is British – no – wrong, wrong, wrong.
I made the lazy mistake about the Irish being British myself.
@ abagond
@ Hannu
Frankly, I feel that if I were to attempt and try to write about the Iroquois and The Five Nations I would make some grave errors indeed. LOL.
I think this video is a fair summary of
1. where and what is Britain, and,
2. who and where are “the British”:
@ Bulanik
@ Hannu
The map is from 1800. If you notice there is no Belgium or Germany or Republic of Ireland. I used an out-of-date map because that is what I did for the Iroquois post.
Most of what is in the post was taken from the 1800s – maps, pictures, the state of women’s rights, etc. Just like the Iroquois post freezes them in time in the 1700s.
My understanding of the term “British” is that it is a nationality not an ethnicity. It is not a matter of what culture you belong to or even what you call yourself, but what nation you belong to. Winston Churchill, for example, was English by ethnicity but British by nationality.
So people who live in the Republic of Ireland today are not British at all – but they were till 1922, an extremely disagreeable fact to many of them. And they were in the time warp world that this post is set in – like in the map.
While I did not put anything in the post I knew to be flat-out wrong, neither did I fact check it anymore than I did the Iroquois post. The difference, of course, is that this post will get tons more British readers – and Dutch or Irish or Jamaican readers – than the other post will ever get in Iroquois readers. I am sure there is stuff in the Iroquois post that is wrong too, but there is almost no one to catch the mistakes. That in itself is pretty troubling. Commenters help to keep me on my toes, but not where there is shared ignorance!!!
@ Hannu
This is partly meant as satire. It is meant to make a point, not be a serious guide to the British. But I am glad people are finding mistakes in it, because that tells me what sort of mistakes there might be in the Iroquois post and, more generally, in what I think I know of Native Americans.
The unfortunate thing, abagond, is that many people — even in the UK, not just the US or whatever — DO routinely make the mistake that Ireland (the Republic) is British.
I made that error myself, even though I should have known bloody better than that!!!
@ teddy
I know what you are saying. They had the same king for a while. That is why I put “under the British crown”, not “under British rule”. Though I could just as well have said that England was under the Dutch crown. There is probably a better way of saying it, but I am going to let it stand as is because mistakes like this are part of the point of the post.
@Abagond
That’s what confused me a bit. I did read it part serious attempt, part satire, but the problem with the approach is that since it’s not properly neither it adds up as nothing, really. It relies too heavily on the reading skills of an average american not educated on the history of countries and cultures outside North America. Some might take this as a solid, reliable piece, if and when they don’t have the ground knowledge nor bother to do their own research on the subject.
I actually myself did read the Iroquais post as a reliable information, being fascinated by the original americans since childhood. I understand you don’t have the time to verify and cross-check your sources and references this blog being just a hobby after all, but maybe you could start citing your sources so people can make their own judgement on their reliability.
@ dave
Having dreams and thinking they have meaning is universal to all known human societies. Even British society. But compared to the Iroquois, who are the standard of comparison here, British culture does not take dreams all that seriously. No one in Britain, for example, is founding a serious religion based on dreams they had.
British culture does not even take dreams as seriously as people do in the Bible. Like in the Gospel of Matthew Joseph married Mary based on a dream even though he had sound reasons to suspect her of being unfaithful.
To clarify:
The map is from 1800 – the same year of The Act of Union, forcing British-ness on the Irish.
Before this date:
Ireland was not Britain and the Irish were not British.
From the time of Henry 8th, who viewed Ireland as his personal property , it became traditional for the British Queens and Kings to believe they simply “owned” the land of the Irish (also known as Hibernia).
The British pressure for union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 was motivated by a desire to snuff out the rebelliousness of the Irish and to occupy the country against any invasion from the French.
What wiki says about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1800
@ Hannu
Just to be clear, the Iroquois post was meant seriously. I like that post. I think everyone understands I am a blogger, not a scholar. My writing in a blog without footnotes and sources shows that.
On the other hand, seeing the level of misrepresentation and ignorance about blacks in White American culture and even in the comments on this blog, I suspect that the Iroquois post is profoundly compromised: almost everything I know about the Iroquois comes from white people. I wrote this post to get a handle on that by recasting it about an analogous subject that is way more familiar so I could see where the warps are.
@Abagond
I did take the Iroquis post seriously, and I like it a lot. I have no qualms or complaints, I’m not a scholar myself, I’m just interested in a wide variety of subjects as I can see many people here are. Fascinating read of fascinating people. Props for writing about them. I also like the illustrations of the longhouses a lot.
Sadly indeed most of the world’s history is biased because it’s written by the victors: white western european and american. I hope and believe that is slowly changing. Right now I’m reading the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann ( http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059 ) about pre-columbian Americas http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/08/18/1491-by-charles-c-mann/ .
I’m only just at the beginning, but it is extremely fascinating so far, coming to the conclusion that that part of the world was more populous, developed and advanced in every way possible than thought before even by the most ‘esteemed’ scholars. The most ignored part of world history so far.
@ Hannu
“1491″ is a great book – at least the parts of it I have read.
@ Hannu
Something of possible interest: recent archaeological findings about the Mayans :
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/the-white-racist-guide-to-writing-history/#comment-145189.
*facepalm*
Good grief. Staggeringly wrong, on so many levels. And this is not parody?
A few points:
It’s called Parliament, not the senate.
Women could, and did, own property (up to and including half the bloody country, and everyone in it, as monarch and head of state).
The union between England and Scotland was in 1707, not 1603, before that the two countries were still discreet sovereign states (and the Act of Union forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland wasn’t until 1801, but things are of course a lot more complicated than that and go back much, much further).
The peak of the power of the British Empire would’ve been closer to 1900 than 1800; the French were, arguably, in ascendancy until Trafalgar (1805) and Waterloo (1815) put an end to Napolean’s ambitions.
And we do have a constitution, just so you know.
I could go on (and on, and on) but I’d be here all week if I went through correcting every mistake – and don’t even get me started on things the British gave to THE WORLD, let alone stuff White Americans got.
Prophets? How about Newton. And Darwin. And James Clerk Maxwell. And a thousand and one other dead white guys who’ve improved your life in innumerable ways.
Just… go to Wikipedia. Using this thing you’re on now, which we call the World Wide Web. Which was invented by a Brit. A white British man, in fact. The evil patriarchal bastard. Remember that the next time you post about “oppression” on this blog, and who made that possible.
You’re right about one thing though, the British Empire went bankrupt fighting the Third Reich (never mind the lives sacrificed). Maybe we should’ve stayed out of it after all, if this is the thanks we get. I guess being the last bastion of resistance against Hitler’s tyranny in Europe makes *us* the bad guys.
Cheers for that.
The British (or Britons, if you prefer) have been around a lot longer than since 1603 as well. Hint: the name is derived from what the Romans used to call us (you’ve heard of the Romans, right?) and that’s by no means the beginning of our history either.
Finally, you can thank the British for stamping out the slave trade, using that standing army and navy you mentioned. Not the first (or last) nation to institute slavery, but the first to put a stop to it. You’re welcome.
Oh yes, how ungrateful colonized and oppressed people can be ^^
Abagond said:
I didn’t want to be the one to bring out many of the points made by British Person above, because The British Response Plus Corrections would come down anyway.
And stuff like “you’ve heard of the Romans, right?” and “thank the British for stamping out slavery” (!) is precisely why satirical posts like this one — about white patriarchal bastards — and even more serious ones about the Iroquois (and other silenced or near silent peoples) need to written about here.
Thank you, British Person. And, you’re welcome back, in advance.
Funny thing is, I read the Iroquois post first, to try and get a handle on where this blog was coming from, and I thought that piece was a parody of ignorant, patronising old imperialist anthropology. Turns out it wasn’t. Oh, dear.
Like the author stated, no facts were checked in the making of these posts.
One may as well read these articles, and everything else here, as parody – certainly not to be taken seriously – since the author seems proud to proclaim that he’s just making it all up as he goes along.
And, Bulanik, you’re free to dispute any of the facts I presented in my comment above, especially those concerning the Royal Navy’s role in ending the slave trade. If it ain’t so, say so.
British Person, you have missed the irony of my earlier comment, I fear.
More than likely. Sorry about that.
I’m still reeling and bemused at the level of malice shown towards Brits on this blog, I didn’t realise we were despised that much. Quite shocking really, I thought the Americans were on Great Satan duty these days…
Let’s forget it. Cup of tea?
Earl Grey? Why not, old bean! LOL.
Ooooo, a British ‘person’ got insulted that the rest of the world isn’t grateful for being exploited and being under their yolk for centuries. Obviously this post did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to reveal the hypocrisy and the white privilege of people like British Person. Scarlet Pimpernel is what you are.
You seem to have totally misunderstood what prophets and dreaming mean in this context (or any other context, I believe). I believe Abagond meant dreaming in the most spiritual sense, not the way artists and scientists might dream when creating or solving a problem.
Personally I think that the British wanted to put stop to slavery just to prevent the Americans getting free labour. I mean if you think how the British ruled their dominions, I find it hard to believe they would’ve acted only out of humanitarian reasons or sheer good-heartedness. Bollocks, as you britons say.
And the chinese must be oh so grateful that you brought China on its knees in the Opium wars and destroyed countless lives by forcing opium to the masses and reaping the ill-gained profits.
What is wrong with you british people is that you suffer from an imperial hangover and are so sorry to have lost your vice grip on the world and its resources. Oh poor us, we are not appreciated for bringing the light to the world -while trampling on it with an iron boot.
British empire did indeed go bankrupt fighting in the WW2 and wasn’t able to recuperate, because suddenly the colonies wanted independence and didn’t want to be robbed of their wealth anymore just to fill the vaults of those darling Britons. Brits suffered but not even the fraction of what Poles, Lithuanians, Ukranians and Belorussians did, just to name a few. Last bastion against Die Dritte Reich? For a short while yes, until Hitler made the mistake and wanted to wrestle with the Russian Bear, fighting on two fronts which toook the pressure of your little archipelago. If you know anything about WW2 you would know that victory depended on Russians (and Americans) more than anyone else.
The positive things that your beloved empire were just byproducts of an ever hungry and bloodthirsty behemoth with an insatiable appetite and with no remorse nor pity for the plight of its unwilling subjects.
THe British Person is making this post the parody it was MEANT TO BE from the beginning. Thank you for filling the gaps and reinforcing the parodic tone! You should really write comedy for the BBC.
And by the way, the britons of antiquity hardly mean the same as todays British. You were after all conquered multiple times in the history by germanic peoples such as the juts, saxons, vikings, normans (decendants of vikings themselves). You are mutts and mongrels.
Bulanik: Smashing! I’ll put kettle on, you find us some crumpets.
—
Hannu L: Look, the original article didn’t insult anything except my intelligence. The only thing about it which offends me is its breathtaking ignorance. You can say anything you like about me and my fellow Brits and we generally won’t mind (you’ll never be as derogatory to us as we are to ourselves, believe me) but, if you’re going to insult us, at least try to make the slurs somewhat accurate or, better yet, funny.
Perhaps its me, perhaps I’m just not in on it, perhaps you have to be part of some Anglo-loathing clique to get the joke, because I didn’t see it (no doubt due to my own blinding British pomposity). Fair enough.
Regarding stopping the slave trade, I don’t much care what the motives were, we did it, and that’s not in dispute, is it? I do, however, find it immensely entertaining that your hatred of the British demands that you impute malevolent designs behind what must be an unequivocal good. We’re just so irredeemably evil that any positive outcomes of our actions must be unintended consequences or simply accidental. We’re innately incapable of doing anything deliberatey benevolent.
Hilarious. I’d lay off the Mel Gibson movies if I was you, mate.
Won’t argue with you about the war. Of course the outcome was decided on the Eastern Front.
Won’t argue with you about the nature of the British Empire either. Like all Empires it was rather grasping and rapacious. No different from any other in that respect, and just like every other people too, except, for a time, we were better at it than anyone else. That’s history. Guilty as charged.
And it doesn’t bother me in the least. That is, after all, how one earns “white privilege”.
You’re wrong about the ancestry of the peoples of the British Isles, btw. There’s been some mixture of related European populations, sure, but the stock hasn’t actually changed drastically in millenia. Look up Cheddar Man.
He was probably a cannibal too. Must be where we get our infamous bloodthirstiness from.
@ British Person
Thank you very much for your comments.
This post was modeled directly on the Iroquois post to see where it would go.
I never said I made stuff up. I said that I did not fact check this post any more than the other one. A relative thing. I was not going to get into 1707 and 1801 and all that, for example, because I did not do that with “Iroquois”, which is also a political identity with a history that is probably just as messy.
“Dreams” means the ones you have while sleeping.
My own picture of the British is not what is presented above. I have been taught NOT to see them that way – even though the Iroquois post is very close to how I was taught to see them.
If I wanted to INSULT the British I could have found way worse pictures than the above. And I could have put in far more damning facts. Victorian times were not pretty for most people, shockingly so when you consider the wealth and power the British nation enjoyed at that time. OR I could have shifted it to the 1700s when they still ran a slave empire and play that up. I did neither because that was not my aim.
“My own picture of the British is not what is presented above. I have been taught NOT to see them that way – even though the Iroquois post is very close to how I was taught to see them.”
Ah! Now I think I begin to see some of your perspective and meaning. Interesting, cheers.
I’ll have a ponder but probably won’t post again. Don’t want to derail your blog with fights I may start through misunderstanding.
Thanks.
“Abagond,
While I did not put anything in the post I knew to be flat-out wrong, neither did I fact check it anymore than I did the Iroquois post. The difference, of course, is that this post will get tons more British readers – and Dutch or Irish or Jamaican readers – than the other post will ever get in Iroquois readers. I am sure there is stuff in the Iroquois post that is wrong too, but there is almost no one to catch the mistakes. That in itself is pretty troubling.”
Linda says,
Abagond, good try at trying to be provocative to get responses.
If you really want to bring in the British, Dutch, or Irish commenters, then you should talk about football and say that “Wayne Rooney or Van Persie is the best footballer that ever lived”…or that British lager is better than Guinness, if that doens’t move people, then nothing will
@Linda
“If you really want to bring in the British, Dutch, or Irish commenters, then you should talk about football”
Aren’t most Europeans die-hard soccer fans? I’d wager add a soccer sucks in a sentence and watch them come running, not just to correct the term “soccer”.
I’d take a gamble and say most are more hardcore fans of soccer than us Canadians are of hockey.
Yawn, don’t you know by now that American-football is just rugby by the wrong name?
“Yawn, don’t you know by now that American-football is just rugby by the wrong name?”
Yup, I’ve know for ages. But when you’re next to the most (current) powerful country you can’t do much but silently agree with whatever blowhard patriotism they want to show (calling rugby soccer for instance).
@ British Person
Personally, I feel you’re wrong about the derailing and fight-starting.
This blog is not always the friendliest place for non-Americans; usually I think British humour / courtesies / self-effacement is ignored or misunderstood.
Often one may feel totally excluded and unwelcome….
Having said that, it’s no harm for a blog like this to put up with the presence of commenters from far-flung places with obscure-sounding POVs.
It was embarrassing to see those Pacific Islanders “lifting” William and Kate on their backs are carrying them. I felt it was 1812 all over again. Under the British, their ancestors were nearly wiped out, had their land and resources taken over.
here is what i know about british history:
divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survive…henry viii
The War for independence, red coats and london tower bridge, peter pan.
I mean i probably know a little bit more, actually because I took a british lit course, so the interregnum i know a little about, but not much else.
“…When you’re next to the most (current) powerful country you can’t do much but silently agree with whatever blowhard patriotism they want to show…”
Hmm. I gathered.
Abagond, look at the map, the Dutch had a republic back then, and considering that the British took over the entire Dutch Colonial Empire, and the Netherlands is like Scotland, Wales and Ireland playing as a county in English count(r)y cricket, it is a rather understandable mistake.
@British Person
Fair enough. I never said that ALL british people were purely EVIL, on the contrary, more like they were not any BETTER than anybody else, but since they were immensely powerful and influential, they did cause much harm to the world, because that’s the nature of an EMPIRE. Empires exist only for themselves and need constant growth and vicious guarding of their amassed wealth and resources. No lives spared.
It admittedly slightly pissed me off that you seemed to me to give an absolution to the atrocities done in the name of the empire. Power corrupts.
I do not like any empire in the history, meaning that the progress and inventions they’ve been credited to has not been worth the suffering and loss of lives they have caused when doing so.
I do not consider myself an anglophobe in the least, I for the most part do not value one culture or people above another, not even my own, which is Finland. There’s good and bad in every society. All cultures have contributed something to this world, but not all have been rightly credited, and some have been credited too much.
The brits I’ve personally met I have mostly liked and have indeed befriended a few.
I have a quick temper, true, but I don’t have the need to uphold any kind of animosity towards you or any other person on this blog once I’ve had my say. So I’ve got no particular ill will against you other than saying out (very) loud what I thought of your comment. And uhh, I don’t really like Mel Gibson that much, except his Mayan adventure film ‘Apocalypto’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eE1hxj1yzU) was rather brilliant. ‘Braveheart’ is entertaining, but his “freedooooooom” crap gets on my tits.
Everyone Irish or Scottish person I’ve ever met would cuss you out (in Gaelic) if they were ever referred to as “English or British”
Hannu, if we were in a pub, this would be the point at which I’d slap you heartily on the back and buy you a pint.
Cheers!
Indeed good sir, and let the next round be on me!
Cheers
their base culture (see above) complete with bad cooking
LOL!
Anyway, like people already pointed out, Irish people are not British. They’re kind of big on this one. So I know it’s a satire and all, but I don’t advise saying it in a pub in Ireland, if you know what I mean.
There was an interesting interview with the Inception actors Cillian Murphy (Irish) and Tom Hardy (English)* and a clueless reporter referred to both of them as British. Then Murphy corrected him: “No, I’m Irish”. But the reporter went on: “Well, yes, that’s what I’m saying, you’re both British”. Murphy: “No, I’m Irish”. It went for a while.
*- I believe Hardy’s mother is Irish, but he’s officially from England.
Anyway, I think this sort of articles are important to make people realize how utterly ridiculous, bad, confusing and plain wrong/incorrect many of the stereotypical portrayals of the non-Western cultures are.
This is a good exercise and can be applied to other things (for example, a horrible way other cultures are treated in movies).
Somebody should write an article on how a movie about American history would be like if made by the outsiders the same way American treat other people’s history. A hint: a movie about September 11 would be set in Los Angeles, Canada with everybody speaking German as their native language.
PS- And I can’t believe British Person wants a cookie for Brits stopping the slave trade. Also, slave trade does not equal stopping slavery itself.
Sound advice.
Last week I was in Dublin for a couple of days and was in earshot of a someone non-Irish “being told” this:
“We are Irish, yer fucker, not fucking British, get dat through your fuck-thick fucking head.”
Not all that polite, but it could have been worse.
Irish identity is no joking matter and was something fought and died for.
It means freedom from British ownership under a plantation system and the raw memory of the British-engineered mass starvation from the potato famine, or “The Great Hunger” (known as “an Gorta Mór” in the Irish language), from 1845-52.
I feel it should be remembered that, under British rule, Irish land was confiscated, de-forested, and rented back out to the Irish to work on. The rents were sent back to England. In 1842 alone, rent remittance was estimated at six million pounds (£6,000,000). I don’t know how much that would be in today’s money.
Non payment of (high) rent meant eviction, usually through violence and the burning of homes. The food source for many was exclusively what they could grow on their rented land. No land meant no food.
Ireland was, under British rule, “a nation of paupers”.
However, during the Famine in Ireland food exports from Ireland to England INCREASED.
One public memorial of The Great Hunger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_memorial_dublin.jpg
The British also offered, and gave, no charity during the period of Irish starvation. Interestingly, there is no record at all of the Irish asking for charity from the British during The Great Hunger. However, there ARE records that show the British asked other nations to help the starving Irish on their behalf! Further, most of those funds garnered from this charity work were, in fact, retained by the British government.
* Calcutta, in India is credited with making the first donation of £14,000, and this money was given by Irishmen serving the British Empire at the time.
* In 1845, Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid declared his intention to send £10,000 to Irish farmers but Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only £1,000, because she herself had sent only £2,000. The Sultan sent the £1,000 sterling but also sent three ships full of food. These shipments were blocked by the British administration, initially.
* During 1847, in the middle of The Great Hunger, the Choctaw nation of southeastern US collected $710 (some say $170) to help the Irish men, women and children starving at this time. This gesture was made 16 years after the Choctaw people themselves had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation.
Whole families were wiped out due to starvation. Others left on ships to the Americas. About 20% to 25% of Ireland’s population was lost as a result of The Great Hunger; it’s estimated that at least 1.5 million people died out of a population of around 8 million in the course of 7 years. One can still find old, deserted derelict houses in rural areas, where families gradually died out AFTER the Great Hunger, and were not counted in numbers of the dead from direct starvation.
The cause of the Famine was not unavoidable or inevitable.
As the Famine progressed, the British government saw it as an opportunity to implement various long-desired changes within Ireland. These included population control and the consolidation of property through various means, especially emigration (to USA especially). Despite the overwhelming evidence of prolonged distress caused by successive years of potato blight, the underlying philosophy of the relief efforts was that they should be kept to a minimum; in fact they actually decreased as the Famine progressed.
I’ve heard this conclusion about this episode in Ireland summed up in these terms: the British government deliberately pursued a race and ethnicity-based policy aimed at destroying the group commonly known as the Irish people and that the policy of mass starvation amounted to genocide per the Hague convention of 1948.
The purpose? Land regeneration in Ireland through the replacement of tillage plots with grazing lands. This was considered more important than any obligation to provide food for its starving ‘British’ citizens.
An early chronicle of Irish life described the Irish landscape and people like this:
“They ….are…dedicated only to leisure and laziness, this is a truly barbarous people. They depend on their livelihood for animals and they live like animals..”
Further, the historian who said this (Gerald of Wales, in his book called “The Topography of Ireland”), goes on to talk about sexual habits of the Irish:
“This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. They indulge in incest, for example in marrying – or rather debauching – the wives of their dead brothers.” Even earlier than this Archbishop Anselm accused the Irish of wife swapping, “…exchanging their wives as freely as other men exchange their horses.”
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The Irish were classed as Infidels, although it was the Irish who are now known to have revived Christianity in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. I am thinking of Saint Collum Cille, also known as Columba of Donegal.
This imaging of the Irish barbarous has been very enduring.
Note what the only English Pope, Adrian IV, said about the Irish when he granted dominion of Ireland over to England’s Henry II, in order “to the end that the foul customs of that country may be abolished and the barbarous nation, Christian in name only, may through your care assume the beauty of good morals.”
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Later in Elizabethan times, Edmund Tremayne, a government official who ‘knew’ about the Irish, said that the Irish “commit whoredom, hold no wedlock, ravish, steal and commit all abomination without scruple of conscience.”
Not surprisingly, the Irish were considered “Africanoid” by the racial scientists of the Victorian era. The position of “The Celt” according to the racial scientist, John Beddoe, held a place on the “Index of Nigrescence” was very different from that of the Anglo-Saxon.
These ideas were not confined to a lunatic fringe of the scientific community, for although they never won over the mainstream of British scientists they were disseminated broadly and it was even hinted that the Irish might be the elusive missing link between Men and Monkeys. According to the influential thinker of the time, Charles Kingsley, who preached and lectured widely at the time of the Great Famine:
And, this is what Irish people are supposed to look like:
For example, like dogs: http://darrylhattenhauer.com/h8/19/pages/Cartoon%20Irishman%20looks%20like%20a%20dog_jpg.htm
Or monkeys:
http://static.thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2011/01/38.jpg
Also as pigs. Or, as “white negroes”, aka, the missing link between apes and humans.
Even these days, UK census forms under the section of race and ethnicity, there is a separate section for “Irish”, because some Irish do not wish to be designated as simply “white”, because of its association with British-ness.
The British, and especially the English, are commonly referred to the Sasanaigh (the Saxons) in the Irish language.
“You’re wrong about the ancestry of the peoples of the British Isles, btw. There’s been some mixture of related European populations, sure, but the stock hasn’t actually changed drastically in millenia. Look up Cheddar Man.”
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it was Cheddar Man’s mtDNA that was extracted and found to match several of the living residents of Cheddar Valley. Mitochondrial DNA in itself is only a small percentage of one’s genetic makeup, and is passed down virtually *unchanged* from mother to child, generation after generation (except for changes due to rarely occurring genetic mutations). Ethnic and / or racial intermixing in a family has *no effect* on this type of DNA.
So, no, just because matches were found today for the mtDNA of a man who died 9000 years ago, it cannot be taken as evidence that his (very) distant modern day relatives are necessarily similar to him in phenotype, race or ethnic “stock”.
@bulanik:
The term Brittish were applied to the people who lived in the island before anglosaxon immigration from 400′s on wards. They called themselves as cymri, romans cymborgi, which means roughly “fellow men”. Anglosaxons called them Wheala, from which the name welsh comes from. These brittish people called the recent immigrants as Angles, from which came Angleland, that is England, and sometimes the sais, from saxons. The name angles sticked and thus became the english.
The original brittish were divided in several nations, or tribes according to the romans, from which the iceni of the east, the belgae of the south and the brigantes of the Pennines were the most famous. The most warlike and wild brittish were the votadini of the sothe east Scotland, from Forth of Firth dfown to the Hardian wall. They remained independent up to the 600′s when the anglosaxons finally conquered their homelands.
When in 550′s onwards anglosaxons were able to penetrate more towards to west, they split the former brittish nation apart. In the south west they became cornish and in the west welsh. Starthclyde around present day Glasgow and Rheged west of Pennines remained longer. Rheged up till 600′s and Strathclyde up till 800′s when it was absorbed into the Scotland.
The scotts, squiths, scuiths came across the sea from the west in 500′s. Originally they came from present day Ulster. They occupied the most western islands and were considered by the northern brittish as pirates etc. Eventually in 700-800′s the scotts joined the pictish tribes and unified under a single ruler and thus became the scottish nation we know today. Eventually the britts of Starthclyde joined in too.
To make the issue even more confused, the Hollywood praised William Wallace was not orginally from Scotland. His family hailed from Wales, which the ame Wallace means: wallace, walles, wales. He was also known as William of Wallace, aka Wales.
The real braveheart, the one the scotts today see as their true champion, was Robert the Bruce, who himself was an old scottish stock which had intermarried into english nobility and was a vassal of the english king BUT also scottish nobility. He also fought the english and gained the scottish independency in 1314 when his army defetaed the english at Bannockburn. Robert the Bruce along his brother also claimed kingship across the Ireland because as scotts they hailed from the island originally and thus were also irish nobility.
The irish remained divided into several kingdoms and groups up untill the english conquests began in medieval times. It was only then that these several irish groups began to see themselves as single ethnic group vis a vis the english. The english occupation of Ireland and opression created the modern irish sense of being one nation and one people.
The most recent idea of the people is that the average people, the farmers and small folk, never moved or were replaced but adopted and survived in the areas overtaken by the anglosaxons. They intermarried, adpoted the language, names etc. and from this fusion the modern english were born. Similar stuff happened in Scotland too, where the small folk remained at place when the nobility moved back and forth. But because of the remoteness the scotts were able to hold on with their customs and language for much longer. The cornish submitted in 900′s.
LOL at the ‘bad cooking’ bit!
Bad cooking was something that Americans got from the British? LOL.
Um, I never thought I’d ever find myself speaking up for the British (LOL), but the stuff about bad cooking of the British isn’t 100% true. Or fair.
It’s a bit like saying frozen pizza IS the apex of Italian cuisine.
There is in fact a long history of good British food, and a number of reasons for its destruction.
If anyone has seen the TV series called “Downton Abbey”, they might remember seeing regular scenes at the grand dining table…and the diners at the table are hardly eating fish and chips in newspaper!
The dining scene in the video is not a dramatic device. The fact is that dining well was a very big deal in the lives of Edwardian England’s upper classes, up to around 1910.
And make no mistake, the food was of high quality and the preparation incredibly sophisticated. The cooks of this era possessed technically dazzling skills. When the First World War came along a lot of the skilled cooks/kitchen labour never returned. Not only did the skilled people not return, but the ingredients that supplemented the limited domestic varieties from continental mainland Europe, was also in short supply… Sugar and cream for example, were also banned, or rationed once conditions were a little better.
This level of prolonged austerity meant that British food culture became very, very simplified and slimmed down.
The Industrial Revolution a century earlier had also seen artisan food making vanish, too, because push to industrialize steamrollered the country traditions that existed.. Unlike in France and Italy and Spain, countries which all retained and cherished their rustic culinary cultures.
British food culture had little chance to recover between the 2 World Wars. The economic crash of 1929 spelled more belt-tightening. Then, with the rise of fascism in continental Europe, this followed 14 years of food rationing that did not end until 1954. Long after the 2nd World War itself ended.
When the people from the Caribbean, China and the India started coming into the UK in large numbers in the late 1950s onwards, they demanded the ingredients of their home cooking, and this international flavour changed the taste of British food forever. These days it’s not unusual to see British people having a sandwich (a British invention) along with a samosa (Indian) and spring roll (Chinese) and a quiche (French), for lunch for example.
What an Italian trying out English food had to say about it:
http://www.i-studentlife.com/2012/04/stefano-evangelisti-is-english-food-really-that-bad
I’ve also heard that the best Indian food is to be found in England:
More about “terrible” British food.
Here are some well known dishes and culinary inventions:
- Bangers and mash
- Balti – (British-style type of curry, served in many restaurants. The origins of the Balti style of cooking are uncertain; some believe it to have been invented in Birmingham — others believe it originated in the northern Pakistani region of Baltistan in Kashmir from where it spread to Britain.)
- Bubble and Squeak
- Cokk-a-leekie soup ( beef, chicken, leeks and prunes in a stew)
- Cumberland sausage
- Eccles cake
- English mustard
- Gravy
- Ice cream – created first in 1718 in England
- Jellied eels
- Kendal mint cake
- Lasagne – contrary to usual perceptions — the first recipes for a lasagne-styled dish were found in an English 14th Century cookbook called “Forme of Cury”, it was a popular dish during the reign of King Richard II.
- Pancake – Modern pancake, English culinary manuscript 143o
- Piccalilli
- Scotch egg – Invented by the famous London department store, Fortnum & Mason, in 1738.
- Scouse
- Carbonated or sparkling water, a major and defining component of soft drinks (Joseph Priestley).
- Sparkling wine (invented by Christopher Merrett)
- Spotted Dikk (a raisin and sponge pudding)
- Syllabub (a dessert based on a 17th century recipe, the story goes that a milkmaid would send a stream of new, warm milk directly from a cow into a bowl of spiced cider or ale. A light curd would form on top with a lovely whey underneath. The modern version is more solid, and mixes sherry and/or brandy, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and double cream into a custard-like dessert or an eggnog-like beverage.)
- Toad in the hole
- Trifle (Layers of alcohol-soaked sponge cake alternate with fruit, custard and whipped cream, some people add jelly.)
- Welsh Rarebit
- Worcestershire sauce
- Westmoreland Pepper Cake (fruitcake with a lot of black pepper. Other ingredients include honey, cloves, ginger, and walnuts.)
Also a word about steaks.
Steaks were so British that the nation’s elite troops were referred to as beefeaters. They can still see in their traditional costume at the Tower of London.
(The term “Porterhouse” for a special large kind of steak cuts has nothing to do with porters or luggage carriers but originates from British pubs where a special brand of dark beer, Porter beer, was served, and where a snack consisted of a steak some 2 lbs (about 900 grams) by weight – a single portion for a single man.)
Here is a quick recipe for a traditional strawberries and cream dessert called “Eaton Mess”.
It’s funny that soccer is a British word.
The Irish people here in UK hate being called ‘British’ or ‘English’… and there’s a lot of the old Irish jokes that English people love to tell you over a pint lol.. If anything, being Irish in the UK is like being black!!
The UK is isn’t that bad at all.. but it’s politics and history is.. which is why prior to the Human Rights Act, the UK parliament were supreme in their Sovereignty and could make a law on just about anything they wanted. (Quite dangerous if you ask me) … And that they did!!
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