British origins

[Spexxvet]

We Merkins have a definite point when our nation was founded, and who the father of our country was: July 4, 1776 and George Washington.

When was England, or the UK, founded, and was there one person who you consider to be the father of your nation? I got to thinking cuz I wuz reading about the war of the roses t'other day.

[Sundae]

I'll let a proper historian answer this properly.
Of course.

But to my mind; no.
Sorry.
Apart from the fact that England and the UK are very very different entities, there is no recognisable beginning to these countries. They go back before our recorded history.

Limey lives on an island with remains of many old settlements. Stone Age I think, but she can correct me.

Personally I've seen Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age and Roman remains here. In fact Roman walls are present in many of our big cities. Bath has a spa which was originally Roman and restored sympathetically. You can walk city walls quite easily in many places, or Hadrian's Wall of course, built to keep the warlike tribes of Brittania out of Roman Britain.

Dana might talk about the Magna Carta.
Others about 1066.
Or even the death of Elizabeth I which joined England with Scotland (a link they are trying to sever. Go on then! See if you can manage free prescriptions and student fees without us! Bye-bye, bye-bye...)
Same with Wales (same for me anyway - they get free prescriptions!!!). They joined us after Llywelyn ap Gruffydd died. Owain Glyndŵr made a bit of an effort in the 1400s, but it came to nothing.

But every schoolkid knows Edward I smashed the Welsh. Shame. Apart from them being quite uppity I am very fond of them. I have no reason to claim Celtic blood, but I wish I could.

So, personally, I can't think of a real "start date".
I look forward to more learned people giving their opinions.
I adore history, but am no scholar.

[footfootfoot]

Where do I sign up?

[infinite monkey]

Sign at the dotted line


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[glatt]

American history is a little messed up too. We celebrate Independence day, but obviously there were people who were here before then. You can go all the way back to Jamestown, and many people consider that the beginnings of our nation, but St. Augustine Florida was already a bustling town when the Jamestown settlers first arrived.

[DanaC]

Well... Depends whether you're talking about England, the UK, or Britain.

Mostly I think we tend to think of 'England' as a political entity, or state, beginning with Alfred the Great, but in reality I believe the first king of a unified England was his grandson Athelstan, early in the 10th century.

There are many 'start points' for England. Bede was probably the first to refer to us as 'English' when he named his work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. (Historia Ecclesiastica Gens Anglorum) There was not a unified English state at this point, but a collection of kingdoms. They were however culturally distinct from the 'British' or Celtic peoples, so even before there was an England, there was an 'English' paradigm.

By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, England was one of the wealthiest and longest established thrones and ruling dynasties in Europe. It was also one of the most organised states of its day in terms of record keeping, taxation, the election of monarchs etc. Kings of England had far more power over their kingdom than most other monarchs, including the French king. William was a Duke before he invaded: England made him a king.

You could say at that point the nature of England changed. Whereas before much of it had held a kind of *thinks* almost federal independence along regional lines, William's ruling style was much more hands on and absolute. The vast majority of property and power changed hands at that time, with the ruling class almost completely replaced. The English state as we understand it now, could be said to have been born then.

In terms of where we place our start as an English people, I think most of us see it as having begun prior to the Norman Conquest. Most people probably don't have a clear idea of when and how, but they will place the beginnings of England much earlier than 1066, and into the 'Dark Ages'.

As far as 'Britain' is concerned there are two answers to that. We see our beginnings stretch back past Yorvik and Watling Street, Stone Henge and Mays How. Cheddar Man was dated at 10,000 years old, but the genetic markers he left can still be found in high numbers around the Cheddar area. I feel just as strong a connection to the Britons who built the great hill forts after Rome abandoned them, as I do to the Saxon mercenaries that overran them. And yet, at the same time, the people I relate strongest to are the Anglo-Saxons. I see the beginnings of my culture with them. But they are all my ancestors. We're too mixed up by now to be coy about it.

But 'British' as a national identity is very modern. It draws in imagery from all the above, but it is only a little older than America as an identity.

[Sundae]

Yup.
.... told you.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by DanaC

William was a Duke before he invaded: England made him a king.

But he was always a bastard.

[DanaC]

lol

True.

I went back to edit and ended up writing way more than I'd intended, Should have done a separate post :P

[DanaC]

Oh, and just as an info point for the Merkins: Watling Street is an ancient road, first paved by the Romans, but mostly following a track which had already been in use for centuries. . Later in our history it was used as the demarkation for the Danelaw, a part of the country ruled by the Danish under the Treaty of Wentmor, Wedmore?, can't remember, will have to google. Most of the road is still in use today.

[Pete Zicato]

Early English history is a maze of twisty passages. So is the development of the English language.

[footfootfoot]

Been reading this amzing book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed
IT's thick enough to stun an ox, but fascinating. Here's the text of the link, but it is easier to read and has active links at wikipedia

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (ISBN 0-19-506905-6) is a 1989 book by David Hackett Fischer that examines the details of the folkways of four groups of settlers from the British Isles that settled and moved from distinct regions of Britain and Ireland to the American colonies. The argument is that the culture of each of the groups persisted, providing the basis for the modern United States.
Albion's Seed utilizes an approach developed by the French school of the Annales begun by Georges Dumezil and developed further by Fernand Braudel that concentrates on both continuity and change over long periods of time.
[edit]Four Migrations

By writing about the four migrations as discussed in the four main chapters of the book his book is easily contrasted with that of other American historians of the 20th century who have written history that is almost exclusively concerned with the new. One of the unique contributions Fischer's book makes is a total, or unified social history rather than a compartmentalized fragment. As the author explains in the preface:
Instead of becoming a synthesizing discipline it [U.S. social history] disintegrated into many special fields--women's history, labor history, environmental history, the history of aging, the history of child abuse, and even gay history--in which the work became increasingly shrill and polemical. (p. ix).'
The book's descriptions of the four folkways grounding American society is one of the most comprehensive, almost encyclopedic, guide to the origins of colonial American culture. According to Fischer, the foundation of American culture was formed from four mass emigrations from four different regions of the British Isles by four different socio-religious groups. New England's constitutional period occurred between 1629 and 1640 when Puritans, most from East Anglia, settled there.
The next mass migration was of southern English cavaliers and their Irish and Scottish servants to the Chesapeake Bay region between 1640 and 1675. Then, between 1675 and 1725 thousands of Irish, English and Welsh Quakers led by William Penn, along with large numbers of Germans who strongly sympathized with the Quakers, settled the Delaware Valley. Finally, Irish, Scottish and English settlers from the borderlands of Britain and Ireland migrated to Appalachia between 1717 and 1775. Each of these migrations produced a distinct regional culture which can still be seen in America today. The four migrations are discussed in the four main chapters of the book:
East Anglia to Massachusetts
The Exodus of the English Puritans
The South of England to Virginia
Distressed Cavaliers and Indentured Servants
North Midlands to the Delaware
The Friends' Migration
Borderlands to the Backcountry
The Flight from Middle Britain and Northern Ireland
In short, Fischer brings back from recent oblivion the colorful regional stereotypes of American history. New Englanders really were puritanical; Southern gentlemen genuine aristocrats; Quakers were very pious; and Ulster-Irish, Northern English and Lowland Scots Borderland clans feuded as they had in the old country. Strikingly, the "hearths" described by Fischer seem to reflect Canute the Great's four feudal earldoms of England and are found similarly in the Catholic Church in England's four archdioceses.
Even the casual identification with American commonwealths seem striking, as the core of four extant republican Anglo-America cultures. These hearths of colonial diversity have expanded to the four United States Census Bureau regions. Fischer includes other peoples such as Welsh, Dutch, French and German—even Italian and a treatise on Black slaves in South Carolina. Fischer covers voting patterns and dialects of speech in four regions which span from their Atlantic colonial base to the Pacific.
[edit]

[Spexxvet]

Thanks, Dana.

Am I right that Great Britain is the name of the entire island, England is the part of the island, a "country", not including Scotland and Wales, and The U.K. is the "country" that includes England, Scotland, and Wales? We tend to use them interchangeably.

[DanaC]

@ Pete: *nods*

That's why we don't tend to have a fixed date in mind for our beginnings. So much is unknown. History and myth intermix. Camelot and Arthur as real in their way to us as Cnut and Richard the Lionheart.

It fascinates me it really does. One of my favourite historical periods. The names alone send a shiver down my spine. The Wulfingas, royal dynasty of East Anglia; Offa, King of the Mercians and builder of a great earthworks known as Offa's Dyke; and the poor lost kingdom of Elmet, where a British dynasty held out against the saxon invaders long after most of their kind had been overun or pushed to the fringes. Where I live now.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by DanaC

And yet, at the same time, the people I relate strongest to are the Anglo-Saxons. I see the beginnings of my culture with them. But they are all my ancestors. We're too mixed up by now to be coy about it.

It's funny, because before dealing with Merkins I was always proud to be part of a mongrel race. But of course we are so rooted to our little island, with no qualms about mixed ancestry from 1000 years ago. I forget that other countries (esp Australia, America and France) have people who have left the lands of their birth much more recently. Especially from Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

Originally Posted by DanaC

Watling Street is an ancient road, first paved by the Romans, but mostly following a track which had already been in use for centuries... Most of the road is still in use today.

It passes close to us.

In fact I know a racist joke based on the roads:
Why did the Romans build such straight roads?
So the fucking Pakis couldn't build corner shops.

Hahahahahahahahahaha....

Like they weren't foreigners themselves.