Are these people really British?

The age of consent came in as law in 1885. The Victorian times was the first time that there being a specific age below which sexual activity was child abuse became a concept. (That does NOT mean that in medieval times etc all girls were getting married at 14 or whatever nonsense people talk about. Parents still cared about their children and child abuse was still abuse. It just wasn't codified in law). But it's definitely not true that child abuse was punishable by death. Killing a child could be for sure.
If she meant child abuse as in physical child abuse then that's also clearly nonsense. Beating children was fine.

What do you do about the illegal nail bar worker who has a baby, or the recently arrived young family on a visa who can't pay their rent? Chuck them out on the streets without assistance?

Yes, that is something that is being promoted now in literature, etc that we are not homogeneous white. Seems a bit worrying.

Incidentally, our definition of "deserving poor" has narrowed considerably since then. Disabled people and single mothers werenpretty much unequivocally considered worthy of support.

The state has had a responsibility to feed and if needed house those unable to feed and house themselves since the Elizabethan poor laws. Well before 1688.

As you said, initially that was at a Parish level. But Parishes had responsibility towards people from outside the Parish who fit certain criteria (at one point it was staying in the Parish for a set period, I think it was for a few months. So people would hide...) or whose father's had been born in the parish if they were illegitimate but the father was known. The debates about which Parish had responsibility and about incomers to the Parish claiming alms are actually very similar to the debates today it's just our borders at bigger (state level rather than parish level).

I answer therefore, I guess for people like JD Vance the cut of for what makes the "British" or "English" or "Scottish" ethnicity is what those places looked like ethnically when the Mayflower left. All immigration before then contributed to the ethnography. All immigration after was a weakening of it.

And if that's the definition people want them it's fine. But it's very self absorbed.

But 1688 the population was less than 6.5 million. Now it's in excess of 70 million.

In 1688 everyone had to work, be supported by family or the parish in which you had lived in for years today the benefits bill is over £300 billion

In 1688 you were responsible for housing yourself...the government weren't putting you in the 4 star hotel I used to stay in when I was a manager for an insurance company (Siswood Horsham, one time summer house of the owner of Harrods)

In 1688 the was a revolution based on an argument about religion... today people not even allowed to question religious ideas

In 1688 if you committed child abuse you were executed. Today you can't even be reported.

You tell me why people are rightfully questioning immigration

I don't need to worry about it

I know I'm British because I'm British. I can look around myself and see most other people in the area I live are British as well. They aren't all white. If I needed to I could draw up a list of traits almost all of them share and it would be quite stereotypical but also reasonably accurate.

Likewise I know I'm English, I can feel reasonably aware of who I consider is English and who isn't, although that's complicated by the fact it hasn't got a legal definition so it's partly down to self identity. There are people I would think of as English who might not call themselves that. But there were grown men literally crying when England lost to Argentina so that's a clue.

I think it's probably a much more pressing issue if your own identity is unsettled. For example this really seems to bother some Americans who themselves aren't English/Scottish/Irish but for whom the identity of being of English/Irish/Scottish heritage is important. Which is fine. But anyone growing up in Britain just "is". It's like fish don't need to define water.

I think that’s an interesting question. Being of mixed heritage myself, I know that some British Citizens’ loyalty and support for Britain is extremely sketchy, far more so than people might assume.
I’m also troubled by people who trot out ‘We should all be ashamed of ourselves because of what Britain has done in the past.’Have they ever thought about their loyalty to the UK? How much do they really know about Britain’s past? IMO, if they were properly informed, they would not parrot these things.
I think a nation is composed of people who are loyal to that nation and have some sympathy with the idea that they should just move on and find something better if they’re so troubled by British history.
I know that’s not enforceable!

🤣 No, I think that was just you!

But we should DEFINITELY have a beef with the Italians for Roman Britain!

Others may not agree but I don’t think this is a good way to represent another person’s book.

Ethnogenesis is the term for what people are reaching for here. At what point is a group of people a defined and stable ethnic group? Ethnicity includes components of both genetics and culture.

This is similar to the question of "at what point do we call something a new species" in that there isn't a pure test you can do. There are innumerable debates about whether some certain type of bird is a new species or a subspecies of another one.

Just because there isn't a hard cutoff, as in, English humans didn't separately spring into existence separately from the rest of homo sapiens! doesn't mean it's not meaningful to talk about ethnic groups.

"Are x people British?" forces the question of "what does it mean to be ethnically British?", even though a lot of people would like to sidestep it by saying it's anyone who spent a couple grand on a passport.

Yeah I get that. I am white British as the short answer
the longer answer is a black gg grandparent migrated from Barbados and married a white English woman
I did my family tree then the ancestry DNA

Dear me.

That really is interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

"So for 100 years they just intermarried with other French families, and didn’t integrate at all."

There are other cases of that as well from the same sort of time. When Britain defeated France in the 1760s and took Canada from the French, some French colonists remained there (which is why they now also speak French in Quebec).

But, like with your ancestors, they just intermarried with other French families (and worshipped at the same Catholic church etc). This means that for anybody studying family history it becomes an absolute nightmare because everyone ends up being related to everyone else with cousins and second cousins marrying each other.

The same thing happened with the French colonists who left. A lot of them moved to Louisiana (around New Orleans). They also intermarried within their own community and eventually became known as "Cajuns".

It really is so fascinating to find out that it also happened here as well.

Thank you for sharing this.

I know what you mean! I am part Irish but wouldn't describe myself as "Irish" because while it's a beautiful country and I've visited there on holiday I haven't really spent enough time there to describe myself as Irish without feeling like a massive poseur. I also don't really feel the need to "come home" some Americans do. Whereas if someone like Ed Sheeran does because they've been raised spending a lot of time there with Irish family it is different. But I do feel more Scottish because I have Scottish family still there and spend more time there. But if anyone asked Id say I was English still.

The problem starts when, for example, Americans visiting Ireland or Scotland get pissy because the "Scottish" hotel owner or whoever looks South Asian and therefore isn't "really Scottish". It's fine to romanticise one's heritage in other places. I don't think it counts above actually being born/living in a place or confers the right to complain somewhere has changed in the 150 years since their ancestors left it.

The answer is yes.

And yes they stayed in that community.

Even more than that, stories are still carried down in the family about life before to today in some cases.

This isn't unusual. My Dad's family is Scottish. The family rumour was that were involved in the Battle of Culloden. That's 1746. This does indeed seem to check out. That's well over 250 years that this knowledge has passed down in the family. There's a few bits of myth in there too but for the most part it seems accurate.

Ah,

Just read further about the study it's based on and it's specifically targeted at people from rural regions. That makes a lot of sense and sort of confirms what I was wondering about in my very long winded post.

There have been immigrants entering the UK since the Ice Age, but in more recent history we have seen Romans, Vikings, Huguenots, Palatines, Irish, Jewish and Post-Empire Commonwealth immigration.

If certain political parties really do wish to ‘send them back’, I’m guessing there will be about 40 people left.

My paternal grandfather was Irish and it never occurs to me to claim that I am Irish in any way. However my mums side is Welsh as far back as you can go and having spent so much time in that lovely country I do sort of feel Welsh if that makes any sense

Do you not know that Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa?

And you don’t think there is any sneering on the other side of the argument?

That's genuinely fascinating thanks! Especially the bit about the Celtic strands (in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Devon etc being very different to each other).
However, this paragraph is important:
All four grandparents of the volunteers selected in this study were born within 80 km of each other. Because grandparents contribute a quarter each to their descendants genome, focussing on this group of volunteers means that the researchers were effectively sampling DNA from the volunteers’ ancestors, allowing a snapshot of UK genetics in the late 19th Century

It means the study is a little skewed in terms of whose DNA is included. On the one hand that obviously avoids more recent movements of people (so it avoids not only the last few decades but any changes since the late 19th century).
However, it also biases the samples a bit since the types of families whose grandparents all stayed in the same place might also be the types of families whose great and great great grandparents stayed in the same place. Eg, my grandparents all came from different corners of Britain. So by design I wouldn't be included in the study. However, I don't know if the factors which made my grandmother's parents more likely to emigrate from Wales when she was a child also caused her grandparents and their grandparents to move around. (They did, we found out some of them came from Cheshire). So families where there was movement in the 18th century, and then later movement in the earlier 20th century wouldn't be captured at all.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself clearly but while it's a very interesting study I don't think you can read from it that populations were stable up until the grandparents generation. What it tells you is that people whose grandparents and parents didn't change location much also had great great great grandparents who didn't change location much.