Can English people explain how they feel about this?

[Green215]

As an English person, do you hold resentment towards any country based on historical grievances like war, invasion, famine, colonialism etc? If so, which; if not, why?

The reason I ask is because I’ve always found it odd how the English tend to be the only people in the world who do not hold such grievances.

Irish people are always complaining about British colonialism; many Scots and Welsh likewise complain about England on a historical basis; Greeks and Turks complain about one another; Africans, Indians, Arabs etc complain about European colonialism and American invasions; China complains about Japanese atrocities and vice versa; Russia complains about German atrocities; post-Soviet states complain about Russian occupation; France and Germany complain about one another; America often complains about the Revolution; Canada complains about the War of 1812; Mexico and Latin American countries and Caribbean countries complain about American invasions or interference or colonialism; some Australians resent British rule etc.

But, rarely do English people demand reparations or sing “rebel songs” or complain about historical grievances. Why?

I could understand if maybe some English people resented Germany due to the two world balls or resented America for things like the Suez crisis and the funding of the IRA. And truth be told, I have come across some English people that are like that. But, they are very few compared to the other peoples I described.

I understand that this is sort of an academic question, but I wanted to come on this forum to ask ordinary English people how they felt and I hope you can give some honest answers rather than sarcastic responses or not answering the question properly.

I think Japan being on these terms so quickly with America is an absolute miracle.

No, none at all.
I find the resentment of (say) the Irish and Boers to what happened generations ago totally inexplicable.
To quote Somerset's greatest philosopher "I weren't there, so I don't care. Don't tell I, tell 'ee."

Quite. A village I lived in had a whole generation of men, killed. Just one example.

Europe is very tribal and the English are no exception. It's very tongue in cheek though. We roll our eyes at the French don't we? Also the Germans, of course the Germans. Everyone in Europe remembers what happened with them. Most of our rivalries are within. Liverpool and Manchester pretend to hate each other, although would join forces of against Yorkshire. Yorkshire and Lancashire pretend to hate each other, although would join forces of against the South.

I read that about 90% of land in England is still owned by direct descendants of the Normans, so our class warfare could be based on a type of colonisation that still goes on.

I’m Scottish and the dislike of the English in Scotland annoys me as I don’t think a lot of our history was English v Scots but Catholic v Protestant.
Our great Scottish hero Bonnie Prine Charlie was a Catholic -so had he reigned we might all be Catholic.
However the Covenanters (Protestant) in south Scotland were horribly tortured and killed but by fellow Scots mainly - the Cs hated Catholics. It’s complicated and I haven’t read enough to give a clear description but the Religious side to it all is played down - except in Glasgow when Rangers plays Celtic- but I think many of the Catholics in Glasgow came from Ireland seeking work but that was more recent -however the underlying religious animosity was there. But it is portrayed as Scots v English.

I share the soft spot for Harold and the "what ifs?" are interesting, if academic at this point, because we have Norman blood in our veins now, along with much else from other cultures. It has made us what we are.

#haroldourlasttrueking

But that is getting off lightly compared to other places.

Because England has always been the oppressor. We have no songs to sing in protest because we've never been occupied. I think the only protest songs are against our own government.

As an Irish person I really resent that remark. A majority of people here hate British colonialism for a very good reason. And our country has had a really bloody war as well. I personally don’t hate British people at all but I do resent a lot of the interference that has gone on here from England particularly in the days of The Troubles. I’d be really careful with your words here, they have and will cause offence especially if you haven’t done the research into your ‘why’. Try living in a country where you aren’t even given your own identity because of another part of the ‘kingdom’ being seen as superior.

People forget this.

All our industrial cities look radically different to how they did in 1938.

I was at a toddler group in a village hall the other day and reading a plaque on the wall of men from the village who died in WW1. The village is probably about 3,000 people now, would’ve been smaller then, yet the list was about 25 men long.

No. That was just an example. Obviously there’s even worse. It’s documented heavily.

I have witnessed that from some people from ex British colonies who love to talk about how wronged their great grand parents were and bear a grudge. I have also met Palestinians who grew up in exile because Britain helped dispossess them from their land but bore absolutely no ill will towards me because I was British. In my experience, people who have genuinely suffered themselves can be incredibly understanding.

I'm English. I don't dislike any nation. I don't feel responsible for decisions the govt make today, or those made before I was born. Mostly you have no say. I come from a big multi-cultural city. People are just people. Doesn't matter where they're from.

My dh is not English (but from the UK) and I have experienced racism where he's from.

I don't hate anyone. I do find the Scottish obsession with wars/battles odd, I lived there for a few years and have a Scottish fil and some very close Scottish friends and they're all the same. My parents and bil don't like the Welsh and my mum hated the Japanese because of ww2 but strangely didn't hate the Germans (her dad fought in both world wars, but not against the Japanese).
I think we're hated so much because we've brow beaten (to put it mildly) the rest of the UK in the past and we've invaded a lot of other countries. The Australians think we're cocky, but then we queue 🤷🏼‍♀️

No, not really. But I've always thought of the English as being more sinning than sinned against.

To me its the simple fact that historically, we've been invaded by just about everyone, but nearly every invasion has added something to our culture, and our way of living.

The two world wars were different, but we won, and the Germans were punished via reparations for the first one, and the second decimated their own population at the hands of a maniac.. the average German people suffered enough.

It's cus we're the bad guys 😂

If I have any beef it's probably more with monarchy over the years. I can't help but get pissy when I think about Henry VIII forcibly taking land and distributing it to his family and cronies and how this still benefits the royals to this day. The Duchy of Cornwall estate makes about £20 mill a year for our current royals to this day and that land was never bought or paid for.

I find it utterly disgusting.

I'm not a fan of how Christianity was forced upon us and history re-written by the church over time, either. The way we as a society generally look down on Paganism, when that is what our ancestors were, also irks me.

We talk a lot in England about what our 'culture' is, but forget how much of it we shunned because the Church (again, headed up by Monarchs, for the most part) told us we had to.

I guess at least they let us keep Christmas and yule logs and Halloween, but nobody realises they're Pagan things anyway, particularly Xmas (Jesus the man was supposedly born in October but the European peasants played up so much about losing their fave celebrations that we were allowed to keep them so log as we rebranded them to be about Jesus). Or so the historical story goes. But who cares about history? Not your average Brit, in my experience.

Sorry but the ‘war’ in Ireland killed 3,500 people from beginning to end (30 years).

The UK lost 800,000 people in WW1 and 450,000 people in WW2.

Not remotely comparable.

There used to be a joke about Germany when I was young (80s) but it was a joke.

we don’t hate anyone because we were always the villain really and then when we weren’t, there were so many other countries involved that it didn’t count.

English here (althoung one Swiss grandparent). My grandfather was in WW1 and injured. Killed when working as ARP warden on 1940 when mum was baby. No animosity to the Germans or anyone else.

English people don't have recent experience of people being beastly to us (apart from our own governments or monarchs) since the Normans wiped out the English nobles in the eleventh century. Otherwise we'd have been less empire-building and more Danish. Lucky for me because I'm not that keen on cinnamon

The only resentment I’ve ever read/seen or felt in an extremely mild way has been about the economic invasion of (mainly) London. So each generation of extremely wealthy people from other countries.

Greeks in the 70s - shipping.
Arabs and oil sheiks
American corporate titans.

There is/was a fair degree of jealousy there, but also some resentment of the colonisation of parts (often the nicer bits) of London.

I think that’s the reason - the ‘occupations’ were so long ago and the people that did it aren’t really an existing country now.

It would be odd to hold modern day Italy accountable for 400 years of Roman occupation.

Also we weren’t simply exploited by the Romans we gained quite a bit by the occupation too.

In World War One, men often joined up together and served together as they thought it would be good for spirit. The problem was it meant that if that regiment suffered then whole villages and some towns would lose all their young men. In World War Two they changed the policy so that conscripted men would be mixed up with others from different areas.

Our village had 44 die from WWI but only 2 from WW2

Read a history book for fuck sake. It wasn’t 30 years and it absolutely was a war. Ireland still hasn’t recovered it’s population from the potato famine.

@Objete but the same applies to all the countries that resent us. Every country we colonised was left with some English people, traditions etc.