To think most of what people call “British” is actually borrowed from other cultures?

[BlendedByEmpire]

From food to fashion to language, it seems like a lot of what’s considered traditionally British has roots elsewhere. Yet people still cling to the idea of a “pure” British culture. AIBU to think the whole concept is more mixed than most are willing to admit?

I've read all your posts now, OP, and I can see where you're getting confused. When people talk about celebrating British culture or respecting British values, you're hearing "British culture/British values, which are of course unblemished by the touch of any other culture except Britain's". So you're kind of assuming an underlying xenophobia when people talk about Britishness, where Brits must of course be denying any links to other countries, which isn't necessarily there. I'm not saying it's impossible that someone could be xenophobic while lauding Britishness, but I don't think you should be jumping to conclusions about what people know/mean when they talk about their own culture.

We drink tea because Charles II’s wife, Catherine de Braganza, brought it over from Portugal and made it fashionable :)

I wonder how long our ancestors sat around not eating a damn thing before someone from abroad arrived to explain. Despite your protestations, I can't see anything here but stirring.

Yes I am one of those horrors who read the first page and felt a need to post. Apologies.

British culture. It always interests me as we are literally a nation of immigrants due to the number of times that we were invaded. The Saxons, Romans, Danes, Normans. And that's only England.

Wales and Scotland weren't joined with England until the Middle Ages.

No one born and bred here is ever truly "British". We've been multicultural forever - literally since before "Britain" existed.

British culture is at least partly about being open to, influenced by, tolerant of and borrowing from other cultures. It's not about purity and authenticity.

Modernity was invented here

Yikes!!

Those traditions are not that old, tbh. Probably at the oldest, the days of Queen Victoria. Iirc, she was married in a white dress and the idea took off from there.

To think that absolutely every single culture in the entire world has been influenced by other cultures and the British, like all other cultures are entitled to enjoy, celebrate and be proud of their culture.

Fixed your pointless question for you.

Good example of this is in another country or region is curry.

From Google-

European Influence and Adaptation
Portuguese Introduction of Chilies:
The Portuguese introduced chilies to South Indian cuisine in the 15th century, an ingredient that became widely adopted.

British Colonial Expansion:
British traders and colonizers developed a taste for the varied spiced dishes in India. They adapted these regional dishes and created "curry powder" to suit European palates.

Yeah, and the only country to have an Industrial Revolution which was exported alll over the world.

Telling that you think pointing out our history is 'bashing'.

I think posts like this are highlighting just what OP is trying to say. To take just one part of your post:

We have an incredible music heritage, with many of the 20th centuries most iconic and influential bands etc being British.

If you were to ask any of those iconic and influential bands who inspired them I think you would find a huge amount got their influences from American blues music.

Producing great writers, actors, artists etc. is hardly something which is unique to one country or culture.

Just because something good comes from a country it doesn't mean that the original source was also from there. I frequently read posts on here about things which are, according to the poster, unique to Britain when in fact they are not.

What?

@Kendodd because I was trying to think of things that are unequivocally indigenous.
Also, personally I prefer old folky stuff to eg grime.

Overseas influences have generally evolved over time via acceptance from the population.

it wasn’t that long ago that a lasagna was considered exotic.

When change happens too quickly, it is not as easily absorbed. Ask any village about their proposed new housing estate. But individual houses built one by one seem ok.

But the evolution from that source point occured differently in different places.

It's harder to see now music is freely and instantly avaliable online, but the development of pop/ rock music in the 60s/ 70s was different on both sides of the Atlantic.

There's also traditionally been localised effects such as the explosion of pop culture in Liverpool from music to poetry. Different cities developed different cultural vibes.

The Beatles and Rolling Stones heard skiffle and rock and roll and took their inspiration in different directions as did the bands inspired by them.

Prior to that there was the Midlands Enlightenment of the 18th Century where contemporaries collaborated across different fields of art, language, engineering and production. Despite their different fields they inspired each other, wrote to each other and met across their region or in London.

Charles Darwin's achievements aren't moot because he had a leg up after grandpa Erasmus had studied botany first.

British culture is a bit easier to "see" as it takes the credit for contempoary, state and multi-cultural cultures. Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish are easier to see when they are distinct from English. A lot of English culture is regional and that gets overlooked. England isn't a homogenous mono-culture from Cornwall to Northumberland (and other parts of the UK have their regional variations too). A brass band is no less a culture than a male voice chior or bagpipes.

Britain has a long history of absorbing, developing and exporting cultural aspects and that's no less valid than more isolationist cultures which tended to develop in geographical remoteness.
I also can't vouch for their regional variations and variety.

The problem is that on the one hand people are marching in the streets demanding Britain back, and the protection of British culture-but then the get all huffy when anyone asks what they mean.

They certainly were part of mine. My mum used to mince everything up in an old mincing machine that clamped to the kitchen table - everything went in them!

I think you're making the same mistake/assumption as the OP: that in noting our musical heritage the poster was actually saying "and none of it influenced one iota by any other culture" which they weren't. For all you know, they're well aware of the influences of earlier mostly African-American music on the Beatles and the Stones. The commenter talked about British creativity rather than British uniqueness.

😁 👍

YAWN. Try leaving London once in a while, OP.

No. You don’t need to travel too much to realise that the UK is really quite unique.

You see, I love all of these things. I actually don't think they're particularly present in a lot of contemporary British life. And I don't think that's due to immigration. I think that's more due to industrialisation and the rise of Christianity, which frowned on these traditions. We do have some lovely folk traditions.

I'm thinking of what another poster said about British culture and why we need a culture we can be proud of.

If anything the struggles that people experience in this country are also due to the atomising effect of privatisation and industrialisation, followed by the loss of industry. Those are the same things that driven the loss of some of our cultural traditions and ways of life.

We by no means have an idyllic past. However, perhaps if we maintained that connection to the more community centred way of life and had more attention to our history, we wouldn't be mistaking immigration as the threat to British life.

We've always had immigration to this country, one way or another. Generally, this has advanced us as a nation and led to development and progress. The addition of more traditions, perspectives, and inventions has made our nation richer.

I don't see immigration as a threat to British culture. I see post-industrial capitalism (and the individualism that came with it) as threats to the well-being of all of us.

I think we need to come together as a "salad bowl" community in Britain and regain the community spirit and care that makes us resilient to the challenges we are facing - poverty, division, feeling hopeless - and create a community culture we can be proud to share.

People like Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk thrive on division. It gives them power, influence, and honestly controversy gets them more "likes" for their brands. But that division keeps us isolated and pitted against each other, at a time when I think we probably need community most.

Nowhere else had an Industrial Revolution.

Listne to ‘The rest is history’’ podcast. With 2 of the biggest historical experts there is.

Every 'culture', i.e. the way of life in a place at any given time, is made up of influences from other 'cultures', from travel, dispersal and migration, from the past, and as generations change. This applies to all the 'cultures' who influence one another.

People use narrative to connect themselves in the now to people who lived in the same place in the past, or who belong to the same tribes, broadly, 'ancestors'. This creates a sense of belonging, continuity and tradition, to counteract inevitable changes and disruptions. All cultures do this.

What is particularly important to people in the now is what we call living memory, which is our memories, partly composed of the individual and community memories of our parents and grandparents. In reality distant 'ancestors' wouldn't recognise our world, values or even our version of their languages. Living memory gives us an important sense of stability, family and community stability, and helps mediate change. For all societies, all cultures.

When this is disrupted suddenly, or change happens too quickly for community cohesion, it damages the existing society and fragments previously shared culture. If change happens more slowly, cultures will assimilate new elements, although distinctions and oppositional elements will always be part of a culture. All societies, all cultures.

A large nation-state will never have a monoculture, where it has shared cultural elements, laws etc. that's by agreement, the formalisation of the agreement is citizenship. In times of war, governments will try to appeal to a consensus version of a national culture to motivate people to defend it - the British government did this rather well in WWII, the cross-class culture on the propaganda posters was both real and not real.

In the UK, the establishment (education, policy-makers etc.) have spent the years since the end of Empire treading down rural cultures and working-class cultures, and in particular telling English people their flag alone shouldn't be seen. This seems to be a reaction by the educated English middle class against its own supposed origins, wanting a cultural narrative that aligns it with an internationalist Enlightenment, not colonial warmongers of the long dead upper classes. If they can find a 'Celtic' ancestor, so much the better.

So now Craig, white panel van man from Chesterfield, with his facebook profile St Geo cross, represents an embarrassing failure for the new enlightenment because he's apparently clinging to an imaginary Britsh culture of the past. It's your fault, Craig, just drink your Monster, eat your Biryani and shut up.