Are these people really British?

[glitterpaperchain]

In 1688, foreign strangers were arriving on British shores daily. The locals complained of despoilment of their environment. Londoners complained that French was everywhere, and not a word of English could be heard spoken! The French immigrants were denigrated either for being too poor, thus a drain on rate-paying parishioners, or too prosperous, at the expense of local merchants and business owners.

(Taken from Thou Savage Woman by Blessin Adams, great book!)

That sounds exactly like what I hear the media saying about immigrants now! So when the far right are making sure that Britain is for the British, shall they make sure we all trace our lineage back to the 1600s, and make sure no descendents of those awful French immigrants count as British?

The British are one of the most mixed nationalities on earth.

And thank god for that.

The whole world is mixed through the centuries.

hate racists

I just thought it was funny that a description of the 1600s felt so similar to the kind of stuff Restore are peddling now.

I wasn't implying that therefore we must all be giddily happy about all present day migration, though quite a few people have interpreted it that way. Seems as if I touched a nerve.

The book is nothing to do with immigration etc, it was just setting the scene really. But it's an excellent book, very entertaining, and I would really recommend you read it!

Absolutely fascinating!

Just Googled it...the French Hospital, Rochester, Kent. Looks very nice. I feel some French ancestry coming on as we speak!!!! 🤣

Je suis goer maintenant in order to faire my family arbre.

@NotAnotherScarf what a strange view you have of 1688. These were not halcyon days . Life was riven with disease, infant mortality, and there were no laws to protect women. There were no clean water systems or sewage plants, no heating, electricity and working life was hard with no conveniences. It was especially hard for women of all classes with little chance at independence... I could go on....
Post second world war has generally been an era of wealth plus huge improvements in life expectancy and female empowerment.
This is starting to change slowly again.

I am an immigrant and there’s some truth to what the poster said. Most immigrants or maybe all come to improve their life circumstances- often they are financial positions or better career opportunities. Some are escaping war zones but most are here for better opportunities.

I came to UK under highly skilled migrant programme. I wanted to advance my career, also wanted more freedom than what was available to women in my culture.

There's definitely some truth to it, and I'm sure most do. But it's the way she, twice, said ALL immigrants move for financial gain. That kind of dismissive generalisation of an entire group of people I find insulting, sad, and tells me a lot about the person who said it.

@glitterpaperchain You said you find it odd when Americans describe themselves as Irish. The reason white Americans say that are Irish or Italian or whatever it may be is because that IS the entirety of their genetic and cultural makeup, being that there are no indigenous white Americans. You can't be a white American and your family be originally from America. That is not a thing.

This is why all white Americans define themselves by their European heritage. Some have very mixed European heritage, so they might say they're English, Irish, Scottish, and Italian, but there are many, many Americans whose entire heritage is Irish or Italian (two big ones). In those families, the great-grandparents came to America from Ireland, say, and they settled in Irish neighbourhoods and marry other people whose entire families also came from Ireland. There are parts of America today where pretty much everyone has an Irish surname. Same with Italian Americans, and I think possibly the same with people of Nordic heritage in parts of the mid-West.

America's not like England where a given person has their English heritage and then they might have a bit of Irish because they had an Irish great-grandparent. An English person would never thus define themselves as Irish. But for white Americans, that European ancestry they mention is the entirety of their heritage and background, because they are not indigenous Americans. That's why they define themselves by whatever European country their families immigrated from, not so long ago.

The cultural set-up in America is totally different from ours, since every white American comes from a family of immigrants. English people in England are in their ancestral homeland, whereas the ancestral homelands of all white Americans lie abroad. And many of them feel very close ties to those countries. Apart from being genetically from there and their families coming from there, they are often brought up with food, recipes, customs, stories, and traditions passed down from the family members who immigrated to America. For many, many white Americans, it was only a few generations ago, and often within their grandparents' living memories. Plus many of them have extended family in the "old country".

Yes, so you had a compelling reason apart from financials (more freedom as a woman).

As for the general point that someone made about immigrants doing it just for money, I can think of SO many reasons why people might immigrate that aren't about money:

Some people immigrate to be near family who have moved. Some people immigrate because they like the lifestyle better in their adopted country, like people who move to Australia because they like the outdoor lifestyle. Or they're gay and want to live openly whereas their own country is hostile to that. Some people just LOVE the country they're moving to, hence terms like Francophile. And some move for better weather. Not to England, admittedly! But that's a big draw for Brits who immigrate to Spain.

Happy to. I’m all 4 corners of the uk

But we are not mixed. We're hugely homogenous.

We're one of the most homogenous nationalities on earth. Yes, there has been a lot of immigration in the past few decades, but most white British have stayed the same since the Vikings shagged us. From the link below:

• There are separate genetic groups in Cornwall and Devon, with a division almost exactly along the modern county boundary.
• The majority of eastern, central and southern England is made up of a single, relatively homogeneous, genetic group

Check this out; it's fascinating.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-03-19-who-do-you-think-you-really-are-genetic-map-british-isles

@suburberphobe And not only are we very homogenous, we tend to stay put. There was a study from Liverpool uni about it.

I have a huguenot surname, so my ancestry through the male line goes back to these French protestant refugees from around 1685. But since 1685 there may have been 14 generations of my family, so I have 2^14 = 16384 ancestors from back then. If 2 of these were French then I must be a massive 0.01% French, the rest could be British.

About 800,000 huguenots left France between 1685 and 1700, and went to countries all over Europe. Many of them were skilled artisans, merchants and financial experts. France suffered severely economically for decades after their departure, and the receiving countries benefited enormously. Industries that still thrive but owe their existence to the huguenots include the Swiss Watch industry and the Irish Linen industry.