The invasions that succeeded added to the English gene pool but did not detract from it; the invasions repelled would have altered England's civic society irremediably.
The invasion of Islamists, unwilling to adapt to the mores of the country they chose to enter, finds Britain fast asleep and vulnerable.
Object, and you're labeled a bigot. Real jail time is likely for those who express reservations about having absorbed a people who don't like their lovely island life. Because despite some bad patches, the sceptered isle is a green and pleasant land. (Forgive the mash of poetry.)
I do not know what benefit Muslims have as a whole brought to England. Some diversity, surely, is nice, but accommodating a critical mass of sullen young men, who have no respect for secular life, or for western women, cannot end well.
I don't see any Islamic Shakespeares, Miltons, Newtons, Darwins, Flemings, Bewicks, Huxleys, or Goodalls coming up the pike.
I do see, though, that England suddenly has a rash of stabbings. No, don't bring up the War of the Roses or any such fatuous comparison; it won't do.
It was always the intention of the Far Left to change the population of England. The Russians and especially the Chinese see politics in racial terms so removal of the English dominance in the UK was a prime political objective of the groups they inserted and supported.
My belief is that Brits, like Americans, are naive.
The British think that newcomers will adopt Western ways, that Muslims will give up their religiosity and prejudices when they're settled in some northern town. That's like New Yorkers thinking that dysfunctional families led by single mothers of 5-8 children by 3-7 different men will become suddenly functional if they're placed into middle-class neighborhoods of intact two-parent households.
We see what becomes to our homes when idealism replaces hard-nosed reality.
Liberals seem more than ever to have adopted the language of Marxism, and certainly China and Russia benefit from the new chaos that afflicts the United States even more than Britain.
I notice the usual complete skimming over of the foundational event in English Culture - the original conversion to Holy Orthodoxy - to true Christianity. This is the civilising force that unites the people into one discernible race, albeit over the course of a few hundred years. This is the explanation too of the Norman invasion - the forced conversion of the English to the novel Papist heresy, and no doubt also the reason Lollardy, the first grass roots rejection of Papacy after the ‘salted earth’ policy of the Normans with regard to English culture had removed all clear memory of England’s links to the Orthodox East, found such a lot of support amongst the theologically illiterate, but apparently still stubbornly rational English who remained. They had received the correct dogma and it remains embedded in the national soul, albeit buried very deep. Thanks!
"... allowed Henry VIII to change the religion... from Roman Catholic to Protestant..."
Henry was not responsible for that. He split from Rome for his own expediency but considered himself Catholic until he died. His fight with Rome allowed Churchmen and prominent people in England who supported the Protestant cause on the Continent to take advantage of the situation and win over the English Church and the people.
Whether it was Henry or Churchmen in England who switched to Protestantism the existence of a strong and growing Lollard movement must have helped enormously. The population was ready for the change of religion.
The Oxbridge Protestants such as Tyndale and Cranmer certainly aligned with the Continental movements. However, they will have read Wycliffe's bible (esp. Tyndale) but would have suppressed any mention of this because Henry was still allowing the burning of Lollards until the split with Rome. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Harding
Social change requires some support from the ordinary people. Without Lollardy would Protestantism have survived Mary?
I wouldn't disagree with any of that. I was really just making the point that some people, including some well-known historians, glibly say or imply that the Protestant Anglican Church was a movement started by Henry when, in fact, it's roots were in Europe.
I suspect Henry's devastating demolition of the monasteries was as much an attack against Rome (as against the monasteries' {corrupt?} wealth) as it was a means to raise much needed funds.
The graph was a representation of the map (Fig 5) in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2 It is fairly faithful but represents gallo-germanic heritage so merges the two graphs. Southern Northumbria contained a celtic kingdom (Elmet) until quite late (7thC). It looks like the genetics shows that the Saxons and Danes did not wipe out the locals.
I remember having a misgiving when making the map about 'Celtic'. It is being used as a term for the populations that held sway in the white parts of the map and which seem to have dated to at least 1000BC. There is, of course, another problem with 'Celtic', it is a Victorianism that probably does not exist except as a broad term for the white parts of my map :)
I am glad you have raised the Frisians. They have been cancelled by modern popular historians but must have been very important between 200BC and 500AD. Frisii were undoubtedly part of the Belgae and in later Roman times they were a NW European power. After defeat were resettled in large numbers by the Romans in England (the Frisian Laeti + auxillaries). This makes it very difficult for genetic studies on graves in England because Germanic genetics cannot be assumed to represent Saxons. The influence of the Belgic tribes compounds this problem.
I am totally with you on the influence of plagues.
From 'The Ruin', an Anglo Saxon poem on a Roman town:
Bright were the buildings, halls where springs ran,
high, horngabled, much throng-noise;
these many meadhalls men filled
with loud cheerfulness: Wierd changed that. Came days of pestilence, on all sides men fell dead,
death fetched off the flower of the people;
where they stood to fight, waste places
and on the acropolis, ruins. Hosts who would build again
shrank to the earth.
Dorchester on Thames and Cirencester were important in the 5th/6th centuries. Cirencester was a centre of the Romano-Briton administration and was only 45miles from Dorchester on Thames which was a little Roman walled town. It is said that the Battle of Mons Badonicus occurred in this general area and stopped the Saxon advance for a century (?). The Gewisse lived between Britons and Wessex and Mercian Saxons. The kingdom of Elmet has a similar demographic position. Could the Gewisse have been a Romano-Briton tribe that was ceded to Saxon fealty as part of the peace?
On language, 'Ing' was a Frisian tribal god. Inglish means beloved of Ing in Frisian. Of course, we are not Inglish are we? Even though English is Anglo-Frisian.
The invasions that succeeded added to the English gene pool but did not detract from it; the invasions repelled would have altered England's civic society irremediably.
The invasion of Islamists, unwilling to adapt to the mores of the country they chose to enter, finds Britain fast asleep and vulnerable.
Object, and you're labeled a bigot. Real jail time is likely for those who express reservations about having absorbed a people who don't like their lovely island life. Because despite some bad patches, the sceptered isle is a green and pleasant land. (Forgive the mash of poetry.)
I do not know what benefit Muslims have as a whole brought to England. Some diversity, surely, is nice, but accommodating a critical mass of sullen young men, who have no respect for secular life, or for western women, cannot end well.
I don't see any Islamic Shakespeares, Miltons, Newtons, Darwins, Flemings, Bewicks, Huxleys, or Goodalls coming up the pike.
I do see, though, that England suddenly has a rash of stabbings. No, don't bring up the War of the Roses or any such fatuous comparison; it won't do.
It was always the intention of the Far Left to change the population of England. The Russians and especially the Chinese see politics in racial terms so removal of the English dominance in the UK was a prime political objective of the groups they inserted and supported.
That's a bit too much like a conspiracy theory.
My belief is that Brits, like Americans, are naive.
The British think that newcomers will adopt Western ways, that Muslims will give up their religiosity and prejudices when they're settled in some northern town. That's like New Yorkers thinking that dysfunctional families led by single mothers of 5-8 children by 3-7 different men will become suddenly functional if they're placed into middle-class neighborhoods of intact two-parent households.
We see what becomes to our homes when idealism replaces hard-nosed reality.
Liberals seem more than ever to have adopted the language of Marxism, and certainly China and Russia benefit from the new chaos that afflicts the United States even more than Britain.
But they have not had to act; only wait.
I agree about the naivety but not the "conspiracy theory". Naive populations are most susceptible to determined subversion.
See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/forget-gender-polarisation-is-the for a full account.
I was reading Doris Lessing's 1994 biography (Under My Skin) on holiday. As a good communist in her youth she describes the subversion.
I'll have to take a look at it.
I notice the usual complete skimming over of the foundational event in English Culture - the original conversion to Holy Orthodoxy - to true Christianity. This is the civilising force that unites the people into one discernible race, albeit over the course of a few hundred years. This is the explanation too of the Norman invasion - the forced conversion of the English to the novel Papist heresy, and no doubt also the reason Lollardy, the first grass roots rejection of Papacy after the ‘salted earth’ policy of the Normans with regard to English culture had removed all clear memory of England’s links to the Orthodox East, found such a lot of support amongst the theologically illiterate, but apparently still stubbornly rational English who remained. They had received the correct dogma and it remains embedded in the national soul, albeit buried very deep. Thanks!
"... allowed Henry VIII to change the religion... from Roman Catholic to Protestant..."
Henry was not responsible for that. He split from Rome for his own expediency but considered himself Catholic until he died. His fight with Rome allowed Churchmen and prominent people in England who supported the Protestant cause on the Continent to take advantage of the situation and win over the English Church and the people.
Whether it was Henry or Churchmen in England who switched to Protestantism the existence of a strong and growing Lollard movement must have helped enormously. The population was ready for the change of religion.
The Oxbridge Protestants such as Tyndale and Cranmer certainly aligned with the Continental movements. However, they will have read Wycliffe's bible (esp. Tyndale) but would have suppressed any mention of this because Henry was still allowing the burning of Lollards until the split with Rome. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Harding
Social change requires some support from the ordinary people. Without Lollardy would Protestantism have survived Mary?
I wouldn't disagree with any of that. I was really just making the point that some people, including some well-known historians, glibly say or imply that the Protestant Anglican Church was a movement started by Henry when, in fact, it's roots were in Europe.
I suspect Henry's devastating demolition of the monasteries was as much an attack against Rome (as against the monasteries' {corrupt?} wealth) as it was a means to raise much needed funds.
The graph was a representation of the map (Fig 5) in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2 It is fairly faithful but represents gallo-germanic heritage so merges the two graphs. Southern Northumbria contained a celtic kingdom (Elmet) until quite late (7thC). It looks like the genetics shows that the Saxons and Danes did not wipe out the locals.
I remember having a misgiving when making the map about 'Celtic'. It is being used as a term for the populations that held sway in the white parts of the map and which seem to have dated to at least 1000BC. There is, of course, another problem with 'Celtic', it is a Victorianism that probably does not exist except as a broad term for the white parts of my map :)
I am glad you have raised the Frisians. They have been cancelled by modern popular historians but must have been very important between 200BC and 500AD. Frisii were undoubtedly part of the Belgae and in later Roman times they were a NW European power. After defeat were resettled in large numbers by the Romans in England (the Frisian Laeti + auxillaries). This makes it very difficult for genetic studies on graves in England because Germanic genetics cannot be assumed to represent Saxons. The influence of the Belgic tribes compounds this problem.
I am totally with you on the influence of plagues.
From 'The Ruin', an Anglo Saxon poem on a Roman town:
https://creativecritical.net/week-6-anglo-saxon-verse/
Bright were the buildings, halls where springs ran,
high, horngabled, much throng-noise;
these many meadhalls men filled
with loud cheerfulness: Wierd changed that. Came days of pestilence, on all sides men fell dead,
death fetched off the flower of the people;
where they stood to fight, waste places
and on the acropolis, ruins. Hosts who would build again
shrank to the earth.
Dorchester on Thames and Cirencester were important in the 5th/6th centuries. Cirencester was a centre of the Romano-Briton administration and was only 45miles from Dorchester on Thames which was a little Roman walled town. It is said that the Battle of Mons Badonicus occurred in this general area and stopped the Saxon advance for a century (?). The Gewisse lived between Britons and Wessex and Mercian Saxons. The kingdom of Elmet has a similar demographic position. Could the Gewisse have been a Romano-Briton tribe that was ceded to Saxon fealty as part of the peace?
On language, 'Ing' was a Frisian tribal god. Inglish means beloved of Ing in Frisian. Of course, we are not Inglish are we? Even though English is Anglo-Frisian.
See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/the-english-language-is-frisian-not