I'm not sure why. In the song he clearly identifies himself with England despite his reservations about English history and the establishment.
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I'm not sure why. In the song he clearly identifies himself with England despite his reservations about English history and the establishment.
It's more the case that in Europe at one time your sect was more important than your nationality / ethnicity. Hence the English preferred to have a Dutch or German Protestant as king rather than an English Catholic. It wouldn't be accurate to say that the English ethnicity had died out.
In Ireland, the Irish Protestants have never been fully accepted as Irish. Or more accurately they are on the condition that they embrace the nativist point-of-view at which point they are as Irish as anybody else; but if they have a different view then they are considered British not Irish.
The Irish nationalist position was hardly a Catholic extremist point-of-view. It came along with a lot of cultural baggage e.g. the Gaelic language and Gaelic sports which Protestants had had a big hand in preserving / promoting.
Had large areas of Scotland become depopulated this would not have made the Scottish ethnicity disappear and if they were replaced with Irish Catholics then potentially those Irish Catholics might have become Scottish, a fused Irish-Scots identity or remained Irish. It depends on a lot of factors.
You used him as an example of how a person of Irish background can become completely immersed in an English identity., The title of the song suggests that this is not the case for Morrissey, else the song would be called English blood English heart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Blood,_English_Heart
There are many better examples. Maybe Wayne Rooney? Even the Gallaghers?
Not exactly. The usual term would be 'west Brits', which, despite the name, really means someone is trying to pretend to be more British than they actually are in order to seem more sophisticated and worldly. I've seen it applied to many Irish Catholics too, especially here on the Southside. No one actually thinks they are British; just suspect that they wish they are. It's sort of analogous to 'Plastic Paddy'.
I went to two Protestant schools growing up and I can certainly see how you would get that impression, but it really isn't casting aspersions on anyone's nationality, just basically calling them lick-arses to a more powerful and wealthy nation. There are probably equivalent terms for Canadians who love the US, Austrians who love Germany etc.
Anyway, I've had my fill of pointless discussion of Ireland v Britain, so by all means feel free to expand the discussion past our two dismal little islands.
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Yes if we are not talking about nationality in terms of ethnicity we are speaking of essentially citizenship/being a subject of state X. But then why are we discussing language or assimilation? South Sudanese nationality encompasses about 60 languages of more than 3 language groups. It encompasses christians, mulims and pagans. It encompasses nomads and settled peoples.
His parents were Irish. It would be a bit ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Despite his ancestry, he identifies as English. That's assimilation. If he were of English ancestry then he wouldn't need to assimilate.
I don't know how Irish Rooney is. Obviously it is an Irish name but he qualified to play for Scotland but it's news to me that he could have played for Ireland had he wished to.
edit: the Gallaghers never really stressed their Englishness or Britishness. They are certain Mancunian and definitely northern but unlike Rooney or Morrissey, they have never made a big fuss about nationality.
I was thinking more of Northern Ireland in modern times and the ROI historically. The number of people, even among Protestants, in the ROI today who have a unionist viewpoint is close to zero.
Taking things the other way, bigger nationalities coalescing rather than smaller ones assimilating,"scandinavian" as a nationality with swedish, danish, and norwegian seen as regional subcultures would have been pretty inevitable if they had been unified for long enough for it to stick. Even today, creating an established literary standard out of danish, swedish, and norwegian is, if anything, less out-there than unifiying "italian" was, and they certainly feel an international kinship.
Québécois deserves mention of course, though it debatably is a nationality. Or, further, no doubt some kind of unified franco-american culture would've developed if New France and Louisiana remained either french or self-governing rather than being carved up.
Québécois deserves mention of course, though it debatably is a nationality. Or, further, no doubt some kind of unified franco-american culture would've developed if New France and Louisiana remained either french or self-governing rather than being carved up.
I think the Byzantines would have become something somewhat resembling Russia/Russian Empire (with the Greeks having the same role as the Russians while other Orthodox peoples would be more akin to Georgians, Armenians, etc..), but with more Mediterranean/Balkanic influences.
The emphasis on pre-Christian Greece would be much smaller than it is nowadays due to the continuity since the ERE.
A pontic (Trebizond) greek nationality was well on its way to forming and close to independence had things gone differently after ww1. Their language was developing into something different then mainland greek too. Their rebellion was crushed and they were mostly all moved to European Greece, where to THIS DAY jokes are made about the way they talk and their "strange" culture and way of thinking and doing things. Of course the newer generation was assimilated and their chance of a seperate nationality is over.
regarding byzantium, I honeslty don't know what kind of nation they would end up as. All I can come up with is "like Greece, but bigger". Something that always struck me was hearing (or reading, cant remember) from other Orthodox people's that the one group everyone would listen to and look for leadership would be the Greeks, but the Greeks have NO desire to use that influence and they found that perplexing. Makes me wonder if Byzantinum would be a lot less "imperial, protector of the Orthodox" than Russia and just instead by that Greece w/ bigger borders.
I suppose a better question would be, how would the late (i.e. mostly Greek) Byzantine Empire (had it survived the Turks) differ from what Greece is now? hmm
regarding byzantium, I honeslty don't know what kind of nation they would end up as. All I can come up with is "like Greece, but bigger". Something that always struck me was hearing (or reading, cant remember) from other Orthodox people's that the one group everyone would listen to and look for leadership would be the Greeks, but the Greeks have NO desire to use that influence and they found that perplexing. Makes me wonder if Byzantinum would be a lot less "imperial, protector of the Orthodox" than Russia and just instead by that Greece w/ bigger borders.
I suppose a better question would be, how would the late (i.e. mostly Greek) Byzantine Empire (had it survived the Turks) differ from what Greece is now? hmm
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Prior to unification of China, the individual Warring States (Qin, Chu, Han, Wei, Zhao) were well on the path to cultural divergence, with separate writing systems, separate dialects (Chu in particular, which mixed Old Chinese with a bit of Yue), and even separate systems of weight and length. Plus in the latter part of their existence these States were building up structures for total war and levee en masse which Western historians generally attribute to the rise of nationalism in Europe.
We'd also see a lot more different 'nationalities' in Southern China, in all likelihood, had waves of Han migration from the north (triggered by various horde invasions into the Central Plains) not assimilated the various peoples of the "Hundred Yue" into the Han identity.
We'd also see a lot more different 'nationalities' in Southern China, in all likelihood, had waves of Han migration from the north (triggered by various horde invasions into the Central Plains) not assimilated the various peoples of the "Hundred Yue" into the Han identity.
Modern Indonesia is like many post colonial nations in that it is made up of an area controlled by a power rather than anything internally consistent. As such there is a huge number of potential nataionalities that could have become states. Virtually every island had its own language and there were several scripts in use. Indeed there are a few places that still aspire to independence (Aceh, West Paupa) as well as some odd divisions (Kalimantan)
Well, from the mid 19th century very large numbers of Irish Catholics did come to Scotland forming up to half the population in a great swathe of the country - in some towns even a majority. Interestingly there were also disproportionately large numbers of Irish Protestant arrivals. Yet whilst within a generation or two the Irish Protestants had more or less assimilated (it speaks volumes that the Orange Order was an imported Irish institution, but one that became madly popular with the locals) the Irish Catholic community remained a self consciously distinct from the Scots for over a century. Really it was only in the latter half of the 20th century that the Transition through from an Irish identity, to an Irish-Scots (think Celtic Football Club style) to a simple Scottish identity (increasingly common and present in my own family at least one generation before me).
You mean everything south of the Yangtse would be an ethnographic Pollock painting like Indochina in the 19th century? What a confusing East-Asia that would be.
hmy:
I was saying to my son yesterday that the match on Friday is nearly going to be a home match for us. You'll far more frequently hear Amhrán na bhFiann or the Fields of Athenry sung there than any Scottish or British songs.
So ironically the English absorbed Irish migrants better than the Scots, particularly in Glasgow where the population had strong ties to (Scottish) Gaelic culture. Even the relatively Anglo Edinburgh seems to have done better than Glasgow.
It's to do with numbers I think. Liverpool, Glasgow and until recently parts of London were so overwhelmingly Irish that it would be hard to 'assimilate' if almost everyone around you is Irish too (a ghetto effect I suppose you could call it). Whereas if you are Irish and move to Birmingham, Kent or Nottingham, you'll be part of a small group that is likely to get swallowed up. I think in general that's the explanation.
Well, you have to note that Scotland had a proportionally much larger intake of migrants than England, whilst West and Central Scotland had much larger numbers than the East (Edinburgh and Glasgow having no comparison in this respect). That said, assimilation in Lanarkshire (where the % of Irish migrants was at least as high and often higher than in Glasgow, in many areas reaching at least 50% of the population) the independent identity is weaker than further West. This despite being an Orange Order heartland. So there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between numbers and the strength of a separate Irish identity.
It also important to note that the Scots were way more hostile to Irish immigrants (perhaps in part due to their numbers, in part due to contemporary Scottish culture), so that contributed to making Scotland's Irish community more insular and therefore more self-identifyingly Irish. It wasn't until the latter stages of the 20th century that the idea of 'Scottishness' and Presbyterianism started to be decoupled - the origins of the SNP were in the radical, anti-Irish, Protestant millieu ...
Its very interesting looking at how in some contexts immigrant communities assimilate and in others they retain a distinct national identity.
This is true but Liverpool doesn't have quite the same sectarian / assimilation issues that Glasgow has. Liverpool vs Everton was never a sectarian thing. Historically they didn't even segregate the crowds for derby games.
Indeed, Ironically Everton were the Catholic club, but Liverpool always had a much bigger Irish fanbase. Neither club was really identified with any religion in modern times and neither club identified with Ireland the way Celtic did, and neither club was particularly identified with Britain or England the way Rangers were.
How likely was it that Macedonian would become a nationality? It seems to me pretty incredible that it didn't just become either Serbian or Bulgarian, they really beat the odds to remain distinct enough that they see themselves as different from one or the other.
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