Calgacus said:
There was no "British" education system for a start; the Scots at least had their own education system.
However, the education curricula were all mandated from the government in London, which controlled the educational system either through indirect appointments to the local school system, direct management from London (infrequent, but not unheard of, through the Home Office) or, in the case of Wales & Ireland, through the established church.
Calgacus said:
Moreover, Scotland and Ireland are legislated for separately.
However, they were not legislated by their own citizens in an autonomous manner from the London government until the granting of Home Rule (or seccession, in the case of Ireland). As well, I believe that Scotland was governed as a subdivision of the Home Office, rather than separately from the Union government, until 1885 when the position of Secretary for Scotland was recreated (though it would not gain cabinet status until 1926). I agree about Ireland, but they've already got a separate culture status.
Calgacus said:
The UK was never a unitary nation-state, and never conceptualized nationality the way continental Europe did. Examine the historiographyof the period. You won't find many histories of "Britain", only England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. The English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay writing of the peoples of Europe couldn't even conceptualize that the Scots, English and Irish might be one people, and lists them separately. When national soccer sides were first created in the Vic period, it never occurred to the British to have a UK team, but an English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh team (and they remain separate to this day!). Look at the history of British propaganda. John Bull, used to represent to the British state, frequently occurs along side Sawney Scot, more often than not with derisive results for the Scots. These are just a tiny number of examples, from what is an inexhausible quarry compared with notions of "Britishness," which were confined to the elites of Scotland and Ireland, and the entrenched protestants of Ulster and Meath.
All valid points. I guess it's up to your interpretation, as you said, of what constitutes a nationality. The main dilemma in using it for Vic, I suppose, is its use in government. Mainly, the Welsh and the Scots (the conformist minority, at least) had rights approaching or equaling the rights of English members of the established church and the non-conformist majority had the same level of persecution as non-conformist Englishmen (the notable exception being Presbyterian Scots). Since they were generally extended those rights, but had a different culture, it makes a dilemma as to whether to include them in the government structure. If Welsh and Scot are made cultures and given accepted culture status in the UK, then it ignores the concerted and effective moves by the British government to eliminate the Welsh and, to a lesser extent, the Scottish language. If they are not included as accepted, then it fails to recognize the political rights enjoyed by them and makes them more prone to rebellion than they were historically.
Calgacus said:
The Scots sung their own songs, had their own names, their own values, and a different religion from the rest of the British, as well as their own national identity. In all this, it is much more reasonable to have a "Scottish" tag, than Ukrainian, Norwegian, Flemish, and South German tags, never mind Yankee, Texan and Anglo-Canadian tags.
Of course, the Ukrainians, Norwegians, Flemish and, to some extent, the South Germans fit those criteria as well, which makes me think that maybe you're right about the Scottish tags. Would we have to create a separate tag for Highland Scot, since they were about as different from Lowland Scots in the respects you mention as they were from the English?
Calgacus said:
I'm not sure what you know about the Welsh. Their language is nothing like English (which is closer to German and French), and ignoring the political events Victoria is designed to simulate, deserve their own tag much more than the Irish (over 50% of the people were Welsh monolinguals at the tuirn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and 80% of the land mass had Welsh majorities).
I was referring to Welsh dialect of English, which was the common language of Wales during the later time of Vic. The 1901 census lists the percentage of Welsh speakers as in the high 40s, with the number of Welsh monolinguals as just under 1/3 of the population of Wales. (
http://www.aber.ac.uk/smba/docs/public/research/reps2001/rp2001-18.pdf).
Couldn't find any figures on language in the 1801 census, though.
Calgacus said:
Well, there's already an Anglo-Canadian tag. I merely suggest an Anglo-Irish tag because there'd be no British ones with these changes. The Irish tag as used does not represent the Irish language. If it did, they would only be a small minority on the island for most of the Vic period.
Well, I can't really argue with that since I thought that an Anglo-Canadian tag was rather silly. Until after the Great War, there was a large majority of 'Anglo-Canadians' that referred to themselves as British rather than Anglo-Canadian, and the term was used by the Dominion Department of Statistics just to discern them from the persons who had immigrated from the UK. If we have an unlimited amount of tags that can be added, I say go for it.
