This is a post inspired by a certain group of far right lunatics who are actually elected officials in this great Democracy of ours. Part of their missions statement is to promote “Anglo-Saxon culture”. This isn’t really a dog-whistle for white supremacy, it’s just plain old white supremacy.
And it’s based on a misconception.
I think what is required here is a quick informal history of the British Isles:
The British Isles were once attached to Europe. Which is itself just a small part of the Eurasian continent. In the pre-dawn of history a bunch of different groups of humans migrated up into this area from the continent of Africa, where we were all forged. Every single one of us. The bands of hominids spread across Eurasia, mostly along the coasts, and some followed the central Eurasian corridor up north. Some stayed in Central Eurasia, some turned left and populated Europe. Some of the groups milling around in central Eurasia eventually became a tribe of people who used chariot technology and domesticated horse to great effect. They dominated their less technologically advanced neighbors and started a kind of cultural domination the likes of which the world had not yet seen. They spread their culture from the Black Sea to the north of India all the way to the British Isles. These were the people who we call the “Proto-Indo-Europeans” but probably had a niftier name for themselves. These PIE tribes branched off dozens of times to have different adventures. Some established the beginnings of what is now India. Some populated Scandinavia and the Italian peninsula. But they were all part of the same group originally. We know this because of the languages they spoke, and speak still, coupled with genetic and archeological evidence. Norwegian and Hindi are related. More closely than you’d guess. Polish and Persian are too.
The Celts were some of these people. They wiped out a lot of the folks who’d been living in Europe and spread pretty much throughout, from the Baltic Sea to Spain to Ireland. Later, another branch of PIE people, the Germanic tribes, whose language was still part of the same family, came and started taking territory from the Celts, establishing much of Central Europe as Germanic. Meanwhile another PIE branch, the Romans, were busy making an Empire. They too ate into Celtic lands. Still, same PIE Family, just becoming culturally further and further apart. Soon the Romans had almost the entire western part of the western chunk of Eurasia. Including Britain. They’d subjugated the Celtic people there and either traded with them, interbred with them or driven them out to places like Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The Emperor Hadrian famously built a wall to keep them out. Then, jumping forward through two hundred years of Roman rule in Britain, Rome collapses. Partly because of pressure from those pesky Germanic tribes, partly because of pressure from other tribes from the Eurasian steppe (for some reason, the Eurasia steppe produces dozens of extremely successful conquerors, time and time again.) Britain is left to fend for itself. Roman Britons, who were probably exceptionally racially diverse due to what we know about the diversity of the Roman Empire, were on their own in their age old struggle to hold back the tide of Celts. They appealed to Rome for help many times. Finally, a hollowed out Roman Empire said, sorry. You’re on your own. Almost literally. They got a letter from the Emperor Honorius that read, ‘look to your own defenses’.
So they hired Germanic mercenaries. These folks were from many different parts of Germania but many were famously Saxons and Angles from what is now the Baltic coasts of Germany and Holland and Poland. There were others like the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii, and Franks, but they get short shrift. They were great mercenaries, but as the Romans in the south had already learned, they were not very nice. Which is why they did what they did I guess.
They look over Britain. So Roman Britons (PIE people) were fighting the original Celts (PIE people) and accidentally invited their own destruction by Germanic tribes (PIE people.) Added to the mess was the Scandinavian tribes, who were the Northern Germanic group, aka the Norsemen, aka the Vikings (and also PIE people.) Eventually, after they’d lived in the North of France for a while, the Normans (Former Vikings and PIE people) would also all pile on. PIE-le on (sorry.)
Not much was left of the Roman Britons by the time the dust cleared. The Celtic tribes outside of the main part of England were (and are) mostly still there though. Thousands had been driven out, either to Ireland or to Brittany, in France, where there were still culturally Celtic people living (see: Asterix and Obelix). Brittany is called Brittany because it is the diminutive form for the name of the old Celtic lands of Britain.
All of these people were ancient cousins of the Persians and Northern Indians and all the PIE cultures in between. They were not from the Caucus Mountains. They were from Central Eurasia, around the Black Sea. We don’t think about these folks much today, but they are the foundation of much of European, Persian and Indian history.
They were technologically advanced, and they were invaders. And they were invaded. They were colonizers and colonized for thousands of years. They were not “White” because such a notion didn’t exist until very recently. They were of one religion originally, a religion that turned into multitudes. Scraps of the same religious vocabulary and practices can be found in every PIE culture.
So getting back to the idea of “Anglo-Saxon culture,” there’s no such thing. The Germanic tribes that lent those names had invaded Britain and were eventually invaded by the old Norse speaking Vikings and then by the French speaking Normans and their language was bent beyond recognition until it eventually becomes the English the world knows today.
Like the language, the “Anglo-Saxon culture” is a mashup of many different PIE cultures originating ultimately in what our former President deemed “shithole countries.”
Of course what they mean by “Anglo-Saxon culture” is the English gentry who also liked that term. They’d like to claim the mantle of elite (and White) English lords who ruled the land of the Angles and the rest of the British Empire. Which is funny because we fought a fairly well publicized revolution to free ourselves from those stuffed shirts. Another layer of irony is that much of White America is descended from the Celts who fled Britain because of those stuffy English lords and their anti-Celtic campaigns that have carried on since the Romans first showed up. It’s a lot these folks who claim Irish ancestry every St. Patrick’s day who are fighting for “Anglo-Saxon” values.
Whatever those are.
~
I should note that this is a massively incomplete history of Britain. Obviously. But it hopefully gets the point across that none of us are any one thing. We are all a melange of our ancestors, their genetics and their traditions. Claiming that one chapter of this long history is superior to others is bullshit. Most of this history I’ve learned fairly recently, as the study of the P.I.E. cultures has evolved a lot since I first heard about them from my Dad, a professor of English at the University of Washington. For more incredibly rich history of these people and the eventual creation of the English language and culture, I recommend the podcast https://historyofenglishpodcast.com by Kevin Stroud, which was introduced to me by our friend Jennifer Harmon.
The origin and spread of the Proto-Indo-Europeans:
Artist’s depiction of the Celtic people and their customs:
The height of P.I.E. culture: