galteeman

I used to live in Munich, Bavaria and I do recall they were at pains to point out that they were different from the rest of the Germans. I remember some guys would get very exited about this point but they were usually drunk at the time .

Edgewaters

Different, yes. But they are part of Germany.

Scotland, Wales etc are not part of England. They aren't just "different". Saying Wales is part of England is like saying Ohio is part of California. Ohio and California are not just different; they are both parts of the US (just like England and Wales are both parts of the UK/Great Britain) but they are not parts of each other.

Toltec

Surely the UK did not exist as a political entity before 1707, Britain did on at least three occasions, Britannia, Edward I, Cromwell.

Black Dog

More correctly: "England" did not exist until the people who gave it its name appeared there, i.e. the Angles and Saxons, along with a sprinkling of allied (Germanic) tribes and affiliations such as the Jutes. Wales, as an entity, did not actually exist: the whole of what we call the British isles were a mix of Celtic peoples, the remnants of the Neolithic and Bronze age people (who were not Celtic) and the Picts, about whom we know very little except what the Romans told us. No-one knows whether they were Celts, even though they came to identify themselves as such. For that is the nature of nationality: you are what you think you are, no matter what evidence to the contrary.

Celtic era Britain, at the time of the (successful) Roman invasion, had no concept of a separate England and Wales: all were identified as Celts (no matter what the archaeologic truth of the ancestry, for no-one know the extent of Celtic ethnicity versus Celtic language and custom adoption), and thus this area was split into lots of often tiny kingdoms, which were by far most heavily populated in the south and east of what we now call England: good country was good farming country.

By the time the Roman legions were leaving in the 5th century, there was already an Anglo-Saxon presence along the East coast, named by the Romans "the Saxon Shore". These people were difficult to remove, given Rome's own problems. Nobody knows for sure, but it is probable that these early settlers could have been instrumental in repelling the next- and far more intensive- wave of Anglo-Saxons. Nationality counts for nothing when new invaders want your land, even if they're the same race and culture.

The Welsh word for Wales is "Cymru", which means, roughly, "compatriots", giving a strong clue that this name- and the concept of Wales as distinct from the rest of Britain- was adopted after the arrival of foreign Anglo-Saxon invaders. In other words, where one's neighbour is the same race, speaks the same language and has the same culture, and his land is, like yours, divided into small kingdoms, then there's no good reason why Wales should exist. That situation would only exist once alien neighbours move in and displace those neighbours. Indeed, early Welsh stories and documents indicate that the inhabitants of post-Anglo-Saxon invasion Wales saw themselves not as Welsh, but as displaced, hard done to former Britons, pushed into a mean corner of Britain. Geoffrey of Monmouth, much later, drew upon this resentment and sense of Britishness in a Celtic sense when he invented his "History of the kings of Britain", claiming descent for the Britons from Brutus and Priam of Troy.

Wales, after Edward I's invasion, was never formally unified with England, merely anexed. That is one reason why Wales is not represented on the Union flag.

My considered feeling on the subject is that Americans largely refer to "Britain" as "England" because when mass migration from Britain to America happened, this was a brief period when English, Welsh and Scots were not as antagonistic towards each other as they were before or have been since. And we really shouldn't doubt that to most Royalists, "Britain" did mean "A particular part of England".

It is important also to make a distinction between "Britain" the political entity, and "The British isles", which includes Ireland and is a purely geographical entity, rather like "The Americas" means not just the US but also Mexico, Canada and Venezuela etc.

Edgewaters

Well ... not exactly. The Romans never named them as Celts, and Celts never named themselves as Celts. It was a broad brush the Romans used to paint a wide variety of (Continental) cultures, and one we continue to use on the basis of similarities in material culture and language between the cultures of Iron Age Western and Central Europe. But Celts themselves didn't conceive of any Celtic identity, nor did the Romans ever speak of Celts being in the British Isles (they referred to the inhabitants only as Britons. They mentioned some Belgic groups had settled there - although they were undecided whether the Belgics were Celtic or Germanic). Affiliations/identities were tribal and local.

Maybe, maybe not. Wales is geographically different from England. It's probable that the inhabitants of the region saw those dwelling on the rich farmlands around, say, the Thames as quite a different group. There is no evidence of any all-embracing identity uniting all the groups, at least, not prior to external threats like the Romans and the Saxons.

Toltec

Black dog, ethno-romantic theory, we have a good post about that here. its worth reading particularly the later posts.

http://www.historum.com/showthread.p...highlight=celt

Black Dog

- Edgewaters.

Yes, good point. Because of modern(ish) concepts of race and nationality and the (dare I say it?) diversity within those, we tend to think that ALL differences in culture or identity are racial, linguistic or purely political, when they may be, as you say, purely practical or environmental.

Thanks for the link, Toltec, I'll take a look.

PADDYBOY

Heidi, there aren't three meanings to England, there is only one and that is England.
Not even the English call the the British isles, Gt. britain or the U.K. by the name of England. England is a part of the U.K. and not the entire U.K. England is a part of the British isles and not the entire British Isles. England is a part of Gt. Britain and not the entirety of Gt. Britain.

England is a Kingdom, Scotland is a kingdom, Wales is a Principality and Northern Ireland is a provence.

I'm just telling you how we here in Britain refer to ourselves, if the rest of the world wants to refer to us collectively, as English, fair enough, but don't be surprised if you get some funny looks if you ever visit the U.K.

Black Dog

Funny looks are the least you can expect!

Chookie

Actually it is, but only geographically.


The Roman province of Britannia did not include any part of Scotland (or Caledonia) north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus. Nor did it include any part of Ireland (Hibernia).