English national identity

Main article: English people § Historical and genetic origins

According to some scholars, a national identity of the English as the people or ethnic group dominant in England can be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period.

For Lindy Brady and Marc Morris, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the construction of Offa's Dyke exemplifies the establishment of such an identity as early as AD 731, becoming a national identity with the unification of the Kingdom of England in the ninth and tenth centuries, and changing status once again in the eleventh century after the Norman Conquest, when Englishry came to be the status of the subject indigenous population. Similarly, Adrian Hastings considers England to be the oldest example of a "mature nation", and links the development of this nationhood to the Christian Church and spread of written popular languages to existing ethnic groups.

In contrast, John Breuilly rejects the notion these examples constituted "national" identity and criticizes the assumption that continued usage of a term such as 'English' means continuity in its meaning. Patrick J. Geary agrees, arguing names were adapted to different circumstances by different powers and could convince people of continuity, even if radical discontinuity was the lived reality. Geary also rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names and that historians fail to recognize the differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study". Krishan Kumar also points out that Bede's 'English' did not refer to a unified people, but rather "still diverse groups of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others with distinct ethnicities".

From the eighteenth century, the terms 'English' and 'British' began to be seen as interchangeable to many of the English.

While the official United Kingdom census does record ethnicity, English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British is a single tick-box under the "White" heading for the answer to the ethnicity question asked in England and Wales (while making the distinction of white Irish).

Although Englishness and Britishness are used synonymously in some contexts, the two terms are not identical, and the relation of each to the other is complex. Englishness is often a response to different national identities within Britain, such as Scottishness, Irishness, Welshness and Cornishness.

Sometimes Englishness is thought to be encapsulated in terms of a particular relation to sport: fair play, for instance. Arguably, England's "national games" are football and, particularly, cricket. As cricket historian Dominic Malcolm argues, the link between cricket and England's national identity became solidified through literature. Works such as James Love's Cricket: an heroic poem and Mary Mitford's Our Village, along with Nyren's The Cricketers of My Time and Pycroft's The Cricket Field, purported to identify the characteristics of cricket with the notional characteristics of English society, such as pragmatism, integrity, and independence.

See also

• Cricket test
• Culture of England
• Social history of England
• St George's Day in England
• English independence

Further reading

• Breward, Christopher; Conekin, Conekin; Cox, Caroline (2002). The Englishness of English dress. Berg Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85973-528-2.
• Siobhain Bly, Calkin (2009). Saracens and the Making of English Identity: The Auchinleck Manuscript. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-80309-0.
• Colls, Robert (1987). Englishness: politics and culture 1880-1920. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7099-4562-8.
• Featherstone, Simon (2009). Englishness: twentieth century popular culture and the forming of English identity. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2365-5.
• Harris, Stephen J. (2003). Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Taylor & Francis.
• Helmreich, Anne (2002). The English garden and national identity. Modern architecture and cultural identity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59293-2.
• Langford, Paul (2001). Englishness identified: manners and character, 1650-1850. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924640-3.
• Rogers, David; McLeod, John (2004). The revision of Englishness. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6972-7.
• Spiering, Menno (1992). Englishness: foreigners and images of national identity in postwar literature. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-5183-436-9.
• MacPhee, Graham; Prem Poddar (2010). MacPhee, Graham and Prem Poddar (ed.). Empire and After: Englishness in Postcolonial Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 1–25. ISBN 978-1-84545-320-6.

External links

• Anthony, Andrew (30 June 2004). "I'm English - but what does that mean?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
• Clarkson, Jeremy (25 November 2007). "We've been robbed of our Englishness". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
• Glass, Bryan S (24 March 2005). "English Identity in the Wake of Devolution". Southwestern Political Science Association. Archived from the original on 30 April 2009. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
• Glass, Bryan S (7 April 2005). "The Devolution Gamble: State, Nation, and Identity in England". The Midwest Political Science Association. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
• Hill, Amelia (13 June 2004). "The English identity crisis: who do you think you are?". The Observer. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
• Kenny, Michael (11 February 2010). "Englishness: the forbidden identity". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
• Kumar, Krishan (2003). The making of English national identity (PDF). Cambridge cultural social studies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77736-0.
• Younge, Gary (28 June 2010). "England's identity crisis". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 February 2011.