mundo anglosajón

08:56 Jul 27, 2020 

Using narrow racial (and therefore often derogatorily intended) terms for "the others" is by no means the exclusive preserve of the continental Europeans. Thus we have the Irish, Scots, Welsh and even the Bretons labelling the English as "Saxons" (viz. Sasana, Sasannach, Saeesneg, Saozneg). And whilst the Roman scholars can be given credit for identifying and naming many European tribes, the inhabitants of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of Northern Italy, Netherlands, and Germany were simpy labelled "Gauls", i.e. foreigners.

22:37 Jul 24, 2020 

When I said the Saxons were the first to develop the English law, I was using the term loosely. I should have said Wessex (I live there) or the Kingdom of the Saxons. No doubt a sizeable proportion of the population there had Celtic blood in their veins.

I think the jury may be out on exactly *who*migrated to the British Isles in the Bronze Age and are responsible for the R1b haplotype but my reading is that most experts say they were "Celts". The term "Celts" however is now regarded as a label to describe a large group with identifiable common cultural peculiarities rather than a "race". What we do now know is that successive English monarchs and a good handful of Prime Ministers have sought to espouse the idea that somehow the English are "Anglo Saxons", usually for nationalistic reasons. I exempt King Aelfred from this charge. He was my 35th great grandfather and he cannot be held responsible for the racial Anglo-Saxonsim of the late 19th and early 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th-century_Anglo-Saxonism

13:06 Jul 24, 2020 

@Allegro
"the Saxons were the first race to develop the English law"

Historical evidence suggests that immigration into GB from the 5th century on was much more mixed than either "Angle" or "Saxon". The term "Anglo-Saxon", as I've mentioned above, was a continental invention to describe the non-Britons who lived in the south and east of GB.

So French use in the 19th and 20th century is in a way repeating a much earlier way of talking about "other people", who in neither case used the term to refer to themselves.

It's also interesting you say "we know that the races of the British Isles (or Britain and Ireland as my Irish relations would insist) have numerous origins", because these notions of "race" and the past are exactly that: insistence, or a triumph of the will, over evidence!

I'd also have my doubts that "insular Celts" ever populated anywhere. Isn't it more likely that populations where the R1b Haplogroup predominates (Atlantic Europe) are simply markers of the extent of settlement by later arrivals?

12:10 Jul 24, 2020 

The Celtiberians

11:59 Jul 24, 2020 

@Adrian "Anglo-Celtic has arguably no negative nationalistic overtones".

No idea - I've rarely (if ever) heard the term used.

I'd just as soon not use terms based on mythologised versions of the past involving ethnic origin, specially when the present needs to embrace diversity. I mean, Leo Varadkar is English-speaking, but Anglo-Celtic?!

A 19th-century pan-European movement saw "national" pasts invented based on romantic notions of racial/ethnic origin that have zero to do with historical/genetic evidence.

In the case of Great Britain, there was constant immigration from continental Europe to the south-east of the Island in the centuries before the Viking Age. Migrants would have come from as far away as Northern Italy. These "Germanic" people were referred to as "Anglo-Saxon" by continental neighbours to distinguish them from other continental groups and from the Britons.

From a genetic point of view, the "Anglo-Saxon" and "Celtic" inhabitants of 19th-century Great Britain and Ireland had much more in common with the "Latin" inhabitants of the top half of the Iberian peninsula than with those in northern Germany or Scandinavia.

10:34 Jul 24, 2020 

That's a surprising comment, Anthony, as - Down Under right up to my recent visits - Anglo-Celtic has arguably no negative nationalistic overtones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Celtic

Admittedly, some of the best runners (on the 'British' Isles) known to me in the London-Irish ex-Athletics & Marathon Club described themselves as 'Aussies and Kiwis of Irish descent'.

10:23 Jul 24, 2020 

As an English speaking person from a country with no connection to Angles or Saxons whatsoever, I've always found this annoying, with its fake ethnic and racial overtones.

The use seems to be primarily French and is mainly used with negative connotations, specially to refer to "Anglo-Saxon economics" (i.e. the Chicago school/Reaganomics and its UK franchise under Thatcher). I think the Spanish and Italian media in particular have adopted the tag from France.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-anglo-saxon-is-not-american-or-br...

Probably the use was originally adopted from the US 19th century use that ironically tended to distinguish those of English origin from other English-speaking people.

I find the suggested variant "Anglo-Celt" even worse, because it again echoes 19th century nationalistic inventions of faux-ethnic distant pasts.