The English Diaspora In North America

Ethnic associations were once vibrant features of societies, such as the United States and Canada, which attracted large numbers of immigrants. While the transplanted cultural lives of the Irish, Scots, and continental Europeans have received much attention, the English are far less widely explored. It is assumed the English were not an ethnic community, that they lacked the alienating experiences associated with immigration and thus possessed few elements of diasporas. This deeply researched text questions this assumption. It shows that English associations once were widespread, taking hold in colonial America, spreading to Canada and then encompassing all of the empire.

Ethnic associations once were vibrant features of societies, such as the United States and Canada, which attracted large numbers of immigrants. While the transplanted cultural lives of the Irish, Scots, and Europeans have received much attention, the English are far less widely explored. It isassumed the English were not an ethnic community; that they lacked the alienating experiences associated with immigration and thus possessed few elements of diasporas. This deeply researched new book questions this assumption. Instead it shows that English associations once were widespread, takinghold in colonial America, spreading to Canada and then encompassing all of the empire. Celebrating saints days, expressing pride in the monarch and national heroes, providing charity to the national poor, and forging mutual aid societies mutual, were all features of English life overseas. In fact,the English simply resembled other immigrant groups too much to be dismissed as the unproblematic, invisible immigrants.

Ten scholars examine English identity, what makes it distinct, and its role in shaping American culture To many, English immigrants contributed nothing substantial to the varied palette of ethnicity in North America. While there is wide recognition of German American, French American, African American, and Native American cultures, discussion of English Americans as a distinct ethnic group is rare. Yet the historians writing in English Ethnicity and Culture in North America show that the English were clearly immigrants too in a strange land, adding their own hues to the American and Canadian characters. In this collection, editor David T. Gleeson and other contributors explore some of the continued links between England, its people, and its culture with North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These essays challenge the established view of the English having no "ethnicity," highlighting the vibrancy of the English and their culture in North America. The selections also challenge the prevailing notion of the English as "invisible immigrants." Recognizing the English as a distinct ethnic group, similar to the Irish, Scots, and Germans, also has implications for understanding American identity by providing a clearer picture of how Americans often have defined themselves in the context of Old World cultural traditions. Several contributors to English Ethnicity and Culture in North America track the English in North America from Episcopal pulpits to cricket fields and dance floors. For example Donald M. MacRaild and Tanja Bueltmann explore the role of St. George societies before and after the American Revolution in asserting a separate English identity across class boundaries. In addition Kathryn Lamontagne looks at English ethnicity in the working-class culture and labor union activities of workers in Fall River, Massachusetts. Ultimately all the work included here challenges the idea of a coherent, comfortable Anglo-cultural mainstream and indicates the fluid and adaptable nature of what it meant and means to be English in North America.

Drawing on extensive archival and library sources, Karsten explores these collisions and arrives at a number of conclusions that will surprise.

While the Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, and Black diasporas are well known and much studied, there is virtual silence on the English. Why, then, is there no English diaspora? This international collection explores key issues about the nature and character of English identity during the creation of the cultures of the wider British world, including themes as wide-ranging as Yorkshire societies in New Zealand and St. George's societies in Montreal, to Anglo-Saxonism in the Atlantic world and the English diaspora of the sixteenth century. The result is a lively volume that brings to light groundbreaking new conceptualizations.

This book is a comparative history of the development of ideas about nature, particularly of the importance of native nature in the Anglo settler countries of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It examines the development of natural history, settlers' adaptations to the end of expansion, scientists' shift from natural history to ecology, and the rise of environmentalism. Addressing not only scientific knowledge but also popular issues from hunting to landscape painting, this book explores the ways in which English-speaking settlers looked at nature in their new lands.