Does history justify a unified UK?

[Cort Haus]

Both England and Scotland benefited from union imo. It makes me laugh to think of how The Republic of Cornwall would have fared on its own.

However, how would history have differed if there was no United Kingdom? Would the wider world have suffered from its absence?

It could be argued that the wider world would have benefitted from its absence, if the British Empire is considered a completely bad thing. If British influence is allowed to be considered in any way positive, then the union can take credit for that.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Nappy

Boney, please. The man was not a diaper.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
There is no "British" cultural identity. We're English, Welsh, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish (and that's a contentious one) and Manx, all cobbled together by an unconvincing English hegemonisation.

:sigh:

At the risk of repeating my post from another thread, there are many ethnic influences on Britain than Scottish, Welsh, English etc. For a start, many of us have roots in more than one of those countries, and that's before we consider European, Indian, West Indian, African, Jewish etc influences.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Arrian
Anyway... Laz, you want independant Scotland and England (and Wales as well, I presume?)... to what point and purpose, exactly? Should they also subdivide into regions, and so on and so forth until you're back to city-states?

The end-point is everybody walking around with their own personalised sovereign flag on their head.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Or ditching the whole notion of balkanised competing little nations altogether.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


:sigh:

At the risk of repeating my post from another thread, there are many ethnic influences on Britain than Scottish, Welsh, English etc. For a start, many of us have roots in more than one of those countries, and that's before we consider European, Indian, West Indian, African, Jewish etc influences.

That's a point which is true of just about any nation. What makes us "British"?

[Dauphin]

Is it your personal sense of identity? Is it a tangible notion that can be measured and counted (such as where you live, what your eating habits are, what accent you have)? Is it something intangible like your views politically or culturally or how you think in general? Is it a shared common history - a mutual collaboration over the years that binds you together with a common goal? [/rhetorical]

Personally I feel English, but I don't really have more in common with people from Newcastle than people from Cardiff, so why shouldn't I feel British? I also feel European (in a geographic measurable sense I am), but I have much more in common with Australians and Americans than I do with Hungarians who are also European.

Simply put, I think Britishness, or Englishness, or whichever, is an idea in the minds of those who profess to be it. Their reasonings for it are varied, sometimes valid and sometimes bonkers or contradictory next to another person who claims the same as you.

[molly bloom]

What makes us British ?

African coffee, imported from Ottoman Turkey. Chinese tea, grown in India and Sri Lanka. Chocolate from Central America and potatoes from South America.

Pyjamas and paradise gardens from Iran. Bungalows and verandahs from India.

Tartans from Scotland and Ireland. Fish in batter, courtesy of Sephardic Jews.

Black cats from the Phoenicians and ginger tabbies from Anatolia via the Vikings.

Kelloggs cornflakes from a health-obsessed American.

Grapevines from the Romans and a language made up of Swahili and Tamil and Greek and Nahuatl and Arabic and Latin and Old Norse and Old German and Dutch and Flemish and...

...genetics from Africa (a genetic link exists in Cornwall and the Orkneys or Shetlands of all places, I forget which exactly) and the Mediterranean and Scandinavia.

A national Church of England based on an Asiatic religion with a patron saint from the Middle East.


Wha's like us ?