From: "Eric Dickens" <eric.dickens-AT-wxs.nl>
Subject: Why Scotsmen became Afrikaners and other stories
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 23:08:11 +0200


19th June 2000

Dear Postcolonialists,

Just before I go to sleep, I'll tackle the accusation, brought up by Liam
Connell, of "conflating" the English and the Britons.

Assuming Liam is not English, and knowing that I am, I think Liam should
credit me with more intelligence than to make that statement. The reason
being that despite the existence of Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic,
Lallans and the more or less died out or artificially revived languages of
Cornish and Manx, I do not think that non-English Britons conduct themselves
abroad with significantly more language humility than English people do. I
accept that Highlanders, certain Welsh people and certain Irish people
(mostly in the Republic) will have a deep sense of linguistic identity and
are pretty browned off at being lumped together linguistically and
culturally with the English - by Europeans.

Liam is under-estimating me if he thinks I haven't picked up a great
sensitivity for the very fact that English people are not the only Britons.
And fair's fair. Only a decade or two ago, Britons were quite happy to call
all Soviet citizens "Russians" and technically, the Netherlands is not only
"Holland" which is only a province. But if you start explaining that, you
get accused of pedantry. The Dutch often "conflate" English with British. In
fact it's almost moulded into their language usage. But I'm not going to
throw chairs at them for all that. I also try to remind the Estonians of the
same sin of calling Britons "inglased" rather than "britlased", although
they themselves would be horrified to be called "Russians". I do stick up
for the Gaelic-speakers when discussing these matters in European countries.

So I may have expressed myself clumsily this time, but on the whole I weigh
up each time I write "English" or "British", just to avoid Liam's plaint.
Not all English people are so gormless as to be unaware of the fact that we
are just the numerical majority in Britain, not the whole story. But please
remember that, for instance, the Scots did help, whether willingly or
reluctantly, in the colonisation of India and Africa. So when I say British
colonialism I mean just that. Some of the imported Scots Calvinist
"dominees" (i.e. church ministers) in South Africa in the mid-19th century
became part of a rather wishy-washy anglicisation programme. Others learnt
Dutch and became Afrikaners to all intents and purposes. The Afrikaners of
the day were anti-British, thus anti-colonialist. These kinds of facts
complicate the cosy black-and-white picture of the colonial and
anti-colonial struggle somewhat.

I for one would be quite happy if Scotland became independent from England.
It has already gone quite some way in that direction and if the Scottish
Nationalists win the majority in the Scottish Parliament, Scotland has
everything to gain from closer ties with Europe, weaker ones with England.
Ditto Catalonia with Spain. As for Northern Ireland, I daren't say a word on
the subject. There have been problems there ever since the English sent out
members of our upper classes hundreds of years ago to "look after" Ireland
as a whole. Nowadays, the ethnic minority-majority problem is extremely
difficult to solve. Let's hope Stormont works.

Best wishes,

Eric Dickens




     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---