Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.
Which medly canton’d in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintain’d eternal wars,
And still the ladies lov’d the conquerors.
The western Angles all the rest subdu’d;
A bloody nation, barbarous and rude:
Who by the tenure of the sword possest
One part of Britain, and subdu’d the rest
And as great things denominate the small,
The conqu’ring part gave title to the whole.
The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu’d,
The very name and memory’s subdu’d:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish’d fall,
And Englishman’s the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e’er they were they’re true-born English now.
The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation,
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe.
For as the Scots, as learned men ha’ said,
Throughout the world their wand’ring seed ha’ spread;
So open-handed England, ’tis believ’d,
Has all the gleanings of the world receiv’d.
Some think of England ’twas our Saviour meant,
The Gospel should to all the world be sent:
Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach,
They to all nations might be said to preach.
‘Tis well that virtue gives nobility,
How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply?
Since scarce one family is left alive,
Which does not from some foreigner derive
‘As a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the Protestant William Prince of Orange replaced the Catholic James II on the throne of England. Not everyone was happy with this turn of events as William was a Dutchman; they objected to having a foreigner as king and extolled their own English parentage by way of comparison.
Defoe composed this satirical rejoinder as a gentle reminder to those English patriots of where their true roots lay. Worthwhille repeating out loud whenever some damn fool British politician starts complaining about the extent of immigration and how its turning the British into a mongrel race.’
…………
African Roots of the Celtish Tribes: Black Celts, Black Britons
by
Jamani
England, an Island populated nearly 50 million inhabitants, of which the majority, indeed the ruling majority are white, caucasian and purportedly of purely european stock. The image presented of the English, cradled in its notion of Englishness conjures up the image of blue eyes, blonde hair, typified by the English rose, or the archetypal fair maiden of old, and the blue-eyed boy of more modern chronology. Images akin to modern Northern europe. However behind this Scandinavian / Greek-esk romanticism we have a population overwhelming consisting of a brown eyed, dark haired inhabitants.
My aim in writing this is to challenge this politically charged iconographic self-image and its use in culturing how this population ideologizes its racial origins.
The study of English history reveals waves of colonizers and immigrants whether this is though the Romans, Vikings, Germanic tribes, the Normans etc. All depicted as white, caucasian, and at least in modern times able to be categorized as being of european stock. However, what seemingly does not find its way into print is an African presence. That is not until the 1500s with the beginning of the slave trade, where Africans are recorded as blackamoor pets, domestic servants, soldiers, and entertainers.
On a closer examination of the history of this Island we find vagueness, inconsistencies and various omissions. History is supposed to be the linear story of facts, the facts of what has gone before. Therefore if we were to walk back and reside with at least some of the indigenous population of this island we find evidence of a people diametrically opposed to those who claim current ownership of this land…,namely African people.
Over a period of at least 2000 years amongst the evidence are burial mounds, where the skeletal remains lying in a foetal position (in adoration to the womb of Mother Earth), and facing to the East run parallel with the ancient African custom of veneration of the sun (rising in the East) and elevation of the immortal soul. We have the discovery of numerous skulls where the sizes and shapes clearly denote an African phenotype and origin, artefacts identical to those found on the African continent such as pottery and jewellery, as well as identical styles of weaving cloth which are found in no other place than specific localities in Africa. Also the legacy of place names denoting the original inhabitants, as well as similarities in the phonetics of languages of non-Aryan origin.
Older text and folklore of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales often mention the arrival of Africans, and a distinct African presence, not solely as visitors, but as the original inhabitants.
We find the earliest races to inhabit the Isle were short, swarthy (black), dark haired, dark eyed, and long skulled, its language belonged to the class called hamaitic and seems to have originally come from some part of either Eastern, Northern, or Central Africaâ€, a quote typically omitted from the history books.
Indeed the notion abounds that English history begins with the arrival of the Celts. However the Celts whose racial origin cannot, or has not been truthfully qualified (outside of the parameters that support a caucasian supremacist myth) had Gods of a non-Aryan origin. Writings of Tacitus, the Roman historian mention the dark complexion of the Silures or Black Celts, and maintained that a black aboriginal race lived side by side with a white one in the British Isle in Pre-Roman times.
To give volume to the consensus of silence stemming from the modern written word, since the original African presence, there have been countless migrations from the African continent for the purpose of conquest, as explorers and colonists.
Pliny the Roman historian who first saw the Britons in the 2nd Cent AD described their complexion as Ethiopian. Under the African Emperor Septimus Severis, along with a large contingent of Roman soldiers including African soldiers and officials we have the Roman occupation of England. Those who Severis fought were known as the Maeatae (Marsh dwellers), they were Caledonni, nick-named Picti, known as Moors, or black men. The early Scots too, (whose name it is claimed is derived from Scotia an Egyptian princess) make their first appearance in history in conjunction with the Picts in 360AD when they began a series of incursions into the Roman provinces of Britain. These two nations are invariably linked in all records of the Roman conquest, with the chief Roman historian regarding them as akin in blood. Though associated primarily to the North, and to the land mass later known as Scotland evidence of their presence is amongst other places to be found in Norfolk and Cornwall
I don’t suggest that solely Africans populated this Island, but contend that as part of the original, indigenous population, and from this point onwards, then undoubtedly we were here. I write this to strike a balance, to include what has been excluded, to permit what has been omitted.
This too is supported by David Mac Ritchie in Ancient and Modern Britons, when he states that the Moors dominated Scotland as late as the times of the Saxons, and that as late as the 10th Cent, 3 provinces in Scotland were wholly black. The 700 year domination over the Iberian Peninsula and Southern France by the Moors, their bringing and transmition of civilization to various parts of europe undeniably resulted in Moorish influence and inhabitation in England, again place names and localities are replete with Moorish names, legacies, and origin
Successive conquest by the Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Normans etc consistently thread through the story of the English, and should need no further mention here, apart from omissions with regard to the historical facts of their racial compositions. A quote by Author Gwyn Jones is that the Vikings were not of one pure Nordic race. Within this we have black Norsemen mentioned in the sagas like Thorstein the Black, and other Africans like Thorhall the hunter, a Viking who was the mentor and closest companion of Eric the Red, a seafarer who chartered uncharted territory. Described as a large man, strong, black, and like a giant. Based on this and beyond a racist ideology, is it beyond every stretch of the imagination to believe that some of the Viking conquerors of England were African. Among the Danes too is a noted Black presence.
Geoffrey of Monmouth described in detailed the invasion of Britain by the Saxons and the involvement of Africans in the struggle between the British and the Anglo-Saxons. With a Saxon stronghold on the East of the Island, the ruler of Britain Keredic was unable to quash a Saxon revolt, and the Saxons according to Monmouth sent for Gormund the African, the then ruler of Ireland. Faced with Gormund and the 160’000 African fleet that Gormund led into Britain, Keredic was forced to seek refuge, and subsequently forced to flee.
Amongst other races, Moorish mercenaries were accrued by the Normans to assist in the Norman conquest, and as previously stated the 700 year Moorish domination on the Iberian peninsula and Southern France should at least permit the possibility of African genealogy within the Normans.
Therefore from the 6th cent to the 12th cent with the arrival of the Germanics, Normans and various other tribes over this period, we have the demise of the original Britons, and any other evidence of indigenous peoples who were not of the proposed Aryan race. Subjugated and driven to extinction by these eventual conquerors, or due to this influx we have intermixing of these races until this evidence is eventually almost bred out. What we then have by the 13th cent is the eventual unification of this Island under one banner, the merger of the peoples, and the creation of the English. Over the centuries this creation is idealized and Aryanized into the notion of Englishness, and this notion is reinforced in the history books and into the minds of the people and as an idealized self-image.
An image used as a political tool from the 16th cent onwards. A time when the African presence is once again prevalent, notably through the Atlantic slave trade in order to justify the social, cultural and economic exploitation of a people to uphold a notion of racial superiority.
The propounded ideology of English history is a falsification of history, one that negates the swaths of people who if not were here first, at least form part of the early presence here, and people who through migration, warfare, and general movement across the land, along with the inevitable infusion of blood and genealogy are part of its make-up. There are countless other facts documenting the African presence on this Island, all throughout its history, however to discover them it appears that one has to look deeper and search further, seriously narrowing the answer as to what threat or challenge to history does inclusion and serious discussion on this information pose.
http://www.ligali.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=307
David Mac Ritchie – ‘Ancient and Modern Britons’ (vol 1+2)
Ahmed Ali, Ibrahim Ali – ‘The Black Celts, An Ancient African Civilization in Ireland and Britain’
Ivan Van Sertima – ‘African Presence in Early europe’
J.A.Rogers – ‘Nature Knows No Colour Line’
Gerald Massey – ‘Ancient Egypt Light of the World’ (depending on the reprint this might come in 2 volumes)
Albert Churchward – ‘Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man’
Big big love to Jahdey!!!!!!!!
Black people is a term which is usually used to define a racial group of human beings with darker skin color. Some definitions of the term include only people of relatively recent Sub Saharan African descent (see African diaspora), while others extend the term to any of the populations characterized by dark skin color, a definition that also includes certain populations in Oceania and Southeast Asia.
In the early twentieth century many scientists held the view that biologically distinct races existed. The races corresponded to the major continental regions of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas. These races were distinguished from each other based on a few visible traits such as skin color and hair texture. Black people were largely defined by their dark skin and sometimes curly hair. The belief at that time was that not only did the races differ in appearance but in behavior, intellect and origins. Some scientists such as Carleton S. Coon believed the different races to have evolved separately over millions of years and that racial differences were thus extremely significant.
Today most scholars have abandoned these views and see race as a social construct with no biological basis. Breakthroughs in genetics and the mapping of the human genome in the late twentieth century have helped dispel many of the earlier myths about race. At least 99.9% of any one person’s DNA is exactly the same as any other person’s, regardless of ethnicity. Of the 0.1% variation, there is an 8% variation between ethnic groups within a race, such as between the French and the Dutch. On average, only 7% of all human genetic variation lies between major human races such as those of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. 85% of all genetic variation lies within any local group. The proportion of genetic variation within continental groups (~93%) is therefore far greater than that between the various continental groups. Or to put it another way, “any two individuals within a particular population are about as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world”[5]
Because of these facts, there is general agreement among biologists that human racial differences are too small to qualify races as separate sub-species. However there is still much controversy regarding the significance of these small differences. For example, some scholars argue that even though there is more variation within populations than between them, the small between-population variation may have implications in medical science
Based from genetic evidence, contemporary world population is assumed to be descended from a relatively small population of Homo sapiens living in Africa some 70,000 years ago — in population bottleneck scenarios, this group may have been as small as 2,000 individuals. The differences in physical appearance between the various peoples of the world is as a result of adaptations to the different environments encountered by various populations subsequent to this split.
The African population exhibits a great degree of physical variation. Even though most sub-Saharan Africans share a skin color that is dark relative to many other peoples of the world, they do differ significantly in physical appearance. Examples include the Dinka, some of the tallest people in the world and the Mbuti, the shortest people in the world. Others such as the Khoisan people have an epicanthal fold similar to the peoples of Central Asia. A recent study found that Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest skin color diversity within population.
The evolution of dark skin is tied with the question of loss of body hair. By 1.2 million years ago, all people having descendants today had exactly the receptor protein of today’s Africans; their skin was dark, and the intense sun killed off the progeny with any lighter skin that resulted from mutational variation in the receptor protein. This is significantly earlier than the speciation of Homo sapiens from Homo erectus some 250,000 years ago.
Dark skin helps protect against skin cancer that develops as a result of ultraviolet light radiation, causing mutations in the skin. Furthermore, dark skin prevents an essential B vitamin, folate, from being destroyed. Therefore, in the absence of modern medicine and diet, a person with dark skin in the tropics would live longer, be more healthy and more likely to reproduce than a person with light skin. White Australians have some of the highest rates of skin cancer as evidence of this expectation. Conversely, as dark skin prevents sunlight from penetrating the skin it hinders the production of vitamin D3. Hence when humans migrated to less sun-intensive regions in the north, low vitamin D3 levels became a problem and lighter skin colors started appearing. The people of Europe, who have low levels of melanin, naturally have an almost colorless skin pigmentation, especially when untanned. This low level of pigmentation allows the blood vessels to become visible and gives the characteristic pale pink color of white people. The difference in skin color between black and whites is however a minor genetic difference accounting for just one letter in 3.1 billion letters of DNA.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the term used to describe African countries located south of the Sahara. It is used as a cultural and ecological distinction from North Africa. Because the indigenous people of this region are primarily dark skinned it is sometimes used as a politically correct term or euphemism for “Black Africa”. Some criticize the use of the term in defining the part of Africa inhabited by black people because the Sahara cuts across countries such as Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Sudan, leaving some parts of them in North Africa and some in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Owen ‘Alik Shahadah argues that the term sub-Saharan Africa has racist overtones:
Sub-Saharan Africa is a racist byword for “primitive”, a place which has escaped advancement. Hence, we see statements like “no written languages exist in Sub-Saharan Africa.†“Ancient Egypt was not a Sub-Saharan African civilization.†Sub-Sahara serves as an exclusion, which moves, jumps and slides around to suit negative generalization of Africa.
However, some black Africans prefer to be culturally distinguished from those who live in the north of the continent.
Black African and Near Eastern peoples have interacted since prehistoric times.Some historians estimate that as many as million black slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 CE.
The Afro-Asiatic languages, which include Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, are believed by some scholars to have originated in Ethiopia. This is because the region has very diverse language groups in close geographic proximity, often considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin.
In more recent times, about 1000 CE, interactions between blacks and Arabs resulted in the incorporation of several Arabic words into Swahili, which became a useful lingua franca for merchants. Some of this because of the slave trade; the history of Islam and slavery shows that the major juristic schools traditionally accepted the institution of slavery. As a result, Arab influence spread along the east coast of Africa and to some extent into the interior (see East Africa). Timbuktu was a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout the Arab World. As a result of these interactions many Arab people in the Middle East have black ancestry and many blacks on the east coast of Africa and along the Sahara have Arab ancestry.
According to Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil’s Universidade do Estado da Bahia, Afro-multiracials in the Arab world self-identify in ways that resemble Latin America. He claims that black-looking Arabs, much like black-looking Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry.
Moore also claims that a film about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had to be canceled when Sadat discovered that an African-American had been cast to play him. In fact, the 1983 television movie Sadat, starring Louis Gossett, Jr., was not canceled. The Egyptian government refused to let the drama air in Egypt, partially on the grounds of the casting of Gossett. The objections, however, did not come from Sadat, who had been assassinated two years earlier.
Sadat’s mother was a black Sudanese woman and his father was a lighter-skinned Egyptian. In response to an advertisement for an acting position he remarked, “I am not white but I am not exactly black either. My blackness is tending to reddish”.
Fathia Nkrumah was another Egyptian intimately tied with black Africa. She was the late wife of Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, whose marriage was seen as helping plant the seeds of cooperation between Egypt and other African countries as they struggled for independence from European colonization, which in turn helped advance the formation of the African Union.
In general, Arab had a more positive view of black women than black men, even if the women were of slave origin. More black women were enslaved than men, and, because the Qur’an was interpreted to permit sexual relations between a male master and his female slave outside of marriage, many mixed race children resulted. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab captor’s child, she became “umm walad†or “mother of a childâ€, a status that granted her privileged rights. The child would have prospered from the wealth of the father and been given rights of inheritance. Because of patrilineality, the children were born free and sometimes even became successors to their ruling fathers, as was the case with Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, (whose mother was a Fulani concubine), who ruled Morocco from 1578-1608. Such tolerance, however, was not extended to wholly black persons, even when technically “free,” and the notion that to be black meant to be a slave became a common belief.The term “abd,” (Arabic: عبد‎,) “slave,” remains a common term for black people in the Middle East, often though not always derogatory