Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction. Locating the English Diaspora: Problems, Perspectives and Approaches
- 1 Mythologies of Empire and the Earliest English Diasporas
- 2 The English Seventeenth Century in Colonial America: The Cultural Diaspora of English Republican Ideas
- 3 Fox Hunting and Anglicization in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
- 4 The Hidden English Diaspora in Nineteenth-Century America
- 5 An English Institution? The Colonial Church of England in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 6 The Importance of Being English: English Ethnic Culture in Montreal, c.1800–1864
- 7 Anglo-Saxonism and the Racialization of the English Diaspora
- 8 ‘The Englishmen here are much disliked’: Hostility towards English Immigrants in Early Twentieth-Century Toronto
- 9 Cousin Jacks, New Chums and Ten Pound Poms: Locating New Zealand's English Diaspora
- 10 ‘Cooked in true Yorkshire fashion’: Regional Identity and English Associational Life in New Zealand before the First World War
- 11 Englishness and Cricket in South Africa during the Boer War
- 12 An Englishman in New York? Celebrating Shakespeare in America, 1916
- 13 The Disappearance of the English: Why is there no ‘English Diaspora’?
- Index
6 - The Importance of Being English: English Ethnic Culture in Montreal, c.1800–1864
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction. Locating the English Diaspora: Problems, Perspectives and Approaches
- 1 Mythologies of Empire and the Earliest English Diasporas
- 2 The English Seventeenth Century in Colonial America: The Cultural Diaspora of English Republican Ideas
- 3 Fox Hunting and Anglicization in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
- 4 The Hidden English Diaspora in Nineteenth-Century America
- 5 An English Institution? The Colonial Church of England in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 6 The Importance of Being English: English Ethnic Culture in Montreal, c.1800–1864
- 7 Anglo-Saxonism and the Racialization of the English Diaspora
- 8 ‘The Englishmen here are much disliked’: Hostility towards English Immigrants in Early Twentieth-Century Toronto
- 9 Cousin Jacks, New Chums and Ten Pound Poms: Locating New Zealand's English Diaspora
- 10 ‘Cooked in true Yorkshire fashion’: Regional Identity and English Associational Life in New Zealand before the First World War
- 11 Englishness and Cricket in South Africa during the Boer War
- 12 An Englishman in New York? Celebrating Shakespeare in America, 1916
- 13 The Disappearance of the English: Why is there no ‘English Diaspora’?
- Index
Summary
‘The British Bow’ by C. Swain
Hurray! The bow, the British bow
The gallant fine old English bow!
Never flashed sword upon the foe,
Like arrow from the good yew bow!
What knight a solider weapon wields?
Thou victor of a thousand fields;
Are lances, carbines, thy compeers?
No, vouch it, Creedy and Poitiers!
With hearts of oak and bows of yew,
And shafts that like the lightning low,
Old England wore her proudest crown,
Nor bolt nor brand might strike it down!
Hurrah!
Published in 1835, this poem presented, for its Montreal readership, both an English identity and a British one, using the two interchangeably. The imagery is clear: the oak, the yew and the battles are all English, iconic signifiers of a sense of Englishness; but they are also British. In this conflation lies the problem that historians of the English face: how do we define English identity as distinct from British identity? In the Canadian context, but particularly in the province of Quebec, English identity is further problematized because English serves not only as an ethnic identity but also as the language of the conqueror. The division of language between French and English was an important one as it differentiated the old population from the new, the conquered from the conqueror, and complicated intergroup communication. English was not, as in the United States, a language of integration but a group identifier, dividing one group from the other. The division between language groups – French and English – has long since marked tensions in Quebec, not least because English ethnic identity began to disappear in a blend of Britannia and language laws.
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- Information
- Locating the English Diaspora, 1500–2010 , pp. 100 - 117Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012