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History Rewritten: Myths Busted & New Truths Uncovered

'Your Country Needs You' - The myth about the First World War poster that 'never existed'
It is perhaps the best known and most enduring image of the First World War: the commanding, moustached face of Lord Kitchener, his accusing, pointing finger and the urgent slogan “Your country needs YOU”.
3:10PM BST 02 Aug 2013

The picture is credited with encouraging millions of men to sign up to fight in the trenches, many of them never to return.
But new research has found that no such poster was actually produced during the war and that the image was never used for official recruitment purposes. In fact, it only became popular and widely-used after the conflict ended.

James Taylor, who has researched the history of recruitment posters, said the popular understanding of the design and the impact it had was almost entirely mistaken.
“It’s widely believed to have been the most popular design of First World War, instrumental in recruiting millions of men. But the truth is: that simply wasn’t the case. It’s an urban myth,” he added.

As part of his research, he studied the official records of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the body responsible for recruitment posters, in the National Archives at Kew.
These documents provided details of the production of almost 200 official recruitment posters produced during the war and indicated which ones were deemed popular. The so-called ‘Your Country Needs You’ poster is absent. He also analysed thousands of photographs of street scenes and recruitment offices from the period in search of the image, again, without finding it.

In his new book, Your Country Needs You, Mr Taylor traced the picture back to its origins, on 5th September 1914, barely a month after the start of the war.
On that day, the image was used on the front cover of the popular magazine London Opinion, beneath the masthead, and alongside two promotional offers: “This paper insures you for £1,000” and “50 photographs of YOU for a shilling”.

It had been designed by Alfred Leete, a graphic artist, who had adapted a portrait of Kitchener to give him the distinctive pointing finger. The slogan was adapted from the official call to arms, which said: “Your King and Country Need You”.

In a subsequent edition, a week later, the magazine, which had a circulation of almost 300,000, said readers would be able to buy postcards of the image for 1s. 4d for 100.
Despite this, Mr Taylor has not been able to track down any surviving examples in public or private collections. He is now offering a £100 reward for anyone who can find the first. 8)

Mr Taylor, who will present his research at an event at the National Army Museum, west London, next month, found that the original artwork for the magazine was acquired by the Imperial War Museum in 1917 and was mistakenly catalogued as part of the poster collection, contributing to later misunderstanding about its use.

“There has been a mass, collective misrecollection. The image’s influence now is absolutely out of all kilter with the reality of its initial impact. It has taken on a new kind of life. It is such a good image and saying that it was later seized upon. Some many historians and books have used it and kept repeating how influential it was, that people have come to accept it.”

This “myth” surrounding the poster echoes that around the “Keep Calm and Carry On” sign, which has been widely reproduced in recent years. That poster, designed in 1939, had limited distribution and no public display.

Mr Taylor’s book shows how the Kitchener image did inspire similar posters, which were used, including one, which was produced by LO, with the word BRITONS, above the same picture of the Field Marshal pointing, with the words “wants YOU – Join Your Country’s Army!”, beneath, and the words ‘God Save The King’ printed along the bottom.

However, Mr Taylor said there was no evidence the poster was particularly popular or a dominant design of the war, as some historians have claimed.

The only occasion in which the image and the wording did appear in poster form was an elaborate design, when the words and picture appear, in a smaller scale, below five flags and surrounded by details or rates of pay and other information, including the additional slogan – “Your Country is Still Calling. Fighting Men! Fall In!!”. The effect is very different from the image of popular imagination and again, Mr Taylor found no evidence it was particularly widespread or popular at the time.

He found that the most popular poster of the era, in terms of numbers produced, did feature Kitchener, but without the pointing finger and featuring a 30-word extract from a speech he had made.

The book also shows how the image and slogan has been adapted for use in other countries, from the United States to the Soviet Union.

Leete’s original image and slogan, which are not covered by copyright, is now sold on aprons, bookmarks, fridge magnets, oven gloves, postcards, towels and T-shirts. The slogan remains a popular political phrase. David Cameron used it in his first party conference speech after becoming prime minister.

Horatio Kitchener had been appointed Secretary of State for War at the outbreak of the conflict - the 99th anniversary of which is this weekend - and correctly predicted that victory would take several years and require huge new armies.
He instigated a huge recruitment campaign to form “Kitchener’s Army”, or the “New Army” – whose men were later to die in campaigns such as the Somme.

He was already the country’s most famous soldier, a recognisable and influential figure having served in a number of Imperial campaigns, including in the Sudan, and South Africa, during the Second Boer War.

He died two years before the end of the First World War when he was travelling to Russia on a diplomatic mission, aboard the warship HMS Hampshire. The vessel struck a mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands. Kitchener, his staff, and 643 of the crew of 655 were drowned or died of exposure. Survivors who saw him in his final moments testified to his outward calm and resolution.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/worl ... isted.html

The story of “that poster”, and a potted bio of Alfred Leete.

maximus otter
 

Similarly with the 2nd World War "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster. This was produced in 11 different sizes, and 2.5 million copies were produced, but only a handful (some sources suggest only 2 known examples) were ever displayed. It was certainly not a common sight or part of the national consciousness at the time of the war.

An unused example of the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was rediscovered in 2000. From there, the meme grew.

In a slightly different way, the so-called "Confederate flag" was never the "national" or "official" flag of the Confederacy. It was a battle flag, used in specific contexts in a varity of versions. Several designs for a "national flag" were considered but not adopted. The battle flag (famously painted on the roof of the General Lee in The Dukes of Hazzard) only came to be regarded as a symbol of the rebel states long after the civil war had ended.
 
The largest member of the Auk family was never called The Great Auk, when alive.

It had regional names, in Iceland it was the Garefowl.
 
In a slightly different way, the so-called "Confederate flag" was never the "national" or "official" flag of the Confederacy. It was a battle flag, used in specific contexts in a varity of versions. Several designs for a "national flag" were considered but not adopted. The battle flag (famously painted on the roof of the General Lee in The Dukes of Hazzard) only came to be regarded as a symbol of the rebel states long after the civil war had ended.
For a long time from the 60's (at least) until quite recently it became just a general signal of a rebel or rebel organisation, not necessarily with any connection the the Confederate cause. A lot of bike clubs used it. It got very tied up with rock'n'roll and rockabilly as well.

And it was, as you say, never the flag of the Confederacy as such.
 
The largest member of the Auk family was never called The Great Auk, when alive.

It had regional names, in Iceland it was the Garefowl.

I seem to recall that in Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, there's a "walk-on part" as it were, for a character called The Last of the Garefowl.
 
Yup, Garefowl in Icelandic

`Penguin` in Welsh (Dunno where it got that, not been seen in Wales for a long time, but there are archaeological remains)

And they describe `The King and Queen of the Guillemots` on Lundy.

In this country though remains have been found in many places they are mostly associated with the Isle of Man, St Kilda and the Orkneys.
 
This Slate article describes the extent to which the Japanese language edition of Wikipedia consistently whitewashes or omits references to Japanese war crimes in WW2. More generally, it seems other non-English Wikipedia editions are similarly manipulated.
Non-English Editions of Wikipedia Have a Misinformation Problem

During World War II, Unit 731 of the Japanese military undertook horrific medical experimentation in Manchukuo (Northeast China). Among other things, members of Unit 731 intentionally infected people with the plague as part of an effort to develop bioweapons. The unit’s crimes have been well documented.

But if you read the Japanese Wikipedia page on Unit 731 in January, you wouldn’t get the full story. The article said that it is “a theory” that human experiments actually took place. It was just one example of the whitewashing of war crimes on Japanese Wikipedia, as I discovered when I was researching the war.

Around the same time, Wikipedia celebrated its 20th birthday and received praise in the U.S. and U.K. media for the accuracy of its articles. But the coverage focused on the English version, even though Wikipedia is just as influential in other languages. Japanese Wikipedia is the most visited edition of Wikipedia after English. ...

If you look at “The Nanjing Massacre ...” page on Japanese Wikipedia, the name has been changed to “The Nanjing Incident ..., and it says, “The Chinese side calls it the Nanjing Massacre, but the truth of the incident is still unknown.” It includes no pictures of the massacre or events leading up to it, even though such pictures exist. One of the most troubling is the page on “Comfort Women” a euphemism for the mostly Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. The page uses the word “baishun ...,” meaning “prostitution,” to describe them, implying that they were not forced. ...

FULL STORY: https://slate.com/technology/2021/03/japanese-wikipedia-misinformation-non-english-editions.html
 
I knew about it as well but its good to get actual figures. I think the extent of it wasn't realised. It would be interesting to see whose fortunes were built on slave labour.

On the subject of slavery, we are generally only told about the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
This, involved an estimated 12 million slaves being transported from Africa initially to Brazil, then throughout the Americas and, to a lesser extent, to Europe. At least 1.2 million slaves died during transportation.

I've been reading the History of World Trade in Maps over the last few weeks.
It's a brilliant book, with magnificent full-colour illustrations and full of illuminating facts about human history - warts and all.
I recently reached the (depressingly thick) section on the slave trade.
I did not realise that the trans-Saharan slave trade was vastly bigger and went on far longer than Atlantic slavery.
Arab traders raided sub-Saharan Africa from around the 8th century up to the late 17th century and a minimum of 28 million recorded slaves were taken.
This figure is thought to be a significant under-estimate. Slaves were treated abominably, being of less value than precious metals, silks, ceramics and even paper and up to 80% of slaves died on gruelling marches through the Sahara, with survivors ending up in North Africa or the Middle East.

map1.JPG
map2.JPG

Another sobering thought is that there are more slaves today than at any time in human history.
And yet, will people remember the 20th and 21st centuries as the epoch of slavery?
 
Regarding Arabia and 20th century slaves

First, a disclaimer: I have no way of verifying that I have correctly interpreted what I saw in SW Saudi Arabia in the 1980’s. This was from the town close to where I lived. I saw, in one particular small town in the mountains, a group of medium to dark skinned African men, who looked to be 40-60 years old. They all worked and lived in a brickmaking facility owned by the local Shaik’s family (as much of the old-style industry was). They all appeared to have one type of dark, thick, raised skin on their foreheads, all being the same pattern similar to a triangle. It looked like a brand to me. It did not look like ritual scarification; and because their skin tones ranged so much, I didn’t think they were from the same tribe. They all looked very poor, and they congregated together, and not with the locals. If I recall correctly, at least one of them had elephantiasis in his legs and feet. It was the first time I had ever seen this. I saw them several times while I was there.

It was explained to me that they had been brought over from East Africa when they were teenagers to work making bricks, and that they could not leave as they were stateless: neither Saudi citizens nor any longer the citizens of their country of birth. They could walk around the small town, but not range any farther. They could not leave the country - or even the small town - without papers, and they had none. The locals thought that African workers had stopped being brought over in the 1970s. Note: Saudi Arabia officially ended slavery in 1962. My source of information on the back story of these men was trustworthy, and was accurate, as far as I know, in everything else he told me.

The unskilled work, at the time I was there, was almost exclusively done by Moslems from 3rd world countries in Asia and the Pacific islands. The same controlling mechanisms of not having access to passports or consulates, no travel, dependencies on the employer family, very little money, and so on, were very much in evidence. I was horrified at the existence of those poor brickmakers, and compartmentalized this in my own mind, as there was nothing I could do and I still had some time before I could leave the country. It was one of the experiences that made me resolved to be more helpful to those in need.

I think that the individual and collective behavior which allows slavery is within the normal range of sustainable human behavior (as is war, torture, charity, etc.) and as such I think it will be around for a long time, way past our lifetimes. We are all collectively responsible for this (cheap clothes, palm oil, Chinese work camps making Western toys, and on and on and on). I have no useful suggestions except to give in to impulses of compassion, whenever one can.
 
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...controlling mechanisms of not having access to passports or consulates, no travel, dependencies on the employer family, very little money, and so on...

“In 2014, the Home Office produced an estimate of the scale of modern slavery in the UK of between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims...”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...eryintheuk/march2020#measuring-modern-slavery

Estimated prevalence of modern slavery by country:

Position in table. Country. Per 100K. Slaves. Population

132United Kingdom2.1136,00065,397,000

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/methodology/prevalence/

maximus otter
 
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“In 2014, the Home Office produced an estimate of the scale of modern slavery in the UK of between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims...”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...eryintheuk/march2020#measuring-modern-slavery

Estimated prevalence of modern slavery by country:

Position in table. Per 100K. Slaves. Population

132United Kingdom2.1136,00065,397,000

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/methodology/prevalence/

maximus otter

Doesn't surprise me.
I do dislike the term "modern slavery" though, as it seems to infer that such a practice in recent times is somehow more enlightened and civilised than earlier slavery.
Slave labourers, indentured for life, or young girls subjected to appalling abuse in forced marriages to men many times their age, are every bit as much slaves as a Sub-Saharan African captured by Arab slavers a thousand years ago.
 
The Alamo mythos (long debunk-able but remarkably unacknowledged for its faults ... ) is once again being targeted for correction.
We've Been Telling the Alamo Story Wrong for Nearly 200 Years. Now It's Time to Correct the Record

Imagine if the U.S. were to open interior Alaska for colonization and, for whatever reason, thousands of Canadian settlers poured in, establishing their own towns, hockey rinks and Tim Hortons stores. When the U.S. insists they follow American laws and pay American taxes, they refuse. When the government tries to collect taxes, they shoot and kill American soldiers. When law enforcement goes after the killers, the colonists, backed by Canadian financing and mercenaries, take up arms in open revolt.

As an American, how would you feel? Now you can imagine how Mexican President Jose Lopez de Santa Anna would have felt in 1835, because that’s pretty much the story of the revolution that paved the way for Texas to become its own nation and then an American state. ...

Even ... despite decades of academic research that casts the Texas Revolt and the Alamo’s siege in a new light, little of this has permeated the conversation in Texas.

Start with the Alamo. So much of what we “know” about the battle is provably wrong. William Travis never drew any line in the sand; this was a tale concocted by an amateur historian in the late 1800s. There is no evidence Davy Crockett went down fighting, as John Wayne famously did in his 1960 movie The Alamo, a font of misinformation; there is ample testimony from Mexican soldiers that Crockett surrendered and was executed. The battle, in fact, should never have been fought. Travis ignored multiple warnings of Santa Anna’s approach and was simply trapped in the Alamo when the Mexican army arrived. He wrote some dramatic letters during the ensuing siege, it’s true, but how anyone could attest to the defenders’ “bravery” is beyond us. The men at the Alamo fought and died because they had no choice. Even the notion they “fought to the last man” turns out to be untrue. Mexican accounts make clear that, as the battle was being lost, as many as half the “Texian” defenders fled the mission and were run down and killed by Mexican lancers. ...
FULL STORY: https://time.com/6072141/alamo-history-myths/
 
National Geographic announced to the world that the ocean around Antarctica is now the Southern Ocean which makes five oceans in the world.

All maps will be changed which changes history.
 
Information leek shows Marconi was an Anti-Semitic Fascisti.

A sculpture honouring Guglielmo Marconi could be abandoned after councillors learned of his support for Mussolini.

Cardiff council had planned to erect the artwork to celebrate Marconi's feat of transmitting a radio signal across open sea off the Welsh coast in 1897. The 4m (13ft) high sculpture of a radio is due to be part of a £1.1m project for the Cardiff Bay barrage area. However the plans are now under review after the council became aware of his support of Italy's fascist government.

Regarded as the "father of radio", Marconi was a joint-winner of the Nobel prize for his work with "wireless telegraphy", which included discoveries that allowed messages to be sent via radio waves. He moved to the UK after the Italian government refused to fund his work and was assisted by George Kemp, a Cardiff-based Post Office engineer. On 13 May 1897, he transmitted radio messages between Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan to Flat Holm island.

However, in 2002, documents discovered in Rome showed Marconi stopped Jewish scientists joining the Academy of Italy, which he ran. He was found to have marked shortlists of candidates with the letter "E", standing for Ebreo - the Italian word for Jew. Marconi was appointed to the post by Benito Mussolini, which made him a member of the Grand Council of Fascism, a ruling body of the government.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-61657852
 
Here's an interesting and little known historical fact:
The 18th century transportation of convicts to Australia on the "hell ships" of the Second Fleet, was in very similar conditions to slave ships.
The convicts were kept chained below-decks and an astonishing 25% of them died during the voyage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Fleet_(Australia)#:~:text=The Second Fleet was a,Australia in the previous year.
And here's another little known fact, not so historical, though it did happen several years ago.
Someone we knew spent a few days in the county jail, driving charges. He was in a cell with an older man in his 60s. This man was complaining and saying he wasn't well. In the middle of the night he started yelling at the cell door, saying he was having trouble breathing. Well the guards never came to help, and this man was taken out in a body bag in the morning.
I think we are totally unaware, even in this day and age, of how people suffer and are just ignored. And what if that poor man was innocent of any crime?
 
I didn't read the whole thread so this might be mentioned but in my area where the Spaniards were the first Europeans to show up and the history was re-written to make sure they were heros. One such reprobate presented to us as a hero was called Don Jaun Onate. I am sure there were others just as bad but his dispicable acts got him tossed in jail when he and his soldiers returned from Santa Fe looking to punish the colonists he was supposed to protect. He was charged with protecting a group of colonists who came from Mexioc City when it still belonged to Spain and to be their governor helping them set up a settlement. Along the way he killed and maimed both natives and his own people sometimes on a whim. When he got everyone settled in Santa Fe, with angry natives threatening them all, he took his soldiers and left to search for some fabled gold north and east of Santa Fe. They were gone 9 months and when they came back they found the colonists had packed up and gone back to Mexico City. He rode his soldiers hard to get back so that he could punish them for abandoning "his" settlement. When he arrived he and his soldiers were tossed in jail and his property was seized. The colonists had told everything and even the Spaniards thought he was a reprobate. The problem was that a new governor showed up a few years later who happened to be his relative and released him from jail and returned all his property and his title. He was not allowed to leave Mexico city though.

But in the history books that were around when I went to school he was famous for colonizing Santa Fe. In actuallity, Santa Fe was colonized by traders who felt there was a need to have a midway point for trade between California and the east. History is re-written all the time by the people who happen to be in charge at the time. Now that we have natives being elected to congress and the senate from the west, the real history is being allowed to come out.
 
According to the South China Morning Post China is issuing new textbooks asserting Hong Kong was never a British colony.
Was Hong Kong a colony? Not according to new textbooks, a newspaper says

At the stroke of midnight on July 1, 1997, the British flag over Hong Kong was lowered and the Chinese flag was raised at a ceremony marking the end of more than a century and a half of British colonial rule. Chinese President Jiang Zemin was on hand, as was Britain's Prince Charles.

But according to the South China Morning Post, new textbooks for use in Hong Kong contend the territory was never a British colony. The reason: China never recognized the treaties that ceded it to Britain.

The Post says four sets of textbooks are currently being vetted by Hong Kong's education bureau. They are part of a "citizenship and social development" course aimed at high school students. ...

As Beijing's grip on Hong Kong has tightened in the wake of huge anti-government protests in 2019, re-vamping education has been a focus. The SCMP says the new class is an overhauled version of a liberal studies course that pro-Beijing politicians blamed for "radicalizing youth".

"All the new textbooks said Hong Kong was never a British colony as the Chinese government had never recognized the unequal treaties or given up sovereignty over the city," the newspaper says. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105...t-according-to-new-textbooks-a-newspaper-says
 
According to the South China Morning Post China is issuing new textbooks asserting Hong Kong was never a British colony.

FULL STORY: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105...t-according-to-new-textbooks-a-newspaper-says
It is very much in line with many other PRC claims such as "Taiwan / Turkestan / Tibet / The South China Sea have always been a part of China", even if these areas enjoyed long periods of complete independance.

The basic idea behind this doctrine is that whichever place a Chinese man sets foot on instantly becomes part of the "motherland" forever, enabling the PRC (People's Republic of China) to claim this territory, and to manage it as they feel fit, dismissing any criticism as an intolerable imperialist intrusion into their internal affairs.

Taiwan is a "fun" example of this :

Until the 16th century, the island was peopled mainly by aboriginal tribes who had almost nothing to do with the Chinese emperors. As the Ming dynasty struggled to deal with pirate raids from overseas pirates (the "Wakou" based around the Okinawaian archipelago), parts of the Chinese southwestern coast were completely evacuated, because deemed non defensible. Hardly a favourable context for the conquest and administration of the isle of Formosa ! So, actually, the first non aboriginal power to claim dominance over the whole of Taiwan and to exert real power there were ... the Netherlands ! The Dutch were the first to establish colonies and forts on the island. So following the Chinese doxa, we should admit that "Taiwan has always been a part of Holland", shouldn't we ?

Of course not, because, the Chinese hero Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) ousted the Dutch from Taiwan and established his own kingdom there. It doesn't matter that Koxinga was half Japanese (and born in Hirado, this typically Chinese town of Southern Japan). He was also half Chinese ! So here we go ! Taiwan has "always" been a part of China" ... since 1661.

Or is it ? If Koxinga ever bothered to conquerTaiwan, it was not in the name of the Chinese people and of the future PRC. It was to escape his enemies. He had just been heavily beaten by the Manchu conquerors of northern China and desperately needed a new base to regroup his forces and to take his revenge. So really, it was a private initiative, and a desperate move, hardly an offical "Chinese" conquest.

Naturally, since the Manchu could not allow a rebel to strive so close from their borders, they would not allow Koxinga's kingdom to survive. So they invaded in 1683, and that's when Taiwan fell under direct Chinese (or rather Manchu) rule. It remained a Chinese possession until 1898, when the island became Japanese for half a century. By the way, notice the similarity with the roughly 150 years of British rule in HK.

So overall, if we go back to the original statement that "Taiwan has always been a part of China", we should understand this "always" as something like 300 years. It's a short "always". And do not dare to point out that the PRC, born in 1949, and until recently so prompt to denounce the Chinese empire a shameful "feudal" hell, never ever exerted any amount of power in Taiwan ...

I witnessed the same dialectics at work in Tibet and Xinjiang, firsthand.

In 2006 I traveled in Xinjiang from Turfan to Urumqi, and then from Khotan to the Kashgar area. Here and there, I would stumble on bilingual Chinese / English inscriptions explaining how such and such monuments were testaments to the Chinese ancestral presence in the area. In the regional museum, a piece of cloth decorated with a handful of Chinese characters, would be proudly displayed has the absolute proof of Chinese dominance on the silk road.

In the museum shop, I purchased the Chinese book "A 100 questions about Xinjiang" as a souvenir of this obsession for appropriating a territory through history rewriting (for those who enjoy this book, "A 100 questions about Tibet" is also a must read, lol).

Now here is the fun part of this story. I left China through Kirghizstan, crossing the border at Torugart pass. It is a cold, desolate and windy place, high in the mountains, due north of Kashgar. Crossing the border is a pain, as the custom officers there are obviously not given this post as a reward. So, while I was there, these guys would vent their frustration on the passer by in countless ways. For my group of westerners, they simply choose to search our luggage. They would spread the luggage open, take out all the (dirty clothes) and then let the traveler painfully put everything back into the bag. When my turn came, they opened my bag and lo and behold ! A miracle happened. They saw my propaganda book, "A 100 Questions about Xinjiang". Did they think I believed this bag of bulsh*t ? Did they recognize me as a faithful supporter of the glorious motherland ? I will never know ... But they instantly stopped rampaging among my belongings, and allowed me to proceed to the other side of the border unimpeded. My fellows did not have this chance ...
 
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History is in a constant state of flux. Only a tiny part of me is Saxon but I'm actually very proud of it. In some estimates they went from total pirates to running the most civilised kingdom in Europe in 500 years or so - not bad. But since the Normans arrived most people - except for a few historians - ignore that. And the Celtic nations still blame the Saxons for wrongs that were largely inflicted on them by a Franco/Norman (and later Germanic) ruling class.
 
History is in a constant state of flux. Only a tiny part of me is Saxon but I'm actually very proud of it. In some estimates they went from total pirates to running the most civilised kingdom in Europe in 500 years or so - not bad. But since the Normans arrived most people - except for a few historians - ignore that. And the Celtic nations still blame the Saxons for wrongs that were largely inflicted on them by a Franco/Norman (and later Germanic) ruling class.

Isn't it a consequence of the arthurian legends, where the Saxons play the bad part ?

The Franco-Norman knights promoted their own version of the arthurian legends and posed as heirs of Arthur and his men. Be it in Ireland or Scotland, many "celtic" independantists actually had Norman roots : both Robert the Bruce, and his Commyn rivals, for instance, came from prominent families from French Cotentin.

Conversely, some Saxon kings probably had Celtic origins. Cerdic of Wessex has a very british sounding name to me : Ceredig / Caradoc. A German would rather have been named Cedric than Cerdic.
 
Isn't it a consequence of the arthurian legends, where the Saxons play the bad part ?

The Franco-Norman knights promoted their own version of the arthurian legends and posed as heirs of Arthur and his men. Be it in Ireland or Scotland, many "celtic" independantists actually had Norman roots : both Robert the Bruce, and his Commyn rivals, for instance, came from prominent families from French Cotentin.

Conversely, some Saxon kings probably had Celtic origins. Cerdic of Wessex has a very british sounding name to me : Ceredig / Caradoc. A German would rather have been named Cedric than Cerdic.
Yes. People forget (or never knew) that the Celts invaded a mature - albeit primitive but highly functional - civilization that had built places like Avebury and Stonehenge. Perhaps Wiltshire should be given back to the Beaker People :)

Just kidding , and typing off the top of my head so not remembering my pre-Roman history very well, but no-one really has a right to a permanent claim on anywhere - it's all been successive waves of invasion/colonisation/migration.
 
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