were the British colonisers around the world mainly English?

Question

Ireland, Scotland, Wales themselves were subjected to cultural oppression by the English. So I was wondering if these people were also part of the british colonisers, in india and other places around the world?

If they were, it is sad because they, having been through all that, could have stopped more of that on other people.

Also, if they were a part, what did they gain - it was English culture that was thrusted on locals, not Irish, Scottish or Welsh?

How about in the American war for independence?

Thanks for the replys.

Marguerite L: The question is not about migration. It is about suppressing native culture. Spanish suppressed South American native cultures. I agree it is not totally gone but it is not the same anymore. That is why the Irish, Welsh, Scottish referances.

Actually, some Irish were supporting Indians against British (AO Hume and Annie Besant being prominent). That made me wonder.

Answer 1

In many instances, a disproportionate number of colonizers were Scots or Irish perhaps because dire economic circumstances drove them from their own countries. After the Jacobite Rebellion in 1746, for example, the Clearances drove many Highland Scots abroad just as the potato famine would drive away the Irish a century later. The Crown also drafted many Highland Scots into the Army in a further effort to break up the clans.

Both the Scots and the Irish settled in large numbers in Canada throughout the 19th-century, although Australia was first colonized by transported Englishmen. The father of Australia, however, was a Scottish Army officer, Lachlan Macquarrie.

As for supporting the American Revolution, Most Catholic Irish were still in Ireland until the 1840s, but the Scots Irish definitely supported the War for Independence. Many Highland Scots didn't arrive in America until the 1790s, although they started coming around 1750. Many of these immigrants paradoxically sided with the British. Nine signers of the Declaration of Independence, however, were either first or second generation Scots.

Incidentally, Scotland hasn't won her freedom. The Act of Union disproportionately officially united the Scots and English 250 years ago, although the Stuart king, James VI of Scotland became the ruler of both Scotland and England (as James I) in 1603. But Scotland wasn't granted its own parliament until 1998. The Scottish Nationalist Party (or SNP) would like for Scotland to succeed from the United Kingdom.

Answer 2

Since English and other anglo-saxons share their appearance, it would be very easy for these ethnic groups to merge. There were probably many people with Welsh, Irish, or Scottish backgrounds among the colonisers. However, remember that during European imperialism, great emphasis was placed on race and nationality. Although white people could mix together, social darwinism dictated that darker skinned people (India, South Africa, Phillippines, all colonies) were child-like and were inferior. Since most of the world believed in social darwinism anyway, the Welsh/Irish probably did too. Although their original culture and society did not gain anything, people are always blending into the dominant culture. For example, immigrants from China and the Middle East live in the U.S. today; and despite the fact that they know the U.S' imperialist policies, many of them still foolishly support them. It is easy to assimilate into the dominant culture, and many times, it is the only way to gain power or social status.
In the American War for independence - again, those Welsh and Irish and Scottish people that actually had enough power to have any influence in this cultural oppression would have already assimilated into English society and would not be the type to question the throne.

Answer 3

After the Union of 1707, they were as much involved as everyone else.
It was very much a BRITISH Empire - without Scottish engineers, Welsh miners, and Irish squaddies, not much British Empire.
And don't forget that many, possibly most, settlers left Britain because either they couldn';t stand it or they couldn't make a living there. Huge numbers of Scots left for Canada during the Highland clearances. Many Irish settled in Australia.
A W I? Not relevant. Nationalistic sentiment of that type was largely a creation of the Romantic movement and came later.

Answer 4

Your thinking is based on the incorrect concept of racial purity - and the false premise that cultures should not learn from one another.

All of history is about population migrations and exchange of ideas. I am wondering what you believe your ancestry to be, (regardless of what you think it is unlikely to be of only one "race" - modern DNA testing is revealing that a great many people have ancestry from several sources.) Why do you apparently believe that it was "English" culture alone that was "thrusted" on the locals?

In medieval times, when England and Scotland were separate realms, both sides employed Irish mercenaries.
Later, after the union of the kingdoms in 1603, English, Scots, Welsh and Irish were all represented in armies and in the crews of ships. ( As an example, Rudyard Kipling was born in India, the son of an Irish soldier in the British army. )
The duke of Marlborough's armies which fought in Europe in the late 17th/early 18th century included large numbers of Scots and Irish, many of whom married German, Austrian and Italian women in the lands where they fought. In those cases, most of them remained and adopted the language and customs of those countries; they did not make English, or either form of Gaelic, the language of the countries they lived.

Colonists in places like Canada and the US came from all sections of society - from the english merchant classes, poor Irish and Scottish farmers, and religious sects from many countries such as French protestants, German catholics, Jews fleeing the inquisition in Spain, France and Italy, Mennonites, and later on Poles and Finss fleeing Russian domination, and so on.

And those in Australia and America descended from convicts and indentured servants were largely English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish, which accounts for the variation in the "English" spoken in Australia, Canada, the West Indies, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.

Immigrants adapted to fit in with the prevailing culture but also kept some of their own traditions and customs and in many cases added them to the culture.

When India, for example, became independent from Britain, it chose to have a parliamentary form of government, kept the British style school system and the bureaucracy that had been established under colonial rule. (They had many native languages and adopted English as an official language in the same way that the Catholic church uses Latin to communicate internationally.) They were not forced to adopt the British way of doing things but apparently considered them to be better than anything else they could come up with.

Just as most of the modern world embraces American entertainment, sometimes people just choose to go with what they like.

As for the American Revolution, it was a rebellion against paying taxes. The American colonists did not like paying to support the army that was there to protect them from the Indians and the French. So they formed their own government (and then still had to pay taxes anyway.) But they did not throw out the baby with the bathwater. They kept the language; much of the law was (and still is) based on English common law. They got rid of some things, kept others.

At the time of the American Revolution, there were actually more German speaking people in the United States than spoke English but the Germans did not get into politics very much so their language was not adopted as the national language. Nowadays there is an increasingly large population in the US which speaks Spanish and if the day ever dawns when they are in a majority and run the government, the schools and all the bureaucracy, then Spanish will take over as the basic language for everyday life.

Answer 5

Oh, come on. . . i'm an American English instructor in China with a level in English preparation. I artwork with many different foreign places instructors, many from the united kingdom. I additionally use Cambridge texts. the version between British and American English is in actuality insignificant, if the two is taught properly. As I continually tell my scholars, "i will comprehend stable British English plenty greater valuable than detrimental American English."

Answer 6

Yes, ireland and scotland were subjects of the british empire. when scotland won it's freedom it stayed on it's own and didn't conquer anyone else, same with southern ireland.