From today's Daily Torygraph - much superior to Boater's Daily Miaou.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100083507/from-the-english-to-american-civil-wars-how-east-anglians-came-to-control-the-world/

From the English to American Civil Wars: How East Anglians came to control the world

By Ed West World Last updated: April 12th, 2011

Today is the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, which began with the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Although the phrase “the first modern war” is applied to other conflicts, namely the Crimean War (which was the first reported in the British press), the American Civil War was the first truly mechanised war, the first in which use of railways, telegraph, mines, iron ships and rifles were used, not to mention a submarine.

Because of this it was also exceptionally horrific, one of the bloodiest in history. And it was also the first conflict to be widely photographed: there are a handful of images from Crimea, but over a million prints were made of the “War Between The States” (many of which ended up being used as glass in greenhouses). It was also the first war in which journalists and photographers staged images, many of the gory post-battle shots being altered, with snappers moving bodies around to make it look more dramatic.

But as well as being militarily significant it was also politically so. I remember long ago reading a Spectator book review (which turned out to be by none other than my colleague Daniel Hannan) about the historical links between the English Civil War, American War of Independence and American Civil War. He wrote:

The English civil war, the American Revolution and the American civil war were three engagements in a single continuing struggle. One side, victorious in all three episodes, was made up of radicals, Puritans and entrepreneurs, the other of High Church Anglicans, conservatives and landowners. It was the triumph of the Protestant and revolutionary party which ushered in the English-speaking golden age which we are now privileged to inhabit.

His story begins in New England, which was largely peopled by East Anglians. Arriving in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the Puritan settlers recreated the wooden houses and long public greens of home, naming their towns Boston and Braintree, Ipswich and Norwich, Chelmsford and Billerica. The counties of the Eastern Association were, of course, to become the Roundhead heartland in England. What is less well known is that, by the time shots were fired at Edgehill, hundreds of New Englanders were streaming back to fight alongside their cousins.

These restless, entrepreneurial people, who were to become known as Yankees, went on to lead the colonies in their bid for independence. When the fighting began in 1775, familiar battle-lines re-emerged. Ranged alongside the New England Congregationalists were the Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania and the bulk of the artisan classes. The loyalists who opposed them were often old allies of the Stuarts: settlers from the Scottish Highlands, High Church Anglicans and descendants of the Southern gentry who had recognised Charles II as king in 1649.

Certainly there are comparisons to be made between the Parliamentarians and the North on the one hand, and the Royalists and the South on the other; the former right but repulsive, the latter wrong but romantic. And the Confederates certainly were romantic, even though they were partly fighting to preserve a barbaric institution. The beautiful English found in the American South, perhaps the most archaic form around and the closest thing to Shakespeare’s English, adds to the attraction.

Kevin Phillips’s book probably owes much to David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed (perhaps the most entertaining academic book I’ve read), which traces America’s cultural folkways – New England, the South, the Middle states and the Appalachians – back to different cultural and religious areas of Britain. The Yankees who triumphed in 1865 have their cultural and biological origins in just eight eastern counties of England, from Lincolnshire to Kent, the hotbeds of Puritanism during the 17th century, from where the Puritan Great Migration came.

Fischer even traced the divide between Puritan East Anglia and Anglican Royalist southern and western England back to older divisions, the Puritan heartlands centred around the ancient Kingdom of East Anglia and the Viking-controlled Danelaw, and on the other hand the High Anglicans in the old Kingdom of Wessex, which never fell under Scandinavian control (curiously later developments in genetic archaeology do suggest there are differences. Englishmen from Norfolk are genetically between 30 and 70 per cent Anglo-Saxon or Viking in origin, compared to those from modern-day Wessex who are less than 10 per cent Germanic).

Fischer’s book is fascinating, not the least for the curious anecdotes (I especially liked the story of the Tennessee woman who shot three escaped German POWs in World War 2, and who upon being reprimanded by the local sheriff, “ma’am, you shouldn’t have shot those Germans”, replied “Germans? I thought they was Yankees!”). And although disputed by some academics, it illustrates nonetheless the success of a group of 20,000 East Anglians who left England during the reign of Charles I, and who established the world’s greatest superpower. Today at least 15 million Americans trace their ancestry to those Puritans, including Barack Obama, George W Bush (whose direct male ancestor came from Essex) and Abraham Lincoln, whose people originally came from Norfolk. After the war Lincoln introduced Thanksgiving to give the East Anglian Puritan Yankees cultural precedence over the Southern settlers, even though the Wessexmen actually got there first.

And that’s how East Anglians ended up controlling the world

And I agree with every word.

So all you Irish-Americans, convict Australians, Indo-English and whatever other mixtures are around - bow down to the super-race!!

Or......give him a nod and a wink first, and THEN indulge him in his delusion of grandeur

I bow in humble adoration. And for an encore.....?

Nice article!

So it's the East Anglians who are responsible for all the invasions and the world financial crisis.

One assumes an author from such a respected journal would have his facts straight. When he misses such an obvious one right in the beginning it causes one to stop reading. The Author states, “the first in which use of railways, telegraph, mines, iron ships and rifles were used, not to mention a submarine.”

Which of course any 2nd grade Yankee knows is false as rifles were used almost one hundred years before the Civil war in the American revolutionary war.

See photo below.

Rifles were also used in the Napoleonic wars, but mainly by the skirmishers, who went out in front of the main body of troops and tried to pick off the officers.

However they were not used in conjunction with telecomms, trains and submarines. What the writer was talking about was a coordinated use of various mechanical and technical developments that had taken place over the previous 75-100 years, not the first use of individual aspects of such developments.

It's called progress, but I'm really not sure we want to progress in such a way. Let's get back to the East Anglians and how we rule the world.

One assumes an author from such a respected journal would have his facts straight. When he misses such an obvious one right in the beginning it causes one to stop reading. The Author states, “the first in which use of railways, telegraph, mines, iron ships and rifles were used, not to mention a submarine.”

Which of course any 2nd grade Yankee knows is false as rifles were used almost one hundred years before the Civil war in the American revolutionary war.

See photo below.

Mark - what's an 'ophan'??

Rifles were also used in the Napoleonic wars, but mainly by the skirmishers, who went out in front of the main body of troops and tried to pick off the officers.

However they were not used in conjunction with telecomms, trains and submarines. What the writer was talking about was a coordinated use of various mechanical and technical developments that had taken place over the previous 75-100 years, not the first use of individual aspects of such developments.

It's called progress, but I'm really not sure we want to progress in such a way. Let's get back to the East Anglians and how we rule the world.

I see your point but in many of the opening skirmishes in the Revolutionary war the Americans had no smooth bore muskets. The entire militias were equipped with rifles. They were not used for sharp shooting but normal combat. The rifle was at a disadvantage for reloading speed and after a few shots it fouled with burnt powder and needed to be cleaned whereas the smooth bore musket could be re loaded much quicker and didn't foul as quickly but had a shorter range.

The real technological advance in infantry weapons in the Civil war was the mini ball used in conjunction with a rifled barrel and the percussion cap instead of a flint lock. The mini ball (not really a ball) had expansion rings which made it adhere to the rifled grooves in the barrel giving it greater accuracy and ease of loading and less fouling.

So did someone with East Anglia roots invent the long rifle used in the Am. Revolutionary War?

So did someone with East Anglia roots invent the long rifle used in the Am. Revolutionary War?

Close, but no banana.

Benjamin Robbins was a West Country lad, but his family were Quakers and therefore, like many East Anglians, subject to many restrictions on their faith.

However, the guy was also a student of Newtonian mathematics and therefore had connections to Cambridge (the proper one - in East Anglia).

BR was the first to consider a bullet (rather than a ball) in a rifled barrel. Previously the balls had been used and the detritus from a couple of shots fouled the barrel and made reloading very slow (as Mark pointed out above). The bullet was more accurate than the ball, even the Minie ball, and became more popular as war became more sophisticated.

The guy lived in the 1700s, but I'm not sure of exact dates.

Can't say who invented the long rifle, or any other very early rifle. The archers of England, using the longbow rather than the cross-bow, found that their shots were more accurate if the flights had a slight twist, causing the arrow to rotate. Many of these archers were, of course, East Anglians.

Of course, in the US, the Indians seem to have picked up the idea of bows and arrows. Maybe from Eric the Red, maybe from unknown East Anglians.

I used to drive an Anglia when I was in high school. Good cheap solid cars. They were all the rage for "hotting up".

It wasn't an East Anglia, though.

Found this on the web :

Barrel rifling was invented in Augsburg at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1520 August Kotter, an armourer of Nuremberg, improved upon this work. Though true rifling dates from the mid-16th century, it did not become commonplace until the nineteenth century.

So did someone with East Anglia roots invent the long rifle used in the Am. Revolutionary War?

Only if they were Chinese.

So did someone with East Anglia roots invent the long rifle used in the Am. Revolutionary War?

Only if they were Chinese.

We have several Chinky Chippy Take-Aways in Cambridge, plus a vast number of Chinese students, not just for the University, but the many language colleges that fill the town. And a lot of post-grad people in high-tech business developments in cooperation with the Uni.

But surely you are discussing gunpowder more than the long rifle.

And a long way away from the fact that East Anglians are the best in the world at everything.

Where's Kayo when I need him?

Still in Cambridge?

I like this thread.

It proves that George Bush really didn't destroy the world as we know it.

Left that to the current crop of politicians.

And there are still more East Anglians around to build it up (sorry - make sure other peasants build it up under instruction) again when the world as we know it slides under the ooze that comes out of the current slimy crop of politicos - whatever their creed.

Uh, the title of this thread is "How East Anglians Grew to Rule the World".

The operative word here is "rule", present tense. Not "ruled" as in past tense.

If you are still ruling you are responsible for past and present.

So how are you going to get us dumb Irish Americans out of this mess you caused?

Uh, the title of this thread is "How East Anglians Grew to Rule the World".

The operative word here is "rule", present tense. Not "ruled" as in past tense.

If you are still ruling you are responsible for past and present.

So how are you going to get us dumb Irish Americans out of this mess you caused?

Destroy your potato crop and offer you free passage to Pakistan, seeing as how you've buggered up New York and Boston.

Do you realise how well those hills would be for growing veggies and tatties? Sit at the peat fire and live off colcannon.

After you've got rid of the pesky natives, of course.

Uh, the title of this thread is "How East Anglians Grew to Rule the World".

The operative word here is "rule", present tense. Not "ruled" as in past tense.

If you are still ruling you are responsible for past and present.

So how are you going to get us dumb Irish Americans out of this mess you caused?

Destroy your potato crop and offer you free passage to Pakistan, seeing as how you've buggered up New York and Boston.

Do you realise how well those hills would be for growing veggies and tatties? Sit at the peat fire and live off colcannon.

After you've got rid of the pesky natives, of course.

What do you think all those drones are for?

The East Anglians weren't native to the Atlantic Archipelago. They came as the Angles came somewhat 1500 years ago to the islands together with the Saxons as invader/settler. The leaving Romans brought at least a little bit civilisation, Christianity, Baths in Bath and a sewage system to the ingenious inbreeds But then came a the time of demise and decay (for a while) The new migrants were pagans aka barbarians. As if it wasn't bad enough that the uninvited immigrants came from the continent, they came from a region that is today in Germany.

the rest is history.

fun facts

On a Tuesday 577 A.D., Rome

A man named Gregory spotted some fair-skinned and fair-headed slave boys on a market place. A price board listed their race as Angles. He thought that must be a spelling mistake and said his famous words "They are not Angles, but angels" Our man Greg became hooked on and developed an ethnic fetish. Slaves weren't cheap these days so he decided to become pope and sent Augustine of Canterbury to Canterbury to convert all of them.

Love between the pope and his angelic sheep wasn't made for eternity.

On an afternoon 1066, Hastings

A carpet dealer named Guillaume le Conquérant wins the Scrabble Championship with his spelling skills extraordinaire.

Speaking french becomes the new fad on the island and is it until today (e.g. color, flavor, honor, is now colour, flavour, honour; center, liter, theater, became centre, litre, theatre, ; the word for cookies is spelled biscuit . Freedom fries are now know as french fries.

Not all Anglo-Saxon switch to French and some wise man predicted that the language issue will later divide them like only an Atlantic ocean could do.

On the seventeenth day of the seventh month 1917, Windsor

After nearly 1000 years of speaking French George Frederick Ernest Albert von Sacksen-Coburg und Gotha is the first Saxon King of the Isles who speaks without a German accent. He decided to change the name of the House from the complicated german House of Saxon-Coburg and Gotha to the shorter Windsor.Other german royals on the island changed their name too. E.g. Prinz Ludwig Alexander von Battenberg chose the more French sounding name Louis Mountbatten, 1. Marquess of Milford Haven.

Today the Germans sit in the White House and brew their own beer.

Oh dear...HB, what have you got to say to that?

Prinz Ludwig Alexander von Battenberg

He makes good cakes.

There are even more fringe theories that suggest the native populations of the broader region are not even of European ancestry. Some models show evidence of a purer Moorish origins.