British Ethno-centricity?

[Tartan Jack]

As this issue is obviously a hot one any has been brought up in various threads in the last 6 months,

Just how "ethro-centric" WERE the Brits in the GAoP?

WOULD they have, generally, adopted stuff from natives?

What about from the Spanish and the French, Dutch, Germans, etc.?

We all know of the English vs. Scot/Irish/Welsh/etc biases and how it was handled WITHIN British society.

So, What is the LIKELYHOOD of pirates adopting stuff from other cultures?

Are there SOME parameters wherein adoption was common, to the exclusion of the norm?

(Such as military tactics, equipment, ship characteristics, and the like)

I would LOVE to hear the opinion of our experts.

So, ARE we too "English-language" focused in our studies and research?

How relevant is looking into other cultures? If highly, WHICH ones are the most important for our limited time (for one to know about what WOULD be relevant).

I mean, one could study Japanese Samurai tactics, BUT it really ISN'T relevant in the Wars of Independence in Scotland and Wales (Wallace, Bruce, and Douglas period), even if contemporary.

I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts.

[The Chapman]

Everyone sees things through the filter of their own experiences and culture. It is unavoidable. All human perception is subjective.

In the past, and I was discussing this with a friend whose opinion I value very highly this evening, human perceptions were much more truncated than now. The physical and visual and for that matter emotional experience of any given ethic group was very limited.

I had been arguing that humans are as limited as ever. My friend argued that all exposure to outside sources or influence change any given individuals' or groups' perception. I think, to a large extent, she's right. She is a rare example of someone I respect, and value, and therefore listen to and change my perceptions accordingly.

But, speaking from my own admittedly limited and theoretically 'modern' experience, really, why do I have tattoos in a language not my own? Why do I identify with groups and cultures not familiar to my ethnic cohorts, when I was separated from them for so long?

The world is a big place.

Deal with it.

Re-enacting does not have to, nor should it, consist of white middle-class suburbanites dressing up like Peter Pan and playing with rubber swords on weekends. There is much knowledge out there.

Find it.

There is no critic but yourselves.

[The Chapman]

I’ve been thinking about the concepts of European ethnocentricity for the last few days. It kind of begs the question, “How basically racist or ethnocentric are any given group of Europeans?”

In the case of the English, as a category, I really don’t see a lot of tremendous ‘racism’ per se in accounts of the time; at least as individuals no more so than anyone else, and in the greater scheme of things, likely less; more on that below.

White people in the US tend to view white people as white people. Not in Europe. They consider themselves separate races. I got royally sick of moronic, small-minded Euros asking me, “What are you?” meaning, “What race are you?” They did not see themselves as racist at all, or that the question might be insulting or rude.

But as far as adopting or assimilating aspects of other cultures, how do the various Europeans fare on that count? It has some application in the ‘tattoos’ thread, too.

The fewer Europeans present in other cultures, the more likely they were to assimilate, interbreed, and at least adopt some aspects of those cultures. This is largely true of any human grouping; numbers win out.

But I do believe that some European ethnic groups are more accepting of cultural exploration than others; and here is where, as far as I can tell, the English are different. Those people were CONSTANTLY careening off to visit other peoples and cultures with truly goofy enthusiasm. They were prone to viewing other races as different from them, but also, with individual exception, don’t seem to have really gone off the deep end into routine genocide as a deliberate policy.

What was that about? I suspect it has something to do with being folks from a backwater island that, well, just didn’t get out much. I recall an otherwise nice, decent couple in London, who matter-of-factly informed me that their dog was trained to attack people of African appearance because, “Everyone knows Blacks are thieves”. They were quite confused and offended when I told them I thought they were bigoted. They had nothing emotionally against Black people, they simply truly believed them to be thieves, and planned their lives accordingly. I chalk that up more to general isolation and cluelessness than deliberate racism, and is, I think, pretty typical of the general attitude.

There are, of course, exceptions; and some English people are violent racist thugs. A quick listen of some skinhead lyrics will inform you of that. But as a general rule, I don’t find them too prone to putting racialist attitudes into physical practice as a societal structure.

The history of the English attitudes towards the Other seems to consist of the feeling that not being English doesn’t make you subhuman, exactly, it just means you’re, well, not English. How anyone else feels about that isn’t really relevant to them.

BUT; and this is important, I think, to understanding the behavior of the time period: the intrinsic duality of the national character. The familial culture is one of checks and balances. Not even necessarily of ‘fairness’, but of limits and controls, culturally ingrained, that lead to there being limits to the brutality and cruelty possible under an English system. They couldn’t send some chopper to oppress the natives without a bleeding heart running along behind them, wagging a finger and announcing the ‘immorality’ of the whole affair. There is a feeling of internal struggle in all things English.

There is an awareness of balance, of running out of control and then saying whoops, that’s gone a little too far there…a balance in English/British explorations and colonies that is just not present in other places, such as the Spanish colonies, or the Dutch colonies, or the German colonies, or the Belgian colonies.

These are the people who brought the world both the modern concentration camp and Winnie The Pooh. They beheaded their king, then changed their mind and brought him back. They blew sepoys in half with cannons, then made a real effort at eliminating the caste system. John Newton wrote ‘Amazing Grace’ while running a slave ship. For that matter, the English more or less invented the international slave trade, then shut themselves down. Would the Germans have desisted due to moral qualms? Did King Leopold wind down his organized genocide in the Congo until some Englishman started in on him?

The thing is, the English have a long history of totally unchecked emotional behavior. This stiff-upper-lip stuff is horseshit. I have found the English to be emotional, sentimental, angry, sad, happy, to the point of having constant national fits of mood swings. I firmly believe the strong parental controls present in English society are there because of a self-awareness of a habit of running amuck and then feeling bad about it. They KNOW they’re prone to childishness and emotional immaturity. Why else would ‘British Humor’ be so beloved by 9-year-old boys the world over?

( Here I think of a prim and proper Englishwoman whose kitchen we remodeled; we were all careful around her until we saw her watch KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. She laughed uproariously and literally flailed around to the point that we were kind of embarrassed for her, and came staggering in, teary-eyed, and announced that her favorite person in the entire world was Onslow).

Could Fletcher Christian have been anything other than an Englishman?

Comprehending English people is largely a matter of understanding they’re leading with their hearts. Why did some Englishman do something? Who the hell knows? He probably doesn’t know; he felt like it. What’s he going to do next? Who the hell knows? He doesn’t know.

This is what leads to the self-criticism and notorious self-deprecating humor, an hilarious example of which is found right here:

http://extraspecialpc.blogspot.com/2007/03...be-british.html