While Cambridge University tolerates students glamping on its sacred lawns in protest at what they think is an Israeli genocide in Gaza, the history faculty is busy committing what may be termed historical genocide. It teaches its undergraduates that the Anglo-Saxons never existed to undermine the nationalist myth that to be English a person must be white. Two weeks ago, it gave its superlatively prestigious Anglo-Saxon England journal the new name of Early Medieval England and its Neighbours. The Anglo-Saxons have been cancelled.
This ahistorical idiocy began it seems with a Canadian historian by the name of Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm. In 2017, she was elected vice president of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS). She described herself as a ‘woman of colour and Anglo-Saxonist’ in her victory speech. So far so good. There is no contradiction at all in such a self-identification. Yet in 2019 she resigned her position because the field of Anglo-Saxon study supposedly lacks diversity for it is one of ‘inherent whiteness’.
Quickly, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) voted to change its name to the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England, claiming that the name Anglo-Saxon has been used by white racists to describe themselves.
This is indeed a sorry narrative of illogic, ideology trumping historical fact and rank hypocrisy.
If Anglo-Saxon study has a colour bar, why was Dr Rambaran-Olm, a person of colour, elected chairperson of ISAS? Furthermore, look at the name of the organisation she was leading: the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. How much more diverse can you get than that?
And so, what if the name Anglo-Saxon has been exploited by far-right nutcases? The way to push back against this misappropriation is to continue to use the term within legitimate settings such as historical study so that it loses its racist connotations.
As for the historical inaccuracy of claiming, as Cambridge University does, that the Anglo-Saxons never existed as a distinct ethnic group, this was exposed as balderdash in an open letter written in December 2019 to the International Society of Anglo-Saxons by a number of historians. According to one of the signatories, Tom Holland, the Anglo-Saxons called themselves Anglo-Saxons. King Alfred claimed to rule as rex Angul-Saxonum and his grandson, Athelstan, the founder of England, declared himself to be rex Angulsexna. A person does not need to be fluent in Old English to work out what those titles mean. To call the Anglo-Saxons the early medieval English is to impose on them a name they would not have recognised. The word English only came into use in the early 11th century whereas the word medieval is a 19th century invention.
The hypocrisy is seen in the fact that Rambaran-Olm and her allies would rather disembowel themselves publicly than misname or cancel any other historical people-group. We can be sure they never use the term red Indian to describe First Nation Americans who rightly go by the names they gave themselves such as the Inuit and the Lakota. But the Anglo-Saxons are fair game.
What is at the heart of this nonsense is the fashionable anti-whiteness and in particular anti-white Englishness that has gripped the imaginations and moral senses of academics who have been cosseted too long in their ivory towers. Let us be clear: white English people are no more racist and violent than any other ethnic group:
Any world history book tells us that the capacity for savagery and exploitation is a universal human trait. Genghis Khan and the Rwandan genocide come easily to mind. What is more, the fact that the founding fathers of England were white in no way prevents a person of colour from being English. Nationality has all to do with language and culture rather than skin colour. The Anglo-Saxons’ whiteness is a biological and historical contingency.
Is it not therefore time that English people of all skin colours denounce anti-white Englishness as the moral monstrosity that it is? The time has come too for the universities who teach white Anglophobia to be defunded, until they purge it from their faculties. Why should English taxpayers finance those who demean white English people and teach others to do the same?
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).
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Try being a tall, slender, blue-eyed, redhead of Welsh descent who may ‘identify’ as a Celt if you think the Anglo-Saxon BNP are having a hard time in these days of the latest wave of immigration into our little island home! The existence of Anglo-Saxons may be questionable, (or not), but the existence of Celts has passed into myth.
Excellent article. The main point is that regarding who pays for this tripe? What benefits accrue to the UK taxpayer for all this nonsense? It’s the same argument I have regarding the BBC. They can say what they like as long as I have the choice to pay for it or not.
The general and widespread use of the term Anglo-Saxon will continue whatever these feeble academics say or do, in just the same way as flags which some allegedly find triggering will continue to fly. None of this is new, we can all remember when Bodicea morphed into Boudica (both probably spelt incorrectly).
Meanwhile, many large, vehicle sized tunnels from Rafah into Egypt have been discovered by the IDF. So where were Hamas getting their resupply from? Those rockets don’t grow on trees.
According to this lot, race is a ‘social construct’. But there was clearly an Anglo-Saxon culture – how else could this Canadian berk have studied it – so they existed, on her definition. Or has she committed life-long academic fraud (not implausible) and been watching boxsets, since one can’t study something that doesn’t exist?
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