Who were the English descended from?
The answer is everywhere, the English greatest strength is they
are one of the world's great mongrel peoples.
After the ice age, settlers began arriving in Britain
sporadically for centuries. At first this wasn't a problemm, but
towards the end of the Bronze age the country was becoming quite
populated. Proof of this is the fact before the Roman invasion the
farmland in Britain was being worked so heavily that not again
until the 20th century would the earth be tilled so heavily. Also
the emergence of hillforts and substantial archaeologic evidence of
fighting in that era show land was at a premium.
Then came the Romans bringing settlers from all over the empire.
The Romans had a policy of stationing troops as far from their
homelands as possible. African and Arab legions were stationed in
Britain during the occupation. Several Roman emperors were also
British including Rome's only black emperor Septimus Severus.
The following dark ages saw more migration to Britain from
Scandenavia. The Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, these groups could
possibly have added upto 20% to the English population at their
height making them the single largest migrant in history.
The Normans numbering only 20,000 were largely insignificant,
but they opened Britain up to cosmopolitan Europe. By the middle
ages Britain had Jews, Turks, French, Libyans all in sizable
numbers.
In the Rennaissance the Huegonots made a major migration from
France and many of Europe's protestant sought sanctuary.
As the British Empire grew an influx of people from all over the
world followed. The by the 1800 there were more Irish in England
than Ireland. By by 1850 London had gettos ranging from Malay to
Polish, there were even American Indian refugees given asylum.
A survey of Whitechapel in Jack the Ripper times showed 50% of
the population were immigrants and of the 50% who weren't virtually
all their parents were. The survey estimated less than 20% of the
whole population of London could trace their English ancestry back
more than 200 years.
In the 20th century the imperial immigrants didn't abate and
England to this day still both has and annually accepts more
immigrants than every other country in Europe combined.
Today, England has descended from many peoples from all over the
world, pre-empire though England was descended from people from
northern Germany, denmark and holland,as well as Celts and
french.
