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"Mixed Britannia - marrying an alien"
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Thomas (U14985443) on Wednesday, 5th October 2011
The link above leads to a slideshow on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News page, related to the broadcast of the first episode of Mixed Britannia on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ 2, tomorrow.
Interesting in that is that the woman, a native English, had to give up their British citizenship to marry her fiancΓ©, a man from China. This was in 1912 in Liverpool, and I assume that this might had less to do with the citizenship of a foreign fiancΓ© to marry an English woman. It seems that it was just because that British women had to give up or even get lost of their British citizenship in case they were to marry a man of foreign nationality / citizenship. IΒ΄ve never heard about an male British Citizen getting lost of his citizenship by marriage to an foreign woman. Probably rather the other way round, the wife became a British citizen, by naturalisation through marriage.
The upcoming series are intended to spot on a part of British history, rather seldom discussed and may be of some interest. Also in the light of the developing of Britain in the past 100 years. -
Message 2
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Wednesday, 5th October 2011
No doubt this programme will irk all of those vile little Englanders, projectile vomiting at the mere mention of foreigners. Lol
I hope the documentary does the topic justice, as interracial sex and marriage - even during the post-slavery Empire when racism became more institutional- was far more widespread than the authorities allowed the public to think.
It was alright for white slave owners to have secret sex with African slave women, though? If they had issue out in the plantations in the Windies, then the mixed children were treated a bit better than the blacks, and given minor office or status, and inheritances.
Even as late as WWII, there were 2,500 mixed race babies born to English women, probably ushered off to homes to be raised secretly. -
Message 3
Posted by Thomas (U14985443) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
In reply to Hereword:
No doubt this programme will irk all of those vile little Englanders, projectile vomiting at the mere mention of foreigners. LolΒ
Probably it will go that way. My thoughts were, besides racism, more on the legacy on the terms and conditions of citizenship escpecially for women. IΒ΄m not familiar with this regarding British Citizenship, it just remindes me on many cases in various countries where the legacy was that a woman, married to a foreign citizen, lost its native citizenship, i. e. nationality, automatically regardless of what nationality her husband was.
Maybe this it the point from that slideshow in which one of the interviewees asked "why was she to give up her British citizenship?". But your aspect is as much relevant as it may be mine.
Thanks.
Thomas -
Message 4
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
No doubt this programme will irk all of those vile little Englanders, projectile vomiting at the mere mention of foreigners. Lol
I hope the documentary does the topic justice, as interracial sex and marriage - even during the post-slavery Empire when racism became more institutional- was far more widespread than the authorities allowed the public to think.
It was alright for white slave owners to have secret sex with African slave women, though? If they had issue out in the plantations in the Windies, then the mixed children were treated a bit better than the blacks, and given minor office or status, and inheritances.
Even as late as WWII, there were 2,500 mixed race babies born to English women, probably ushered off to homes to be raised secretly.Β Some very good points there....
Quite a few "brown babies" were abandoned at the gates of Barnardos, as we'll probably see in one of George Alagiah's programmes. As someone of mixed race myself, I'm quite looking forward to this series.
In the Caribbean, it's still felt in parts of the rural areas that a lighter skin leads to better prospects. That is a vestige of centuries of British colonialism in the area.... -
Message 5
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
In the Caribbean, it's still felt in parts of the rural areas that a lighter skin leads to better prospects. That is a vestige of centuries of British colonialism in the area..Β
Is it entirely or perhaps there but not in other places? I know that throughout many parts of the world a light skin is favoured leading to the growth of a cosmetic industry specialising in some pretty horrendous chemical bleaches. Doesn't the song of Solomon have a passage about a woman lamenting her dark skin and isn't there caste based discrimination in India based on skin colour?
Sorry, I'm probably off topic again. -
Message 6
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
Yes, it is prevalent in those countries, but I think it was a more serious problem in post-slavery countries such as the Caribbean....
For example, you could only get a job if you had a lighter skin. The white population was never big enough in the Caribbean to run the entire civil service, so the authorities generally picked their recruits from the mulatto classes.
Also, in the days of slavery, a lot of slave women felt that the best chance their children could have is if they were sired by a white man, and could as a result secure their freedom. The status quo which had the white man ruling the black man perpetuated the belief that 'nothing good was black', even among quite a few slaves. That belief persisted among significant pockets of the Caribbean black population throughout the days after Emancipation, since the top posts in local government were always taken by light-skinned people.
That was until Marcus Garvey came along.... -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 6th October 2011
Of course not all "mixed marriages" are obviously "Mixed Race"..
Teaching in Inner London it was often useful to be able to highlight that experiences that some people felt were "racist" actually came from cultural differences.
I remember a conversation with a father from the Indian sub-continent whose daughter was doing A Level Economics- including the paper on English economic and social history-. I pointed out that as she was studying the lives of people whose fundamental roots and traditions were not those of her own home and family. He said "But she was born in England"..
I said so are my children. But they are half French with the advantages of having their competence shared over two cultures, and actually living in a home environment that was probably more French than English. There was a funny incident when our daughter was tested at the age of 4 something at school because they were testing everyone for whom English was not their mother tongue. The teacher said that she had told the assessors that there was no need. But- she pointed out- strangely she could not indentify a cup and saucer.. Not surprising because she had never seen these items in her life.
By the way the student got a grade A in Economics, went to University to study English and became an English teacher.
Regarding marriages- when we married in 1968 my wife would have lost her French Nationality had she become British.
And when she first came to live in England she tried to do a quick degree in French- being a French person with a degree in English.. But she failed I presume because the examiners obviously expected answers written in excellent English showing an acceptable command of French.
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Friday, 7th October 2011
I thought the first episode last night was quite interesting....
I didn't know anything about the race riots of 1919, so I learnt something new there.
But it was nothing short of disgraceful that the British authorities stripped white English women of their citizenship for marrying non-whites, such as Chinese. -
Message 9
Posted by Patrick Wallace (U196685) on Sunday, 9th October 2011
More a case of a woman losing her citizenship because she married someone of another citizenship, rather than race. There were plenty of far more horrifying examples of contemporary racism.
Coincidentally, I've only recently discovered that one of my direct ancestors, from about eight generations back, was from a mixed race relationship (outside marriage but clearly of long standing ,since there were half a dozen siblings) in Jamaica. It seems to be quite clear that the children of that relationship were recognised and supported, being sent off to England to train as lawyers and army officers and the like, and accepted as heirs under their father's will. But the mother was herself of mixed race, and I have yet to discover what happened in earlier generations. -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 9th October 2011
Well law and legality can not be divorced from a capacity to enforce the law.. which means a capacity to coerce and compel-- or to fail in the attempt..
Generally that capacity to coerce, compel or die in the attempt was associated with men rather than women.. It has been suggested that men are "programmed" in a crisis to "fight or flee".
And, as cited in a quote I posted the other day from G.G. Coulton, since the time of Alfred the Great the male citizen of Wessex and then England etc could be conscripted to go to fight and die for King and Country.
Much later people started talking about "inalienable rights" with which people are endowed by "their Creator" but- as we are seeing in the present international financial crisis - no State or group of States can be stronger than the willingness of its Citizens to "do their duty" by the State and be prepared to make sacrifices.
It was the extension of war fare to the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Front in the First World War that made the argument for women's suffrage unanswerable.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Monday, 10th October 2011
More a case of a woman losing her citizenship because she married someone of another citizenship, rather than race. There were plenty of far more horrifying examples of contemporary racism.
Coincidentally, I've only recently discovered that one of my direct ancestors, from about eight generations back, was from a mixed race relationship (outside marriage but clearly of long standing ,since there were half a dozen siblings) in Jamaica. It seems to be quite clear that the children of that relationship were recognised and supported, being sent off to England to train as lawyers and army officers and the like, and accepted as heirs under their father's will. But the mother was herself of mixed race, and I have yet to discover what happened in earlier generations.Β Yes, apparently there were thousands of black and mixed race men and women in London, Bristol and Liverpool in the years leading up to Emancipation, so your ancestor could've been one of them. They all seem to have intermarried, and their black genes became regressive....
True, there were more horrifying examples of contemporary racism. But this was a law that was brought about as a war-time weapon against Germany, and after the war was used as a racist weapon. At about the same time, my English grandfather married a Swiss woman, and he was not subjected to the same treatment. The law seemed to have been selectively used to try to discourage white English women from marrying non-whites.... -
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
shivfan
But traditionally -as I said in my last post- it had been the first duty of males individually to protect the rights of the women and children who were their responsibility- and to "do their duty" within the various collective entities that were aimed at creating security.
And women in most parts of the world seem to move from the protection of their childhood home and community into that of their husbands.
The real problem of the "age of human rights" was that there was a huge expansion in the growth and the importance attached to the State and the way that it impacted on the Economy, which has largely destroyed and made redundant, in the West at least, the organic and truly living heart of human life which should be Society- that function of group activity that works by means of affection, compassion and humanity.
In England the State worked because it was based upon a strong Society. But the peripheral hard exterior was made central as England adjusted to being part of Britain and then Great Britain.
The evidence of the life of Olaudah Equianno- who we have discussed before- suggests that in his lifetime during the middle of the Eighteenth Century he could be known for himself as "the African" who had made his home in England and had married an English wife.
Of course in those days the whole question of the rights of wives independently of their husbands had not yet arisen. On marriage the rights and duties relating to young women passed from their fathers to their husbands- they were literally "given away".
Nowadays people have lots more rights- but no right to expect anybody to actually care for or about them as themselves.
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Monday, 10th October 2011
What you say about Equiano is true, Cass, that he did marry a white English woman, but crucially she remained English, and he became English himself. Her British citizenship was not revoked....
It does seem that this Act, which was passed sometime before or during World War I, to deal with English women with German husbands, was then used to discriminate against English women who married non-white foreign men. I have come across instances of white English women at the time marrying white Continental non-German Europeans being allowed to keep their British nationality....
It just seems that this Act was selectively applied. -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
shivfan
To be fair D.H. Lawrence suffered quite a lot too from anti-German feeling - having a German wife..
But I have also just been writing about the hardline "Anglo-Saxon contagion" that often infected British policy for forty years or so down to 1918. It involved an emphasis on all things German, and the whole question of citizenship in Germany seems to have been and still to be quite important.. Perhaps the Jews might have fared better had the Weimer Constitution NOT given then full German citizenship before social attitudes were ready.. I do not know whether the Germans have now normalised the anomaly of refusing German citizenship to children born in Germany to the Turkish workers who were so important in the post-war revival.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Friday, 14th October 2011
The second episode of this programme was quite interesting....
There was a second instalment in the terrible treatment apparently meted out to Chinese men who married English women in Liverpool. In another shameful episode, the British government deported over a thousand Chinese men who were living and working in Liverpool, and quite a few of them had married English women....
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