What do I owe the Normans? We lived at Gurnie when the Normans were no better than wolves of the sea... and it was a better Gurnie then before they came to rob us. Screenplay, Black Rose (1950)-Statement of Walter of Gurnie to King Edward I.
Right.
One glaring example is the great evil visited on the Anglo-Saxon population by the Normal Conquest of 1066. By any standard, the effect on indigenous English society was enduring devastation. Through war, invasion and genocide, the Anglo-Saxon ruling class was almost entirely replaced, control of the church and state surrendered to foreign adversaries, English replaced by Norman French as the language of government, and England’s entire political, social and cultural orientation shifted from Northern Europe to the continent for the next thousand years.
This matters because, just as the pain of colonialism continues to be endured by its descendants, the Conquest continues to have lasting effects. In his study of surnames and social mobility, economic historian Gregory Clark concluded that Norman surnames continue to be 25 percent overrepresented at Oxbridge to this day relative to other indigenous English surnames. As Clark put it: ‘The fact that Norman surnames had not been completely average in their social distribution by 1300, by 1600, or even by 1900 implies astonishingly slow rates of social mobility during every epoch of English history.’ Not for nothing did Nonconformists and Whigs loudly oppose ‘the Norman yoke’ during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Cambridge University, which still drips with Norman money and influence, should now consider to what extent it needs to compensate its Anglo-Saxon victims. The Sutton Trust estimates that Oxbridge graduates earn £400,000 more during their lifetimes than graduates from other UK universities. These figures imply that descendants of the rapacious Norman invader class could be earning tens of thousands of pounds more than other graduates — an undeserved lifetime premium that has survived 31 generations. So, reparations must certainly be made. But who shall pay, and who shall receive?
Go here to read the rest. Myself, I am still holding out for reparations for the Irish Potato Famine and the Trail of Tears!
Saxons?
What about us British Celtics?
Those Saxons (along with the Angles & Jutes) invaded us long before those Normans. 😀
Yep. Make the Limies pay all of us!
Let’s not forget reparations for descendants of the good people of the Byzantine Empire, courtesy of Islam. That could stir things up in Istanbul.
Survival of a surname does not mean survival of the race that originated the surname. Any history of the Normans or their Viking forbearers describes how freely they intermarried with the locals. That was part of their success. Ask a Fitzgerald in Co. Kerry if he’s Norman or Irish and you might get an unsettling look. Ask a MacDonald in Scotland if he’s really a Celt or just a descendant of Vikings, if you like swimming in the deep end of a loch.
The British Left and Old Labour’s Stalinists are notorious for fomenting the “reverse snobbery” evident in that “report”. Tell ’em to go boil their heads!
Still waiting for reparations for the descendants of all slavic peoples, enslaved in such great numbers “slav” became “slave.”
From the Proto-Slavic slověninъ to the Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος to the Medieval Latin Sclāvus or Sclāva to the Old French esclave to the Middle English slave.
Everyone is, I presume, aware that the irony of both Stamford Bridge and Hastings is they were fought to determine which descendant of Vikings was to rule the English. Correct?
I want reparations from;
1. Sweden, from the mid 17th century Deluge that wrecked and permanently weakened Poland;
2. Germany – the Partitions of the 18th century that lasted until 1918 and the horrors of WWII inflicted upon Poland;
3. Russia – the same;
4. Ukraine – the Wolyn Massacres and Lvov,
5. Austria – Patritions again,
6. Turkey – for constantly attacking the Commonwealth, and:
7. Norman Lear for making Polish jokes all the rage in the 1970s.
What about Mongolia? You went awful easy on the Mongol Horde there, don’t you know?
And my German ancestors were living on the Vistula before your Slav ancestors were, so if you aren’t going to cut me in on whatever you squeeze out of your victimizers, I expect my share of your reparations take to be prorated!
As a person of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Hispanic, and Slovenian descent, I demand quadruple reparations!
From yourself, right?
With a maiden Anglo-Saxon surname I’m sure to receive a few pounds.
Interesting. So with Saxon ancestry on my paternal grandmothers side, and Norman ancestry on my paternal grandfathers side; Celtic ancestry on my maternal grandfathers side, and English ancestry on my maternal grandmothers side-
I dunno – this is totally confusing. I guess I’ll have to pay myself multiple compensations.
And then, of course, there’s the NZ Maori question………….
It can get complicated Don. Sometimes my Irish ancestors demand reparations from my Scottish ancestors for Ulster. Then my Scottish ancestors demand reparations because of the Irish, by the Scotti, colonization of Scotland. Then they all get mad, yell at each other and nothing gets accomplished, the usual pattern of demands for reparations!
I wonder would the Donald Trump be more Viking than Celt and Putin more Mongol than Rus
I figure we all owe reparations to the Neanderthal for what we did to the mammoth and the wooly rhinoceros.
Now THAT was a cultural and ecological genocide!
Hi, Ernst,
I never heard of any Germanic tribes dwelling along the Vistula….other than the Wehrmacht. Since my mom is mostly German and a little Swedish and Scot (the grand and noble Clan Lamont) would owe myself….I’ll settle for a large soft serve cone on this hot Saturday.
As for the Mongols, being stuck in Mongolia is punishment enough.
I say let’s implement Charlemagne’s ‘Saxon Solution’ to Eastern Wales (England) and be done with the whole matter.
Signed,
Phoenician-Roman-Visigoth-Arab-Berber-Moor-Castilian-Spanish-Portuguese-Mexican-American-Cherokee-Welsh-Britannic-Celtic-Norman-English-French-Gallic-Ashkenazim Jew-Viking descendant.
The Veneti in the 2nd Century A.D., at least according to Tacitus. I believe the Goths passed through on their way to what’s now Ukraine as well.
So wese wuz thar fust!
I demand reparations from black Africans whereever they may live today because they pushed my ancestors out of humankind’s common African homeland.