England: what a melting pot!

We are all used to seeing and hearing politicians growing ever more patriotic when election time is near. This year, with the General Election just over a fortnight away, expect them all to use St George’s Day to press the nationalist button and drum up some extra votes.

Perhaps they should take a moment to think. We’ve long pointed out that England was multicultural before the word was invented – and the “English values” that immigrants are often questioned about can trace their roots back across the world.

And now international money remittance company worldremit has put together a short list of facts which show just how diverse the English nation is. Worldremit points out that from the Romans, Saxons and Normans many hundreds of years ago to those from Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Philippines today, England has always been shaped by migration. Here’s just five things that have actually been brought to England by people from abroad!

♦Fish & Chips
The quintessential English fast food, what could be more English than picking up a portion from the chippie on a Friday? But fried fish was actually introduced into Britain by Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain who hung around our own Whitechapel…

♦Polo
Is anything more English than rubbing shoulders with the high-rollers at a polo match at the height of summer? Yet English plantation owners actually learned polo from locals in the Indian state of Assam in the 19th century…

♦Tea
We all know the English love a good cuppa! A lot of people know that tea was first grown in China and was then taken to India by the British. But did you know that the tea bag was accidently invented by a New York tea merchant? In the very early 1900s, Thomas Sullivan sent his customers samples of tea in silken bags. Rather than emptying the tea from the bag, some assumed they should be used in the same way as metal infusers and consequently, the tea bag was born…

♦Pubs
Long have the British population relished a pint in the local pub but it was after the arrival of the Romans, and the Roman road network, that inns began to appear where a passer-by could enjoy a refreshing beverage…

♦Saint George
Even Saint George himself was born abroad! Although historians have argued the Roman’s soldiers place of birth for over a century, it is believed that that Saint George was born to a Greek Christian noble family in Syria…

So look back on St George’s day with a thought about what it really is to be English – in the true international sense.

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