Jefferson and Saxonism

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Friday, May 18, 2007
Jefferson and Saxonism

Still flourishing in some philological and art-historical circles, Anglo-Saxon studies took a hit in the 1960s with its insistence on "relevance." The requirement that English majors study the language, once common in our universities, has disappeared. Even graduate students get little exposure to this once vital field, whose origins go back to a directive of Thomas Jefferson that it be taught at the University of Virginia. To be sure, there are several popular translations of Beowulf (and a 1977 rock opera with that name!), but these encounters sidestep any encounter with the language. Allen J. Frantzen explains this paradox--dismissal and partial survival (in special enclaves)--in his book Desire for Origins: New Languages, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition.

In England the matter has retained more interest, in part because of the popular enthusiasm for archaeology. An old dispute has reached a surprising conclusion. For a long time historical demographers had debated whether the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes had simply ethnically cleansed the indigenous Celtic population, or had absorbed them into their own stock. It turns out that neither is true. DNA and other genetic analyses have shown that the bulk of the population of England (and presumably the other parts of the British Isles) descends from an original peopling as the ice sheets retreated some 10,000 years ago. These folk came from northern Spain. In all likelihood, the closest ethnic affinities of the modern English are with the Basques.

These discoveries are very recent. During the early modern period a powerful set of myths took root in England concerning the Anglo-Saxons. In the 17th century these views became entangled with the dispute between the parliamentary faction and and the monarchy. According to the defenders of the privileges of parliament, the English possess a natural sense of liberty which came, with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the forests of northern Germany. By tradition this settlement began with the arrival of the Jutish chieftains Hengist and Horsa, who reputedly landed in southern England in 449 CE. The brutal Norman conquest of 1066 occluded these virtues, but failed to suppress them completely. In fact, the cause of freedom and the "natural rights of Englishmen" made a comeback with the granting of Magna Carta in 1215.

Language still offers some attestation to this legend of origins, as the part of Germany from which the proto-English came is still termed Lower Saxony. In part for this reason, the overall theory of special English virtue owing to the settlement of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, is commonly termed Saxonism.

The notion also bonded with the fascination with the Goths, a continental Germanic group who ostensibly created Gothic architecture. The Gothic heritage blended synergistically with other trends to form the "Gothic balance." This expression, favored by James Herrington, serves as a kind of shorthand for the principle of mixed government in which no branch will have supremacy. Others preferred the presumed original purity of the Saxon foundations, without any "Gothic" admixture.

The original narrative proved very congenial to Thomas Jefferson. At several points during his life he took up a project for an Anglo-Saxon grammar which remained unfinished. Yet Jefferson's interest in the Saxon heritage went far beyond matters of philology. He held that the forward movement of British settlement in North America was a continuation of the original migration of Hengist and Horsa. It was all part of the vigorous expansion of a superior group of people. Jefferson even went so far as to suggest that the form of government being adopted in the emerging United States represented a restoration of the sublime Anglo-Saxon principles. It was now North America that represented these verities, not a corrupt England under the rule of foreign monarchs.

Thomas Jefferson held that the basis of the common law was shaped in the immediate aftermath of the arrival of Hengist and Horsa in the mid-fifth century. Since England was not converted to Christianity until two centuries later, the common law is by definition pagan.

Jefferson sought to give these ideas visual form in his proposal for the design of the Great Seal of the United States. One side was to bear the images of Hengist and Horsa. The other was to depict a pillar of fire leading the Chosen People into the Promised Land. The racial character of this combination is unmistakable. Those of English heritage must predominate on the new continent because of the primordial excellence of the Anglo-Saxons, personified by Hengist and Horsa. The pillar of fire designates the collective side. It belongs to what is termed the theory of manifest destiny, the idea that the original settlers of British North America were entitled to exercise supremacy over the whole continent--and beyond.

Jefferson's enthusiasm for his presumed Germano-English ancestors foreshadows the contemporary preoccupation with "roots," the idea that ethnicity plays a special role in one's identity. In contemporary parlance, it is the tribal myth of the WASPS. In their exclusiveness, though, Jefferson's Saxonist beliefs were the immediate ancestor of Nativism, with its suspicion of all immigrants of non-English stock. As such, the ideology is poorly suited to an increasingly multiethnic America. Perhaps that is why this strand of Jeferson's thought does not figure, as far as I can tell, in any of the current accounts of the ideas of he Founders of the American Republic..

In recent years the iconic status of Thomas Jefferson has sustained a number of shocks, including the revelation of his affair with Sally Hennings, the awareness of his convictions regarding the supposed inferiority of blacks, his faltering support of civil liberties, and his proposal that homosexuals be castrated. Yet his adoption of the Saxonist myth may be the worst of these faults, enlisted as it is in his ideas of American triumphalism and Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

POSTSCRIPT

A reader suggests that Jefferson's well-known univeralism remains paramount. Perhaps so, but I am not sure the Founder's Enlightenment universalism overrides his seemingly episodic preoccupation with his roots. After all, there is a similar problem in the contrast between his stubborn insistence on black inferiority vs. the ringing language of the Declaration of Independence. Can we really say that Jefferson's Negrophobia, which was almost pathological, was episodic?

It may be that he adumbrated an answer to the first question in his "A Summary View of the Rights of British North America." There he says that the ancestors of the British Americans had twice exercised a "right which nature has given to all men," that is, to change their place of residence. Thus rights are potentialy universal, but most peoples have become servile and neglect the exercise of these rights. The Saxons, broadly defined, owe their superiority to this exercise.

Over the years Saxonism has become deeply unfashionable, indeed forgotten. Not so the universalism of the Declaration of Independence. As I noted, though, that universalism is problematic.

Labels: Jefferson Saxonism

posted by Dyneslines at 7:08 AM
6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Highly dubious scientific assertions you are offering but this is a brilliant essay nonetheless.

    I do believe that language forms so much of identity and perspective and that formation can be so unique that it is important to study the development of modern (English) and its cultural contexts.

    Back to the science- I think this new and highly dubious attempt at revising Anglo-Saxon settlement theory has been not scientifically driven but politically driven. In post-imperial Britain no one wants to be seen as the inheritors of aggressive, proto-racists colonizers. Scots have conveniently retreated from their heritage, reforming themselves into Celtic, language minority, Third World oppressed people instead of what they are- largely Anglo Saxon, English (dialect) speaking, former imperialists in an empire so recently vanished as to still leave bloody hands. (I'm in America now where the blood is being freshly applied.) Nothing wrong with that. It is more important to see what we are going to be today while examining how our legacy affects us. Dishonesty is the best way not to do that.

    Or perhaps we're just ashamed of being descended from the Dutch!

    Here's a link:

    http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/
    content/full/19/7/1008

http://dyneslines.blogspot.com/2007/05/ ... onism.html

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Genetic Britain: How Roman, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Genes Make up the UK's DNA

Hastings 2006

Who are we? The genetic make-up of the British people is a hotly contested subject in academic and political circles. Britain has a tumultuous history that includes Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Roman invasions, but what legacy of these settlers and invaders remains in the DNA of Brits today?

The BNP's Nick Griffin, who has recently gained a foothold in British politics, claimed recently to represent the "indiginous people" of Britain, comparing modern English, Scots, Irish and Welsh with the indiginous populations of North America and New Zealand.

But today's Brit is a complex melting pot of influences. A revealing Channel 4 documentary in 2006 carried out genetic testing on eight people who believed themselves to be "100% English", and found them all to have a rich genetic heritage beyond their expectations.

Advances in DNA profiling have enabled scientists and historians to probe the depths of British history in a new way. Can little strands of DNA tell us who are and where we came from? And how do these new approaches alter the established timeline of British history?
The Science Bit

The field of genetic research into ancestry is still in its infancy – although, as projects such as the human genome demonstrate, it is moving at a rate of knots.

Wave after wave of Europeans came to displace the native Britons
Geneticist Bryan Sykes - a human genetics professor at Oxford University and a science adviser to the British House of Commons - was one of the first people to successfully extract DNA from fossilised bones. In 1996, he dated a skeleton found in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset to around 7150BC.

In the last 15 years scientists have adopted two key methods of tracing ancestry through DNA. Mitochondrial DNA can be used to unpick female ancestry, while Y-chromosomes can determine male lineage.

When passed from father to son, the Y-chromosome is usually unchanged. However, over time, small variations occur – and these variations can be used to identify different population strands.
Who Were the First Brits?

Archaeological evidence near Lowestoft, Suffolk, indicates that the first human settlement in the British Isles was around 700,000 years ago, when – believe it or not – the climate was almost Mediterranean.

Researchers on the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project at the Natural History Museum in London suggest there were seven failed attempts at human occupation in prehistoric times. Each time humans were beaten by changes in climate. Permanent settlement did not occur until after the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago.

The traditional view of British history has generally held that the first inhabitants of the isles were the Celts, who were thought to have originated somewhere in central Europe.

These original Britons were subjugated by the Romans then displaced by an influx of Anglo Saxons from Germany and Holland in the sixth and seventh centuries AD. Later invasions by the Vikings and the Normans further altered the local population.

Recent research in genetics has found evidence to both support and disprove this traditional viewpoint. Broadly speaking, there are two main schools of thought – one argues that the British gene pool was profoundly affected by the influx of invaders; the other maintains that the British genetic make-up has changed little over time.
Anglo Saxon Wipeout

DSC_0039Not the name of a Dark Ages quiz show, but rather a theory used to assess the impact of the Anglo Saxons on Britain.

The Roman occupation of Britain had a profound impact on trade, culture and technology, but saw little in the way of actual immigration. After the Roman withdrawal in around 400AD, Britain entered the Dark Ages – and found itself increasingly vulnerable to attack by outside forces.

Wave after wave of Europeans came to displace the native Britons. The three main tribes were the Angles from Angeln in northern Germany, the Saxons from Lower Saxony, and the Jutes from the Jutland Peninsular.

It is almost impossible to say how many Anglo Saxons arrived or how violent the clashes between natives and settlers were. Historical sources are limited to just a handful of scribes, most of them writing years after the event. The sixth-century cleric Gildas, for example, describes some of the battles between the Britons and the Anglo Saxons, but hard facts are in short supply

Mass migration of Anglo Saxons would have ensured the dilution of the original British gene pool over the course of several centuries. What, then, can genetics tell us about the Anglo Saxon invasion?
Mass Migration Event?

A 2002 study at University College London (UCL) looked for evidence linking modern-day Brits to ancient Anglo Saxons. They compared the Y-chromosomes of present-day males in central England with those of men in Friesland, a Dutch province thought to be an Anglo Saxon homeland.

The study found remarkable genetic similarities between the two populations and concluded that a 'mass migration event' must have occurred in the Dark Ages. In other words, a flood of Anglo Saxons came to dominate the English gene pool, stopping short at the Welsh border. (The same study found that despite thousands of years of shared history, there is a marked genetic dissimilarity between English and Welsh people.)

In order to explain the wide genetic spread of the Anglo Saxons, it has been suggested the invading force must have numbered some 500,000 people – an enormous population movement for the time.
Apartheid System

Hastings 2006Another UCL study in 2006 offered a different explanation. Anglo Saxons came to dominate the gene pool not through sheer weight of numbers but rather through their imposition of an 'apartheid-style' social hierarchy. The native Britons were reduced to second-class status and the Anglo Saxons enjoyed greater 'reproductive success'; they had more babies, more often and more successfully than the subjugated, downtrodden Brits.

The researchers cited examples of other apartheid systems throughout history in support of their theory, alongside fragmentary evidence that appears to show Anglo Saxon laws discriminated against native people. The UCL team theorised that a force of 200,000 invaders could have dominated the gene pool in just 15 generations.

Other historical sources indicate that there was widespread Celtic migration away from Britain during the Dark Ages, as defeated Britons fled their lands to set up enclaves in Brittany (its name derived from Briton) and Galicia in Spain. The Celtic influence is still visible in the culture of these regions today.

In addition, diseases such as the plague of Justinian may account for what historians believe was a significant population decrease in the Dark Ages. A combination of these factors, therefore, radically altered the make-up of the British population.

The gene pool received new input with the arrival of the Vikings in the ninth century and the Normans in the eleventh. However, genetic researchers have yet to find a way of distinguishing between the Y-chromosomes of the Anglo Saxons and the later invaders – making it hard to say how much impact these groups had on the population.
Basque Country?

Celtic CrossThere are, however, high-profile voices that argue against the Anglo Saxon wipeout theory. Leading geneticists Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer maintain that the British gene pool has remained largely unchanged since the first settlers arrived 12,000 years ago.

Both writers refute the traditional view that the Celts originated in central Europe and insist that they hailed from the Iberian peninsular – specifically the Basque country. The Irish, the Welsh and people in the west of England have been found to share up to 80% genetic similarity with modern-day Basques, falling to around 65% in eastern parts of England where Anglo Saxon and Viking influence was greater.

Oppenheimer goes further by questioning the notion that the British Isles were uniformly Celtic at the time of the Roman invasion. He has argued that the absence of Celtic words in English and the conspicuous lack of Celtic place names implies that England itself was not in fact a Celtic nation.

The theory goes that, by the time the Romans arrived, southern England was occupied by Germanic-speaking tribes with connections to Belgic Gaul. Julius Caesar himself, on a fleeting visit in around 50BC, reported that the locals spoke a dialect similar to that of the Gauls.

Oppenheimer's reading of the genetic evidence also indicates there were people of Scandinavian origin living in northern and eastern Britain long before the Vikings invaded.

Perhaps most important of all, Oppenheimer's research on specific gene types has found that Anglo Saxon DNA contributed as little as five per cent to male lines, with virtually no evidence of it occurring in female lines. Any similarities between modern-day Britons and Anglo Saxons, he argues, can be attributed to common ancestors way back in the distant past.
A Cultural Legacy

Roman bathsIf DNA cannot yet provide a definitive answer, historians must approach the problem from more traditional angles. Over the course of time, invaders left more than just a genetic stamp on the British Isles – they built towns and forts, changed the culture and radically transformed the language.

The Romans founded London, built roads, baths and aqueducts, overhauled trade and introduced coinage.

The Vikings brought with them words from Old Norse that remain in our language today – some of them tellingly aggressive (knife, ransack, die), some rather more elemental (husband, sky, bairn, get, call).

The Normans had arguably the greatest impact, establishing one of the oldest monarchical lines in the word, overhauling the political and legal systems, and fusing French and English words together, as well as kick-starting a thousand-year rivalry with the Old Enemy.
The Original Briton

No study can ever fully measure the vast contributions made by each of these invading forces to the make-up of the British Isles - linguistically, culturally and genetically. The idea of the 'original Briton' may continue to obsess certain political elements, but it seems likely that he will remain as mythical as King Arthur – a Briton who would probably have his own things to say on Anglo Saxon wipeout.

It is clear, then, that the answer to who we are lies as much beyond these sceptred isles as within them. Life here, it seems, began out there. As the UCL scientists Neil Bradman and Mark Thomas summarised in their study of the Y chromosome, "if we go back far enough, all men are not only born equal, but are paternally related."

http://heritage-key.com/britain/genetic ... ke-uks-dna