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Ten scholars examine English identity, what makes it distinct, and its role in shaping American culture

To many, English immigrants contributed nothing substantial to the varied palette of ethnicity in North America. While there is wide recognition of German American, French American, African American, and Native American cultures, discussion of English Americans as a distinct ethnic group is rare. Yet the historians writing in English Ethnicity and Culture in North America show that the English were clearly immigrants too in a strange land, adding their own hues to the American and Canadian characters.

In this collection, editor David T. Gleeson and other contributors explore some of the continued links between England, its people, and its culture with North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These essays challenge the established view of the English having no "ethnicity," highlighting the vibrancy of the English and their culture in North America. The selections also challenge the prevailing notion of the English as "invisible immigrants." Recognizing the English as a distinct ethnic group, similar to the Irish, Scots, and Germans, also has implications for understanding American identity by providing a clearer picture of how Americans often have defined themselves in the context of Old World cultural traditions.

Several contributors to English Ethnicity and Culture in North America track the English in North America from Episcopal pulpits to cricket fields and dance floors. For example Donald M. MacRaild and Tanja Bueltmann explore the role of St. George societies before and after the American Revolution in asserting a separate English identity across class boundaries. In addition Kathryn Lamontagne looks at English ethnicity in the working-class culture and labor union activities of workers in Fall River, Massachusetts. Ultimately all the work included here challenges the idea of a coherent, comfortable Anglo-cultural mainstream and indicates the fluid and adaptable nature of what it meant and means to be English in North America.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright
  2. pp. i-iv
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Introduction: England in America
  2. pp. 1-7
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  1. Relocating the English Diaspora in America
  2. William Van Vugt
  3. pp. 8-36
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  1. Ethnic Conflict and English Associational Culture in America: The Benevolent Order of the Society of St. George, 1870–1920
  2. Donald M. Macraild
  3. pp. 37-63
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  1. Mutual, Ethnic, and Diasporic: The Sons of England in Canada, c. 1880 to 1910
  2. Tanja Bueltmann
  3. pp. 64-87
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  1. “Lancashire in America”: The Culture of English Textile Mill Operatives in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1875–1904
  2. Kathryn G. Lamontagne
  3. pp. 88-111
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  1. The Church of England and English Clergymen in the United States, 1783–1861
  2. Joseph Hardwick
  3. pp. 112-138
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  1. England and the Antebellum South
  2. David T. Gleeson
  3. pp. 139-154
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  1. “Time and circumstance work great changes in public sentiment”: Royal Statues and Monuments in the United States of America, 1770–2010
  2. James McConnel
  3. pp. 155-176
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  1. “The Game of the English”: Cricket and the Spread of English Culture in North America, 1830–1900
  2. Dean Allen
  3. pp. 177-197
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  1. Reviving English Folk Customs in America in the Early Twentieth Century
  2. Monika Smialkowska
  3. pp. 198-213
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  1. The Morris Diaspora: Transplanting an Old English Tradition or Inventing a New American One?
  2. Mike Sutton
  3. pp. 214-240
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 241-244
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 245-250
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