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Globalizing St George: English associations in the Anglo-world to the 1930s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2012

Tanja Bueltmann  and
Donald M. MacRaild
Tanja Bueltmann
Affiliation:
School of Arts & Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Lipman Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Donald M. MacRaild
Affiliation:
School of Arts & Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Lipman Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

While English nationalism has recently become a subject of significant scholarly consideration, relatively little detailed research has been conducted on the emigrant and imperial contexts, or on the importance of Englishness within a global British identity. This article demonstrates how the importance of a global English identity can be illuminated through a close reading of ethnic associational culture. Examining organizations such as the St George's societies and the Sons of England, the article discusses the evolving character of English identity across North America, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Antipodes. Beginning in the eighteenth century, when English institutions echoed other ethnic organizations by providing sociability and charity to fellow nationals, the article goes on to map the growth of English associationalism within the context of mass migration. It then shows how nationalist imperialism – a broad-based English defence of empire against internal and external threats – gave these associations new meaning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article also explores how competitive ethnicity prompted English immigrants to form such societies and how both Irish Catholic hostility in America and Canada and Boer opposition in South Africa challenged the English to assert a more robust ethnic identity. English associationalism evinced coherence over time and space, and the article shows how the English tapped global reservoirs of strength to form ethnic associations that echoed their Irish and Scottish equivalents by undertaking the same sociable and mutual aspects, and lauded their ethnicity in similar fashion.

Keywords

Anglo-worldcompetitive ethnicitydiasporaEnglish associationsethnicityimperial nationalisminter-ethnic rivalrySt George
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 79 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

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102 The Argus, 11 August 1857.

103 New York Times, 22 August 1888; Birmingham Daily Post, 27 February and 12 March 1888.

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106 Toronto Daily Mail, 14 March 1894; Ottawa Citizen, 10 August 1927.

107 Ceylon Observer, 10 April 1902.

108 The Australian version still exists: http://www.royalsocietyofstgeorge.com.au/ (consulted 1 November 2011).

109 Central African Times, 12 November 1904; 14 January, 11, 12, and 25 March, 1 and 29 April 1905; 14 April 1906; 3 April 1907.

110 Straits Times (Singapore), 12 April 1904.

111 Rhodesia Herald, 1 April 1912; East African Standard (Nairobi), 19 and 26 April 1913; Bulawayo Chronicle, 30 August 1918.

112 Ashburton Guardian, 24 April 1913.

113 Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1904; also New York Times, 24 April 1901.

114 The original painting of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria the First, painted by Mr. Thomas Sully, expressly for “The Society of the Sons of St. George”, Philadelphia, Philadelphia: The Society, 1839. The painting was mentioned as being placed behind the president's chair in the City Hotel, Philadelphia: see Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 April 1842.

115 Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 April 1862.

116 E.g. Montreal Gazette, 24 April 1878.

117 Hawaiian Gazette, 29 April 1868.

118 National Archives of Australia, A2/1904/2695, Letter from J. C. Langley, secretary of the Society of St George, to the Prime Minister, 26 November 1904.

119 Straits Times, 9 February 1926; 17 February 1927.

120 Central African Times, 12 November 1904; 14 January, 11, 12, and 25 March, 1 and 29 April 1905; 14 April 1906; 3 April 1907.

121 Straits Times, 9 February 1925; 3 February 1927. Also Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 4 February 1935. For the St George's Day celebration in 1923, see Straits Times, 9 February 1923.

122 Straits Times, 13 February 1933; 24 April 1937.

123 See, for example, The Colonist, 24 April 1903.

124 The Star (Auckland), 24 April 1903.

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130 Annual membership numbers were established using the Society's annual reports and newspaper evidence. For the annual reports, see New York Public Library, *ZAN-8373.

131 Christian Science Monitor (Boston), 8 September 1913.

132 Brisbane Courier, 25 October 1904.

133 St John Daily Sun, 11 October 1905.

134 The Mercury, 22 October 1907.

135 Brisbane Courier, 15 June 1922; The Mercury, 18 June 1928; The Argus, 4 April 1930. The original Magna Charta Association was a radical, maverick organization founded by an Irish Catholic, Edward Kenealy, to fight for parliamentary reform and the restoration of English liberties in the wake of the Tichborne Case, a courtroom cause célèbre over inheritance. The twentieth-century version was an ethno-nationalist organization, with no obvious connection to the earlier one. See Hamilton, J. A., ‘Kenealy, Edward Vaughan Hyde (1819–1880)’, rev. Rohan McWilliam, Oxford Dictionary of Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15356 (consulted 2 September 2011); McWilliam, Rohan, The Tichborne claimant: a Victorian sensation, London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007Google Scholar.

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137 Obituary, The Argus, 7 April 1945.

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140 National Archives of Australia, A2487/1919/10401, Extract of a resolution of a meeting of the RSStG, Adelaide, 29 September 1919.

141 Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 9 December 1930; Straits Times, 8 November 1932.

142 Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 15 November 1932.

143 Rhodesia Herald, 20 April 1905.

144 North American, 23 June 1897.

145 For instance, James Connolly wrote an article, ‘Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1897)’, which set out the case: Ellis, Peter Beresford, James Connolly: selected writings, London: Pluto, 1988, p. 14Google Scholar.

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147 Poulson's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 27 April 1813, 26 April 1814; New York Spectator, 28 April 1841; Weekly Herald (New York), 28 April 1849; Chicago Tribune, 2 December 1861.

148 North American, 18 March 1892.

149 Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, 13 May 1854.

150 Editorial, ‘What is the value of the Oath of Allegiance?’, The Republic: a monthly magazine of American literature, politics & art, 3 June 1852, p. 312.

151 Chicago Tribune, 25 May 1866.

152 Berthoff, British immigrants, p. 188.

153 R. C. Clipperton, HM's Consul, USA, 1886 (C. 4783), Commercial, No. 20 (1886), Reports by Her Majesty's representatives abroad, on the system of co-operation in foreign countries, p. 138. Kenny, Kevin, Making sense of the Molly Maguires, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998Google Scholar.

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157 Boston Daily Advertiser, 22 October 1887.

158 Rules and regulations of the British American society 1830, St John: Donald A. Cameron, 1830, Rule 1, p. 3; Daily Evening Bulletin, 22 November 1888.

159 Berthoff, British immigrants, pp. 196–7; Anglo-American Times (London), 14 November 1874; Fall River Daily Evening News, 28 October 1876; Canadian-American, 17 September 1886.

160 Milwaukee Sentinel, 24 October 1888, 1 November 1889, 19 May 1892; Daily Inter Ocean, 13 May 1888.

161 Daily Inter Ocean, 25 October 1895, 25 October 1896.

162 Irish World and Industrial Liberator (New York), 30 April 1898.

163 Classic among proliferating Anglo-Saxon literature, is J. R. Dos Passos, The Anglo-Saxon century and the unification of the English-speaking people, New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1903. See also Brandt, John L., Anglo-Saxon supremacy or race contributions to civilization, Boston, MA, and Toronto: Badger and Copp Clark Co., 1915Google Scholar.

164 Irish World and Industrial Liberator, 29 April 1899.

165 Irish World and Industrial Liberator, 3 June 1899.

166 King, John S., The early history of the Sons of England Benevolent Society, Toronto: Thomas Moore, 1891, p. 11Google Scholar.

167 Ibid.

168 ‘Address to Englishmen’, in Constitution of the Sons of England Benevolent Society under the supreme jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Canada, Bellville: J. W. London, 1899, pp. 3–5 (quotation from p. 3). A more sympathetic view was taken in South Africa, where it was said that the ‘more phlegmatic Englishman takes longer to stimulate into enthusiasm’: Mafeking Mail, 15 April 1904.

169 Elyria Daily Telephone, 15 May 1887; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 18 May 1887.

170 Freeman's Journal, 15 July 1878; Leeds Mercury, 20 July 1878; Lloyd's Weekly Register, 21 July 1878.

171 The Argus, 19 March 1847. The clandestine, Catholic, Ribbon Society was founded in 1811 to resist the spread of the Orange Order, often using violence.

172 The Argus, 24 December 1884.

173 Western Argus (Kalgoorlie), 12 March 1918.

174 Brisbane Courier, 14 January 1920.

175 Mafeking Mail, 15 May 1901; Rhodesia Herald, 18 May 1910.

176 Rhodesia Herald, 24 April 1900.

177 Sir George Sprigg, at consecutive St George's Society events in Cape Town: The Pioneer (Allahabad), 13 June 1900; Mafeking Mail and Protectorate Guardian, 15 May 1901.

178 One noticed in Paul A. Kramer's excellent analysis of the coming together of British and American ideologies under the umbrella of Anglo-Saxonism: ‘Empires, exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: race and rule between the British and United States empires, 1880–1910’, Journal of American History, 88, 4, 2002, pp. 1315–53.

179 National Library of Australia, Pethick Collection, cloth souvenir programme, RSStG, St George's Day, 1920.