Anglo-Saxons deserve reparations for the Norman Conquest

The effect on indigenous English society was enduring devastation

Sahil Mahtani

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Sahil Mahtani

13 July 2019

9:00 AM


Restorative justice for the victims of colonialism is an idea whose time has come. A few years ago, the Indian diplomat Shashi Tharoor suggested Britain pay India compensation to atone for centuries of colonial rule. ‘I’d be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next two hundred years,’ he said.

In April, Cambridge University announced a two-year study into how buildings and wine cellars might have been constructed on the backs of slaves. ‘There is growing public and academic interest in the links between the older British universities and the slave trade, and it is only right that Cambridge should look into its own exposure to the profits of coerced labour during the colonial period,’ said Vice-Chancellor Stephen Toope.

Too right. Glasgow University has already conducted a study into its own links with slavery and concluded that £200 millionworth of its wealth was ill-gotten in this way — though it hasn’t yet decided what form reparations should take. In America, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing in June to examine ‘the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice’. The campaign has received support from nearly 60 House Democrats and a string of the wokest Democratic presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren.

To those who suggest we might be better spending our time righting the injustices of today rather than of the distant past I say: shame on you. If these wrongs are not righted through compensation they will live on in our collective shame and the descendants of the victims will continue to suffer. Far from abandoning the principle of restorative justice we should be expanding it and exploring what other injustices might be put right through financial compensation.

One glaring example is the great evil visited on the Anglo-Saxon population by the Norman 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 per cent 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?

It should be straightforward for a Royal Commission to trace the present-day descendants of Britain’s Norman usurpers through a combination of genealogical and administrative research as well as — inevitably — mandatory genetic testing. A small tax on the Lampards, Vardys and Gascoignes of the world, payable to the Bamfords, Bransons and Ecclestones, would be sufficient to catalyse healing for the open sores of the past.

What are the sums involved? By 1086, the Norman arrivistes had stolen almost a third of the 12.5 million acres of arable land in England, parcelling it into manorial estates. At a conservative estimate, that land is now worth £7,000 per acre — or £25 billion in total that the Normans owe Anglo-Saxons for the Conquest. France’s liability could, of course, be offset against our exit bill from the EU.

There will be inevitable quibbles, such as descendants of Normans claiming that they were not personally responsible. But this is feeble prattle. Countries typically honour treaties dating hundreds of years in the past, despite no one being alive who signed them. We pay debts accumulated by previous generations. Similarly, reparations correctly depend on a notion of collective and inherited responsibility, precisely why the Jews were held accountable for the death of Jesus Christ for most of the Christian era.

We are learning every day just how deep our roots in the past lie. The more we learn, the more necessary it is to see the past in terms of the attitudes of the present, and to rectify regrettable aspects. Eventually these may encompass events as old as the Indo-Aryan invasions of 1500 bc, which produced the Hindu caste system, as well as more unheralded travesties such as the American conquest of the Philippines, which introduced junk food, soap operas and general bad taste. Ultimately, only by demarcating a special class of victims and making grievance inheritable can we address the sins of the past and promote harmony in our own world.

Of course, in Britain one Royal Commission is unlikely to be sufficient. Once the Anglo-Saxon population has been compensated, surviving descendants of the ancient Britons will understandably want to seek redress from the Anglo-Saxons themselves for crimes committed during that earlier settlement. Justice must be served, even if it means even more public money disappearing over the Severn Bridge into Wales. But hopefully it will be made up for by the billions we are owed by present-day Scandinavians in compensation for all that rape and pillage by the Vikings.

Couldn't agree more! There needs to be a complete accounting for all of the past wrongs!

Other segments of history that are suffering from severe neglect is what happened to Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. These poor folks had literally everything taken from them, and yet where is the outrage? A complete study needs to be done and a fair compensatory package needs to be delivered to......their descendants. I think this needs to happen way before we can even begin to look at reparations for Blacks or Anglo-Saxons, as a matter of chronological priorities.

Hey, wait a second! What about us Celts!?!? The Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the people who today style themselves "Anglo-Saxons", invaded us and devastated our families, our government, our religion, our economy, our culture and our society! We deserve full reparations first!!

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Hey, wait a second! What about us Celts!?!? ... We deserve full reparations first!!

A point I usually make about the whole “reparations” concept, and there are countless similar examples that could be cited. Based on recent findings about early human history, I’m thinking of identifying myself as a Neanderthal and demanding reparations from the entire homo sapiens species. Pay up, you big-brained suckas!

Us Vikings ran out of fjucks about 800 years ago.

The descendants of African slaves here and elsewhere should demand justice from the slave trader countries in Africa.

Man, go after Italy for the Roman Empire

Nope, apparently you're going to have to go straight to Rome - assuming you can't find a way to serve process on the ancient war god Mars, of course, and that you can prove Remus didn't have any offspring.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Romulus-and-Remus

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
A point I usually make about the whole “reparations” concept, and there are countless similar examples that could be cited. Based on recent findings about early human history, I’m thinking of identifying myself as a Neanderthal and demanding reparations from the entire homo sapiens species. Pay up, you big-brained suckas!

Apparently there are now beginning to be some questions as to who came first where.
http://news.yahoo.com/skull-di...umans-195516344.html

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Apparently there are now beginning to be some questions as to who came first where.

Yes, I saw that.

But such facts don’t matter any more than the fact that it would have been impossible for a few “white” slavers to round up thousands of native Africans and take them away without the active support of other native Africans. What matters is that my claim was first.

What I want is retribution reparation for the dumbass Great Ape that gave birth to the first Democrat, who has been shitting on this country and its Citizens ever since. I think a quadrillion $ will do it, all of which needs to come from their apish camp.

Aww, c'mon, the Irish!

Centuries of British subjugation, despite what U2 sing about.

Potato famine ... Jamaica free slaves ... the list is endless.

The Celts, really? Your painted men and women held the Roman Empire at the Wall ... all we Irish had was pottoes and mud to fling about.


Tongue in cheek ripostes ...

From s Munster descendant.

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
Man, go after Italy for the Roman Empire

Absolutely... they oppressed the ancestors of billions and must pay!

quote:

Originally posted by zapfire:
Nice read, the British throne is filled with long and historical event, i recently found out the Royal family are of Scottish decent.

Only partly - the present Queen's mother mother was Scottish, and that AFAIK, is it.

I, on the other hand, am distantly related to the Patriarch Abraham

quote:

Originally posted by Ryanp225:
Us Vikings ran out of fjucks about 800 years ago.

I LOL'ed at this

Yn gyntaf oll oedd y Rhufeiniaid a gyrhaeddodd ym Mhrydain a dros y bedair mlynedd nesaf, a 90% o Brydain yn siarad Cymraeg/Frythonig. Yna mae'r Jutiaid a Sacsoniaid gyrraedd, a gyrru eu ffordd ar draws yr hyn a elwir bellach yn Lloegr, ond wedi methu â gwneud llawer o gynnydd yng Nghymru. Yr iaith yn goroesi yno, ac, i'ryw raddau, yn Llydaw, rhan o Ffrainc. Mae wedi goroesi heddiw, yng Nghymru. Nid oedd y Gwylliaid, y Cymry yn Celtaidd. Mae Cymru yn mynnu gwneud iawn o Denmarc, Norwy, Sweden a Gogledd yr Almaen.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tacfoley,

Tac FTW

First of all it was the Romans who arrived in Britain when 90% of Britain spoke spoke Welsh/Brythonic. Then the Saxons and Jutes arrived, driving their way across what is now England, but failed to make much progress in Wales. The language survived there, and, to some extent, in Brittany, part of France. It survives today, in Wales.

None of the invaders were Celtic, but the Welsh are.

Wales demands redress from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Northern Germany.