Poem of the Week: Daniel Dafoe's The True Born Englishman

In the upcoming election, immigration is likely to be a big issue.

The wisdom and expanse of legal immigration notwithstanding -- I tend to favor the widest possible on both humanitarian and economic grounds -- it is good to remember that the distinction between the natives (unless of course you are Native American) and recent immigrants was and has always been a fiction. It is wildly unhistorical to suggest that we are anything other than a bastard people. We are all visitors, so the trying to distinguish amongst the quality of more recent migrants is destined to be arbitrary hair-splitting.

Furthermore, even with respect to nations that aren't composed of migrants, the suggestion that the boundaries of a nation state correlate with a race of men is equally asinine. Calling someone a member of the British nationality because they were born in the UK is about as arbitrary as calling them a Jute or a Norman, or calling a Frenchman a son of the Merovingian line. They are a citizen of Britain -- and no doubt a very proud one -- but that is a statement of culture of common values and culture, not of genes and heredity.

Daniel Dafoe, in his poem written in 1701 The True Born Englishman, satirized this fallacy of nativism.

The True Born Englishman (excerpt)
by Daniel Dafoe

The Romans first with Julius Caesar came,
Including all the nations of that name,
Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards, and, by computation,
Auxiliaries or slaves of every nation.
With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sueno came,
In search of plunder, not in search of fame.
Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore,
And conquering William brought the Normans o'er.
All these their barbarous offspring left behind,
The dregs of armies, they of all mankind;
Blended with Britons, who before were here,
Of whom the Welsh ha' blessed the character.
From this amphibious ill-born mob began
That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.

...

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend'ring off-spring quickly learn'd to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus'd betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust.

...

The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu'd,
The very name and memory's subdu'd:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish'd fall,
And Englishman's the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e'er they were they're true-born English now.
The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation,
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman's a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe.