Can there be an "American" ethnicity? If yes, would it be a Germanic ethnicity or else? (Mexican, Chinese)
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"We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts! ... But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more lovable than the mutt."
- Bill Murray (as John Winger in the movie "Stripes")
If you are from the American south you would be mostly Southern English/ Welsh / West Country English/ lowland Scottish / Ulster ( lowland Scot / Northern English from Yorkshire/ Cumbria ( Cumberland Gap), basically British Isles. Not southern Irish , Scots / Irish, basically British. There was very little German influence, ie: place names, food , culture, ancestry;some French no Dutch. Not glamorous but working class British. Most southern English were indentured servants and petty criminals . Similar to Australia.
I agree with most of your post, but during and around the time of the English Civil War, there were many connections with Holland/The Netherlands. Some of it was due to more religious tolerance in Holland, thus drawing many English Puritans to move there, while the relatively new tobacco trade (with the Virginia Colony mostly) was also a factor. Inevitably, there were marriages and resulting children with both Dutch and English heritage, well before anyone moved to the New World.
New York was first Niew Amsterdam, and was settled and claimed by the Dutch. The so-called Pennsylvania Dutch were German, and were present in great numbers prior to the American Revolution.
Cumberland Gap was named for the (bloody) Duke of Cumberland, Bonnie Prince Charlie's arch-enemy, not the geographic place Cumbria/Cumberland.
Also, many second sons (and third and fourth ones plus daughters) of respectable families immigrated to the American Colonies, for financial reasons. They were not indentured servants or petty criminals, but were members of the merchant or minor land-owning classes. My own English immigrant ancestors from this time were merchants, both in England and Colonial Virginia - difference was that land was amply available in Virginia, and tobacco ruled and was very much a money crop at this time.
So, many ambitious young men and women tried their fortunes in the New World, which even prior to the American Revolution, was considerably more free and offered more opportunities than did England (and many other European countries) at this time.
Of course, the problem was that tobacco cultivation was largely dependent on slave labor. As was indigo and rice cultivation in the Carolinas, and later of course, cotton...Not to mention sugar cane in the West Indies. All crops tainted by slave labor.
Many Americans with predominantly British ancestry also have French Huguenot background, again, particularly those with early 18th century Virginia Colony background, due to the good ship "Mary and Ann", which carried several hundred Huguenot religious refugees to new lives in the New World in 1700. They settled at Manakintown, just up the James River from Richmond, VA, and were greatly assisted by Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church, whose families each sponsored a French Huguenot family for the first few years, until the newcomers became self-supporting.
As for the Scots-Irish, they are exactly the same people also referred to as Ulster Scots: Protestants of northern English and southern (border) Scots ancestry who were sent to northern Ireland to subdue the native Catholic population, back in the time of Queen Elizabeth I and James II. Many came to America in the years before and shortly after the American Revolution. It's also very common for Americans whose families have been in America since the 1800s to have Scots-Irish ancestry, and this is especially true in the southeastern states' mountainous areas.
Again, Ulster Scots and Scots-Irish are the same group. And they were certainly here prior to the American Revolution (my own Scots-Irish maternal ancestors first arrived in 1786, so were a little on the late side in arriving).
A first cousin who shares paternal background with me just took a DNA ancestry test. The results were almost 97% British, with only a smattering of French and other European backgrounds (Norse and Finnish were the surprises) plus Irish, specifically from County Cork. While we knew of some Irish background, County Cork was a surprise (as was the Finnish fraction). The first ancestor who bore our surname came to the Virginia Colony from England in 1647 or 1648, so it was surprising to learn that the British component was still so high after all these years.
So, not too much of a melting pot in my cousin's case - mine would be a bit more diverse, due to that Scots-Irish g-g-grandfather of mine and some German ancestry through my maternal grandfather.
American people mostly share the same culture, language, mentality and values. This makes "American" an ethnicity in my opinion. So, what kind of ethnicity American is? Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Mediterranean, etc?
Absolutely. The most successful one at that in the recent few centuries. It may be british, german ,irish, italian etc, but it stood out in striving for freedom and equality for all.
Does "ethnicity" depend upon what countries our ancestors came from, or our present-day nationality and/or way of life? Decide this, and you'll have the answer to just who and what Americans are.
I am an American, with an English surname. Most of my known ancestors came here prior to or just after the American Revolution, from England, Ulster Ireland, France, Germany, and the Isle of Jersey, which was technically English but whose traditional way of life was closer to that in France. Those are just the countries my ancestors resided in just prior to crossing The Pond - before that occurred, there were intermarriages with people from Wales, Scotland, and southern Ireland.
So - I am an American, with ancestral roots in each of those countries. I find learning more about life in those other countries at the time my ancestors came to America very interesting, and it enhances my understanding of who they were and why they immigrated - and who I am today. I'm an American, with roots mostly in what used to be termed the British Isles (sorry, Ireland, you're included) and western continental Europe.
My French Huguenot ancestors are known to have fled first to Switzerland after being persecuted in France for their religion, and then moved on to Holland, before coming to England for a few years prior to sailing to America, where they and their descendants remained. But living (as refugees) in Switzerland, Holland, and England temporarily did not change their French identity, which gradually became Americanized as generations passed, intermarriages with colonists of English-speaking backgrounds occurred, and French no longer was the language of choice at Manakintown.
What survived was the little Calvinist church and its rituals, French surnames and given names, which were often Anglicized as time passed, and a remembrance of their origins among their American descendants, 300 years later.
Correct. And as much as the Left hates it, core US culture came from Great Britain. See our legal system, majority language, religious groups, etc.
Thankfully the meanness and cunningness was not inherited.
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