My trail of thought began when there was a news story a few years back about a TV show that, for some unknown reason, is quite popular called 'Downton Abbey' (I've thankfully never seen it). Apparently it's a fictional show about a quiet English town and the things that go on there. The news story came about due to the fact that the show didn't have anyone in the cast who looked remotely 'foreign' - everyone was Caucasian, and while some people felt this didn't represent the true nature of the population in England, the producers had come out and said that it was reflective of a 'typically' English village, or something like that.
So, me knowing how much B.S., and how ignorant that statement is, due to the fact that most 'English' people know that a vast a mount of their ancestors came over during the Viking/Danish immigrations after the collapse of the Roman Empire, it got me thinking about all the other 'English' things which are really foreign. So here goes...
Tea - A cuppa tea is very English, and perhaps the national drink next to Beer - Tea originated in China
Fish and Chips - Jewish
Cricket - Invented in India (though it could be said that all ball games are derived from the Olmec Ball Game, so take your pick)
Football - Romans had a game called Harpastum. The Chinese claimed to have invented football before the Olympics in Beijing. It was the modern rules which were invented in England.
Morris Dancing - Moorish Dancing
Oxford University - founded by a guy to went over to Al Andalus (Spain) during the middle ages, learnt from the Moors about how to run a University like the one in Salamanca, and then came back to England and founded Oxford Uni
The Royal Family - Germans - Originally the house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha - changed to Windsor before the wars so that British people wouldn't turn on them
The English language - a combination of French, Arabic, Sanskrit, German, and lots more. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_country_or_language_of_origin
English People - John Beddoe, who was the professor of Ethnology at Oxford University during the late 1800s found that studies of the hair and eye colour of English people showed that a vast percentage of British and Irish people have Asiatic/African origins. The further west you went the more prominent this was.
The most popular dish in England is Curry.
Beer - goes back to Ancient Egypt
England (the name) - the land was originally called Albion. The origin England or 'Land of the Angles/Angels' was, and still is in America - New England
