# To what extent do Americans consider British history part of theirs? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2022, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430 "2022-05-31T11:45:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2022, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/101 "2022-06-05T19:53:22Z")
Of course those nuts would want that; the counties vary wildly in size and population. It would give a HUGE advantage to the Republican/Conservative side of things. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/102 "2022-06-08T05:56:45Z")
I had AP history in high school and because it was soooo long ago, I don’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t get that much into anything before the Pilgrims. Utah never had any Spanish settlements so we didn’t cover that too much. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/103 "2022-06-16T13:25:13Z")
> [@BippityBoppityBoo](#): > > …… Victoria was queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ( **1837–1901** ) and empress of India (1876–1901). Her reign was one of the longest in British history, and the Victorian Age was named for her.May 20, 2022 > > Date of death: January 22, 1901 > > [Encyclopedia Britannia] Well, yes, obviously that’s why we Brits call the age Victorian (just as we have Elizabethan, Jacobean, Georgian, Regency and Edwardian periods - all named for our monarchs). But it doesn’t explain why Americans do. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/104 "2022-06-16T17:32:55Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > But it doesn’t explain why Americans do. But this does. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > London was still the cultural center of the entire English speaking world and when Americans talk about “Victorian” they mean culture, not government or geopolitics. To expand on this: American culture blatantly imitated Victorian English culture. (Not Irish or Scots or Welsh.) English books, plays, dress, furniture, morality, recreation, and enough other stuff to fill books arrived in America and filled the gaping holes where American culture was still lacking. Authors like Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde toured America to rock star receptions. Nouveau riche Americans married their daughters off to impoverished lords. The Victorian Age in England was very much as social and cultural as it was political. Americans skipped the political but embraced the social and cultural as if it were their own. To be fair, continental Europe also got widely imitated and stirrings of original American culture started to be felt. Even so, that’s a bit like saying that art movies and foreign movies exist outside of Hollywood movies today. True, but seldom relevant to the masses. ---
**Author:** ![ThisOneGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@ThisOneGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisOneGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/105 "2022-06-17T16:02:26Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > There’s also an Inyo County. Friends of mine were desert camping there and visting old mines. The “Inyo Min(d)” joke got very old. I always like to refer to the east side of Mount Whitney as “The Inyo Face”. The general problem with history is that there is just too much of it (and we’re still making more). Just not possible to cover all of it. My own distant memories of world history in high school goes something like Egypt-\>Greece-\>Rome-\>Feudal Period-\>Renaissance-\>Age of Exploration-\>American Revolution. More detail about England than the rest of Europe and nothing in eastern Europe after Greece. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/106 "2022-06-17T16:24:04Z")
> [@the\_art\_of\_rolling](#): > > This tread gives me a chance to ask something that has, as an English person, puzzled me for years. > Why do Americans (or at least novelists and makers of t.v. documentaries) so frequently refer to the latter nineteenth century as “Victorian”? What should we refer to it as? ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/107 "2022-06-17T18:03:29Z")
There are some distinctly American terms for that same period. The Gilded Age is one. Another one, but charged with particular political positions, is the Age of Robber Barons. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/108 "2022-06-17T18:09:12Z")
So, as an American, I should say, “Sherlock Holmes is set in Gilded Age London?” ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/109 "2022-06-21T18:56:12Z")
The Gilded Age is specifically the last couple decades of the nineteenth century, though, so it applies to only a subset of Victoria’s reign. It doesn’t come up super often, but it’s occasionally handy to have an adjective meaning “of or pertaining to the last two-thirds or so of the nineteenth century”. Actually, I think by far the most frequent use of “Victorian” in modern American English is as a noun referring to houses of a particular architectural style. “They bought an old Victorian and are refurbishing it”. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/110 "2022-06-21T19:55:59Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Literature classes in the US do tend to focus heavily on literature written in English. I think the reasons for that are obvious: > > 1. we can’t read it directly > 2. there’s enough of it that there’s not a compelling reason to seek it other literature. Some of the artistry is always lost in translation, too. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430/111 "2022-06-22T03:30:52Z")
I dunno. Translators to some other languages take great pride in their artistry. I have a Russian friend who read a lot of American science fiction, some in English, and some translated into Russian. He said he’d been told that Vonnegut is better in translation, and i believe him. For that matter, when i was in college i spoke with a German graduate student reading Kant in English. She told me that the English version is easier to read. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-do-americans-consider-british-history-part-of-theirs/965430.md?page=5)