See query.
Is it a quotation or reference to some event or speech?
What the heck does it mean? At one end, I’m guessing:
or the other:
It’s also weird that I, for one, normally pretty quick on the uptake on the odd polemic, have still not come to a conclusion.
I think it’s supposed to offer a contrast with Great Britain. Great Britain is a world power that has interests and takes action all over the globe. Little England is concerned with just what is going on in England (and maybe grudgingly Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland).
Yup. The phrase started out in the late nineteenth century as “little Englander”, an epithet applied to those whose values and interests were perceived to be narrow, inward-looking, isolationist and who were unconcerned with Britain’s place in the world or its status as a global citizen, and who dismissed the signficance of imperial and foreign affairs. In modern times it has been revived as an epithet for those who oppose the UK’s involvement with the EU. Both in its original and its modern senses it’s pejorative.
Thanks to both.
It is then, an exact “reversal” of “Great Britain?” :smack:
Think ‘American exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny’
Another comparator would be American isolationism (e.g., wanting to disengage from European affairs after WW1). There was a similar foreign policy of “splendid isolation” in the late nineteenth century in the UK, which no doubt some Brexiteers imagine is still possible for the UK, but that has hardly been the case since very shortly after the term came into popular use in the 1890s. “Little Englander” is now the pejorative response to such an idea, though originally it came from anti-imperialists in the late nineteenth century.
See also the related terms Middle England and Deep England.
I think the American equivalent of “Little England” would be “flyover country”.
Huh? Those are very similar terms, not at all like the two contrasting terms in the OP.
On re-reading this I see it could be misinterpreted. To b clear, it was merely a comment confirming the linguistic observation of Little Nemo: Great–>Little/Britain–>England.
Sort of like Great Everyone.
British (and English) citizen and resident here: I find this a perceived wording-contrast which has long been irresistible to commentators, pundits, and word-mongers in general – in terms as expressed by Little Nemo above. It annoys me a little: in my perception, “Great Britain” is a geographical expression, meant to refer to the largest island in the British Isles archipelago: i.e. that which contains on one island, the mainlands of England, Wales, and Scotland – for me, nothing to do with whether our country is a big and important power among nations, or an obscure backwater. However – “wordsmiths and pundits will be wordsmiths and pundits”…
This whole thing with our island group, and England and her “Celtic fringe”, seems irremediably bound up with confusion and loose / creative language use. A late (British, and English) uncle of mine habitually described himself as a “Little Englander” – by which he meant that he identified with, and cared about: the British Isles – England, and Wales and Scotland and Ireland (both North and South) – to which his first loyalty was; and he felt in comparison little empathy with, or concern about, the rest of the world.
You might get a better idea if you watch this episode of “Little Britain” a BBC d̶̷o̶̷c̶̷u̶̷m̶̷e̶̷n̶̷t̶̷a̶̷r̶̷y̶̷ comedy.
If by “pejorative term used by big-city “Progessives” for people who don’t agree with them” then yes; otherwise, the other political currents traveling with populism and isolationism (and regional concentrations thereof) differ from country to country; in whatever regions “flyover” country may be be presumed to exist, US citizens’ self-image of the outsized national (US) character being worth spreading around the globe, and the global respect and responsibility of the US, is well entrenched.
From an outsiders point of view, I think “Red Neck” might be a nearer equivalent.
Again, regarding isolationism, it still doesn’t work. Pejorative sense used by “Progressives,” yeah, why not.
Huh? Are you meaning to say that the Great comes from being the largest island of the group Ireland+GB, so that the island of Ireland would be ‘Small Britain’?
Because if so, you would be right, except that the complementary ‘Small Britain’ is Brittany instead of Ireland (Bretagne vs Grande-Bretagne).
I’m an American, but I have some English friends. I once went to Brighton with one (a Londoner), and as we passed some neatly painted cottages with flowers in front, she exclaimed delightedly, “It’s so Little England!” I took her to mean something like what Americans might mean when we say “all-American”–quaint, unsophisticated and unpretentious, solid citizens. I didn’t ask her to explain what she meant as it seemed clear to me, but I may have misunderstood. My friend is by no means inward-looking or narrow minded, she’s pretty cosmopolitan and definitely pro-EU. I feel sure she didn’t mean it in the sense of “redneck” as bob++ suggests, or as any kind of pejorative. However, maybe she herself was using the term incorrectly.
“Britain” is the place inhabited by Britons, and at various times the name (or its equivalent in other languages) has been applied to various places. Brittany, obviously. The Roman province of Britannia, which was (very roughly) England and Wales. “Little Britain” is (the English translation of) the modern Irish term for Wales.
“Great Britain”, as noted, is simply the whole island. The term doesn’t imply military, political, economic or cultural greatness. (Though occasionally it gets used rhetorically in a way intended to invoke that connotation.)