Americans like to celebrate their Irish and Scottish roots, but not their English ones -- Northumbrian historian asks why

"My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas, and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way," joked the US president when he visited Ireland en route to the UK last month. Like John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan before him, Obama was just another US president embracing his Celtic heritage. And the practice isn't just for those looking for a vote-winner: Yankees have always loved to talk up their Irish blood – and Scottish, too. But Americans celebrating their Englishness? That's not quite so common.

Now a group of academics want to find out why. Donald MacRaild, professor of history at Northumbria University in Newcastle, and his colleagues Tanja Bueltmann and David Gleeson, reckon English cultural communities did exist in North America, but have been ignored by traditional historians.

The academics believe the commonly accepted truth – that the English assimilated into Anglo-American culture without any need to shout about their separate ethnicity – just isn't true. And they're now embarking on a three-year project to prove their case. The study – called Locating the Hidden Diaspora: The English in North America in Transatlantic Perspective – focuses on the years between 1760 and 1950 to find out where history lost sight of Englishness in America.

"The English," says MacRaild, "have had very little exposure to the historian's gaze, and we want to rectify that. Back in the 1730s, the English in North America formed an array of ethnic clubs and societies, like the St George's Society, in the same way that their Irish and Scottish peers had St Patrick's societies, Caledonian societies and St Andrew's societies. They provided charity – from meal tickets to Christmas gifts – to poorer English immigrants, and celebrated English events. But since then, no one has shown much interest in the English cultural legacy. Whilst the Irish, Scots, Germans, and many other European ethnic groups have been subjected to dozens, if not hundreds, of studies, it hasn't been so for the English."...