New World British descendants: Regional differences

[Alenka]

I've been watching some Australian shows, and I think I noticed a bit of a racial/phenotype difference between Aussie whites of British descent and USA whites of British descent. I think the Aussie ones looked stereotypically British more often, while quite some of the USA ones had a somewhat more universal Euro look.

Why is that? Did their ancestors migrate from different regions of the UK?

[Žołnir]

I've been watching some Australian shows, and I think I noticed a bit of a racial/phenotype difference between Aussie whites of British descent and USA whites of British descent. I think the Aussie ones looked stereotypically British more often, while quite some of the USA ones had a somewhat more universal Euro look.

Why is that? Did their ancestors migrate from different regions of the UK?

I agree and i must say Australia has bigger share of Ango-Irish folk while America is full of ppl of German, French, etc. stock and other non British elements. America has been like that from very early times. This is my opinion.

[Smaug]

I don't know about the Anglosphere, but Brazilians of British descent usually belong to the Atlantid/North-Atlantid proper, myself included.

[Scholarios]

Hmm. America just has and had more diversity from the get-go. Germans, French, Spanish, Italians, etc. And that doesn't even count Native-ancestry that could have given them a different look. Original American British colonists came from Southern England and in addition from Scottish and "Scotch-Irish" depending upon the region. Though they were supplemented by lots of others.

[Graham]

Australia was a tiny population, when the American Revolution happened. Australia & New Zealand have many newer migrants from the British Isles.

Guessing it depends on the American States or Canadian Provinces.

[Ouistreham]

The phenotypal gap between average Britons and U.S. citizens of British descent is indeed quite big.

This is quite understandable if you remember that emigration in the 17-18th centuries was completely different of what it was to become after 1850. Back then, emigration was quite an investment that the poor couldn't afford. Therefore, most emigrants to the New World were typically sons of well-to-do farmer or craftsmen families in search of availaible farmland or businesses. They were a lot more literate than common people, they had saved enough money to pay the fare and their installment overseas, they were rather upper middle class. Which certainly helped to select a higher than average Subnordid input.

In addition to this social selection there was also a regional selection. The West Country and East Anglia (soon followed by Scotland) were over-represented, which probably contributed to select more robust types (meanwhile, during the early industrial revolution, working people of the North and the Midlands were flocking to Lancashire and Birmingham in search of jobs). So, the initial U.S. population was predominantly made of samples from peripheral Britain.

Furthermore, even before German input grew momentum after 1815, British colonists were mixed with a sizeable share of Dutch and French Calvinists, which tended to dilute typical English traits.

[StonyArabia]

Yes White Americans and White Canadians don't look the same either.

[Gospodine]

The 2nd biggest ethnic group in pre-Independance America were the Germans. The Americas were a free-for-all.

Everyone took a slice, even the Russians (who had trading posts in northern California aside from Alaska). Throw the Dutch, French, and Spaniards into the mix, slave and Amerindian admixture, followed by massive pre-WWI Italian/Polish/Russian/Jewish emigration and it's no wonder Americans don't look have a typical British Isles look anymore.

Australia remained exclusively Anglo with a small Celtic minority pretty much up until the 1940's.

Negligible amounts of immigrants from other parts of the world had arrived since the early 1800's including Chinese, Italians, Germans, Yugoslavs and hell, even Afghans (see here) but they were always novelty demographics who rarely settled in the New World permanently.

The White Australia Policy furthered this ethnocentric trend well into the 1960's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

Australia's also still a member of the Commonwealth. America is obviously not.

More recent British immigration schemes to Australia were encouraged through social programs (see here) and certain incentives even up until the 1960's and 70's when Australia was facing a labour shortage (as it always has).

British migrants were invited to settle on Australian farms or to work on large civil engineering projects as part of these programs.

And of course admixture with the indigenous population was basically non-existent in Australia due to intense colonial efforts aimed at the eradication of Aboriginals (which succeeded in Tasmania), the far smaller and more concentrated colonial population as well as the annexation of all coastal territory which drove most of them out of the soon-to-be urban areas until recent times.

[dapork]

Yeah, Americans are just more mixed. Aussies are purer Brits.

[Methmatician]

Not sure if it makes a difference but most of the original European settlers in Australia came from Ireland and the Southern parts of England (I think mostly Cornwall).