1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Anglo-Israelite Theory

ANGLO-ISRAELITE THEORY, the contention that the British people in the United Kingdom, its colonies, and the United States, are the racial descendants of the “ten tribes” forming the kingdom of Israel, large numbers of whom were deported by Sargon king of Assyria on the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C. The theory (which is fully set forth in a book called Philo-Israel) rests on premises which are deemed by scholars—both theological and anthropological—to be utterly unsound.