English people

This article is about the English as an ethnic group and nation. For information on the population of England, see Demography of England.

For other uses, see English (disambiguation).

Template:English populations The English (from Old English Ænglisc) are a nation and ethnic group native to England and who speak English. The largest single population of English people reside in England — the largest constituent country of the United Kingdom, both physically and demographically.

Definitions

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that the earliest recorded sense of the word 'English' is "Of or belonging to the group of Teutonic peoples collectively known as the Angelcynn [...] comprising the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who settled in Britain during the 5th c.". However, the OED continues that

With the incorporation of the Celtic and Scandinavian elements of the population into the ‘English’ people, the adj. came in the 11th c. to be applied to all natives of ‘England’, whatever their ancestry. But for a generation or two after the Norman Conquest, the descendants of the invaders, though born in England, continued to be regarded as ‘French’, so that the word English, as applied to persons, was for a time restricted to those whose ancestors were settled in England before the Conquest."

Today, the word can be used to refer to an 'English nation' comprising anyone who considers themselves English and are considered English by most other people (see civic nationalism). The word also can have a more restrictive definition that perceives the English exclusively as a native white people descended from Romano-Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Danes(during their migration to England and the Danelaw) and Normans, who emigrated to England after 1066 (see ethnic nationalism).

The English as an ethnic group

It is unclear how many people in the UK consider themselves ethnically English. In the 2001 UK census, respondents were invited to state their ethnicity, but while there were tick boxes for 'Irish' and for 'Scottish', there were none for 'English' or 'Welsh', who were subsumed into the general heading 'White British'. Following complaints about this, the 2011 census will "allow respondents to record their English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, Irish or other identity"; "English" will be listed as a subcategory of "White".

Some people see important ethnic differences between those with long-standing English ancestry and those whose ancestors arrived in England more recently: for example in Sarah Kane's play Blasted the character Ian boasts "I'm not an import", contrasting himself with the children of immigrants: "they have their kids, call them English, they're not English, born in England don't make you English".

A complication is England's dominant position within the United Kingdom, which has resulted in the terms 'English' and 'British' often being used interchangeably (much as 'Russian' was once popularly but incorrectly used to describe all people living in the Soviet Union). Similarly, studies of people with English ancestry have shown that they tend not to regard themselves as an ethnic group, even when they live in other countries. Patricia Greenhill studied people in Canada with English heritage, and found that they did not think of themselves as "ethnic", but rather as "normal" or "mainstream", an attitude Greenhill attributes to the cultural dominance of the English in Canada. Writer Paul Johnson has suggested that like most dominant groups, the English have only demonstrated interest in their self-definition when they were feeling oppressed.

Despite these complexities, the notion of English ethnic distinctiveness has been highlighted in sensationalized and generally inaccurate reporting of scientific and sociological studies. In 2002, the BBC used the headline "English and Welsh are races apart" to report a genetic survey of test subjects from market towns in England and Wales, while in September 2006, The Sunday Times reported that a survey of first names and surnames in the UK had identified Ripley as "the 'most English' place in England with 88.58% of residents having an English ethnic background". In both cases, the conclusions of these studies have been exaggerated and the language of race and ethnicity used only by the journalists.

The English as a nation

The phrase, "the English people", can also be used more inclusively to discuss the English as a "nation" rather than an ethnic group, using the OED's definition of "nation" as a group united by factors that include "language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory", rather than ancestral ties alone.

In an article for The Guardian, novelist Andrea Levy (born in London to Jamaican parents) calls England a separate country "without any doubt" and asserts that she is "English. Born and bred, as the saying goes. (As far as I can remember, it is born and bred and not born-and-bred-with-a-very-long-line-of-white-ancestors-directly-descended-from-Anglo-Saxons.)" Arguing that "England has never been an exclusive club, but rather a hybrid nation", she writes that "Englishness must never be allowed to attach itself to ethnicity. The majority of English people are white, but some are not ... Let England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland be nations that are plural and inclusive."

However, this use of the word "English" is complicated by the fact that most non-white people in England have a greater allegiance to Britain as a whole than to England. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office of National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people described their nationality as "English", the vast majority of non-white people called themselves "British". For example, "78 per cent of Bangladeshis said they were British, while only 5 per cent said they were English, Scottish or Welsh", and the largest percentage of non-whites to identify as English were the people who described their ethnicity as "Mixed" (37%).

Regardless of how it is defined, the concept of an 'English nation' (as opposed to a British one) has become increasingly popular after the devolution in the 1990s of some powers to the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales, Northern Ireland Assembly and the London Mayor and London Assembly. A rise in English self-consciousness resulted, with increased use of the English flag. When given a referendum on devolution in Northern England the electorate overwhelmingly rejected it, but opinion polls show support for a devolved English parliament from about two thirds of the residents of England as well as support from both Welsh and Scottish nationalists. Conversely, the English Democrats gained just 14,506 votes in the 2005 UK general election. While there can be an ethnic component to expressions of English national identity, most political English nationalists do not consider Englishness to be racial. For example, the English Democrats Party states that "We do not claim Englishness to be purely ethnic or purely cultural, but it is a complex mix of the two. We firmly believe Englishness is a state of mind", while the Campaign for an English Parliament says, "The people of England includes everyone who considers this ancient land to be their home and future regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or culture"..

History

Overview

Further information: [[:Settlement of Great Britain and Ireland]]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term English people was not originally used to refer to the earliest inhabitants of England - Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, Celtic Britons, and Roman colonists. Instead, it referred to a heritage that began with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, who settled lands already inhabited by Romano-British tribes. That heritage then comes to include later arrivals, including Scandinavians, Normans, and other groups, as well as those Romano-Britons who still lived in England.

Romano-Britons and Anglo-Saxons

Further information: [[:Anglo-Saxons, Roman Britain, Sub-Roman Britain, Ancient Britons, Romano-Britons]]

The first people to be called 'English' were the Anglo-Saxons, a group of closely related Germanic tribes that migrated to England from southern Denmark and northern Germany in the 5th century AD after the Romans retreated from Britain. The Anglo-Saxons gave their name to England (Angle-land) and to the English people.

However, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in a land that was already populated by people commonly referred to as the 'Romano-British', the descendants of the native Brythonic-speaking Celtic population that lived in the area of Britain under Roman rule during the 1st-5th centuries AD. Furthermore, the multi-ethnic nature of the Roman Empire meant that other peoples were also present in England before the Anglo-Saxons arrived: for example, archaeological discoveries suggest that North Africans may have had a limited presence (popular historians sometimes refer to these people as "black", although this description is debatable since not all North Africans are black).

The exact nature of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and their relationship with the Romano-British is a matter of debate. Traditionally, it was believed that a mass invasion by various Anglo-Saxon tribes largely displaced the indigenous British population in southern and eastern Great Britain (modern day England), except in Cornwall. However, archaeologists and historians have found minimal evidence for this: archaeologist Francis Pryor has stated that he "can't see any evidence for bona fide mass migrations after the Neolithic." Historian Malcolm Todd writes

"It is much more likely that a large proportion of the British population remained in place and was progressively dominated by a Germanic aristocracy, in some cases marrying into it and leaving Celtic names in the, admittedly very dubious, early lists of Anglo-Saxon dynasties. But how we identify the surviving Britons in areas of predominantly Anglo-Saxon settlement, either archaeologically or linguistically, is still one of the deepest problems of early English history."

Geneticists have explored the relationship between Anglo-Saxons and Britons by studying the Y-chromosomes of men in present day English towns. In 2002, a study by Weale et al found a considerable genetic difference between test subjects from market towns in England and Wales, and that the English subjects were, on average closer genetically to the Frisians of the Netherlands than they were to their Welsh neighbours. This conclusion seemed to indicate that the Anglo-Saxons purged England of its previous inhabitants. A 2006 study led by Mark Thomas used computer simulations to find a possible reason for the divergence between these finds and the archaeological record. They concluded that the likeliest explanation was that the Anglo-Saxons operated an apartheid-like system, preventing intermarriage between Britons and Anglo-Saxons and asserting political dominance.

Other geneticists tell a different story. A follow-up study to Weale et al in 2003 by Christian Capelli et al complicated Weale's conclusions, indicating that different parts of England received different levels of intrusion from outsiders: while central and eastern England experienced a high level of intrusion from continental Europe (the study could not distinguish Germans from Danes and Frisians), southern England did not and the population there appears to be largely descended from the indigenous Britons (the scientists acknowledge that this conclusion is "startling"). The 2003 study also noted that the transition between England and Wales is more gradual than the earlier study suggested. Stephen Oppenheimer, basing his arguments on the findings of the 2003 study, has argued that the majority of English people, much like the other populations within the British Isles, have some genetic relationship to the original hunter-gatherers who settled Britain between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the last Ice Age. And Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes has argued from DNA evidence that English genetic heritage is derived mainly from the Iberian Peninsula; according to him, the Anglo-Saxons played a rather insignificant role in English genetic composition.

The Danish Vikings and the unification of the English

Further information: [[:Danelaw, Vikings, Treaty of Wedmore, Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum]]

Southern Great Britain in AD 600 after the Saxon settlement, showing England's division into multiple petty kingdoms.

The English population was not politically unified until the ninth century. Before then, it consisted of a number of petty kingdoms which gradually coalesced into a Heptarchy of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. The English nation state began to form when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united against Danish Viking invasions, which began around 800 AD. Over the following century and a half England was for the most part a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after 959.

At first, the Vikings were very much considered a separate people from the English. This separation was enshrined when Alfred the Great signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum to establish the Danelaw, a division of England between English and Danish rule, with the Danes occupying northern and eastern England. However, Alfred's successors subsequently won military victories against the Danes, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England.

The nation of England was formed in 937 by Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh, as Wessex grew from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw. Danish invasions continued into the 11th century, and there were both English and Danish kings in the period following the unification of England (for example, Ethelred the Unready was English but Canute the Great was Danish).

Gradually, the Danes in England came to be seen as 'English'. They had a noticeable impact on the English language: many English words, such as dream are of Old Norse origin, and place names that include thwaite and by are Scandinavian in origin.

Normans and Angevins

Further information: [[:Normans]]

The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England to an end, as the new Norman elite almost universally replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders. After the conquest, the term "English people" normally included all natives of England, whether they were of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Celtic ancestry, to distinguish them from the Norman invaders, who were regarded as "French" even if born in England, for a generation or two after the Conquest. The Norman dynasty ruled England for 87 years until the death of King Stephen in 1154, when the succession passed to Henry II, of the French House of Plantagenet, and England became part of the Angevin Empire until 1399.

The Norman aristocracy used Anglo-Norman as the language of the court, law and administration. It continued to be used by the Plantagenet kings. However, over time the English language became more important even in the court, and the French were gradually assimilated into the English people, until, by the late 1200s, both rulers and subjects regarded themselves as English and spoke the English language.

Despite the assimilation of the French, the distinction between 'English' and 'French' survived in official documents long after it had fallen out of common use, in particular in the legal phrase Presentment of Englishry (a rule by which a hundred had to prove an unidentified murdered body found on their soil to be that of an Englishman, rather than a Norman, if they wanted to avoid a fine).

The English and Britain

Main articles: United Kingdom and English nationalism

Since the 16th century, England has been one part of a wider political entity covering all or part of the British Isles, which is today called the United Kingdom. Wales was annexed by England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, which incorporated Wales into the English state. A new British identity was subsequently developed when James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well and expressed the desire to be known as the monarch of Britain. In 1707, England formed a union with Scotland by the passage of the Acts of Union 1707 in both the Scottish and English parliaments, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801 another Act of Union formed a union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. About two thirds of Irish population, (those who lived in 26 of the 34 counties of Ireland) left the United Kingdom in 1922 to form the Irish Free State, and the remainder became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Throughout the history of the UK, the English have been dominant in terms of population and political weight. As a consequence, the notions of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness' are often very similar. At the same time, after the 1707 Union, the English, along with the other peoples of the British Isles, have been encouraged to think of themselves as British rather than identifying themselves by the smaller constituent nations.

However, the late 1990s saw a resurgence of English national identity, spurred by devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which has given semi-independence to those countries. As England lacks its own devolved parliament, its laws are created only in the UK parliament, giving rise to the "West Lothian question", a hypothetical situation in which a law affecting only England could be voted for or against by a Scottish MP. Consequently, groups such as the Campaign for an English Parliament are calling for the creation of a devolved English Parliament, claiming that there is now a discriminative democratic deficit against the English. This resurgence of English nationalism sometimes has an ethnic dimension; for example, the England First Party advocates "Reformation of the ethnic infrastructure of the English parliament" to create "an individual parliament with its own indigenous race of MPs."

Later immigrants

See also: Immigration to the United Kingdom (until 1922), Immigration to the United Kingdom (1922-present day), Demographics of England.

Although England has not been successfully conquered since the Norman conquest, English ethnic identity remains complex in some respects because England has been the destination of several mass emigrations since the seventeenth century. While some members of these groups maintain a separate ethnic identity, others have assimilated and intermarried with the English. Since Oliver Cromwell's resettlement of the Jews in 1656, there have been waves of Jewish immigration from persecution in Russia in the nineteenth century and from Germany in the twentieth. After the French king Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau, an estimated 50,000 Protestant Huguenots fled to England. Due to sustained and sometimes mass emigration from Ireland, current estimates indicate that around 6 million people in the UK have at least one grandparent born in the Republic of Ireland.

There has been a black presence in England since at least the 16th century due to the slave trade and an Indian presence since the mid 19th century because of the British Raj. Black and Asian proportions have grown in England as immigration from the British Empire and the subsequent Commonwealth of Nations was encouraged due to labour shortages during post-war rebuilding. While one result of this immigration has been racial hatred, there has also been considerable intermarriage; the 2001 census recorded that 1.31% of England's population call themselves "Mixed", and The Sunday Times reported in 2007 that mixed race people are likely to be the largest ethnic minority in the UK by 2020.

Geographic distribution

Further information: English American, English-Canadian, Anglo-African, and English Australian

From the earliest times English people have left England to settle in other parts of the British Isles, but it is not possible to identify their numbers, as British censuses have historically not invited respondents to identify themselves as English. However, the census does record place of birth, revealing that 8.08% of Scotland's population, 3.66% of the population of Northern Ireland and 20% of the Welsh population were born in England. Similarly, the census of the Republic of Ireland does not collect information on ethnicity, but it does record that there are over 200,000 people living in Ireland who were born in England and Wales.[1]

Map showing the population density of United States citizens who claim some English ancestry in the census. Dark red and brown colours indicate a higher density: highest in the northeast as well as Utah and surrounding areas. (see also Maps of American ancestries).

English emigrant and descent communities are found across the world, and in some places, settled in significant numbers. Countries with significant numbers of people of English ancestry or ethnic origin include Australia, the United States (particularly Utah, New England, New York, California, Virginia and the Southern States), Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

Since the 1980s there have been increasingly large numbers of English people, estimated at over 3 million, permanently or semi-permanently living in Spain and France, drawn there by the climate and cheaper house prices.

Culture

Contribution to humanity

Further information: List of English people

In the opinion of English philologist J. R. R. Tolkien, the early medieval Anglo-Saxon mission to the Frankish Empire was "among our chief contributions to Europe, considering all our history".

The English have played a significant role in the development of the arts and sciences. Prominent individuals have included the scientists and inventors Isaac Newton, Francis Crick, Abraham Darby, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Joseph Swan and Frank Whittle; the poet and playwright William Shakespeare, the novelists Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and George Orwell , the composers Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten, and the explorer James Cook. English philosophers include Francis Bacon, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell.

English law has also formed the basis for common law legal systems throughout the world.

The rules for many modern sports including football, rugby (union and league), cricket and tennis were first formulated in England.

Language

Further information: [[:English language, English English and British English]]

Countries where English has official or de facto official language status.

English people traditionally speak the English language, a member of the West Germanic language family. The modern English language evolved from Old English, with lexical influence from Norman-French, Latin, and Old Norse. Cornish, a Celtic language originating in Cornwall, is currently spoken by about 3,500 people. Historically, another Brythonic Celtic language, Cumbric, was spoken in Cumbria in North West England, but it died out in the 11th century although traces of it can still be found in the Cumbrian dialect. Because of the 19th century geopolitical dominance of the British Empire and the post-World War II hegemony of the United States, English has become the international language of business, science, communications, aviation, and diplomacy. English is the native language of roughly 350 million people worldwide, with another 1.5 billion people who speak it as a second language.

Religion

Further information: [[:Religion in the United Kingdom, Medieval Religion in England, Church of England, Anglicanism and English Reformation]]

Ever since the break with the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, the English have predominantly been members of the Church of England, a branch of the Anglican Communion, a form of Christianity with elements of Protestantism and Catholicism. The Book of Common Prayer is the foundational prayer book of the Church of England and replaced the various Latin rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

Today, most English people practising organized religion are affiliated to the Church of England or other Christian denominations such as Roman Catholicism and Methodism (itself originally a movement within the Anglican Church). In the 2001 Census, a little over 37 million people in England and Wales professed themselves to be Christian. Jewish immigration since the seventeenth century means that there is an integrated Jewish English population, mainly in urban areas. 252,000 Jews were recorded in England & Wales in the 2001 Census; however this represents a decline of about 50% over the previous 50 years, caused by emigration and intermarriage. Immigration to Britain from India and Pakistan since the 1950s means that a large number of people living in England practise Islam (818,000), Hinduism (467,000), or Sikhism (301,000); however, the census shows that adherents to these religions are more likely to regard themselves as British than English. The 2001 census also revealed that about seven million people, or 15% of English people, claim no religion.

Sports

There are many sports codified by the English, which then spread worldwide due to trading and the British Empire, including badminton, cricket, croquet, football, field hockey, lawn tennis, rugby league, rugby union, table tennis and thoroughbred horse racing.

England, like the other countries of the United Kingdom, competes as a separate nation in some international sporting events. The English football, cricket and rugby union teams have contributed to an increasing sense of English identity. The England Cricket team actually represents England and Wales.

Supporters are more likely to carry the Cross of Saint George flag whereas twenty years ago the British Union Flag would have been the more prominent. In an article in the Daily Mirror on 17 September 2005, Billy Bragg said "Watching the crowd in Trafalgar Square celebrating The Ashes win, I couldn't help but be amazed at how quickly the flag of St George has replaced the Union Flag in the affections of England fans. A generation ago, England games looked a lot like Last Night of the Proms, with the red, white and blue firmly to the fore. Now, it seems, the English have begun to remember who they are.".

Symbols

Saint George's Cross, the English flag.

The English flag is a red cross on a white background, commonly called the Cross of Saint George. It was adopted after the Crusades. Saint George, later famed as a dragon-slayer, is also the patron saint of England. The three golden lions on a red background was the banner of the kings of England derived from their status as Duke of Normandy and is now used to represent the English national football team and the English national cricket team, though in blue rather than gold. The English oak and the Tudor rose are also English symbols, the latter of which is (although more modernised) used by the England national rugby union team.

England has no official anthem; however, the United Kingdom's "God Save the Queen" is currently used. Other songs are sometimes used, including "Land of Hope and Glory" (used as England's anthem in the Commonwealth Games), "Jerusalem", "Rule Britannia", and "I Vow to Thee, My Country". Moves by certain groups are encouraging adoption of an official English anthem following similar occurrences in Scotland and Wales.

See also

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Bibliography

• Kate Fox (2004). Watching the English. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN-10 0340818867.
• Krishan Kumar (2003). The Making of English National Identity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521777364.
• Jeremy Paxman (1999). The English. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN-10 0140267239.

External links

• The Steadfast Trust The Steadfast Trust is the first and only registered charity that undertakes work specifically on behalf of the Ethnic English community.
• Steadfast Online Steadfast - a journal for the English community.
• BBC Nations Articles on England and the English
• The British Isles Information on England
• Mercator's Atlas Map of England ("Anglia") circa 1564.
• Viking blood still flowing; BBC; 3 December 2001.
• UK 2001 Census showing 49,138,831 people from all ethnic groups living in England.
• Tory MP leads English protest over census; The Telegraph; 23 April 2001.
• On St. George's Day, What's Become Of England?; CNSNews.com; 23 April 2001.
• Watching the English — an anthropologist's look at the hidden rules of English behaviour.
• The True-Born Englishman, by Daniel Defoe.
• The Effect of 1066 on the English Language Geoff Boxell
• BBC "English and Welsh are races apart"
• Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration
• Origins of Britons - Brian Sykes