British Americans
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   Notable British Americans: Benjamin Franklin · Douglas MacArthur · James Monroe Abraham Lincoln · Thomas Paine · James Dean · George Washington · Butch Cassidy · John Adams · Thomas Jefferson   | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Throughout the Entire United States | |
| Languages | |
| American English | |
| Religion | |
| Christian Mainly Protestant, and to a lesser extent Catholic | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Britons · English Americans · Scottish Americans · Scots-Irish Americans · Welsh Americans |
British Americans are Americans whose ancestry stems, either wholly or in part, from the United Kingdom. The term is seldom used by people to refer to themselves (less than 1% chose it in the 2000 census), and is used primarily as a demographic or historical research tool. Terms such as White American or European American or simply American are more commonly used.
British Americans have English, Scottish, Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots) and/or Welsh family heritages, or came from Canada where their ancestors were of British descent. Catholic Irish-Americans are not usually categorized as having British ancestry; they do not usually consider themselves as being British Americans. Immigrants from Canada of British ancestry tend to call themselves Canadian Americans. Similarly, most British Americans tend to differentiate to being specifically English, Scottish, Welsh or ethnic minorities (eg. Pakistani Scottish) and do not identify with the UK as a whole, therefore tending not to refer to themselves as British American (see: English American, Scottish American, Welsh American, or Scots-Irish American) and settlers of British heritage from other former British territories like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa also consider themselves by their nationalities, Australian Americans, New Zealand Americans, and South African-Americans. Many recent immigrants to the US from the UK, such as Indians (some 17,000 people), Chinese (some 9,000 people), Mixed Race (some 14,000 people) or Black Caribbeans and or Africans (some 35,000 people), who are not of indigenous British ethnicity may either identify with Indian American, Chinese American, Multiracial, African American or of course British American. This disparity of identification could be considered part of the overall trend in the United Kingdom whereby the term "British" is not tied to any specific ethnic group(s) but the population as a whole. Subsequently, British people who migrate to the United States generally identify with their specific ethnic group rather than the non-ethnic demonym of "British".
British American or American?
Many British Americans have ancestry in America that dates back to colonial times in the 17th and 18th centuries. Those who went to New England are known as Yankees. With their roots being in America for such a long period, many British Americans and a significant number of Irish Americans have begun to think of themselves ancestrally simply as "Americans." This is especially true in the South.
Many other Americans are uncertain about the relative proportions in their own ancestry or have forgotten the origins of their distant ancestors, or prefer to identify with the ethnicity of ancestors who arrived more recently, which provide more distinctive folkways than the general American culture. Great Britain also provided millions of immigrants to America after 1776. They typically assimilated quite rapidly.
Number of British Americans
2000 U.S Census
The Twenty-Second United States Census, 2000, 36.4 million Americans reported British ancestry.[1]
Demographic distribution
British Ancestry 1980,1990,2000 of total U.S Population |
Most of the population who stated their ancestry as "American" are said to be of old colonial British stock.
- American 20,625,093 (7.3%)
1990 U.S Census
The Twenty-first United States Census, 1990.[2]
1980 U.S Census
The Twentieth United States Census, 1980, 61.3 million (61,311,449) Americans reported British ancestry.
The total U.S population in 1980 was 226,545,805 and was the first census-form that asked peoples ancestry.[3]
These include: In 1980, the total census reported that British ancestry was (32.56%) of the total U.S population.
Triple ancestry response:English-Irish-Scotch: 897,316 There are no concrete figures for the Scots-Irish and some group responses were undercounted, but in 1980, 29,828,349 people claimed Irish and another ethnic ancestry... These figures make British Americans the largest "ethnic" groups in the U.S. and would have natuarally increased in population with more people of British origin than in 1980. When counted collectively (the Census Bureau does give the choice to count them collectively as one ancestry, and also count them in a separate ethnic group, that is English, Scottish, Welsh or Scots-Irish). In In 2000, Germans and Irish are the largest self-reported ethnic groups in the nation.
British ancestry maps
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File:Scottish1346.gif | 
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| English American, Scottish American, Scots-Irish American, Welsh American | ||||
| Dark red and brown colours indicate a higher density.(see also Maps of American ancestries). | ||||
See also
- European American
- Hyphenated American
- List of English Americans
- List of Scots-Irish Americans
- List of Scottish Americans
- List of Welsh Americans
- Anglo-Celtic Australian
References
- ^ United States 2000 Census, Ancestry: 2000
- ^ United States 1990 Census
- ^ United States 1980 Census
Scholarly sources
- Oscar Handlin, Ann Orlov and Stephan Thernstrom eds. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980) the standard reference source for all ethnic groups.
- Rowland Tappan Berthoff. British Immigrants in Industrial America, 1790-1950 (1953).
- David Hackett Fischer. Albion's Seed, Four British Folkways In America (1989).