British people#Classification

{{further|Britain (place name)}}

{{See also|Glossary of names for the British}}

The earliest known reference to the inhabitants of Great Britain may have come from 4th century BC records of the voyage of Pytheas, a Greek geographer who made a voyage of exploration around the British Isles. Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them. Pytheas called the islands collectively {{lang|grc|αἱ Βρεττανίαι}} (hai Brettaniai), which has been translated as the Brittanic Isles, and the peoples of what are today England, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man of Prettanike were called the {{lang|grc|Πρεττανοί}} (Prettanoi), Priteni, Pritani or Pretani.

The group included Ireland, which was referred to as Ierne (Insula sacra "sacred island" as the Greeks interpreted it) "inhabited by the different race of Hiberni" (gens hibernorum), and Britain as insula Albionum, "island of the Albions".{{sfn|Snyder|2003}}{{cite book |author=Donnchadh Ó Corráin |editor-last=Foster |editor-first=R. F. |title=The Oxford History of Ireland |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1 November 2001 |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordhistoryofi00rffo |isbn=0-19-280202-X}} The term Pritani may have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who possibly used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands.

Greek and Roman writers, in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the Priteni,{{Harvnb|Snyder|2003|pp=12, 68}} the origin of the Latin word Britanni. It has been suggested that this name derives from a Gaulish description translated as "people of the forms", referring to the custom of tattooing or painting their bodies with blue woad made from Isatis tinctoria.{{Harvnb|Cunliffe|2002|p=95}} Parthenius, an Ancient Greek grammarian, and the Etymologicum Genuinum, a 9th-century lexical encyclopaedia, mention a mythical character Bretannus (the Latinised form of the {{langx|grc|Βρεττανός}}, Brettanós) as the father of Celtine, mother of Celtus, the eponymous ancestor of the Celts.{{citation |title=Patrhenius, Love Stories 2; XXX. The Story of Celtine |url=http://www.theoi.com/Text/Parthenius2.html#30 |publisher=theoi.com |access-date=26 May 2009 |archive-date=25 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200925070512/https://www.theoi.com/Text/Parthenius2.html#30 |url-status=live}}

By 50 BC, Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles.{{Harvnb|O'Rahilly| 1946}} However, with the Roman conquest of Britain, the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia (modern day Scotland north of the rivers Forth and Clyde), although the people of Caledonia and the north were also the selfsame Britons during the Roman period, the Gaels not arriving until four centuries later.4.20 provides a translation describing Caesar's first invasion, using terms which from IV.XX appear in Latin as arriving tamen in Britanniam, the inhabitants being Britannos, and on p.30 principes Britanniae is translated as "chiefs of Britain".{{Harvnb|Cunliffe|2002|pp=94–95}} Following the end of Roman rule in Britain, the island of Great Britain was left open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors such as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons and Jutes from Continental Europe, who gained control in areas around the south east, and to Middle Irish-speaking people migrating from the north of Ireland to the north of Great Britain, founding Gaelic kingdoms such as Dál Riata and Alba, which would eventually subsume the native Brittonic and Pictish kingdoms and become Scotland.{{cite web |title=Anglo-Saxons |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/ |publisher=BBC News |access-date=5 September 2009 |archive-date=15 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190515145846/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/ |url-status=live}}

In this sub-Roman Britain, as Anglo-Saxon culture spread across southern and eastern Britain and Gaelic through much of the north, the demonym "Briton" became restricted to the Brittonic-speaking inhabitants of what would later be called Wales, Cornwall, North West England (Cumbria), and a southern part of ScotlandFoster, Sally M. (2014). Picts, Scots and Gaels — Early Historic Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn. {{ISBN|9781780271910}}. (Strathclyde).{{cite episode |title=A New Civilization |series=How the Celts Saved Britain |credits=Dan Snow (presenter) |minutes=36—40 |network=BBC Four |airdate=7 June 2009 |number=1}} In addition, the term was also applied to Brittany in what is today France and Britonia in north west Spain, both regions having been colonised in the 5th century by Britons fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasions. However, the term "Britannia" persisted as the Latin name for the island. The Historia Brittonum claimed legendary origins as a prestigious genealogy for Brittonic kings, followed by the Historia Regum Britanniae, which popularised this pseudo-history to support the claims of the Kings of England.

During the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Tudor period, the term "British" was used to refer to the Welsh people and Cornish people. At that time, it was "the long held belief that these were the remaining descendants of the Britons and that they spoke 'the British tongue{{'"}}.{{Harvnb|Bradshaw|Roberts|2003|p=1}}. This notion was supported by texts such as the Historia Regum Britanniae, a pseudohistorical account of ancient British history, written in the mid-12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Historia Regum Britanniae chronicled the lives of legendary kings of the Britons in a narrative spanning 2000 years, beginning with the Trojans founding the ancient British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 7th century forced the Britons to the west, i.e. Wales and Cornwall, and north, i.e. Cumbria, Strathclyde and northern Scotland. This legendary Celtic history of Great Britain is known as the Matter of Britain. The Matter of Britain, a national myth, was retold or reinterpreted in works by Gerald of Wales, a Cambro-Norman chronicler who, in the 12th and 13th centuries, used the term "British" to refer to the people later known as the Welsh.{{citation |url=http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/chap_page.jsp?t_id=Cambrensis_Desc&c_id=8 |title=Book 1, Ch. 6: The pleasantness and fertility of Wales |publisher=visionofbritain.org.uk |author=Great Britain Historical GIS |access-date=13 May 2009 |author-link=Great Britain Historical GIS |archive-date=20 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201020025032/https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/chap_page.jsp?t_id=Cambrensis_Desc&c_id=8 |url-status=live}}

{{further|Genetic history of the British Isles|historical immigration to Great Britain}}

The indigenous people of the British Isles have a combination of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Norman ancestry.{{cite web |title=Cornish Stannary Parliament Archives – Documents – UNITED NATIONS RECOGNISES CORNISH IDENTITY |url=http://cornishstannaryparliament.co.uk//resources//index.php?topic=General |access-date=15 May 2009 |work=Cornish Stannary Parliament website |publisher=Cornish Stannary Parliament |date=6 July 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090226202602/http://cornishstannaryparliament.co.uk/resources/index.php?topic=General |archive-date=26 February 2009 |url-status=dead}}{{cite web |title=Mebyon Kernow – The Party for Cornwall – BETA |url=http://www.mebyonkernow.org/?q=policies_historic_celtic_nation |access-date=15 May 2009 |work=Mebyon Kernow website |publisher=Mebyon Kernow |year=2007 |archive-date=28 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200928063542/https://www.mebyonkernow.org/?q=policies_historic_celtic_nation |url-status=live}}{{cite web |title=About RTÉ- RTÉ Awards |url=http://www.rte.ie/about/awards/celtic09%20nominees.html |access-date=15 May 2009 |publisher=RTÉ |date=13 January 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220215252/http://www.rte.ie/about/awards/celtic09%20nominees.html |archive-date=20 February 2009}}{{cite web |title=Welsh Assembly Government – Celtic countries connect with contemporary Cymru |url=http://wales.gov.uk/news/topic/officefirstminister/2008/2372569/;jsessionid=2HxQKNPNwtyLzpl2VLlsysLyGVVhyMybcd94RlxXDyZHG6VpJbjP!1298896870?lang=en |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121223235236/http://wales.gov.uk/news/topic/officefirstminister/2008/2372569/;jsessionid=2HxQKNPNwtyLzpl2VLlsysLyGVVhyMybcd94RlxXDyZHG6VpJbjP!1298896870?lang=en |url-status=dead |archive-date=23 December 2012 |access-date=15 May 2009 |work=Welsh Assembly Government website |publisher=Welsh Assembly Government |date=13 May 2008}}{{citation |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html |title=A United Kingdom? Maybe |work=The New York Times |last=Wade |first=Nicholas |date=6 March 2007 |access-date=16 May 2009 |archive-date=23 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230523092040/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html |url-status=live}}{{citation |url=http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/10/mythsofbritishancestry/ |publisher=prospect-magazine.co.uk |title=Myths of British Ancestry |first=Stephen |last=Oppenheimer |access-date=16 May 2009 |date=October 2006 |archive-date=15 October 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111015212548/http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/10/mythsofbritishancestry/ |url-status=dead}} Between the 8th and 11th centuries, "three major cultural divisions" emerged in Great Britain: the English, the Scots and the Welsh. The earlier Brittonic Celtic polities in what are today England and Scotland were absorbed into Anglo-Saxon England and Gaelic Scotland by the early 11th century.{{Harvnb|Smyth|1998|pp=24–25}} The English had been unified under a single nation state in 937 by King Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh.{{citation |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/athelstan.shtml |title=Athelstan (c.895 – 939) |publisher=BBC |access-date=18 May 2009 |archive-date=14 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114013132/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/athelstan.shtml |url-status=live}}

Before then, the English (known then in Old English as the Anglecynn) were under the governance of independent Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms, which gradually coalesced into a Heptarchy of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. Scottish TV presenter and conspiracy theorist Neil Oliver said that the Battle of Brunanburh would "define the shape of Britain into the modern era"; it was a "showdown for two very different ethnic identities – a Norse Celtic alliance versus Anglo Saxon. It aimed to settle once and for all whether Britain would be controlled by a single imperial power or remain several separate independent kingdoms, a split in perceptions which is still very much with us today".{{cite episode |title=The Last of the Free |series=A History of Scotland |series-link=A History of Scotland |credits=Neil Oliver (presenter) |network=BBC One |airdate=9 November 2008 |number=1}} However, historian Simon Schama suggested that it was Edward I of England who solely was "responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood" in the 13th century.{{cite episode |title=Nations |series=A History of Britain |series-link=A History of Britain (TV series) |credits=Simon Schama (presenter) |network=BBC One |airdate=21 October 2000 |number=4 |minutes=3}} Schama hypothesised that Scottish national identity, "a complex amalgam" of Gaelic, Brittonic, Pictish, Norsemen and Anglo-Norman origins, was not finally forged until the Wars of Scottish Independence against the Kingdom of England in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.{{Harvnb|Smyth|1998|p=xii}}{{cite episode |title=Hammers of the Scots |series=A History of Scotland |series-link=A History of Scotland |credits=Neil Oliver (presenter) |network=BBC One |airdate=16 November 2008 |number=2}}

File:Arth tapestry2.jpg, a legendary ancient British ruler who had a leading role in the Matter of Britain, a national myth used as propaganda for the ancestral origins of the British Royal Family and their British subjects]]

Though Wales was conquered by England, and its legal system replaced by that of the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, the Welsh endured as a nation distinct from the English; and to some degree the Cornish people, although conquered into England by the 11th century, also retained a distinct Brittonic identity and language.{{Harvnb|Bradshaw|Roberts|2003|p=11}}. Later, with both an English Reformation and a Scottish Reformation, Edward VI of England, under the counsel of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, advocated a union with the Kingdom of Scotland, joining England, Wales and Scotland in a united Protestant Great Britain.{{Harvnb|Ryrie|2006|p=82}}. The Duke of Somerset supported the unification of the English, Welsh and Scots under the "indifferent old name of Britons" on the basis that their monarchies "both derived from a Pre-Roman British monarchy".

Following the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603, the throne of England was inherited by James VI, King of Scots, so that the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united in a personal union under James VI of Scotland and I of England, an event referred to as the Union of the Crowns.{{Harvnb|Ross|2002|p=56|quote=1603: James VI becomes James VI and I in the Union of the Crowns, and leaves Edinburgh for London}} King James advocated full political union between England and Scotland,{{Harvnb|Robbins|1998|p=53}}. and on 20 October 1604 proclaimed his assumption of the style "King of Great Britain", though this title was rejected by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland{{Harvnb|Croft|2003|p=67}}{{Harvnb|Willson|1963|pp=249–252}}. and thus had no basis in either English law or Scots law.

{{main|Treaty of Union|Britishness}}

{{See also|Acts of Union 1707|History of the formation of the United Kingdom}}

{{further|Napoleonic Wars|Royal Navy|British Empire}}

File:Union flag 1606 (Kings Colors).svg representing the personal union between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland was specified in a royal decree. The St George's Cross and St Andrew's saltire were "joined together ... to be published to our Subjects."{{citation |url=http://www.flaginstitute.org/index.php?location=7 |publisher=Flag Institute |access-date=14 May 2009 |title=British Flags |archive-date=14 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121114033042/http://www.flaginstitute.org/index.php?location=7 |url-status=live}}]]

Despite centuries of military and religious conflict, the Kingdoms of England and Scotland had been "drawing increasingly together" since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and the Union of the Crowns in 1603.{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=12}}. A broadly shared language, island, monarch, religion and Bible (the Authorized King James Version) further contributed to a growing cultural alliance between the two sovereign realms and their peoples.{{citation |url=http://www.parliament.uk/actofunion/02_03_future.html |publisher=Parliament of the United Kingdom |title=The Future of Scotland: Union? |author=Parliament of the United Kingdom |author-link=Parliament of the United Kingdom |access-date=22 December 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080615125226/http://www.parliament.uk/actofunion/02_03_future.html |archive-date=15 June 2008}} The Glorious Revolution of 1688 resulted in a pair of Acts of the English and Scottish legislatures—the Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689 respectively—that ensured that the shared constitutional monarchy of England and Scotland was held only by Protestants. Despite this, although popular with the monarchy and much of the aristocracy, attempts to unite the two states by Acts of Parliament were unsuccessful in 1606, 1667 and 1689; increased political management of Scottish affairs from England had led to "criticism" and had strained Anglo-Scottish relations.{{citation |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/devolution/scotland/briefing/1707.shtml |publisher=BBC |title=Scotland in the Early Eighteenth Century |access-date=14 May 2009 |archive-date=26 June 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090626015534/http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/devolution/scotland/briefing/1707.shtml |url-status=live}}{{Harvnb|Whatley|2006|p=91}}

While English maritime explorations during the Age of Discovery gave new-found imperial power and wealth to the English and Welsh at the end of the 17th century, Scotland suffered from a long-standing weak economy. In response, the Scottish kingdom, in opposition to William II of Scotland (III of England), commenced the Darien Scheme, an attempt to establish a Scottish imperial outlet—the colony of New Caledonia—on the isthmus of Panama. However, through a combination of disease, Spanish hostility, Scottish mismanagement and opposition to the scheme by the East India Company and the English government (who did not want to provoke the Spanish into war){{Harvnb|Birnie|2006|pp=206–208}}. this imperial venture ended in "catastrophic failure", with an estimated "25% of Scotland's total liquid capital" lost.

The events of the Darien Scheme, and the passing by the English Parliament of the Act of Settlement 1701 asserting the right to choose the order of succession for English, Scottish and Irish thrones, escalated political hostilities between England and Scotland and neutralised calls for a united British people. The Parliament of Scotland responded by passing the Act of Security 1704, allowing it to appoint a different monarch to succeed to the Scottish crown from that of England if it so wished. The English political perspective was that the appointment of a Jacobite monarchy in Scotland opened up the possibility of a Franco-Scottish military conquest of England during the Second Hundred Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession. The Parliament of England passed the Alien Act 1705, which provided that Scottish nationals in England were to be treated as aliens and estates held by Scots would be treated as alien property,{{citation |publisher=Parliament of the United Kingdom |title=Westminster passes the 'Alien Act', 1705 |url=http://www.parliament.uk/actofunion/03_05_alien.html |access-date=8 February 2009 |author=Parliament of the United Kingdom |author-link=Parliament of the United Kingdom |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081017085553/http://www.parliament.uk/actofunion/03_05_alien.html |archive-date=17 October 2008}} whilst also restricting the import of Scottish products into England and its colonies (about half of Scotland's trade).{{Harvnb|Lynch|1992|pp=311–314}}. However, the Act contained a provision that it would be suspended if the Parliament of Scotland entered into negotiations regarding the creation of a unified Parliament of Great Britain, which in turn would refund Scottish financial losses on the Darien Scheme.

Despite opposition from within both Scotland and England,{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|pp=12–13}}. a Treaty of Union was agreed in 1706 and was then ratified by the parliaments of both countries with the passing of the Acts of Union 1707. With effect from 1 May 1707, this created a new sovereign state called the "Kingdom of Great Britain".[http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/ Acts of Union 1707] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120529130147/http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/ |date=29 May 2012 }} Parliament of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 9 January 2011[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/rise_parliament/uniting.htm Uniting the kingdom?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180929191921/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/rise_parliament/uniting.htm |date=29 September 2018 }} nationalarchives.gov.uk. Retrieved 9 January 2011[http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/visitingHolyrood/union_exhibition.pdf Making the Act of Union 1707] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511140052/http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/visitingHolyrood/union_exhibition.pdf |date=11 May 2011 }} Parliament of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 9 January 2011 This kingdom "began as a hostile merger", but led to a "full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world"; historian Simon Schama stated that "it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history".{{cite episode |title=Britannia Incorporated |series=A History of Britain |series-link=Simon Schama's A History of Britain |credits=Simon Schama (presenter) |network=BBC One |airdate=22 May 2001 |number=10 |minutes=3}} After 1707, a British national identity began to develop, though it was initially resisted, particularly by the English. The peoples of Great Britain had by the 1750s begun to assume a "layered identity": to think of themselves as simultaneously British and also Scottish, English, or Welsh.

File:Turner, The Battle of Trafalgar (1822).jpg by J. M. W. Turner (oil on canvas, 1822–1824) combines events from several moments during the Napoleonic Wars' Battle of Trafalgar—a major British naval victory upon which Britishness has drawn influence.]]

The terms North Briton and South Briton were devised for the Scots and the English respectively, with the former gaining some preference in Scotland, particularly by the economists and philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment.{{Harvnb|Campbell|Skinner|1985|p=39}}.{{Harvnb|Broadie|2003|p=14}}. Indeed, it was the "Scots [who] played key roles in shaping the contours of British identity";{{Harvnb|Gottlieb|2007|p=15}}. "their scepticism about the Union allowed the Scots the space and time in which

to dominate the construction of Britishness in its early crucial years",{{Harvnb|O'Neill|2004|p=353}}. drawing upon the notion of a shared "spirit of liberty common to both Saxon and Celt ... against the usurpation of the Church of Rome".{{Harvnb|Bradley|2007|pp=119–120}}. James Thomson was a poet and playwright born to a Church of Scotland minister in the Scottish Lowlands in 1700 who was interested in forging a common British culture and national identity in this way. In collaboration with Thomas Arne, they wrote Alfred, an opera about Alfred the Great's victory against the Vikings performed to Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1740 to commemorate the accession of George I and the birthday of Princess Augusta.{{Harvnb|Scholes|1970|p=897}}. "Rule, Britannia!" was the climactic piece of the opera and quickly became a "jingoistic" British patriotic song celebrating "Britain's supremacy offshore".{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=10}}. An island country with a series of victories for the Royal Navy associated empire and naval warfare "inextricably with ideals of Britishness and Britain's place in the world".{{Harvnb|Lincoln|2002|p=73}}{{sfn|Colley|1992|pp=132–133}}

Britannia, the new national personification of Great Britain, was established in the 1750s as a representation of "nation and empire rather than any single national hero".{{sfn|Whale|Copley|1992|p=81}} On Britannia and British identity, historian Peter Borsay wrote: {{blockquote|Up until 1797 Britannia was conventionally depicted holding a spear, but as a consequence of the increasingly prominent role of the Royal Navy in the war against the French, and of several spectacular victories, the spear was replaced by a trident... The navy had come to be seen...as the very bulwark of British liberty and the essence of what it was to be British.Peter Borsay, New approaches to social history. Myth, memory, and place: Monmouth and Bath 1750–1900. Journal of Social History 22 March 2006}}

From the Union of 1707 through to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Great Britain was "involved in successive, very dangerous wars with Catholic France",{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=18}}. but which "all brought enough military and naval victories ... to flatter British pride".{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=52}}. As the Napoleonic Wars with the First French Empire advanced, "the English and Scottish learned to define themselves as similar primarily by virtue of not being French or Catholic".{{Harvnb|Allan|2008|p=17}}. In combination with sea power and empire, the notion of Britishness became more "closely bound up with Protestantism",{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=8}}. a cultural commonality through which the English, Scots and Welsh became "fused together, and remain[ed] so, despite their many cultural divergences".{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=368}}.

The neo-classical monuments that proliferated at the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th century, such as The Kymin at Monmouth, were attempts to meld the concepts of Britishness with the Greco-Roman empires of classical antiquity. The new and expanding British Empire provided "unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility and the accumulations of wealth", and so the "Scottish, Welsh and Irish populations were prepared to suppress nationalist issues on pragmatic grounds".{{sfn|Rojek|2008|p=8}} The British Empire was "crucial to the idea of a British identity and to the self-image of Britishness".{{Harvnb|Powell|2002|p=xi}} Indeed, the Scottish welcomed Britishness during the 19th century "for it offered a context within which they could hold on to their own identity whilst participating in, and benefiting from, the expansion of the [British] Empire". Similarly, the "new emphasis of Britishness was broadly welcomed by the Welsh who considered themselves to be the lineal descendants of the ancient Britons – a word that was still used to refer exclusively to the Welsh".{{Harvnb|Williams|2006|p=17}}. For the English, however, by the Victorian era their enthusiastic adoption of Britishness had meant that, for them, Britishness "meant the same as 'Englishness'",{{Harvnb|Hilton|2006|p=714}}.{{sfn|Caunce et al. 2004|p=92}} so much so that "Englishness and Britishness" and "'England' and 'Britain' were used interchangeably in a variety of contexts".{{Harvnb|Anderson|2006|p=34}}. England has "always been the dominant component of the British Isles in terms of size, population and power"; Magna Carta, common law and hostility to continental Europe were English factors that influenced British sensibilities.{{citation |first=Rebecca |last=Langlands |year=1999 |title=Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain |journal=Nations and Nationalism |volume=5 |pages=53–69 |doi=10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00053.x}}{{harvnb|Ichijo|Spohn|2005|p=26}}

The political union in 1800 of the predominantly Catholic Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain, coupled with the outbreak of peace with France in the early 19th century, challenged the previous century's concept of militant Protestant Britishness.{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=322}}. The new, expanded United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland meant that the state had to re-evaluate its position on the civil rights of Catholics, and extend its definition of Britishness to the Irish people.{{Harvnb|Ichijo|Spohn|2005|p=22}}{{Harvnb|Howe|2002|p=40}}. Like the terms that had been invented at the time of the Acts of Union 1707, "West Briton" was introduced for the Irish after 1800. In 1832 Daniel O'Connell, an Irish politician who campaigned for Catholic Emancipation, stated in Britain's House of Commons: {{blockquote|The people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the British Empire, provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Briton if made so in benefits and justice; but if not, we are Irishmen again.{{Harvnb|Hall|Rose|2006|p=93}}.}}

Ireland, from 1801 to 1923, was marked by a succession of economic and political mismanagement and neglect, which marginalised the Irish, and advanced Irish nationalism. In the forty years that followed the Union, successive British governments grappled with the problems of governing a country which had as Benjamin Disraeli, a staunch anti-Irish and anti-Catholic member of the Conservative party with a virulent racial and religious prejudice towards Ireland{{cite book |author=Robert Blake |title=Disraeli |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BmB4jYrsiQoC&pg=PT153 |date=19 April 2012 |publisher=Faber & Faber |isbn=978-0-571-28755-0 |page=153}} put it in 1844, "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world".{{Harvnb|James|1978|p=40}}. Although the vast majority of Unionists in Ireland proclaimed themselves "simultaneously Irish and British", even for them there was a strain upon the adoption of Britishness after the Great Famine.{{Harvnb|Howe|2002|p=41}}.

War continued to be a unifying factor for the people of Great Britain: British jingoism re-emerged during the Boer Wars in southern Africa.{{Harvnb|Ward|2004|p=96}}{{Harvnb|Ward|2004|p=16}} The experience of military, political and economic power from the rise of the British Empire led to a very specific drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility for Britishness.{{citation |url=http://www.britishempire.co.uk/art/artandempire.htm |title=Art and Empire |publisher=britishempire.co.uk |access-date=24 October 2008 |last=McKenzie |first=John |archive-date=27 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127015605/https://www.britishempire.co.uk/art/artandempire.htm |url-status=live}} In 1887, Frederic Harrison wrote: {{blockquote|Morally, we Britons plant the British flag on every peak and pass; and wherever the Union Jack floats there we place the cardinal British institutions—tea, tubs, sanitary appliances, lawn tennis, and churches.}}

The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 reflected a "marked change in attitudes" in Great Britain towards Catholics and Catholicism.{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|pp=324–325}}. A "significant" example of this was the collaboration between Augustus Welby Pugin, an "ardent Roman Catholic" and son of a Frenchman, and Sir Charles Barry, "a confirmed Protestant", in redesigning the Palace of Westminster—"the building that most enshrines ... Britain's national and imperial pre-tensions". Protestantism gave way to imperialism as the leading element of British national identity during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and as such, a series of royal, imperial and national celebrations were introduced to the British people to assert imperial British culture and give themselves a sense of uniqueness, superiority and national consciousness.{{Harvnb|Bush|2006|p=177}}. Empire Day and jubilees of Queen Victoria were introduced to the British middle class, but quickly "merged into a national 'tradition'".{{Harvnb|MacKenzie|1989|p=135}}.

{{See also|British nationality law}}

{{further|Immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922}}

File:30a Sammlung Eybl Großbritannien. Alfred Leete (1882–1933) Britons (Kitchener) wants you (Briten Kitchener braucht Euch). 1914 (Nachdruck), 74 x 50 cm. (Slg.Nr. 552).jpg-era recruitment poster, stressing the concept of British national identity]]

The First World War "reinforced the sense of Britishness" and patriotism in the early 20th century. Through war service (including conscription in Great Britain), "the English, Welsh, Scots and Irish fought as British". The aftermath of the war institutionalised British national commemoration through Remembrance Sunday and the Poppy Appeal. The Second World War had a similar unifying effect upon the British people,{{Harvnb|Ichijo|Spohn|2005|p=23}} however, its outcome was to recondition Britishness on a basis of democratic values and its marked contrast to Europeanism. Notions that the British "constituted an Island race, and that it stood for democracy were reinforced during the war and they were circulated in the country through Winston Churchill's speeches, history books and newspapers".

At its international zenith, "Britishness joined peoples around the world in shared traditions and common loyalties that were strenuously maintained".{{Harvnb|Darian-Smith et al. 2007|p=1}}. But following the two world wars, the British Empire experienced rapid decolonisation. The secession of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom meant that Britishness had lost "its Irish dimension" in 1922, and the shrinking empire supplanted by independence movements dwindled the appeal of British identity in the Commonwealth of Nations during the mid-20th century.{{Harvnb|Darian-Smith et al. 2007|p=236}}.

Since the British Nationality Act 1948 and the subsequent mass immigration to the United Kingdom from the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the world, "the expression and experience of cultural life in Britain has become fragmented and reshaped by the influences of gender, ethnicity, class and region".{{Harvnb|Christopher|1999|p=xi}}. Furthermore, the United Kingdom's membership of the European Economic Community in 1973 eroded the concept of Britishness as distinct from continental Europe.{{Harvnb|Darian-Smith et al. 2007|p=3}}.{{Harvnb|Powell|2002|p=240}}. As such, since the 1970s "there has been a sense of crisis about what it has meant to be British",{{Harvnb|Ward|2004|p=1}}. exacerbated by growing demands for greater political autonomy for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.{{Harvnb|Ichijo|Spohn|2005|p=25}}

The late 20th century saw major changes to the politics of the United Kingdom with the establishment of devolved national administrations for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales following pre-legislative referendums.{{citation |url=http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/1/217 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090617212544/http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/1/217 |url-status=dead |archive-date=17 June 2009 |title=Reforging the Union: Devolution and Constitutional Change in the United Kingdom |access-date=4 February 2009 |journal=Publius: The Journal of Federalism |volume=28 |issue=1 |page=217 |author=Keating, Michael |date=1 January 1998 |doi=10.1093/oxfordjournals.pubjof.a029948|url-access=subscription }} Calls for greater autonomy for the four countries of the United Kingdom had existed since their original union with each other, but gathered pace in the 1960s and 1970s. Devolution has led to "increasingly assertive Scottish, Welsh and Irish national identities",{{Harvnb|Ward|2004|p=180}}. resulting in more diverse cultural expressions of Britishness,{{Harvnb|Christopher|1999|pp=xi–xii}}. or else its outright rejection: Gwynfor Evans, a Welsh nationalist politician active in the late 20th century, rebuffed Britishness as "a political synonym for Englishness which extends English culture over the Scots, Welsh and the Irish".{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/halloffame/public_life/gwynfor_evans.shtml |title=South East Wales Public Life – Dr Gwynfor Evans |publisher=BBC |access-date=13 April 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629025706/http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/halloffame/public_life/gwynfor_evans.shtml |archive-date=29 June 2011}}

File:Ve Day Celebrations in London, England, UK, 8 May 1945 D24587.jpg to hear Winston Churchill's victory speech on 8 May 1945.]]

In 2004, Sir Bernard Crick, political theorist and democratic socialist tasked with developing the life in the United Kingdom test said: {{blockquote|Britishness, to me, is an overarching political and legal concept: it signifies allegiance to the laws, government and broad moral and political concepts—like tolerance and freedom of expression—that hold the United Kingdom together.{{citation |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/apr/12/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices |work=The Guardian |date=12 April 2004 |access-date=19 May 2009 |title=All this talk of Britain is so ... English |last=Crick |first=Bernard |author-link=Bernard Crick |location=London |archive-date=27 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727042501/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/apr/12/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices |url-status=live}}}}

Gordon Brown initiated a debate on British identity in 2006.{{citation |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4611682.stm |title=Brown speech promotes Britishness |publisher=BBC News |date=14 January 2006 |access-date=17 May 2009 |archive-date=31 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170831194313/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4611682.stm |url-status=live}} Brown's speech to the Fabian Society's Britishness Conference proposed that British values demand a new constitutional settlement and symbols to represent a modern patriotism, including a new youth community service scheme and a British Day to celebrate. One of the central issues identified at the Fabian Society conference was how the English identity fits within the framework of a devolved United Kingdom. An expression of Her Majesty's Government's initiative to promote Britishness was the inaugural Veterans' Day which was first held on 27 June 2006. As well as celebrating the achievements of armed forces veterans, Brown's speech at the first event for the celebration said: {{blockquote|Scots and people from the rest of the UK share the purpose that Britain has something to say to the rest of the world about the values of freedom, democracy and the dignity of the people that you stand up for. So at a time when people can talk about football and devolution and money, it is important that we also remember the values that we share in common.{{citation |title=Brown pinning his hopes on a new regiment |work=The Herald |date=27 June 2006 |url=http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/64828.html |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120917102727/http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/64828.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=17 September 2012 |access-date=15 October 2006}}}}

In 2018, the Windrush scandal illustrated complex developments in British peoplehood, when it was revealed hundreds of Britons had been wrongfully deported.{{Cite news |url=https://www.ft.com/content/209782f4-4254-11e8-93cf-67ac3a6482fd |title=May says sorry to Caribbean leaders over Windrush scandal |work=Financial Times|location=London |author=Robert Wright |date=17 April 2018 |quote=Theresa May told Caribbean leaders face to face on Tuesday that she was "genuinely sorry" for the harassment of up to 50,000 British people of Caribbean origin, who have been asked to prove they have the right to stay in the UK. |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=20 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201220043811/https://www.ft.com/content/209782f4-4254-11e8-93cf-67ac3a6482fd |url-status=live}} With roots in the break-up of the empire, and post-war rebuilding; the Windrush generation had arrived as CUKC citizens in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in former British colonies, they settled in the UK before 1973, and were granted "right of abode" by the Immigration Act 1971.{{Cite web |author=Wendy Williams, HMCPSI |date=March 2020 |title=Windrush Lessons Learned Review |url=https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/876336/6.5577_HO_Windrush_Lessons_Learned_Review_LoResFinal.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201214175142/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/876336/6.5577_HO_Windrush_Lessons_Learned_Review_LoResFinal.pdf |archive-date=14 December 2020 |access-date=2 June 2020 |publisher=UK Home Office |quote=They were from a group of British people who held what became CUKC (citizens of the UK and Colonies) citizenship, and their children, who came to the UK between 1948 and 1973, mostly from Caribbean countries ... Their status was sometimes undocumented: "While migrants of the 1940s and 1950s arrived as citizens of the UK and Colonies, with equal rights to live in the UK to people born in the UK, that picture changed gradually due to successive rounds of immigration legislation in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, some of which have been recognised and were accepted at the time to have had racial motivations. The 1971 Immigration Act entitled people who had arrived from Commonwealth countries before January 1973 to the 'right of abode' or 'deemed leave' to remain in the UK. But the government gave them no documents to demonstrate this status. Nor did it keep records." Chartered Institute of Housing: "the Windrush Britons often had compelling anecdotal and other evidence demonstrating their lengthy residence in the UK".}} Having faced removal, or been deported, many British people of African Caribbean heritage suffered with loss of home, livelihood, and health. As a result of the political scandal, many institutions and elected politicians publicly affirmed that these individuals, while not legally holding British citizenship or nationality, were, in fact, British people. These included British Prime Minister Theresa May,{{Cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43806710 |title=Windrush: Theresa May hits back at Labour over landing cards |publisher=BBC |date=18 April 2018 |quote=The prime minister had begun the session with a fresh apology to the Windrush migrants, saying: "These people are British. They are part of us." |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=18 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201218210954/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43806710 |url-status=live}} London Mayor Sadiq Khan,{{Cite web |url=https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayor-government-is-leaving-teenagers-in-limbo |title=Sadiq Khan: Government must act to avoid second Windrush-style scandal |publisher=London Assembly |date=14 May 2018 |quote=Khan: "something we already know to be true – that they are British citizens, that they are Londoners." |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=3 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200403182614/https://www.london.gov.uk//press-releases/mayoral/mayor-government-is-leaving-teenagers-in-limbo |url-status=live}} Her Majesty's CPS Inspectorate Wendy Williams and her House of Commons-ordered Windrush Lessons Learned Review,{{Cite news |url=https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/windrush-review-key-findings-39058104.html |title=Windrush Review: Key findings |work=Belfast Telegraph |author=Joe Gammie |date=19 March 2020 |quote=Ministers should apologise and admit 'serious harm' was inflicted on British people. The first recommendation of the report is that ministers on behalf of the Home Office admit that serious harm was inflicted on people who are British and to provide an "unqualified apology" to those affected and the wider black African-Caribbean community. |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=28 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200728043516/https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/windrush-review-key-findings-39058104.html |url-status=live}}{{Cite web |url=https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-19/windrush-scandal-foreseeable-and-avoidable/ |title=Windrush scandal 'foreseeable and avoidable' and victims let down by 'systematic operational failings' |publisher=ITV News |date=19 March 2020 |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=13 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201013091813/https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-19/windrush-scandal-foreseeable-and-avoidable |url-status=live}} the Chartered Institute of Housing, Amnesty International,{{Cite web |url=https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/windrush-one-year-scandal-far-over |title=Windrush one year on: Scandal 'far from over' |date=15 April 2019 |publisher=Amnesty International |quote=It risks doing precisely what was done when the seeds of the Windrush Scandal were first sown – that is leaving British people treated as mere guests in the country of their home |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=23 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201123095655/https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/windrush-one-year-scandal-far-over |url-status=live}} University of Oxford's social geographer Danny Dorling,{{cite book |author1=Danny Dorling |author2=Sally Tomlinson |author-link1=Danny Dorling |title=Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire |chapter=The Windrush Scandal |isbn=978-1785904530 |date=2016 |publisher=Biteback Publishing |quote=It was unfortunate (for the UK government, not for the deportees) that the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was in London that week and they were suitably outraged at the threats of deportation of these British people ... In 2018, the independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration reported that some 140,000 British people had been told they faced removal as they had no official legal status in the country.}} and other public figures.{{Cite news |url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-theresa-may-is-to-blame-for-the-windrush-scandal |title=Why Theresa May is to blame for the Windrush scandal |work=The Spectator |author=Brendan O'Neill |author-link=Brendan O'Neill (columnist) |date=17 April 2018 |quote=As a result, Windrush people who are effectively paperless – because they were told they could stay, because they were told they didn't need papers, because they feel and are British – are now having their lives turned upside down. |access-date=2 June 2020 |archive-date=9 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109034629/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-theresa-may-is-to-blame-for-the-windrush-scandal |url-status=live}}{{Cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/18/windrush-scandal-heartbreaking-should-not-used-excuse-stop-sensible/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/18/windrush-scandal-heartbreaking-should-not-used-excuse-stop-sensible/ |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=The Windrush scandal is heartbreaking, but it should not be used as an excuse to stop sensible migration controls |work=The Daily Telegraph |author=Nick Timothy |author-link=Nick Timothy |date=18 April 2018 |quote=The people of the Windrush generation are here legally, they are British, and their experience is intolerable.}}{{cbignore}}

{{Main|British diaspora}}

{{See also|English-speaking world|List of countries by British immigrants}}

[[File:Map of the British Diaspora in the World.svg|thumb|300x300px|Map of the British diaspora in the world by population (includes people with British ancestry or citizenship):

{{Legend|#000000|United Kingdom}}

{{Legend|#000b44|+ 10,000,000}}

{{Legend|#002a9e|+ 1,000,000}}

{{Legend|#366bff|+ 100,000}}

{{Legend|#7bb1ff|+ 10,000}}]]

The earliest migrations of Britons date from the 5th and 6th centuries AD, when Brittonic Celts fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasions migrated what is today northern France and north western Spain and forged the colonies of Brittany and Britonia. Brittany remained independent of France until the early 16th century and still retains a distinct Brittonic culture and language, whilst Britonia in modern Galicia was absorbed into Spanish states by the end of the 9th century AD.

Britons – people with British citizenship or of British descent – have a significant presence in a number of countries other than the United Kingdom, and in particular in those with historic connections to the British Empire. After the Age of Discovery, the British were one of the earliest and largest communities to emigrate out of Europe, and the British Empire's expansion during the first half of the 19th century triggered an "extraordinary dispersion of the British people", resulting in particular concentrations "in Australasia and North America".{{Harvnb|Ember et al. 2004|p=47}}.

The British Empire was "built on waves of migration overseas by British people",{{harvnb|Marshall|2001|p=254}}. who left the United Kingdom and "reached across the globe and permanently affected population structures in three continents". As a result of the British colonisation of the Americas, what became the United States was "easily the greatest single destination of emigrant British", but in Australia the British experienced a birth rate higher than "anything seen before", resulting in the displacement of indigenous Australians.

In colonies such as Southern Rhodesia, British East Africa and Cape Colony, permanently resident British communities were established and, whilst never more than a numerical minority, these Britons "exercised a dominant influence" upon the culture and politics of those lands. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, "people of British origin came to constitute the majority of the population", contributing to these states becoming integral to the Anglosphere.

The 1861 United Kingdom census estimated the size of the overseas British to be around 2.5 million, but concluded that most of these were "not conventional settlers" but rather "travellers, merchants, professionals, and military personnel". By 1890, there were over 1.5 million further UK-born people living in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. A 2006 publication from the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated 5.6 million Britons lived outside of the United Kingdom.{{citation |title=Brits Abroad |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/brits_abroad/html/ |publisher=BBC News |date=11 December 2006 |access-date=13 April 2009 |archive-date=30 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201130025630/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/brits_abroad/html/ |url-status=live}}{{citation |last=Sriskandarajah |first=Dhananjayan |author2=Drew, Catherine |title=Brits Abroad: Mapping the scale and nature of British emigration |url=http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=509 |date=11 December 2006 |publisher=ippr.org.uk |access-date=13 April 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080524215729/http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=509 |archive-date=24 May 2008}}

Outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories, up to 76% of Australians, 70% of New Zealanders, 48% of Canadians, 33% of Americans, 4% of Chileans and 3% of South Africans have ancestry from the British Isles.{{cite news |url=http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/49f609c83cf34d69ca2569de0025c182!OpenDocument |title=Feature Article – Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Australia (Feature Article) |publisher=Australian Bureau of Statistics |work=1301.0 – Year Book Australia, 1995}}{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/detailed-race-ethnicities-2020-census.html |title=Detailed Races and Ethnicities in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2020 Census |publisher=United States census |date=21 September 2023 |access-date=2 January 2024}}{{cite web |url=http://www.biografiadechile.cl/detalle.php?IdContenido=1673&IdCategoria=91&IdArea=488&TituloPagina=Historia%20de%20Chile |title=Historia de Chile, Británicos y Anglosajones en Chile durante el siglo XIX |access-date=11 January 2010}} Hong Kong has the highest proportion of British nationals outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories, with 47% of Hong Kong residents holding a British National (Overseas) status or a British citizenship.{{cite web |author=The Committee Office, House of Commons |url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmfaff/117/11712.htm#note212 |title=House of Commons – Foreign Affairs – Fifth Report |publisher=Parliament of the United Kingdom |access-date=26 February 2014 |archive-date=27 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727051735/https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmfaff/117/11712.htm#note212 |url-status=live}} The next highest concentrations of British citizens outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories are located in Barbados (10%), the Republic of Ireland (7%), Australia (6%) and New Zealand (5%).

{{See also|First Fleet|Anglo-Celtic Australian}}

File:Flag of Australia.svg was approved by Australian and British authorities, and features a Union Flag—the flag of the United Kingdom—in the canton. Australia has one of the largest concentrations of people of British heritage.]]

From the beginning of Australia's colonial period until after the Second World War, people from the United Kingdom made up a large majority of people coming to Australia, meaning that many people born in Australia can trace their origins to Britain.{{citation |url=http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/af5129cb50e07099ca2570eb0082e462!OpenDocument |title=Population characteristics: Ancestry of Australia's population |author=Australian Bureau of Statistics |author-link=Australian Bureau of Statistics |publisher=abs.gov.au |date=3 June 2003 |access-date=27 May 2009 |archive-date=25 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200925075652/https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/af5129cb50e07099ca2570eb0082e462!OpenDocument |url-status=live}} The colony of New South Wales, founded on 26 January 1788, was part of the eastern half of Australia claimed by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1770, and initially settled by Britons through penal transportation. Together with another five largely self-governing Crown Colonies, the federation of Australia was achieved on 1 January 1901.

Its history of British dominance meant that Australia was "grounded in British culture and political traditions that had been transported to the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century and become part of colonial culture and politics".{{sfn|Galligan et al. 2001|p=113}} Australia maintains the Westminster system of parliamentary government and Charles III as King of Australia. Until 1987, the national status of Australian citizens was formally described as "British Subject: Citizen of Australia". Britons continue to make up a substantial proportion of immigrants.

By 1947, Australia was fundamentally British in origin with 7,524,129 or 99.3% of the population declaring themselves as European.[https://books.google.com/books?id=AE-AZucUOCcC&q=1947%20australia%20census%20race%20european&pg=PA1289 Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia No. 37] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230928163115/https://books.google.com/books?id=AE-AZucUOCcC&q=1947%20australia%20census%20race%20european&pg=PA1289#v=snippet&q=1947%20australia%20census%20race%20european&f=false |date=28 September 2023 }} – 1946 and 1947 In the 2016 census, a large proportion of Australians self-identified with British ancestral origins, including 36.1% or 7,852,224 as English and 9.3% (2,023,474) as Scottish alone.[http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Cultural%20Diversity%20Article~60 THE ANCESTRIES OF AUSTRALIANS] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220120194204/https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Cultural%20Diversity%20Article~60 |date=20 January 2022 }} – Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia – Stories from the Census, 2016[http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Cultural%20Diversity%20Data%20Summary~30 Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103233639/http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Cultural%20Diversity%20Data%20Summary~30 |date=3 January 2021 }} – Ancestry 2016 A substantial proportion —33.5%— chose to identify as 'Australian', the census Bureau has stated that most of these are of Anglo-Celtic colonial stock.Australian Bureau of Statistics has stated that most who list "Australian" as their ancestry are part of the "Anglo-Celtic" group. {{cite web |url=http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/49f609c83cf34d69ca2569de0025c182!OpenDocument |title=Feature Article – Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Australia (Feature Article) |access-date=24 June 2008 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160420205113/http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs%40.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/49f609c83cf34d69ca2569de0025c182%21OpenDocument |archive-date=20 April 2016 |date=January 1995}} All six states of Australia retain the Union Jack in the canton of their respective flags.

File:Colour party of the Royal Bermuda Regiment at Queen's Birthday Parade in 2017.jpg at the Queen's Birthday Parade in Bermuda on 10 June 2017]]

The approximately 250,000 people of the British Overseas Territories are British by citizenship, via origins or naturalisation. Along with aspects of common British identity, each of the territories has its own distinct identity shaped in its own political, economic, ethnic, social and cultural history. For instance, in the case of the Falkland Islanders, a former Speaker of the Legislative Council of the Falkland Islands, Lewis Clifton, explains: {{blockquote|British cultural, economic, social, political and educational values create a unique British-like, Falkland Islands. Yet Islanders feel distinctly different from their fellow citizens who reside in the United Kingdom. This might have something to do with geographical isolation or with living on a smaller island—perhaps akin to those Britons not feeling European.{{harvnb|Clifton|1999|pp=16–19}}. }}

In contrast, for the majority of the Gibraltarians, who live in Gibraltar, there is an "insistence on their Britishness" which "carries excessive loyalty" to Britain.{{citation |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/gibraltars-people-ought-to-accept-this-sensible-deal-659298.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090618205224/http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/gibraltars-people-ought-to-accept-this-sensible-deal-659298.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=18 June 2009 |work=The Independent |date=4 February 2002 |access-date=28 May 2009 |title=Gibraltar's people ought to accept this sensible deal |location=London}} The sovereignty of Gibraltar has been a point of contention in Spain–United Kingdom relations, but an overwhelming number of Gibraltarians embrace Britishness with strong conviction, in direct opposition to Spanish territorial claims.{{citation |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/3851047.stm |title=Regions and territories: Gibraltar |access-date=20 December 2007 |date=18 July 2007 |publisher=BBC News |archive-date=4 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210104200451/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/3851047.stm |url-status=live}}{{citation |url=https://www.theguardian.com/gibraltar/story/0,,634007,00.html |title=Gibraltar |author=Mark Oliver |access-date=20 December 2007 |author2=Sally Bolton |author3=Jon Dennis |author4=Matthew Tempest |date=4 August 2004 |work=The Guardian |location=London |archive-date=29 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729190639/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/04/qanda.foreignpolicy |url-status=live}}

{{See also|Canadians}}

File:Canadian Red Ensign 1921-1957.svg was the flag of Canada pre-1965, and features a Union Flag—the flag of the United Kingdom—in the canton. Canada has a large concentration of people of British heritage.]]

Canada traces its statehood to the French, English, and Scottish expeditions of North America from the late-15th century. France ceded nearly all of New France in 1763 after the Seven Years' War, and so after the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, Quebec and Nova Scotia formed "the nucleus of the colonies that constituted Britain's remaining stake on the North American continent".{{harvnb|Marshall|2001|p=34}} British North America (the archipelago of Bermuda and those continental colonies remaining after the independence of the thirteen that would become the United States) attracted the United Empire Loyalists, Britons who migrated out of what they considered the "rebellious" United States, increasing the size of British communities in what was to become Canada.

File:TimbrePosteCanada5centsElizabethIIWilding1954.jpg, 1954]]

In 1867 there was a union of three colonies of British North America, the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, which together formed the Canadian Confederation, a federal dominion.{{citation |title=Territorial evolution |work=Atlas of Canada |publisher=Natural Resources Canada |url=http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/anniversary_maps/terr_evol |access-date=9 October 2007 |quote=In 1867, the colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are united in a federal state, the Dominion of Canada.... |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070809154930/http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/anniversary_maps/terr_evol |archive-date=9 August 2007}}{{citation |title=Canada: History |work=Country Profiles |author=Commonwealth Secretariat |publisher=thecommonwealth.org |url=http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookInternal/145152/history/ |access-date=9 October 2007 |quote=The British North America Act of 1867 brought together four British colonies ... in one federal Dominion under the name of Canada. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012021238/http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookInternal/145152/history/ |archive-date=12 October 2007 |author-link=Commonwealth Secretariat}}{{cite encyclopedia |first1=Norman |last1=Hillmer |first2=W. David |last2=MacIntyre |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/commonwealth |title=Commonwealth |encyclopedia=The Canadian Encyclopedia |quote=With "Confederation" in 1867, Canada became the first federation in the British Empire |access-date=25 August 2019 |archive-date=3 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103002315/https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/commonwealth |url-status=live}} This began an accretion of additional provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster 1931 and culminating in the Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the parliament of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, it is recognised that there is a "continuing importance of Canada's long and close relationship with Britain";{{harvnb|Buckner|2008|p=1}}. large parts of Canada's modern population claim "British origins" and the British cultural impact upon Canada's institutions is profound.{{harvnb|Buckner|2008|p=160}}.

It was not until 1977 that the phrase "A Canadian citizen is a British subject" ceased to be used in Canadian passports. The politics of Canada are strongly influenced by British political culture.{{citation |last=Victoria |author-link=Queen Victoria |date=29 March 1867 |title=Constitution Act, 1867 |series=III.15 |location=Westminster |publisher=Queen's Printer |url=http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1867.html |access-date=15 January 2009 |ref=CITEREF_Victoria_1867 |archive-date=3 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100203024121/http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1867.html |url-status=live}}{{citation |last=MacLeod |first=Kevin S. |author-link=Kevin S. MacLeod |title=A Crown of Maples |place=Ottawa |publisher=Queen's Printer for Canada |year=2008 |edition=1 |page=17 |url=http://www.pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/fr-rf/crnCdn/crn_mpls-eng.pdf |isbn=978-0-662-46012-1 |ref=CITEREF_MacLeod_2008 |access-date=28 May 2009 |archive-date=27 March 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090327083452/http://www.pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/fr-rf/crnCdn/crn_mpls-eng.pdf |url-status=live}} Although significant modifications have been made, Canada is governed by a democratic parliamentary framework comparable to the Westminster system, and retains Charles III as King of Canada and head of state.{{citation |url=http://www.pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/fr-rf/index-eng.cfm |last=Department of Canadian Heritage |title=Ceremonial and Canadian Symbols Promotion > The Canadian Monarchy |publisher=Queen's Printer for Canada |access-date=14 May 2009 |archive-date=25 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200825002610/https://www.canada.ca/home.html |url-status=live}}{{citation |url=http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchAndCommonwealth/Canada/Canada.aspx |last=The Royal Household |title=The Queen and the Commonwealth > Queen and Canada |publisher=Queen's Printer |access-date=14 May 2009 |archive-date=21 August 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160821082408/http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchAndCommonwealth/Canada/Canada.aspx |url-status=live}} English is the most commonly spoken language used in Canada and it is an official language of Canada.{{Citation |url=http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookHomeInternal/138389/ |title=Canada; Key Facts |author=Commonwealth Secretariat |access-date=28 May 2009 |publisher=thecommonwealth.org |archive-date=14 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200514220751/https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/canada |url-status=live}}

British iconography remains present in the design of many Canadian flags, with 10 out of 13 Canadian provincial and territorial flags adopting some form of British symbolism in their design. The Union Jack is also an official ceremonial flag in Canada, known as the Royal Union Flag, which is flown outside of federal buildings three days of the year.{{cite web |title=The Honours, Flags and Heritage Structure of the Canadian Forces |url=http://www.saskd.ca/heritage.pdf#page=336 |author=Department of National Defence |publisher=Queen's Printer for Canada |date=5 January 2001 |page=337 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090325162006/http://www.saskd.ca/heritage.pdf#page=336 |archive-date=25 March 2009}}{{cite web |title=Statement by the Hon. Jason Kenney, PC, MP, Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity) on Commonwealth Day |url=http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/infoCNtr/cdm-mc/index-eng.cfm?action=doc&DocIDCd=DJK072980 |author=Canadian Heritage |date=10 March 2008 |publisher=Queen's Printer for Canada |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111111070357/http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/infoCNtr/cdm-mc/index-eng.cfm?action=doc&DocIDCd=DJK072980 |archive-date=11 November 2011}}

{{See also|New Zealand European|Immigration to New Zealand}}

File:Flag of New Zealand.svg features a Union Flag—the flag of the United Kingdom—in the canton. A referendum held in 2016 found that 57% of New Zealand voters wanted to retain the current design of the New Zealand flag.]]

As a long-term result of James Cook's voyage of 1768–1771,{{Harvnb|Mein Smith|2005|p=23}}. a significant number of New Zealanders are of British descent, for whom a sense of Britishness has contributed to their identity.{{citation |encyclopedia=Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand |url=http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealanders/NewZealandPeoples/TheNewZealanders/3/en |title=Britons |publisher=teara.govt.nz |access-date=28 May 2009 |date=1 October 2007 |first=Jock |last=Phillips |archive-date=25 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525085043/http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/the-new-zealanders/page-3 |url-status=live}} As late as the 1950s, it was common for British New Zealanders to refer to themselves as British, such as when Prime Minister Keith Holyoake described Sir Edmund Hillary's successful ascent of Mount Everest as putting "the British race and New Zealand on top of the world".{{citation |title=Panel Discussion 3c – Population Change And International Linkages |work=Population Conference 1997, New Zealand |url=http://www.executive.govt.nz/96-99/minister/bradford/population/content/pnldis3c/pnld3c_1.htm |publisher=executive.govt.nz |first=Phillip |last=Gibson |year=2000 |access-date=22 May 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090411212113/http://executive.govt.nz/96-99/minister/bradford/population/content/pnldis3c/pnld3c_1.htm |archive-date=11 April 2009}} New Zealand passports described nationals as "British Subject: Citizen of New Zealand" until 1974, when this was changed to "New Zealand citizen".{{citation |first=Carl |last=Walrond |url=http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealanders/NewZealandPeoples/KiwisOverseas/3/en |encyclopedia=Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand |publisher=teara.govt.nz |title=Kiwis overseas – Staying in Britain |date=13 April 2007 |access-date=22 May 2009 |archive-date=25 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525090003/http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/kiwis-overseas/page-3 |url-status=live}}

In an interview with the New Zealand Listener in 2006, Don Brash, the then Leader of the Opposition, said:

{{blockquote|British immigrants fit in here very well. My own ancestry is all British. New Zealand values are British values, derived from centuries of struggle since Magna Carta. Those things make New Zealand the society it is.{{citation |url=http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3460/features/6926/so_who_do_we_keep_out.html;jsessionid=6294B858836B17C47C11ECEDD83FD284 |title=So who do we keep out? |publisher=listener.co.nz |access-date=22 May 2009 |first=Bruce |last=Ansley |date=2 September 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090523012030/http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3460/features/6926/so_who_do_we_keep_out.html |archive-date=23 May 2009}}}}

The politics of New Zealand are strongly influenced by British political culture. Although significant modifications have been made, New Zealand is governed by a democratic parliamentary framework comparable to the Westminster system, and it retains Charles III as the head of the monarchy of New Zealand.{{harvnb|Mulgan|Aimer|2004|p=62}}. English is the dominant official language used in New Zealand.{{Citation |url=http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookHomeInternal/138891/ |title=New Zealand; Key Facts |author=Commonwealth Secretariat |access-date=28 May 2009 |publisher=thecommonwealth.org |archive-date=17 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170617234744/http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/new-zealand |url-status=live}}

{{see also|British Hong Kong|British nationality law and Hong Kong|British National (Overseas)|Britons in Hong Kong|Handover of Hong Kong}}

British nationality law as it pertains to Hong Kong has been unusual ever since Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842.{{sfn|Tsang|2004|p=12}} From its beginning as a sparsely populated trading port to its modern role as a cosmopolitan international financial centre of over seven million people, the territory has attracted refugees, immigrants and expatriates alike searching for a new life.{{Cite web |title=Hong Kong (August 1997) – Library of Congress Information Bulletin |url=https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9708/hongkong.html |access-date=4 January 2024 |website=loc.gov}} Citizenship matters were complicated by the fact that British nationality law treated those born in Hong Kong as British subjects (Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies from 1948) based on the principle of jus soli, while the People's Republic of China (PRC) did not recognise the ethnically Chinese population in Hong Kong as such.{{cite web |title=British Nationality Act 1948 section 33 |url=https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/11-12/56/section/33/enacted}}{{cite web |title=British Nationality Act of 1948 |url=https://parliament.gov.gy/documents/regulations/21644-british_nationality_regulations_1948.pdf}}

The main reason was that recognising these British-born nationals would have been seen as a tacit acceptance of a series of historical treaties labelled by the PRC as "unequal", including the ones that ceded Hong Kong Island (Treaty of Nanking) and Kowloon Peninsula (Convention of Peking) to Britain and the New Territories lease. The British government, however, recognising the unique political situation of Hong Kong, granted 3.4 million Hongkongers a new class of British nationality known as British National (Overseas), which is established in accordance with the Hong Kong Act 1985.{{cite web |url=http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/15/introduction |title=Hong Kong Act 1985 |date=4 April 1985 |publisher=legislation.gov.uk |access-date=15 November 2019}} Some of those also have British citizenship in conjunction with their British National (Overseas) citizenship. Both British Nationals (Overseas) and British citizens are British nationals and Commonwealth citizens according to the British Nationality Law, which enables them to various rights in the United Kingdom.

{{further|British Americans}}

{{See also|British colonisation of the Americas|British America|New England}}

An English presence in North America began with the Roanoke Colony and Colony of Virginia in the late-16th century, but the first successful English settlement was established in 1607, on the James River at Jamestown. By the 1610s an estimated 1,300 English people had travelled to North America, the "first of many millions from the British Isles".{{Harvnb|Ember et al. 2004|p=48}}. In 1620, the Pilgrims established the English imperial venture of Plymouth Colony, beginning "a remarkable acceleration of permanent emigration from England" with over 60% of trans-Atlantic English migrants settling in the New England Colonies. During the 17th century, an estimated 350,000 English and Welsh migrants arrived in North America, which in the century after the Acts of Union 1707 was surpassed in rate and number by Scottish and Irish migrants.{{Harvnb|Ember et al. 2004|p=49}}.

The British policy of salutary neglect for its North American colonies intended to minimise trade restrictions as a way of ensuring that they stayed loyal to British interests. This permitted the development of the American Dream, a cultural spirit distinct from that of its European founders.{{citation |last=Henretta |first=James A. |title=History of Colonial America |url=http://encarta.msn.com/text_1741502191___0/History_of_Colonial_America.html |encyclopedia=Encarta Online Encyclopedia |year=2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090923141733/http://encarta.msn.com/text_1741502191___0/History_of_Colonial_America.html |archive-date=23 September 2009 |url-status=dead}} The Thirteen Colonies of British America began an armed rebellion against British rule in 1775 when they rejected the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation; they proclaimed their independence in 1776, and constituted the first thirteen states of the United States of America, which became a sovereign state in 1781 with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. The 1783 Treaty of Paris represented Great Britain's formal acknowledgement of the United States' sovereignty at the end of the American Revolutionary War.{{citation |title=Chapter 3: The Road to Independence |url=http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/histryotln/road.htm |work=Outline of U.S. History |publisher=usinfo.state.gov |date=November 2005 |access-date=21 April 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080409035942/http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/histryotln/road.htm |archive-date=9 April 2008}}

Nevertheless, longstanding cultural and historical ties have, in more modern times, resulted in the Special Relationship, the historically close political, diplomatic, and military co-operation between the United Kingdom and United States.{{citation |last=James |first=Wither |date=March 2006 |title=An Endangered Partnership: The Anglo-American Defence Relationship in the Early Twenty-first Century |journal=European Security |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=47–65 |doi=10.1080/09662830600776694 |s2cid=154879821 |issn=0966-2839}} Linda Colley, a professor of history at Princeton University and specialist in Britishness, suggested that because of their colonial influence on the United States, the British find Americans a "mysterious and paradoxical people, physically distant but culturally close, engagingly similar yet irritatingly different".{{Harvnb|Colley|1992|p=134}}.

For over two centuries of early U.S. history, all Presidents with the exception of two (Van Buren and Kennedy) were descended from the varied colonial British stock, from the Pilgrims and Puritans to the Scotch-Irish and English who settled the Appalachia.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GOYg58I7g30C&q=albions+seed+presidents+&pg=PA835 |title=Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America |first=David |last=Hackett Fischer |year=1989 |page=839 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195069051 |access-date=25 July 2020 |archive-date=28 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230928163347/https://books.google.com/books?id=GOYg58I7g30C&q=albions+seed+presidents+&pg=PA835#v=snippet&q=albions%20seed%20presidents&f=false |url-status=live}} The largest concentrations of self-reported British ethnic ancestry in the United States were found to be in Utah (35%), Maine (30%), New Hampshire (25%) and Vermont (25%) at the 2015 American Community Survey.{{cite web |url=https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Overview |title=Overview of the United States |website=statisticalatlas.com |access-date=21 July 2022 |archive-date=25 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125134219/https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Overview |url-status=live}} Overall, 10.7% of Americans reported their ethnic ancestry as some form of "British" in the 2013–17 ACS, behind German and African ancestries and on par with Mexican and Irish ancestries.{{cite web |title=Selected social characteristics in the United States: 2013–2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates |url=https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/17_5YR/DP02/0100000US |publisher=US Census Bureau |access-date=26 August 2019 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20200213004920/https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/17_5YR/DP02/0100000US |archive-date=13 February 2020 |url-status=dead}}

{{Main|British Chilean}}

File:Antofagasta.jpg city]]

File:Escudo de Coquimbo.svg, with the Union Flag]]

Approximately 4% of Chile's population is of British or Irish descent.{{cite web |url=http://arpa.ucv.cl/archivum6/historia%20regional,%20gran%20valpara%EDso/6.%20LA%20IGLESIA%20SAINT%20PAUL%B4S%20DE%20VALPARA%CDSO...M.PRAIN.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070623090223/http://arpa.ucv.cl/archivum6/historia%20regional,%20gran%20valpara%EDso/6.%20LA%20IGLESIA%20SAINT%20PAUL%B4S%20DE%20VALPARA%CDSO...M.PRAIN.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=23 June 2007 |title=Inmigrantes británicos. |access-date=26 February 2014}} Over 50,000{{cite web |author=Frank Keelderwald |url=http://www.galeon.com/typepad/enlaces2074641.html |title=Noticias La Emigración De Chilenos Al Exterior E Inmigración A Chile |publisher=Galeon.com |access-date=26 February 2014 |archive-date=25 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525085846/http://www.galeon.com/typepad/enlaces2074641.html |url-status=dead}} British immigrants settled in Chile from 1840 to 1914. A significant number of them settled in Magallanes Province, especially in the city of Punta Arenas when it flourished as a major global seaport for ships crossing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Strait of Magellan. Around 32,000 English settled in Valparaíso, influencing the port city to the extent of making it virtually a British colony during the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.{{cite web |url=http://www.galeon.com/typepad/ |title=Inmigración britanica en Chile |access-date=25 January 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090822074242/http://www.galeon.com/typepad/ |archive-date=22 August 2009 |url-status=dead}} However, the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War drove many of them away from the city or back to Europe.

In Valparaíso, they created their largest and most important colony, bringing with them neighbourhoods of British character, schools, social clubs, sports clubs, business organisations and periodicals. Even today, their influence is apparent in specific areas, such as the banks and the navy, as well as in certain social activities, such as football, horse racing and the custom of drinking tea.

During the movement for Chilean independence (1818), it was mainly the British who formed the Chilean Navy, under the command of Lord Cochrane. British investment helped Chile become prosperous and British seamen helped the Chilean navy become a strong force in the South Pacific. Chile won two wars, the first against the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, and the second, the War of the Pacific, in 1878–79, against an alliance between Peru and Bolivia. The liberal-socialist "Revolution of 1891" introduced political reforms modelled on British parliamentary practice and lawmaking.

British immigrants were also important in the northern zone of the country during the saltpetre boom, in the ports of Iquique and Pisagua. The "King of Saltpetre", John Thomas North, was the principal tycoon of nitrate mining. The British legacy is reflected in the streets of the historic district of the city of Iquique, with the foundation of various institutions, such as the Club Hípico (Racing Club). Nevertheless, the British active presence came to an end with the saltpetre crisis during the 1930s.

Some Scots settled in the country's more temperate regions, where the climate and the forested landscape with glaciers and islands may have reminded them of their homeland (the Highlands and Northern Scotland), while English and Welsh made up the rest. The Irish immigrants, who were frequently confused with the British, arrived as merchants, tradesmen and sailors, settling along with the British in the main trading cities and ports. An important contingent of British (principally Welsh) immigrants arrived between 1914 and 1950, settling in the present-day region of Magallanes. British families were established in other areas of the country, such as Santiago, Coquimbo, the Araucanía and Chiloé.

The cultural legacy of the British in Chile is notable and has spread beyond the British Chilean community into society at large. Customs taken from the British include afternoon tea (called onces by Chileans), football, rugby union and horse racing. Another legacy is the widespread use of British personal names by Chileans. Chile has the largest population of descendants of British settlers in Latin America. Over 700,000 Chileans may have British (English, Scottish and Welsh) origin, amounting to 4.5% of Chile's population.{{citation |url=http://www.biografiadechile.cl/detalle.php?IdContenido=1673&IdCategoria=91&IdArea=488&TituloPagina=Historia%20de%20Chile |title=Historia de Chile, Británicos y Anglosajones en Chile durante el siglo XIX |access-date=15 September 2009 |publisher=biografiadechile.cl |archive-date=12 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201112003642/http://www.biografiadechile.cl/detalle.php?IdContenido=1673 |url-status=live}}

{{further|British diaspora in Africa|1820 Settlers}}

{{see also|White South Africans}}

File:Cecil Rhodes - Project Gutenberg eText 16600.jpg, the 6th Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (divided between two provinces in modern-day South Africa) and founder of the De Beers diamond company]]

The British arrived in the area which would become the modern-day South Africa during the early 18th century, yet substantial settlement only started end of the 18th century, in the Cape of Good Hope.{{cite book |last=Kopstein |first=Jeffrey |title=Comparative Politics: Interests, Identities, and Institutions in a Changing Global Order |year=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521633567 |page=434 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gh3PVi6II54C}} In the late 19th century, the discovery of gold and diamonds further encouraged colonisation of South Africa by the British, and the population of the British-South Africans rose substantially, although there was fierce rivalry between the British and Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch colonists) in the period known as the Boer Wars. The latest census in South Africa showed that there are almost 2 million British-South Africans; they make up about 40% of the total White South African demographic, and the greatest white British ancestry populations in South Africa are in the KwaZulu-Natal province and in the cities of Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth.{{cite book |title=Census 2011: Census in brief |url=http://www.statssa.gov.za/census/census_2011/census_products/Census_2011_Census_in_brief.pdf |publisher=Statistics South Africa |location=Pretoria |year=2012 |isbn=9780621413885 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150513171240/http://www.statssa.gov.za/census/census_2011/census_products/Census_2011_Census_in_brief.pdf |archive-date=13 May 2015 |url-status=live |page=26}} The number of people who described themselves as white in terms of population group and specified their first language as English in South Africa's 2011 Census was 1,603,575. The total white population with a first language specified was 4,461,409, and the total population was 51,770,560.

{{further|Plantations of Ireland|Unionism in Ireland|The Troubles}}

File:The Special Air Service during the Second World War MH24415.jpg from County Down; a founding member of the SAS; was one of the most decorated British soldiers of World War II. He also played rugby for Ireland.]]

Plantations of Ireland introduced large numbers of people from Great Britain to Ireland throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period. The resulting Protestant Ascendancy, the aristocratic class of the Lordship of Ireland, broadly identified themselves as Anglo-Irish.{{Harvnb|Finnegan|McCarron|2000|p=14}}. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Protestant British settlers subjugated Catholic, Gaelic inhabitants in the north of Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster and the Williamite War in Ireland; it was "an explicit attempt to control Ireland strategically by introducing ethnic and religious elements loyal to the British interest in Ireland".{{harvnb|Craith|2002|p=169}}.

The Ulster Scots people are an ethnic group of British origin in Ireland, broadly descended from Lowland Scots who settled in large numbers in the province of Ulster during the planned process of colonisations of Ireland which took place in the reign of James VI of Scotland and I of England. Together with English and Welsh settlers, these Scots introduced Protestantism (particularly the Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland) and the Ulster Scots and English languages to, mainly, northeastern Ireland. With the partition of Ireland and independence for what is now the Republic of Ireland some of these people found themselves no longer living within the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland itself was, for many years, the site of a violent and bitter ethno-sectarian conflict—The Troubles—between those claiming to represent Irish nationalism, who are predominantly Roman Catholic, and those claiming to represent British unionism, who are predominantly Protestant.{{citation |title=Northern Ireland LIFE & TIMES survey. Question: Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a unionist, nationalist or neither? |url=http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2005/Political_Attitudes/UNINATID.html |publisher=ARK Research |year=2005 |access-date=18 May 2009 |archive-date=11 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511052151/http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2005/Political_Attitudes/UNINATID.html |url-status=live}} Unionists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom,{{citation |url=http://www.uup.org/policy/standing-up-for-northern-ireland/index.php |title=Standing up for Northern Ireland |publisher=uup.org |author=Ulster Unionist Party |access-date=2 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080608215815/http://www.uup.org/policy/standing-up-for-northern-ireland/index.php |archive-date=8 June 2008 |author-link=Ulster Unionist Party}} while nationalists desire a united Ireland.{{citation |url=http://www.sinnfein.ie/policies/document/155 |title=Strategy Framework Document: Reunification through Planned Integration: Sinn Féin's All Ireland Agenda |publisher=sinnfein.ie |access-date=2 September 2008 |author=Sinn Féin |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080619073014/http://www.sinnfein.ie/policies/document/155 |archive-date=19 June 2008}}{{citation |url=http://www.sdlp.ie/policy_details.php?id=78 |title=Policy Summaries: Constitutional Issues |publisher=sdlp.ie |access-date=2 September 2008 |author=Social Democratic and Labour Party |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024181602/http://www.sdlp.ie/policy_details.php?id=78 |archive-date=24 October 2007 |author-link=Social Democratic and Labour Party}}

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, most of the paramilitary groups involved in the Troubles have ceased their armed campaigns, and constitutionally, the people of Northern Ireland have been recognised as "all persons born in Northern Ireland and having, at the time of their birth, at least one parent who is a British citizen, an Irish citizen or is otherwise entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence".{{Citation |url=http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.htm#annex |title=Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations |date=10 April 1998 |publisher=cain.ulst.ac.uk/ |access-date=13 May 2008 |archive-date=22 November 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131122194559/http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.htm#annex |url-status=live}} The Good Friday Agreement guarantees the "recognition of the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose".

{{See also|Culture of the United Kingdom}}

Result from the expansion of the British Empire, British cultural influence can be observed in the language and culture of a geographically wide assortment of countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, the United States, and the British overseas territories. These states are sometimes collectively known as the Anglosphere.{{sfn|Bennett|2004|p=80}} As well as the British influence on its empire, the empire also influenced British culture, particularly British cuisine. Innovations and movements within the wider-culture of Europe have also changed the United Kingdom; Humanism, Protestantism, and representative democracy have developed from broader Western culture. As a result of the history of the formation of the United Kingdom, the cultures of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are diverse and have varying degrees of overlap and distinctiveness.

{{Main|British cuisine}}

File:Fish and chips.jpg, a popular take-away food throughout the United Kingdom, has been described as the quintessential British dish.{{Harvnb|Walton|2000|p=1}}.]]

Historically, British cuisine has meant "unfussy dishes made with quality local ingredients, matched with simple sauces to accentuate flavour, rather than disguise it".{{citation |url=http://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/ |publisher=UKTV|title=British cuisine |access-date=23 May 2008 |archive-date=9 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190909211520/https://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/ |url-status=dead}} It has been "vilified as unimaginative and heavy", and traditionally been limited in its international recognition to the full breakfast and the Christmas dinner.{{Harvnb|Spencer|2003|pp=7–10}}. This is despite British cuisine having absorbed the culinary influences of those who have settled in Britain, resulting in hybrid dishes such as the British Asian Chicken tikka masala, hailed by some as "Britain's true national dish".{{citation |author=BBC E-Cyclopedia |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/e-cyclopedia/1285804.stm |title=Chicken tikka masala: Spice and easy does it |publisher=BBC News |access-date=28 September 2007 |date=20 April 2001 |archive-date=4 February 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090204161931/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/e-cyclopedia/1285804.stm |url-status=live}}

Celtic agriculture and animal breeding produced a wide variety of foodstuffs for Celts and Britons. The Anglo-Saxons developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques before the practice became common in Europe. The Norman conquest of England introduced exotic spices into Britain in the Middle Ages. The British Empire facilitated a knowledge of India's food tradition of "strong, penetrating spices and herbs". Food rationing policies, imposed by the British government during wartime periods of the 20th century, are said to have been the stimulus for British cuisine's poor international reputation.

British dishes include fish and chips, the Sunday roast, and bangers and mash. British cuisine has several national and regional varieties, including English, Scottish and Welsh cuisine, each of which has developed its own regional or local dishes, many of which are geographically indicated foods such as Cheddar cheese, Cheshire cheese, the Yorkshire pudding, Arbroath Smokie, Cornish pasty and Welsh cakes.

The British are the second largest per capita tea consumers in the world, consuming an average of {{convert|2.1|kg}} per person each year.{{citation |url=http://www.foodanddrinkeurope.com/news/ng.asp?id=17656-britons-have-less |title=Britons have less time for tea |publisher=foodanddrinkeurope.com |date=16 June 2003 |access-date=16 June 2003 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071215124721/http://www.foodanddrinkeurope.com/news/ng.asp?id=17656-britons-have-less |archive-date=15 December 2007}} British tea culture dates back to the 19th century, when India was part of the British Empire and British interests controlled tea production in the subcontinent.

{{Further|British English|British literature|Languages of the United Kingdom}}

There is no single British language, though English is by far the main language spoken by British citizens, being spoken monolingually by more than 70% of the UK population. English is therefore the de facto official language of the United Kingdom.{{Citation |url=http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookHomeInternal/139560/ |title=United Kingdom; Key Facts |author=Commonwealth Secretariat |access-date=27 May 2009 |publisher=thecommonwealth.org |archive-date=23 January 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120123200616/http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookHomeInternal/139560/ |url-status=live}} However, under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Irish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Manx and Scots languages are officially recognised as Regional or Minority languages by the UK Government.{{citation |author=Scottish Executive |url=http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCulture/gaelic/gaelic-english/17910/europeancharter |title=European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages |publisher=scotland.gov.uk |date=13 June 2006 |access-date=23 August 2007 |archive-date=12 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012182532/http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ArtsCulture/gaelic/gaelic-english/17910/europeancharter |url-status=dead}} Insular varieties of Norman are recognised languages of the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, although they are dying.{{Cite web |title=The Jersey Language |url=https://members.societe-jersiaise.org/sdllj/kitchen.html |access-date=6 January 2022 |website=members.societe-jersiaise.org |archive-date=26 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210926233709/http://members.societe-jersiaise.org/sdllj/kitchen.html |url-status=live}} Standard French is an official language of both bailiwicks.{{Cite web |title=Guernésiais and French to be made official languages |url=https://gsy.bailiwickexpress.com/gsy/news/states-take-steps-preserve-guernesias/ |access-date=6 January 2022 |website=Bailiwick Express |language=en |archive-date=6 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106233812/https://gsy.bailiwickexpress.com/gsy/news/states-take-steps-preserve-guernesias/ |url-status=live}}{{Cite journal |last=Hanson |first=Timothy |date=June 2005 |title=The Language of the Law: The Importance of French |url=https://www.jerseylaw.je/publications/jglr/PDF%20Documents/JLR0506_Hanson.pdf |journal=Jersey Law Review |access-date=6 January 2022 |archive-date=6 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106230756/https://www.jerseylaw.je/publications/jglr/PDF%20Documents/JLR0506_Hanson.pdf |url-status=live}}

As indigenous languages which continue to be spoken as a first language by native inhabitants, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic have a different legal status from other minority languages. In some parts of the UK, some of these languages are commonly spoken as a first language; in wider areas, their use in a bilingual context is sometimes supported or promoted by central or local government policy. For naturalisation purposes, a competence standard of English, Scottish Gaelic or Welsh is required to pass the life in the United Kingdom test.{{citation |url=http://lifeintheuktest.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/htmlsite/background_10.html |work=Life in the United Kingdom test |publisher=lifeintheuktest.gov.uk |author=UK Border Agency |author-link=UK Border Agency |title=Background to the test |access-date=28 May 2009 |archive-date=29 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729195023/https://www.gov.uk/life-in-the-uk-test |url-status=live}} However, English is used routinely, and although considered culturally important, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are much less used.

Throughout the United Kingdom there are distinctive spoken expressions and regional accents of English, which are seen to be symptomatic of a locality's culture and identity.{{harvnb|Hardill|Graham|Kofman|2001|p=139}}. An awareness and knowledge of accents in the United Kingdom can "place, within a few miles, the locality in which a man or woman has grown up".{{harvnb|Rose|1958|p=54}}.

{{main|British literature}}

File:Jk-rowling-crop.JPG is one of the world's best selling British authors. Her Harry Potter series of books have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide.{{cite web |url=http://www.hypable.com/harry-potter/book-history/ |title=Harry Potter – History of the Books • Hypable |publisher=Hypable.com |access-date=26 February 2014 |archive-date=5 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201005043413/https://www.hypable.com/harry-potter/book-history/ |url-status=live}}]]

British literature is "one of the leading literatures in the world".{{sfn|Broich|Bassnett|2001|p=27}} The overwhelming part is written in the English language, but there are also pieces of literature written in Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Cornish and Welsh.

Britain has a long history of famous and influential authors. It boasts some of the oldest pieces of literature in the Western world, such as the epic poem Beowulf, one of the oldest surviving written work in the English language.{{cite book |author=J. M. Cohen |title=A History of Western Literature: From Medieval Epic to Modern Poetry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qVM2fnZSA78C&pg=PA39 |access-date=29 June 2013 |year=2008 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |isbn=978-0-202-36641-8 |page=39}} Prior to the formation of British nationhood, famous authors who inhabited Great Britain include some of the world's most studied and praised writers. In England, the playwrights William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe defined England's Elizabethan period.{{cite book |author=John Wagner |title=Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World: Britain, Ireland, Europe and America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zjfwNlN1sWYC&pg=PA194 |year=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59761-9 |page=194}}

The British Romantic movement was one of the strongest and most recognisable in Europe. The poets William Blake, Robert Burns, Wordsworth and Coleridge were amongst the pioneers of Romanticism in literature.{{cite book |author=Christopher John Murray |title=Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8GS8DWMLRYEC&pg=PA116 |year=2013 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-135-45579-8 |page=116}} Other Romantic writers that followed these figure further enhanced the profile of Romanticism in Europe, such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.{{cite book |author=Mary Ellen Snodgrass |title=Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zEAcjezGec4C&pg=PA420 |year=2009 |publisher=Infobase Publishing |isbn=978-1-4381-0911-4 |page=420}} Later periods like the Victorian Era saw a further flourishing of British writing, including Charles Dickens and William Thackeray.{{cite book |author=Bhim S. Dahiya |author-link=Bhim S. Dahiya |title=Major Trends in English Literature ( 1837–1945 ) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DCM8oKPs_4oC&pg=PA31 |year=1992 |publisher=Academic Foundation |isbn=978-81-7188-039-3 |page=31}}

Women's literature in Britain has had a long and often troubled history, with many female writers producing work under a pen name, such as George Eliot.{{cite book |author=George Levine |author-link=George Levine |title=The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wWafuNhBP7oC&pg=PA20 |year=2001 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-66473-8 |page=20}} Other great female novelists that have contributed to world literature are Frances Burney, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne.{{cite book |author1=B. A. Sheen |author2=Matthew Kozlowski |title=English Writers: A Bibliography With Vignettes |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h0ciAGWDWaYC&pg=PA110 |year=2004 |publisher=Nova Publishers |isbn=978-1-59033-260-3 |page=110}}

Non-fiction has also played an important role in the history of British letters, with the first dictionary of the English language being produced and compiled by Samuel Johnson, a graduate of Oxford University and a London resident.{{cite book |author=Allen Reddick |title=The Making of Johnson's Dictionary 1746–1773 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cCccP0mNlZcC&pg=PA2 |year=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-56838-8 |page=2}}

{{Further|Music of the United Kingdom|Radio in the United Kingdom|Television in the United Kingdom}}

File:Proms in the Park 2.jpg is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts held across the United Kingdom. The Last Night of the Proms celebrates British tradition with patriotic classical music of the United Kingdom.{{citation |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2008/lastnight/ |title=The Last Night |publisher=BBC |year=2008 |access-date=22 October 2008 |archive-date=13 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121113065621/http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2008/lastnight/ |url-status=dead}}{{citation |url=http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2446128.0.last_night_of_the_proms_brought_to_a_rousing_finale_with_patriotic_splendour.php |publisher=sundayherald.com |title=Last Night of the Proms brought to a rousing finale with patriotic splendour |access-date=22 October 2008 |first=James |last=Hamilton |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080918022406/http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2446128.0.last_night_of_the_proms_brought_to_a_rousing_finale_with_patriotic_splendour.php |archive-date=18 September 2008}}]]

Although cinema, theatre, dance and live music are popular, the favourite pastime of the British is watching television.{{harvnb|Gallagher|2006|p=36}}. Public broadcast television in the United Kingdom began in 1936, with the launch of the BBC Television Service (now BBC One). In the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, one must have a television licence to legally receive any broadcast television service, from any source. This includes the commercial channels, cable and satellite transmissions, and the Internet. Revenue generated from the television licence is used to provide radio, television and Internet content for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Welsh language television programmes for S4C. The BBC, the common abbreviation of the British Broadcasting Corporation,{{citation |title=About the BBC |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/ |access-date=30 December 2008 |archive-date=19 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100219042255/http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/ |url-status=live}} is the world's largest broadcaster.{{citation |title=About the BBC – What is the BBC |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/purpose/what.shtml |access-date=14 June 2008 |publisher=BBC |archive-date=16 January 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100116202334/http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/purpose/what.shtml |url-status=dead}} Unlike other broadcasters in the UK, it is a public service based, quasi-autonomous, statutory corporation run by the BBC Trust. Free-to-air terrestrial television channels available on a national basis are BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 (S4C in Wales), and Five.

100 Greatest British Television Programmes was a list compiled by the British Film Institute in 2000, chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened.{{citation |url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100/index.html |title=The bfi TV 100 |access-date=2 June 2009 |publisher=British Film Institute |date=4 September 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090524092249/http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100/index.html |archive-date=24 May 2009}} Topping the list was Fawlty Towers, a British sitcom set in a fictional Torquay hotel starring John Cleese.

"British musical tradition is essentially vocal",{{sfn|Cosman|1957|p=22}} dominated by the music of England and Germanic culture,{{harvnb|Harewood|1962|p=224}}. most greatly influenced by hymns and Anglican church music.{{harvnb|Crowest|1896|pp=172–174}}. However, the specific, traditional music of Wales and music of Scotland is distinct, and of the Celtic musical tradition.{{harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|p=253}} In the United Kingdom, more people attend live music performances than football matches.{{harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|p=252}} British rock was born in the mid-20th century out of the influence of rock and roll and rhythm and blues from the United States. Major early exports were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Kinks.{{harvnb|Else et al. 2007|p=74}}. Together with other bands from the United Kingdom, these constituted the British Invasion, a popularisation of British pop and rock music in the United States. Into the 1970s heavy metal, new wave, and 2 tone. Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands reviving British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s. Leading exponents of Britpop were Blur, Oasis and Pulp.{{harvnb|Bartsch-Parker|O'Maolalaigh|Burger|1999|p=119}} Also popularised in the United Kingdom during the 1990s were several domestically produced varieties of electronic dance music; acid house, UK hard house, jungle, UK garage which in turn have influenced grime and British hip hop in the 2000s. The BRIT Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual awards for both international and British popular music.

{{Further|Religion in the United Kingdom}}

File:Westminster abbey west.jpg is used for the coronation of the British monarchs, who are also made the head of the Church of England.]]

Historically, Christianity has been the most influential and important religion in Britain, and it remains the declared faith of the majority of the British people.{{Harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|p=234}} The influence of Christianity on British culture has been "widespread, extending beyond the spheres of prayer and worship. Churches and cathedrals make a significant contribution to the architectural landscape of the nation's cities and towns" whilst "many schools and hospitals were founded by men and women who were strongly influenced by Christian motives". Throughout the United Kingdom, Easter and Christmas, the "two most important events in the Christian calendar", are recognised as public holidays.

Christianity remains the major religion of the population of the United Kingdom in the 21st century, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and then Judaism in terms of numbers of adherents. The 2007 Tearfund Survey revealed 53% identified themselves as Christian, which was similar to the 2004 British Social Attitudes Survey,{{citation |url=http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/News/Final%20churchgoing%20report.pdf |title=Tearfund Survey 2007 |access-date=5 May 2007 |year=2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070614005402/http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/News/Final%20churchgoing%20report.pdf |archive-date=14 June 2007}}{{Citation |publication-date=20 February 2006 |year=2004 |title=British Social Attitudes Survey |publisher=data-archive.ac.uk |author=National Centre for Social Research |url=http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5329 |access-date=25 February 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071112165559/http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5329 |archive-date=12 November 2007}} and to the 2001 United Kingdom census in which 71.6% said that Christianity was their religion,{{citation |url=http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=293 |title=UK Census 2001 |access-date=22 April 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070312034628/http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=293 |archive-date=12 March 2007}} However, the Tearfund Survey showed only one in ten Britons attend church weekly.{{citation |url=http://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/pr-Tearfund-Prayer-in-the-UK-report_1.pdf |publisher=methodist.org.uk |title=Prayer in the UK |date=11 November 2007 |access-date=19 May 2009 |author=Tearfund |author-link=Tearfund |archive-date=23 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200923174242/https://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/pr-Tearfund-Prayer-in-the-UK-report_1.pdf |url-status=live}} Secularism was advanced in Britain during the Age of Enlightenment, and modern British organisations such as the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society offer the opportunity for their members to "debate and explore the moral and philosophical issues in a non-religious setting".

The Treaty of Union that led to the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain ensured that there would be a Protestant succession as well as a link between church and state that still remains. The Church of England (Anglican) is legally recognised as the established church, and so retains representation in the Parliament of the United Kingdom through the Lords Spiritual, whilst the British monarch is a member of the church as well as its Supreme Governor.{{Harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|p=235}}{{citation |url=http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/history/ |title=The History of the Church of England |author=Church of England |access-date=23 November 2008 |publisher=cofe.anglican.org |archive-date=21 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100221212004/http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/history |url-status=dead}} The Church of England also retains the right to draft legislative measures (related to religious administration) through the General Synod that can then be passed into law by Parliament. The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is the second largest Christian church with around five million members, mainly in England.{{citation |url=http://www.catholicchurch.org.uk/Catholic-Church/The-Church-in-England-and-Wales |title=The Church in England and Wales |publisher=catholic-ew.org.uk |access-date=27 November 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100617043450/http://www.catholicchurch.org.uk/Catholic-Church/The-Church-in-England-and-Wales |archive-date=17 June 2010}} There are also growing Orthodox, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, with Pentecostal churches in England now third after the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in terms of church attendance.{{citation |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article757934.ece |title='Fringe' Church winning the believers |work=The Times |date=19 December 2006 |access-date=26 May 2009 |first=Ruth |last=Gledhill |location=London |archive-date=14 August 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110814125609/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article757934.ece |url-status=dead}} Other large Christian groups include Methodists and Baptists.

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland (known informally as The Kirk), is recognised as the national church of Scotland and not subject to state control. The British monarch is an ordinary member and is required to swear an oath to "defend the security" of the church upon his or her accession. The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is Scotland's second largest Christian church, with followers representing a sixth of the population of Scotland.{{citation |url=http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20757/53570 |title=Analysis of Religion in the 2001 Census: Summary Report |publisher=scotland.gov.uk |access-date=6 December 2008 |year=2005 |archive-date=7 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607092428/http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20757/53570 |url-status=live}} The Scottish Episcopal Church, which is part of the Anglican Communion, dates from the final establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland in 1690, when it split from the Church of Scotland over matters of theology and ritual. Further splits in the Church of Scotland, especially in the 19th century, led to the creation of other Presbyterian churches in Scotland, including the Free Church of Scotland. In the 1920s, the Church in Wales became independent from the Church of England and became 'disestablished' but remains in the Anglican Communion. Methodism and other Protestant churches have had a major presence in Wales. The main religious groups in Northern Ireland are organised on an all-Ireland basis. Though collectively Protestants constitute the overall majority,{{citation |url=http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=980 |title=Communities in Northern Ireland |publisher=statistics.gov.uk |access-date=29 October 2008 |author=Office for National Statistics |author-link=Office for National Statistics |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080315171823/http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=980 |archive-date=15 March 2008}} the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland is the largest single church. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, closely linked to the Church of Scotland in terms of theology and history, is the second largest church followed by the Church of Ireland (Anglican) which was disestablished in the 19th century.

{{Further|Sport in the United Kingdom}}

{{See also|Home Nations}}

File:GB Gold WOC2008 Relay.jpg]]

Sport is an important element of British culture, and is one of the most popular leisure activities of Britons. Within the United Kingdom, nearly half of all adults partake in one or more sporting activity each week.{{Harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|p=282}} Some of the major sports in the United Kingdom "were invented by the British",{{Harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|p=293}} including football, rugby union, rugby league and cricket, and "exported various other games" including tennis, badminton, boxing, golf, snooker and squash.{{Harvnb|O'Meara|2007|pp=164–166}}.

In most sports, separate organisations, teams and clubs represent the individual countries of the United Kingdom at international level, though in some sports, like rugby union, an all-Ireland team represents both Northern Ireland and Ireland (Republic of), and the British and Irish Lions represent Ireland and Britain as a whole. The UK is represented by a single team at the Olympic Games and at the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Great Britain team won 65 medals: 29 gold (the most since the 1908 Summer Olympics), 17 silver and 19 bronze, ranking them 3rd.See the articles entitled All-time Olympic Games medal table and Great Britain at the Olympics. In total, sportsmen and women from the UK "hold over 50 world titles in a variety of sports, such as professional boxing, rowing, snooker, squash and motorcycle sports".

A 2006 poll found that association football was the most popular sport in the UK.{{citation |url=http://www.ipsospublicaffairs.co.uk/content/crowded-summer-of-sport.ashx |title=Crowded Summer of Sport |publisher=Ipsos Mori |access-date=17 October 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090618163751/http://www.ipsospublicaffairs.co.uk/content/crowded-summer-of-sport.ashx |archive-date=18 June 2009}} In England 320 football clubs are affiliated to The Football Association (FA) and more than 42,000 clubs to regional or district associations. The FA, founded in 1863, and the Football League, founded in 1888, were both the first of their kind in the world. In Scotland there are 78 full and associate clubs and nearly 6,000 registered clubs under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Football Association.{{Harvnb|Office for National Statistics|2000|pp=297–298}} Two Welsh clubs play in England's Football League and others at non-league level, whilst the Welsh Football League contains 20 semi-professional clubs. In Northern Ireland, 12 semi-professional clubs play in the IFA Premiership, the second oldest league in the world.

Recreational fishing, particularly angling, is one of the most popular participation activities in the United Kingdom, with an estimated 3–4 million anglers in the country.{{citation |url=http://www.safewatersports.co.uk/sport-fishing.html |publisher=safewatersports.co.uk |access-date=3 June 2009 |title=Sport Fishing |archive-date=24 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201024032647/http://www.safewatersports.co.uk/sport-fishing.html |url-status=live}} The most widely practised form of angling in England and Wales is for coarse fish while in Scotland angling is usually for salmon and trout.

{{Further|Architecture of the United Kingdom|Art of the United Kingdom}}

For centuries, artists and architects in Britain were overwhelmingly influenced by Western art history. Amongst the first visual artists credited for developing a distinctly British aesthetic and artistic style is William Hogarth.{{harvnb|Else et al. 2007|p=78}}. The experience of military, political and economic power from the rise of the British Empire, led to a very specific drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility in the United Kingdom. Britons used their art "to illustrate their knowledge and command of the natural world", whilst the permanent settlers in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa "embarked upon a search for distinctive artistic expression appropriate to their sense of national identity". The empire has been "at the centre, rather than in the margins, of the history of British art", and imperial British visual arts have been fundamental to the construction, celebration and expression of Britishness.{{sfn|Barringer et al. 2007|p=3}}

British attitudes to modern art were "polarised" at the end of the 19th century.{{harvnb|Whittle et al. 2005|p=5}}. Modernist movements were both cherished and vilified by artists and critics; Impressionism was initially regarded by "many conservative critics" as a "subversive foreign influence", but became "fully assimilated" into British art during the early-20th century. Representational art was described by Herbert Read during the interwar period as "necessarily... revolutionary", and was studied and produced to such an extent that by the 1950s, Classicism was effectively void in British visual art. Post-modern, contemporary British art, particularly that of the Young British Artists, has been pre-occupied with postcolonialism, and "characterised by a fundamental concern with material culture ... perceived as a post-imperial cultural anxiety".{{sfn|Barringer et al. 2007|p=17}}

Architecture of the United Kingdom is diverse; most influential developments have usually taken place in England, but Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have at various times played leading roles in architectural history.{{citation |url=http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=781533633 |title=British Architecture > page 1 |work=Encarta |publisher=MSN |access-date=18 June 2009 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/5kwQNgfPK?url=http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=781533633 |archive-date=31 October 2009 |url-status=dead}} Although there are prehistoric and classical structures in the British Isles, British architecture effectively begins with the first Anglo-Saxon Christian churches, built soon after Augustine of Canterbury arrived in Great Britain in 597. Norman architecture was built on a vast scale from the 11th century onwards in the form of castles and churches to help impose Norman authority upon their dominion. English Gothic architecture, which flourished from 1180 until {{circa|1520}}, was initially imported from France, but quickly developed its own unique qualities. Secular medieval architecture throughout Britain has left a legacy of large stone castles, with the "finest examples" being found lining both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border, dating from the Wars of Scottish Independence of the 14th century.{{citation |url=http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=781533633&pn=2 |title=British Architecture > page 2 |work=Encarta |publisher=MSN |access-date=18 June 2009 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20091031182319/http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=781533633&pn=2 |archive-date=31 October 2009 |url-status=dead}} The invention of gunpowder and canons made castles redundant, and the English Renaissance which followed facilitated the development of new artistic styles for domestic architecture: Tudor style, English Baroque, The Queen Anne Style and Palladian. Georgian and Neoclassical architecture advanced after the Scottish Enlightenment. Outside the United Kingdom, the influence of British architecture is particularly strong in South India,{{harvnb|Singh et al. 2007|p=69}}. the result of British rule in India in the 19th century. The Indian cities of Bangalore, Chennai, and Mumbai each have courts, hotels and train stations designed in British architectural styles of Gothic Revivalism and neoclassicism.

{{Further|Politics of the United Kingdom}}

File:Palace of Westminster, London - Feb 2007.jpg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which houses the Parliament of the United Kingdom.]]

British political culture is tied closely with its institutions and civics, and a "subtle fusion of new and old values".{{harvnb|Burch|Moran|1987|p=69}}. The principle of constitutional monarchy, with its notions of stable parliamentary government and political liberalism, "have come to dominate British culture".{{Harvnb|Goldman|1993|p=87}}. These views have been reinforced by Sir Bernard Crick who said:{{Harvnb|Bradley|2007|p=34}}. {{blockquote|To be British seems to us to mean that we respect the laws, the elected parliamentary and democratic political structures, traditional values of mutual tolerance, respect for equal rights and mutual concern; that we give our allegiance to the state (as commonly symbolised by the Crown) in return for its protection.}}

British political institutions include the Westminster system, the Commonwealth of Nations and Privy Council of the United Kingdom.{{harvnb|Harrison|1996|p=380}}. Although the Privy Council is primarily a British institution, officials from other Commonwealth realms are also appointed to the body.{{Harvnb|Gay|Rees|2005|p=3}}. The most notable continuing instance is the Prime Minister of New Zealand, its senior politicians, Chief Justice and Court of Appeal judges are conventionally made Privy Counsellors,{{citation |url=http://www.dpmc.govt.nz/honours/overview/honourable_privycouncil.html |title=The title 'The Honourable' and the Privy Council |work=New Zealand Honours |publisher=Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet |access-date=3 August 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080703221643/http://www.dpmc.govt.nz/honours/overview/honourable_privycouncil.html |archive-date=3 July 2008}} as the prime ministers and chief justices of Canada and Australia used to be.{{citation |url=https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/chamber/362/orderpaper/ord-e |title=Order Paper and Notice Paper, 20 October 2000 |publisher=Senate of Canada |year=2000 |access-date=12 September 2008 |archive-date=27 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727053729/https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/chamber/362/orderpaper/ord-e |url-status=live}}{{citation |url=http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foa-com-judges.htm |title=Commonwealth Judges |work=Forms of address |publisher=Ministry of Justice |year=2008 |access-date=12 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080829153353/http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foa-com-judges.htm |archive-date=29 August 2008}} Prime Ministers of Commonwealth countries which retain the British monarch as their sovereign continue to be sworn as Privy Counsellors.

Universal suffrage for all males over 21 was granted in 1918 and for adult women in 1928 after the Suffragette movement.{{harvnb|Power|Rae|2006|p=22}}. Politics in the United Kingdom is multi-party, with three dominant political parties: the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. The social structure of Britain, specifically social class, has "long been pre-eminent among the factors used to explain party allegiance", and still persists as "the dominant basis" of party political allegiance for Britons.{{harvnb|Dearlove|Saunders|2000|p=120}}. The Conservative Party is descended from the historic Tory Party (founded in England in 1678), and is a centre-right conservative political party,{{citation |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/382412.stm |publisher=BBC News |title=Tories secure centre-right deal |date=30 June 1999 |access-date=2 January 2010 |archive-date=29 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729204006/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/382412.stm |url-status=live}} which traditionally draws support from the middle classes.{{harvnb|Dearlove|Saunders|2000|p=90}}. The Labour Party (founded by Scotsman Keir Hardie) grew out of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century, and continues to describe itself as a "democratic socialist party".{{citation |url=http://www.labour.org.uk/labour_policies |title=Labour's policies |access-date=21 July 2007 |publisher=labour.org.uk |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711081023/http://www.labour.org.uk/labour_policies |archive-date=11 July 2007}} Labour states that it stands for the representation of the low-paid working class, who have traditionally been its members and voters. The Liberal Democrats are a liberal political party, and third largest in the UK in terms of MPs elected. It is descended from the Liberal Party, a major ruling party of 19th-century UK through to the First World War, when it was supplanted by the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrats have historically drawn support from wide and "differing social backgrounds".{{harvnb|Dearlove|Saunders|2000|p=102}}. The Scottish National Party is the fourth largest political party in the UK in terms of representation in parliament, having won 9 out of 57 Scottish seats at the 2024 General Election. {{cite web |url=https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/

|title=General Election 2024: full results and analysis

|website=House of Commons Library

|publisher=UK Parliament

|date=8 July 2024

|access-date=19 April 2025}} There are over 300 other, smaller political parties in the United Kingdom registered to the Electoral Commission.{{citation | url = http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?ec={ts%20%272009-05-14%2000%3A33%3A49%27} | title = Register of political parties | date = 14 May 2009 | publisher = electoralcommission.org.uk | access-date = 13 May 2009 | author = Electoral Commission | author-link = Electoral Commission (United Kingdom) | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090618164406/http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?ec=%7Bts%20%272009-05-14%2000%3A33%3A49%27%7D | archive-date = 18 June 2009 | url-status = dead }}{{citation | url = http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?ec={ts%20%272009-05-14%2000%3A33%3A15%27} | title = Register of political parties (Northern Ireland) | date = 14 May 2009 | publisher = electoralcommission.org.uk | access-date = 13 May 2009 | author = Electoral Commission | author-link = Electoral Commission (United Kingdom) | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090618163452/http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?ec=%7Bts%20%272009-05-14%2000%3A33%3A15%27%7D | archive-date = 18 June 2009 | url-status = dead }}

{{See also|British nationality law|Ethnic groups in the United Kingdom|United Kingdom Census 2001 Ethnic Codes}}

According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, there are broadly two interpretations of British identity, with ethnic and civic dimensions:

{{blockquote|The first group, which we term the ethnic dimension, contained the items about birthplace, ancestry, living in Britain, and sharing British customs and traditions. The second, or civic group, contained the items about feeling British, respecting laws and institutions, speaking English, and having British citizenship.{{harvnb|Park|2005|p=153}}.}}

Of the two perspectives of British identity, the civic definition has become "the dominant idea ... by far", and in this capacity, Britishness is sometimes considered an institutional or overarching state identity. This has been used to explain why first-, second- and third-generation immigrants are more likely to describe themselves as British, rather than English, because it is an "institutional, inclusive" identity, that can be acquired through naturalisation and British nationality law;{{harvnb|Ichijo|Spohn|2005|p=27}} the vast majority of people in the United Kingdom who are from an ethnic minority feel British.{{citation |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/ethnic-minorities-feel-strong-sense-of-identity-with-britain-report-reveals-578503.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515193209/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/ethnic-minorities-feel-strong-sense-of-identity-with-britain-report-reveals-578503.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=15 May 2011 |work=The Independent |title=Ethnic minorities feel strong sense of identity with Britain, report reveals |first=Maxine |last=Frith |access-date=7 July 2009 |date=8 January 2004 |location=London}}

However, this attitude is more common in England than in Scotland or Wales; "white English people perceived themselves as English first and as British second, and most people from ethnic minority backgrounds perceived themselves as British, but none identified as English, a label they associated exclusively with white people". Contrawise, in Scotland and Wales, White British and ethnic minority people both identified more strongly with Scotland and Wales than with Britain.{{harvnb|Commission for Racial Equality|2005|p=35}}

Studies and surveys have "reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis". The Commission for Racial Equality found that with respect to notions of nationality in Britain, "the most basic, objective and uncontroversial conception of the British people is one that includes the English, the Scots and the Welsh". However, "English participants tended to think of themselves as indistinguishably English or British, while both Scottish and Welsh participants identified themselves much more readily as Scottish or Welsh than as British".

Some persons opted "to combine both identities" as "they felt Scottish or Welsh, but held a British passport and were therefore British", whereas others saw themselves as exclusively Scottish or exclusively Welsh and "felt quite divorced from the British, whom they saw as the English".{{harvnb|Commission for Racial Equality|2005|p=22}} Commentators have described this latter phenomenon as "nationalism", a rejection of British identity because some Scots and Welsh interpret it as "cultural imperialism imposed" upon the United Kingdom by "English ruling elites",{{Harvnb|Ward|2004|pp=2–3}}. or else a response to a historical misappropriation of equating the word "English" with "British",{{citation |url=http://assets.cambridge.org/97805217/71887/sample/9780521771887ws.pdf |title=The Making of English National Identity |publisher=assets.cambridge.org |first=Krishan |last=Kumar |year=2003 |access-date=5 June 2009 |archive-date=6 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606234823/http://assets.cambridge.org/97805217/71887/sample/9780521771887ws.pdf |url-status=live}} which has "brought about a desire among Scots, Welsh and Irish to learn more about their heritage and distinguish themselves from the broader British identity".{{citation |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/255337.stm |publisher=BBC News |date=14 January 1999 |access-date=5 June 2009 |title=The English: Europe's lost tribe |archive-date=29 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729161222/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/255337.stm |url-status=live}}

• English people
• Scottish people
• Welsh people
• People of Northern Ireland
• Anti-British sentiment
• Lists of British people
• 100 Greatest Britons

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{{refend}}

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{{British people}}

{{British Isles}}

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Category:Society of the United Kingdom

Category:Ethnic groups in the United Kingdom