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The English are an ethnic group and nation primarily associated with England and the English language. They are native to the country of England. The largest single population of English people reside in England, the largest constituent country of both Great Britain and the United Kingdom.[1]
The English as an ethnic group trace their heritage largely to the Anglo-Saxons,[2] the Romano-Britons,[3] the Danish-Vikings[4] that formed the Danelaw during the time of Alfred the Great, and the Normans.[5][6] The name of England derives from the Angles.
Romano-British is a collective term used to describe the native Brythonic-speaking Celtic population that lived in the area of Britain under Roman rule, known as Britannia, during the 1st-5th C. AD. It is generally believed they are among the descendants of the first wave of hunter-gatherers to colonise Britain after the end of the Ice Age. It was until recently, generally believed that a mass invasion by various Anglo-Saxon tribes largely displaced the native British populations, but recent genetic surveys have contradicted this view somewhat. [7] Some archaeologists see only limited evidence of immigration in the record. Francis Pryor states "I also can't see any evidence for bona fide mass migrations after the Neolithic."[8] Archaeological discoveries suggest that North Africans may have had a very limited presence in those parts of Britain that were to become England at the time of the Roman Empire.[9][10]
Anglo-Saxon is a collective term usually used to describe the population living in Anglo-Saxon held territory in the south and east of the island of Great Britain (modern England) from around the mid-5th century AD to the Norman conquest of 1066.[11] The Anglo-Saxons are believed to originate from Germanic tribes that migrated from northern Germany in the 5th C. AD. It has been suggested that Germanic immigrants and Germanic auxiliary troops in the Roman army may have settled in Britain long before the departure of the Roman legions in AD 410; indeed Germanic auxiliary troops may even have been involved in the Roman invasion of the island in the 1st century A.D.[12] This same process occurred in many other provinces along the Roman border with the Germani. If Germanic garrison soldiers had retained their language and culture, this may have facilitated any later migration of Germanic peoples. [12]
By the time of the first Viking attacks around 800 AD, the numerous petty kingdoms in south and east Britain had coalesced into what is commonly referred to as the Heptarchy. The most powerful of these at this time were Mercia and Wessex. The increasing pressure of Viking attack led to more cooperation between Wessex and Mercia; most notably, this period saw the rise of Alfred the Great, the only English born King of England to be titled 'the great'.
Alfred defeated a Danish army at the Battle of Edington in 878, coming to terms with the Danish leader Guthrum. After the Battle of Edington, Alfred negotiated the Danelaw with the Danes, resulting in a settlement of Danish-Vikings in northern and eastern England.[13] These groups had a noticeable impact on the English language; for example, the modern meaning of the word dream is of Old Norse origin.[14] Additionally place names that include thwaite and by are Scandinavian in origin.[15]
Following Alfred's victory, his son Edward the Elder, daughter Æthelflæd lady of the Mercians and grandson Athelstan gained significant military success, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England. The nation of England was initially formed in 937 by Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh.[16][17] Therefore Wessex had grown from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw.[18] Over the following century and a half England was for the most part a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after 959. There were both English and Danish kings during this period, including Aethelraed Unraed (sometimes referred to as Ethelred the Unready) and Canute the Great.
The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule to an end. The new Norman elite almost universally replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders. The Anglo-Saxons existed as a subject class for about 300 years with the aristocracy speaking Anglo-Norman until a full assimilation was made by the time of Chaucer, in the late 1300s. By this time a large number of French words had been added to the English language. Although few Normans actually settled in England, they made great impacts on the culture, government, and law of England.[18] However, most of the English nobility and upper classes are descended from the Normans.
Since Oliver Cromwell's resettlement of the Jews in 1656, there has been a small but continuous Jewish community in England, which has produced many notable people, including the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.[19]
Irish immigration has also added a significant contribution to the English populace over the past few centuries due to sustained and sometimes mass exodus emigration from Ireland. Current estimates place around 6 million people in the UK with at least one grandparent born in the Irish Republic.[20] Liverpool, Manchester, and London are cities with significant Irish elements present.
There had also been a very small black presence in England since at least the 16th century, due to the slave trade and an Indian presence since the mid 19th century because of the British Raj.[21] Since 1945, this proportion has grown, as immigration from the British Empire and subsequent Commonwealth of Nations was encouraged due to labour shortages during post-war rebuilding.[22]
English emigrant and descent communities are found across the world, and in some places, settled in significant numbers. Countries with significant numbers of people of English ancestry or ethnic origin/ethnicity include the United States (particularly Utah, New England, New York, California, Virginia and the Southern States), Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. In the last two decades there has been increasingly larger numbers of English people permanently or semi permanently living in Spain and France, drawn there by the climate and cheaper house prices. [23] [24] [25]
The English have played a significant role in the development of the arts and sciences. Prominent individuals have included the scientists and inventors Isaac Newton, Francis Crick, Abraham Darby, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin and Frank Whittle; the poet and playwright William Shakespeare, the novelists Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and George Orwell , the composers Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten, and the explorer James Cook. English philosophers include Francis Bacon, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell.
English common law has also formed a foundation for legal systems throughout the world.[26]
The rules for many modern sports including Football, Rugby, Cricket and Tennis were first formulated in England.
English people traditionally speak the English language, a member of the West Germanic language family. The modern English language evolved from Old English, with lexical influence from Norman-French, Latin, and Old Norse. In addition, Welsh is also used by a number of speakers across England, predominantly on the border with Wales and in the London Area.[27] A third language traditionally spoken is Cornish, a Celtic language originating in Cornwall, currently spoken by about 3,500 people. A fourth language also of the Brythonic Celtic group, Cumbric, used to be spoken in Cumbria in northwest England, but it died out in the 11th century although traces of it can still be found in the Cumbrian dialect. Because of the 19th century geopolitical dominance of the British Empire and the post-World War II hegemony of the United States, English has become the international language of business, science, communications, aviation, and diplomacy. English is the native language of roughly 350 million people worldwide, with another 1.5 billion people who speak it as a second language.
Ever since the break with the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, the English have predominantly been members of the Church of England, a branch of the Anglican Communion, a form of Christianity with elements of Protestantism and Catholicism. The Book of Common Prayer is the foundational prayer book of the Church of England and replaced the various Latin rites of the Roman Catholic Church.
Perhaps the moment when the Protestant identity of England began to be questioned most radically was during the ritualist controversies of the nineteenth century . Today, most English people practising organized religion are affiliated to the Church of England or other Christian denominations such as Roman Catholicism and Methodism (itself originally a movement within the Anglican Church). In the 2001 Census, a little over 37 million people in England and Wales professed themselves to be Christian. Jewish immigration since the seventeenth century means that there is an integrated Jewish English population, mainly in urban areas. 252,000 Jews were recorded in England & Wales in the 2001 Census; however this represents a decline of about 50% over the previous 50 years, caused by emigration and intermarriage, and the long-term future of the community is a matter of some concern to community leaders. The gradual integration of migrants from India and Pakistan since the 1950s means that a large number of English people practise Islam (818,000), Hinduism (467,000), or Sikhism (301,000). The 2001 census also revealed that about seven million people, or 15% of English people, claim no religion.
There are many sports codified by the English, which then spread worldwide due to trading and the British Empire, including football, cricket, croquet, badminton, rugby union, rugby league, table tennis and lawn tennis.
England, like the other nations of the United Kingdom, competes as a separate nation in some international sporting events. The English football, cricket (the England Cricket team represents England and Wales)[28] and rugby union teams have contributed to an increasing sense of English identity. Supporters are more likely to carry the St George's Cross whereas twenty years ago the British Union Flag would have been the more prominent.[29]
The English flag is a red cross on a white background, commonly called the Saint George's Cross, it was adopted after the Crusades. Saint George, famed as a dragon-slayer, is also the patron saint of England. The three golden lions or leopards on a red background was the banner of the kings of England derived from their status as Duke of Normandy and is now used to represent the English national football team and the English national cricket team. The Tudor rose and the English oak are also English symbols.
England has no official anthem; however, the United Kingdom's "God Save the Queen" is widely regarded as England's unofficial national anthem. However, other songs are sometimes used, including "Land of Hope and Glory" (used as England's anthem in the Commonwealth Games), "Jerusalem", "Rule, Britannia", and "I Vow to Thee, My Country." Of these, only Jerusalem specifically mentions England.
Wales was annexed by England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542, which incorporated Wales into the English state. In 1707 England formed a union with Scotland by the passage of the Acts of Union 1707 in both the Scottish and English parliaments, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. This was replaced again by the Act of Union 1800, which merged the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Most of Ireland left the United Kingdom in 1922 to form the Irish Free State, and the remainder became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.[30] A new British identity began and was subsequently developed when James I expressed the desire to be known as the monarch of Britain (he was James I of England and James VI of Scotland).[31] The English, along with the other peoples of the Britain found their old identities succeeded in favour of a new British identity.[32]
The late 1990s saw the beginning of a gradual renaissance of English national identity, spurred by devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Some English people now question what it is to be English and its relationship with being British, and are calling for the creation of a devolved English Parliament, claiming that there is now a discriminative democratic deficit, known as the West Lothian question, against people living in England.[33]