The 2001 UK Census recorded 158,434 people born in the United States.[1] According to the 2011 UK Census, there were 173,470 US-born residents in England, 3,715 in Wales,[2] 15,919 in Scotland,[3] and 4,251 in Northern Ireland.[4] The Office for National Statistics estimates that 197,000 US-born immigrants were resident in the UK in 2013.[5] In a 2020 House of Commons research briefing on immigrants working in the National Health Service out of 1.28 million members of staff, 1,380 declared that they were American.[6]
The largest single local cluster of Americans in the UK recorded by the 2001 UK Census was in Mildenhall in North-West Suffolk—the site of RAF Mildenhall and nearby RAF Lakenheath. This is because of the legacy of the Cold War and NATO cooperation. 17.28% of Mildenhall's population were born in the United States. In London, the majority of Americans are businesspeople and their families which ties in with the strong economic relations between the City of London and New York City or Washington, D.C.Chelsea (where 6.53% of residents were born in the US in 2001) and Kensington (5.81%) have large American communities.[7]
Prior to the end of the Cold War, the highest proportion of Americans resident in the United Kingdom per head of population was centred on the Scottish seaside town of Dunoon, Argyll and Bute, the former site of the Holy LochUS Navy base. At its height in the early 1990s, around one quarter of Dunoon's population was American.[8]
Some Americans in the UK are older, ex-servicemen who returned to Britain after being based in the UK during World War II.[7]
Henry James, considered one of the greatest novelists in the English language, was born to a Boston Brahmin family and moved to London in 1869. Aside from brief periods spent on the Continent and two short trips back to the US, James spent the rest of his life in England. (See Lamb House). He was naturalized as a British subject in the final year of his life.
Zoë Wanamaker is a US-born British actress of Jewish-Ukrainian ancestry,[10]Louis Theroux is the son of American writer Paul Theroux,[11] whilst Mika has a Lebanese mother and an American father born in Jerusalem.[12]
YouTuber Evan Edinger who does vlogs about the comparisons between the UK and the United States since moving to the UK in 2012, gained British citizenship in June 2021.[16]
African American immigration to the UK began as early as the late-eighteenth century[17] after American slaves failed in their attempt to defend the British Crown in the American Revolution. The Revolution began in the thirteen American colonies and United States in the late-1770s. The British promised freedom to any slave or rebel who fought the Americans on their behalf.[18] African Americans made up over 20% of the American population at the time, which was the second-largest ethnic group in British North America only after the English[19] and as many as 30,000 slaves escaped to British lines.[20] The largest regiment was the Black Pioneers who followed troops under Sir General Henry Clinton.[21] Working as soldiers, labourers, pilots, cooks, and musicians, they were a major part of the unsuccessful British war effort. African Americans who fought against the British were known as Black Patriots (modern day African Americans in the US), but rather if they were fighting for the Crown or American Independence both were mostly doing it in return for promises of freedom from enslavement or indentured servitude.[22]
The British-American Commission identified the Black people who had joined the British before the surrender, and issued "certificates of freedom" signed by General Birch or General Musgrave. Those who chose to emigrate were evacuated by ship.[17] The fallout of the Revolution resulted in an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Black Americans scattering across the Atlantic world, profoundly affecting the development of Nova Scotia, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and the African nation of Sierra Leone as prominent leaders in the emerging freed black communities.[22][23][24] To make sure no one attempted to leave who did not have a certificate of freedom, the name of any Black person on board a vessel, whether slave, indentured servant, or free, was recorded, along with the details of enslavement, escape, and military service, in a document called the Book of Negroes.[17] Between 400 and 1,000 African Americans emigrated to London and were later given the title of Black Loyalist for their service in the British Armed forces and formed the core of the early Black British community.[22][24]
The African American singer Edwin Starr, moved to the UK in the 1970s, and lived there until his death in 2003.[25]
The British mixed-raced politician and noted former MP Oona King is the daughter of the African-American civil rights academic Preston King.
Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex since her marriage to Prince Harry, kept her American citizenship and has a mixed-raced heritage with parents both American, of German and English ancestry for her father and of African-American background for her mother. Their son, Archie, who was born in London, has joint British and American citizenship since birth.
In 2001, 306 Puerto Rican-born people alone were residing in the United Kingdom (the nineteenth-most common birthplace amongst Latin American states).[1] The most notable Puerto Rican-Briton is Wilnelia Merced, the wife of the entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth.
Martin Frobisher returned from a voyage to discover the Northwest Passage in 1576, bringing with him a native Inuit that he had seized. The man died days after reaching London and was buried in the churchyard at St. Olave's.[30]
Sir Richard Grenville captured the Roanoke IslandNative AmericanRaleigh (named for Sir Walter Raleigh) and brought him to Bideford following a skirmish in 1586. He had his baptism at Saint Mary the Virgin's Church in March 1588. He died from influenza in Grenville's house on 2 April 1589. His interment was at that same church five days later. Raleigh was the first Native American to have a Christian conversion and an English resting place.[31]
Chief Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas spent some of her life in London two years after she married English colonist John Rolfe.[32] At age twenty-one, Pocahontas died due to an unknown disease. She was buried at St George's Church in Gravesend afterwards. Her son Thomas Rolfe lived in England until the age of 20 before returning to Virginia.
Lakota tribes arrived in England when they were part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Surrounded By the Enemy, a twenty-two-year-old Oglala gun-slinging and horse-riding stuntman and a year old boy named Red Penny died during the tour in 1887. Their interments were at West Brompton's cemetery. Brulé tribesman Paul Eagle Star died after breaking his ankle when he fell off a horse in Sheffield on 24 August 1891 at age twenty-seven. His interment was in West Brompton near the same plot as Surrounded. Fifty-nine-year-old Oglala Sioux, Long Wolf, died during the tour due to pneumonia on 13 June 1892. His interment was in West Brompton. Two months later, a two-year-old girl named White Star Ghost Dog died when she fell from her mother's arms during horseback. Her remains shared the same grave as Long Wolf's remains. Long Wolf and White Star Ghost Dog's coffins were repatriated to the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1997.[33] Two years later, Paul Eagle Star's coffin was repatriated to the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Tribal descendants include John Black Feather (Long Wolf's great-grandson), Moses Eagle Star and Lucy Eagle Star (Paul Eagle Star's two grandchildren).
Blackfoot Sioux chief Charging Thunder came to Salford at age twenty-six as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1903. Like many Lakota tribesmen, Charging Thunder was an exceptional horseman and performed thrilling stunts in Buffalo Bill's show in front of huge crowds, on the site of what is now Lowry in Salford Quays. But when the show rolled out of town, he remained in the North West. He married Josephine, an American horse trainer who had just given birth to their first child, Bessie and together they settled in Darwen, before moving to Gorton. His name became George Edward Williams, after registering with the British immigration authorities to enable him to find work. Williams ended up as an elephant keeper at the Belle Vue Zoo. He died on 28 July 1929 from pneumonia at age fifty-two. His interment was in Gorton's cemetery.
More recently, notable British people of Native American descent include actress Hayley Atwell, who has dual UK-US citizenship due to her part-Native American father.[34]
Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about 1,035 km (643 mi) to the west-northwest.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland and, after 1707, Great Britain. Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time. Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
Louis Sebastian Theroux is a British-American documentarian, journalist, broadcaster, and author. He has received three British Academy Television Awards and a Royal Television Society Television Award.
Paul Edward Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name.
Olaudah Equiano, known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa, was a writer and abolitionist. According to his memoir, he was from the village of Essaka in modern southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child in West Africa, he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before purchasing his freedom in 1766.
This article concerns the history of British nationality law.
Black Loyalists were African-Americans who sided with the Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. In particular, the term refers to men who escaped enslavement by Patriot masters and served on the Loyalist side because of the Crown's guarantee of freedom.
Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British people of either African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The term Black British developed in the 1950s, referring to the Black British West Indian people from the former Caribbean British colonies in the West Indies sometimes referred to as the Windrush Generation and Black British people descending from Africa.
The right of abode (ROA) is an immigration status in the United Kingdom that gives a person the unrestricted right to enter and live in the UK. It was introduced by the Immigration Act 1971 which went into effect on 1 January 1973. This status is held by British citizens, certain British subjects, as well as certain Commonwealth citizens with specific connections to the UK before 1983. Since 1983, it is not possible for a person to acquire this status without being a British citizen.
British Afro-Caribbean people are a British ethnic group. They are British people whose recent ancestors originate from the Caribbean, and further trace their ancestry back to Africa or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.
Thomas Peters, born Thomas Potters, was a veteran of the Black Pioneers, fighting for the British in the American Revolutionary War. A Black Loyalist, he was resettled in Nova Scotia, where he became a politician and one of the "Founding Fathers" of the nation of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Peters was among a group of influential Black Canadians who pressed the Crown to fulfill its commitment for land grants in Nova Scotia. Later they recruited African-American settlers in Nova Scotia for the colonisation of Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century.
British Nigerians have formed long-established communities in London, Liverpool and other industrial cities. Many Nigerians and their British-born descendants in Britain live in South London, and they are one of the larger immigrant groups in the country.
British Jamaicans are British people who were born in Jamaica or who are of Jamaican descent. The community is well into its third generation and consists of around 300,000 individuals, the second-largest Jamaican population, behind the United States, living outside of Jamaica. The Office for National Statistics estimates that in 2015, some 137,000 people born in Jamaica were resident in the UK. The number of Jamaican nationals is estimated to be significantly lower, at 49,000 in 2015.
Latin American migration to the United Kingdom dates back to the early 19th century. However, before the 1970s, when political and civil unrest became rife in many Latin American countries, the United Kingdom's Latin American community was not particularly large. Economic migration to the United Kingdom has since increased. Brazilian and Colombian-born residents are the two largest groups standing at 95,000 and 36,000 respectively as of 2019. A number of refugees and asylum seekers moved to the UK during the late 20th century, however, since the turn of the century, Latin Americans have been migrating to the UK for a wide range of reasons and at present the community consists of people from all walks of life. The UK is also home to British-born people of Latin American ancestry. During the 2008–2014 Spanish financial crisis, Britain also became one of the favourite European destinations for some of the roughly 1.4 million Latin Americans who had acquired Spanish citizenship.
Zimbabweans Britons are British people who were born in Zimbabwe or can trace their ancestry to immigrants from Zimbabwe who emigrated to the United Kingdom. While the first natives of the country then known as Southern Rhodesia arrived in Britain in larger numbers from the late-1960s, the majority of immigrants arrived during the 1990s and 2000s. The Zimbabwean community in the UK is extremely diverse, consisting of individuals of differing racial, ethnic, class, and political groups. There are a diverse mix of asylum seekers, professionals, investors, businesspeople, labour migrants, students, graduates, undocumented migrants, and others who have gained British citizenship.
Barbadian British people, Bajan Brits or British Barbadians, are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose ethnic origins lie fully or partially in the Caribbean island of Barbados. The UK is home to the second largest Barbadian-born migrant population out of all the OECD countries, with the 2001 Census recording 21,601 UK residents born on the Caribbean island, compared to the 53,785 Barbadian-born residents of the United States.
The British diaspora consists of people of English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx and Channel Islands ancestral descent who live outside of the United Kingdom and its Crown Dependencies.
Algerians in the United Kingdom are residents of the UK with ancestry from Algeria. They include Algerian-born immigrants and their British-born descendants.
Swedes in the United Kingdom or British Swedes are immigrants from Sweden living in the United Kingdom as well as their British-born descendants. Although only around 38,000 Swedish-born people live in the UK, millions of Britons have some degree of Scandinavian ancestry that dates back over 1,000 years to the Viking invasion of Great Britain. The Swedish community in the UK is amongst the largest in the Swedish diaspora; in 2001 only the United States, Norway and Finland within the OECD had larger Swedish-born populations.
Sierra Leonean nationality law is regulated by the Constitution of Sierra Leone, as amended; the Citizenship Act, and its revisions; and various international agreements to which the country is a signatory. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of Sierra Leone. The legal means to acquire nationality, formal legal membership in a nation, differ from the domestic relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Nationality describes the relationship of an individual to the state under international law, whereas citizenship is the domestic relationship of an individual within the nation. In Britain and thus the Commonwealth of Nations, though the terms are often used synonymously outside of law, they are governed by different statutes and regulated by different authorities. Sierra Leonean nationality is based on descent from a person who is Negro-African, regardless of whether they were born in Sierra Leone, jus soli, or abroad to a Sierra Leonean, jus sanguinis. The Negro clause was inserted based upon the founding of the colony as a refuge for former slaves to prevent economically powerful communities from obtaining political power. It can be granted to persons with an affiliation to the country, or to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalisation.
↑ dobson, Alan P. (2009). Luí s Nuno Rodrigues; Sergiy Glebov (eds.). Military Bases: Historical Perspectives, Contemporary Challenges. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series. Vol.51. IOS Press. p.29. ISBN978-1-58603-967-7.
↑ Malamud, Randy (4 August 1955). The Wasteland and Other Poems.
↑ Shabazz, Daaim (2017). Triple Exclam!!! the Life and Games of Emory Tate, Chess Warrior. Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp Print Us. p.257. ISBN978-0-9981180-9-3. Tate, Emory Andrew, III (son of Tate Jr.)
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