This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2023) |
Total population | |
---|---|
| |
Regions with significant populations | |
All parts of Australia including urban, rural and regional Australia | |
Languages | |
Predominantly Australian English Welsh • Irish • Scottish Gaelic • Cornish | |
Religion | |
Predominantly Christian | |
Related ethnic groups | |
European New Zealanders |
Anglo-Celtic Australians is an ancestral grouping of Australians whose ancestors originate wholly or partially in the British Isles - predominantly in England (including Cornish), Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. [5]
While Anglo-Celtic Australians do not form an official ethnic grouping in the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups, due to the long historical dominance and intermixture of Australians with ancestries from the British Isles, it is commonly used as an informal ethnic identifier. [2]
The term has received criticism for erasing historical distinctions between English and Celtic settlers. In particular, it does not account for the political and social segregation of English and Irish Australians which some scholars have labelled an apartheid [6] or the fact that while many English arrived in Australia as willing immigrants, many Irish were forcibly transported as prisoners or refugees. [7]
At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses from the following groups as a proportion of the total Australian population amounted to 51.7%: English Australian, Irish Australian, Scottish Australian, Welsh Australian, Cornish Australians, British Australian (so described), Manx Australian, Channel Islander Australian. [1] [upper-alpha 3] The precise number of Anglo-Celtic Australians is unknown due to the way in which ancestry data is collected in Australia. For instance, many census recipients nominated two Anglo-Celtic ancestries due to the long history of these ancestries in Australia, tending towards an overcount. Conversely, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has stated that most people nominating "Australian" ancestry have at least partial Anglo-Celtic European ancestry despite "Australian" ancestry being classified as part of the Oceanian ancestry group, [4] tending towards an undercount.
The British Government initiated European settlement of the Australian continent by establishing a penal settlement at Sydney Cove in 1788. Between then and 1852, about 100,000 convicts (mostly tried in England) were transported to eastern Australia. Scotland and Wales contributed relatively few convicts.[ citation needed ]
Native-born Australians of British and Irish descent were approximately a quarter of the population of the colony of New South Wales in both 1817 and 1828. [8] : 17 There were slightly more native-born than free settlers in 1850. [8] They were nearly half of the population in 1868. [9] Their proportion of the population decreased during the times of the rapid population growth brought on by the goldrushes. [8] : 17 The convicts were augmented by free settlers, including large numbers who arrived during the gold-rush in the 1850s. As late as 1861, people born in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland outnumbered even the Australia-born population. The number of settlers in Australia who were born in the United Kingdom (UK) peaked at 825,000 in 1891, from which point the proportion of British among all immigrants to Australia steadily declined.[ clarification needed ]
Until 1859, 2.2 million (73%) of the free settlers who immigrated were British. [10]
From the beginning of the colonial era until the mid-20th century, the vast majority of settlers to Australia were from Britain and Ireland, with the English being the dominant group, followed by the Irish and Scottish. Among the leading ancestries, increases in Australian, Irish, and German ancestries and decreases in English, Scottish, and Welsh ancestries appear to reflect such shifts in perception or reporting. These reporting shifts at least partly resulted from changes in the design of the census question, in particular the introduction of a tick box format in 2001. [11]
Those born in the United Kingdom were the largest foreign group throughout the 20th century. Prior to the last quarter of the century, the United Kingdom was strongly favoured as a source country by immigrant selection policies and remained the largest single component of the annual immigration intake until 1995–96, when immigrants from New Zealand surpassed it in number. However, their share of the total immigrant population is in decline. Those from the United Kingdom comprised 58 per cent of the total overseas-born population in 1901, compared to 27 per cent in 1996. An even greater decline has occurred for those born in Ireland. In 1901, those born in Ireland comprised 22 per cent of all immigrants, while in 1996 the Ireland-born represented just 1 per cent of the immigrant population. [12]
While those born in England have formed the largest component of the British immigrant population, Australia has also received significant numbers of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Up until the First World War the Irish were, in their own right, the second largest immigrant population. [12]
The most dramatic increase in the British immigrant population occurred between 1961 and 1971. The number of British-born people living in Australia exceeded one million at the 1971 Census and has remained above one million to this day. The United Kingdom-born population in Australia reached a peak of 1,107,119 in 1991.[ citation needed ]
Anglo-Celtic Australian 1846 - 2021 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Year | % of total population | |||
1846 | 57.2 | |||
1861 | 78.1 | |||
1891 | 86.8 | |||
1947 | 89.7 | |||
1988 | 74.6 | |||
1996 | 71.45 | |||
1999 | 69.9 | |||
2016 | 58 | |||
2021 | 42.2 | |||
Source: 1846, [13] 1996, [14] 1999, [15] 2016, [16] 2021 [1] |
Anglo-Celtic is not an official ancestry category in the Australian census. [2] Census respondents may nominate up to two ancestries. The number of ancestry responses from the following groups as a proportion of the total Australian population amounted to 51.7% at the 2021 census: English Australian, Irish Australian, Scottish Australian, Cornish Australians, Welsh Australian, British Australian (so described), Manx Australian, Channel Islander Australian. [1] [upper-alpha 4] The precise number of Anglo-Celtic Australians is unknown due to the way in which ancestry data is collected in Australia. For instance, many census recipients nominated two Anglo-Celtic ancestries due to the long history of these ancestries in Australia, tending towards an overcount. Conversely, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has stated that most people nominating "Australian" ancestry have at least partial Anglo-Celtic European ancestry despite "Australian" ancestry being classified as part of the Oceanian ancestry group, [4] tending towards an undercount.
At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated Anglo-Celtic ancestries were: [1]
The United Kingdom remains a significant source of immigrants to Australia. In 2005–06, 22,143 persons born in the United Kingdom settled in Australia, representing 21.4% of all migrants. At the 2006 Census (excluding overseas visitors) [17] 1,038,165 persons identified themselves as having been born in the United Kingdom (5.2% of the Australian population), while 50,251 identified themselves as Irish born.
Melbourne and Sydney have the lowest rates of Anglo-Celtic Australians, particularly in certain regions of each city (such as Western Sydney). Tasmania could have the nation's highest proportion of citizens of Anglo-Celtic origin, possibly as high as 85 percent. On the evidence of statistics of ethnic derivation Tasmania could also be considered more British than New Zealand (where the Anglo-Celtic majority has fallen below 75 percent). [18]
The following table shows the British and Irish-born population for every national Australian census as a proportion of the total foreign-born population at various points.
UK and Ireland-born population of Australia % of all overseas born | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Year | Anglo-Celtic / % | United Kingdom % of overseas-born | Ireland % of overseas-born | Ref(s) | ||||
1881 | 689,642 | - | - | - | - | - | [19] | |
1901 | 679,159 | 79.2 | 495 074 | 57.7 | 184,085 | 21.5 | [20] [21] | |
1911 | 590,722 | 78.0 | 451,288 | 59.6 | 139,434 | 18.4 | [20] | |
1921 | 673,403 | 80.2 | 568,370 | 67.7 | 105,033 | 12.5 | [20] [22] | |
1933 | 712,458 | 78.9 | 633,806 | 70.2 | 78,652 | 8.7 | [20] | |
1947 | 541,267 | 72.7 | 496,454 | 66.7 | 44,813 | 6.0 | [20] [21] | |
1954 | 661,205 | 51.6 | 616,532 | 47.9 | 44,673 | 3.5 | [20] [21] | |
1961 | 755,402 | 42.6 | 718,345 | 40.4 | 37,057 | 2.1 | [20] [21] | |
1966 | 908,664 | - | 870,548 | 38,116 | [22] | |||
1971 | 1,088,210 | 42.2 | 1,046,356 | 40.6 | 41,854 | 1.6 | [20] [23] | |
1976 | 1,117,599 | - | 1,070,233 | 47,361 | [24] | |||
1981 | 1,132,601 | 41.1 | 1,086,625 | 36.5 | [21] [25] | |||
1986 | 1,127,196 | 34.7 | [21] [25] | |||||
1991 | 1,174,860 | 31.17 | 1,107,119 | 30.0 | 51,642 | 1.17 | [21] [26] [27] [28] | |
1996 | ,124,031 | - | 1,072,562 | 28.7 | 51,469 | - | [23] [27] [29] | |
2001 | 1,086,496 | - | 1,036,261 | 25.2 | 50,235 | [30] | ||
2006 | 1,088,416 | - | 1,038,162 | 23.5 | 50,255 | - | [30] [31] [32] | |
2011 | 1,168,398 | 20.8 | 1,101,082 | 20.8 | 67,318 | 0.0 | [20] [30] [32] [33] | |
2016 | 1,162,654 | - | 1,087,759 | 17.7 | 74,895 | - | [34] [35] | |
2021 | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | - | ||
Notes: From 1954 onwards people from "Northern Ireland" and "Ulster" were recorded separately from the people of "Ireland". [36] The 1966 census (is Republic of Ireland & Ireland (undefined).
The following table shows various Anglo-Celtic ancestries since 1986, the first census to include as a question on ancestry. The aim of the question was to measure the ethnic composition of the population as a whole. Very little use was made of the ancestry data from the 1986 Census. As a consequence, ancestry was not included in either the 1991 or 1996 Censuses. Between 1987 and 1999, the Anglo-Celtic component of Australia's population declined from 75 per cent to 70 per cent. [37] In 1999, the Anglo-Celtic share of the Australian population was calculated as 69.9%. [38]
Ancestry | 1986 | % | 2001 | % | 2006 | % | 2011 | % | % Change 2006–2011 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
English | 6,607,228 [39] | 42.4 | 6,358,880 | 33.9 | 6,283,647 | 31.6 | 7,238,533 | 36.1% [40] | +15.2% | |
Irish | 902,679 | 5.8 | 1,919,727 | 10.2 | 1,803,736 | 9.1 | 2,087,800 | 10.4 | +15.7% | |
Scottish | 740,522 | 4.7 | 540,046 | 2.9 | 1,501,200 | 7.6 [41] [42] | 1,792,622 | 8.3 | +19.4% | |
Welsh | no data | no data | 84,246 | no data | 113,244 | 0.6 | 125,597 | 0.6 | +10.9% | |
Total | 8,250,429 | 52.9 | 8,902,899 | 47.0 | 9,701,827 | 48.9 | 11,244,552 | 53.0% – 55.4% |
Some have argued that the term is entirely a product of multiculturalism that ignores the history of sectarianism in Australia. For example, historian John Hirst wrote in 1994: "Mainstream Australian society was reduced to an ethnic group and given an ethnic name: Anglo-Celt." [43]
According to Hirst:
In the eyes of multiculturalists, Australian society of the 1940s, 150 years after first settlement, is adequately described as Anglo-Celtic. At least this acknowledges that the people of Australia were Irish and Scots as well as English, but it has nothing more substantial than a hyphen joining them. In fact a distinct new culture had been formed. English, Scots and Irish had formed a common identity – first of all British and then gradually Australian as well. In the 1930s the historian W. K. Hancock could aptly describe them as Independent Australian Britons. [44]
The Irish-Australian journalist Siobhán McHugh has argued that the term "Anglo-Celtic" is "an insidious distortion of our past and a galling denial of the struggle by an earlier minority group", Irish Australians, "against oppression and demonisation... In what we now cosily term "Anglo-Celtic" Australia, a virtual social apartheid existed at times between [Irish] Catholics and [British] Protestants", which did not end until the 1960s.
The term was also criticised by the historian Patrick O'Farrell as "a grossly misleading, false, and patronising convenience, one crassly present-oriented. Its use removes from consciousness and recognition a major conflict fundamental to any comprehension not only of Australian history but of our present core culture." [6]
Streams of migration from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland to Australia played a key role in Australia's cultural development, despite the last substantial scheme for preferential migration from Britain to Australia ending in 1972. There is a long history of cultural exchange between the countries and many Australians have used Britain as a stepping-stone to international success, e.g., Nellie Melba, Peter Dawson, Clive James, Robert Hughes. In 1967, British migrants in Australia formed an association to represent their special interests: the United Kingdom Settlers' Association, which subsequently became the British Australian Community.
On 10 July 2017, at a press conference in London, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said:
"Australians feel at home in the United Kingdom and Britons feel at home in Australia. Most Australians have some of their ancestry at least from the United Kingdom and five per cent of Australians were actually born in the United Kingdom. The culture, the laws the traditions of Britain were brought to Australia with the European settlement, British settlement that were brought as part of the heritage of the men and women, including my forebears, that founded what we know today as modern Australia". . . There are no two nations in the world that trust each other more than the United Kingdom and Australia. We are family in a historical sense. We're family in a genetic sense. But we are so close and that trust is getting stronger all the time. [45]
There are many places in Australia named after people and places in the United Kingdom as a result of the many British settlers and explorers; in addition, some places were named after the British royal family.[ citation needed ]
New South Wales – Cook first named the land "New Wales", named after Wales. However, in the copy held by the Admiralty, he "revised the wording" to "New South Wales". [46]
Queensland – The state was named in honour of Queen Victoria, [48] [49] who on 6 June 1859 signed Letters Patent separating the colony from New South Wales. [50]
Victoria – like Queensland, was named after Queen Victoria, who had been on the British throne for 14 years when the colony was established in 1851. [55]
The population of Australia is estimated to be 27,461,700 as of 17 October 2024. It is the 54th most populous country in the world and the most populous Oceanian country. Its population is concentrated mainly in urban areas, particularly on the Eastern, South Eastern and Southern seaboards, and is expected to exceed 30 million by 2029.
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to, or descent from England, English culture, the English people or the English language, such as in the term Anglosphere. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British descent in Anglo-America, the Anglophone Caribbean, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, and New Zealand. It is used in Canada to differentiate between French-speaking Canadians (Francophones), located mainly in Quebec but found across Canada, and English-speaking Canadians (Anglophones), also located across Canada, including in Quebec. It is also used in the United States to distinguish the Latino population from the non-Latino white majority.
European Americans are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes both people who descend from the first European settlers in the area of the present-day United States and people who descend from more recent European arrivals. Since the 17th century, European Americans have been the largest panethnic group in what are now the United States.
British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom. It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
The Welsh are an ethnic group and nation native to Wales who share a common ancestry, history and culture. Wales is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The majority of people living in Wales are British citizens.
Irish Australians are residents of Australia who are fully or partially of Irish descent. Irish immigrants and descendants have been a prominent presence in the Australian populace since the First Fleet's arrival in New South Wales in 1788.
German Australians are Australians with German ancestry. German Australians constitute one of the largest ancestry groups in Australia, and German is the fifth most identified European ancestry in Australia behind English, Irish, Scottish and Italian. German Australians are one of the largest groups within the global German diaspora.
The Scottish diaspora consists of Scottish people who emigrated from Scotland and their descendants. The diaspora is concentrated in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, England, New Zealand, Ireland and to a lesser extent Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. The Scottish diaspora has been estimated by the Scottish Government to be between 28 and 40 million people worldwide. Other estimates have ranged as high as 80 million.
Sydney is Australia's most populous city, and is also the most populous city in Oceania. In the 2021 census, 5,231,147 persons declared themselves as residents of the Sydney Statistical Division–about one-fifth (20.58%) of Australia's total population. With a population density of 2037 people per square kilometre, the urban core has population density five times that of the greater region.
Welsh Australians are citizens of Australia whose ancestry originates in Wales.
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Australian. Australian law does not provide for a racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship as a legal status, though the Constitutional framers considered the Commonwealth to be "a home for Australians and the British race alone", as well as a "Christian Commonwealth". Since the postwar period, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism and has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30 percent of the population in 2019.
English Australians, also known as Anglo-Australians, are Australians whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England. In the 2021 census, 8,385,928 people, or 33% of the Australian population, stated that they had English ancestry. It is the largest self-identified ancestry in Australia. People of ethnic English origin have been the largest group to migrate to Australia since the establishment of the Colony of New South Wales in 1788.
Scottish Australians are residents of Australia who are fully or partially of Scottish descent.
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.
The English diaspora consists of English people and their descendants who emigrated from England. The diaspora is concentrated in the English-speaking world in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, South Africa, and to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe, India, Zambia and continental Europe.
The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common ancestry, history, and culture. The English identity began with the Anglo-Saxons, when they were known as the Angelcynn, meaning race or tribe of the Angles. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who invaded Britain around the 5th century AD.
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.
English Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England. In the 2020 United States census, English Americans were the largest group in the United States with 46.5 million Americans self-identifying as having some English origins representing (19.8%) of the White American population. This includes 25,536,410 (12.5%) who were "English alone". Despite them being the largest self-identified ancestral origin in the United States, demographers still regard the number of English Americans as an undercount. As most English Americans are the descendants of settlers who first arrived during the colonial period which began over 400 years ago, many Americans are either unaware of this heritage or choose to elect a more recent known ancestral group even if English is their primary ancestry.
European Australians are citizens or residents of Australia whose ancestry originates from the peoples of Europe. They form the largest panethnic group in the country. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within European ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to more than 57.2%. It is impossible to quantify the precise proportion of the population with European ancestry. For instance, many census recipients nominated two European ancestries, tending towards an overcount. Conversely, 29.9% of census recipients nominated "Australian" ancestry, tending towards an undercount.
The Scottish people or Scots are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. In the following two centuries, Celtic-speaking Cumbrians of Strathclyde and Germanic-speaking Angles of Northumbria became part of Scotland. In the High Middle Ages, during the 12th-century Davidian Revolution, small numbers of Norman nobles migrated to the Lowlands. In the 13th century, the Norse-Gaels of the Western Isles became part of Scotland, followed by the Norse of the Northern Isles in the 15th century.