Total population | |
---|---|
Estimated at 200 million [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
United States | 109,531,643 (up to 33% of population) [A] [4] |
Australia | 19,301,379 (up to 76% of population) [B] [5] |
Canada | 17,325,860 (up to 48% of population) [C] [7] |
New Zealand | 3,372,708 (up to 70.2% of population) [D] [9] |
South Africa | 1,600,000 (4% of population) [10] |
France | 150,000-400,000 (2017) [11] |
Spain | 297,229 (2014) [12] |
Argentina | 270,000 (2015) [13] [14] [15] |
Germany | 178,000 (2021) [16] |
India | 300,000 (2023) [17] |
Languages | |
Predominantly English Also: Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Ulster Scots, Cornish, Manx, British Sign Language | |
Religion | |
Predominantly Christianity (Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, etc.) [18] |
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.
In 2008, the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office estimated that at least 80% of New Zealanders had some British ancestry, however at the 2018 census only 70% of New Zealanders identified as having some European ancestry. [8] [9] Up to 76% of Australians, 48% of Canadians, 33% of Americans, and 3% of South Africans have ancestry from the British Isles. Additionally, at least 270,000 Argentines have some British ancestry. [13] [14] [15] More than 300,000 Anglo-Indians have some British ancestry, but comprise less than 0.1% of India's population. [19] [7] [10] [20]
The British diaspora includes about 200 million people worldwide. [1] Other countries with over 100,000 British expatriates include the Republic of Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. [21] [22]
The first documented exodus of Britons began during the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Great Britain. A large number of Brythonic-speaking Celts fled or migrated to what is now Brittany on the coast of France, becoming the Bretons. [23]
The second large-scale British migration came following the Norman Conquest of England, leading to a displacement of English people, mostly dispossessed nobility. They settled in neighboring regions including Ireland and Scandinavia, and as far east as Crimea and Anatolia in the Byzantine Empire. [24] Englishmen eventually replaced Scandinavians as the main source of recruitment for the Byzantine Emperor's personal Varangian Guard. [25]
After the Age of Discovery, the various peoples of the British Isles, and especially the English, were among the earliest and by far the largest communities to emigrate out of Europe. Indeed, the British Empire's expansion during the first half of the 19th century saw an extraordinary dispersion of the British people, with particular concentrations in Australasia and North America. [26]
The British Empire was "built on waves of migration overseas by British people", [27] who left Great Britain, later the United Kingdom, and reached across the globe and permanently affected population structures in three continents. [26] 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 what would become the Commonwealth of Australia the British experienced a birth rate higher than anything seen before, which together with continuing British immigration resulted in a huge outnumbering of indigenous Australians. [26]
In colonies such as Southern Rhodesia, British Hong Kong, Singapore, Jamaica, Barbados, Malaysia, and the Cape Colony, permanently resident British communities were established, and while never more than a numerical minority, these Britons exercised a dominant influence upon the culture and politics of those lands. [27] 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. [27]
The British not only emigrated to parts of the British Empire, but also settled in large numbers in parts of the Americas, particularly in the United States and in sizeable numbers in Argentina, Chile and Mexico.
The United Kingdom census, 1861 estimated the number of overseas British to be around 2.5 million. However, it concluded that most of these were "not conventional settlers" but rather "travellers, merchants, professionals, and military personnel". [26] By 1890, there were over 1.5 million further British-born people living in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. [26]
According to The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, there were 13.1 million British nationals living abroad in 2004–05. These figures are taken from the consular annual returns from overseas posts. There is no requirement for UK citizens to register with British missions overseas, so these figures are therefore based on the most reliable information that can be obtained, e.g. from host government official statistics. [28]
A 2006 publication from the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated that 5.5 million British-born people lived outside the United Kingdom. [22]
In terms of outbound expatriation, in 2009, the United Kingdom had the most expatriates among developed OECD countries, with more than three million British living abroad, a figure followed by Germany and Italy. [29] On an annual basis, emigration from Britain stood at about 400,000 per year during the ten years until 2010 at least. [30]
Living abroad as an expatriate can affect certain rights. In particular:
This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: recent electoral legislation.(August 2024) |
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". [26]
The United Kingdom Census 1861 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". [26] By 1890, there were over 1.5 million further UK-born people living in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. [26] A 2006 publication from the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated 5.6 million Britons lived outside of the United Kingdom. [37] [38]
Outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories, up to 76% of Australians, 70% of New Zealanders, 48% of Canadians, 33% of Americans and 3% of South Africans have ancestry from the British Isles. [6] [9] [7] [4] [10] 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. [39] 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%). [37]
^ Note: A different estimate puts China (incl. Hong Kong) ahead with a population of 3,750,000 British citizens, [47] [48] most of which are those in Hong Kong who have continued to possess British nationality, particularly the British nationals (overseas) status, which numbered 3.4 million, through their connection with the former crown colony (see British nationality and Hong Kong for further details). [49]
The British diaspora played a significant role in bringing British sports to the world. British sailors and soldiers contributed to association football becoming the most popular sport in the world. [50]
In a few places, Britons helped establish cricket, only for it to be replaced by baseball, an American sport with English antecedents. This happened in the United States and then later Japan in the late 19th century. [51]
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.
Anglo-Celtic Australians is an ancestral grouping of Australians whose ancestors originate wholly or partially in the British Isles - predominantly in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as the Isle of Man and Channel Islands.
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.
Britons never made up more than a small portion of the population in Hong Kong, despite Hong Kong having been under British rule for more than 150 years. However, they did leave their mark on Hong Kong's institutions, culture and architecture. The British population in Hong Kong today consists mainly of career expatriates working in banking, education, real estate, law and consultancy, as well as many British-born ethnic Chinese, former Chinese émigrés to the UK and Hong Kongers who successfully applied for full British citizenship before the transfer of sovereignty in 1997.
The Australian diaspora are those Australians living outside of Australia. It includes approximately 598,765 Australian-born people living outside of Australia, people who are Australian citizens and live outside Australia, and people with Australian ancestry who live outside of Australia.
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.
East Asians in the United Kingdom are East Asians living in the United Kingdom. They have been present in the country since the 17th century and primarily originate from countries such as China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. They are called "East Asian" or "Oriental", although – dependent upon the context – the use of the term "Oriental" might be considered by some to be derogatory or offensive. In the 2001 British census, the term Chinese or Other is used.
The term Other White, or White Other, is a classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom, used in documents such as the 2021 United Kingdom Census, to describe people who identify as white persons who are not of the English, Welsh, Scottish, Roma, Irish or Irish Traveller ethnic groupings. In Scotland, the term Other White is also used to refer collectively to those not of Scottish or Other British ethnicity, in which case it also includes those of a Gypsy, Roma, Irish or Irish Traveller background.
The Zimbabwean diaspora refers to the diaspora of immigrants from the nation of Zimbabwe and their descendants who now reside in other countries. The number of Zimbabweans living outside Zimbabwe varies significantly from 4 to 7 million people, though it is generally accepted at over 5 million people, some 30 per cent of all Zimbabweans. Varying degrees of assimilation and a high degree of interethnic marriages in the Zimbabwean diaspora communities makes determining exact figures difficult. The diaspora population is extremely diverse and consists of Shona people, Ndebele, white Zimbabweans, mixed-race people, Asians, Jewish people and other minority groups. The diaspora traces their origin to several waves of emigration, starting with the exodus that followed the 1965, unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia, but significantly since the sociopolitical crisis that began in 2000.
New Zealanders in the United Kingdom are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom who originate from New Zealand.
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.
Hong Kongers in the United Kingdom are people from Hong Kong who are residing in the United Kingdom or British nationals of Hong Kong origin or descent.
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.
Hongkongers, Hong Kongers, Hong Kongese, Hongkongese, Hong Kong citizens and Hong Kong people are demonyms that refer to a resident of Hong Kong, although they may also refer to others who were born and/or raised in the territory.
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.
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.
The Malaysian diaspora are Malaysian emigrants from Malaysia and their descendants that reside in a foreign country. Population estimates vary from seven hundred thousand to one million, both descendants of early emigrants from Malaysia, as well as more recent emigrants from Malaysia. The largest of these foreign communities are in Singapore, Australia, Brunei and the United Kingdom.
As of 2006, an estimated 36,000 British people live in China, including those living in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. A different estimate puts the number of Britons in China at 3,752,031, the majority of which are those in Hong Kong who have continued to possess British nationality, particularly the British nationals (overseas) status, which numbered 3.4 million as of 2007.
Notes
[...] even the basic outline of the diaspora remains vague. It was never a controlled movement and it was mostly poorly documented. Migrants are always difficult to categorise and to count. [...] The scale of the modern British dispersion has been estimated at about 200 million, [...] or, counting those who can claim descent from British and Irish emigrants, more than three times the current population of the British Isles.
The community still exists in Argentina today, with a population of more than 70,000.
Bibliography