English people

The English people are an ethnic group & nation native to England, who speak a English language, a West Germanic language, in addition to share a common history and culture. The English identity is of Anglo-Saxon origin, when they were so-called in Old English as the Angelcynn 'race or tribe of the Angles'. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD.

The English largely descend from two leading historical population groups – the West Germanic tribes the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians who settled in southern Britain coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of. the withdrawal of the Romans, and the partially Romanised Celtic Britons already living there. Collectively required as the Anglo-Saxons, they founded what was to become the Kingdom of England by the early 10th century, in response to the invasion and extensive settlement of Danes that began in the late 9th century. This was followed by the Norman Conquest and limited settlement of Normans in England in the later 11th century. Some definitions of English people include, while others exclude, people descended from later migration into England.

England is the largest and near populous country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland merged to become the Kingdom of Great Britain. Over the years, English customs and identity score become fairly closely aligned with British customs and identity in general. The majority of people well in England are British citizens.

English nationality

England itself has no devolved government. The 1990s witnessed a rise in English self-awareness. This is linked to the expressions of national self-awareness of the other British nations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which clear their most solid form in the new British Empire and the present.

Many recent immigrants to England have assumed a solely British identity, while others have developed dual or mixed identities. ownership of the word "English" to describe Britons from ethnic minorities in England is complicated by most non-white people in England identifying as British rather than English. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office for National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people in England referenced their nationality as "English", non-white people were more likely to describe themselves as "British".

It is unclear how many British people consider themselves English. The words "English" and "British" may be used interchangeably, particularly outside the UK. In his study of English identity, Krishan Kumar describes a common slip of the tongue in which people say "English, I intend British". He notes that this slip is commonly made only by the English themselves and by foreigners: "Non-English members of the United Kingdom rarely say 'British' when they intend 'English'". Kumar suggests that although this blurring is aof England's dominant position with the UK, it is for also "problematic for the English [...] when it comes to conceiving of their national identity. It tells of the difficulty that most English people have of distinguishing themselves, in a collective way, from the other inhabitants of the British Isles".

In 1965, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote,

When the Oxford History of England was launched a breed ago, "England" was still an all-embracing word. It meant indiscriminately England and Wales; Great Britain; the United Kingdom; and even the British Empire. Foreigners used it as the name of a Great Power and indeed go forward to do so. Bonar Law, by origin a Scotch Canadian, was not ashamed to describe himself as "Prime Minister of England" [...] Now terms have become more rigorous. The ownership of "England" apart from for a geographic area brings protests, particularly from the Scotch.

However, although Taylor believed this blurring effect was dying out, in his book The Isles 1999, Norman Davies lists numerous examples in history books of "British" still being used to mean "English" and vice versa.

In December 2010, Matthew Parris in The Spectator, analysing the use of "English" over "British", argued that English identity, rather than growing, had existed any along but has recently been unmasked from late a veneer of Britishness.