British Americans
British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and also the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and Gibraltar). 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.
Based on 2020 American Community Survey estimates, 1,934,397 individuals identified as having British ancestry, while a further 25,213,619 identified as having English ancestry, 5,298,861 Scottish ancestry and 1,851,256 Welsh ancestry. The total of these groups, at 34,298,133, was 10.5% of the total population. A further 31,518,129 individuals identified as having Irish ancestry, but this is not differentiated between modern Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) and the Republic of Ireland. Figures for Manx and Cornish ancestries are not separately reported, although Manx was reported prior to 1990, numbering 9,220 on the 1980 census, and some estimates put Cornish ancestry as high as 2 million. This figure also does not include people reporting ancestries in countries with majority or plurality British ancestries, such as Canadian, South African, New Zealander (21,575) or Australian (105,152).[3] There has been a significant drop overall, especially from the 1980 census where 49.59 million people reported English ancestry and larger numbers reported Scottish, Welsh and North Irish ancestry also.
Demographers regard current figures as a "serious under-count", as a large proportion of Americans of British descent have a tendency to simply identify as 'American' since 1980 where over 13.3 million or 5.9% of the total U.S. population self-identified as "American" or "United States", this was counted under "not specified".[4] This response is highly overrepresented in the Upland South, a region settled historically by the British.[5][6][7][8][9][10] Those of mixed European ancestry may identify with a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.[11] Of the top ten family names in the United States (2010), seven have English origins or having possible mixed British Isles heritage (such as Welsh, Scottish or Cornish), the other three being of Spanish origin.[12]
Not to be confused are cases when the term is also used in an entirely different (although possibly overlapping) sense to refer to people who are dual citizens of both the United Kingdom and the United States.
History[edit]
Overview[edit]
The British diaspora consists of the scattering of British people and their descendants who emigrated from the United Kingdom. The diaspora is concentrated in countries that had mass migration such as the United States and that are part of the English-speaking world. A 2006 publication from the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated 5.6 million British-born people lived outside of the United Kingdom.[48][49]
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 latter half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century saw an "extraordinary dispersion of the British people", with particular concentrations "in Australasia and North America".[50]
The British Empire was "built on waves of migration overseas by British people",[51] who left the United Kingdom and "reached across the globe and permanently affected population structures in three continents".[50] As a result of the British colonization of the Americas, what became the United States was "easily the greatest single destination of emigrant British".[50]
Historically in the 1790 United States census estimate and presently 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.[51] There is also a significant population of people with British ancestry in South Africa.