English people
The English (English English or English people) are a nation of about 50 million people ( with an English -born diaspora about 90 million), mainly living in England, the largest country on the island of Great Britain. They make up about 84 % of the population of the United Kingdom. In addition, (often large ) parts of the population in other parts of the British Isles, ie Ireland ( esp. Northern Ireland), Scotland and Wales as well as the ( immigrant, non-indigenous ) populations in some countries of the former British Empire and the Commonwealth ethnically English descent ( esp. in Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States of America).
In German-speaking all residents of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, are often wrongly referred to as English, although correctly would have spoken in this case by British or specific in each of English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Cornish or Manx.
Language
Their language is the approximately uniformly established since the 14th century English, which is originated from the Old Saxon Saxon and is therefore counted among the West Germanic languages. The name derives from the tribe of the Angles from (country of fishing - Fishing in England ). Until the early Middle Ages island Celtic, Goidelic and accurate Britannic languages from the 1066 Anglo- Norman in England had been in use.
History of English identity
The English are originated from the Celtic aborigines of the British Isles and from the 5th century to immigrants from northern and central Europe Germanic peoples of the Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes. Roughly coinciding with the departure of the Romans from Britain - - for the first time as " English" and derived from their land designated as "England", this aggregated under the name Anglo-Saxons West Teutons who you were. The Anglo-Saxons displaced in what is now England (with exceptions Cornwall ) most of the Celtic- British natives.
In the 9th and 10th centuries, there was a regional non-negligible Danish Immigration ( Danelaw ). About the same time the British were housed under a common rule. 937 there was under Æthelstan, the first Anglo-Saxon English kingdom that spanned the entire present-day England.
From 1066 and the Norman conquest of England ( Battle of Hastings ), there was also a strong Norman influence, the Normans became the new social elite of England.
Until the 18th century, the identities of the English, Scots and Irish were clearly separated from each other ( with the exception of the Anglo-Irish upper class in Ireland). Only with the personal union of Jacob VI. or James I as King of Scotland and England and with the Act of Union in 1707, the united Britain politically, so came up with something like a British identity. This was true to a lesser extent also Ireland, which was politically united in the Act of Union of 1800 with Great Britain. There is but one dominated by Catholicism and Gaelic - Celtic tradition own identity, which stood in contrast to the Anglo- Protestant developed in parallel since the early modern period. This contrast led to a strong desire for independence, so that Ireland, with a large part of its territory in 1922 as the Irish Free State, later Republic of Ireland seceded from British rule.
Religion
See also Church of England
In antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the English hung on an Anglo-Saxon polytheism. In the 7th century they first came into contact with Christianity and was influenced by both the Celtic monasticism and of the early Roman Church. During the high and late Middle Ages, most Englishmen were followers of the Catholic Church.
Since the debate initiated by Henry VIII English Reformation (Act of Supremacy 1534), the majority of Englishmen, however, the new Anglican church belonged to. In the following 150 years, there were always Confession of monarchs before in the Glorious Revolution of the late 1680s of Anglicanism was established as a state religion and religion of the Magi. Since the 17th, no later than the early 18th century, England saw as a leader of the Protestant powers of Europe. Catholics and non- Anglican Protestants ( Dissenters ) were discriminated against until the modern era, and not as an Englishman. England is also the homeland of Puritanism and Methodism, whose followers as dissenters but mostly fled ( esp. in North America ). The ( politically motivated ) tensions between the different directions of Protestantism and Catholicism were discharged in the English Civil War.
The English identity is strongly influenced due to the connection between the monarchy and the Protestant state church until today of an anti- Catholic, Protestant- Anglican self-understanding.