Table of contents
Table of contents
Entry about England
I. History
II. Government and politics
III. Geography
IV. Climate
V. Economics
VI. Demography
VII. Culture
VIII. Language
IX. Religion
X. People
Utillized literature
Entry. England (Old English: Englaland, Middle English: Engelond) is the
largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its inhabitants account for more
than 83% of the total population of the United Kingdom, while the
mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds
of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to
the north and Wales to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the North
Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel.
England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from
the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th
and 6th centuries. The capital of England is London, the largest urban
area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union
by most, but not all, measures.
England ranks amongst the world’s most influential and far-reaching
centres of cultural development. It is the place of origin of the
English language and the Church of England, and English law forms the
basis of the legal systems of many countries; in addition, London was
the centre of the British Empire, and the country was the birthplace of
the Industrial Revolution. England was the first country in the world to
become industrialised. England is home to the Royal Society, which laid
the foundations of modern experimental science. England was the world’s
first modern parliamentary democracy and consequently many
constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin
in England have been widely adopted by other nations.
The Kingdom of England was a separate state, including the Principality
of Wales, until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a
political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of
Great Britain.
I. Bones and flint tools found in Norfolk and Suffolk show that Homo
erectus lived in what is now England about 700,000 years ago. At this
time, England was joined to mainland Europe by a large land bridge. The
current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing
westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and
the Seine. This area was greatly depopulated during the period of the
last major ice age, as were other regions of the British Isles. In the
subsequent recolonisation, after the thawing of the ice, genetic
research shows that present-day England was the last area of the British
Isles to be repopulated, about 13,000 years ago. The migrants arriving
during this period contrast with the other of the inhabitants of the
British Isles, coming across lands from the south east of Europe,
whereas earlier arriving inhabitants came north along a coastal route
from Iberia. These migrants would later adopt the Celtic culture that
came to dominate much of western Europe.
Roman conquest of Britain
By AD 43, the time of the main Roman invasion, Britain had already been
the target of frequent invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the
Roman Republic and Roman Empire. It was first invaded by the Roman
dictator Julius Caesar in 55 BC, but it was conquered more fully by the
Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. Like other regions on the edge of the empire,
Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans, and their
economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British
late pre-Roman Iron Age, especially in the south. With the fall of the
Roman Empire 400 years later, the Romans left England.
Anglo-Saxons
The History of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early mediaeval
England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the
Normans in 1066.
Fragmentary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the 5th and 6th
centuries comes from the British writer Gildas (6th century) the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the English people begun in the 9th
century), saints’ lives, poetry, archaeological findings, and place-name
studies.
The dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of
Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity is
thought to have come from three directions—from Rome to the south, and
Scotland and Ireland to the north and west.
From about 500, England was divided (it is believed) into seven petty
kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia,
Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As
early as the time of Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised as
Bretwalda (“Lord of Britain”). Generally speaking, the title fell in the
7th century to the kings of Northumbria, in the 8th to those of Mercia,
and in the 9th, to Egbert of Wessex, who in 825 defeated the Mercians at
the Battle of Ellendun. In the next century his family came to rule all
England.
Kingdom of England
Originally, England (or Englaland) was a geographical term to describe
the part of Britain occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of
an individual nation-state. It became politically united through the
expansion of the kingdom of Wessex, whose king Athelstan brought the
whole of England under one ruler for the first time in 927, although
unification did not become permanent until 954, when Edred defeated Eric
Bloodaxe and became King of England.
In 1016 England was conquered by the Danish king Canute the Great, and
became the centre of government for his short-lived empire which
included Denmark and Norway. In 1042 England became a separate kingdom
again with the accession of Edward the Confessor, heir of the native
English dynasty. However,the political ties and direction of England
were changed forever by the Norman Conquest in 1066.
The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued to exist as an
independent nation-state right through to the Acts of Union.
Middle Ages
The next few hundred years saw England as a major part of expanding and
dwindling empires based in France, with the “Kings of England” using
England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in
France for many years (Hundred Years’ War) ; in fact the English crown
did not relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until Calais was
lost during the reign of Mary Tudor (the Channel Islands are still crown
dependencies, though not part of the UK).
In the 13th century, through conquest Wales (the remaining Romano-Celts)
was brought under the control of English monarchs. This was formalised
in the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, by which Wales became part of the
Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales shared a
legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called
England and later England and Wales.
An epidemic of catastrophic proportions, the Black Death first reached
England in the summer of 1348. The Black Death is estimated to have
killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe’s population. England
alone lost as much as 70% of its population, which passed from seven
million to two million in 1400. The plague repeatedly returned to haunt
England throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. The Great Plague of
London in 1665–1666 was the last plague outbreak.
Reformation
During the English Reformation in the 16th century, the external
authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and
replaced with Royal Supremacy and ultimately describes the establishment
of a Church of England, outside the Roman Catholic Church, under the
Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation
differed from its European counterparts in that it was a political,
rather than purely theological, dispute at root. The break with Rome
started in the reign of Henry VIII.
The English Reformation paved the way for the spread of Anglicanism in
the church and other institutions.
Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political
machinations that took place between Parliamentarians and Royalists from
1642 until 1651. The first (1642–1645) and second (1648–1649) civil wars
pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the
Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–1651) saw fighting between
supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The
Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of
Worcester on 3 September 1651.
The Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of
his son Charles II and the replacement of the English monarchy with the
Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a Protectorate
(1653–1659) : the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell. After a brief return
to Commonwealth rule, in 1660 The Crown was restored and Charles II
accepted Convention Parliament’s invitation to return to England. During
the interregnum the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian
worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the
already-established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally,
the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern
without the consent of Parliament although this would not be cemented
until the Glorious Revolution later in the century.
Great Britain and the United Kingdom
Although embattled for centuries, the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of
Scotland had been drawing increasingly together since the Protestant
Reformation of the 16th century and after 1603, when the two countries
became linked by a personal union, being ruled by the same Stuart
dynasty. Following a number of attempts to unite the Kingdoms, on 1 May
1707, the Acts of Union resulted in a political union between the states
creating the Kingdom of Great Britain.The Kingdom of Ireland later
joined this union to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland changed its
name to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1927
to reflect its reduced territory following the secession of southern
Ireland as the Irish Free State in 1922.
Throughout these changes, England (including Wales) retained a separate
legal identity from its partners, with a separate legal system (English
law) from those in Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland law) and Scotland
(Scots law). (See subdivisions of the United Kingdom)
Wales had already been made part of the Kingdom of England by the
Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, and it was legally incorporated into
England by the Wales and Berwick Act 1746, making laws passed in England
automatically applicable to Wales. This was reversed by the Welsh
Language Act 1967, which thus effectively gave Wales a separate identity
from England. Since then, legal and political terminology refers to
“England and Wales”. The county of Monmouthshire has long been an
ambiguous area, its legal identity passing between England and Wales at
various periods. In the Local Government Act 1972 it was made part of
Wales.
The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 also referred to the formerly Scottish
burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The border town changed hands several times
and was last conquered by England in 1482, but was not officially
incorporated into England. Contention about whether Berwick was in
England or Scotland was ended by the union of the two in 1707. Berwick
remains within the English legal system and so is regarded today as part
of England though there has been some suggestion in Scotland that
Berwick should be invited to ‘return to the fold’.
The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are Crown dependencies and are
not part of England or of the United Kingdom.
II. There has not been a Government of England since 1707, when the
Kingdom of England merged with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the
Kingdom of Great Britain, although both kingdoms have been ruled by a
single monarch since 1603. Before the Acts of Union of 1707, England was
ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England.
Following the establishment of devolved government for Scotland and
Wales in 1999, England was left as the only country within the United
Kingdom still governed in all matters by the UK government and the UK
parliament in London. (Those, like Mebyon Kernow, who claim that
Cornwall should be viewed as having a distinct national identity and who
campaign for a Cornish assembly along Welsh lines may dispute this
claim.)
Since Westminster is the UK parliament but also legislates on matters
that affect England alone, devolution of national matters to
parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has
refocused attention on the anomaly called the West Lothian question. The
“Question” is that Scottish and Welsh MPs continue to be able to vote on
legislation relating only to England in the post devolution era while
English MPs have no equivalent right to legislate on devolved matters.
(Of course, Scottish and Welsh MPs are also unable to vote on devolved
issues affecting their own constituencies.) This ‘problem’ is
exacerbated by an over-representation of Scottish MPs in the government,
sometimes referred to as the Scottish mafia; as of September 2006, seven
of the twenty-three Cabinet members represent Scottish constituencies,
including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Defence
Secretary. In addition, Scotland traditionally benefited from moderate
malapportionment in its favour, increasing its representation to a
degree disproportionate to its population. In 2004 the Scottish
Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 was passed which rectified this to
a degree, reducing the number of MPs representing Scottish
constituencies from 73 to 59 and brought the number of voters per
constituency closer to that in England. This change was implemented in
the 2005 General Election.
There are calls for a devolved English Parliament, and certain English
parties go further by calling for the dissolution of the Union entirely.
However, the approach favoured by the current Labour government was (on
the basis that England is too large to be governed as a single sub-state
entity) to propose the devolution of power to the Regions of England.
Lord Falconer claimed a devolved English parliament would dwarf the rest
of the United Kingdom.
In terms of national administration, therefore, England’s affairs are
managed by a combination of the UK government, the UK parliament and
England-specific quangos such as English Heritage.
III. England comprises the central and southern two-thirds of the island
of Great Britain, plus offshore islands of which the largest is the Isle
of Wight. It is bordered to the north by Scotland and to the west by
Wales. It is closer to continental Europe than any other part of
Britain, divided from France only by a 24-statute mile (52 km or 21
nautical mile) sea gap. The Channel Tunnel, near Folkestone, directly
links England to the European mainland. The English/French border is
halfway along the tunnel.
Much of England consists of rolling hills, but it is generally more
mountainous in the north with a chain of low mountains, the Pennines,
dividing east and west. Other hilly areas in the north and Midlands are
the Lake District, the North York Moors, and the Peak District. The
approximate dividing line between terrain types is often indicated by
the Tees-Exe line. To the south of that line, there are larger areas of
flatter land, including East Anglia and the Fens, although hilly areas
include the Cotswolds, the Chilterns, the North and South Downs,
Dartmoor and Exmoor.
The largest natural harbour in England is at Poole, on the south-central
coast. Some regard it as the second largest harbour in the world, after
Sydney, Australia, although this fact is disputed (see harbours for a
list of other large natural harbour).
IV. England has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year
round, although the seasons are quite variable in temperature. However,
temperatures rarely fall below ?5 °C (23 °F) or rise above 30 °C (86
°F). The prevailing wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet
weather to England regularly from the Atlantic Ocean. It is driest in
the east and warmest in the south, which is closest to the European
mainland. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring, although it is
not that common away from high ground.
The highest temperature recorded in England is 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) on
August 10, 2003 at Brogdale, near Faversham, in Kent. The lowest
temperature recorded in England is ?26.1 °C (?15.0 °F) on January 10,
1982 at Edgmond, near Newport, in Shropshire.
V. England’s economy is the second largest in Europe and the fifth
largest in the world. It follows the Anglo-Saxon economic model.
England’s economy is the largest of the four economies of the United
Kingdom, with 100 of Europe’s 500 largest corporations based in London.
As part of the United Kingdom, England is a major centre of world
economics. One of the world’s most highly industrialised countries,
England is a leader in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors and in
key technical industries, particularly aerospace, the arms industry and
the manufacturing side of the software industry.
London exports mainly manufactured goods and imports materials such as
petroleum, tea, wool, raw sugar, timber, butter, metals, and meat.
England exported more than 30,000 tons of beef last year, worth around
Ј75,000,000, with France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and
Spain being the largest importers of beef from England.
The central bank of the United Kingdom, which sets interest rates and
implements monetary policy, is the Bank of England in London. London is
also home to the London Stock Exchange, the main stock exchange in the
UK and the largest in Europe. London is one of the international leaders
in finance and the largest financial centre in Europe.
Traditional heavy and manufacturing industries have declined sharply in
England in recent decades, as they have in the United Kingdom as a
whole. At the same time, service industries have grown in importance.
For example, tourism is the sixth largest industry in the UK,
contributing 76 billion pounds to the economy. It employs 1,800,000
full-time equivalent people—6.1% of the working population (2002
figures). The largest centre for tourism is London, which attracts
millions of international tourists every year.
As part of the United Kingdom, England’s official currency is the Pound
Sterling (also known as the British pound or GBP).
VI. With 50,431,700 inhabitants, or 84% of the UK’s total, England is
the most populous nation in the United Kingdom; as well as being the
most ethnically diverse. England would have the fourth largest
population in the European Union and would be the 25th largest country
by population if it were a sovereign state.
The country’s population is ‘ageing’, with a declining percentage of the
population under age 16 and a rising one of over 65. Population
continues to rise and in every year since 1901, with the exception of
1976, there have been more births than deaths. England is one of the
most densely populated countries in Europe, with 383 people per square
kilometre (992/sq mi), making it second only to the Netherlands.
The generally accepted view is that the ethnic background of the English
populace, before 19th- and 20th century immigration, was a mixed
European one deriving from historical waves of Celtic, Roman,
Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Norman invasions, along with the possible
survival of pre-Celtic ancestry. Genetic studies have shown that the
modern-day English gene pool contains more than 50% Germanic
Y-chromosomes.
The economic prosperity of England has also made it a destination for
economic migrants from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the
Republic of Ireland. This was particularly true during the Industrial
Revolution.
Since the fall of the British Empire, many denizens of former colonies
have migrated to Britain including the Indian sub-continent and the
British Caribbean. A BBC-published report of the 2001 census, by the
Institute for Public Policy Research stated that the vast majority of
immigrants settled in London and the South East of England. The largest
groups of residents born in other countries were from the Republic of
Ireland, India, Pakistan, Germany, and the Caribbean. Although Germany
was high on the list, this was mainly the result of children being born
to British forces personnel stationed in that country.
About half the population increase between 1991 and 2001 was due to
foreign-born immigration. In 2004 the number of people who became
British citizens rose to a record 140,795—a rise of 12% on the previous
year. The number had risen dramatically since 2000. The overwhelming
majority of new citizens come from Africa (32%) and Asia (40%), the
largest two groups being people from India and Pakistan. One in five
babies in the UK are born to immigrant mothers, according to official
statistics released in 2007. 21.9% of all births in the UK in 2006 were
to mothers born outside the United Kingdom compared with just 12.8% in
1995.
In 2006, an estimated 591,000 migrants arrived to live in the UK for at
least a year, while 400,000 people emigrated from the UK for a year or
more, with Australia, Spain, France, New Zealand and the U.S. most
popular destinations. Largest group of arrivals were people from the
Indian subcontinent who accounted for two-thirds of net immigration,
mainly fuelled by family reunion. One in six were from Eastern European
countries. They were outnumbered by immigrants from New Commonwealth
countries.
The European Union allows free movement between the member states. While
France and Germany put in place controls to curb Eastern European
migration, the UK and Ireland did not impose restrictions. Following
Poland’s entry into the EU in May 2004 it is estimated that by the start
of 2007 about 375,000 Poles have registered to work in the UK, although
the total Polish population in the UK is believed to be 750,000. Many
Poles work in seasonal occupations and a large number is likely to move
back and forth including between Ireland and other EU Western nations. A
quarter of Eastern European migrants, often young and well-educated,
plan to stay in Britain permanently. Most of them had originally
intended to go home but have changed their minds after living there
VII. England has a vast and influential culture that encompasses
elements both old and new. The modern culture of England is sometimes
difficult to identify and separate clearly from the culture of the wider
United Kingdom, so intertwined are its composite nations. However, the
traditional and historic culture of England is more clearly defined.
English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing
the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. London’s
British Museum, British Library and National Gallery contain some of the
finest collections in the world.
The English have played a significant role in the development of the
arts and sciences. Many of the most important figures in the history of
modern western scientific and philosophical thought were either born in,
or at one time or other resided in, England. Major English thinkers of
international significance include scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton,
Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford,
philosophers such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and
Thomas Hobbes, and economists such as David Ricardo, and John Maynard
Keynes. Karl Marx wrote most of his important works, including Das
Kapital, while in exile in Manchester, and the team that developed the
first atomic bomb began their work in England, under the wartime
codename tube alloys.
VIII.
Language
Places in the world where English language is spoken. Countries are dark
blue where English is an official language, de facto official language,
or national language. Countries are light blue where it is an official,
non-primary language or non-official primary language.
Beowulf is one of the oldest surviving epic poems in what is
identifiable as a form of the English language.As its name suggests, the
English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around
the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the
principal tongue today (although not officially designated as such). An
Indo-European language in the Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic
family, it is closely related to Scots and the Frisian languages. As the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged into England, “Old English” emerged; some of
its literature and poetry has survived.
Used by aristocracy and commoners alike before the Norman Conquest
(1066), English was displaced in cultured contexts under the new regime
by the Norman French language of the new Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Its
use was confined primarily to the lower social classes while official
business was conducted in a mixture of Latin and French. Over the
following centuries, however, English gradually came back into fashion
among all classes and for all official business except certain
traditional ceremonies, some of which survive to this day. Although,
Middle English, as it had by now become, showed many signs of French
influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the Renaissance, many
words were coined from Latin and Greek origins; and more recent years,
Modern English has extended this custom, willing to incorporate
foreign-influenced words.
It is most commonly accepted that—thanks in large part to the British
Empire, and now the United States—the English language is now the
world’s unofficial lingua franca, while English common law is also the
foundation of many legal systems throughout the English-speaking
countries of the world. English language learning and teaching is an
important economic sector, including language schools, tourism spending,
and publishing houses.
Additional languages
UK legislation does not recognise any language as being official, but
English is the only language used in England for general official
business. The other national languages of the UK (Welsh, Irish, Scots
and Scottish Gaelic) are confined to their respective nations, except
Welsh to some degree.
The only non-Anglic native spoken language in England is the Cornish
language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became extinct in
the 19th century but has been revived and is spoken in various degrees
of fluency, currently by about 2,000 people. This has no official status
(unlike Welsh) and is not required for official use, but is nonetheless
supported by national and local government under the European Charter
for Regional or Minority Languages. Cornwall County Council has produced
a draft strategy to develop these plans. There is, however, no programme
as yet for public bodies to actively promote the language. Scots is
spoken by some adjacent to the Anglo-Scottish Border, and Welsh is still
spoken by some natives around Oswestry, Shropshire, on the Welsh border.
Most deaf people within England speak British sign language (BSL), a
sign language native to Britain. The British Deaf Association estimates
that 250,000 people throughout the UK speak BSL as their first or
preferred language, but does not give statistics specific to England.
BSL is not an official language of the UK and most British government
departments and hospitals have limited facilities for deaf people. The
BBC broadcasts several of its programmes with BSL interpreters.
Different languages from around the world, especially from the former
British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations, have been brought to
England by immigrants. Many of these are widely spoken within ethnic
minority communities, with Bengali, Hindi, Sinhala, Tamil, Punjabi,
Urdu, Gujarati, Polish, Greek, Turkish and Cantonese being the most
common languages that people living in Britain consider their first
language. These are often used by official bodies to communicate with
the relevant sections of the community, particularly in large cities,
but this occurs on an “as needed” basis rather than as the result of
specific legislative ordinances.
Other languages have also traditionally been spoken by minority
populations in England, including Romany.
Despite the relatively small size of the nation, there are many distinct
English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not
be easily understood elsewhere in the country. Use of foreign
non-standard varieties of English (such as Caribbean English) is also
increasingly widespread, mainly because of the effects of immigration.
IX. Due to immigration in the past decades, there is an enormous
diversity of religious belief in England, as well as a growing
percentage that have no religious affiliation. Levels of attendance in
various denominations have begun to decline[citation needed]. England is
classed largely as a secular country even allowing for the following
affiliation percentages : Christianity: 71.6%, Islam: 3.1%, Hindu: 1.1%,
Sikh: 0.7%, Jewish: 0.5%, and Buddhist: 0.3%, No Faith: 22.3%.The EU
Eurobarometer poll of 2005 shows that only 38% of people in the UK
believe in a god, while 40% believe in “some sort of spirit or life
force” and 20% do not believe in either.
Christianity
Christianity reached England through missionaries from Scotland and from
Continental Europe; the era of St. Augustine (the first Archbishop of
Canterbury) and the Celtic Christian missionaries in the north (notably
St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert). The Synod of Whitby in 664 ultimately led
to the English Church being fully part of Roman Catholicism. Early
English Christian documents surviving from this time include the 7th
century illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels and the historical accounts
written by the Venerable Bede. England has many early cathedrals, most
notably York Minster (1080), Durham Cathedral (1093) and Salisbury
Cathedral (1220), In 1536, the Church was split from Rome over the issue
of the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon. The split
led to the emergence of a separate ecclesiastical authority, and later
the influence of the Reformation, resulting in the Church of England and
Anglicanism. Unlike the other three constituent countries of the UK, the
Church of England is an established church (although the Church of
Scotland is a ‘national church’ recognised in law).
The 16th century break with Rome under the reign of King Henry VIII and
the Dissolution of the Monasteries had major consequences for the Church
(as well as for politics). The Church of England remains the largest
Christian church in England; it is part of the Anglican Communion. Many
of the Church of England’s cathedrals and parish churches are historic
buildings of significant architectural importance.
Other major Christian Protestant denominations in England include the
Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church.
Smaller denominations, but not insignificant, include the Religious
Society of Friends (the “Quakers”) and the Salvation Army—both founded
in England. There are also Afro-Caribbean Churches, especially in the
London area.
The Roman Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in England in the
19th century. Attendances were considerably boosted by immigration,
especially from Ireland and more recently Poland.
The Church of England is still the official state church.
Other religions
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, immigration from many
colonial countries, often from South Asia and the Middle East have
resulted in a considerable growth in Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism in
England. Cities and towns with large Muslim communities include
Birmingham, Blackburn, Coventry, Bolton, Bradford, Leicester, London,
Luton, Manchester, Oldham and Sheffield. Cities and towns with large
Sikh communities include London, Slough, Staines, Hounslow, Southall,
Reading, Ilford, Barking, Dagenham, Leicester, Leeds, Birmingham,
Wolverhampton and others.
The Jewish community in England is mainly in the Greater London area,
particularly the north west suburbs such as Golders Green; although
Manchester, Leeds and Gateshead also have significant Jewish
communities.
X. The ancestry of the English, considered as an ethnic group, is mixed;
it can be traced to the mostly Celtic Romano-Britons, to the eponymous
Anglo-Saxons, the Danish-Vikings that formed the Danelaw during the time
of Alfred the Great and the Normans, among others. The 19th and 20th
centuries, furthermore, brought much new immigration to England.
Ethnicity aside, the simplest view is that an English person is someone
who was born in England and holds British nationality, regardless of his
or her racial origin. It has, however, been a notoriously complicated,
emotive and controversial identity to delimit. Centuries of English
dominance within the United Kingdom has created a situation where to be
English is, as a linguist would put it, an “unmarked” state. The English
frequently include themselves and their neighbours in the wider term of
“British”, while the Scots and Welsh tend to be more forward about
referring to themselves by one of those more specific terms. This
reflects a more subtle form of English-specific patriotism in England;
St George’s Day, the country’s national day, is barely celebrated. The
celebrations have increased year on year over the past five years.
Modern celebration of English identity is often found around its sports,
one field in which the British Home Nations often compete individually.
The English Association football team, rugby union team and cricket team
often cause increases in the popularity of celebrating Englishness.
The utillized literature
1. “Wikipedia”, the free encyclopedia.
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