Unit Two: The People
1. Discuss how the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish have defined themselves in term of their individual nationalities.
People from various ethnic groups reside in the United Kingdom. For most of the last millennium, the lands now constituting the United Kingdom were largely inhabited by English, Scots, Irish, Welsh people.
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English, whose identity as a people is of early medieval origin. Today the largest single English population resides in England, forming the largest part of the racially-based classification used in the 2001 UK census known as White British. It is difficult to clearly define the origins of the English, owing to the close interactions between the English and their neighbours in the British Isles, and the waves of immigration that have added to England's population at different periods. The English are often believed to be a mixture of several closely related groups that have settled in what became England, such as the Angles, Saxons, 该浏览器不支持webassemblyNorse Vikin
gs and Normans. Another complication in defining the English is a common tendency for the words "English" and "British" to be used interchangeably. This blurring is a sign of England's dominant position with the UK, and it is also problematic for the English when it comes to conceiving of their national identity.
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language. The origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, although Celtic languages seem to have been spoken in Wales far longer. As with all ethnic groups, the term Welsh people applies to people who identify themselves as Welsh, and who are identified by others as Welsh. They may perceive themselves, or be perceived, as having a shared cultural heritage, or shared ancestral origins. In modern use in Wales, "Welsh people" may also refer to anyone born or living in Wales.
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originated in Ireland, which has been populated for around 9,000 years, with the last group of the people's earliest ancestors supposedly r
epresenting the "pure" Gaelic ancestry, and still serving as a term for the Irish race today. The main groups that interacted with the Irish in the Middle Ages include the Scottish people and the Vikings, with the Icelanders especially having some Irish descent. The Anglo-Norman invasion of the High Middle Ages, the English plantations and the subsequent English rule of the country introduced the idea保存快捷键是什么Normans, Welsh, Flemish, Anglo-Saxons, and Bretons into Ireland. On 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, six of the traditional nine counties of the historic Irish province of Ulster formulated Northern Ireland as a distinct subdivision of the UK. At the time of the 2001 UK Census, Northern Irish population was 1,685,000, constituting between a quarter and a third of the island's total population and about 3 per cent of the population of the UK. People from Northern Ireland are British citizens but may additionally be recognised as Irish citizens, as a result of the 1998 珠宝logoBelfast Agreement between the British and Irish governments. However, a 1999 survey showed that 51 per cent of Protestants felt "Not at all Irish" and 41 per cent only "weakly Irish" where 77 per cent of Catholics polled said they felt "strongly Irish".
The Scots people are a nation and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland. Historically, as an ethnic group, they emerged from an amalgamation of Celts, Picts, entry汇编语言Gaels and Brythons. In modern use "Scottish people" or "Scots" refers to anyone born in Scotland. In another sense, it applies to people who are descended from the Scots and who identify ethnically as Scots. While the Latin word Scoti originally applied to a particular, 5th century, Gaelic tribe that inhabited areas in the north of Ireland and western Scotland, and continued to be synonymous with the Gaelic language until the 15th century. Today the term Scots is now used to describe all Scottish people. Though usually considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been incorrectly used for the Scottish people, but this use has been primarily by people outside of Scotland.
2. Critically examine the Britishness in the contemporary UK population.
Britishness is a term referring to a sense of national identity of the British people, and common culture of the United Kingdom. Britishness only became synonymous with a national civic identity with the formation in 1707 of the united Kingdom of Great Britain, w
hich became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and in turn, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with the secession of what became the Republic of Ireland. Following the 1707 Act of Union, it became common for the people of the Kingdom of Great Britainspringcloudalibaba to have a "layered" identity, that is, to think of themselves as simultaneously British and also Scottish, English, and/or Welsh.
In the present day, the term “Britishness” is often associated with a desire to develop the sense of British identity for political reasons by appealing to British patriotism, British nationalism or British unionism, and in this capacity is reported as controversial. Across all Scottish and Welsh groups, regardless of people’s ethnic backgrounds, national identification is much stronger than identification with Britain, although those identities are not seen as incompatible or mutually exclusive. The situation is different in England, where there is a sharp difference in the ways in which white English and ethnic minority people think of themselves. Most white English people see themselves as English, first and foremost, but also as British. By contrast, most ethnic minority people (except for black Africans) see themselves as British, to the exclusion of any identification with Engla
nd, since they strongly associate England with white English people. Thus, perhaps against expectations, it would seem that ethnic minority people (except for black Africans) who live in England are the ones who most strongly identify themselves as British.

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