British American

Infobox Ethnic group
group = British American

caption = Notable British Americans: Benjamin Franklin·Douglas MacArthur·James Monroe
Abraham Lincoln·Thomas Paine·James Dean·George Washington·Butch Cassidy·John Adams·Thomas Jefferson

flagicon|UK|1606 flagicon|USA
poptime = British
36,564,465 Americans (2000) Estimated up to 18% of US population
popplace = Throughout the Entire United States
langs = American English
rels = Christian
Mainly Protestant, and to a lesser extent Catholic
related = Britons·English Americans·Scottish Americans·Scots-Irish Americans·Welsh Americans

British Americans are Americans whose ancestry stems, either wholly or in part, from the United Kingdom. The term is seldom used by people to refer to themselves (less than 1% chose it in the 2000 census), and is used primarily as a demographic or historical research tool. Terms such as White American or European American or simply American are more commonly used.

British Americans have English, Scottish, Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots) and/or Welsh family heritages, or came from Canada where their ancestors were of British descent. Catholic Irish-Americans are not usually categorized as having British ancestry; they do not usually consider themselves as being British Americans. Immigrants from Canada of British ancestry tend to call themselves Canadian Americans. Similarly, most British Americans tend to differentiate to being specifically English, Scottish, Welsh or ethnic minorities (eg. Pakistani Scottish) and do not identify with the UK as a whole, therefore tending "not" to refer to themselves as British American "(see: English American, Scottish American, Welsh American, or Scots-Irish American)" and settlers of British heritage from other former British territories like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa also consider themselves by their nationalities, Australian Americans, New Zealand Americans, and South African-Americans. Many recent immigrants to the US from the UK, such as Indians (some 17,000 people), Chinese (some 9,000 people), Mixed Race (some 14,000 people) or Black Caribbeans and or Africans (some 35,000 people, see ), who are not of indigenous British ethnicity may identify with Indian American, Chinese American, Multiracial, African American. This disparity of identification could be considered part of the overall trend in the United Kingdom whereby the term "British" is not tied to any specific ethnic group(s) but the population as a whole. Subsequently, British people who migrate to the United States generally identify with their specific ethnic group rather than the non-ethnic demonym of "British".

British American or American?

Many British Americans have ancestry in America that dates back to colonial times in the 17th and 18th centuries. Those who went to New England are known as Yankees. With their roots being in America for such a long period, many British Americans and a significant number of Irish Americans have begun to think of themselves ancestrally simply as "Americans." This is especially true in the South.

Many other Americans are uncertain about the relative proportions in their own ancestry or have forgotten the origins of their distant ancestors, or prefer to identify with the ethnicity of ancestors who arrived more recently, which provide more distinctive folkways than the general American culture. Great Britain also provided millions of immigrants to America after 1776. They typically assimilated quite rapidly.

Number of British Americans

2000 U.S Census

The Twenty-Second United States Census, 2000, 36.4 million Americans reported British ancestry. [United States 2000 Census, [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_QTP13&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U Ancestry: 2000] ]

British Ancestry
1980,1990,2000 of total U.S Population

Most of the population who stated their ancestry as "American" are said to be of old colonial British stock.
* American 20,625,093 (7.3%)

1990 U.S Census

The Twenty-first United States Census, 1990. [ [http://www.census.gov/population/www/CPH-L-97.pdf United States 1990 Census] ]

1980 U.S Census

The Twentieth United States Census, 1980, 61.3 million "(61,311,449)" Americans reported British ancestry.
The total U.S population in 1980 was 226,545,805 and was the first census-form that asked peoples ancestry. [ [http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/pc80-s1-10/tab02.pdf United States 1980 Census] ]

These include:In 1980, the total census reported that British ancestry was (32.56%) of the total U.S population.

* Scots-IrishTriple ancestry response:"English-Irish-Scotch": 897,316There are no concrete figures for the Scots-Irish and some group responses were undercounted, but in 1980, 29,828,349 people claimed Irish and another ethnic ancestry... These figures make British Americans the largest "ethnic" groups in the U.S. and would have natuarally increased in population with more people of British origin than in 1980. When counted collectively (the Census Bureau does give the choice to count them collectively as one ancestry, and also count them in a separate ethnic group, that is English, Scottish, Welsh or Scots-Irish). In In 2000, Germans and Irish are the largest self-reported ethnic groups in the nation.

British ancestry maps

ee also

*European American
*Hyphenated American
*List of English Americans
*List of Scots-Irish Americans
*List of Scottish Americans
*List of Welsh Americans
*Anglo-Celtic Australian

References

* [http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:WJGw9z2RkkYJ:www.uen.org/Lessonplan/downloadFile.cgi%3Ffile%3D1041-6-15955-AF_Census_Data.pdf%26filename%3DAF_Census_Data.pdf+49,598,035&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk References]

cholarly sources

* Oscar Handlin, Ann Orlov and Stephan Thernstrom eds. "Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups" (1980) the standard reference source for all ethnic groups.
* Rowland Tappan Berthoff. "British Immigrants in Industrial America, 1790-1950" (1953).
* David Hackett Fischer. "Albion's Seed, Four British Folkways In America" (1989).

External links

* [http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/pc80-s1-10.html 1980 U.S Census ancestry lists]
* [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_QTP13&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-_sse=on 2000 Census Bureau ancestry figures]

European Americans