|
British people, or Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies; and their descendants.〔Cfr. Interpretation Act 1978, Sched. 1. By the British Nationality Act 1981, s. 50 (1), the United Kingdom includes the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man for the purposes of nationality law.〕〔:〕〔:〕 British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, British people refers to the ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain south of the Forth.〔 Although early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain〔(【引用サイトリンク】 THE TREATY or Act of the Union )〕 in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity.〔.〕 The notion of Britishness was forged during the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and the First French Empire, and developed further during the Victorian era.〔〔.〕 The complex history of the formation of the United Kingdom created a "particular sense of nationhood and belonging" in Great Britain and Ireland;〔 Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish cultures, whose distinctiveness still resist notions of a homogenised British identity.〔.〕 Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by unionists. Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in the British Isles before the eleventh century. Prehistoric, Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse influences were blended in Britain under the Normans, descended from Scandinavian settlers in northern France. Conquest and union facilitated migration, cultural and linguistic exchange, and intermarriage between the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales during the Middle Ages, Early Modern period and beyond.〔.〕〔.〕 Since 1922, there has been immigration to the United Kingdom by people from what is now the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth, mainland Europe and elsewhere; they and their descendants are mostly British citizens with some assuming a British, dual or hyphenated identity.〔.〕 The British are a diverse, multi-national〔(Gordon Brown: We must defend the Union ) ''The Daily Telegraph'', 25 March 2008〕〔(DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP CURRICULUM REVIEW ) www.devon.gov.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2010.〕 and multicultural society, with "strong regional accents, expressions and identities".〔.〕 The social structure of the United Kingdom has changed radically since the nineteenth century, with the decline in religious observance, enlargement of the middle class, and increased ethnic diversity. The population of the UK stands at around 62.5 million, with a British diaspora of around 140 million concentrated in Australia, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United States.〔 == History of the term == Greek and Roman writers, between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the ''Priteni'', the origin of the Latin word ''Britannic''. Parthenius, a 1st-century Ancient Greek grammarian, and the ''Etymologicum Genuinum'', a 9th-century lexical encyclopaedia, describe Bretannus (the Latinised form of the Ancient Greek ''Βρεττανός'') as the Celtic national forefather of the Britons. It has been suggested that this name derives from a Gaullish description translated as "people of the forms", referring to the custom of tattooing or painting their bodies with blue woad. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of ''Prettanikē'' as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term ''Britannia'' was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman occupied Britain south of Caledonia.〔4.20 provides a translation describing Caesar's first invasion, using terms which from IV.XX appear in Latin as arriving "tamen in Britanniam", the inhabitants being "Britannos", and on p30 "principes Britanniae" is translated as "chiefs of Britain".〕 Following the Roman departure from Britain, the island of Great Britain was left open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors such as Saxons and Jutes who gained control in areas around the south east.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/ )〕 In this post-Roman period, as the Anglo-Saxons advanced, the Britons became confined to what would later be called Wales, Cornwall, North West England and Strathclyde. However, the term Britannia persisted as the Latin name for the island. The ''Historia Brittonum'' claimed legendary origins as a prestigious genealogy for Brittonic kings, followed by the ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' which popularised this pseudo-history to support the claims of the Kings of England.〔 During the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Tudor period, the term "British" was used to refer to the Welsh people. At this time, it was "the long held belief that the Welsh were descendants of the ancient Britons and that they spoke 'the British tongue.〔.〕 This notion was supported by texts such as the ''Historia Regum Britanniae'', a pseudohistorical account of ancient British history, written in the mid-12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth.〔 The ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' chronicled the lives of legendary kings of the Britons in a narrative spanning a time of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the ancient British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the 7th century forced the Celtic Britons to the west coast, namely Wales and Cornwall.〔 This legendary Celtic history of Great Britain is known as the Matter of Britain. The Matter of Britain, a national myth, was retold or reinterpreted in works by Gerald of Wales, a Cambro-Norman chronicler who in the 12th and 13th centuries used the term British to refer to what were later known as the Welsh. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「British people」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|