The English diaspora consists of English people and their descendants who emigrated from England. The diaspora is concentrated in the English-speaking world in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, South Africa, and to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe, India, Zambia and continental Europe.
Origins of the diaspora The first notable exodus of English-speakers began in the years following the Norman Conquest of England, the majority of them being aristocrats and their retinues, who had become dispossessed of their manors and titles by the invading Normans. Some went to neighboring lands in Scotland, Ireland and Scandinavia, but many fled to the Byzantine Empire where they were said to have settled an area they named New England along the Black Sea, likely Crimea, and garrisoned a castle called Kibatos on the coast of Anatolia. The Emperor's Varangian Guard then became mostly Englishmen.
The first deliberate and organized English diaspora began when English Catholics exiled themselves from Henry VIII's religious policies to Habsburg lands, especially the nearest Catholic intellectual centre, the University of Louvain (in present-day Belgium) which was by the late 1540s a bastion of ultra-orthodoxy. This was redoubled by a further wave of emigration under Edward VI's more radically Protestant regime.
Age of Discovery After the Age of Discovery, the native peoples of England were among the earliest and by far the largest communities to emigrate out of Europe, and English overseas expansion beginning in the 16th century, followed by the British Empire's expansion during the first half of the 19th century saw an extraordinary dispersion of English people, with particular concentrations in North America and Australasia..
The British Empire was "built on waves of migration overseas by British peoples",. who left the island of Great Britain, reaching across the globe and permanently affecting population structures in three continents. What became the United States was "easily the greatest single destination of emigrant British", but in the Federation of Australia the British ethnic groups experienced a birth rate higher than anything seen before, resulting in them becoming the dominant ethnic groups in Australia.
Americas
Argentina
English settlers arrived in Buenos Aires in 1806 (then a Spanish colony) in small numbers, mostly as businessmen, when Argentina was an emerging nation and the settlers were welcomed for the stability they brought to commercial life. As the 19th century progressed more English families arrived, and many bought land to develop the potential of the Argentine pampas for the large-scale growing of crops. The English founded banks, developed the export trade in crops and animal products and imported the luxuries that the growing Argentine middle classes sought.
As well as those who went to Argentina as industrialists and major landowners, others went as railway engineers, civil engineers and to work in banking and commerce. Others went to become whalers, missionaries and simply to seek out a future. English families sent second and younger sons, or what were described as the black sheep of the family, to Argentina to make their fortunes in cattle and wheat. English settlers introduced football to Argentina. Some English families owned sugar plantations.
English culture, or a version of it as perceived from outside, had a noted effect on the culture of Argentina, mainly in the middle classes. In 1888 local Anglo-Argentines established the Hurlingham Club, based on its namesake in London. The city of Hurlingham, Buenos Aires and Hurlingham Partido in Buenos Aires Province later grew up around the club and took their names from it. The Córdoba Athletic Club, one of the oldest sports clubs in Argentina, was founded in 1882 by Englishmen that lived in Córdoba working in the railways.
There are about 1,000,000 people of English descent in Argentina.
Canada
In the Canada 2016 Census, 'English' was the most common ethnic origin (ethnic origin refers to the ethnic or cultural group(s) to which the respondent's ancestors belong) recorded by respondents; 6,320,085 people or 18.3% of the population self-identified themselves as wholly or partly English.Census Profile, 2016 Census - Ethnic origin populationFocus on Geography Series - 2016 Census On the other hand, people identifying as Canadian but not English may have previously identified as English before the option of identifying as Canadian was available.According to Canada's Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census , (p.7) "...the presence of the Canadian example has led to an increase in Canadian being reported and has had an impact on the counts of other groups, especially for French, English, Irish and Scottish. People who previously reported these origins in the census had the tendency to now report Canadian."
Chile
Chileans of English ancestry are estimated to number 1,000,000
When the Port of Valparaíso opened to free trade in 1811, the English began to congregate in Valparaíso. The first to arrive brought with them tools, articles of china, wool and cotton, with instructions to return with copper and hemp. This was the first exchange of what would become a deep-rooted commercial relationship between the UK and Chile.
In Valparaíso they constructed their largest and most important colony, developing neighborhoods of English character, schools, social, sports clubs, business organizations and periodicals. This influence is apparent in some areas of Chilean society today, such as the bank and the national marina, as well as in certain social activities popular in the country, such as football, horse racing, and drinking tea.
The English in the city eventually numbered more than 32,000 in the port's boom period during the saltpeter bonanza at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Inmigración británica en Valparaíso. The British colonial influence is important to understand the port's boom and bust.
The English colony was also important in the northern zone of the country during the saltpeter boom, in the ports of Iquique and Pisagua. The King of Saltpeter, John Thomas North, was the principal backer of nitrate mining. The English legacy was reflected in the streets of the historic district of the city of Iquique, with the foundation of various institutions, such as the Club Hípico (Racing Club). Nevertheless, their presence came to an end with the saltpeter crisis during the 1930s.
An important contingent of English immigrants also settled in the present-day region of Magallanes. In the same way, they established English families in other areas of the country, such as Santiago, Coquimbo, the Araucanía, and Chiloé.
Nicaragua
English people along the Caribbean Coast, or Miskito Coast, of Nicaragua began in 1633. The area was controlled by Britain until 1860, and eventually integrated into Nicaragua by 1894. The Miskito Coast region divided into two autonomous regions within Nicaragua after 1987. The first English settlers of the Miskito Coast arrived in 1633, exchanging products through primitive trade with the Miskitos. The English exchanged manufactured goods such as guns, machetes, beds, mirrors etc., in exchange for cocoa, animal skins, sarsaparilla, rubber, wood, and turtle shells. The formation of an English colony in the region led Spain to protest, but England managed to create a colony on the Caribbean Coast. This colony had two different, but complementary, production methods; one a capitalist basis and the other communal.
Paraguay
The English people in Paraguay mostly arrived during the colonial period as investors and industrialists. They were noted throughout the Southern cone region of Paraguay as being skilled farmers, investors, and bankers and as having created many of the regions railways and settled vast tracts of land.
In the modern day however it is assumed most have become a part of the wider Paraguayan ethnicity, although there are still some in Paraguay who identify as "English". The English indirectly and probably inadvertently played a major part in Paraguay's continual existence, because the British Empire had invested heavily throughout South America, including Paraguay.
United States
English immigration began in the 1500s. Sir Walter Raleigh led expeditions to North America in order to found new settlements and find gold and named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. In 1585 Sir Walter Raleigh sent several shiploads of colonists to the 'New World', who settled on Roanoke Island. It was here that Eleanor White Dare gave birth to a daughter, Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents in America. The first immigrants mysteriously disappeared and Roanoke was given the nickname of "the Lost Colony".
English settlement in America recommenced with Jamestown in the Virginia Colony in 1607. With the permission of James I, three ships (the Susan Constant, The Discovery and The God Speed) sailed from England and landed at Cape Henry in April, under the captainship of Christopher Newport, who had been hired by the London Company to lead expeditions to what is now America. In 1620 another religious group left England in search of religious freedom. This group was called the Puritans who represented the next wave of English immigration to America. The 'Great Migration' between 1620 and 1640 to America led to the establishment of the first Thirteen Colonies. It is estimated that over 50,000 undertook the journey to America during the Great Migration.
The overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America were of English extraction, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton.
Estimates and census data + 1700-1790 estimates Year Population % 17001700 - 1790 are estimates.200,710includes English and Welsh80.01755 -52.01775 -48.717901,897,81048.3 Census results 1980 49,598,035 26.3 1990 32,651,788 13.1 2000 24,515,138 8.7 2020 46,550,968 14.0
The table shows the English population old stock estimates from 1700 to 1790. In 1700 the total population of the American colonies was 250,888 of which 223,071 (89%) were white and 80% were ethnically English and Welsh.
In the 2020 United States census, English Americans (46.6 million or 19.8% of white Americans) were the most common ancestral group, followed by German Americans (45 million) and Irish Americans at 38.6 million.
However, demographers regard this as an undercount, as the index of inconsistency is high and many, if not most, people from English stock have a tendency (since the introduction of a new 'American' category in the 2000 census) to identify as simply AmericansSharing the Dream: White Males in a Multicultural America By Dominic J. Pulera.Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44-6.Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters, 'Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 487, No. 79 (September 1986), pp. 82-86. or if of mixed European ancestry, identify with a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 36. In the 1980 United States Census, over 49 million (49,598,035) Americans claimed English ancestry, at the time around 26.34% of the total population and largest reported group which, even today, would make them the largest ethnic group in the United States.