British People

British people (also referred to as the British, Britons, or informally as Brits or Britishers) are citizens or natives of the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies, British Overseas Territories, and their descendants. 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, the term 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 unified Kingdom of Great Britain 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; Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English, Scots and Welsh cultures, whose distinctiveness still resist notions of a homogenised British identity. Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Northern Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by unionists.

Contemporary Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic stocks that settled in Great Britain 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 and multicultural society, with "strong regional accents, expressions and identities". The social structure of Britain 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 United Kingdom stands at around 62.5 million, with a British diaspora of around 140 million concentrated in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United States.