Origins

Occupying the southern half of the island of Great Britain, England takes its name from the “Angles,” one of the Germanic tribes (another being the Saxons) who invaded and settled the island beginning in the middle of the fifth century, pushing the existing Celtic population to the western periphery in Wales and Cornwall. After 865, the Germanic tribal territories in the north and east were overrun by Scandinavians who settled among the existing population and assumed political control, and in the tenth century the northwest was occupied by Norwegians from Ireland. Several Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian rulers achieved overlordship and claimed to be kings of the English prior to the invasion of England by the Normans.

The conquest of England by William of Normandy in 1066 brought a new ruling class rather than a major new influx of settlement, but, through intermarriage and the Normans’ control of government and the courts, the invasion hybridized the Anglo-Saxon tongue into the ancestor of present-day English. In 1204 the Anglo-Normans lost control over their territories in France, but England itself, protected by a powerful navy, was never again to suffer invasion. Consolidating its power over the rest of the British Isles, England incorporated Wales into the kingdom in 1536 and Scotland in 1707. Ireland came under secure English control from the time of Oliver Cromwell’s invasion in the 1650s. With the suppression of the Irish Parliament in 1801, Ireland joined England, Scotland, and Wales as parts of the United Kingdom. It was at that time that the country’s flag, the Union Jack, assumed its present design, with the cross of St Patrick (Ireland) joining those of St George (England) and St Andrew (Scotland). Following the partition of Ireland in 1921, the state was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The latter territory had its own regional legislature until 1972.

Britain’s naval strength and growing prowess in trade underpinned its emergence in the nineteenth century both as the world’s premier industrial power and as the centre of an extensive empire upon which, proverbially, “the sun never set.” From North America to Africa to south and southeast Asia, numerous colonies were administered by officials from the British Isles. During the second half of the twentieth century, the British Empire was largely disassembled as former colonies became independent countries. This transformation was for the most part carried out peacefully, since the United Kingdom was exhausted by two world wars against Germany and in most cases was unwilling or unable to maintain its former colonies.

The creation of Britain did not involve the eradication of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish identities, but a sense of Britishness arose in the eighteenth century as Britons – apart from Irish Catholics – collectively redefined themselves in contradistinction both to the colonial peoples they conquered and, more important, to the military threat long posed by France. Since the disappearance of an external foe in 1945 and the decline of Britain’s imperial role, there has been a recurrence of devolutionary tendencies in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This history has also bequeathed a legacy of semantic confusion.

In earlier generations it was fashionable to view Canada, a former British colony, as essentially an English country, or to consider the English and the French as the two “founding peoples” or “charter groups.” Though sensibilities towards the First Nations and other immigrant peoples have changed, the result has not been a rush to study or even to define clearly the English experience in Canada. Unlike the Scots and the Irish, both of whom have attracted much scholarly interest, the English continue to be virtually ignored. It has been assumed – incorrectly – that the bulk of British immigrants were English, that already we know their story, and that the groups needing study are the “ethnics,” the exotics, the non-English. Such assumptions prevail partly because English immigration to Canada was not punctuated by dramatic episodes such as the Irish potato famine or Scotland’s Highland clearances, and partly because the English are not seen to have suffered discrimination at the hands of a native-born majority and are believed to have been assimilated easily.

Historians, it is true, have explored the competition of English and American ideas and their impact on Canada, as well as English influence on political structures, art, and literature, and the contributions of imperial if not strictly English sentiment to Canadian nationalism and identity. Yet studies of the English as one of Canada’s peoples are almost non-existent. What is more, the English have suffered from a widespread confusion in terminology. Most notably in Quebec, study of the ethnic English is complicated by use of the term “English,” especially in recent decades, to mean English-speaking rather than those of specifically English or sometimes even British ancestry. This usage has persisted despite official attempts to popularize the term “anglophone” and promotion by some of the term “English-speaking Quebec.”

Adding to the confusion is the fact that after 1950 immigration statistics are not broken down beyond “United Kingdom” (the same is true of census-birth-place data after 1961). Similarly, by rejecting “American” as an ethnic identifier for census purposes, colonial and Canadian governments have greatly obscured the national-origin statistics, especially in such areas of heavy American settlement as parts of New Brunswick, southern Nova Scotia, the Eastern Townships, eastern and southern Ontario, and the west. Notwithstanding the impression conveyed by such statistics, there were great differences between American settlers of English ancestry and immigrants directly from England.

In this entry, the term “English” refers to natives of England and the descendants of those who came to Canada directly from England or via other countries after only the briefest of sojourns. Excluded are groups deemed to be culturally American, namely, the minority of Loyalists who were of English descent and other immigrants from the United States (see AFRICAN CANADIANS; AMERICANS). The term “British” is in theory an inclusive one, comprising also Scots, Welsh, and Irish, though some of them reject the label. Many English call themselves British in contradistinction to these other groups, but such usage may merely reflect imperialist appropriation on their part. When the term “British” is used here, it refers to all peoples living in Great Britain and Ireland (including the southern Irish while they were British subjects). (See also CORNISH; IRISH CATHOLICS; IRISH PROTESTANTS; SCOTS; WELSH.)