British Americans

British Americans. British Americans (including the English, Scots, Welsh, and Scotch‐Irish) began to settle North America permanently in 1607. They dominated immigration in the Colonial Era, bringing with them the English language and Protestant Christianity, as well as the legal system and political, cultural, and economic values that shaped the nation. Arriving from distinct parts of Britain and settling in distinct parts of America, they laid the foundations of America's regional cultures. By 1776, with about half the white population consisting of English immigrants and their descendents, America was overwhelmingly a British world. Through the twentieth century, Britons continued to constitute a substantial though diminishing share of immigrants.

Between 1820 and 1930, at least five million Britons (including Canadians of British origins) permanently settled in the United States. These immigrants were “invisible” in the sense that they blended into the dominant culture and society more readily than other immigrant groups. Generally they did not form ethnic settlements, nor were they seen as “foreigners.” In the Antebellum Era, many Britons came seeking farmland and helped push the frontier westward; by the 1880s, more settled in cities. Throughout the nineteenth century, British Americans loomed large in literature and the arts; in banking and finance; and in the industrialization process, especially in the textile industry, the iron and steel industry, mining, railroads, and engineering. In the twentieth century, though spread across the economic spectrum, British Americans figured prominently in the skilled and professional ranks, continuing to blend in with American society and to contribute to its development. Despite the nation's growing ethnic diversity, British Americans dominated national politics, the judiciary, and higher education well into the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Charlotte Erickson , Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth‐Century America, 1972.
David Hackett Fischer , Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, 1989.

William E. Van Vugt