British

British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. 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" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants forming the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality. Though early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity. The notion of Britishness and a shared British identity was forged during the 18th century and early 19th century when Britain engaged in several global conflicts with France, 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 resists 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. Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Normans. The progressive political unification of the British Isles facilitated migration, cultural and linguistic exchange, and intermarriage between the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales during the late Middle Ages, early modern period and beyond. Since 1922 and earlier, 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.