British people

British people, or Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies; 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, 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 united 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 and Ireland; Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish cultures, whose distinctiveness still resists notions of a homogenised British identity. Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by unionists.