English national identity was established during the Early Middle Ages, as the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were forged into a new nation state. However, from the Union in the eighteenth century the terms 'English' and 'British' began to be seen as interchangeable,[1] and today some argue that Englishness and Britishness are synonymous.[2]
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As Macphee and Poddar argue in their book Empire and After, that even though for many outside the borders of the British isles Englishness and Britishness may seem like two synonymous expressions, the two are not identical and their relation to each other is for the most part is highly complex. Englishness is often a response to different national identities within Britain such as Scottishness, Irishness, Welshness. However this does not necessarily entail that it is appropriate to call the people living in England as English. For many, Englishness connotes e.g. “whiteness” and people other than white descendants (especially citizens from former British colonies) may feel that the more open term Britishness is to be preferred. It could therefore be said that Englishness is a response to the internal local pressure from other countries in Britain while Britishness developed as a reaction towards the global community. Though the designation of the two terms is not as simple since they are invariably conflated, they are both tied into the identity of the British nation and empire, since these last two are altering considerably as Englishness and Britishness do too. Thus the slippage between the two words can be seen as a play between these changing dynamics.[3]