The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe.
Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities. The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans.1
There is no precise or universally accepted definition of the terms "ethnic group" or "nationality". In the context of European ethnography in particular, the terms ethnic group, people (without nation state), nationality, national minority, ethnic minority, linguistic community, linguistic group and linguistic minority are used as mostly synonymous, although preference may vary in usage with respect to the situation specific to the individual countries of Europe.2
These eight groups between themselves account for some 465 million or about 65% of European population.
About 20-25 million residents (3%) are members of diasporas of non-European origin. The population of the European Union, with some five hundred million residents, accounts for two thirds of the European population.
Of the total population of Europe of some 730 million (as of 2005), over 80% or some 600 million fall within three large branches of Indo-European languages, viz., Slavic, Latin (Romance) and Germanic. The largest groups that do not fall within either of these, or the so-called separate groups, are the Greeks and Hungarians (about 12 million each) and the Albanians (about 8 million). Beside the Indo-European languages there are two other major language families on the European continent: Turkic languages and Uralic languages. The Semitic languages that dominate the coast of the northern Africa as well as the Near East are preserved on the Malta islands, a Mediterranean archipelago. The Basque language is a linguistic isolate unrelated to any other languages inside or outside of Europe.
9 (excluding Turkey)
19 (including European Turkey)
approx. 9 million (not including Turkey),30 10 million in Eastern Thrace (European Turkey); overall there is a total of 55-60 million Turks in Turkey.31 (see Turks in Europe)
ethno-linguistic classification is difficult, since there is significant historical admixture of Italian, Sicilian, Siculo-Arabic, British and French influence.
Pan and Pfeil (2002) distinguish 33 peoples which form the majority population in at least onenote 3 sovereign state geographically situated in Europe.note 4 These majorities range from nearly homogeneous populations as in Albania or Poland, to comparatively slight majorities as in Latvia or Belgium. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro are multiethnic states in which no group forms a majority.
other European 7%, North African 7%, Sub-Saharan African, Indochinese, Asian, Latin American and Pacific Islander. [2] French with recent immigrant background (at least one great-grandparent) 33%.4344
Germans without immigrant background 81%; Germans with immigrant background (including ethnic German repatriates and people of partial immigrant background) 10%; Foreigners 9%: Turks 2.1%, others 6.7% and non-European descent about 2 to 5%).45
other white (large numbers of Latvian, Polish and Ukrainian migration) 7.5%, Asian 1.3%, black 1.1%, mixed 1.1%, and unspecified (i.e. Ulster Scots and Irish Travellers) 1.6%. (2006 census)
other European (mostly Albanian, followed by Slovene, Croatian, Hungarian, Greek, Romanian, Ukrainian and Swiss) 2.5%, North African Arab 1%, and others (i.e. Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Black African and Latin American) 1.5%. [3]
Regarding the European Bronze Age, the only secure reconstruction is that of Proto-Greek (ca. 2000 BC). A Proto-Italo-Celtic ancestor of both Italic and Celtic (assumed for the Bell beaker period), and a Proto-Balto-Slavic language (assumed for roughly the Corded Ware horizon) has been postulated with less confidence. Old European hydronymy has been taken as indicating an early (Bronze Age) Indo-European predecessor of the later centum languages.
the western Kipchaks known as Cumans entered the lands of present-day Ukraine in the 11th century.
the Mongol/Tatar invasions (1223–1480), and Ottoman control of the Balkans (1389–1878). These medieval incursions account for the presence of European Turks and Tatars.
Europa Polyglotta, Linguarum Genealogiam exhibens, una cum Literis, Scribendique modis, Omnium Gentium ("multilingual Europe, exhibiting a genealogy of tongues together with the letters and modes of writing of all peoples").
Book IX of Isidore's Etymologiae (7th century) treats de linguis, gentibus, regnis, militia, civibus (of languages, peoples, realms, armies and cities). Ahmad ibn Fadlan in the 10th century gives an account of the Bolghar and the Rus' peoples. William Rubruck, while most notable for his account of the Mongols, in his account of his journey to Asia also gives accounts of the Tatars and the Alans. Saxo Grammaticus and Adam of Bremen give an account of pre-Christian Scandinavia. The Chronicon Slavorum (12th century) gives an account of the northwestern Slavic tribes.
Gottfried Hensel in his 1741 Synopsis universae philologiae published what is probably the earliest ethno-linguistic map of Europe, showing the beginning of the pater noster in the various European languages and scripts.5354 In the 19th century, ethnicity was discussed in terms of scientific racism, and the ethnic groups of Europe were grouped into a number of "races", Mediterranean, Alpine and Nordic, all part of a larger "Caucasian" group.
The beginnings of ethnic geography as an academic subdiscipline lie in the period following World War I, in the context of nationalism, and in the 1930s exploitation for the purposes of fascist and Nazi propaganda so that it was only in the 1960s that ethnic geography began to thrive as a bona fide academic subdiscipline.55
The origins of modern ethnography are often traced to the work of Bronisław Malinowski who emphasized the importance of fieldwork.56 The emergence of population genetics further undermined the categorisation of Europeans into clearly defined racial groups. A 2007 study on the genetic history of Europe found that the most important genetic differentiation in Europe occurs on a line from the north to the south-east (northern Europe to the Balkans), with another east-west axis of differentiation across Europe, separating the "indigenous" Basques and Sami from other European populations. Despite these stratifications it noted the unusually high degree of European homogeneity: "there is low apparent diversity in Europe with the entire continent-wide samples only marginally more dispersed than single population samples elsewhere in the world."575859
The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of Europeans.60
The member states of the Council of Europe in 1995 signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The broad aims of the Convention are to ensure that the signatory states respect the rights of national minorities, undertaking to combat discrimination, promote equality, preserve and develop the culture and identity of national minorities, guarantee certain freedoms in relation to access to the media, minority languages and education and encourage the participation of national minorities in public life. The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities defines a national minority implicitly to include minorities possessing a territorial identity and a distinct cultural heritage. By 2008, 39 member states have signed and ratified the Convention, with the notable exception of France.
Most of Europe's indigenous peoples, or ethnic groups known to have the earliest known historical connection to a particular region, have gone extinct or been absorbed by (or, perhaps, contributed to) the dominant cultures. Those that survive are largely confined to remote areas. Groups that have been identified as indigenous include the Sami of northern Scandinavia, the Basques of northern Spain and southern France, and a many of the western indigenous peoples of Russia. Groups in Russia include Finno-Ugric peoples such as the Komi and Mordvins of the western Ural Mountains, Samoyedic peoples such as the Nenets people of northern Russia.
Europe is also where a multiplicity of cultures, nationalities and ethnic groups originated outside of Europe reside in, most of them are recently arrived immigrants in the 20th century and their country of origin are often a former colony of the British, French and Spanish empires.
Populations of non-European origin in Europe (approx. 22 - 29+ million, or approx. 3% to 4%+ [depending on definition of non-European origin], out of a total population of approx. 728 million):
North Africans (Arabs and Berbers): approx. 5 million, mostly in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. The bulk of North African migrants are Moroccans, although France also has a large number of Algerians.
Horn Africans: approx. 200,000 Somalis,61 mostly in the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia.
Sub-Saharan Africans (many ethnicities including Afro-Caribbeans and others by descent): approx. 5 million but rapidly growing, mostly in the UK and France, with smaller numbers in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Portugal and elsewhere.62
Latin Americans: approx. 2.2 million, mainly in Spain and to a lesser extent Italy and the UK.63 See also Latin American Britons (80,000 Latin American born in 2001).64
Brazilians: around 70,000 in Portugal and Italy each, and 50,000 in Germany.
Chilean refugees escaping the Augusto Pinochet regime of the 1970s formed communities in France, Sweden, the UK, former East Germany and the Netherlands.
South Asians (many ethnicities, not including Romani): approx. 3 - 4 million, mostly in the UK but reside in smaller numbers in Germany and France.
Romani (Gypsies) (whom have been in Europe for several centuries, and thus whose non-European origins are distant): approx. 4 or 10 million (although estimates vary widely), dispersed throughout Europe but with large numbers concentrated in the Balkans area, they are of ancestral South Asian origin.
Indians: approx. 2 million, mostly in the UK, also in Germany and smaller numbers in Ireland.
Pakistanis: approx. 1,000,000, mostly in the UK, but also in Norway and Sweden.
African Americans (i.e. African American British) who are Americans of Black/African ancestry reside in other countries. In the 1920s, African-American entertainers established a colony in Paris and descendants of WWII/Cold war era black American GI's stationed in France, Germany and Italy are well known.
Amerindians and Inuit, a scant few in the European continent of American Indian ancestry (often Latin Americans in Spain, France and the UK; Inuit in Denmark), but most may be children or grandchildren of U.S. soldiers from American Indian tribes by intermarriage with local European women. In Germany, the Native American Association of Germany founded in 1994 as a socio-cultural organization estimates 50,000 North American Indians (descendants) live in the country.citation needed
Medieval notions of a relation of the peoples of Europe are expressed in terms of genealogy of mythical founders of the individual groups. The Europeans were considered the descendants of Japhet from early times, corresponding to the division of the known world into three continents, the descendants of Sem peopling Asia and those of Ham peopling Africa. Identification of Europeans as "Japhetites" is also reflected in early suggestions for terming the Indo-European languages "Japhetic".
In this tradition, the Historia Brittonum (9th century) introduces a genealogy of the peoples of the Migration period (as it was remembered in early medieval historiography) as follows,
The first man that dwelt in Europe was Alanus, with his three sons, Hisicion, Armenon, and Neugio. Hisicion had four sons, Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, and Bruttus. Armenon had five sons, Gothus, Valagothus, Cibidus, Burgundus, and Longobardus. Neugio had three sons, Vandalus, Saxo, and Boganus.
European culture is largely rooted in what is often referred to as its "common cultural heritage".66 Due to the great number of perspectives which can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing conception of European culture.67 Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe.68 One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:69
A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;70
A plurality of states with different political orders, which are condemned to live together in one way or another;70
Respect for peoples, states and nations outside Europe.70
Berting says that these points fit with "Europe's most positive realisations".71 The concept of European culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.72 The term has come to apply to countries whose history has been strongly marked by European immigration or settlement during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe.
Since the High Middle Ages, most of Europe used to be dominated by Christianity. There are three major denominations, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox, with Protestantism restricted mostly to Northern Europe, and Orthodoxy to Slavic regions, Romania, Greece and Georgia. Catholicism, while centered in the Latin parts, has a significant following also in Germanic and Slavic regions, Hungary, and Ireland (with some in Great Britain).
Judaism has a long history in Europe, but is a small minority religion, with France (1%) the only European country with a Jewish population in excess of 0.5%. (With millions of Jews killed during WW2, the Holocaust has contributed to the small population percentages.) The Jewish population of Europe is composed primarily of two groups, the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi. Ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews likely migrated to the middle of Europe at least as early as the 8th century, while Sephardi Jews established themselves in Spain and Portugal at least one thousand years before that. Jews originated in the Levant thousands of years ago and spread around the Mediterranean and into Europe. Jewish European history was notably affected by the Holocaust and emigration (including Aliyah, as well as emigration to America) in the 20th century.
"Pan-European identity" or "Europatriotism" is an emerging sense of personal identification with Europe, or the European Union as a result of the gradual process European integration taking place over the last quarter of the 20th century, and especially in the period after the end of the Cold War, since the 1990s. The foundation of the OSCE followng the 1990s Paris Charter has facilitated this process on a political level during the 1990s and 2000s.
From the later 20th century, 'Europe' has come to be widely used as a synonym for the European Union even though there are millions of people living on the European continent in non-EU states. The prefix pan implies that the identity applies throughout Europe, and especially in an EU context, and 'pan-European' is often contrasted with national identity.74
^ In the 2001 census in England and Wales, white residents could identify themselves as White Irish or White British though no separate White English or White Welsh options were offered. In Scotland, white residents could identify themselves as White Scottish or Other White British. In the census of Northern Ireland, White Irish and White British were combined into a single "White" ethnic group on the census forms.
References
^ Christoph Pan, Beate Sibylle Pfeil,Minderheitenrechte in Europa. Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen (2002). Living-diversity.eu, English translation 2004.
^ Pan and Pfeil (2004), "Problems with Terminology", pp. xvii-xx.
^ Pan and Pfeil (2004) give 122 million for Europe and Asia taken together.
^ Pan and Pfeil, National Minotiries in Europe (2004), ISBN 978-3-7003-1443-1. The Peoples of Europe by Demographic Size, Table 1, pp. 11f. (a breakdown by country of these 87 groups is given in Table 5, pp. 17-31.)
^ unless otherwise indicated, population figures are those of Pan and Pfeil (2004)
^ Persons of danish origin: 4 985 415. Total population: 5 511 451 Statistics Denmark
^ "Immigration is hardly a recent development in French history, as Gérard Noiriel amply demonstrates in his history of French immigration, The French Melting Pot. Noiriel estimates that one third of the population currently living in France is of "foreign" descent", Marie-Christine Weidmann-Koop, "France at the dawn of the twenty-first century, trends and transformations", Summa Publications, Inc., 2000, P.160
^ " In present day France, one-third of the population has grandparents that were born outside of France", Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong: What makes the French so French", Robson Books Ltd, 2004, p.8
^ Karl Friedrich Vollgraff, Erster Versuch einer Begründung sowohl der allgemeinen Ethnologie durch die Anthropologie, wis auch der Staats und rechts-philosophie durch die Ethnologie oder Nationalität der Völker (1851), p. 257.
^ A. Kumar, Encyclopaedia of Teaching of Geography (2002), p. 74 ff.; the tripartite subdivision of "Caucasians" into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean groups persisted among some scientists into the 1960s, notably in Carleton Coon's book The Origin of Races (1962).
^ab Hisitione autem ortae sunt quattuor gentes Franci, Latini, Albani et Britti. ab Armenone autem quinque: Gothi, Valagothi, Gebidi, Burgundi, Longobardi. a Neguio vero quattuor Boguarii, Vandali, Saxones et Turingi.trans. J. A. Giles. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848.
^ Cederman (2001:2) remarks: "Given the absence of an explicit legal definition and the plethora of competing identities, it is indeed hard to avoid the conclusion that Europe is an essentially contested concept." Cf. also Davies (1996:15); Berting (2006:51).
^ K. Bochmann (1990) L'idée d'Europe jusqu'au XXè siècle, quoted in Berting (2006:52). Cf. Davies (1996:15): "No two lists of the main constituents of European civilization would ever coincide. But many items have always featured prominently: from the roots of the Christian world in Greece, Rome and Judaism to modern phenomena such as the Enlightenment, modernization, romanticism, nationalism, liberalism, imperialism, totalitarianism."
^ This is particularly the case among proponents of the so-called confederalist or neo-functionalist position on European integration. Eder and Spohn (2005:3) note: "The evolutionary thesis of the making of a European identity often goes with the assumption of a simultaneous decline of national identities. This substitution thesis reiterates the well-known confederalist/neo-functionalist position in the debate on European integration, arguing for an increasing replacement of the nation-state by European institutions, against the intergovernmentalist/realist position, insisting on the continuing primacy of the nation-state."
Bibliography
Andrews, Peter A.; Benninghaus, Rüdiger (2002), Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, Reichert, ISBN3-89500-325-5
Banks, Marcus (1996), Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions, Routledge
Berting, J. (2006), Europe: A Heritage, a Challenge, a Promise, Eburon Academic Publishers, ISBN90-5972-120-9
Cederman, Lars-Erik (2001), "Political Boundaries and Identity Trade-Offs", in Cederman, Lars-Erik, Constructing Europe's Identity: The External Dimension, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 1–34
Cole, J. W.; Wolf, E. R. (1999), The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley, University of California Press, ISBN978-0-520-21681-5
Davies, N. (1996), Europe: A History, Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-820171-0
Dow, R. R.; Bockhorn, O. (2004), The Study of European Ethnology in Austria, Progress in European Ethnology, Ashgate Publishing, ISBN978-0-7546-1747-1
Eberhardt, Piotr; Owsinski, Jan (2003), Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-century Central Eastern Europe, M.E. Sharpe, ISBN0-7656-0665-8
Eder, Klaus; Spohn, Willfried (2005). Collective Memory and European Identity: The Effects of Integration and Enlargement. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company. ISBN0-7546-4401-4.
Gresham, D. et al. (2001), "Origins and divergence of the Roma (Gypsies)", American Journal of Human Genetics69 (6): 1314–1331Online article
Karolewski, Ireneusz Pawel; Kaina, Viktoria (2006), European Identity: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Insights, LIT Verlag, ISBN3-8258-9288-3
Jordan-Bychkov, T.; Bychkova-Jordan, B. (2008), The European Culture Area: A Systematic Geography. Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN0-7425-1628-8
Levinson, David (1998), Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN978-1-57356-019-1 part I: Europe, pp. 1–100.
Hobsbawm, E. J.; Kertzer, David J. (1992), "Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today", Anthropology Today8: 3–8
Minahan, James (2000), One Europe, many nations: a historical dictionary of European national groups, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN0-313-30984-1
Panikos Panayi, Outsiders: A History of European Minorities (London: Hambledon Press, 1999)
Olson, James Stuart; Pappas, Lee Brigance; Pappas, Nicholas Charles (1994), An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empire, Greenwood, ISBN0-313-27497-5
O'Néill, Diarmuid (2005), Rebuilding the Celtic languages: reversing language shift in the Celtic countries, Y Lolfa, ISBN0-86243-723-7
Panayi, Panikos (1999), An Ethnic History of Europe Since 1945: Nations, States and Minorities, Longman, ISBN0-582-38135-5
Parman, S. (ed.) (1998), Europe in the Anthropological Imagination, Prentice Hall
Stephens, Meic (1976), Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe, Gomer Press, ISBN0-608-18759-3
Szaló, Csaba (1998), On European Identity: Nationalism, Culture & History, Masaryk University, ISBN80-210-1839-9
Stone, Gerald (1972), The Smallest Slavonic Nation: The Sorbs of Lusatia, Athlene Press, ISBN0-485-11129-2
Vembulu, R. Pavananthi (2003), Understanding European Integration: History, Culture, and Politics of Identity, Aakar Books, ISBN81-87879-10-6
,_ethnic_groups.jpg)
