British immigration to Mexico

British Mexican
británico-mexicano

Panteón Inglés, Real del Monte, Hidalgo
Total population
4,182 UK-born residents (2012)
Regions with significant populations
Mexico City and Hidalgo
Languages
Mexican Spanish and British English
Religion
Catholicism • Methodism • Anglicanism
Related ethnic groups
other British diasporas

British Mexicans are Mexicans of British descent or British-born persons who have become naturalized citizens of Mexico.

The British have had a presence in Mexico since the Colonial era. However, the greatest exchange occurred following independence, notably with the Cornish miners in Hidalgo.

During the Colonial era, the Spanish restricted the entrance of other Europeans, however, some non-Spanish Europeans were present. In 1556, the English adventurer Robert Thomson encountered the Scotsman Thomas Blake (Tomás Blaque), who had been living in Mexico City for more than twenty years. Blake is the first known Briton to have settled in what would become Mexico.

During his third voyage, the ship commanded by John Hawkins escaped destruction at the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa (1568). However, after becoming lost in the Gulf of Mexico and with a bloated crew, Hawkins abandoned more than one hundred men near Tampico. A group of the men went north (including David Ingram), while the rest went south and were captured by the Spanish. Notable among this group was who wrote a narrative detailing his and the other Englishmen's struggles. They were taken to Mexico City, given care at a hospital and imprisoned. After attempting to escape, they were sold as servants or slaves. Some were able to accumulate wealth by rising to the position of overseers at mines and other operations. However, after the establishment of the Mexican Inquisition, the men were stripped of any wealth and imprisoned as Lutheran heretics. Three of the men were burned, while some sixty were given penance.

Various British privateers and pirates repeatedly attacked the coastal cities of New Spain, most famously in Campeche. In southern Baja California Sur, a few families retain the English surname "Green". This surname is sometimes cited as a legacy of the British pirates who frequented the Cape region. However, the founder was established to be Esteban Green, an English whaler that settled in the region in 1834.