Polish migration to the United Kingdom
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
Born in the UK or Poland: 1,000,000+ (media estimates) Born in Poland only: 831,000 (2015 ONS estimate) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Throughout the UK | |
| Languages | |
| English, Polish | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism · Polish Orthodox Church · Judaism · Protestant |
Polish migration to the United Kingdom is the temporary or permanent settlement of Polish people in the United Kingdom. Most Polish migrants arrived in the UK after the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. As of 2015, the number of UK residents born in Poland was estimated at 831,000, making them the largest foreign-born group in the country, and there is a wider population of British Poles, including the descendants of over 200,000 immigrants who settled in the UK after World War II. The Polish language is the second most spoken language in England and the third most spoken language in the UK after English and Welsh. About 1% of Britain's population speaks Polish.
Polabian Slavs (Wends) settled in parts of the Danelaw (north-eastern England ruled by the Danes), apparently as Danish allies.
According to the medieval chroniclers Thietmar of Merseburg and Adam of Bremen, King Canute the Great - who ruled both Denmark and England - was the son of a Polish princess, a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland and sister of Boleslaw I of Poland. An inscription in Liber vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester mentions King Canute as having a sister named "Santslaue" ("Santslaue soror CNVTI regis nostri"), which without doubt is a Slavic name, and J. Steenstrup suggests this was a rendering of Świętosława. References in medieval chronicles to the involvement of Polish troops in invasions of England are likely related to Canute's Polish ancestry, constituting the earliest evidence of Poles arriving in the country.
In the 16th century, when most grain imports to the British Isles were derived from Poland, Polish travellers came as merchants and diplomats, usually on the Eastland Company trade route from Gdańsk to London. Poles are mentioned in Shakespeare's Hamlet (e.g. "sledded polack"), which Israel Gollancz says is an influence of De optimo senatore (The Counsellor) by Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki. As early as 1608, there were enough Poles in England for the Virginia Company to hire a group of them to sail to America to help salvage the Jamestown Colony, where they formed an early trade union.
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Wikipedia