Allegiance in the context of "Oaths of allegiance"

⭐ In the context of Oaths of Allegiance, to whom are pledges of loyalty traditionally sworn in constitutional monarchies such as the United Kingdom and Australia?

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⭐ Core Definition: Allegiance

An allegiance is a duty of fidelity said to be owed, or freely committed, by the people, subjects or citizens to their state or sovereign.

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👉 Allegiance in the context of Oaths of allegiance

An oath of allegiance is an oath whereby a subject or citizen acknowledges a duty of allegiance and swears loyalty to a monarch or a country. In modern republics, oaths are sworn to the country in general, or to the country's constitution. For example, officials in the United States, take an oath of office that includes swearing allegiance to the United States Constitution. However, typically in a constitutional monarchy, such as in the United Kingdom, Australia, and other Commonwealth realms, oaths are sworn to the monarch. Armed forces typically require a military oath.

In feudal times, a person would also swear allegiance to their feudal superiors. To this day the oath sworn by freemen of the City of London contains an oath of obedience to the Lord Mayor of the City of London.

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Allegiance in the context of Defector

In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, cause, or doctrine to which one is bound by some tie, as of allegiance or duty.

This term is also applied, often pejoratively, to anyone who switches loyalty to another religion, sports team, political party, or other rival faction. In that sense, the defector is often considered a traitor by their original side.

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Allegiance in the context of Fealty

An oath of fealty, from the Latin fidelitas (faithfulness), is a pledge of allegiance of one person to another.

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Allegiance in the context of Pledge of Allegiance

The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States. The first version was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union army officer in the Civil War who later wrote a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools. In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas.

Bellamy, the circulation manager for The Youth's Companion magazine, helped persuade then-president Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day. The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on October 21, 1892, over 10,000 children recited the verse together.

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Allegiance in the context of Political club

The political club is a membership based organization. Membership of a political club is an outward show of political allegiance.

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Allegiance in the context of American ancestry

In the demography of the United States, some people self-identify their ancestral origin or descent as "American", rather than the more common officially recognized racial and ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the American people. The majority of these respondents are visibly white and do not identify with their ancestral European ethnic origins. The latter response is attributed to a multitude of generational distance from ancestral lineages, and these tend to be Anglo-Americans of English, Scots-Irish, Welsh, Scottish or other British ancestries, as demographers have observed that those ancestries tend to be recently undercounted in U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey ancestry self-reporting estimates.

Although U.S. census data indicates "American ancestry" is most commonly self-reported in the Deep South, the Upland South, and Appalachia, a far greater number of Americans and expatriates equate their national identity not with ancestry, race, or ethnicity, but rather with citizenship and allegiance.

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