Latins

(Latium Vetus) and surrounding regions in central Italy that were eventually annexed by Rome to form "New Latium". The Alban Hills, a region of early Latin settlement (from ) and the site of the Latiar, the most important Latin communal festival, are located under the "U" in . The region's two main lakes, Nemi and Albanus, are visible under the "I". The leading Latin city-states of Rome, Tibur (Tivoli), Praeneste (Palestrina), Ardea and Gabii are shown.|297x297px The Latins were an ancient Italic people of the Latium region in central Italy (Latium Vetus, "Old Latium"), in the 1st millennium BC. Although they lived in independent city-states, they spoke Latin as a common language, held common religious beliefs, and extended common rights of residence and trade to one another. Collectively, these Latin states were known as the Latin League. A rupture between Rome, one of the Latin states, and the rest of the Latin League emerged as a result of the former's territorial ambitions. The Latin League fought against Rome in the Latin War (340–338 BC), which ended in a Roman victory. Consequently, some of the Latin states were incorporated within the Roman state, and their inhabitants were given full Roman citizenship. Others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges. After the Social War (91–87 BC), when the rest of the Latins received full Roman citizenship, "Latin" ceased to be an ethnolinguistic term and became a purely juridical category, ius latii ("Latin rights"). The Roman Empire would go on to dominate the Mediterranean region for the next several centuries, spreading the Latin language and Roman culture. The Latin-speaking Western Roman Empire ended in AD 476, while the Greek-speaking eastern half survived on until 1453. ==As a religious designation==

Middle Ages depiction of Latin Crusaders In the Eastern Roman Empire, and the broader Greek Orthodox world, Latins was a synonym for all people who followed the Roman Catholicism of Western Christianity, regardless of ethnicity. The term was related to the predominance of the Latin Church, which is the largest autonomous particular church within the broader Catholic Church, and took its name from its origins in the Latin-speaking world which had Rome as its center. Latin was generally a negative characterization, especially after the 1054 schism. Present day Latins are a constitutionally recognized minority in Cyprus. Hugh Foot, the last British governor of the island, revived the term in 1960 to distinguish them from the Maronite Cypriots, who are also Catholics. Other Catholics under the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem have also been referred to as Latins. == Latin peoples and regions ==

(dark green and light green), French (blue and light blue), Italian (yellow), Portuguese (orange), Romanian (red), and Catalan (purple). Europe and the Americas In the present day, Latin can be an ethnically-related designation that denotes a member of the Latin (Romance-speaking) peoples– including, and often specifically, Latin Americans. Within that framework, Latin peoples include Italians, French, Spaniards, Catalans, Provençals, Romansh, Portuguese, and Walloons in Western Europe, While the use of Latin to denote a non-ethnolinguistic Western Catholic identity predominated in the medieval period, In 1458, Pope Pius II used the term genus Italicum () in his work De Europa () to group together Italians and Romanians. By the 19th century, Romance-speaking groups were being collectively classified as Latin peoples, a category that was considered one of the three major ethnolinguistic groupings of Europe, along with the Germanic and Slavic peoples. These are generally Catholic peoples (with the exception of the Romanians and Moldovans, which are in their majority Orthodox) that, by virtue of their Roman heritage, exhibit cultural characteristics distinct from the peoples of Germanic and Slavic Europe. One variant of the ideology held the imperialist idea that Latin peoples should rule over non-Latins, In 1927, The New York Times reported on "the incipient Pan-Latin movement" and defined "Latinity" as consisting of Latin populations from both Europe and the Americas, regardless of genetics. Africa Many of the present-day independent states of Africa have main official languages that are Romance, as a result of colonization by Romance-speaking European countries in the 19th century. The French political theorist Gabriel Hanotaux claimed that the Latin peoples were as capable of practicing modern imperialism as other groups and had an important role to play in the colonization of Africa. Barthélémy Boganda, a politician of the Central African Republic, proposed a "United States of Latin Africa" in 1957 that would serve as a federation of the Romance-speaking countries in the region of Central Africa; this never came to fruition. African-American author Richard Wright, who criticized the proposal, said that "Latin Africa" correlated with "Catholic Africa" and would create an unnecessary religious division against the English-speaking "Protestant Africa". == See also ==