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Great Britain
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Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is the third most populated island on Earth. It has Ireland to its west, and is surrounded by over 1000 smaller islands and islets.
It makes up the largest part of the territory of the country the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the term Great Britain is sometimes used inaccurately to mean the United Kingdom.
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Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is the third most populated island on Earth. It has Ireland to its west, and is surrounded by over 1000 smaller islands and islets.
It makes up the largest part of the territory of the country the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the term Great Britain is sometimes used inaccurately to mean the United Kingdom. England, Scotland and Wales are mostly situated on the island, along with their capital cities, London, Edinburgh and Cardiff respectively.
The Kingdom of Great Britain was the state resulting from the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland made on 1 May, 1707 under Queen Anne - "the two kingdoms of Scotland and England shall...be united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain". It existed until 1801 when Great Britain and Ireland united. The resulting United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland lasted until 1922 when it was divided into the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Political definition
Great Britain is the eastern island of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Politically, Great Britain also describes England, Scotland and Wales in combination, and therefore also includes a number of outlying islands such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland. It does not include the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as they are not part of the United Kingdom, with independent legislative and taxation systems.
The union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland began with the 1603 Union of Crowns, a personal union under James VI of Scotland, I of England. The political union that joined the two countries happened in 1707, with the Acts of Union merging the parliaments of each nation, and forming the Kingdom of Great Britain, which covered the entire island.
In 1801, an Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland created the larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). This in turn became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922, following the partition of Ireland and the creation of the Irish Free State.
The term Great Britain is sometimes mistakenly used to denote the United Kingdom. This error can be compared with the use of the term Russia to mean the former USSR.
Geographical definition
Great Britain lies to the northwest of Continental Europe, with Ireland to the west, and makes up the larger part of the territory of the United Kingdom. It is surrounded by 1000 smaller islands and islets. It occupies an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 square miles).
It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshu.
Great Britain stretches over about ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north – south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in the western and northern regions.
The English Channel is of geologically recent origins, having been dry land for most of the Pleistocene period. It is thought to have been created between 450,000 and 180,000 years ago by two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods caused by the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline, a ridge which held back a large proglacial lake in the Doggerland region, now submerged under the North Sea. The flood would have lasted several months, releasing as much as one million cubic metres of water per second. The cause of the breach is not known but may have been caused by an earthquake or simply the build-up of water pressure in the lake. As well as destroying the isthmus that connected Great Britain to continental Europe, the flood carved a large bedrock-floored valley down the length of the English Channel, leaving behind streamlined islands and longitudinal erosional grooves characteristic of catastrophic megaflood events.
History
Traces of early humans have been found in Great Britain from some 700,000 years ago and modern humans from about 30,000 years ago. Up until about 9,000 years ago, Great Britain was joined to Ireland. As recently as 8,000 years ago Great Britain was joined to the continent. The southeastern part of Great Britain was still connected by a strip of low marsh to the European mainland in what is now northeastern France. In Cheddar Gorge near Bristol, the remains of animal species native to mainland Europe such as antelopes, brown bears, and wild horses have been found alongside a human skeleton, 'Cheddar Man', dated to about 7150 B.C. Thus, animals and humans must have moved between mainland Europe and Great Britain via a crossing.
The island of Great Britain formed at the end of the Pleistocene ice age when sea levels rose due to isostatic depression of the crust and the melting of glaciers. The island was first inhabited by people who crossed over the land bridge from the European mainland. Its Iron Age inhabitants are known as the Britons, a group speaking a Celtic language, and most of it (not the northernmost part (beyond Hadrian's Wall), where the majority of Scotland lies today) was conquered to become the Ancient Roman province of Britannia. After the fall of the Roman Empire, over a period of 500 years, the Britons of the south and east of the island were assimilated or displaced by invading Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who became known as the English people. At about the same time Scots invaded from Ireland, absorbing both the Picts and Britons of northern Britain, and in the 9th Century the Kingdom of Scotland was formed. Some Britons were driven back to form present day Wales and Cornwall whilst others emigrated to modern day Brittany.
The south-east of Scotland was colonised by the Angles and formed, until 1018, a part of the Kingdom of Northumbria. To speakers of Germanic languages, the Britons were called Welsh, a term that eventually came to be applied exclusively to the inhabitants of what is now Wales, but which survives also in names such as Wallace. In subsequent centuries Vikings settled in several parts of the island, and The Norman Conquest introduced a French ruling élite who were also eventually assimilated.
Since the union of 1707, the entire island has been one political unit, first as the Kingdom of Great Britain, later as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and then as part of the present United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Since the formation of this unified state, the adjective British has come to refer to things associated with the United Kingdom generally, such as citizenship, and not the island of Great Britain.
Though England and Scotland each remained legally in existence as separate countries with their own parliaments, on 20 October 1604 King James proclaimed himself as 'King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland', a title that continued to be used by many of his successors. In 1707, an Act of Union joined both parliaments. That act used two different terms to describe the new all island nation, a 'United Kingdom' and the 'Kingdom of Great Britain'. However, the former term is regarded by many as having been a description of the union rather than its formal name at that stage. Most reference books therefore, describe the all-island kingdom that existed between 1707 and 1800 as the "Kingdom of Great Britain".
In 1801, under a new Act of Union, this kingdom merged with the Kingdom of Ireland, over which the monarch of Great Britain had ruled. The new kingdom was from then onward unambiguously called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, 26 of Ireland's 32 counties attained dominion status within the British Empire, forming a separate Irish Free State. The remaining truncated kingdom has therefore since then been known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Terminology
Etymology
The oldest mentions of terms related to the formal name of Britain was made by Aristotle (c. 384–322 BC), in his text [On The Universe], Vol. III. To quote his works, “...in the ocean however, are two islands, and those very large, called Bretannic, Albion and Ierna....”
The archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over two thousand years, the term British Isles derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe the island group. Pliny the Elder (c. 23–79 AD) in his The [Natural History] (iv.xvi.102) records of Great Britain stated, ‘It was itself named Albion, while all the islands about which we shall soon briefly speak were called the Britanniae.
The earliest known name of Great Britain is Albion (??ß???) or insula Albionum, from either the Latin albus meaning white (referring to the white cliffs of Dover, the first view of Britain from the continent) or the "island of the Albiones", first mentioned in the Massaliote Periplus and by Pytheas.
The name Britain descends from the Latin name for Britain, Brittania or Brittania, the land of the Britons. Old French Bretaigne (whence also Modern French Bretagne) and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond). Brittania was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. It is derived from the travel writings of the ancient Greek Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far North as Thule (probably Iceland).
The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the ??etta???, Priteni or Pretani.
Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, Britain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic speaking inhabitants of Ireland. The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans.
Derivation of 'Great'
After the Old English period, Britain was used as a historical term only.
Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae (circa 1136) refers to the island of Great Britain as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany. The term "Great Britain" was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, and James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee." It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I, in a deliberate attempt to impose a term which would unite his double inheritance of the kingdoms of Scotland and England, proclaimed his assumption of the throne in the style "King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland..."
Use of the term Great Britain
"Great Britain" refers to the majority of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (UK). It refers to the largest island only, or to England, Scotland and Wales as a unit (though these three countries also include many smaller islands). It does not include Northern Ireland.
In 1975 the government affirmed that the term Britain, not Great Britain, could be used as a shortened form of the United Kingdom. British refers, however, to all citizens of the United Kingdom - including Welsh, Scottish, English and Northern Irish.
The abbreviations GB and GBR are used in some international codes as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Examples include: , international sports teams, NATO, the International Organization for Standardization, and other organisations. (See also country codes, international licence plate codes, and technical standards such as the ISO 3166 geocodes GB and GBR.)
On the Internet, .uk is used as a country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. A .gb top-level domain was also used to a limited extent in the past, but this is now effectively in abeyance because the domain name registrar will not take new registrations.
Capital cities
Other major settlements
- England: Birmingham, Blackpool, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Colchester, Coventry, Derby, Doncaster, Exeter, Gloucester, Huddersfield, Hull, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Preston, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland, Swindon, Wolverhampton, York.
- Scotland: Aberdeen, Dundee, East Kilbride, Glasgow, Livingston, Paisley, Ayr, Kilmarnock, Stirling, Irvine, Inverness, Kirkcaldy
- Wales: Newport, Swansea, Wrexham.
See also
External links
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- – the BBC explores the coast of Great Britain
- – from the Ordnance Survey; various formats
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- [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html CIA Factbook United Kingdom]
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