Great Britain
is an island [1] lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 [2] smaller islands and islets. The island of Ireland lies to its west.
Most of the territory of the sovereign state the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is in Great Britain, and the term is sometimes used inaccurately to refer to the United Kingdom. Most of England, Scotland and Wales are on the island, as are their capital cities, London, Edinburgh and Cardiff.
The Kingdom of Great Britain
resulted from the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland on 1 May, 1707 under Queen Anne. It existed until 1801 when the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland were united. This resulted in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This in turn became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922 with the secession of the Irish Free State.
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GREAT BRITAIN TICKETS
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Political definition
Great Britain
is the largest island of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Politically, Great Britain also refers to
England,
Scotland and
Wales in combination,
[3] 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 which are not part of the United Kingdom, and have 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
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.
Geographical definition
Great Britain
lies to the northwest of
Continental Europe and east of
Ireland. It includes most of the
territory of the
United Kingdom. Great Britain is surrounded by 1000 smaller
islands and
islets. It occupies an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 square miles).
[5]
It is the
third most populous island after
Java and
Honshu.
[6]
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.
[7]
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. Until about 9,000 years ago, Great Britain was joined to
Ireland and as recently as 8,000 years ago it was joined to the continent by a strip of low marsh to 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.
[8]
Great Britain became an island 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 had crossed over the land bridge from the European mainland.
Its
Iron Age inhabitants are known as the
Britons, a group speaking a
Celtic language. The Romans conquered most of the island (up to
Hadrian's Wall, in northern
England) and this became the
Ancient Roman province of
Britannia
. For 500 years after the Roman Empire fell, the Britons of the south and east of the island were assimilated or displaced by invading
Germanic tribes (
Angles,
Saxons, and
Jutes, often referred to collectively as
Anglo-Saxons). At about the same time
Gaelic-speaking
Scots invaded from Ireland, absorbing both the
Picts and
Britons of northern Britain, and in the 9th Century the Kingdom of
Scotland was formed. The south-east of Scotland was colonised by the
Angles and formed, until 1018, a part of the
Kingdom of Northumbria. Ultimately, the population of south-east Britain came to be referred to, after the Angles, as the
English people.
Germanic speakers referred to Britons as
Welsh
. This term eventually came to be applied exclusively to the inhabitants of what is now
Wales, but it also survives in names such as
Wallace, and in the second syllable of
Cornwall.
Cymry
, a name the Britons used to describe themselves, is similarly restricted in modern Welsh to people from Wales, but also survives in English in the place name of
Cumbria. The Britons living in the areas now known as Wales and Cornwall, were not assimilated by the Germanic tribes, a fact reflected in the survival of Celtic languages in these areas into modern times. At the time of the Germanic invasion of Southern Britain, many Britons emigrated to the area now known as
Brittany, where
Breton, a Celtic language closely related to
Welsh and
Cornish and descended from the language of the emigrants, is still spoken. In the ninth century, a series of Danish assaults on northern English kingdoms led to them coming under Danish control (an area known as the
Danelaw). In the tenth century, however, all the English kingdoms were unified under one ruler as the kingdom of
England. In 1066, England was
conquered by the Normans, who introduced a French ruling élite that was eventually assimilated. Wales came under Anglo-Norman control in 1282, and was officially annexed to England in the sixteenth century.
On 20 October 1604 King James (who had succeeded separately to the two thrones of England and Scotland) proclaimed himself as 'King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland', a title that continued to be used by many of his successors.
[9] However, England and Scotland each remained legally in existence as separate countries with their own parliaments until 1707, when 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 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 is named 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.
[10]
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. [11] 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
(c.
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 ..." [12]
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. [13]
In 1975 the government affirmed that the term Britain, not Great Britain, could be used as a shortened form of the United Kingdom. [14] British refers, however, to all citizens of the United Kingdom—including Welsh, Scottish, English, and Northern Irish. [15]
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 country codes ISO 3166-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, and international licence plate codes, among others.
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 obsolete because the domain name registrar will not take new registrations.
Biodiversity
Fauna
Animal diversity is modest, as a result of factors including the island's small land area, the relatively recent age of the habitats developed since the last Ice Age and the island's physical separation from continental Europe, and the effects of seasonal variability. [17] Great Britain has also gone through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, which have contributed towards the overall loss of species. [18] A DEFRA study from 2006 suggested that 100 species have become extinct in the UK during the 20th century, about 100 times the background extinction rate. [19] However, some species, such as the brown rat, red fox, and introduced grey squirrel, are well adapted to urban areas.
Rodents make up 40% of the total number of mammal species in Great Britain. These include squirrels, mice, voles, rats and the recently reintroduced European beaver.
There is a wealth of birdlife in Britain, 583 species in total, [22] of which 258 breed on the island or remain during winter. [23] Because of its mild winters for its latitude, Great Britain hosts important numbers of many wintering species, particularly ducks, geese and swans. [24] Other well known bird species include the golden eagle, grey heron, kingfisher, pigeon, sparrow, pheasant, partridge, and various species of crow, finch, gull, auk, grouse, owl and falcon. [25] There are six species of reptile on the island; three snakes and three lizards including the legless slow worm. One snake, the adder, is venomous but rarely deadly. [26] Amphibians present are frogs, toads and newts.
Flora
In a similar sense to fauna, and for similar reasons, the flora of Great Britain is impoverished compared to that of continental Europe. [27] Great Britain's flora comprises 3354 vascular plant species in total, of which 2297 are native and 1057 have been introduced into the island. [28] The island has a wide variety of trees, including native species of birch, beech, ash, hawthorn, elm, oak, yew, pine, cherry and apple. [29] Other trees have been naturalised, introduced especially from other parts of Europe (particularly Norway) and North America. Introduced trees include several varieties of pine, chestnut, maple, spruce, sycamore and fir, as well as cherry plum and pear trees.
There are at least 1500 different species of wildflower in Britain, [32] Some 107 species are particularly rare or vulnerable and are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. It is illegal to uproot any wildflowers without the landowner's permission.
Settlements
Capital cities
Capitals of countries of the United Kingdom in Great Britain:
* England: London
* Scotland: Edinburgh
* Wales: Cardiff
Other major cities
Cities with a population of over 300,000 in Great Britain (not including the capital cities listed above):
Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Leicester, Coventry, Kingston-upon-Hull.
See also
- List of islands of England
- List of islands of Scotland
- List of islands of Wales