Great Britain
- See also: Kingdom of Great Britain
Sobriquet: Albion |
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 Satellite image of Great Britain |
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| Geography | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Western Europe |
| Archipelago | British Isles |
| Area | 80,823 sq mi (209,331 km2) (9th) |
| Highest point | Ben Nevis (1344 m) |
| Country | |
 United Kingdom |
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| Home Nations |  England Scotland Wales |
| Largest city | London |
| Demographics | |
| Population | approximately 58,000,000 (as of 2006)[1] |
| Density | approx. 277 people/km2 |
| Ethnic groups | Cornish, English, Manx, Scots, Welsh |
Great Britain (Scottish Gaelic: Breatainn Mhòr, Welsh: Prydain Fawr, Cornish: Breten Veur, Scots: Graet Breetain) is the larger of the two main islands of the British Isles, the largest island in Europe and the ninth largest island in the world. Great Britain is also the third most populated island on earth, with a population of 58 million people and is the world's 5th largest economy. It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe, with Ireland to the west, and makes up the largest part of the territory of the country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is surrounded by over 1,000[2] smaller islands and islets.
England, Scotland and Wales are mostly situated on the island, along with their capital cities, London, Edinburgh and Cardiff respectively.
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Geographical definition
- Further information: Geography of England, Geography of Scotland, and Geography of Wales
Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles. It 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).[3]
It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshū.[4]
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 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.[5]
Political definition
"Great Britain" is the eastern island of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Politically, "Great Britain" describes the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales, 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 outlying islands of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as they have independent legislative and taxation systems.[6][7]
Great Britain evolved politically into a union of England and Scotland from a personal union in 1603 with the Union of Crowns under James VI of Scotland, I of England. The political union that merged the two countries happened with the Acts of Union in 1707 which merged the parliaments of each nation and thus resulted in the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain, which covered the entire island.
In turn, in 1801, an Act Union between Great Britain and Ireland created the larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The UK became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922 following the creation in Ireland of the Irish Free State. The term Great Britain is still used today to some extent to refer to the United Kingdom. In some languages such as German, the term Großbritannien is used as a synonym for the UK due to difficulties in translated the term United Kingdom.
History
- Further information: Prehistoric Britain, Roman Britain, Medieval Britain, and Early Modern Britain
- Further information: History of England, History of Scotland, and History of Wales
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.[8]
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 of Britain became assimilated by colonising Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who became known as the English people. The only parts of Great Britain that were not colonised (and eventually conquered) by the Germanic tribes were present day Wales, Cornwall and the northern parts of Scotland. Beyond Hadrian's wall, the major ethnic groups were the Scots, who may have emigrated from Ireland, and the Picts as well as other Brythonic peoples in the south-west.
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 also became 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.
The term was used officially for the first time during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, James I of England. 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.[9] 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 (Ἀλβίων) 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 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). These are derived in turn from the Latin name Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons. This name 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 Πρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani.[10] 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.
It has also been claimed that the name derives from Breta, a pre-Roman British folk deity.
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 Britain re-surfaces in Early Modern period, in the context of efforts toward unification of England and Scotland. In 1604, James I proclaimed himself "King of Great Britain".
Sources such as the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) define Great Britain as "England, Wales, and Scotland considered as a unit" and Britain as "an island that consists of England, Wales, and Scotland."
In Irish, Wales is referred to as An Bhreatain Bheag which means, literally, Little Britain. On the other hand, the closely related language, Scottish Gaelic, uses the term, A'Bhreatainn Bheag, to refer to Brittany.
Use of the term Great Britain
"Great Britain" refers to three quarters of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (UK). It refers only to the largest island within the union.
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, 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: Universal Postal Union, 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. Ireland has its own separate Internet code, .ie, which can be used in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Capital cities
Other major settlements
- See also: List of largest United Kingdom settlements by population
- 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
- List of islands of England
- List of islands of Scotland
- List of islands of Wales
References
- ↑ Population of England, Scotland, and Wales, excluding outlying islands. [http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=6 National mid-2006 Population estimates]. Published 22 August 2007.
- ↑ http://mapzone.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/mapzone/didyouknow/howmany/q_14_27.html says 803 islands surround Great Britain which have a distinguishable coastline on an Ordnance Survey map, and several thousand more exist which are too small to be shown as anything but a dot.
- ↑ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) ISLAND DIRECTORY TABLES "ISLANDS BY LAND AREA". Retrieved from http://islands.unep.ch/Tiarea.htm on August 24, 2008.
- ↑ See Geohive.com Country data; Japan Census of 2000; United Kingdom Census of 2001. The editors of List of islands by population appear to have used similar data from the relevant statistics bureaux, and totalled up the various administrative districts that comprise each island, and then done the same for less populous islands. An editor of this article has not repeated that work. Therefore this plausible and eminently reasonable ranking is posted as unsourced common knowledge.
- ↑ Gupta, Sanjeev; Jenny S. Collier, Andy Palmer-Felgate & Graeme Potter (2007). "Catastrophic flooding origin of shelf valley systems in the English Channel". Nature 448 (7151): 342–345. doi:. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7151/full/nature06018.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-18. Lay summary – msnbc.com (2007-07-18).
- ↑ "Key facts about the United Kingdom". Direct.gov.uk. Retrieved on 2008-10-11.
- ↑ Ademuni-Odeke (1998). Bareboat Charter (ship) Registration. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 367. ISBN 9041105131. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rvIWmznNEGYC&pg=PA367&dq=great+britan+political+definiton+isle+of+man&as_brr=3&sig=ACfU3U3wgiQcCuZU2yn9ApGgLix9BwuYmg#PPA367,M1.
- ↑ Lacey, Robert. Great Tales from English History. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-316-10910-X.
- ↑ Proclamation styling James I King of Great Britain on October 20, 1604
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Snyder, Christopher A. (2003). The Britons. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22260-X.
- ↑ Foster (editor), R F; Donnchadh O Corrain, Professor of Irish History at University College Cork: (Chapter 1: Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland) (1 November 2001). The Oxford History of Ireland. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280202-X.
External links
- Interactive map of Great Britain
- Start planning your trip to Great Britain
- Coast – the BBC explores the coast of Great Britain
- Administrative map of Great Britain – from the Ordnance Survey; various formats
- BBC Nations
- The British Isles
- CIA Factbook United Kingdom
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