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Coordinates: 53°49′34″N 2°25′19″W / 53.826°N 2.422°W / 53.826; -2.422
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This article is about the island. For the state that existed from 1707 to 1801, see Kingdom of Great Britain. For the modern state, see United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. For an explanation of terms such as "British", "United Kingdom", "England", "Scotland" and "Wales", see Terminology of the British Isles. For other uses, see Great Britain (disambiguation).

Great Britain
Map
Geography
LocationNorthern Europe
Coordinates53°49′34″N 2°25′19″W / 53.826°N 2.422°W / 53.826; -2.422
ArchipelagoBritish Isles
Area rank9th
Administration
Demographics
Populationapproximately 59,608,000 (as of 2008)[2]

Great Britain is an island[4] 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[5] 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.

Political definition

Main articles: Kingdom of Great Britain and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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,[6] 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.[6][7]

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

Main article: Geography of Great Britain
Further information: Geography of England, Geography of Scotland, and Geography of Wales

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).[8]

It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshū.[9]

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.[10]

History

Main article: History of Great Britain
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. 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.[11]

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.[12] 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

Main article: Britain (name)

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.[13]

The name Britain descends from the Latin name for Britain, Brittania or Brittānia, 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 Πρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani.[13] 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.[14] 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 ..."[15]

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.[16]

In 1975 the government affirmed that the term Britain, not Great Britain, could be used as a shortened form of the United Kingdom.[17] British refers, however, to all citizens of the United Kingdom—including Welsh, Scottish, English, and Northern Irish.[18]

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 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

Main article: Fauna of Great Britain
The Robin is popularly known as "Britain's favourite bird".[19]

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.[20] Great Britain has also gone through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, which have contributed towards the overall loss of species.[21] 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.[22] 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.[21] There is also an abundance of rabbits, hares, hedgehogs, shrews, moles and several species of bat.[21] Carnivorous mammals include the fox, badger, otter, weasel, stoat and elusive wildcat.[23] Various species of seal, whale and dolphin are found on or around British shores and coastlines. The largest land-based wild animals today are deer. The red deer is the largest species, with roe deer and fallow deer also prominent; the latter was introduced by the Normans.[23][24] Habitat loss has affected many species. Extinct large mammals include the brown bear, grey wolf and wild boar; the latter has had a limited reintroduction in recent times.[21]

There is a wealth of birdlife in Britain, 583 species in total,[25] of which 258 breed on the island or remain during winter.[26] Because of its mild winters for its latitude, Great Britain hosts important numbers of many wintering species, particularly ducks, geese and swans.[27] 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.[28] 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.[29] Amphibians present are frogs, toads and newts.[21]

Flora

Main article: Flora of Great Britain
Heather growing wild in the Highlands at Dornoch.

In a similar sense to fauna, and for similar reasons, the flora of Great Britain is impoverished compared to that of continental Europe.[30] Great Britain's flora comprises 3354 vascular plant species in total, of which 2297 are native and 1057 have been introduced into the island.[31] The island has a wide variety of trees, including native species of birch, beech, ash, hawthorn, elm, oak, yew, pine, cherry and apple.[32] 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.[32] The tallest species are the Douglas firs; two specimens have been recorded measuring 65 meters or 212 feet.[33] The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire is the oldest tree in Europe.[34]

There are at least 1500 different species of wildflower in Britain,[35] 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.[35][36] A vote in 2002 nominated various wildflowers to represent specific counties.[37] These include red poppies, bluebells, daisies, daffodils, rosemary, gorse, iris, ivy, mint, orchids, brambles, thistles, buttercups, primrose, thyme, tulips, violets, cowslip, heather and many more.[38][39][40][41] There are also many species of algae, lichens, fungi and mosses across the island.[42]

Settlements

See also: List of largest United Kingdom settlements by population

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

Sources

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Dictionary of the Scots Language". DSL.ac.uk. Retrieved on 1 February 2009.
  2. ^ "National Population estimates for mainland Great Britain". Statistics.gov.uk. Retrieved on 31 August 2009.
  3. ^ "-images-eicexpertsreportfull_tcm77-19490.pdf - [[Adobe Acrobat|Adobe Reader]]" (pdf). National Statistics: 2011 Census: Ethnic group, national identity, religion and language consultation. Office for National Statistics. 2007. p. 19. Retrieved 31 August 2009. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  4. ^ Islands by land area, United Nations Environment Programme
  5. ^ says 803 islands 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.
  6. ^ a b "Key facts about the United Kingdom". Direct.gov.uk. Retrieved 11 October 2008.
  7. ^ Ademuni-Odeke (1998). Bareboat Charter (ship) Registration. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 367. ISBN 9041105131.
  8. ^ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) ISLAND DIRECTORY TABLES "ISLANDS BY LAND AREA". Retrieved from http://islands.unep.ch/Tiarea.htm on 13 August 2009.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Gupta, Sanjeev (2007). "Catastrophic flooding origin of shelf valley systems in the English Channel". Nature. 448 (7151): 342–345. doi:10.1038/nature06018. Retrieved 18 July 2007. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysource= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  11. ^ Lacey, Robert. Great Tales from English History. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-316-10910-X.
  12. ^ Proclamation styling James I King of Great Britain on 20 October 1604
  13. ^ a b Snyder, Christopher A. (2003). The Britons. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22260-X.
  14. ^ Foster (editor), R F (1 November 2001). The Oxford History of Ireland. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280202-X. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Denys Hay, The use of the term "Great Britain" in the Middle Ages, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1955-56, pp.55-66
  16. ^ Britain 2001:The Official Handbook of the United Kingdom, 2001, ONS/Her Majesty's Stationary Office, London, ISBN 011 621278 0
  17. ^ Britain 2001: The Official Handbook of the United Kingdom, 2001, ONS/Her Majesty's Stationary Office, London, ISBN 011 621278 0
  18. ^ Britain 2001: The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom, 2001, Office of National Statistics/Her Majesty's Stationary Office ISN 011 621278 0
  19. ^ "The Robin - Britain's Favourite Bird". BritishBirdLovers.co.uk. Retrieved on 1 February 2009.
  20. ^ "Decaying Wood: An Overview of Its Status and Ecology in the United Kingdom and Europe" (PDF). FS.fed.us. Retrieved on 1 February 2009.
  21. ^ a b c d e "A Short History of the British Mammal Fauna". ABDN.ac.uk. Retrieved on 1 February 2009.
  22. ^ DEFRA, 2006
  23. ^ a b Else, Great Britain, 85.
  24. ^ The Fallow Deer Project, University of Nottingham
  25. ^ "British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee". Interscience.wiley.com. Retrieved on 16 February 2009.
  26. ^ "Birds of Britain". BTO.org. Retrieved on 16 February 2009.
  27. ^ "Duck, Geese and Swan Family". NatureGrid.org.uk. Retrieved on 16 February 2009.
  28. ^ "Birds". NatureGrid.org.uk. Retrieved on 16 February 2009.
  29. ^ "The Adder's Byte". CountySideInfo.co.uk. Retrieved on 1 February 2009.
  30. ^ "Plants of the Pacific Northwest in Western Europe". Botanical Electric News. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  31. ^ Frodin, Guide to Standard Floras of the World, 599.
  32. ^ a b "Checklist of British Plants". Natural History Museum. Retrieved on 2 March 2009.
  33. ^ "Facts About Britain's Trees". WildAboutBritain.co.uk. Retrieved on 2 March 2009.
  34. ^ "The Fortingall Yew". PerthshireBigTreeCountry.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  35. ^ a b "Facts and Figures about Wildflowers". WildAboutFlowers.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  36. ^ "Endangered British Wild Flowers". CountryLovers.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  37. ^ "County Flowers of Great Britain". WildAboutFlowers.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  38. ^ "People and Plants: Mapping the UK's wild flora" (PDF). PlantLife.org.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  39. ^ "British Wildflower Images". Map-Reading.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  40. ^ "List of British Wildlfowers by Common Name". WildAboutBritain.co.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  41. ^ "British Plants and algae". Arkive.org. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  42. ^ "Lichen". YorkshireDales.org.uk. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.

References

  • Pliny the Elder (translated by Rackham, Harris) (1938). Natural History. Harvard University Press.
  • Ball, Martin John (1993). The Celtic Languages. Routledge. ISBN 0415010357.
  • Butler, Alban (1997). Butler's Lives of the Saints. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0860122557.
  • Frodin, DG (2001). Guide to Standard Floras of the World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521790778.
  • Spencer, Colin (2003). British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231131100.
  • Andrews, Robert (2004). The Rough Guide to Britain. Rough Guides Ltd. ISBN 1843533014.
  • Dawkins, Peter (2004). The Shakespeare Enigma. Polair Publishing. ISBN 0954538943.
  • Major, John (2004). History in Quotations. Cassell. ISBN 0304353876.
  • Else, David (2005). Great Britain. Lonely Planet. ISBN 1740599217.
  • Kaufman, Will & Macpherson Slettedahl, Heidi (2005). Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1851094318.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Oppenheimer, Stephen (2006). Origins of the British. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0786718900.
  • Room, Adrian (2006). Placenames of the World. McFarland. ISBN 0786422483.
  • Massey, Gerald (2007). A Book of the Beginnings, Vol.1. Cosimo. ISBN 1602068291.
  • Taylor, Issac (2008). Names and Their Histories: A Handbook of Historical Geography and Topographical Nomenclature. BiblioBazaar. ISBN 0559296673.

External links

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