Great Britain

Great Britain

File:LocationIslandGreatBritain.png Great Britain lies between Ireland and mainland Europe
Geography
Location	Western Europe
Archipelago	British Isles
Area	80,823 sq mi (209,331 km²)
Highest point	Ben Nevis (1344 m)
Country
United Kingdom
Home Nations	England Scotland Wales
Largest city	London
Demographics
Population	57,100,000 (as of 2001)
Ethnic groups	English, Scottish, Welsh, others

Satellite Image of Great Britain

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 the largest island in Europe, and eighth largest in the world. It is surrounded by over 1000 smaller islands and islets.

Terminology and usage

Great Britain is an island off the west coast of Europe. It is the largest island in Europe, and consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The terms "Great Britain" and "United Kingdom" are often used interchangeably, however the U.K. includes Northern Ireland, a number of offshore islands and several overseas territories in addition to Great Britain.

Difficulty in understanding which words to use in describing various geographical and political entities within the area of the British Isles is common. Innocent misuse in this often politically sensitive area can cause unwitting offense to natives of the area.

Etymology

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As late as the time of Julius Caesar, and probably much later, the main native population of Britain and Ireland was known to the Celts of Gaul by the name Pretani. From the Gallic Celts, Greek writers learned to call Britain and Ireland the Pretanic Islands. The name Pretani is represented in the earliest Irish documents by Cruithin, which is translated by the Latin Picti, and is the specific designation of the ethnic group now called the Picts. For Pretani, Caesar substituted Brittani or Britanni, which was probably the name of a subdivision of the Belgae in Gaul, perhaps also in Britain. For Albio or Albion, the older name of Britain, Caesar substituted Brittania (Britannia), and thenceforward in Latin writings Brittani became the name of the people of the island in general. From Brittani the by-form Brittones also came into use.

The name Britain is derived from the name Britannia, used by the Romans from around 55 B.C.E. and increasingly used to describe the island which had formerly been known as insula Albionum, the "island of the Albions". The name Britannia derived from the travel writings of the ancient Greek Pytheas around 320 B.C.E., which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far North as Thule (probably Iceland) . Although Pytheas' own writings do not survive, later Greek writers described the islands as the αι Βρεττανιαι or the Brittanic Isles. The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Ρρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani. These names derived from a Celtic name which is likely to have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who may have used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands. 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 and the north of Scotland. The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans.

During Roman times, the term Britannia was applied to the Roman province of Britain, which occupied most of the island of Great Britain, and to the island as a whole.

Great Britain may well be a translation of the French term Grande Bretagne, which is used in France to distinguish Britain from Brittany (in French: Bretagne), which had been settled in late Roman times by Romano-Celtic troops from Maximus' army and later by refugees from Roman Britain, who were then under attack by the Anglo-Saxons. Since the English court and aristocracy was largely French-speaking for about two centuries after the Norman Conquest of 1066, the French term may have naturally passed into English usage. The term "Bretayne the grete" was used by chroniclers as early as 1338^{[citation needed]}, but it was not used officially until James I proclaimed himself "King of Great Britain" on 20 October 1604 to avoid the more cumbersome title "King of England and Scotland." 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." Thus, Britain is the name of the island, while Great Britain is the name of the geopolitical unit. NOAD advises that while Britain "is broadly synonymous with Great Britain ... the longer form is usual for the political unit." However, in the United Kingdom itself, "Britain" is usually taken to be synonymous with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland .

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The geographical term Great Britain was used to distinguish the largest of the British Isles from Brittany, or Little Britain. When James I succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 he proposed that the union of the crowns should be followed by a governmental union and suggested the name Great Britain. Though the English Parliament could not be brought to agree, James adopted the name by proclamation and used it on his coinage. It was given statutory authority by the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707. This usage lasted until the Act of Union with Ireland in 1801, which substituted the term ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’.

'Minor' Britain

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae (circa 1136), the island of Great Britain was referred to as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany.

In Irish, Wales is referred to as An Bhreatain Bheag which means, literally, Little Britain, although a truer translation would be Britain Minor. On the other hand, the closely-related language, Scottish Gaelic, uses the term, A'Bhreatainn Bheag, to refer to Brittany.

Little Britain is also the name of a BBC radio and television sketch show, and the name of streets in the City of London and in Dorchester. The street in London was named in honour of the former embassy of the Duchy of Brittany, which was located there.

Geography

With an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 square miles) the island of Great Britain is the largest of the British Isles. It is the largest island in Europe, and eighth largest in the world. It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshū.

Great Britain stretches over approximately 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. Before the end of the last ice age, Great Britain was a peninsula of Europe; the rising sea levels caused by glacial melting at the end of the ice age caused the formation of the English Channel, the body of water which now separates Great Britain from continental Europe at a minimum distance of 21 miles (34 km).

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There are more than 6,000 islands in the group, the largest two being Great Britain and Ireland. Great Britain is to the east and covers 216,777 km² (83,698 square miles), over half of the total landmass of the group. Ireland is to the west and covers 84,406 km² (32,589 square miles). The largest of the other islands are to be found in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland to the north, Anglesey and the Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland, and the Channel Islands near the coast of France.

Political definition

Great Britain is no longer a country, but simply an island in the United Kingdom. Politically, "Great Britain" describes the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales, and therefore 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, but does not include the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.

Great Britain has evolved politically from the gradual union of England and Scotland which started in 1603 with the Union of Crowns under James VI of Scotland and eventually resulted in 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, to the situation following 1801 in which Great Britain together with the island of Ireland constituted 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 independence of five-sixths of Ireland as first the Irish Free State, a Dominion of the then British Commonwealth, and then later as an independent republic outside the British Commonwealth as the Republic of Ireland.

History

Great Britain was formed around 9000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene ice age when sea levels rose due to isostatic depression of the crust and the melting of glaciers. When this happened, the island was cut off from the European mainland.

Great Britain was first inhabited by people who crossed over the land bridge from the European mainland. Its Iron Age inhabitants are known as the Brythons, a group speaking a Celtic language, and most of it (not the northernmost part) was conquered to become the Ancient Roman province of Britannia. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Brythons of the south and east of the island became assimilated by colonising Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) who became known as the English people. 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 Brythons were called Welsh, a term that came eventually to be applied exclusively to the inhabitants of what is now Wales, but which survives also in names like 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, firstly 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.

As recently as 9,000 years ago, Great Britain was not an island at all. The end of the last ice age saw the southeastern part of Great Britain still connected by a strip of low marshes to the European mainland in what is now northeastern France. In Cheddar Gorge near Bristol, the remains of animals 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.E. Thus, animals and humans must have moved between mainland Europe and Great Britain via a crossing.

Albion (Alouion in Ptolemy) is the most ancient name of Great Britain.^{[citation needed]} It is sometimes used now to refer to England specifically. Occasionally, it refers to Scotland, which is called Alba in Gaelic, Albain in Irish, and Yr Alban in Welsh. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (iv.xvi.102) applies it unequivocally to Great Britain. The name Britain may be derived from the Brythonic 'Prydyn' (Goidelic: Cruithne), a name used to describe some northern inhabitants of the island by Britons or pre-Roman Celts in the south. "It was itself named Albion, while all the islands about which we shall soon briefly speak were called the Britanniae." The name Albion was taken by medieval writers from Pliny and Ptolemy. For etymology, see below.

The term was used officially for the first time during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, 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. 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 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 onwards unambiguously called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, 26 of Ireland's 32 counties attained independence to form 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.

Capital cities

• England: London
• Scotland: Edinburgh
• Wales: Cardiff

Other islands of the archipelago

• Anglesey
• Hebrides
• Ireland
• Isle of Man
• Isle of Wight
• Lundy
• Mull
• Orkneys
• The Shetland Islands
• Skye

Sources and further reading

• Davies, John. Britain/Great Britain/United Kingdom: Some Common Confusions, The alt.usage.english Home Page. Retrieved September 11, 2007.

External links

• Interactive map of 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

Credits

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