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Note: "Great Britain" is often used to refer to the United
Kingdom, which also includes Northern Ireland. Whilst this is
inaccurate, the use of "Great Britain" is still sometimes used as a synonym of the UK in certain contexts (e.g. the UK competes
in the Olympic Games as Great Britain).
Great Britain is an island lying off the western coast of Europe, comprising the main territory of the United Kingdom. With an area of 229,850 kmē (88,745 sq. mi.)
the island of Great Britain is the largest of the British Isles, an
archipelago that also includes Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is the largest island in
Europe, and its rank among the islands in the world is either eighth or ninth,
depending on whether Australia is counted as an island.
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 whch now divides Great Britain from the European mainland.
The climate of Great Britain is milder than that of other regions of the Northern Hemisphere at the same latitude, because the warm waters of the Gulf Stream pass by the British Isles and exert a moderating influence on the weather. Cool, but not
cold, temperatures, clouds more often than sun, and abundant rain are the rule in most years.
Great Britain is also a political term describing the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales.
In this sense it includes distant outlying islands such as the Isles of
Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland but does not include the Isle of Man and the Channel
Islands.
The term Britain is sometimes used to mean Great Britain.
Over the centuries, Great Britain has evolved politically from several independent states (England, Scotland, and Wales)
through two kingdoms with a shared monarch (England and Scotland), a single
all-island Kingdom of Great Britain, 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 the 1920s.
Because of this complex history the term Great Britain (or Britain)
is often erroneously used when the UK is meant.
Origins and nomenclature
The name Britain is very ancient: the earliest known form is believed to date back to about 325 BC. (See Britain for more on the evolution of the word.)
The term Great Britain was first widely used during the reign of King James VI of Scotland, I of England to describe the island, on which co-existed two separate
kingdoms ruled over by the same monarch. Though England and Scotland each remained
legally in existence as a separate state with its own parliament, collectively they were sometimes referred to as Great Britain.
In 1707, an Act of Union
joined both states. That Act used two different terms to describe the new all island state, a 'united Kingdom' and the 'Kingdom
of Great Britain'. The former is generally though not universally regarded as a description of the union rather than its
name. Most reference books 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 unambiguously called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, twenty-six of Ireland's
thirty-two counties left to form a separate Irish Free State. The
remaining truncated kingdom is now known as the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland, which also now includes a number of Overseas Territories. Though sometimes the term 'Great Britain' is used when referring
to the United Kingdom, with the United Kingdom minus Northern Ireland being referred to as 'the mainland', this is factually
incorrect; it is simply 'Great Britain'.
Often the terms Britain and British refer to the whole of the UK or its predecessors, or institutions associated with them, and not just
Great Britain. For example, United Kingdom monarchs are often called "British monarchs"; United Kingdom Prime Ministers are often called "British Prime Ministers". Such usage is
generally seen as correct. However the use of the term English for British, as in "Queen of England" is clearly
incorrect; England in a sense of a separate state has not existed since 1707.
The term Islands of the North Atlantic
or IONA has also been used more recently for the British Isles. It was created as a neutral term for use in efforts to achieve
agreement on a more widely acceptable political structure for Northern
Ireland. However, it remains unknown to most of the British population, and seems likely to achieve little recognition
outside of the narrow political circles in which it was coined.
Why "Great" Britain rather than Britain?
There are in fact two Britains: the island of Britain in the British Isles and the land of Britain in France. In French these
are known as Grande Bretagne and Bretagne, in English as Great Britain and Brittany. The word "Great" in this context has its old meaning of "big" as in "she was great with child" or
"Greater London". Likewise, the ending "-y" on the end of "Brittany" has the meaning "Little", as in "doggy", meaning "small
dog", or "Jimmy", meaning "little Jim". During medieval times, the British Isles were referred to as Britannia major and
Britannia minor (as in Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Historia Regum Britanniae). The term "Bretayne the grete" was used by chroniclers as early as 1338, but it was not used officially until King James I proclaimed himself "King of Great Britain" on 20 October 1604 to avoid the more cumbersome
title "King of England and Scotland".
From about the 16th century to the 20th century, the political and/or military control of Great Britain and the United Kingdom extended over a large number of territories all around the world, and all those entities together were known as "the British Empire".
Territories associated with Great Britain
Territories elsewhere in the archipelago
Related topics
External links
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