Place Information
|
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom, the UK, Great Britain or Britain) is a European country and sovereign state that lies to the north-west of the continent with the Republic of Ireland to the west. It occupies all of the island of Great Britain and the north-east part of the island of Ireland, sharing a land border with the Republic of Ireland. It is a member of the European Union. The United Kingdom is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and its ancillary bodies of water, including the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, St George's Channel, and the Irish Sea. The United Kingdom is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy composed of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who is also the Queen and Head of State of fifteen other Commonwealth Realms, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica. The Crown Dependencies of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, formally possessions of the Crown, form a federacy with the United Kingdom collectively known as the British Islands. The UK also has fourteen overseas territories, all remnants of the British Empire which at its height encompassed a quarter of the world's surface and population. Although Britain was the foremost great power during the 19th century, the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished Britain's status in global affairs. However, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a nuclear power, a member of the G8 and the fifth largest economy, Britain remains an important political, economic and military world power. History
The Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland had existed as separate sovereign and independent states with their own monarchs and political structures since the 9th century. The once independent Principality of Wales fell under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284. Under the Acts of Union 1707, England (including Wales) and Scotland, which had been in personal union since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, agreed to a political union in the form of a unified Kingdom of Great Britain. The Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, which had been gradually brought under English control between 1541 and 1691, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Independence for the Republic of Ireland in 1922 followed the partition of the island of Ireland two years previously, with six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remaining within the , which then changed to the current name in 1927 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (The terms Great Britain or Britain collectively refer to three of the four UK constituent countries, namely England, Scotland and Wales. The terms United Kingdom or UK however include Northern Ireland as the fourth). Britain was an important part of the Age of Enlightenment with philosophical and scientific input and an influential literary and theatrical tradition. Over the next century the United Kingdom played a leading role in developing Western ideas of parliamentary democracy with significant contributions to literature, the arts and science. The wealth of the early British Empire, like other Great Powers, was also partly generated by colonial exploitation, including the industrialisation after 1750 of the slave trade, with Britain's 18th century shipping fleet, the largest in the world, taking African slaves to the Americas as part of the infamous triangular trade. At the beginning of the 19th however, Britain passed the Slave Trade Act and became the first nation to permanently prohibit trade in slaves. After the Industrial Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars, Britain became the principal power of the 19th century. At its peak, the British Empire, which is considered to be both the United Kingdom and areas that are legally separate entities from, but controlled by, the U.K., stretched to almost one-quarter of the earth and encompassed a third of its population, making it in terms of population and territory the largest in history. Over the 19th century the country played an important role in the development of parliamentary democracy, partly via the emergence of a multi-party system and expansion of suffrage. Developments of science and the arts, building on an 18th century inheritance of figures such as Isaac Newton, and particularly its earlier tradition of literature, were influential.
After emergence from the war, the world's first large-scale international broadcasting network, the BBC, was created. The country's Labour movement had been in expansion since the late 19th century, and in 1924 the first labour government came to power. Britain fought Nazi Germany in World War II, with its Commonwealth allies including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, later to be joined by further allies. Wartime leader Winston Churchill and his successor Clement Atlee helped plan the post-war world as part of the "Big Three". World War II, however, left the United Kingdom financially and physically damaged. Economically costly wartime loans, loans taken in 1945 from the United States and from Canada, combined with post-war Marshall Plan aid from the United States started the United Kingdom on the road to recovery.
The United Kingdom has been a member of the European Union since 1973. The attitude of the present Labour government towards further integration with this organisation is mixed, with the Conservative Party favouring a return of some powers and competencies to the state, and the Liberal Democrats supportive of current engagement. Research Tips
|
