UK | Encyclopedia

United Kingdom
^{'Britain' and 'UK' redirect here.}

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign state comprising the island of Great Britain, the northeastern portion of the island of Ireland, and a number of smaller surrounding islands. It lies off the northwestern coast of continental Europe, bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east by the North Sea. Its only land border runs between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. As of the 2002 estimate, the country holds a population of some 71.8 million, giving it standing among the more populous nations of Western Europe, with a gross domestic product exceeding one and a half trillion dollars.

The state took its present constitutional form through a gradual union of separate kingdoms rather than a single founding act. England and Wales were brought under common governance through medieval conquest and later statute, Scotland joined through the Acts of Union of 1707, and Ireland was incorporated in 1801. The partition of Ireland in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 left the present arrangement of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, formalized through subsequent legislation. Sovereignty rests in the Crown-in-Parliament, with executive authority exercised in practice by a Cabinet drawn from and accountable to the House of Commons.

ETYMOLOGY

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HISTORY

PREHISTORIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN

Human occupation of the British Isles extends back to the Paleolithic, with successive waves of settlement following the retreat of the ice sheets during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. Megalithic construction, most famously at Stonehenge and Avebury, dates from the third millennium BCE, and the arrival of Celtic-speaking peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages established the linguistic and cultural pattern that Roman writers would later encounter. Julius Caesar's expeditions of 55 and 54 BCE opened contact between Rome and the island without lasting conquest, and it was not until the invasion under Claudius in 43 CE that Britannia was incorporated as a Roman province. Roman rule endured for roughly three and a half centuries, leaving behind a network of roads, fortified towns, and the northern frontier marked by Hadrian's Wall, before the legions were withdrawn in the early fifth century amid the broader contraction of imperial authority.

ANGLO-SAXON AND MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Alfred the Great,
whose resistance to Danish incursion
laid the foundation for a unified
Kingdom of England

UNION AND EMPIRE

The accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603 as James I brought the two crowns into personal union without merging their parliaments, an arrangement that persisted through the upheavals of the Civil War and the Restoration before the Acts of Union of 1707 joined England and Scotland into a single Kingdom of Great Britain with one Parliament at Westminster. Ireland was brought into the same constitutional framework by the Act of Union of 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Across this period the country built a global commercial and colonial empire, first through chartered trading companies and naval expansion and later through direct administration of territories in North America, the Caribbean, South Asia, and elsewhere, a process accelerated by the Industrial Revolution that began in British textile and iron manufacturing during the later eighteenth century. By the close of the nineteenth century the empire had grown to encompass a substantial portion of the globe's population and landmass, administered from London under Queen Victoria.

A Spitfire and a Hurricane as flown in
the Battle of Britain during the Second World War

POLITICS

GOVERNMENT

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