Great Britain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- Note: Great Britain is often incorrectly used to refer to the United Kingdom, which also includes Northern Ireland and a number of offshore islands.
- See SS Great Britain for the steamship of that name.
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 (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 kingdomss 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
- Kingdom of England
- Kingdom of Scotland
- Principality of Wales
Territories elsewhere in the archipelago
Related topics
- History of Britain
- History of England
- History of Scotland
- History of Wales
- British Empire
- The Commonwealth of Nations formerly called The British Commonwealth
- List of British monarchs
- Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
- British Prime Ministers
- Act of Union 1536 merging Kingdom of England and Principality of Wales
- Act of Union 1707 merging Scotland and England to form Great Britain
- Act of Union 1801 merging Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom
- Anglo-Irish Treaty facilitating the Irish Free State's exit from the United Kingdom
- SS Great Britain,
- List of United Kingdom topics
External links
- Know Britain – one explanation of the terms "Great Britain", "United Kingdom" and so on
- Administrative map of Great Britain – from the Ordnance Survey; various formats