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This article explains the archipelago in north-western Europe. For those areas of the archipelago with constitutional links to the British monarchy, see British Islands.
| British Isles | |
|---|---|
 The British Isles in relation to mainland Europe | |
| Geography | |
| Location | Western Europe
|
| Total islands | 6,000+ |
| Major islands | Great Britain, Ireland |
| Area | 315,134 km²
121,673 sq mi |
| Highest point | Ben Nevis 1,344 m (4,409 ft) |
| Administration | |
 Guernsey
| |
| Largest city | St Peter Port
|
 Isle of Man
| |
| Largest city | Douglas
|
 Ireland
| |
| Largest city | Dublin
|
 Jersey
| |
| Largest city | Saint Helier
|
 United Kingdom
| |
| Home Nations | England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales
|
| Largest city | London
|
| Demographics | |
| Population | ~65 million
|
| Indigenous people | Britons, Channel Islanders, English, Irish, Manx, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, Welsh |
The British Isles (Irish: Oileáin Iarthair Eorpa,meaning Islands of Western Europe (from Patrick S. Dineen, Foclóir Gaeilge Béarla, Irish-English Dictionary, Dublin, 1927). Another translations is Éire agus an Bhreatain Mhór, meaning Ireland and Great Britain (from focail.ie, "The British Isles", Foras na Gaeilge, 2006) Manx: Ellanyn Goaldagh, Scottish Gaelic: Eileanan Breatannach, Welsh: Ynysoedd Prydain) are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe comprising Great Britain, Ireland and a number of smaller islands."British Isles," Encyclopædia Britannica The term British Isles is controversial in relation to Ireland (see British Isles naming dispute) where its use is objected to by many peopleAn Irishman\'s Diary Myers, Kevin; The Irish Times (subscription needed) 09/03/2000, Accessed July 2006 \'millions of people from these islands — \'oh how angry we get when people call them the British Isles\'
Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: Europe\'s House Divided 1490-1700. (London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2003): “the collection of islands which embraces England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales has commonly been known as the British Isles. This title no longer pleases all the inhabitants of the islands, and a more neutral description is ‘the Atlantic Isles’” (p. xxvi)
On 18 July 2004 The Sunday Business Post questioned the use of British Isles as a purely geographic expression, noting:
[The] "Last Post has redoubled its efforts to re-educate those labouring under the misconception that Ireland is really just British. When British Retail Week magazine last week reported that a retailer was to make its British Isles debut in Dublin, we were puzzled. Is not Dublin the capital of the Republic of Ireland?...Archipelago of islands lying off the north-western coast of Europe?Retrieved 17 July 2006
"...I have called the Atlantic archipelago – since the term ‘British Isles’ is one which Irishmen reject and Englishmen decline to take quite seriously." Pocock, J.G.A. (2005). The Discovery of Islands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 29.
"...what used to be called the "British Isles," although that is now a politically incorrect term." Finnegan, Richard B.; Edward T. McCarron (2000). Ireland: Historical Echoes, Contemporary Politics. Boulder: Westview Press, p. 358.
"In an attempt to coin a term that avoided the \'British Isles\' - a term often offensive to Irish sensibilities - Pocock suggested a neutral geographical term for the collection of islands located off the northwest coast of continental Europe which included Britain and Ireland: the Atlantic archipelago..." Lambert, Peter; Phillipp Schofield (2004). Making History: An Introduction to the History and Practices of a Discipline. New York: Routledge, p. 217.
"..the term is increasingly unacceptable to Irish historians in particular, for whom the Irish sea is or ought to be a separating rather than a linking element. Sensitive to such susceptibilities, proponents of the idea of a genuine British history, a theme which has come to the fore during the last couple of decades, are plumping for a more neutral term to label the scattered islands peripheral to the two major ones of Great Britain and Ireland." Roots, Ivan (1997). "Union or Devolution in Cromwell\'s Britain". History Review.
The British Isles, A History of Four Nations, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, July 2006, Preface, Hugh Kearney. "The title of this book is ‘The British Isles’, not ‘Britain’, in order to emphasise the multi-ethnic character of our intertwined histories. Almost inevitably many within the Irish Republic find it objectionable, much as Basques or Catalans resent the use of the term ‘Spain’. As Seamus Heaney put it when he objected to being included in an anthology of British Poetry: \'Don’t be surprised If I demur, for, be advised My passport’s green. No glass of ours was ever raised To toast the Queen. (Open Letter, Field day Pamphlet no.2 1983)" and by the government of the Republic of Ireland.
"Written Answers - Official Terms", Dáil Éireann - Volume 606 - 28 September 2005. In his response, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs stated "The British Isles is not an officially recognised term in any legal or inter-governmental sense. It is without any official status. The Government, including the Department of Foreign Affairs, does not use this term. Our officials in the Embassy of Ireland, London, continue to monitor the media in Britain for any abuse of the official terms as set out in the Constitution of Ireland and in legislation. These include the name of the State, the President, Taoiseach and others."
"New atlas lets Ireland slip shackles of Britain". A spokesman for the Irish Embassy in London said: “The British Isles has a dated ring to it, as if we are still part of the Empire. We are independent, we are not part of Britain, not even in geographical terms. We would discourage its usage.” Its use is also avoided in relations between the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, who generally employ the term these islands. [1] Bertie Ahern\'s Address to The Joint Houses of Parliament, Westminster, 15th May, 2007 [2] Tony Blair\'s Address to the Dáil and Seanad, November 1998
There are other common uncertainties surrounding the extent, names and geographical elements of the island group.
Usage is not consistent as to whether the Channel Islands are included [in the British Isles] - geographically they should not be, politically they should.
Several different names are currently used to describe the islands.
Dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases that use the term British Isles define itLongman Modern English Dictionary - "a group of islands off N.W. Europe comprising Great Britain Ireland, the Hebrides, Orkney the Shetland Is and adjacent islands"Merriam Webster - "Function: geographical name, island group W Europe comprising Great Britain, Ireland, & adjacent islands"dictionary.com - includes for example the American Heritage Dictionary - "British Isles, A group of islands off the northwest coast of Europe comprising Great Britain, Ireland, and adjacent smaller islands"Encarta - "British Isles, group of islands in the northeastern Atlantic, separated from mainland Europe by the North Sea and the English Channel. It consists of the large islands of Great Britain and Ireland and almost 5,000 surrounding smaller islands and islets"Philip\'s World AtlasTimes Atlas of the WorldInsight Family World Atlas as Great Britain, Ireland and adjacent islands, typically including the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, Shetland, Orkney. Some definitions include the Channel Islands.OED Online: "a geographical term for the islands comprising Great Britain and Ireland with all their offshore islands including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands"GENUKI: Crown DependenciesThe British Isles and all thatPhilips University Atlas
Many major road and rail maps and atlases use the term "Great Britain and Ireland" to describe the islands, although this may be ambiguous regarding the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.Amazon.com: Michelin Great Britain Ireland (Michelin Maps): Books: Michelin Travel PublicationsAmazon.co.uk: Rail Atlas Great Britain and Ireland: Books: S.K. BakerComplete Driver\'s Atlas of Great Britain & Ireland | |Readers Digest UKHammond International Great Britain, Ireland Another alternative name is "British-Irish Isles".John Oakland, 2003, British Civilization: A Student\'s Dictionary, Routledge: London
British-Irish Isles, the (geography) see BRITISH ISLES
British Isles, the (geography) A geographical (not political or CONSTITUTIONAL) term for ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES, and IRELAND (including the REPUBLIC OF IRELAND), together with all offshore islands. A more accurate (and politically acceptable) term today is the British-Irish Isles.
In addition, the term "British Isles" is itself used in widely varying ways, including as an effective synonym for the UK or for Great Britain and its islands, but excluding Ireland. British Weather (Part One) This BBC article referred to \'a small country such as the British Isles\' between at least April 2004 and January 2007 (checked using the Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org. Last accessed and checked 01/01/07. It was changed in February 2007 and now reads \'a small area such as the British Isles\'"[4] Website on Megalithic Monuments in the British Isles and Ireland. Ireland in this site includes Fermanagh, which is politically in Northern Ireland.""[5] The website uses the term "British Isles" in various ways, including ways that use Ireland as all of Ireland, while simultaneously using the term "The British Isles and Ireland", e.g. \'Anyone using GENUKI should remember that its name is somewhat misleading -- the website actually covers the British Isles and Ireland, rather than just the United Kingdom, and therefore includes information about the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, as well as England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.\'""Annual Guide to Narrow Gauge and Miniature Railways in the British Isles and Ireland: 2003PDF (575 KiB) which includes Belfast lines under the section on Ireland." For example, see Google searches of the BBC website. Media organisations like the The Times and the BBC have style-guide entries to try to maintain consistent usage,BBC\'s style guide BBC:PDF (275 KiB) "The British Isles is not a political entity. It is a geographical unit, the archipelago off the west coast of continental Europe covering Scotland, Wales, England, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands."The Times: "Britain or Great Britain = England, Wales, Scotland and islands governed from the mainland (i.e. not Isle of Man or Channel Islands). United Kingdom = Great Britain and Northern Ireland. British Isles = United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. Do not confuse these entities." but these are not always successful.
Encyclopædia Britannica, the Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - and the UK Hydrographic Office (publisher of Admiralty charts) have all occasionally used the term "British Isles and Ireland" (with Britannica and Oxford contradicting their own definitions of the "British Isles"),[6]PDF (1.00 MiB) Notice to Mariners of 2005 referring to a new edition of a nautical chart of the Western Approaches. Chart 2723 INT1605 International Chart Series, British Isles & Ireland, Western Approaches to the North Channel."[7] Thus, the Gulf Stream–North Atlantic–Norway Current brings warm tropical waters northward, warming the climates of eastern North America, the British Isles and Ireland, and the Atlantic coast of Norway in winter, and the Kuroshio–North Pacific Current does the same for Japan and western North America, where warmer winter climates also occur. Page retrieved Feb eighteenth 2007."[8] The description of the OUP textbook "The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries" in the series on the history of the British Isles carries the description that it \'Offers an integrated geographical coverage of the whole of the British Isles and Ireland - rather than purely English history\'" The same blurb goes on to say that the "book encompasses the histories of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and also considers the relationships between the different parts of the British Isles". Page retrieved Feb eighteenth 2007. and some specialist encyclopedias also use that term."[9] Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trees by David More and John White, Timber Press, Inc., 2002, "This book began and for many years quietly proceeded as DM\'s (David Martin\'s) personal project to record in detail as many tree species, varieties and cultivars as he could find in the British Isles and Ireland." The BBC style guide\'s entry on the subject of the British Isles remarks, "Confused already? Keep going." The Economic History Society style guide suggests that the term should be avoided.Economic History Society Style Guide
Other descriptions for the islands are also used in everyday language, examples are: "Great Britain and Ireland", "UK and Ireland", and "the British Isles and Ireland". Some of these are used by corporate entities and can be seen on the internet, such as in the naming of Yahoo UK & Ireland,Yahoo UK and Ireland or such as in the 2001 renaming of the British Isles Rugby Union Team to the current name of the "British and Irish Lions".
As mentioned above, the term "British Isles" is controversial in relation to Ireland. One map publisher recently decided to abandon using the term in Ireland while continuing to use it in Britain.The Irish Times, "Folens to wipe \'British Isles\' off the map in new atlas", October 2, 2006British Isles is removed from school atlases The Irish government is opposed to the term "British Isles" and says that it "would discourage its usage".The Times, "New atlas lets Ireland slip the shackles of Britain", October 3, 2006
Satellite Image of the British Isles (excluding Orkney and Shetland); close to the coast of France
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.
The larger islands that constitute the British Isles include:
See also:
The islands are at relatively low altitudes, with central Ireland and southern Great Britain particularly low lying: the lowest point in the islands is the Fens at −4 m (−13 ft). The Scottish Highlands in the northern part of Great Britain are mountainous, with Ben Nevis being the highest point in the British Isles at 1,344 m (4,409 ft). Other mountainous areas include Wales and parts of the island of Ireland, but only seven peaks in these areas reach above 1,000 m (3,281 ft). Lakes on the islands are generally not large, although Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is an exception, covering 381 km² (147 square miles); the largest freshwater body in Great Britain is Loch Lomond at 71.1 km² (27.5 square miles). Neither are rivers particularly long, the rivers Severn at 354 km (219 miles) and Shannon at 386 km (240 miles) being the longest.
The British Isles have a temperate marine climate, the North Atlantic Drift ("Gulf Stream") which flows from the Gulf of Mexico brings with it significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the islands\' latitudes.Mayes, Julian; Dennis Wheeler (1997). Regional Climates of the British Isles. London: Routledge, p. 13. Winters are thus warm and wet, with summers mild and also wet. Most Atlantic depressions pass to the north of the islands, combined with the general westerly circulation and interactions with the landmass, this imposes an east-west variation in climate.Ibid., pp. 13–14.
Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport of Europe in terms of passenger traffic and the Dublin-London route is the busiest air route of Europe,Seán McCárthaigh, Dublin–London busiest air traffic route within EU, Irish Examiner, March 31, 2003 and the second-busiest in the world. Europe\'s two largest low-cost airlines, Ryanair and easyJet, operate from Ireland and Britain respectively.
The English Channel and the southern North Sea are the busiest seaways in the world[citation needed]. The car ferry, M/F Ulysses, traveling the Irish Sea is the largest in the world. The Channel Tunnel, opened 1994, links Great Britain to France and is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world. The idea of building a tunnel under the Irish Sea has been raised since 1895,"TUNNEL UNDER THE SEA", The Washington Post, May 2, 1897 (Archive link) when it was first investigated, but is not considered to be economically viable[citation needed]. Several potential Irish Sea tunnel projects have been proposed, most recently the Tusker Tunnel between the ports of Rosslare and Fishguard proposed by The Institute of Engineers of Ireland in 2004.A Vision of Transport in Ireland in 2050, IEI report (pdf), The Irish Academy of Engineers, 21/12/2004Tunnel \'vision\' under Irish Sea, (link), BBC news, Thursday, 23 December, 2004 A different proposed route is between Dublin and Holyhead, proposed in 1997 by a leading British engineering firm, Symonds, for a rail tunnel from Dublin to Holyhead. Either tunnel, at 80 km, would be by far the longest in the world, and would cost an estimated €20 billion. A proposal in 2007,BBC News, From Twinbrook to the Trevi Fountain, 21 August 2007 estimated the cost of building a bridge from County Antrim in Northern Ireland to Galloway in Scotland at £3.5bn (€5bn). However, none of these is thought to be economically viable at this time.
The British Isles lie at the juncture of several regions with past episodes of tectonic mountain building. These orogenic belts form a complex geology which records a huge and varied span of earth history.Goudie, Andrew S.; D. Brunsden (1994). The Environment of the British Isles, an Atlas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 2. Of particular note was the Caledonian Orogeny during the Ordovician Period, ca. 488–444 Ma and early Silurian period, when the craton Baltica collided with the terrane Avalonia to form the mountains and hills in northern Britain and Ireland. Baltica formed roughly the north western half of Ireland and Scotland. Further collisions caused the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, forming the hills of Munster, south-west England, and south Wales. Over the last 500 million years the land which forms the islands has drifted northwest from around 30°S, crossing the equator around 370 million years ago to reach its present northern latitude.Ibid., p. 5.
The islands have been shaped by numerous glaciations during the Quaternary Period, the most recent being the Devensian. As this ended, the central Irish Sea was de-glaciated (whether or not there was a land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland at this time is somewhat disputed, though there was certainly a single ice sheet covering the entire sea) and the English Channel flooded, with sea levels rising to current levels some 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, leaving the British Isles in their current form.
The islands\' geology is highly complex, though there are large amounts of limestone and chalk rocks which formed in the Permian and Triassic periods. The west coasts of Ireland and northern Great Britain that directly face the Atlantic Ocean are generally characterized by long peninsulas, and headlands and bays; the internal and eastern coasts are "smoother".
A population density map of the British Isles. Dublin and London, with respective population densities of 1,288 and 4,761 are shaded blue.
The demographics of the British Isles show dense population in England, which accounts for almost 80% of the total population of the region. In Ireland, Northern Ireland. Scotland, Wales dense populations are limited to areas around, or close to, their respective capitals. Major populations centres (greater than one million people) exist in the following areas:
The population of England has risen steadily throughout its history, while the populations of Scotland and Wales have shown little increase during the twentieth century - the population of Scotland remaining unchanged since 1951. Ireland, which for most of its history comprised a population proportionate to its land area, one third of the total population, has since the Great Famine fallen to less than one tenth of the population of the British Isles. The famine, which caused a century-long population decline, drastically reduced the Irish population and permanently altered the demographic make-up of the British Isles. On a global scale this disaster led to the creation of an Irish diaspora that number fifteen times the current population of the island.
| Ireland | British Isles | % of total | Graph | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1841 | 8.2 | 26.7 | 30.7% | 
|
| 1851 | 6.9 | 27.7 | 24.8% | |
| 1891 | 4.7 | 37.8 | 12.4% | |
| 1951 | 4.1 | 53.2 | 7.7% | |
| 1991 | 5.5 | 62.9 | 8.7% | |
| 2006 | 6.0 | 64.3 | 9.3% |
Between 1801 and 1922, Great Britain and Ireland together formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.Though the Irish Free State left the United Kingdom on 6 December 1922 the name of the United Kingdom was not changed to reflect that until April 1927, when Northern Ireland was substituted for Ireland in its name. In 1922, twenty-six counties of Ireland left the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom following the Irish War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty; the remaining six counties, mainly in the northeast of the island, became known as Northern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Both states, but not the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands, are members of the European Union.
However, despite independence of most of Ireland, political cooperation exists across the islands on some levels:
| History of the British Isles
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By chronology
By nation
By topic
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The British Isles have a long and complex shared history. While this tends to be presented in terms of national narratives, many events transcended modern political boundaries. In particular these borders have little relevance to early times and in that context can be misleading, though useful as an indication of location to the modern reader. Also, cultural shifts which historians have previously interpreted as evidence of invaders eliminating or displacing the previous populations are now, in the light of genetic evidence, perceived by a number of archaeologists and historians as being to a considerable extent changes in the culture of the existing population brought by groups of immigrants or invaders who at times became a new ruling élite.
At a time when the islands were still joined to continental Europe, Homo erectus brought Palaeolithic tool use to the south east of the modern British Isles some 750,000 years ago followed (about 500,000 years ago) by the more advanced tool use of Homo heidelbergensis found at Boxgrove. It appears that the glaciation of ice ages successively cleared all human life from the area, though human occupation occurred during warmer interglacial periods. Modern humans appear with the Aurignacian culture about 30,000 years ago, famously with the "Red Lady of Paviland" in modern Wales. The last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago, and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers spread to all parts of the islands by around 8,000 years ago, at a time when rising sea levels now cut off the islands from the continent. The immigrants came principally from the ice age refuge in what is now the Basque Country, with a smaller immigration from refuges in the modern Ukraine and Moldavia. Three quarters of the ancestors of people of the British Isles may have arrived in this wave of immigration.Stephen Oppenheimer, Myths of British Ancestry, Prospect, Issue 127, p.50 (Oct. 2006)
Around 6,500 years ago farming practices spread to the area with the Neolithic Revolution and the western seaways quickly brought megalithic culture throughout the islands. The earliest stone house still standing in northern Europe is at Knap of Howar, in Orkney which also features such monuments as Maes Howe ranking alongside the Callanish stone circle on the Isle of Lewis, Newgrange in Ireland, and Stonehenge in southern England along with thousands of lesser monuments across the isles, often showing affinities with megalithic monuments in France and Spain.British Archaeology Magazine - People of the Sea article by Barry Cunliffe Further cultural shifts in the Bronze Age were followed with the building of numerous hill forts in the Iron Age, and increased trade with continental Europe.
Early historical records of the islands, notably descriptions from Pytheas and Ptolemy, portray numerous named tribes while using Priteni or Pretani as an overall collective term, Hiberni for the inhabitants of Ireland and Albiones for those of Great Britain, though it is questionable if these people identified themselves with any grouping larger than the tribe.Snyder 2003, p. 2–5 Later scholars associated these tribal societies with the Celts the Ancient Greeks reported in what is now south-West Germany, and sub-grouped their Celtic languages in the British Isles into the Brythonic languages spoken in most of Great Britain, and Goidelic in Ireland. They perceived these languages as arriving in a series of invasions, but modern evidence suggests that these peoples may have migrated from Anatolia around 7000 BC through southern and then Western Europe.Oppenheimer, ibid. Genetic evidence indicates that there was not a later large-scale replacement of these early inhabitantsB.McEvoy, M.Richards, P.Forster, and D.G. Bradley, The Longue Durée of Genetic Ancestry: Multiple Genetic Marker Systems and Celtic Origins on the Atlantic Facade of Europe, Am J Hum Genet. October 2004; 75(4): 693–702. [10] and that the Celtic influence was largely cultural. In the Scottish highlands northwards the people the Romans called Caledonians or Picts spoke a language which is now unknown and extinct. It is also possible that southern England was settled by Belgic tribes.
During the first century the Roman conquest of Britain established Roman Britain which became a province of the Roman Empire named Britannia. It included most of the island of Great Britain but never consolidating control over the highlands of Caledonia, and around 180 drew back to Hadrian\'s Wall with tribes forming friendly buffer states further north to around the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. The interaction of the Romans with Ireland appears to have been limited to some trade. From the 4th century raids on Roman Britain increased and language links have led to speculation that many Britons migrated across the English Channel at this time to found Brittany, but it has been contended that Armorica was already Brythonic speaking due to trade and religious links, and the Romans subsequently called it Brittania.Snyder 2003, p. 149
The end of Roman rule around 410 was followed by the formation of numerous kingdoms across most of Britain. Subsequent settlement in Sub-Roman Britain by peoples traditionally called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes created Anglo-Saxon kingdoms ("the Heptarchy") over much of what is now Eastern England and south-east Scotland. Between the 5th and 10th centuries England was divided into areas of British and Anglo-Saxon control, with the latter gradually expanding westward. The Irish raiders known as Scoti attacked many areas of Britain, and that name was also used for Gaels from Dál Riata in north eastern Ireland and later to settlers from Ireland in western Scotland.
The Vikings arrived in the British Isles in the 790\'s with raids on Lindisfarne, Iona, and the west of Ireland. They provided another wave of immigration, settling in Orkney and Shetland and then Western Isles, Caithness, Sutherland, Isle of Man, Galloway, Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia and founding the cities of Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Arklow, and Dublin in Ireland. Wessex prevented the further expansion of the Vikings in England, and achieved a united Kingdom of England in 927, which was then ruled by both English and Viking kings until 1066. In 900 A.D. Donald II was the first king of Alba rather than king of the Picts. His successors amalgamated all the kingdoms north of the English border into the Kingdom of Alba, later known as the Kingdom of Scotland, and fixed its southern border on the Tweed in 1018 , approximating the current England-Scotland border. Wales, still divided following the Roman withdrawal, was divided into a number of Brythonic kingdoms, with the exception from one short period of unification, and also suffered from Viking raids in the tenth century.
Ireland, having like England and Scotland been divided among around eighty to a hundred petty kingdoms, began to slowly amalgamate into eight to ten provincial kingdoms by the tenth century. Nominally these were governed by a single High King, with the title floating between an ever fewer number of noble dynasties with increasing national authority. Viking influence in Irish affairs was crushed in the 980 Battle of Tara. Following the 1014 Battle of Clontarf, they turned their attention to Scotland and especially England, conquered by the Viking Canute the Great the following year. The same battle, however, resulted in the death Brian Boru, who had effectively united Ireland, causing a power vacuum and a series of bloody factional wars.
The Norman Conquest of 1066 first brought England under Norman rule. The Normans would later extend their influence, in different ways, into Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. The Normans were centralisers and expansionists. Their lands within the British Isles were part of extensive holdings across north-Western Europe held within a feudal framework. Wales was brought under their control by the end of the 11th century, but not successfully held until 1283. In 1072 the Normans forced the Scottish king to submit to their feudal overlordship, something they would regularly assert during the mediaeval period. The Normans did not supplant the Scottish political structure, but had great influence over it, eventually supplying the kings of the Scots from 1150 and then asserting independence of the Scottish Crown from that of England. The Scottish Crown gradually gained control of Norse areas, annexing the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles in 1266, and Orkney and Shetland from Norway in 1472. In 1169, the Normans were invited to Ireland to aid a provincial king whose lands had been confiscated by the High King. Papal permission was granted, by the only English head of the Catholic Church to sit in Rome, Pope Adrian IV, for the annexation of the country, to be a feudal possession of the English crown, as the Lordship of Ireland. Although immediately transferred to the king\'s second son, this reverted to the English crown with John\'s unexpected accession to the throne of his father.
During the Middle Ages, the Normans slowly intermarried with the previous populations and adopted their language and customs. In England, the Anglicisation of the Norman elite was driven by the slow erosion of their lands elsewhere, but it was 1362 before Anglo-Norman gave way to Middle English to become the language of the law courts. In Ireland, a Gaelic resurgence at the close of the 13th century led the Norman to famously become "more Irish than the Irish themselves", adopting Gaelic customs, laws and language, intermarrying with the native nobility and rebelling against the English crown. The 1360 Statutes of Kilkenny were intended to stem this tide by legislating the death penalty for any Englishman (as the Normans were then known) who consorted with the Irish in this way. However, little could be done, save an expensive re-conquest, to bring Ireland back under English law and by the 15th century only a fortified twenty-mile (32 km) radius around Dublin, known as the Pale, was loyal to the English crown.
The feudal system decayed and by the end of the sixteenth century was replaced by a system of centralised states. The English throne had come under the Welsh Tudors, who centralised government in England, Ireland, and Wales. In 1603 James VI of Scotland brought England and Scotland into personal union and promoted the existence of a modern British identity.
These changes happened at the same time as the Protestant reformation where the Roman Catholic church had been replaced by national churches to which all people were expected to adhere to. Failure to do so resulted in prosecution for recusancy and heavy fines, and recusants laid themselves open to accusations of treason and loss of land. By 1600 there was a wide range of religious belief within the islands from Presbyterian Calvinists (who were the majority in much of Scotland) and Independents to episcopal Calvinists (in the Church of Ireland and parts of Scotland) to Protestant Episcopalians that retained formal liturgy (especially the Church of England) to Roman Catholicism (which retained a large majority in Ireland).
James, and his son, Charles I, favoured political and religious centralisation and uniformity throughout the British Isles. They favoured episcopal, Armininian churches with a formal liturgy, which antagonised many Protestants. In addition, James, although he followed a policy of relative religious toleration, worsened the position of Irish Catholics by expanding the policy of plantation in Ireland, most notably in the Plantation of Ulster where forfeited lands from Catholics were settled by Scottish and English Protestants and by barring Catholics from serving in public office. Charles tried to force central, personal government. He attempted to bypass institutions he could not control and impose a uniform non-Calvinistic settlement throughout the islands.
The result was the First Bishops War in Scotland in 1639, when the Scottish Presbyterians rebelled against Charles\' religious policies. The crisis rapidly spread to Ireland, in the form of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and then to England, where Parliament refused to raise an army for Charles to fight in Scotland or Ireland, fearing that it would next be used against them. The English Civil War broke out in 1642. Collectively, these conflicts are known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a shifting series of conflicts and alliances within Britain and Ireland. The King\'s supporters were known as the Royalists and had forces in England, Scotland (mostly episcopalian and Catholic highlanders), and Ireland. The English Parliamentary forces (mostly presbyterian and independents) fought against them, but were defeated in England by 1645. The Scottish presbyterians (the Covenanters) were allied to the English Parliament, while the Irish Catholic Confederates were loosely allied with the Royalists.
By 1649 Parliamentary forces ruled England and executed Charles and the Covenanters had secured Scotland. An alliance between the Catholic Confederates and the Royalists in Ireland resulted in the parliamentary conquest of Ireland, followed by a brutal guerrilla campaign which officially ended in 1653. Charles II repudiated the Irish alliance in 1650 in order to enter one with the Covenanters instead and invaded England. He was defeated in 1651 and the result was that the entire British Isles were brought under the English parliamentary army. There was religious toleration of Protestant denominations (though no episcopalian church), but Catholics were strongly repressed. In Ireland they were disenfranchised and dispossessed with Catholic land ownership dropping from 60% to 8% and their land was confiscated to pay off the Parliament\'s debts. Some of the land was given to another wave of Protestant immigrants, especially former soldiers, but these were not sufficient to replace the existing Irish, so Ireland became a land largely owned by Protestant landlords with Catholic tenants.
The restoration of Charles II in 1660 reversed many of the Commonwealth measures: the three kingdoms were separated again, the episcopalian Churches of England and Ireland re-established, a Presbyterian Church of Scotland established, and Protestant nonconformism repressed. A small proportion of the confiscated lands in Ireland were restored, bringing Catholic ownership up to 20%. In1685 brought Charles\' brother, James II, a Catholic, to the thrones. James suspended the laws discriminating against those not adhering to the national churches; but he attempted personal rule with a large standing army and heavy-handedly attempted to replace Anglicans with Catholics. This alienated the English establishment who invited the Dutch William, Prince of Orange to depose James in favour of his daughter, Mary. On William\'s landing, James fled first to France and then to Ireland where the government remained loyal to him. Here he was defeated, and the position of the Protestant Ascendancy cemented with the imposition of Penal Laws there that effectively denied nearly all Catholics (75% of the population) any sort of power or substantial property.
James and his descendants attempted to recover the throne several times over the next sixty years, but failed to gain sufficient active support and were consistently defeated.
The 1707 Act of Union united England and Scotland in the Kingdom of Great Britain. The next century saw the start of great social changes. Enclosure had been taking place over a long period in England, but the British Agricultural Revolution accelerated the process by which land was privatised, commercialised, and intensively exploited, and caused it to spread throughout the British Isles. This resulted in the displacement of large numbers of people from the land and widespread hardship, including the Highland Clearances in which many of the residents of the Scottish highlands were systematically removed to make the land available for sheep farming. Prebble, John. (1969). Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140028379 In addition, the industrial revolution saw the displacement of cottage industries by large-scale factories and the rapid growth of industrial towns and cities. The British Empire grew substantially, stoking the growth in industrial production, bringing in wealth, giving rise to large-scale emigration, and making London the largest city in Europe.
Social unrest and repressive government accompanied these upheavals. The ideals of the French Revolution were widely supported and led to a full-scale rebellion in Ireland. A result of the rebellion was the start of the end of Ascendancy hegemony in Ireland and its political unification with Great Britain in 1801. Unrest throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland continued well into the 19th century, but was increasingly legitimised and able to find an outlet in Parliament from the Great Reform Act of 1832 onwards. The role of religion in determining political markedly decreased from the Catholic Relief Act in 1829 onwards. The social upheavals continued with widespread migration from the countryside to towns and cities and abroad. Ireland suffered a famine from 1845 until 1849 which resulted in its population dropping by a third through death and migration. This included large-scale movements to Great Britain, especially to the north west of England and western Scotland. Emigration from the whole of the British Isles overseas continued, especially to the English-speaking parts of the British Empire, the United States, and other countries such as Argentina.
Prosperity increased in England through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century and politics became increasingly popular and democratic. The suspension of the Home Rule Act 1914, the subsequent Easter Rising, and the Anglo-Irish War led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, which subsequently survived the Irish Civil War. The Irish Free State existed until a new constitution in 1937. The Irish state held dominion status until 1949, when it became a republic. During World War II, the Irish Free State stayed officially neutral under a state of emergency.
Six counties in the north-east were politically separated from the rest of Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, forming Northern Ireland. They remained part of the United Kingdom with a devolved government until 1972 [11], when direct rule was imposed from London following the failure of a power-sharing assembly. There have been extensive periods of unrest in Northern Ireland which has seen several periods of direct rule in the subsequent decades as the parties within Northern Ireland failed to reach practical agreement on power sharing.
Within the United Kingdom there are devolved governments in Wales and Scotland, and in Northern Ireland although each has different powers.
Attempts at long-needed economic reforms by the UK government in the wake of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849) resulted in mass migration from Ireland to Great Britain. Despite attempts by the Irish governments, north and south, to stem the tide, the pattern continued following independence, with notable post-independence spikes in the 1950s and 1980s. Since the mid-1990s Ireland has grown more prosperous and the Irish Gross Domestic Product per capita now exceeds that of the United Kingdom. Both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973.
The end of the British Empire in the latter half of the twentieth century saw the end of large-scale emigration from Great Britain; instead, there was new non-Irish imigration to Great Britain, especially from the West Indies and the Indian sub-continent. Recently, with the accession of Poland and other former communist states to the European Union, there has been significant migration to both Britain and Ireland from eastern Europe.
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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into British Isles naming dispute. (Discuss) |
A 1490 Italian reconstruction of Ptolemy\'s Geography based on surviving latitude and longitude descriptions, showing Ibernia Britannica Insula ("Hibernia, Island of Britannia", Ireland), Albion Insula Britannica ("Albion, Island of Britannia", Great Britain) and Mona Insula (Isle of Man) separated from the European mainland by Oceanus Germanicus ("Germanic Ocean", North Sea) to the east and Oceanus Britannicus ("Britannic Ocean", English Channel) to the south.
In classical times, several Greek and Roman Geographers used derivatives of the Celtic Languages term "Pretani", like "Brit-" or "Prit-" with various endings to describe the islands to the north west of the European mainland, although several included islands not currently viewed as part of the "British Isles", e.g. Thule. Later in the Roman era the term Britannia came to mean more specifically the Roman province of Britain.
Other early classical geographers and also later native sources in the post-Roman period used the general term "oceani insulae", simply meaning "islands of the ocean". Great Britain was called "Britannia" and Ireland was called "Hibernia" and also, between about the fifth and eleventh centuries, "Scotia". The Orkneys ("Orcades") and Isle of Man were typically also mentioned in descriptions of the islands. No specific collective term for the islands was used other than "islands of the ocean".
The term "British Isles" entered the English language in the seventeenth century as the description of Great Britain, Ireland and the surrounding islands, but was not in common use until at least the second half of the seventeenth century"When I refer to the composite Monarchy ruled over by James VI and I and by King Charles I, it is always described as Britain and Ireland, and I deliberately avoid the politically loaded phrase \'the British Isles\' not least because this was not a normal usage in the political discourse of the time". Canny, Nicholas (2001). Making Ireland British:. New York: Oxford University Press, p. viii. ISBN-13:. and, in general, the modern notion of "Britishness" only started to become common after the 1707 Act of Union. Snyder "The Britons", P281, quoting Linda Colley. While it is probably the most common term used to describe the islands, use of this term is is not universally accepted and is sometimes rejected in Ireland. "...I have called the Atlantic archipelago – since the term ‘British Isles’ is one which Irishmen reject and Englishmen decline to take quite seriously." Pocock, J.G.A. (2006). The Discovery of Islands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 29. ISBN-13:978-0521850957.
Other descriptions are also used, including "Great Britain and Ireland", "The British Isles and Ireland", "Britain and Ireland", and the deliberately vague "these isles", as well as other less common designations like "IONA" (Islands of the North Atlantic), "The Anglo-Celtic Isles", etc.
The earliest known names for the islands come from copies of ancient Greek writings. These include the Massaliote Periplus, a merchants\' handbook from around 500 BC that describes searoutes,Snyder 2003, p. 12, Ó Corráin 1989, p. 1Cunliffe 2002, pp. 38-45, 94 The Massaliote Periplus describes a sea route south round the west coast of Spain from the promontory of Oestriminis (Cape Finisterre) back to the Mediterranean. The poem by Avienus makes used of it in describing the voyage of Himilco the Navigator, also incorporating fragments from 11 ancient writers including Pytheas. When Avienus says it\'s two days sailing from Oestriminis to the Holy Isle, inhabited by the Hierni, near Albion, this differs from the sailing directions of the Periplus and implies that Oestriminis is Brittany, a conflict explained if it had been taken by Avienus from one of his other sources. and the travel writings of the Greek Pytheas from around 320 BC. Although the earliest texts have been lost, excerpts were quoted or paraphrased by later authors. The main islands were called Ierne, equating to the term Ériu for Ireland,Ó Corráin 1989, p. 1 and Albion for modern-day Great Britain. These early writers referred to the inhabitants as the Ρρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani, probably from a Celtic languages term meaning "people of the forms".Snyder 2003, p. 12, 68 , and Pretannia as a place-name was Diodorus\'s rendering in Greek of this self-description. It is often taken as a reference to the practice by the inhabitants of painting or tattooing their skin, though as it is unusual for an ethnonym or self-description to describe appearance, this name may have been used by Armoricans.Cunliffe 2002, p. 95,Encyclopedia of the Celts: Pretani There is considerable confusion about early use of these terms and the extent to which similar terms were used as self-description by the inhabitants.Cunliffe 2002, p. 94 From this name a collective term for the islands was used, appearing as αι Πρετανικαι νησοι (Pretanic Islands)O\'Rahilly 1946 and αι Βρεττανιαι (Brittanic Isles).Snyder 2003, p. 12 Cognates of all these terms are still used.Cognates of Albion (normally referring only to Scotland) - English: Albion (archaic); Cornish: Alban; Irish: Alba; Manx: Albey; Scots: Albiane; Scottish Gaelic: Alba; Welsh: Yr Alban. Cognates of Ierne: English: Ireland; Cornish: Iwerdhon; Irish: Éire; Manx: Nerin; Scots: Irland; Scottish Gaelic: Éirinn; Welsh: Iwerddon though in English Albion is deliberately archaic, or poetical. Cognates of Priteni – Welsh: Prydain; English: Briton and British.
In 55 and 54 BC Caesar\'s invasions of Britain brought first hand knowledge, and in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico he introduced the term Britannia.4.20 provides a translation describing Caeser\'s first invasion, using terms which from IV.XX appear in Latin as arriving "tamen in Britanniam", the inhabitants being "Britannos", and on p30 "principes Britanniae" is translated as "chiefs of Britain".
Around AD 70 Pliny the Elder in Book 4 of his Naturalis Historia describes the islands he considers to be Britanniae as including Great Britain, Ireland, The Orkneys, smaller islands such as the Hebrides, Isle of Man, Anglesey, possibly one of the Friesan Islands, and islands that have been identified as Ushant and Sian. He refers to Great Britain as the island called Britannia, while noting that its former name was Albion. The list also includes the island of Thule, most often identified as Iceland, although some express the view that it may have been the Faroe Islands, the coast of Norway or Denmark or possibly Shetland."The opinions as to the identity of ancient Thule have been numerous in the extreme. We may here mention six: ― 1. The common, and apparently the best founded opinion, that Thule is the island of Iceland. 2. That it is either the Ferroe group, or one of those islands. 3. The notion of Ortelius, Farnaby, and Schœnning, that it is identical with Thylemark in Norway. 4. The opinion of Malte Brun, that the continental portion of Denmark is meant thereby, a part of which is to the present day called Thy or Thyland. 5. The opinion of Rudbeck and of Calstron, borrowed originally from Procopius, that this is a general name for the whole of Scandinavia. 6. That of Gosselin, who thinks that under this name Mainland, the principal of the Shetland Islands, is meant. It is by no means impossible that under the name of Thule two or more of these localities may have been meant, by different authors writing at distant periods and under different states of geographical knowledge. It is also pretty generally acknowledged, as Parisot remarks, that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy is identical with Thylemark in Norway." (1855) "Britannia", in Bostock, John and H.T. Riley: The Natural History of Pliny, footnote #16. OCLC 615995.
Ptolemy included essentially the same main islands in the Britannias. He was writing around AD 150, though he used the now lost work of Marinus of Tyre from around fifty years earlier.Ó Corráin 1989 His first description is of Ireland, which he called Hibernia. Second was the island of Great Britain, which he called Albion. Book II, Chapters 1 and 2 of his Geography are respectively titled as Hibernia, Island of Britannia and Albion, Island of Britannia.Ptolemy\'s Geography.
