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The British Isles is a term sometimes used to refer to group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe consisting of Great Britain, Ireland, and a number of smaller surrounding islands and islets. The term British Isles is often misunderstood, and is sometimes considered objectionable. The term is not used to any great extent in the Republic of Ireland.

There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The group also includes the Isle of Man, a British crown dependency. Both states, but not the Isle of Man, are members of the European Union. Between 1801 and 1922, Great Britain and Ireland together formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, Ireland left the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, except for six counties in the northeast of the island, which became known as Northern Ireland.

The islands encompass an area south to north from Pednathise Head to Out Stack, Shetland in the United Kingdom, and west to east from Tearaght Island in the Republic of Ireland to Lowestoft Ness in the United Kingdom, containing more than 6,000 islands, amounting to a total land area of 121,674 square miles (315,134 km²). The British Isles are largely low lying and fertile, though with significant mountainous areas in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the north of England. The regional geology is complex, formed by the drifting together of separate regions and shaped by glaciation.

Origins of the term

The prefix "Brit-" is derived from the Latin Britto of classical times. This, along with other variants, was derived from the terms Ρρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani, which were used by Greek and Roman geographers and were derived from a Celtic language term which is likely to have reached them from the Gauls.

For example, throughout Book 4 of his Geography, Strabo is consistent in spelling the island Britain (transliterated) as Prettanikee, which was written in Latin as Britannia. The term itself most likely referred to the way in which the people first encountered in the south of Great Britain used woad to decorate their bodies. Peter Heylyn stated that Britt meant paint.

Pliny the Elder writing around AD 70 uses a Latin version of the same terminology in Book 4 of his Naturalis Historia. Pliny describes the places he considers to make up the Britannias, 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 also includes the island of Thule, most often identified as Iceland, although there is some debate about the exact identification and some express the view that it may have been parts of the coast of Norway, the Faroe Islands, or even the mainland of Denmark.

Ptolemy included essentially the same main islands in the Britannias. He first described 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 Britania. Interestingly, Ptolemy included Thule in the chapter on Albion, although the coordinates he gives have been mapped to the area around modern Kristiansund in western Norway.

Since classical times, the term British has referred to the ancient Britons, nowadays often called the Brythons, who lived in the southern half of Great Britain. Around AD 700 Bede, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, refers to "the tongues of five nations, namely the Angles, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Latins", with "Latins" apparently referring to the Britons of the south whose language had come under Roman influence. This usage continues through Early Modern times to the present day.

The earliest indigenous source to use a collective term for the archipelago is the Life of Saint Columba, a hagiography recording the missionary activities of the sixth century Irish monk Saint Columba among the peoples of modern Scotland. It was written in the late seventh century by Adomnán of Iona, an Irish monk living on the Inner Hebridean island. The collective term for the archipelago used within this work is Oceani Insulae meaning "Islands of the Ocean" (Book 2, 46 in the Sharpe edition = Book 2, 47 in Reeves edition), it is used sparingly and no Priteni-derived collective reference is made.

Another early native source to use a collective term is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum of Bede written in the early eighth century. The collective term for the archipelago used within this work is insularum meaning "islands" (Book 1, 8) and it too is used sparingly.

During the medieval period use of the term British Isles (or its equivalent) appears to have been rare. One example is that of Athelstan, first king of a united England, who defeated an alliance of Scottish, British, and Irish-Norse forces at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937. After receiving the subsequent submission and fealty of kings Constantine II of Scotland, Owain I of Strathclyde, and Olaf III of Dublin, Athelstan assumed the title ÆtfelstaHus rex et rector totius hujus Britanniae insulae ("Athelstan, king and restorer of the whole of the British Isles").

Queen Elizabeth as Astraea, Frances A. Yates (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 10, 1947) quotes John Dee as using the term Brytish Iles, most likely in the 1570s. This is possibly the first recorded use in English. It was Dee who also invented the term "British Empire". As a Welshman himself, and also to flatter the Welsh-descended Tudor monarchy, he preferred using the term "British" to "English". Dee was influential in building the legal and philosophical base for the expansion of British power and also described the "British Ocean," which extended north-west from Britain, encompassing Greenland and Iceland and possibly as far as North America.

The description "The British Isles" (or its equivalent in Latin) also started to be used by mapmakers from the late 16th century onwards, such as Gerardus Mercator. Mercator, who leant heavily on his friend Dee as a source for his maps, was the most notable. Similarly Ortelius, in his atlas derived from Mercator´s original maps, uses the title "Angliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae, sive Britannicar. insularum descriptio". This translates as "England, Scotland and Ireland, that I describe the British islands". Although many other mapmakers continued to use descriptions like "Angliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae" without any reference to British terminology, e.g. the Schagen Map , the precedent set by Mercator and Ortelius, who were probably the most influential mapmakers of the period, and the final political incorporation of Ireland into the United Kingdom during the late 16th century and into the 17th century meant that the term was very commonly — perhaps even universally — used in maps by the late 17th century.

Geography

The island-group is made up of more than 6,000 islands, the two biggest being Great Britain and Ireland. Great Britain, to the east, covers 83,698 square miles (216,777 km²), over half of the total landmass of the group; Ireland, to the west, covers 32,589 square miles (84,406 km²). Other larger islands include the Hebrides and Shetland Islands in the north of the group, Anglesey and the Isle of Man in the centre, and the Channel Islands in the south.

The larger islands that constitute the British Isles include:

• clockwise around Great Britain from the north:
  • Northern Isles
    • Orkney
    • Shetland
    • Fair Isle
  • Farne Islands
  • Portsmouth Islands
    • Hayling Island
    • Portsea Island
  • Isle of Wight
  • Channel Islands
  • Isle of Portland
  • Isles of Scilly
  • Anglesey
  • Islands of Furness
  • Isle of Man
  • Islands of the lower Firth of Clyde
    • Isle of Arran
    • Bute
  • Hebrides
    • Inner Hebrides
    • Outer Hebrides
    • Small Isles

• clockwise around Ireland from the north:
  • Rathlin Island
  • Lambay Island
  • Ireland's Eye
  • Great Island
  • Sherkin Island
  • Cape Clear
  • Valentia Island
  • Blasket Islands
  • Aran Islands
  • Inishark
  • Inishbofin
  • Inishturk
  • Clew Bay islands
  • Achill Island
  • Arranmore
  • Tory Island

• Isle of Man

See also:

• List of islands of England
• List of islands of Ireland
• List of islands of Isle of Man
• List of islands of Scotland
• List of islands of Wales

The Channel Islands are sometimes stated as being in the British Isles, though geographically they are not part of the island group, being close to the coast of France.

The islands are at relatively low altitudes, with central Ireland and southern Great Britain particularly low lying. 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 metres (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 metres (3,281 ft). Lakes on the islands are generally not large, although Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is an exception, covering 147 square miles (381 km²); the largest freshwater body in Great Britain is Loch Lomond at 27.5 square miles (71.1 km²). Neither are rivers particularly long, the rivers Severn at 219 miles (354 km) and Shannon at 240 miles (386 km) 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 degrees Celsius (20°F) above the global average for the islands' latitudes. 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.

Geology

An interactive geological map is available.

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. 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.

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".

History

Part of a series on the
History of the British Isles
Overview United Kingdom England Isle of Wight Isles of Scilly Scotland Shetland Orkney Inner Hebrides Outer Hebrides Wales Anglesey Northern Ireland Ireland Isle of Man (Mann) Channel Islands Jersey Guernsey
Prehistoric period Prehistoric Britain Prehistoric England Prehistoric Scotland Prehistoric Shetland Prehistoric Orkney Prehistoric Wales Prehistoric Ireland Prehistoric Mann
Classical period Roman Britain Roman Scotland Roman Wales Protohistoric Ireland, Roman Ireland End of Roman rule Sub-Roman Britain
Medieval period Medieval England Early medieval England High medieval England Late medieval England Medieval Scotland Early medieval Scotland High medieval Scotland Late medieval Scotland Medieval Wales Early medieval Wales High medieval Wales Late medieval Wales Medieval Ireland Early medieval Ireland High medieval Ireland Late medieval Ireland Medieval Mann
Early modern period Early modern Britain Early modern England Early modern Scotland Early modern Wales Early modern Ireland Early modern Mann
Late modern period United Kingdom (since 1707) Victorian period Edwardian period First World War Interwar period Second World War World Wars (Wales) Post-war period (political history) Post-war period (social history) Late modern Ireland Late modern Mann
Related House of Plantagenet House of Lancaster House of York Monarchs
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Peoples and polities Gaelic Ireland Lordship of Ireland Kingdom of Ireland United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Irish Republic Irish Free State Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
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Template:History of the Isle of Man

See also: History of the Isle of Man, History of the Orkney Islands.

The British Isles has 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.

Prehistory

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.

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. 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.

Pretani, Romans and Anglo-Saxons

The oldest surviving historical records of the islands preserve fragments of the travels of the ancient Greek Pytheas around 320 BC and describe Great Britain and Ireland as the islands of Prettanike with their peoples the Priteni or Pretani, a name which may have been used in Gaul. A later variation on this term as the Cruithne would come to refer to certain groups. Ireland was referred to as Ierne (the sacred island as the Greeks interpreted it) "inhabited by the race of Hiberni", and Great Britain as insula Albionum, "island of the Albions". These terms without the collective name appear in the 4th century writings of Avienus which preserve fragments of the Massaliote Periplus of the 6th century BC. Later scholars associated these tribal societies with the Celts the Ancient Greeks reported in what is now south-west Germany, and subgrouped their Celtic languages in the British Isles into the Brythonic languages spoken in most of Great Britain, and Goidelic in Ireland and the west of modern Scotland. 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. Genetic evidence indicates that there was not a later large-scale replacement of these early inhabitants 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. 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, eventually extending on the island of Great Britain to Hadrian's Wall with tribes forming friendly buffer states further north to around the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth, and military expeditions beyond that into Caledonia. The interaction of the Romans with Ireland appears to have largely 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 Brittonic speaking due to trade and religious links, and the Romans subsequently called it Brittania.

The departure of the Romans around 410 left numerous kingdoms across the British Isles. 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 England and south-east Scotland. To the north, the Irish Dál Riatans, also known by the name Scotti expanded their influence to western Scotland.

National formation

The Vikings arrived in Britain and Ireland 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, in various places around Ireland, Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia. Wessex prevented the further expansion of the Vikings, and achieved a united kingdom of England in 927, which was then ruled by both English and Viking kings until 1066. Further north, 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 England into the kingdom of Alba and fixed its southern border on the Tweed in 1018. Wales was divided into a number of British kingdoms, apart from one short period of unification, and also suffered from Viking raids in the tenth century. Ireland was divided among around eighty to a hundred petty kingdoms grouped under larger regional kingdoms and then a weak High King. The Vikings founded Dublin in 852 and established several other coastal strongholds around Ireland. The Viking kingdom of Dublin went on to dominate much of Ireland, but their power was broken by Brian Boru in 1014 who effectively united Ireland, but only until his death.

Norman immigration

The next wave of immigration were Viking descendants, the Normans. The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought England under their rule and then extended their influence and power to the rest of the British Isles. The Normans were centralisers and expansionists. Their lands (and those of their successors, the Plantagenets) within the British Isles were part of more extensive land holdings in France and elsewhere, and held within a feudal framework. They controlled Wales by the end of the 11th century, only to partially lose it again several times owing to revolts until 1283 when Edward I successfully enforced Plantagenet supremacy. In 1072 the Normans forced the Scottish king Malcolm III 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 kingdoms of Mann and of the Isles in 1266, and Orkney and Shetland from Norway in 1472. The Normans were initially invited to Ireland, here they asserted overlordship, resulting in 1184 with the Pope authorising the feudal Lordship of Ireland. This fell under the English crown with the accession of John. Formal taxation and government during the middle ages was generally restricted to an arc around Dublin called the Pale.

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 and Plantagenet elite was driven by the slow erosion of their lands elsewhere, but it was 1362 before the Langue d'oïl, Anglo-Norman gave way to Middle English to become the language of the law courts.

Protestant reformation and civil wars

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 pubic office. Charles tried to force central, personal government. He attempted to bypass institutions he could not control and impose a uniform non-Calivinistic 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 Paliament, 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 guerilla 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 return of the Stuarts

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.

Kingdom of Great Britain and social revolutions

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 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. 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 great 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.

The 20th century

Prosperity increased through the 19th and into the 20th century, and politics became increasingly popular and democratic. The Irish War of Independence and subsequent Irish Civil War led to the 1922 formation of the Irish Free State, which was a dominion until becoming a republic in 1949. Six Irish counties remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland, initially with devolved government. Since then there have been extensive periods of unrest. Both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973. Currently there are devolved governments in Wales and Scotland, though in Northern Ireland the devolved assembly is currently suspended.

Further waves of migration from Ireland to Great Britain took place during times of economic difficulty in the thirties, forties, and fifties, though since then it has grown more prosperous and its Gross Domestic Product per capita now exceeds that of the United Kingdom. The end of the British Empire in the latter half of the 20th century saw the end of large-scale emigration; instead, there was immigration to Britain, especially from the West Indies and the Indian sub-continent, and recently to both Britain and Ireland from eastern Europe.

Sport and Culture

Despite the split between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, a limited number of sport or cultural events operate across the isles as a whole, especially where an all-Ireland team competes internationally. The British and Irish Lions is a rugby union team made up of players from the entire archipalego; they compete in tours of Southern Hemisphere rugby playing nations. Prior to 1979, the Ryder Cup was played between the United States and the British Isles, before it was expanded to include the whole of Europe. Bowls continues to have a British Isles championship.

There can also be strong links in cultural activities. For example, the Mercury Music Prize is handed out every year to the best album from a British or Irish musician or group, though other musical awards are considered on a national basis; for example, U2 won the best international group award at the 2001 Brit awards.

Other organisations are sometimes organised across the islands; for example the Samaritans.

Terminology

The geographical and political terminology within the British Isles can be confusing. This is due to the similarity between many of the terms used, and the repeated misuse of terminology. Furthermore, some of the terminology may be controversial if interpreted as holding a political stance about the national divisions within the islands. In particular, the term British Isles would be considered offensive by those who feel it is being used to assert the dominance of the United Kingdom over the Republic of Ireland , which seceded from the UK in 1922. Some alternative terms for the islands have been suggested, though none have entered the everyday languages. Most commonly, those within the islands wanting to avoid British Isles might use these isles. Generally, the term British Isles is used unproblematically within Great Britain, with more issues rising within Ireland.

Footnotes

1. "British Isles," Encyclopedia Britannica
2. An 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'
3. The diplomatic and constitutional name of the Irish state is simply Ireland. For disambiguation purposes "Republic of Ireland" is often used though technically that is not the name of the state, but according to the Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 its "description". Article 4, Bunreacht na hÉireann. Section 2, Republic of Ireland Act, 1948.
4. 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.
5. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 25 June 2006, The Concise Oxford Dictionary
6. ^ Snyder, Christopher A. (2003). The Britons. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN-X. Cite error: The named reference "snyder" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
7. Foster (editor), R F (1 November 2001). The Oxford History of Ireland. Oxford University Press. ISBN-X. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
8. Peter Heylyn, Microcosmus, p.)
9. "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."Bostock, John and H.T. Riley, ed. (1855). "Britannia". The Natural History of Pliny. pp. footnote #16. OCLC 615995. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
10. Ptolemy's Geography.
11. Since meridian 30° P corresponds to our meridian 8°24’E, Thule must be identified with the maze of islands and fjords around the three main islands that form the city of Kristiansund.
12. General survey of Lothian.
13. See William Shakespeare, King Lear III iv 189.
14. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Online Version (2000)
15. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, T. Northcote Toller (1921)
16. Discourse on history, geography, and law: John Dee and the limits of the British empire, 1576–80 Canadian Journal of History, Apr 2001 by Ken MacMillan
17. Continental maps from the late XVI century. Accessed 18 July 2006]
18. Anglia and Scotia, 1570, by Ortelius.
19. Schagen Map, late 17th century from the University of Amsterdam
20. Jersey Government.
21. Mayes, Julian (1997). Regional Climates of the British Isles. London: Routledge. pp. p. 13. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
22. Ibid., pp. 13–14.
23. Goudie, Andrew S. (1994). The Environment of the British Isles, an Atlas. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. p. 2. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
24. Ibid., p. 5.
25. Stephen Oppenheimer, Myths of British Ancestry, Prospect, Issue 127, p.50 (Oct. 2006)
26. British Archaeology Magazine - People of the Sea article by Barry Cunliffe
27. Encyclopedia of the Celts: Pretani
28. ^ Oppenheimer, ibid.
29. B.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.

Further reading

• A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World, 3500 BC - 1603 AD by Simon Schama, BBC/Miramax, 2000 ISBN 0-7868-6675-6
• A History of Britain — The Complete Collection on DVD by Simon Schama, BBC 2002
• The Isles, A History by Norman Davies, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-513442-7
• Shortened History of England by G. M. Trevelyan Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-023323-7

See also

• UK topics
• Botanical Society of the British Isles
• History of Great Britain
• Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542
• Act of Union 1707
• Act of Union 1800
• Anglo-Irish Treaty
• British-Irish Council

External links

• Britons and their origins
  • The Scotsman.
  • Daily Mail.
  • The Telegraph.
  • Prospect.

• Belfast Agreement.
• Archaic England: an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions, by Harold Bayley. Publisher: London, Chapman & Hall ltd., 1919.
• Geograph British Isles — Creative Commons-licensed, geo-located photographs of the British Isles.
• Roman Britain.
• Roman Britain at LacusCurtius (includes 3 complete books).
• The Geography of Claudius Ptolemy: Book II, Chapter 1.
• Pliny, Book 4 section 102ff.
• Pliny excerpts.
• Angliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae, sive Britannicar. insularum descriptio. Ortelius, 1570.
• Britannicarum Insularum Typus, Ortelius 1624
• Excerpt from Reeves edition of Life of Saint Columba.
• Excerpt from Bede in Latin.
• Excerpt from Bede in English translation.
• BBC Nations.
• The British Isles.

• British Isles
• Controversies