British Isles

This article is about the geographical archipelago. For those parts under British sovereignty, see British Islands.

British Isles
Other native names
A map of the British Isles and their location in Europe.
A 2012 NASA satellite image of the British Isles, excluding Shetland and the Channel Islands which are out of the frame
Geography
LocationNorth-western Europe
Coordinates54°N 4°W / 54°N 4°W / 54; -4
Adjacent toAtlantic Ocean
Total islands6,000+
Area315,159 km2 (121,684 sq mi)[5]
Highest elevation1,345 m (4413 ft)
Highest pointBen Nevis[6]
Demographics
Population71,891,524 (2019)[7]
Pop. density216/km2 (559/sq mi)
LanguagesEnglish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, French, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Sercquiais, Shelta, Ulster-Scots, Angloromani, British Sign Language, Irish Sign Language
Additional information
Time zone
 • Summer (DST)
Drives on theleft
  1. ^ Irish Standard Time in the Republic of Ireland, British Summer Time in the United Kingdom and associated territories.

The British Isles are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland), and over six thousand smaller islands.[8] They have a total area of 315,159 km2 (121,684 sq mi)[5] and a combined population of almost 72 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of Ireland),[9] and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles,[10] even though geographically they do not form part of the archipelago.[11] Under the UK Interpretation Act 1978, the Channel Islands are clarified as forming part of the British Islands,[12] not to be confused with the British Isles.

The oldest rocks are 2.7 billion years old and are found in Ireland, Wales and the north-west of Scotland.[13] During the Silurian period, the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis, the highest mountain, rises to only 1,345 metres (4,413 ft),[6] and Lough Neagh, which is notably larger than other lakes in the island group, covers 390 square kilometres (151 sq mi). The climate is temperate marine, with cool winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the latitude. This led to a landscape that was long dominated by temperate rainforest, although human activity has since cleared the vast majority of forest cover. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, by 12,000 BC, when Great Britain was still part of a peninsula of the European continent. Ireland may have been connected to Great Britain by way of an ice bridge before 14,000 BC, and was not inhabited until after 8000 BC.[14] Great Britain became an island by 7000 BC with the flooding of Doggerland.[15]

The Gaels (Ireland), Picts (northern Great Britain) and Britons (southern Great Britain), all speaking Insular Celtic languages,[16] inhabited the islands at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Much of Brittonic-occupied Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire from AD 43. The first Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century, and eventually they dominated the bulk of what is now England.[17] Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by more permanent settlements and political change, particularly in England. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the later Angevin partial conquest of Ireland from 1169 led to the imposition of a new Norman ruling elite across much of Britain and parts of Ireland. By the Late Middle Ages, Great Britain was separated into the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland, while control in Ireland fluxed between Gaelic kingdoms, Hiberno-Norman lords and the English-dominated Lordship of Ireland, soon restricted only to The Pale. The 1603 Union of the Crowns, Acts of Union 1707 and Acts of Union 1800 aimed to consolidate Great Britain and Ireland into a single political unit, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands remaining as Crown Dependencies. The expansion of the British Empire and migrations following the Irish Famine and Highland Clearances resulted in the dispersal of some of the islands' population and culture throughout the world, and rapid depopulation of Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Anglo-Irish Treaty (1919–1922), with six counties remaining in the UK as Northern Ireland.

As a term, "British Isles" is a geographical name and not a political unit. In Ireland, the term is controversial,[8][18] and there are objections to its usage.[19] The Government of Ireland does not officially recognise the term,[20] and its embassy in London discourages its use.[21] "Britain and Ireland" is used as an alternative description,[19][22][23] and "Atlantic Archipelago" has also seen limited use in academia.[24][25][26][27] In official documents created jointly by Ireland and the United Kingdom, such as the Good Friday Agreement, the term "these islands" is used.[28][29]

  1. ^ The British Isles s pl Na hOileáin bhriontanacha "the British Isles". téarma.ie – Dictionary of Irish Terms. Foras na Gaeilge and Dublin City University. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
  2. ^ University of Glasgow Department of Celtic
  3. ^ Office of The President of Tynwald (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 24 February 2009
  4. ^ "Règlement (1953) (Amendement) Sur l'importation et l'exportation d'animaux". Jersey Legal Information Board. Retrieved 2 February 2012.
  5. ^ a b Country/Territory Index, Island Directory Archived 13 December 2018 at the Wayback Machine, United Nations Environment Programme. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
    Island Facts Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Isle of Man Government. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
    According to the UNEP, the Channel Islands have a land area of 194 km2, the Republic of Ireland has a land area of 70,282 km2, and the United Kingdom has a land area of 244,111 km2. According to the Isle of Man Government, the Isle of Man has a land area of 572 km2. Therefore, the overall land area of the British Isles is 315,159 km2.
  6. ^ a b "Great Britain's tallest mountain is taller - Ordnance Survey Blog". Ordnance Survey Blog. 18 March 2016. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
  7. ^ "World Population Prospects 2017". Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  8. ^ a b "British Isles". Britannica Online. 12 May 2023. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
  9. ^ The diplomatic and constitutional name of the Irish state is simply Ireland. For disambiguation purposes, Republic of Ireland is often used although technically not the name of the state but, according to the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, the state "may be described" as such.
  10. ^ Oxford English Dictionary: "British Isles: 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."
  11. ^ Alan, Lew; Colin, Hall; Dallen, Timothy (2008). World Geography of Travel and Tourism: A Regional Approach. Oxford: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-7506-7978-7. The British Isles comprise more than 6,000 islands off the north-west coast of continental Europe, including the countries of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. The group also includes the United Kingdom crown dependencies of the Isle of Man, and by tradition, the Channel Islands (the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey), even though these islands are strictly speaking an archipelago immediately off the coast of Normandy (France) rather than part of the British Isles.
  12. ^ ""British Islands" means the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. (1889)". Statutelaw.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 7 May 2009. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
  13. ^ Woodcock, Nigel H.; Rob Strachan (2012). Geological History of Britain and Ireland. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 49–50. ISBN 978-1-1182-7403-3.
  14. ^ Edwards, R.J.; Brooks, A.J. (2008). Davenport, J.J.; Sleeman, D.P.; Woodman, P.C. (eds.). "The Island of Ireland: Drowning the Myth of an Irish Land-bridge?". The Irish Naturalists' Journal: 19–34.
  15. ^ McGreevy, Nora (2 December 2020). "Study Rewrites History of Ancient Land Bridge Between Britain and Europe". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
  16. ^ Koch, John C (2006). Celtic Culture: Aberdeen breviary-celticism. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781851094400.
  17. ^ British Have Changed Little Since Ice Age, Gene Study SaysJames Owen for National Geographic News, 19 July 2005 [1].
  18. ^ Payne, Malcolm; Shardlow, Steven (2002). Social Work in the British Isles. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-85302-833-5. When we think about social work in the British Isles, a contentious term if ever there was one, what do we expect to see?
  19. ^ a b Davies, Alistair; Sinfield, Alan (2000), British Culture of the Postwar: An Introduction to Literature and Society, 1945–1999, Routledge, p. 9, ISBN 978-0-415-12811-7, Some of the Irish dislike the 'British' in 'British Isles', while a minority of the Welsh and Scottish are not keen on 'Great Britain'. ... In response to these difficulties, 'Britain and Ireland' is becoming preferred official usage if not in the vernacular, although there is a growing trend amongst some critics to refer to Britain and Ireland as 'the archipelago'.
  20. ^ "Written Answers – Official Terms" Archived 6 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Dáil Éireann, Volume 606, 28 September 2005. In his response, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs stated that "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."
  21. ^ Sharrock, David (3 October 2006), "New atlas lets Ireland slip shackles of Britain", The Times, UK, archived from the original on 16 February 2007, retrieved 24 April 2020, 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 useage [sic].'
  22. ^ Hazlett, Ian (2003). The Reformation in Britain and Ireland: an introduction. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-567-08280-0. At the outset, it should be stated that while the expression 'The British Isles' is evidently still commonly employed, its intermittent use throughout this work is only in the geographic sense, in so far as that is acceptable. Since the early twentieth century, that nomenclature has been regarded by some as increasingly less usable. It has been perceived as cloaking the idea of a 'greater England', or an extended south-eastern English imperium, under a common Crown since 1603 onwards. ... Nowadays, however, 'Britain and Ireland' is the more favoured expression, though there are problems with that too. ... There is no consensus on the matter, inevitably. It is unlikely that the ultimate in non-partisanship that has recently appeared the (East) 'Atlantic Archipelago' will have any appeal beyond captious scholars.
  23. ^ "Guardian Style Guide", The Guardian, London, 19 December 2008, archived from the original on 24 May 2023, A geographical term taken to mean Great Britain, Ireland and some or all of the adjacent islands such as Orkney, Shetland and the Isle of Man. The phrase is best avoided, given its (understandable) unpopularity in the Irish Republic. The plate in the National Geographic Atlas of the World once titled British Isles now reads Britain and Ireland.
  24. ^ Norquay, Glenda; Smyth, Gerry (2002), Across the margins: cultural identity and change in the Atlantic archipelago, Manchester University Press, p. 4, ISBN 978-0-7190-5749-6, The term we favour here—Atlantic Archipelago—may prove to be of no greater use in the long run, but at this stage, it does at least have the merit of questioning the ideology underpinning more established nomenclature.
  25. ^ Schwyzer, Philip; Mealor, Simon (2004), Archipelagic identities: literature and identity in the Atlantic Archipelago, Ashgate Publishing, p. 10, ISBN 978-0-7546-3584-0, In some ways 'Atlantic Archipelago' is intended to do the work of including without excluding, and while it seems to have taken root in terms of academic conferences and publishing, I don't see it catching on in popular discourse or official political circles, at least not in a hurry.
  26. ^ Kumar, Krishan (2003), The Making of English National Identity, Cambridge University Press, p. 6, ISBN 978-0-521-77736-0, Some scholars, seeking to avoid the political and ethnic connotations of 'the British Isles', have proposed the 'Atlantic Archipelago' or even 'the East Atlantic Archipelago' (see, e.g. Pocock 1975a: 606; 1995: 292n; Tompson, 1986) Not surprisingly this does not seem to have caught on with the general public, though it has found increasing favour with scholars promoting the new 'British History'.
  27. ^ David Armitage; Michael Braddick (2002), The British Atlantic world, 1500–1800, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 284, ISBN 978-0-333-96340-1, British and Irish historians increasingly use 'Atlantic archipelago' as a less metro-centric term for what is popularly known as the British Isles.
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference Marshall Cavendish-2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ "CAIN: Events: Peace: The Agreement - Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations (10 April 1998)". cain.ulster.ac.uk. Retrieved 19 April 2023.