Home › British Isles

British Isles

Geography
British Isles British Isles, British and Irish Isles or Great Britain and Ireland (fr)
Map of the British Isles.
Country	United Kingdom Ireland
Location	Atlantic Ocean
Area	315 134 km ²
Number of islands	Over 6000
Island (s) principal (s)	Great Britain , Ireland
Climax	Ben Nevis (1344 m Great Britain )
Geology	Islands continental and volcanic
Administration
Status	Archipelago divided between two countries ( Ireland and United Kingdom ) and three UK Crown Dependencies ( Isle of Man and of bailiwicks Guernsey and Jersey ).
United Kingdom
Constituent nations	England , Scotland , Northern Ireland , Wales
Ireland
Counties	All
Demography
Population	64.5 million inhabitants (2005).
Density	204.67 inhabitants / km ²
Largest city	London
Other information
Discovery	Prehistory
Time Zone	UTC +0
Archipelagos Ireland - Archipelagos UK

The British Isles (or Great Britain and Ireland or the Channel Islands Celts in Ireland where the term British Isles is not recognized) form an archipelago located in the north-western Europe comprising mainly mainland Britain and Ireland as well as numerous smaller islands nearby such as the Isle of Man , the Isles of Scilly , the Hebrides , the Shetland and Orkney.

The archipelago has more than 6,000 islands totaling 315 134 km. It is divided since 1922 into two sovereign states , the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ireland , plus a crown dependency of the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man. Although they are not geographically part of the British Isles, the Channel Islands are most often ranked among the politically and the British Isles are divided into two bailiwicks: that of Jersey and that of Guernsey. The Irish government does not recognize the term British Isles being replaced by Great Britain and Ireland. Not to create controversy, the British government studiously avoids the term when it must meet with the Irish government.

Summary

/ / Geography

England :
- Three-quarters south of Britain - the largest island of the archipelago with 216 777 km ( ^9th in the world), or 69% of the area of the archipelago
- Archipelago of Scilly , in the extreme south-west
- Isle of Wight , southern

Scotland :
- Northeast quarter of Great Britain
- Archipelago Hebrides to the west, including Skye and Lewis and Harris are the largest islands
- Islands of the Firth of Forth
- Islands of the Firth of Clyde , south-west, especially Arran and Bute
- Archipelago of Orkney , north
- Shetland in the far north

Ireland :
- Ireland - the second largest island of the archipelago ⁽³ rd of Europe ) with 84 406 km (27% of the archipelago), divided between the Republic of Ireland and north-east, the Northern Ireland (which is part of the United Kingdom )
- Aran Islands , west

Wales :
- Center west of Great Britain
- Anglesey , north-west

Other islands:
- Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland
- Channel Islands according to some rankings
- The islet of Rockall in the Atlantic Ocean north, which British sovereignty is contested by several other countries.

Demographics

80% of the population is concentrated in the British Isles England. In Ireland , in Scotland and Wales , the population is most dense near their respective capitals in their surroundings.

Satellite photo of the British Isles

The urban population of the largest (more than 1 million inhabitants) are located in the following areas:

London and its metropolitan area: 8.5 million
West Midlands conurbation and: 2.28 million
Dublin conurbation and its 1.7 million
West Yorkshire conurbation and its 1.5 million
Glasgow : 1.2 million

The population in England has steadily increased throughout the decades, while those of Scotland and Wales has increased somewhat during the ^twentieth century - the population in Scotland has not changed since 1951. Ireland still carries traces of the Great Famine which raged there between 1845 and 1849 or 1951: the population is no longer while less than one tenth of the population of the British Isles millions of victims die, of Others emigrate en masse to the United Kingdom or the United States.

Political cooperation between the islands

Between 1801 and 1922, Great Britain and Ireland formed the United Kingdom by the Act of Union in 1801. Following the Irish War of Independence , 6 counties of Northern Ireland with a strong Protestant majority remain attached to the United Kingdom , the other 26 are united in the Republic of Ireland. However, there remain several areas of cooperation between the islands:

Traffic between the islands since independence from the Republic of Ireland , an area of free movement continued to exist across all regions. In 1997, the European Union has officially recognized in the Amsterdam Treaty a "common travel area". However, it seems that the situation could change in the British government's decision, even if not a certainty.
Voting rights: all citizens of the British Isles have a voting share in the courts of the archipelago, except for presidential elections and referendums in Ireland.
Diplomacy: British Embassies have a bilateral agreement, the right to represent and act as an embassy when the Irish Republic of Ireland is not present in some countries.

Nationality of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland : the citizens of Northern Ireland can choose their nationality: Irish, British or dual nationality. The British-Irish Council was established in 1999 after the Belfast Agreement of 1998, also known as the Good Friday Agreement. It is composed of all political parties of the islands.

History

Pre-Roman and Roman

The historic density of the British Isles is related to changes in the geographical pattern of islands:

The Ice Age left a cold and humid mountain landscape. The land was used mainly for raising livestock. The agricultural and handicraft production was so limited (in Scotland , we did not find any trace of activity pottery), the population was much less dense than in Europe. Therefore, the political organization was not very developed.
Until 6500 BC. BC, what we call "Great Britain" was connected to continental Europe by a strip of land now in place of the Channel.

Neolithic population present on the islands developed farming techniques to improve returns on land by making them more fertile. The construction of Stonehenge in southern England show that religious structures become more complex and simple are ritualized.

C. 1000 BC. BC, the Celts came from northern Europe, after crossing western Europe through Gaul, arrived in the British Isles. As such, Scottish, Welsh and Irish have mostly kept this Celtic culture to differentiate themselves from Anglo-Saxon.