The United Kingdom, also known as Britain, is an island country in Northwestern Europe, located among the British Isles. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed on 1 January 1801 through the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into a unified state with a single Parliament. Prior to the 1800 acts, the House of Hanover had ruled over England, Scotland, and Wales (as "Great Britain") and Ireland as separate entities under a personal union, but the Irish Rebellion of 1798 led King George III to strip Ireland of its home rule and centralize power. For much of its history, the United Kingdom was the center of the global British Empire, which stretched from Canada and the Caribbean in North America to Gibraltar in Europe, much of Western, Southern, and East Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, Hong Kong, and much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. From the final defeat of Napoleon at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Britain was almost continuously at peace with the Great Powers (apart from the 1853-1856 Crimean War with Russia), pursuing a policy of "splendid isolation" to insulate itself from the dynastic and nationalist struggles on the European continent while pursuing the expansion of its colonial empire. As the home of the Industrial Revolution, Britain became a major center of the world economy, and outward migration - caused by factors such as the Great Famine in Ireland and the overcrowding of urban centers - populated Britain's overseas possessions such as Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The British Empire's non-alignment came to an end as the result of the German Empire's growing naval power in the early 20th century, and Britain formed alliances with Japan, France, and Russia. When Germany invaded neutral Belgium - a country protected by Britain under an 1837 treaty - in 1914, Britain entered World War I on the Entente side, inflicting heavy losses on British manpower, materiel, and treasure, while enabling the British to add German colonies in Africa and the Pacific to their empire. World War I tested the British Empire's strength and enabled Ireland to break away during the Irish War of Independence, resulting in the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the United Kingdom's continuation as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. While Britain was also among the Allied victors of World War II, the occupation of Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia by Japan and the participation of British dominions in yet another costly war led to Britain's colonial subjects begin to demand increased autonomy and independence. India and Pakistan declared independence in 1947, and the 1950s and 1960s saw Britain's African possessions attain independence. The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a great power, and, while Britain's imperial pride was temporarily restored through its victory in the 1982 Falklands War, the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 symbolized the end of the British Empire. As a result of its many years as the center of a global, multicultural empire, the United Kingdom itself has evolved into a diverse nation consisting not only of the ethnic English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, and Ulster Scots, but also of immigrant communities from across the world, especially from former British colonies in South Asia, East Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Britain remains a major player in world affairs as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a leading power in NATO, a nuclear power, and as an influential economic hub (boasting the world's sixth-largest GDP by 2023). In 2023, the United Kingdom had 68,138,484 residents, of whom 83.6% were White British/Irish, 7% Asian, 3.5% non-British white, 3% Black, 2% mixed, and .9% other.
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