UK or England thread?

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I haven't been to either but the pictures of it look nice.

No calls , but I get them in email form

Just home from a week on the beach in Pembrokeshire. Temp topped out at 25c and there was only a few hours of storm all week.

I need to go shopping, but it's still pissing it down.

Funny you should say that, I am hungry and I need a pee.

I came here curious why there were 150+ pages of debate on whether it should be the UK or England, and which interpretation of the question was generating such debate (does anyone argue that the whole UK should be called England? or argue that England should be separate from the rest of the UK?). This makes more sense.

I read this week that the transition from the name "Britain" to "England" began with Egbert the Angle. He was the first to be established as head over all the seven Saxon kingdoms.

You can talk about whatever you like as long as it is within the rules of wp.

I think this tread has become a UK thread and we could do with more UK history to help us educate ourselves more.

I think it's fair to say it was the Romans that divided Britain into the separate parts even though it was not till a long time after that the fragments unified into countries.

By separate parts, are you referring to the seven kingdoms I mentioned?

Another thing I read this week: When the Saxons took over, they couldn't conquer Wales, so some original Britons remained there and were the ancestors to the Welsh.

^I've been reading "Vanished Kingdoms" by Norman Davies. (Slowly- it's a beast of a book.) In the chapter on Dumbarton, he points out that in the Dark Ages northern England and southern Scotland were indeed culturally and linguistically Welsh. The people there were Britons, speaking Celtic dialects related to modern Welsh, and the invading Anglo-Saxons to the south applied the name "Welsh" to them as well. For an added bonus, the Irishman St Patrick was actually a Welshman from Scotland. The names England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales meant nothing at the time- national and ethnic boundaries were not the same at all.

Meanwhile the original "Scots" were Irish raiders from Ulster who settled in Scotland in the 6th century. Many of the Scottish Protestants sent to live in Ulster a thousand years later may have been their descendants.

Fascinating! Apologies for my imprecision; I shouldn't have said "Wales," but, perhaps, "the approximate geographical location of modern-day Wales." Your text goes into far more detail than mine, which I've been reading to my child, An Island Story (also published as Our Island Story) by H.E. Marshall.

I may have to track that book down for a less brain-meltingly detailed version of the history....

It's free online here.

I don't think it's the case that there are 150+ pages debating that point!

One thing that is worth mentioning perhaps is that the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It comprises four nations, namely England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Britain was originally England and Wales, it became Great Britain when Scotland joined in 1707. The whole of Ireland was part of the Kingdom from the early 19th Century to 1922, when the greater part of the country ('Southern Ireland') gained its independence - that country is nowadays known 'The Republic of Ireland' or simply 'Eire'. I often get the impression that many Americans say 'England' when they really mean the UK as a whole, but I stand to be corrected on that.

A major issue over the last few decades has been the emergence of political parties in Scotland and Wales campaigning for those nations to become fully independent. This has become a genuine possibility in the case of Scotland over the past decade, where the Scottish Nationalist Party now holds the majority of Scottish parliamentary seats in the UK House of Commons at Westminster, and forms the government in Scotland's 'devolved' parliament.

In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein campaigns for the country to be united with the Republic of Ireland. They too have gained parliamentary representation both in Ireland and at Westminster.

You may also sometimes hear the term 'The British Isles'. That includes the islands of Great Britain and the whole of Ireland (North and South), plus many smaller islands. This is despite the fact that Southern Ireland/The Republic of Ireland/Eire is no longer part of the UK.

I suspect a fair bit of this can sound quite confusing to outsiders.

Indeed, I was just having a chuckle that I interpreted the thread title that way. Once I clicked and read a bit I realized it was not that at all.





You explained this very well. I'm pleased to see that I still have a good understanding of all these terms which I first learned in high school geography. You've added a few details that I didn't know before. When you say Britain was Wales and England, do you mean at a later point in history than what I've been reading? I was under the impression that at least in Roman days Britain was the whole island (modern day Scotland, Wales, and England).



It's quite possible. The state of education over here isn't great. I guess this ties into my original curiosity about the possible meanings of the thread title, knowing that people over here mix the terms up, but being surprised it would take 150+ pages to set them straight, haha. It's the question mark that confused me, I suppose.



I'd heard discussion about independence for Scotland. I didn't know the other political details. Thank you! I love learning things!

You're right about the term 'Britain' in Roman times. The Romans did use it to refer to the whole island, but in reality their rule didn't extend into Scotland. The border was effectively Hadrian's Wall, which is just South of the current border between England and Scotland. The idea of 'Britain' as a political entity came about in Tudor times, when Henry VIII made Wales a 'principality' of England, and the whole country (minus Scotland) became known as Britain. I think that technically, even to this day, Wales is part of England, but you won't hear too many people stirring that particular hornet's nest, if indeed they are aware of it.

There's still a fair bit of overlap, vagueness and loose terminology in this field. People in Northern Ireland who wish to remain part of the UK (so-called 'Loyalists' or 'Unionists') generally regard themselves as 'British'. even though technically Northern Ireland isn't part of Great Britain. At the Olympic Games, the four 'nations' compete as 'Great Britain', rather than under their own flags, but in the Football World Cup, they compete as individual states. The England Cricket team has traditionally included players born and/or resident in Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland, though Scotland does have its own cricket team. Scotland has its own Football League structure, but some Welsh professional teams play in the English League (Cardiff, Swansea, wrexham and Newport). It's quite complicated in some ways...