History of the word england

The words ‘English’ and ‘England’ come from the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxons were not a single people, and may not have been even a formal confederation initially. Largely composed of Jutes from Jutland where they are still called Jutes because area, the Engle or Angles from Angeln in Denmark, additionally called the ‘Anglii’ (Latin for Engle,) by the Roman chronicler Tacitus, as well as the Seax, called after their formidable fighting blade of the exact same name, that came from Saxony Elbe-Weser region in Germany.

Smaller number of Frisians came from the little islands in the North Sea.There were also Jutes from the lower Rhineland, and also Swabians, Franks and Alamanni. The Anglian and also Saxon tribes were the most prominent. These people called the Anglii-Saxones by Paul The Deacon to cover a solitary ‘insular Germanic’ identification, or Saxons (after the leading tribe,) for short in even more modern times.

They were a powerful trine North Sea Germanic people. From this combination of people we obtain a development through the words Engle, Angles, Anglii, – or Englisc, Anglisc which were apart of the Nerthus-Worshipping individuals mentioned in Tacitus’s Germania. Anglii (the Latin version of words Engle) is the earliest taped form of the folk-name which triggered ‘Eng’ in England. The people called themselves Anglisc (Angle-ish, Anglian) as well as the national identity was presumed under the going Anglisc or Englisc, ‘English’. Individuals gave their name to their territory, therefore the Englisc provided their name to Englalond (England). Englisc was made use of from the time of Alfred the Great onwards to define both in the sense of ‘Englishman’ and as suggesting the ‘English’ language.

The word England– its real significance

Ing implies ‘people of’ – which became Eng. The Ing worshipped the sword in early times in exactly what is now Denmark.

England = Land – of individuals – that worship the sword.

The English– a legal interpretation

The Ethnic English

The English are by law a Nation. A legal representative has actually explained the English this way:

” The English gave their name to England and also have actually lived there ever since. People that have since involved England as well as merged into the English population and also are equivalent from the English and also case no identification apart from English and are accepted by the English as being just one of their own, are English.”

Englishness

” Your strength of Englishness is defined by your need to be part of the English neighborhood, to be sensitive to the ethnic English individuals that form it, and also to its background and also culture as any person would certainly anticipate them selves to be conscious any type of culture.”

English Culture

Leaving aside Shakespeare, William Blake and also others who are Global culturalists, England itself does have a strong Folk culture. Use the internet to search for the people below:

• English Sword Dancers
• Carlisle Sword Dancers
• English Folk Music or Folk Songs
• Cecil James Sharp, born in 1859 in London an organist
• William Kimber born 1872 from Headington Quarry near Oxford.
• Charles Marson from Hambridge in Somerset
• English Folk as well as Country dancing– ritualistic and also social– ritualistic being seasonal.

England
Flag Royal Arms
Anthem: Various Predominantly «God Save the King» (National anthem of the United Kingdom)
Location of England (dark green) – in Europe (green & dark grey) – in the United Kingdom (green)
Status	Country
Capital and largest city	London 51°30′N 0°7′W / 51.500°N 0.117°W
National language	English
Regional languages	Cornish
Ethnic groups (2021)	81.0% White 9.7% Asian 4.2% Black 2.9% Mixed 2.2% Other
Religion (2021)	46.3% Christianity (official) 36.7% No religion 6.7% Islam 1.8% Hinduism 0.9% Sikhism 0.5% Judaism 0.6% Other 6.0% Not stated
Demonym(s)	English
Sovereign state Legal jurisdiction	United Kingdom England and Wales
Government	Part of a constitutional monarchy, direct government exercised by the government of the United Kingdom
• Monarch	Charles III
Parliament of the United Kingdom
• House of Commons	533 MPs (of 650)
Establishment
• Unification of Angles, Saxons and Danes	12 July 927
• Union with Scotland	1 May 1707
Area
• Land	130,279 km2 (50,301 sq mi)[1]
Population
• 2021 census	56,489,800[2]
• Density	434/km2 (1,124.1/sq mi)
GVA	2020 estimate
• Total	£1.683 trillion[3]
• Per capita	£29,757
Currency	Pound sterling (GBP)
Time zone	UTC+0 (Greenwich Mean Time)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+1 (British Summer Time)
Date format	dd/mm/yyyy (AD)
Driving side	left
Calling code	+44
ISO 3166 code	GB-ENG

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.^[4] It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea area of the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.

The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century.^[5]

The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law, which collectively served as the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world, developed in England, and the country’s parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations.^[6] The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world’s first industrialised nation.^[7] England is also home to the two oldest institutions of higher learning in the English-speaking world, the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209, and the University of Oxford, founded in 1096, both of which are routinely ranked among the most prestigious universities globally.^[8]

England’s terrain is chiefly low hills and plains, especially in the centre and south. Upland and mountainous terrain is mostly restricted to the north and west, including the Lake District, Pennines, Dartmoor and Shropshire Hills. The capital is London, whose greater metropolitan population of 14.2 million as of 2021 represents the United Kingdom’s largest metropolitan area. England’s population of 56.3 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom,^[9] largely concentrated around London, the South East, and conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, and Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century.^[10]

The Kingdom of England, which after 1535 included Wales, ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.^[11] In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.^[12]

Toponymy

The name «England» is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means «land of the Angles».^[13] The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area (present-day German state of Schleswig-Holstein) of the Baltic Sea.^[14] The earliest recorded use of the term, as «Engla londe«, is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was then used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning «the land inhabited by the English», and it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was then part of the English kingdom of Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years later the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went «out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland», thus using it in the more ancient sense.^[15]

The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used.^[16] The etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars; it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape.^[17] How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe that was less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons (Eald-Seaxe) of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany.^[18] In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England (Sasunn);^[19] similarly, the Welsh name for the English language is «Saesneg«. A romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend. Albion is also applied to England in a more poetic capacity,^[20] though its original meaning is the island of Britain as a whole.

History

Prehistory and antiquity

The earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago.^[21] Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years.^[22]
After the last ice age only large mammals such as mammoths, bison and woolly rhinoceros remained. Roughly 11,000 years ago, when the ice sheets began to recede, humans repopulated the area; genetic research suggests they came from the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula.^[23] The sea level was lower than the present day and Britain was connected by land bridge to Ireland and Eurasia.^[24]
As the seas rose, it was separated from Ireland 10,000 years ago and from Eurasia two millennia later.

The Beaker culture arrived around 2,500 BC, introducing drinking and food vessels constructed from clay, as well as vessels used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores.^[25] It was during this time that major Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury were constructed. By heating together tin and copper, which were in abundance in the area, the Beaker culture people made bronze, and later iron from iron ores. The development of iron smelting allowed the construction of better ploughs, advancing agriculture (for instance, with Celtic fields), as well as the production of more effective weapons.^[26]

During the Iron Age, Celtic culture, deriving from the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures, arrived from Central Europe. Brythonic was the spoken language during this time. Society was tribal; according to Ptolemy’s Geographia there were around 20 tribes in the area. Earlier divisions are unknown because the Britons were not literate. Like other regions on the edge of the Empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans. Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic attempted to invade twice in 55 BC; although largely unsuccessful, he managed to set up a client king from the Trinovantes.

The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD during the reign of Emperor Claudius, subsequently conquering much of Britain, and the area was incorporated into the Roman Empire as Britannia province.^[27] The best-known of the native tribes who attempted to resist were the Catuvellauni led by Caratacus. Later, an uprising led by Boudica, Queen of the Iceni, ended with Boudica’s suicide following her defeat at the Battle of Watling Street.^[28] The author of one study of Roman Britain suggested that from 43 AD to 84 AD, the Roman invaders killed somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 people from a population of perhaps 2,000,000.^[29] This era saw a Greco-Roman culture prevail with the introduction of Roman law, Roman architecture, aqueducts, sewers, many agricultural items and silk.^[30] In the 3rd century, Emperor Septimius Severus died at Eboracum (now York), where Constantine was subsequently proclaimed emperor a century later.^[31]

There is debate about when Christianity was first introduced; it was no later than the 4th century, probably much earlier. According to Bede, missionaries were sent from Rome by Eleutherius at the request of the chieftain Lucius of Britain in 180 AD, to settle differences as to Eastern and Western ceremonials, which were disturbing the church. There are traditions linked to Glastonbury claiming an introduction through Joseph of Arimathea, while others claim through Lucius of Britain.^[32] By 410, during the decline of the Roman Empire, Britain was left exposed by the end of Roman rule in Britain and the withdrawal of Roman army units, to defend the frontiers in continental Europe and partake in civil wars.^[33] Celtic Christian monastic and missionary movements flourished: Patrick (5th-century Ireland) and in the 6th century Brendan (Clonfert), Comgall (Bangor), David (Wales), Aiden (Lindisfarne) and Columba (Iona). This period of Christianity was influenced by ancient Celtic culture in its sensibilities, polity, practices and theology. Local «congregations» were centred in the monastic community and monastic leaders were more like chieftains, as peers, rather than in the more hierarchical system of the Roman-dominated church.^[34]

Middle Ages

Roman military withdrawals left Britain open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors from north-western continental Europe, chiefly the Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians who had long raided the coasts of the Roman province. These groups then began to settle in increasing numbers over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, initially in the eastern part of the country.^[33] Their advance was contained for some decades after the Britons’ victory at the Battle of Mount Badon, but subsequently resumed, overrunning the fertile lowlands of Britain and reducing the area under Brittonic control to a series of separate enclaves in the more rugged country to the west by the end of the 6th century. Contemporary texts describing this period are extremely scarce, giving rise to its description as a Dark Age. The nature and progression of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is consequently subject to considerable disagreement; the emerging consensus is that it occurred on a large scale in the south and east but was less substantial to the north and west, where Celtic languages continued to be spoken even in areas under Anglo-Saxon control.^[35][36] Roman-dominated Christianity had, in general, been replaced in the conquered territories by Anglo-Saxon paganism, but was reintroduced by missionaries from Rome led by Augustine from 597 onwards.^[37] Disputes between the Roman- and Celtic-dominated forms of Christianity ended in victory for the Roman tradition at the Council of Whitby (664), which was ostensibly about tonsures (clerical haircuts) and the date of Easter, but more significantly, about the differences in Roman and Celtic forms of authority, theology, and practice.^[34]

During the settlement period the lands ruled by the incomers seem to have been fragmented into numerous tribal territories, but by the 7th century, when substantial evidence of the situation again becomes available, these had coalesced into roughly a dozen kingdoms including Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, East Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex. Over the following centuries, this process of political consolidation continued.^[38] The 7th century saw a struggle for hegemony between Northumbria and Mercia, which in the 8th century gave way to Mercian preeminence.^[39] In the early 9th century Mercia was displaced as the foremost kingdom by Wessex. Later in that century escalating attacks by the Danes culminated in the conquest of the north and east of England, overthrowing the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia. Wessex under Alfred the Great was left as the only surviving English kingdom, and under his successors, it steadily expanded at the expense of the kingdoms of the Danelaw. This brought about the political unification of England, first accomplished under Æthelstan in 927 and definitively established after further conflicts by Eadred in 953. A fresh wave of Scandinavian attacks from the late 10th century ended with the conquest of this united kingdom by Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013 and again by his son Cnut in 1016, turning it into the centre of a short-lived North Sea Empire that also included Denmark and Norway. However, the native royal dynasty was restored with the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042.

A dispute over the succession to Edward led to the Norman Conquest in 1066, accomplished by an army led by Duke William of Normandy.^[40] The Normans themselves originated from Scandinavia and had settled in Normandy in the late 9th and early 10th centuries.^[41] This conquest led to the almost total dispossession of the English elite and its replacement by a new French-speaking aristocracy, whose speech had a profound and permanent effect on the English language.^[42]

Subsequently, the House of Plantagenet from Anjou inherited the English throne under Henry II, adding England to the budding Angevin Empire of fiefs the family had inherited in France including Aquitaine.^[43] They reigned for three centuries, some noted monarchs being Richard I, Edward I, Edward III and Henry V.^[43] The period saw changes in trade and legislation, including the signing of the Magna Carta, an English legal charter used to limit the sovereign’s powers by law and protect the privileges of freemen. Catholic monasticism flourished, providing philosophers, and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded with royal patronage. The Principality of Wales became a Plantagenet fief during the 13th century^[44] and the Lordship of Ireland was given to the English monarchy by the Pope.

During the 14th century, the Plantagenets and the House of Valois both claimed to be legitimate claimants to the House of Capet and with it France; the two powers clashed in the Hundred Years’ War.^[45] The Black Death epidemic hit England; starting in 1348, it eventually killed up to half of England’s inhabitants.^[46] From 1453 to 1487 civil war occurred between two branches of the royal family – the Yorkists and Lancastrians – known as the Wars of the Roses.^[47] Eventually it led to the Yorkists losing the throne entirely to a Welsh noble family the Tudors, a branch of the Lancastrians headed by Henry Tudor who invaded with Welsh and Breton mercenaries, gaining victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field where the Yorkist king Richard III was killed.^[48]

Early modern

During the Tudor period, the Renaissance reached England through Italian courtiers, who reintroduced artistic, educational and scholarly debate from classical antiquity.^[49] England began to develop naval skills, and exploration to the West intensified.^[50] Henry VIII broke from communion with the Catholic Church, over issues relating to his divorce, under the Acts of Supremacy in 1534 which proclaimed the monarch head of the Church of England. In contrast with much of European Protestantism, the roots of the split were more political than theological.^[a] He also legally incorporated his ancestral land Wales into the Kingdom of England with the 1535–1542 acts. There were internal religious conflicts during the reigns of Henry’s daughters, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The former took the country back to Catholicism while the latter broke from it again, forcefully asserting the supremacy of Anglicanism. The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor age of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I («the Virgin Queen»). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. Elizabethan England represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of art, poetry, music and literature.^[52] The era is most famous for its drama, theatre and playwrights. England during this period had a centralised, well-organised, and effective government as a result of vast Tudor reforms.^[53]

Competing with Spain, the first English colony in the Americas was founded in 1585 by explorer Walter Raleigh in Virginia and named Roanoke. The Roanoke colony failed and is known as the lost colony after it was found abandoned on the return of the late-arriving supply ship.^[54] With the East India Company, England also competed with the Dutch and French in the East. During the Elizabethan period, England was at war with Spain. An armada sailed from Spain in 1588 as part of a wider plan to invade England and re-establish a Catholic monarchy. The plan was thwarted by bad coordination, stormy weather and successful harrying attacks by an English fleet under Lord Howard of Effingham. This failure did not end the threat: Spain launched two further armadas, in 1596 and 1597, but both were driven back by storms. The political structure of the island changed in 1603, when the King of Scots, James VI, a kingdom which had been a long-time rival to English interests, inherited the throne of England as James I, thereby creating a personal union.^[55] He styled himself King of Great Britain, although this had no basis in English law.^[56] Under the auspices of James VI and I the Authorised King James Version of the Holy Bible was published in 1611. It was the standard version of the Bible read by most Protestant Christians for four hundred years until modern revisions were produced in the 20th century.

Based on conflicting political, religious and social positions, the English Civil War was fought between the supporters of Parliament and those of King Charles I, known colloquially as Roundheads and Cavaliers respectively. This was an interwoven part of the wider multifaceted Wars of the Three Kingdoms, involving Scotland and Ireland. The Parliamentarians were victorious, Charles I was executed and the kingdom replaced by the Commonwealth. Leader of the Parliament forces, Oliver Cromwell declared himself Lord Protector in 1653; a period of personal rule followed.^[57] After Cromwell’s death and the resignation of his son Richard as Lord Protector, Charles II was invited to return as monarch in 1660, in a move called the Restoration. With the reopening of theatres, fine arts, literature and performing arts flourished throughout the Restoration of »the Merry Monarch» Charles II.^[58] After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, it was constitutionally established that King and Parliament should rule together, though Parliament would have the real power. This was established with the Bill of Rights in 1689. Among the statutes set down were that the law could only be made by Parliament and could not be suspended by the King, also that the King could not impose taxes or raise an army without the prior approval of Parliament.^[59] Also since that time, no British monarch has entered the House of Commons when it is sitting, which is annually commemorated at the State Opening of Parliament by the British monarch when the doors of the House of Commons are slammed in the face of the monarch’s messenger, symbolising the rights of Parliament and its independence from the monarch.^[60] With the founding of the Royal Society in 1660, science was greatly encouraged.

In 1666, the Great Fire of London gutted the City of London but it was rebuilt shortly afterwards^[61] with many significant buildings designed by Christopher Wren. In Parliament two factions had emerged – the Tories and Whigs. Though the Tories initially supported Catholic king James II, some of them, along with the Whigs, during the Revolution of 1688 invited Dutch Prince William of Orange to defeat James and ultimately to become William III of England. Some English people, especially in the north, were Jacobites and continued to support James and his sons. Under the Stuart dynasty England expanded in trade, finance and prosperity. Britain developed Europe’s largest merchant fleet.^[62] After the parliaments of England and Scotland agreed,^[63] the two countries joined in political union, to create the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.^[55] To accommodate the union, institutions such as the law and national churches of each remained separate.^[64]

Late modern and contemporary

Under the newly formed Kingdom of Great Britain, output from the Royal Society and other English initiatives combined with the Scottish Enlightenment to create innovations in science and engineering, while the enormous growth in British overseas trade protected by the Royal Navy paved the way for the establishment of the British Empire. Domestically it drove the Industrial Revolution, a period of profound change in the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of England, resulting in industrialised agriculture, manufacture, engineering and mining, as well as new and pioneering road, rail and water networks to facilitate their expansion and development.^[65] The opening of Northwest England’s Bridgewater Canal in 1761 ushered in the canal age in Britain.^[66] In 1825 the world’s first permanent steam locomotive-hauled passenger railway – the Stockton and Darlington Railway – opened to the public.^[66]

During the Industrial Revolution, many workers moved from England’s countryside to new and expanding urban industrial areas to work in factories, for instance at Birmingham and Manchester, dubbed «Workshop of the World» and «Warehouse City» respectively.^[68] Manchester was the world’s first industrial city.^[69] England maintained relative stability throughout the French Revolution; William Pitt the Younger was British prime minister for the reign of George III. The Regency of George IV is noted for its elegance and achievements in the fine arts and architecture.^[70] During the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon planned to invade from the south-east. However, this failed to manifest and the Napoleonic forces were defeated by the British: at sea by Horatio Nelson, and on land by Arthur Wellesley. The major victory at the Battle of Trafalgar confirmed the naval supremacy Britain had established during the course of the eighteenth century.^[71] The Napoleonic Wars fostered a concept of Britishness and a united national British people, shared with the English, Scots and Welsh.^[72]

London became the largest and most populous metropolitan area in the world during the Victorian era, and trade within the British Empire – as well as the standing of the British military and navy – was prestigious.^[73] Technologically, this era saw many innovations that proved key to the United Kingdom’s power and prosperity.^[74] Political agitation at home from radicals such as the Chartists and the suffragettes enabled legislative reform and universal suffrage.^[75] Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a «leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun really never set on the British flag.»^[76]

Power shifts in east-central Europe led to World War I; hundreds of thousands of English soldiers died fighting for the United Kingdom as part of the Allies.^[b] Two decades later, in World War II, the United Kingdom was again one of the Allies. At the end of the Phoney War, Winston Churchill became the wartime prime minister. Developments in warfare technology saw many cities damaged by air-raids during the Blitz. Following the war, the British Empire experienced rapid decolonisation, and there was a speeding-up of technological innovations; automobiles became the primary means of transport and Frank Whittle’s development of the jet engine led to wider air travel.^[78] Residential patterns were altered in England by private motoring, and by the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948. The UK’s NHS provided publicly funded health care to all UK permanent residents free at the point of need, being paid for from general taxation. Combined, these prompted the reform of local government in England in the mid-20th century.^[79]

Since the 20th century, there has been significant population movement to England, mostly from other parts of the British Isles, but also from the Commonwealth, particularly the Indian subcontinent.^[80] Since the 1970s there has been a large move away from manufacturing and an increasing emphasis on the service industry.^[81] As part of the United Kingdom, the area joined a common market initiative called the European Economic Community which became the European Union. Since the late 20th century the administration of the United Kingdom has moved towards devolved governance in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.^[82] England and Wales continues to exist as a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom.^[83] Devolution has stimulated a greater emphasis on a more English-specific identity and patriotism.^[84] There is no devolved English government, but an attempt to create a similar system on a sub-regional basis was rejected by referendum.^[85]

Governance

Politics

England is part of the United Kingdom, a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system.^[86] There has not been a government of England since 1707, when the Acts of Union 1707, putting into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union, joined England and Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.^[63] Before the union England was ruled by its monarch and the Parliament of England. Today England is governed directly by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, although other countries of the United Kingdom have devolved governments.^[87] In the House of Commons which is the lower house of the British Parliament based at the Palace of Westminster, there are 532 Members of Parliament (MPs) for constituencies in England, out of the 650 total.^[88] As of the 2019 United Kingdom general election, England is represented by 345 MPs from the Conservative Party, 179 from the Labour Party, seven from the Liberal Democrats, one from the Green Party, and the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Hoyle.

Since devolution, in which other countries of the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – each have their own devolved parliament or assemblies for local issues, there has been debate about how to counterbalance this in England. Originally it was planned that various regions of England would be devolved, but following the proposal’s rejection by the North East in a 2004 referendum, this has not been carried out.^[85]

One major issue is the West Lothian question, in which MPs from Scotland and Wales are able to vote on legislation affecting only England, while English MPs have no equivalent right to legislate on devolved matters.^[89] This when placed in the context of England being the only country of the United Kingdom not to have free prescriptions and free top-up university fees,^[90] has led to a steady rise in English nationalism.^[91] Some have suggested the creation of a devolved English parliament,^[92] while others have proposed simply limiting voting on legislation which only affects England to English MPs.^[93]

Law

The English law legal system, developed over the centuries, is the basis of common law^[94] legal systems used in most Commonwealth countries^[95] and the United States (except Louisiana). Despite now being part of the United Kingdom, the legal system of the Courts of England and Wales continued, under the Treaty of Union, as a separate legal system from the one used in Scotland. The general essence of English law is that it is made by judges sitting in courts, applying their common sense and knowledge of legal precedent – stare decisis – to the facts before them.^[96]

The court system is headed by the Senior Courts of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice for civil cases, and the Crown Court for criminal cases.^[97] The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the highest court for criminal and civil cases in England and Wales. It was created in 2009 after constitutional changes, taking over the judicial functions of the House of Lords.^[98] A decision of the Supreme Court is binding on every other court in the hierarchy, which must follow its directions.^[99]

The Secretary of State for Justice is the minister responsible to Parliament for the judiciary, the court system and prisons and probation in England.^[100] Crime increased between 1981 and 1995 but fell by 42% in the period 1995–2006.^[101] The prison population doubled over the same period, giving it one of the highest incarceration rates in Western Europe at 147 per 100,000.^[102] His Majesty’s Prison Service, reporting to the Ministry of Justice, manages most prisons, housing 81,309 prisoners in England and Wales as of September 2022.^[103]

Regions, counties, and districts

The subdivisions of England consist of up to four levels of subnational division controlled through a variety of types of administrative entities created for the purposes of local government. The highest tier of local government were the nine regions of England: North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East, South East, South West, and London. These were created in 1994 as Government Offices, used by the UK government to deliver a wide range of policies and programmes regionally, but there are no elected bodies at this level, except in London, and in 2011 the regional government offices were abolished.^[104]

After devolution began to take place in other parts of the United Kingdom it was planned that referendums for the regions of England would take place for their own elected regional assemblies as a counterweight. London accepted in 1998: the London Assembly was created two years later. However, when the proposal was rejected by the 2004 North East England devolution referendum in the North East, further referendums were cancelled.^[85] The regional assemblies outside London were abolished in 2010, and their functions transferred to respective regional development agencies and a new system of local authority leaders’ boards.^[105]

Below the regional level, all of England is divided into 48 ceremonial counties.^[106] These are used primarily as a geographical frame of reference and have developed gradually since the Middle Ages, with some established as recently as 1974.^[107] Each has a lord lieutenant and high sheriff; these posts are used to represent the British monarch locally.^[106] Outside Greater London and the Isles of Scilly, England is also divided into 83 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties; these correspond to areas used for the purposes of local government^[108] and may consist of a single district or be divided into several.

There are six metropolitan counties based on the most heavily urbanised areas, which do not have county councils.^[108] In these areas the principal authorities are the councils of the subdivisions, the metropolitan boroughs. Elsewhere, 27 non-metropolitan «shire» counties have a county council and are divided into districts, each with a district council. They are typically, though not always, found in more rural areas. The remaining non-metropolitan counties are of a single district and usually correspond to large towns or sparsely populated counties; they are known as unitary authorities. Greater London has a different system for local government, with 32 London boroughs, plus the City of London covering a small area at the core governed by the City of London Corporation.^[109] At the most localised level, much of England is divided into civil parishes with councils; in Greater London only one, Queen’s Park, exists as of 2014 after they were abolished in 1965 until legislation allowed their recreation in 2007.

Geography

Landscape and rivers

Geographically, England includes the central and southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain, plus such offshore islands as the Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly. It is bordered by two other countries of the United Kingdom: to the north by Scotland and to the west by Wales. England is closer than any other part of mainland Britain to the European continent. It is separated from France (Hauts-de-France) by a 21-mile (34 km)^[110] sea gap, though the two countries are connected by the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone.^[111] England also has shores on the Irish Sea, North Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

The ports of London, Liverpool, and Newcastle lie on the tidal rivers Thames, Mersey and Tyne respectively. At 220 miles (350 km), the Severn is the longest river flowing through England.^[112] It empties into the Bristol Channel and is notable for its Severn Bore (a tidal bore), which can reach 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height.^[113] However, the longest river entirely in England is the Thames, which is 215 miles (346 km) in length.^[114]

There are many lakes in England; the largest is Windermere, within the aptly named Lake District.^[115] Most of England’s landscape consists of low hills and plains, with upland and mountainous terrain in the north and west of the country. The northern uplands include the Pennines, a chain of uplands dividing east and west, the Lake District mountains in Cumbria, and the Cheviot Hills, straddling the border between England and Scotland. The highest point in England, at 978 metres (3,209 ft), is Scafell Pike in the Lake District.^[115] The Shropshire Hills are near Wales while Dartmoor and Exmoor are two upland areas in the south-west of the country. The approximate dividing line between terrain types is often indicated by the Tees–Exe line.^[116]

In geological terms, the Pennines, known as the «backbone of England», are the oldest range of mountains in the country, originating from the end of the Paleozoic Era around 300 million years ago.^[117] Their geological composition includes, among others, sandstone and limestone, and also coal. There are karst landscapes in calcite areas such as parts of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The Pennine landscape is high moorland in upland areas, indented by fertile valleys of the region’s rivers. They contain two national parks, the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District. In the West Country, Dartmoor and Exmoor of the Southwest Peninsula include upland moorland supported by granite, and enjoy a mild climate; both are national parks.^[118]

The English Lowlands are in the central and southern regions of the country, consisting of green rolling hills, including the Cotswold Hills, Chiltern Hills, North and South Downs; where they meet the sea they form white rock exposures such as the cliffs of Dover. This also includes relatively flat plains such as the Salisbury Plain, Somerset Levels, South Coast Plain and The Fens.

Climate

England has a temperate maritime climate: it is mild with temperatures not much lower than 0 °C (32 °F) in winter and not much higher than 32 °C (90 °F) in summer.^[119] The weather is damp relatively frequently and is changeable. The coldest months are January and February, the latter particularly on the English coast, while July is normally the warmest month. Months with mild to warm weather are May, June, September and October.^[119] Rainfall is spread fairly evenly throughout the year.

Important influences on the climate of England are its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, its northern latitude and the warming of the sea by the Gulf Stream.^[119] Rainfall is higher in the west, and parts of the Lake District receive more rain than anywhere else in the country.^[119] Since weather records began, the highest temperature recorded was 40.3 °C (104.5 °F) on 19 July 2022 at Coningsby, Lincolnshire,^[120] while the lowest was −26.1 °C (−15.0 °F) on 10 January 1982 in Edgmond, Shropshire.^[121]

Nature and wildlife

The fauna of England is similar to that of other areas in the British Isles with a wide range of vertebrate and invertebrate life in a diverse range of habitats.^[124]

National nature reserves in England are designated by Natural England as key places for wildlife and natural features in England. They were established to protect the most significant areas of habitat and of geological formations. NNRs are managed on behalf of the nation, many by Natural England themselves, but also by non-governmental organisations, including the members of The Wildlife Trusts partnership, the National Trust, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. There are 229 NNRs in England covering 939 square kilometres (363 square miles). Often they contain rare species or nationally important populations of plants and animals.^[125]

The Environment Agency is a non-departmental public body, established in 1995 and sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with responsibilities relating to the protection and enhancement of the environment in England.^[126] The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the minister responsible for environmental protection, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in England.^[127]

England has a temperate oceanic climate in most areas, lacking extremes of cold or heat, but does have a few small areas of subarctic and warmer areas in the South West. Towards the North of England the climate becomes colder and most of England’s mountains and high hills are located here and have a major impact on the climate and thus the local fauna of the areas. Deciduous woodlands are common across all of England and provide a great habitat for much of England’s wildlife, but these give way in northern and upland areas of England to coniferous forests (mainly plantations) which also benefit certain forms of wildlife. Some species have adapted to the expanded urban environment, particularly the red fox, which is the most successful urban mammal after the brown rat, and other animals such as common wood pigeon, both of which thrive in urban and suburban areas.^[128]

Grey squirrels introduced from eastern America have forced the decline of the native red squirrel due to competition. Red squirrels are now confined to upland and coniferous-forested areas of England, mainly in the north, south west and Isle of Wight. England’s climate is very suitable for lagomorphs and the country has rabbits and brown hares which were introduced in Roman times.^[129] Mountain hares which are indigenous have now been re-introduced in Derbyshire. The fauna of England has to cope with varying temperatures and conditions, although not extreme they do pose potential challenges and adaptational measures. English fauna has however had to cope with industrialisation, human population densities amongst the highest in Europe and intensive farming, but as England is a developed nation, wildlife and the countryside have entered the English mindset more and the country is very conscientious about preserving its wildlife, environment and countryside.^[130]

Major conurbations

The Greater London Built-up Area is by far the largest urban area in England^[131] and one of the busiest cities in the world. It is considered a global city and has a population larger than any other country in the United Kingdom besides England itself.^[131] Other urban areas of considerable size and influence tend to be in northern England or the English Midlands.^[131] There are 50 settlements which have designated city status in England, while the wider United Kingdom has 66.

While many cities in England are quite large, such as Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Bradford, Nottingham, population size is not a prerequisite for city status.^[132] Traditionally the status was given to towns with diocesan cathedrals, so there are smaller cities like Wells, Ely, Ripon, Truro and Chichester.

Economy

England’s economy is one of the largest and most dynamic in the world, with an average GDP per capita of £28,100. HM Treasury, led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is responsible for developing and executing the government’s public finance policy and economic policy.^[134] Usually regarded as a mixed market economy, it has adopted many free market principles, yet maintains an advanced social welfare infrastructure.^[135] The official currency in England is the pound sterling, whose ISO 4217 code is GBP. Taxation in England is quite competitive when compared to much of the rest of Europe – as of 2014 the basic rate of personal tax is 20% on taxable income up to £31,865 above the personal tax-free allowance (normally £10,000), and 40% on any additional earnings above that amount.^[136]

The economy of England is the largest part of the UK’s economy,^[137] which has the 18th highest GDP PPP per capita in the world. England is a leader in the chemical^[138] and pharmaceutical sectors and in key technical industries, particularly aerospace, the arms industry, and the manufacturing side of the software industry. London, home to the London Stock Exchange, the United Kingdom’s main stock exchange and the largest in Europe, is England’s financial centre, with 100 of Europe’s 500 largest corporations being based there.^[139] London is the largest financial centre in Europe, and as of 2014 is the second largest in the world.^[140]

The Bank of England, founded in 1694, is the United Kingdom’s central bank. Originally established as private banker to the government of England, since 1946 it has been a state-owned institution.^[141] The bank has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, although not in other parts of the United Kingdom. The government has devolved responsibility to the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee for managing the monetary policy of the country and setting interest rates.^[142]

England is highly industrialised, but since the 1970s there has been a decline in traditional heavy and manufacturing industries, and an increasing emphasis on a more service industry oriented economy.^[81] Tourism has become a significant industry, attracting millions of visitors to England each year. The export part of the economy is dominated by pharmaceuticals, cars (although many English marques are now foreign-owned, such as Land Rover, Lotus, Jaguar and Bentley), crude oil and petroleum from the English parts of North Sea oil along with Wytch Farm, aircraft engines and alcoholic beverages.^[143] The creative industries accounted for 7 per cent GVA in 2005 and grew at an average of 6 per cent per annum between 1997 and 2005.^[144]

Most of the UK’s £30 billion^[145] aerospace industry is primarily based in England. The global market opportunity for UK aerospace manufacturers over the next two decades is estimated at £3.5 trillion.^[146] GKN Aerospace, an expert in metallic and composite aerostructures involved in almost every civil and military fixed and rotary wing aircraft in production, is based in Redditch.^[147]

BAE Systems makes large sections of the Typhoon Eurofighter at its sub-assembly plant in Samlesbury and assembles the aircraft for the RAF at its Warton plant, near Preston. It is also a principal subcontractor on the F35 Joint Strike Fighter – the world’s largest single defence project – for which it designs and manufactures a range of components including the aft fuselage, vertical and horizontal tail and wing tips and fuel system. It also manufactures the Hawk, the world’s most successful jet training aircraft.^[147]

Rolls-Royce PLC is the world’s second-largest aero-engine manufacturer. Its engines power more than 30 types of commercial aircraft, and it has more 30,000 engines currently in service across both the civil and defence sectors. With a workforce of over 12,000 people, Derby has the largest concentration of Rolls-Royce employees in the UK. Rolls-Royce also produces low-emission power systems for ships; makes critical equipment and safety systems for the nuclear industry and powers offshore platforms and major pipelines for the oil and gas industry.^[147][148] The pharmaceutical industry plays an important role in the economy, and the UK has the third-highest share of global pharmaceutical R&D expenditures.^[149]

Much of the UK’s space industry is centred on EADS Astrium, based in Stevenage and Portsmouth. The company builds the buses – the underlying structure onto which the payload and propulsion systems are built – for most of the European Space Agency’s spacecraft, as well as commercial satellites. The world leader in compact satellite systems, Surrey Satellite Technology, is also part of Astrium.^[147] Reaction Engines Limited, the company planning to build Skylon, a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane using their SABRE rocket engine, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket propulsion system is based in Culham. The UK space industry was worth £9.1bn in 2011 and employed 29,000 people. It is growing at a rate of 7.5 per cent annually, according to its umbrella organisation, the UK Space Agency. In 2013, the British Government pledged £60 million to the Skylon project: this investment will provide support at a «crucial stage» to allow a full-scale prototype of the SABRE engine to be built.

Agriculture is intensive, highly mechanised and efficient by European standards, producing 60% of food needs with only 2% of the labour force.^[150] Two-thirds of production is devoted to livestock, the other to arable crops.^[151] The main crops that are grown are wheat, barley, oats, potatoes, sugar beets. England retains a significant, though much reduced fishing industry. Its fleets bring home fish of every kind, ranging from sole to herring. It is also rich in natural resources including coal, petroleum, natural gas, tin, limestone, iron ore, salt, clay, chalk, gypsum, lead, and silica.^[152]

Science and technology

Prominent English figures from the field of science and mathematics include Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Robert Hooke, James Prescott Joule, John Dalton, Lord Rayleigh, J. J. Thomson, James Chadwick, Charles Babbage, George Boole, Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Paul Dirac, Stephen Hawking, Peter Higgs, Roger Penrose, John Horton Conway, Thomas Bayes, Arthur Cayley, G. H. Hardy, Oliver Heaviside, Andrew Wiles, Edward Jenner, Francis Crick, Joseph Lister, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Young, Christopher Wren and Richard Dawkins. Some experts claim that the earliest concept of a metric system was invented by John Wilkins, the first secretary of the Royal Society, in 1668.^[153]

England was a leading centre of the Scientific Revolution from the 17th century.^[154] As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England was home to many significant inventors during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Famous English engineers include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges, hence revolutionising public transport and modern-day engineering.^[155] Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine helped spawn the Industrial Revolution.^[156]

The Father of Railways, George Stephenson, built the first public inter-city railway line in the world, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830. With his role in the marketing and manufacturing of the steam engine, and invention of modern coinage, Matthew Boulton (business partner of James Watt) is regarded as one of the most influential entrepreneurs in history.^[157] The physician Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine is said to have «saved more lives … than were lost in all the wars of mankind since the beginning of recorded history.»^[158]

Inventions and discoveries of the English include: the jet engine, the first industrial spinning machine, the first computer and the first modern computer, the World Wide Web along with HTML, the first successful human blood transfusion, the motorised vacuum cleaner,^[160] the lawn mower, the seat belt, the hovercraft, the electric motor, steam engines, and theories such as the Darwinian theory of evolution and atomic theory. Newton developed the ideas of universal gravitation, Newtonian mechanics, and calculus, and Robert Hooke his eponymously named law of elasticity. Other inventions include the iron plate railway, the thermosiphon, tarmac, the rubber band, the mousetrap, «cat’s eye» road marker, joint development of the light bulb, steam locomotives, the modern seed drill and many modern techniques and technologies used in precision engineering.^[161]

The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge,^[162] is a learned society and the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as «The Royal Society».^[162] It is the oldest national scientific institution in the world.^[163] The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, fostering international and global co-operation, education and public engagement.^[164]

The Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at a variety of locations, including Gresham College in London. They were influenced by the «new science», as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards.^[165] A group known as «The Philosophical Society of Oxford» was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library.^[166] After the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College.^[167] It is widely held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society.^[166]

Scientific research and development remains important in the universities of England, with many establishing science parks to facilitate production and co-operation with industry.^[168] Between 2004 and 2008 the United Kingdom produced 7 per cent of the world’s scientific research papers and had an 8 per cent share of scientific citations, the third and second-highest in the world (after the United States and China, respectively).^[169] Scientific journals produced in England include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation has responsibility for science in England.^[170]

Transport

The Department for Transport is the government body responsible for overseeing transport in England. The department is run by the Secretary of State for Transport.

England has a dense and modern transportation infrastructure. There are many motorways in England, and many other trunk roads, such as the A1 Great North Road, which runs through eastern England from London to Newcastle^[171] (much of this section is motorway) and onward to the Scottish border. The longest motorway in England is the M6, from Rugby through the North West up to the Anglo-Scottish border, a distance of 232 miles (373 km).^[171] Other major routes include: the M1 from London to Leeds, the M25 which encircles London, the M60 which encircles Manchester, the M4 from London to South Wales, the M62 from Liverpool via Manchester to East Yorkshire, and the M5 from Birmingham to Bristol and the South West.^[171]

Bus transport across the country is widespread; major companies include Arriva, FirstGroup, Go-Ahead Group, National Express, Rotala and Stagecoach Group. The red double-decker buses in London have become a symbol of England.

National Cycle Route offers cycling routes nationally. There is a rapid transit network in two English cities: the London Underground; and the Tyne and Wear Metro in Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland.^[172] There are several tram networks, such as the Blackpool tramway, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram and West Midlands Metro, and the Tramlink system centred on Croydon in South London.^[172]

Great British Railways is a planned state-owned public body that will oversee rail transport in Great Britain from 2023. The Office of Rail and Road is responsible for the economic and safety regulation of England’s railways.^[173]

Rail transport in England is the oldest in the world: passenger railways originated in England in 1825.^[174] Much of Britain’s 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of rail network lies in England, covering the country fairly extensively, although a high proportion of railway lines were closed in the second half of the 20th century. There are plans to reopen lines such as the Varsity Line between Oxford and Cambridge. These lines are mostly standard gauge (single, double or quadruple track) though there are also a few narrow gauge lines. There is rail transport access to France and Belgium through an undersea rail link, the Channel Tunnel, which was completed in 1994.

Crossrail was Europe’s largest construction project with a £15 billion projected cost, opened in 2022.^[175] High Speed 2, a new high-speed north–south railway line, projected in 2015 to cost £56 billion is to start being built in 2020.^[176]

England has extensive domestic and international aviation links. The largest airport is Heathrow, which is the world’s busiest airport measured by number of international passengers.^[177] Other large airports include Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Luton and Birmingham.^[178]

By sea there is ferry transport, both local and international, including from Liverpool to Ireland and the Isle of Man, and Hull to the Netherlands and Belgium.^[179] There are around 4,400 miles (7,100 km) of navigable waterways in England, half of which is owned by the Canal & River Trust,^[179] however, water transport is very limited. The River Thames is the major waterway in England, with imports and exports focused at the Port of Tilbury in the Thames Estuary, one of the United Kingdom’s three major ports.^[179]

Energy

Energy use in the United Kingdom stood at 2,249 TWh (193.4 million tonnes of oil equivalent) in 2014.^[182] This equates to energy consumption per capita of 34.82 MWh (3.00 tonnes of oil equivalent) compared to a 2010 world average of 21.54 MWh (1.85 tonnes of oil equivalent).^[183] Demand for electricity in 2014 was 34.42 GW on average^[184] (301.7 TWh over the year) coming from a total electricity generation of 335.0 TWh.^[185]

Successive UK governments have outlined numerous commitments to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Notably, the UK is one of the best sites in Europe for wind energy, and wind power production is its fastest growing supply.^[181] Wind power contributed 15% of UK electricity generation in 2017.^[186][187] England is home to Hornsea 2, the largest offshore wind farm in the world, situated in waters roughly 89 kilometres off the coast of Yorkshire.^[188]

The Climate Change Act 2008 was passed in Parliament with an overwhelming majority across political parties. It sets out emission reduction targets that the UK must comply with legally. It represents the first global legally binding climate change mitigation target set by a country.^[189] UK government energy policy aims to play a key role in limiting greenhouse gas emissions, whilst meeting energy demand. Shifting availabilities of resources and development of technologies also change the country’s energy mix through changes in costs.^[190]

The current energy policy is the responsibility of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.^[191] The Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth is responsible for green finance, climate science and innovation, and low carbon generation.^[192] United Kingdom is ranked 4 out of 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index.^[193] A law has been passed that UK greenhouse gas emissions will be net zero by 2050.^[194]

Tourism

English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. It is currently sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.^[195]

The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty is a charity which also maintains multiple sites. Of the 25 United Kingdom UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 17 are in England.^[196]

Some of the best known of these include Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites, Tower of London, Jurassic Coast, Palace of Westminster, Roman Baths, City of Bath, Saltaire, Ironbridge Gorge, Studley Royal Park and more recently the English Lake District. The northernmost point of the Roman Empire, Hadrian’s Wall, is the largest Roman artefact anywhere: it runs for a total of 73 miles (117 kilometres) in northern England.^[197]

The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has overall responsibility for tourism, arts and culture, cultural property, heritage and historic environments, libraries, and museums and galleries.^[198] The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism is the minister with responsibility over tourism in England.^[199]

A blue plaque, the oldest historical marker scheme in the world, is a permanent sign installed in a public place in England to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event. The scheme was the brainchild of politician William Ewart in 1863 and was initiated in 1866. It was formally established by the Royal Society of Arts in 1867, and since 1986 has been run by English Heritage. In 2011 there were around 1,600 museums in England.^[200] Entry to most state-supported museums and galleries is free unlike in other countries.^[201]

London is one of the world’s most visited cities, regularly taking the top five most visited cities in Europe.^[202] It is largely considered a global centre of finance, arts and culture.^[203]

Healthcare

The National Health Service (NHS), is the publicly funded healthcare system responsible for providing the majority of healthcare in the country. The NHS began on 5 July 1948, putting into effect the provisions of the National Health Service Act 1946. It was based on the findings of the Beveridge Report, prepared by economist and social reformer William Beveridge.^[204] The NHS is largely funded from general taxation including National Insurance payments,^[205] and it provides most of its services free at the point of use, although there are charges for some people for eye tests, dental care, prescriptions and aspects of personal care.^[206]

The government department responsible for the NHS is the Department of Health, headed by the Secretary of State for Health, who sits in the British Cabinet. Most of the expenditure of the Department of Health is spent on the NHS—£98.6 billion was spent in 2008–2009.^[207] In recent years the private sector has been increasingly used to provide more NHS services despite opposition by doctors and trade unions.^[208]

When purchasing drugs, the NHS has significant market power that, based on its own assessment of the fair value of the drugs, influences the global price, typically keeping prices lower.^[209] Several other countries either copy the UK’s model or directly rely on its assessments for their own decisions on state-financed drug reimbursements.^[210] Regulatory bodies such as the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council are organised on a UK-wide basis, as are non-governmental bodies such as the Royal Colleges.

The average life expectancy of people in England is 77.5 years for males and 81.7 years for females, the highest of the four countries of the United Kingdom.^[211] The South of England has a higher life expectancy than the North; however, regional differences do seem to be slowly narrowing: between 1991–1993 and 2012–2014, life expectancy in the North East increased by 6.0 years and in the North West by 5.8 years, the fastest increase in any region outside London, and the gap between life expectancy in the North East and South East is now 2.5 years, down from 2.9 in 1993.^[211]

Demography

Population

With over 56 million inhabitants, England is by far the most populous country of the United Kingdom, accounting for 84% of the combined total.^{[10]: 12 [212]} England taken as a unit and measured against international states would be the 25th largest country by population in the world.^[213]

The English people are British people.^[214] Some genetic evidence suggests that 75–95% descend in the paternal line from prehistoric settlers who originally came from the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a 5% contribution from Angles and Saxons, and a significant Scandinavian (Viking) element.^[215][216] However, other geneticists place the Germanic estimate up to half.^[217] Over time, various cultures have been influential: Prehistoric, Brythonic,^[218] Roman, Anglo-Saxon,^[219] Viking (North Germanic),^[220] Gaelic cultures, as well as a large influence from Normans. There is an English diaspora in former parts of the British Empire; especially the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.^[c] Since the late 1990s, many English people have migrated to Spain.^[225]

In 1086, when the Domesday Book was compiled, England had a population of two million. About 10% lived in urban areas.^[226] By 1801, the population was 8.3 million, and by 1901 30.5 million.^[227] Due in particular to the economic prosperity of South East England, it has received many economic migrants from the other parts of the United Kingdom.^[214] There has been significant Irish migration.^[228] The proportion of ethnically European residents totals at 87.50%, including Germans^[229] and Poles.^[214]

Other people from much further afield in the former British colonies have arrived since the 1950s: in particular, 6% of people living in England have family origins in the Indian subcontinent, mostly India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.^[214][229] About 0.7% of people are Chinese.^[214][229] 2.90% of the population are black, from Africa and the Caribbean, especially former British colonies.^[214][229] In 2007, 22% of primary school children in England were from ethnic minority families,^[230] and in 2011 that figure was 26.5%.^[231] About half of the population increase between 1991 and 2001 was due to immigration.^[232] Debate over immigration is politically prominent;^[233] 80% of respondents in a 2009 Home Office poll wanted to cap it.^[234] The ONS has projected that the population will grow by nine million between 2014 and 2039.^[235]

England contains one indigenous national minority, the Cornish people, recognised by the UK government under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 2014.^[236]

Language

Language	Native speakers (thousands) [237]
English	46,937
Polish	529
Punjabi	272
Urdu	266
Bengali	216
Gujarati	212
Arabic	152
French	145
Portuguese	131
Welsh	8
Cornish	0.6
Other	2,267
Population	51,006

English, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated in what is now England, where it remains the principal tongue. According to a 2011 census, it is spoken well or very well by 98% of the population.^[238] It is an Indo-European language in the Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family.^[239] After the Norman conquest, the Old English language, brought to Britain by the Anglo-Saxon settlers, was confined to the lower social classes as Norman French and Latin were used by the aristocracy.

By the 15th century, English was back in fashion among all classes, though much changed; the Middle English form showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the English Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins.^[240] Modern English has extended this custom of flexibility when it comes to incorporating words from different languages. Thanks in large part to the British Empire, the English language is the world’s unofficial lingua franca.^[241]

English language learning and teaching is an important economic activity, and includes language schooling, tourism spending, and publishing. There is no legislation mandating an official language for England,^[242] but English is the only language used for official business. Despite the country’s relatively small size, there are many distinct regional accents, and individuals with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood everywhere in the country.

As well as English, England has two other indigenous languages, Cornish and Welsh. Cornish died out as a community language in the 18th century but is being revived,^[243] and is now protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.^[244] It is spoken by 0.1% of people in Cornwall,^[245] and is taught to some degree in several primary and secondary schools.^[246]

When the modern border between Wales and England was established by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, many Welsh-speaking communities found themselves on the English side of the border. Welsh was spoken in Archenfield in Herefordshire into the nineteenth century,^[247] and by natives of parts of western Shropshire until the middle of the twentieth century if not later.^[248]

State schools teach students a second language or third language from the ages of seven, most commonly French, Spanish or German.^[249] It was reported in 2007 that around 800,000 school students spoke a foreign language at home as a result of immigration among their family,^[230] the most common languages being Punjabi and Urdu. However, following the 2011 census data released by the Office for National Statistics, figures now show that Polish is the main language spoken in England after English.^[250]

Religion

In the 2011 census, 59.4% of the population of England specified their religion as Christian, 24.7% answered that they had no religion, 5% specified that they were Muslim, while 3.7% of the population belongs to other religions and 7.2% did not give an answer.^[251] Christianity is the most widely practised religion in England, as it has been since the Early Middle Ages, although it was first introduced much earlier in Gaelic and Roman times. This Celtic Church was gradually joined to the Catholic hierarchy following the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by St Augustine. The established church of England is the Church of England,^[252] which left communion with Rome in the 1530s when Henry VIII was unable to annul his marriage to the aunt of the king of Spain. The church regards itself as both Catholic and Protestant.^[253]

There are High Church and Low Church traditions and some Anglicans regard themselves as Anglo-Catholics, following the Tractarian movement. The monarch of the United Kingdom is the supreme governor of the Church of England, which has around 26 million baptised members (of whom the vast majority are not regular churchgoers). It forms part of the Anglican Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as its symbolic worldwide head.^[254] Many cathedrals and parish churches are historic buildings of significant architectural importance, such as Westminster Abbey, York Minster, Durham Cathedral, and Salisbury Cathedral.

The 2nd-largest Christian practice is the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Since its reintroduction after the Catholic Emancipation, the Church has organised ecclesiastically on an England and Wales basis where there are 4.5 million members (most of whom are English).^[255] There has been one Pope from England to date, Adrian IV; while saints Bede and Anselm are regarded as Doctors of the Church.

A form of Protestantism known as Methodism is the third largest Christian practice and grew out of Anglicanism through John Wesley.^[256] It gained popularity in the mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and amongst tin miners in Cornwall.^[257] There are other non-conformist minorities, such as Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians and The Salvation Army.^[258]

The patron saint of England is Saint George; his symbolic cross is included in the flag of England, as well as in the Union Flag as part of a combination.^[259] There are many other English and associated saints; some of the best-known are: Cuthbert, Edmund, Alban, Wilfrid, Aidan, Edward the Confessor, John Fisher, Thomas More, Petroc, Piran, Margaret Clitherow and Thomas Becket. There are non-Christian religions practised. Jews have a history of a small minority on the island since 1070.^[260] They were expelled from England in 1290 following the Edict of Expulsion, only to be allowed back in 1656.^[260]

Especially since the 1950s, religions from the former British colonies have grown in numbers, due to immigration. Islam is the most common of these, now accounting for around 5% of the population in England.^[261] Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism are next in number, adding up to 2.8% combined,^[261] introduced from India and South East Asia.^[261]

A small minority of the population practise ancient Pagan religions. Neopaganism in the United Kingdom is primarily represented by Wicca and Witchcraft religions, Druidry, and Heathenry. According to the 2011 UK Census, there are roughly 53,172 people who identify as Pagan in England,^[d] and 3,448 in Wales,^[d] including 11,026 Wiccans in England and 740 in Wales.^[e]

24.7% of people in England declared no religion in 2011, compared with 14.6% in 2001. These figures are slightly lower than the combined figures for England and Wales as Wales has a higher level of irreligion than England.^[262] Norwich had the highest such proportion at 42.5%, followed closely by Brighton and Hove at 42.4%.

Education

Primary education

The Department for Education is the government department responsible for issues affecting people in England up to the age of 19, including education.^[263] State-run and state-funded schools are attended by approximately 93% of English schoolchildren.^[264] Education is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Education.^[265]

Children who are between the ages of 3 and 5 attend nursery or an Early Years Foundation Stage reception unit within a primary school. Children between the ages of 5 and 11 attend primary school, and secondary school is attended by those aged between 11 and 16. State-funded schools are obliged by law to teach the National Curriculum; basic areas of learning include English literature, English language, mathematics, science, art & design, citizenship, history, geography, religious education, design & technology, computing, ancient & modern languages, music, and physical education.^[266]

More than 90% of English schools require students to wear uniforms.^[267] School uniforms are defined by individual schools, within the constraint that uniform regulations must not discriminate on the grounds of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief. Schools may choose to permit trousers for girls or religious dress.^[268]

The Programme for International Student Assessment coordinated by the OECD currently ranks the overall knowledge and skills of British 15-year-olds as 13th in the world in reading literacy, mathematics, and science with the average British student scoring 503.7, compared with the OECD average of 493, ahead of the United States and most of Europe.^[269]

Although most English secondary schools are comprehensive, there are selective intake grammar schools to which entrance is subject to passing the eleven-plus exam. Around 7.2 per cent of English schoolchildren attend private schools, which are funded by private sources.^[270] Standards in state schools are monitored by the Office for Standards in Education, and in private schools by the Independent Schools Inspectorate.^[271]

After finishing compulsory education, students take GCSE examinations. Students may then opt to continue into further education for two years. Further education colleges (particularly sixth form colleges) often form part of a secondary school site. A-level examinations are sat by a large number of further education students, and often form the basis of an application to university. Further education (FE) covers a wide curriculum of study and apprenticeships, including T-levels, BTEC, NVQ and others. Tertiary colleges provide both academic and vocational courses.^[272]

Higher education

Higher education students normally attend university from age 18 onwards, where they study for an academic degree. There are over 90 universities in England, all but one of which are public institutions. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is the government department responsible for higher education in England.^[273] Students are generally entitled to student loans to cover the cost of tuition fees and living costs.^[f] The first degree offered to undergraduates is the bachelor’s degree, which usually takes three years to complete. Students are then able to work towards a postgraduate degree, which usually takes one year, or towards a doctorate, which takes three or more years.^[274]

England’s universities include some of the highest-ranked universities in the world. As of 2023, four England-based universities, the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and University College London, are each ranked among the top ten universities in the world in the 2023 QS World University Rankings. The University of Cambridge, founded in 1209, and the University of Oxford, founded in 1096, are the two oldest universities in the English-speaking world.^[275]

The London School of Economics has been described as the world’s leading social science institution for both teaching and research.^[276] The London Business School is considered one of the world’s leading business schools and in 2010 its MBA programme was ranked best in the world by the Financial Times.^[277] Academic degrees in England are usually split into classes: first class (1st), upper second class (2:1), lower second class (2:2), third (3rd), and unclassified.^[274]

The King’s School, Canterbury and King’s School, Rochester are the oldest schools in the English-speaking world.^[278] Many of England’s most well-known schools, such as Winchester College, Eton, St Paul’s School, Harrow School and Rugby School are fee-paying institutions.^[279]

Culture

Architecture

Many ancient standing stone monuments were erected during the prehistoric period; amongst the best known are Stonehenge, Devil’s Arrows, Rudston Monolith and Castlerigg.^[280] With the introduction of Ancient Roman architecture there was a development of basilicas, baths, amphitheaters, triumphal arches, villas, Roman temples, Roman roads, Roman forts, stockades and aqueducts.^[281] It was the Romans who founded the first cities and towns such as London, Bath, York, Chester and St Albans. Perhaps the best-known example is Hadrian’s Wall stretching right across northern England.^[281] Another well-preserved example is the Roman Baths at Bath, Somerset.^[281]

Early Medieval architecture’s secular buildings were simple constructions mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. Ecclesiastical architecture ranged from a synthesis of Hiberno–Saxon monasticism,^[282][283] to Early Christian basilica and architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings. After the Norman conquest in 1066 various castles in England were created so law lords could uphold their authority and in the north to protect from invasion. Some of the best-known medieval castles are the Tower of London, Warwick Castle, Durham Castle and Windsor Castle.^[284]

Throughout the Plantagenet era, an English Gothic architecture flourished, with prime examples including the medieval cathedrals such as Canterbury Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and York Minster.^[284] Expanding on the Norman base there was also castles, palaces, great houses, universities and parish churches. Medieval architecture was completed with the 16th-century Tudor style; the four-centred arch, now known as the Tudor arch, was a defining feature as were wattle and daub houses domestically. In the aftermath of the Renaissance a form of architecture echoing classical antiquity synthesised with Christianity appeared, the English Baroque style of architect Christopher Wren being particularly championed.^[285]

Georgian architecture followed in a more refined style, evoking a simple Palladian form; the Royal Crescent at Bath is one of the best examples of this. With the emergence of romanticism during Victorian period, a Gothic Revival was launched. In addition to this, around the same time the Industrial Revolution paved the way for buildings such as The Crystal Palace. Since the 1930s various modernist forms have appeared whose reception is often controversial, though traditionalist resistance movements continue with support in influential places.^[g]

Gardens

Landscape gardening, as developed by Capability Brown, set an international trend for the English garden. Gardening, and visiting gardens, are regarded as typically English pursuits. The English garden presented an idealized view of nature. At large country houses, the English garden usually included lakes, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape.^[288]

By the end of the 18th century, the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century.^[289] The English landscape garden was centred on the English country house and manor houses.^[288]

English Heritage and the National Trust preserve great gardens and landscape parks throughout the country.^[290] The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is held every year by the Royal Horticultural Society and is said to be the largest gardening show in the world.^[291]

Folklore

English folklore developed over many centuries. Some of the characters and stories are present across England, but most belong to specific regions. Common folkloric beings include pixies, giants, elves, bogeymen, trolls, goblins and dwarves. While many legends and folk-customs are thought to be ancient, such as the tales featuring Offa of Angel and Wayland the Smith,^[292] others date from after the Norman invasion. The legends featuring Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood, and their battles with the Sheriff of Nottingham, are among the best-known of these.^[293]

During the High Middle Ages tales originating from Brythonic traditions entered English folklore and developed into the Arthurian myth.^{[294][295][296]} These were derived from Anglo-Norman, Welsh and French sources,^[295] featuring King Arthur, Camelot, Excalibur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table such as Lancelot. These stories are most centrally brought together within Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain).^[h] Another early figure from British tradition, King Cole, may have been based on a real figure from Sub-Roman Britain. Many of the tales and pseudo-histories make up part of the wider Matter of Britain, a collection of shared British folklore.

Some folk figures are based on semi or actual historical people whose story has been passed down centuries; Lady Godiva for instance was said to have ridden naked on horseback through Coventry, Hereward the Wake was a heroic English figure resisting the Norman invasion, Herne the Hunter is an equestrian ghost associated with Windsor Forest and Great Park and Mother Shipton is the archetypal witch.^[298] On 5 November people make bonfires, set off fireworks and eat toffee apples in commemoration of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot centred on Guy Fawkes. The chivalrous bandit, such as Dick Turpin, is a recurring character, while Blackbeard is the archetypal pirate. There are various national and regional folk activities, participated in to this day, such as Morris dancing, Maypole dancing, Rapper sword in the North East, Long Sword dance in Yorkshire, Mummers Plays, bottle-kicking in Leicestershire, and cheese-rolling at Cooper’s Hill.^[299] There is no official national costume, but a few are well established such as the Pearly Kings and Queens associated with cockneys, the Royal Guard, the Morris costume and Beefeaters.^[300]

Cuisine

Since the early modern period the food of England has historically been characterised by its simplicity of approach and a reliance on the high quality of natural produce.^[301] During the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance period, English cuisine enjoyed an excellent reputation, though a decline began during the Industrial Revolution with the move away from the land and increasing urbanisation of the populace. The cuisine of England has, however, recently undergone a revival, which has been recognised by food critics with some good ratings in Restaurant‘s best restaurant in the world charts.^[302] An early book of English recipes is the Forme of Cury from the royal court of Richard II.^[303]

Traditional examples of English food include the Sunday roast, featuring a roasted joint (usually beef, lamb, chicken or pork) served with assorted vegetables, Yorkshire pudding and gravy.^[304] Other prominent meals include fish and chips and the full English breakfast (generally consisting of bacon, sausages, grilled tomatoes, fried bread, black pudding, baked beans, mushrooms and eggs).^[305] Various meat pies are consumed, such as steak and kidney pie, steak and ale pie, cottage pie, pork pie (usually eaten cold)^[304] and the Cornish pasty.

Sausages are commonly eaten, either as bangers and mash or toad in the hole. Lancashire hotpot is a well-known stew originating in the northwest. Some of the more popular cheeses are Cheddar, Red Leicester, Wensleydale, Double Gloucester and Blue Stilton. Many Anglo-Indian hybrid dishes, curries, have been created, such as chicken tikka masala and balti. Traditional English dessert dishes include apple pie or other fruit pies; spotted dick – all generally served with custard; and, more recently, sticky toffee pudding. Sweet pastries include scones (either plain or containing dried fruit) served with jam or cream, dried fruit loaves, Eccles cakes and mince pies as well as a wide range of sweet or spiced biscuits.

Common non-alcoholic drinks include tea, the popularity of which was increased by Catherine of Braganza,^[306] and coffee; frequently consumed alcoholic drinks include wine, ciders and English beers, such as bitter, mild, stout and brown ale.^[307]

Visual arts

The earliest known examples are the prehistoric rock and cave art pieces, most prominent in North Yorkshire, Northumberland and Cumbria, but also feature further south, for example at Creswell Crags.^[308] With the arrival of Roman culture in the 1st century, various forms of art such as statues, busts, glasswork and mosaics were the norm. There are numerous surviving artefacts, such as those at Lullingstone and Aldborough.^[309] During the Early Middle Ages the style favoured sculpted crosses and ivories, manuscript painting, gold and enamel jewellery, demonstrating a love of intricate, interwoven designs such as in the Staffordshire Hoard discovered in 2009. Some of these blended Gaelic and Anglian styles, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and Vespasian Psalter.^[310] Later Gothic art was popular at Winchester and Canterbury, examples survive such as Benedictional of St. Æthelwold and Luttrell Psalter.^[311]

The Tudor era saw prominent artists as part of their court, portrait painting which would remain an enduring part of English art, was boosted by German Hans Holbein, natives such as Nicholas Hilliard built on this.^[311] Under the Stuarts, Continental artists were influential especially the Flemish, examples from the period include Anthony van Dyck, Peter Lely, Godfrey Kneller and William Dobson.^[311] The 18th century was a time of significance with the founding of the Royal Academy, a classicism based on the High Renaissance prevailed, with Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds becoming two of England’s most treasured artists.^[311]

In the 19th century, Constable and Turner were major landscape artists. The Norwich School continued the landscape tradition, while the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, led by artists such as Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, revived the Early Renaissance style with their vivid and detailed style.^[311] Prominent amongst 20th-century artists was Henry Moore, regarded as the voice of British sculpture, and of British modernism in general.^[312] More recent painters include Lucian Freud, whose work Benefits Supervisor Sleeping in 2008 set a world record for sale value of a painting by a then-living artist.^[313] The Royal Society of Arts is an organisation committed to the arts and culture.^[314]

Literature, poetry, and philosophy

Early authors such as Bede and Alcuin wrote in Latin.^[315] The period of Old English literature provided the epic poem Beowulf and the secular prose of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,^[316] along with Christian writings such as Judith, Cædmon’s Hymn and hagiographies.^[315] Following the Norman conquest Latin continued amongst the educated classes, as well as an Anglo-Norman literature.

Middle English literature emerged with Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, along with Gower, the Pearl Poet and Langland. William of Ockham and Roger Bacon, who were Franciscans, were major philosophers of the Middle Ages. Julian of Norwich, who wrote Revelations of Divine Love, was a prominent Christian mystic. With the English Renaissance literature in the Early Modern English style appeared. William Shakespeare, whose works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, remains one of the most championed authors in English literature.^[317]

Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, and Ben Jonson are other established authors of the Elizabethan age.^[318] Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes wrote on empiricism and materialism, including scientific method and social contract.^[318] Filmer wrote on the Divine Right of Kings. Marvell was the best-known poet of the Commonwealth,^[319] while John Milton authored Paradise Lost during the Restoration.

Some of the most prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment were John Locke, Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson and Jeremy Bentham. More radical elements were later countered by Edmund Burke who is regarded as the founder of conservatism.^[321] The poet Alexander Pope with his satirical verse became well regarded. The English played a significant role in romanticism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake and William Wordsworth were major figures.^[322]

In response to the Industrial Revolution, agrarian writers sought a way between liberty and tradition; William Cobbett, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were main exponents, while the founder of guild socialism, Arthur Penty, and cooperative movement advocate G. D. H. Cole are somewhat related.^[323] Empiricism continued through John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, while Bernard Williams was involved in analytics. Authors from around the Victorian era include Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and Lewis Carroll.^[324] Since then England has continued to produce novelists such as George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, C. S. Lewis, Enid Blyton, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, Terry Pratchett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling.^[325]

Performing arts

The traditional folk music of England is centuries old and has contributed to several genres prominently; mostly sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and dance music. It has its own distinct variations and regional peculiarities. Ballads featuring Robin Hood, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the 16th century, are an important artefact, as are John Playford’s The Dancing Master and Robert Harley’s Roxburghe Ballads collections.^[326] Some of the best-known songs are Greensleeves, Pastime with Good Company, Maggie May and Spanish Ladies amongst others. Many nursery rhymes are of English origin such as Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Roses Are Red, Jack and Jill, London Bridge Is Falling Down, The Grand Old Duke of York, Hey Diddle Diddle and Humpty Dumpty.^[327] Traditional English Christmas carols include «We Wish You a Merry Christmas», «The First Noel», «I Saw Three Ships» and «God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen».^[328]

Early English composers in classical music include Renaissance artists Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, followed up by Henry Purcell from the Baroque period and Thomas Arne who was well known for his patriotic song Rule, Britannia!. German-born George Frideric Handel spent most of his composing life in London and became a national icon in Britain, creating some of the most well-known works of classical music, especially his English oratorios, The Messiah, Solomon, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks.^[329] One of his four Coronation Anthems, Zadok the Priest, composed for the coronation of George II, has been performed at every subsequent British coronation, traditionally during the sovereign’s anointing.

Classical music attracted much attention from 1784 with the formation of the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which was the longest running classical music festival of its kind until the final concerts in 1912. The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when English composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences. There was a revival in the profile of composers from England in the 20th century led by Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others.^[330] Present-day composers from England include Michael Nyman, best known for The Piano, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose musicals have achieved enormous success in the West End and worldwide.^[331]

In popular music, many English bands and solo artists have been cited as the most influential and best-selling musicians of all time. Acts such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Queen, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Def Leppard are among the highest-selling recording artists in the world.^[333] Many musical genres have origins in (or strong associations with) England, such as British invasion, progressive rock, hard rock, Mod, glam rock, heavy metal, Britpop, indie rock, gothic rock, shoegazing, acid house, garage, trip hop, drum and bass and dubstep.^[334]

Large outdoor music festivals in the summer and autumn are popular, such as Glastonbury, V Festival, and the Reading and Leeds Festivals. England was at the forefront of the illegal, free rave movement from the late 1980s, which led to pan-European culture of teknivals mirrored on the UK free festival movement and associated travelling lifestyle.^[335] The Boishakhi Mela is a Bengali New Year festival celebrated by the British Bangladeshi community. It is the largest open-air Asian festival in Europe. After the Notting Hill Carnival, it is the second-largest street festival in the United Kingdom attracting over 80,000 visitors from across the country.^[336]

The most prominent opera house in England is the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.^[337] The Proms – a season of orchestral classical concerts held primarily at the Royal Albert Hall in London – is a major cultural event in the English calendar, and takes place yearly.^[337] The Royal Ballet is one of the world’s foremost classical ballet companies, its reputation built on two prominent figures of 20th-century dance, prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn and choreographer Frederick Ashton. The Royal Academy of Music is the oldest conservatoire in England, founded in 1822. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV.^[338] England is home to numerous major orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra.^[339]

The circus is a traditional form of entertainment in England. Chipperfield’s Circus dates back more than 300 years, making it one of the oldest family circus dynasties.^[340] Philip Astley is regarded as the father of the modern circus.^[341] Following his invention of the circus ring in 1768, Astley’s Amphitheatre opened in London in 1773.^[341][342] As an equestrian master Astley had a skill for trick horse-riding, and when he added tumblers, tightrope-walkers, jugglers, performing dogs, and a clown to fill time between his own demonstrations – the modern circus was born.^[343][344]

Pantomime is a British musical comedy stage production, designed for family entertainment. It is performed in theatres throughout England during the Christmas and New Year season. The art originated in the 18th century with John Weaver, a dance master and choreographer.^[345] In 19th century England it acquired its present form, which includes songs, slapstick comedy and dancing, employing gender-crossing actors, combining topical humour with a story loosely based on a well-known fairy tale.^[345]

Cinema

England (and the UK as a whole) has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema, producing some of the greatest actors, directors and motion pictures of all time, including Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers, Julie Andrews, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Daniel Day-Lewis. Hitchcock and Lean are among the most critically acclaimed filmmakers.^[347] Hitchcock’s first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926), helped shape the thriller genre in film, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, is often regarded as the first British sound feature film.^[348]

Major film studios in England include Pinewood, Elstree and Shepperton. Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in England, including two of the highest-grossing film franchises (Harry Potter and James Bond).^[349] Ealing Studios in London has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world.^[350] Famous for recording many motion picture film scores, the London Symphony Orchestra first performed film music in 1935.^[351] The Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee saw the production of the first gory horror films showing blood and guts in colour.^[352]

The BFI Top 100 British films includes Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), a film regularly voted the funniest of all time by the UK public.^[353] English producers are also active in international co-productions and English actors, directors and crew feature regularly in American films. The UK film council ranked David Yates, Christopher Nolan, Mike Newell, Ridley Scott and Paul Greengrass the five most commercially successful English directors since 2001.^[354] Other contemporary English directors include Sam Mendes, Guy Ritchie and Richard Curtis. Current actors include Tom Hardy, Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lena Headey, Felicity Jones, Emilia Clarke, Lashana Lynch, and Emma Watson. Acclaimed for his motion capture work, Andy Serkis opened The Imaginarium Studios in London in 2011.^[355] The visual effects company Framestore in London has produced some of the most critically acclaimed special effects in modern film.^[356] Many successful Hollywood films have been based on English people, stories or events. The ‘English Cycle’ of Disney animated films include Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh.^[357]

Museums, libraries, and galleries

English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. It is currently sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The charity National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty holds a contrasting role. 17 of the 25 United Kingdom UNESCO World Heritage Sites fall within England.^[358] Some of the best-known of these are: Hadrian’s Wall, Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites, Tower of London, Jurassic Coast, Saltaire, Ironbridge Gorge, Studley Royal Park and various others.^[359]

There are many museums in England, but perhaps the most notable is London’s British Museum. Its collection of more than seven million objects^[360] is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world,^[361] sourced from every continent, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. The British Library in London is the national library and is one of the world’s largest research libraries, holding over 150 million items in almost all known languages and formats; including around 25 million books.^[362][363] The most senior art gallery is the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, which houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.^[364] The Tate galleries house the national collections of British and international modern art; they also host the famously controversial Turner Prize.^[365]

Media

The BBC, founded in 1922, is the UK’s publicly funded radio, television and Internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world.^[366][367] It operates numerous television and radio stations in the UK and abroad and its domestic services are funded by the television licence.^[368][369] The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world’s largest of any kind.^[370] It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages.^[371][372]

London dominates the media sector in England: national newspapers and television and radio are largely based there, although Manchester is also a significant national media centre. The UK publishing sector, including books, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies, has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000 people.^[373] National newspapers produced in England include The Times, The Guardian and the Financial Times.^[374]

Magazines and journals published in England that have achieved worldwide circulation include Nature, New Scientist, The Spectator, Prospect, NME and The Economist. The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has overall responsibility over media and broadcasting in England.^[375]

Sport

England has a strong sporting heritage, and during the 19th century codified many sports that are now played around the world. Sports originating in England include association football,^[376] cricket, rugby union, rugby league, tennis, boxing, badminton, squash,^[377] rounders,^[378] hockey, snooker, billiards, darts, table tennis, bowls, netball, thoroughbred horseracing, greyhound racing and fox hunting. It has helped the development of golf, sailing and Formula One.

Football is the most popular of these sports. The England national football team, whose home venue is Wembley Stadium, played Scotland in the first ever international football match in 1872.^[379] Referred to as the «home of football» by FIFA, England hosted the 1966 FIFA World Cup, and won the tournament by defeating West Germany 4–2 in the final, with Geoff Hurst scoring a hat-trick.^[380] With a British television audience peak of 32.30 million viewers, the final is the most watched television event ever in the UK.^[381]

At club level, England is recognised by FIFA as the birthplace of club football, due to Sheffield F.C. founded in 1857 being the world’s oldest club.^[376] The Football Association is the oldest governing body in the sport, with the rules of football first drafted in 1863 by Ebenezer Cobb Morley.^[382] The FA Cup and The Football League were the first cup and league competitions respectively. In the modern day, the Premier League is the world’s most-watched football league,^[383] most lucrative,^[384] and amongst the elite.^[385]

As is the case throughout the UK, football in England is notable for the rivalries between clubs and the passion of the supporters, which includes a tradition of football chants.^[386] The most successful English football team in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League is Liverpool F.C. who have won the competition on six occasions.^[387] Other English success has come from Manchester United F.C., winning the competition on 3 occasions; Nottingham Forest F.C. and Chelsea F.C. on 2 occasions, Aston Villa F.C. have only won the trophy once.^[388]

Cricket is generally thought to have been developed in the early medieval period among the farming and metalworking communities of the Weald.^[390] The England cricket team is a composite England and Wales, team. One of the game’s top rivalries is The Ashes series between England and Australia, contested since 1882. The climax of the 2005 Ashes was viewed by 7.4 million as it was available on terrestrial television.^[391] England has hosted five Cricket World Cups (1975, 1979, 1983, 1999 and 2019), winning the 2019 edition in a final regarded as one of the greatest one day internationals ever played.^[392] They hosted the ICC World Twenty20 in 2009, winning this format in 2010 beating rivals Australia in the final. In the domestic competition, the County Championship, Yorkshire are by far the most successful club having won the competition 32 times outright and sharing it on 1 other occasion.^[393] Lord’s Cricket Ground situated in London is sometimes referred to as the «Mecca of Cricket».^[394]

William Penny Brookes was prominent in organising the format for the modern Olympic Games. In 1994, then President of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch, laid a wreath on Brooke’s grave, and said, «I came to pay homage and tribute to Dr Brookes, who really was the founder of the modern Olympic Games».^[395] London has hosted the Summer Olympic Games three times, in 1908, 1948, and 2012. England competes in the Commonwealth Games, held every four years. Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England. The Minister for Sport and Civil Society has responsibility for sport in England.^[396]

Rugby union originated in Rugby School, Warwickshire in the early 19th century.^[397] The England rugby union team won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, with Jonny Wilkinson scoring the winning drop goal in the last minute of extra time against Australia. England was one of the host nations of the competition in the 1991 Rugby World Cup and also hosted the 2015 Rugby World Cup.^[398] The top level of club participation is the English Premiership. Leicester Tigers, London Wasps, Bath Rugby and Northampton Saints have had success in the Europe-wide Heineken Cup.

Rugby league was born in Huddersfield in 1895. Since 2008, the England national rugby league team has been a full test nation in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, which won three World Cups but is now retired. Club sides play in Super League, the present-day embodiment of the Rugby Football League Championship. Rugby League is most popular among towns in the northern English counties of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria.^[399] The vast majority of English clubs in Super League are based in the north of England. Some of the most successful clubs include Wigan Warriors, Hull F.C. St. Helens, Leeds Rhinos and Huddersfield Giants; the former three have all won the World Club Challenge previously.

Golf has been prominent in England; due in part to its cultural and geographical ties to Scotland, the home of Golf.^[400] There are both professional tours for men and women, in two main tours: the PGA and the European Tour. England has produced grand slam winners: Cyril Walker, Tony Jacklin, Nick Faldo, and Justin Rose in the men’s and Laura Davies, Alison Nicholas, and Karen Stupples in the women’s. The world’s oldest golf tournament, and golf’s first major is The Open Championship, played both in England and Scotland. The biennial golf competition, the Ryder Cup, is named after English businessman Samuel Ryder who sponsored the event and donated the trophy.^[401] Nick Faldo is the most successful Ryder Cup player ever, having won the most points (25) of any player on either the European or US teams.^[402]

Tennis was created in Birmingham in the late 19th century, and the Wimbledon Championships is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, and widely considered the most prestigious.^[404][405] Wimbledon is a tournament that has a major place in the British cultural calendar. Fred Perry was the last Englishman to win Wimbledon in 1936. He was the first player to win all four Grand Slam singles titles^[406] and helped lead the Great Britain team to four Davis Cup wins. English women who have won Wimbledon include: Ann Haydon Jones in 1969 and Virginia Wade in 1977.

In boxing, under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, England has produced many world champions across the weight divisions internationally recognised by the governing bodies. World champions include Bob Fitzsimmons, Ted «Kid» Lewis, Randolph Turpin, Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank, Frank Bruno, Lennox Lewis, Ricky Hatton, Naseem Hamed, Amir Khan, Carl Froch, and David Haye.^[407] In women’s boxing, Nicola Adams became the world’s first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Originating in 17th and 18th-century England, the thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. The National Hunt horse race the Grand National, is held annually at Aintree Racecourse in early April. It is the most watched horse race in the UK, attracting casual observers, and three-time winner Red Rum is the most successful racehorse in the event’s history.^[408] Red Rum is also the best-known racehorse in the country.^[409]

The 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone was the first race in the newly created Formula One World Championship.^[410] Since then, England has produced some of the greatest drivers in the sport, including; John Surtees, Stirling Moss, Graham Hill (only driver to have won the Triple Crown), Nigel Mansell (only man to hold F1 and IndyCar titles at the same time), Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.^[411] It has manufactured some of the most technically advanced racing cars, and many of today’s racing companies choose England as their base of operations for its engineering knowledge and organisation. McLaren Automotive, Williams F1, Team Lotus, Honda, Brawn GP, Benetton, Renault, and Red Bull Racing are all, or have been, located in the south of England. England also has a rich heritage in Grand Prix motorcycle racing, the premier championship of motorcycle road racing, and produced several World Champions across all the various class of motorcycle: Mike Hailwood, John Surtees, Phil Read, Geoff Duke, and Barry Sheene.

Darts is a widely popular sport in England; a professional competitive sport, darts is a traditional pub game. The sport is governed by the World Darts Federation, one of its member organisations is the British Darts Organisation (BDO), which annually stages the BDO World Darts Championship, the other being the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), which runs its own world championship at Alexandra Palace in London. Phil Taylor is widely regarded as the best darts player of all time, having won 187 professional tournaments, and a record 16 World Championships.^[412][413] Trina Gulliver is the ten-time Women’s World Professional Darts Champion of the British Darts Organisation. Another popular sport commonly associated with pub games is Snooker, and England has produced several world champions, including Steve Davis and Ronnie O’Sullivan.

The English are keen sailors and enjoy competitive sailing; founding and winning some of the world’s most famous and respected international competitive tournaments across the various race formats, including the match race, a regatta, and the America’s Cup. England has produced some of the world’s greatest sailors, including Francis Chichester, Herbert Hasler, John Ridgway, Robin Knox-Johnston, Ellen MacArthur, Mike Golding, Paul Goodison, and the most successful Olympic sailor ever Ben Ainslie.^[414]

National symbols

The St George’s Cross has been the national flag of England since the 13th century. Originally the flag was used by the maritime Republic of Genoa. The English monarch paid a tribute to the Doge of Genoa from 1190 onwards so that English ships could fly the flag as a means of protection when entering the Mediterranean.
A red cross was a symbol for many Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. It became associated with Saint George, along with countries and cities, which claimed him as their patron saint and used his cross as a banner.^[415] Since 1606 the St George’s Cross has formed part of the design of the Union Flag, a Pan-British flag designed by King James I.^[259] During the English Civil War and Interregnum, the New Model Army’s standards and the Commonwealth’s Great Seal both incorporated the flag of Saint George.^[416][417]

There are numerous other symbols and symbolic artefacts, both official and unofficial, including the Tudor rose, the nation’s floral emblem, and the Three Lions featured on the Royal Arms of England. The Tudor rose was adopted as a national emblem of England around the time of the Wars of the Roses as a symbol of peace.^[418] It is a syncretic symbol in that it merged the white rose of the Yorkists and the red rose of the Lancastrians—cadet branches of the Plantagenets who went to war over control of the nation. It is also known as the Rose of England.^[419] The oak tree is a symbol of England, representing strength and endurance. The Royal Oak symbol and Oak Apple Day commemorate the escape of King Charles II from the grasp of the parliamentarians after his father’s execution: he hid in an oak tree to avoid detection before safely reaching exile.

The Royal Arms of England, a national coat of arms featuring three lions, originated with its adoption by Richard the Lionheart in 1198. It is blazoned as gules, three lions passant guardant or and it provides one of the most prominent symbols of England; it is similar to the traditional arms of Normandy. England does not have an official designated national anthem, as the United Kingdom as a whole has God Save the King. However, the following are often considered unofficial English national anthems:
Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory (used for England during the 2002 Commonwealth Games),^[420] and I Vow to Thee, My Country. England’s National Day is 23 April which is Saint George’s Day: Saint George is the patron saint of England.^[421]

See also

• Outline of England
• Outline of the United Kingdom

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

• English Heritage – National body protecting English heritage
• Natural England – Wildlife and the natural world of England
• VisitEngland – English Tourist Board
• BBC News – England – News items from BBC News relating to England
• GOV.UK – The Official Website of the British Government
• Geographic data related to England at OpenStreetMap

England
Motto: Dieu et mon droit (French) «God and my right»[1][2]
Anthem: None (de jure) God Save the King (de facto)
Location of  England (orange) – on the European continent (camel  white) – in the United Kingdom (camel)
Capital (and largest city)	London 51°30′N 0°7′W
Official languages	English (de facto)[3]
Recognized regional languages	Cornish
Ethnic groups (2011)	85.4% White, 7.8% Asian, 3.5% Black, 2.3% Mixed, 0.4% Arab, 0.6% Other
Demonym	English
Government	Non-devolved state within a constitutional monarchy
—	Monarch	Charles III
—	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom	Rishi Sunak
Legislature	Parliament of the United Kingdom
Establishment
—	Unification of Angles, Saxons and Danes	July 12, 927
—	Union with Scotland	May 1, 1707
Area
—	Total	130,395 km²  50,346 sq mi
Population
—	2017 estimate	55,619,400
—	2021 census	56,490,048[4]
—	Density	434/km²  1,124.1/sq mi
Currency	Pound sterling (GBP)
Time zone	GMT (UTC0)
—	Summer (DST)	BST (UTC+1)
Internet TLD	.uk[5]
Calling code	+44
Patron saint	Saint George

England is the largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and is located to the north-west of mainland Europe.

England is often mistakenly considered the same as the United Kingdom, or the same as the island of Great Britain, which consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. However, England no longer officially exists as an administrative or political unit—as do Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which have varying degrees of self-government in domestic affairs.

England became a unified state during the tenth century and takes its name from the Angles, one of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in the territory during the fifth and sixth centuries.

England ranks among the world’s most influential centers of cultural development. It is the place of origin of the English language and the Church of England, and English law forms the basis of the legal systems of many countries. The nation was the center of the British Empire, and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. England is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science. England was the world’s first parliamentary democracy and consequently many constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.

The Kingdom of England was a separate state until May 1, 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Geography

The mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and English Channel.

England comprises the central and southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain, plus offshore islands of which the largest is the Isle of Wight. It is bordered to the north by Scotland and to the west by Wales. It is closer to continental Europe than any other part of Britain, and is only 24 miles (52 km) from France. The Channel Tunnel, near Folkestone, directly links England to the European mainland. The English/French border is halfway along the tunnel.

England’s land area is 50,319 square miles (130,325 square kilometers), or slightly smaller than Louisiana in the United States.

Most of England consists of rolling hills, but it is more mountainous in the north with a chain of low mountains, the Pennines, dividing east and west. The dividing line between terrain types is usually indicated by the Tees-Exe line. There is also an area of flat, low-lying marshland in the east, the Fens, much of which has been drained for agricultural use.

The highest point in England is Scafell Pike, which at 3208 feet (978 meters) is part of the Cumbrian Mountains in North West England. Other mountain ranges and hills in England include the Chilterns, Cotswolds, Dartmoor, Lincolnshire Wolds, Exmoor, Lake District, Malvern Hills, Mendip Hills, North Downs, Peak District, Salisbury Plain, South Downs, Shropshire Hills, and Yorkshire Wolds.

England has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round. Temperatures rarely fall below 23°F (-5°C) or rise above 86°F (30°C), although they can be quite variable. The prevailing wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean. It is driest in the east and warmest in the south, which is closest to the European mainland. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring.

England’s best-known river is the Thames, which flows through London. At 215 miles (346km), it is the longest river in England. The River Severn is the longest in total, but it flows from the mountains of Wales, and the parts which run through England are shorter than the Thames. Other rivers include the Trent, Humber, Tyne, Tees, Ribble, Ouse, Mersey, Dee, and Avon.

The largest natural harbor is at Poole, on the south-central coast.

Originally, oak forests covered the lowlands, while pine forests and patches of moorland covered the higher or sandy ground. Much forest has been cleared for cultivation. Oak, elm, ash, and beech are the most common trees in England.

Wolves, bears, boars, and reindeer are extinct, but red and roe deer are protected for sport. Foxes, hares, hedgehogs, rabbits, weasels, stoats, shrews, rats, and mice are common, otters are found in many rivers, and seals appear along the coast. The chaffinch, blackbird, sparrow, and starling are the most numerous of the 230 species of birds there, and another 200 are migratory. Game birds—pheasants, partridges, and red grouse—are protected. The rivers and lakes contain salmon, trout, perch, pike, roach, dace, and grayling.

Agriculture is intensive, highly mechanized, and efficient by European standards, producing about 60 percent of food needs with only one percent of the labor force. It contributes around two percent of GDP. Around two thirds of production is devoted to livestock, and one third to arable crops.

The capital city of England is London, which is the largest city in Great Britain, and the largest city in the European Union by most measures. The ancient City of London still retains its tiny medieval boundaries; but the name «London» has long applied more generally to the whole metropolis which has grown up around it. An important settlement for around two millennia, London is today one of the world’s leading business, financial and cultural centers, and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the major global cities.

Birmingham is the second largest, both in terms of the city itself and its urban conurbation. A number of other cities, mainly in central and northern England, are of substantial size and influence. These include: Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, and Hull.

History

Prehistoric England

Cro-Magnons (the first anatomically modern humans) are believed to have arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago, and lived in the region that was to become England by 27,000 years ago. Up to around 6000 B.C.E., England was connected to Europe, and was easily accessible by nomadic hunter-gatherers. Around 4000 B.C.E., Neolithic immigrants brought agriculture, used stone tools, buried their dead in communal graves of stone or mounds of earth, and conducted rituals at henge monuments. From around 2300 B.C.E., Beaker folk, who buried their dead in individual graves, often with a drinking vessel, arrived from the Low Countries and middle Rhine. These people knew how to work copper and gold. Wessex chieftains dominated trade, and ensuing prosperity enabled these chieftains to build the large bluestone monoliths known as Stonehenge.

The Celts

From the eighth century B.C.E., Celts arrived, and hill forts began to appear. A succession of migrations took place from 700 B.C.E. to 400 B.C.E. Settlements had a traditional round house, and farming was characterized by small fields, and storage pits for grain. Iron daggers were made, then swords, and with increasing pressure on resources, increasing numbers of hill forts were built.

Romans invade

The first Roman invasion of the British Isles was led by Julius Caesar in 55 B.C.E.; the second, a year later in 54 B.C.E. Although no territory was taken for the Roman Empire on either occasion, this was the start of the Roman settlement of Britain. The Romans had many supporters among the Celtic tribal leaders, who agreed to pay tributes to Rome in return for Roman protection. The Romans returned in 44 C.E., led by Claudius, this time establishing control, and establishing a province Britannia. Initially an oppressive rule, gradually the new leaders gained a firmer hold on their new territory which at one point stretched from the south coast of England to Wales and as far away as Scotland (though they did not hold the latter for long). Hadrian’s Wall, built on the Solway-Tyne isthmus (122 C.E.-130 C.E.) marked the frontier of Roman civilization.

Over the approximately 350 years of Roman occupation of Britain, the majority of settlers were soldiers garrisoned on the mainland. It was with constant contact with Rome and the rest of Romanized Europe through trade and industry that the native Britons themselves adopted Roman culture and customs.

Christianity introduced

Christianity is thought to have come from three directions—from Rome (via Roman merchants and soldiers), and from Scotland and Ireland. Christianity made little headway until the late fourth century, initially among wealthy villa owners. By the end of Roman rule, in 410 C.E., Christian leaders followed the teachings of the Briton Pelagius (354-420), considered heretical, because he denied the doctrine of original sin, and emphasized the importance of the human will over divine grace in attaining salvation. This philosophy of self-reliance is a British characteristic. St Augustine (who died in 604) was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The Synod of Whitby in 685 ultimately led to the English Church being fully part of Roman Catholicism.

Anglo-Saxon England

The history of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early medieval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066. It is speculated that the first Germanic immigrants to Britain arrived at the invitation of the Roman rulers. The traditional division into Angles, Saxons and Jutes is first seen in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by Bede, however historical and archaeological research has shown that a wider range of Germanic peoples from the coast of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jutland, and Southern Sweden moved to Britain in this era. After the withdrawal of the last legions in the early fifth century, the number of newcomers increased, and it is speculated that relations with the ruling Romanized Britons became strained.

By about 449, open conflict had broken out, and the immigrants began to establish their own kingdoms in what would eventually become the Heptarchy, the seven petty kingdoms which eventually merged to become the Kingdom of England: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. As early as the time of Ethelbert of Kent (560-616), one king could be recognized as Bretwalda («Lord of Britain»). The title fell in the seventh century to the kings of Northumbria, in the eighth to those of Mercia, and finally, in the ninth, to Egbert of Wessex, who in 825 defeated the Mercians at the Battle of Ellendun. In the next century his family came to rule all England.

Vikings

The earliest Viking raid on Britain was 789 when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Portland was attacked. A more reliable report dates from June 8, 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne on the east coast of England was pillaged. These raiders, whose expeditions extended well into the ninth century, were gradually followed by settlers who brought a new culture and tradition markedly different from that of the prevalent Anglo-Saxon society. These enclaves expanded, and soon Viking warriors established areas of control that could be described as kingdoms. Viking conquest of large parts of England established the Danelaw, a name given to northern and eastern England in which the laws of the Danes held predominance over those of the Anglo-Saxons.

The Kingdom of England

Originally, England (or Angleland) was a geographical term to describe the territory of Britain which was occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual nation-state.
During the ninth century, the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex came to dominate other kingdoms in England (especially as a result of the extinction of rival lines in England during the First Viking Age). Alfred the Great (849-899), who was king of Wessex from 871 to 899, defeated the Viking Guthrum at the Battle of Edington in 878.

England was unified in 927 by Athelstan. For several hundred years, the Kingdom of England would fall in and out of power between several Wessex and Danish kings. For over half a century, the unified Kingdom of England became part of a vast Danish empire under Canute the Great (995-1035), before regaining independence for a short period under the restored West-Saxon lineage of Edward the Confessor(1004-1066).

The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued to exist as an independent nation-state right through to the Acts of Union and the Union of Crowns. However the political ties and direction of England were changed forever by the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Norman conquest

William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy) landed in England in September 1066 to assert his claim to the throne. The Saxon king Harold II had just destroyed an invading Norwegian Viking army under King Harald Hardråda, ending the Viking age. William’s success at the Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066), in which the Saxon king Harold II was killed, resulted in the Norman control of England. William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book, a survey of the entire population and their lands and property for tax purposes. The Norman conquest was a pivotal event in English history for a number of reasons. This conquest linked England more closely with Continental Europe through the introduction of a Norman aristocracy, thereby lessening Scandinavian influence. It created one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe and engendered a sophisticated governmental system. The use of the Anglo-Norman language by the aristocracy endured for centuries and left an indelible mark in the development of modern English. The conquest changed the English culture, and set the stage for rivalry with France, which would continue intermittently until the twentieth century. It has an iconic role in English national identity as the last successful military conquest of England.

The Middle Ages

The English Middle Ages, which lasted from 1066 until conflicts over the English throne between the Houses of Lancaster and York, known as the Wars of the Roses, ended in 1487, were characterized by civil war, international war, occasional insurrection, and widespread political intrigue among the aristocratic and monarchic elite. England was an important part of expanding and dwindling empires based in France, with the «King of England» being a subsidiary title of a succession of French-speaking Dukes of territories in what became France. English kings used England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in France for the duration of the Hundred Years’ War (1337 to 1453). In fact the English crown did not relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until Calais was lost during the reign of Mary Tudor (the Channel Islands remain crown dependencies).

The Principality of Wales, under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales shared a legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called «England» and later «England and Wales.»

Magna Carta

The signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, had lasting impact. King John (1166 – 1216) suffered the loss of Normandy and numerous other French territories following the disastrous Battle of Bouvines in 1214. He managed to antagonize the feudal nobility and leading Church figures to the extent that in 1215, they led an armed rebellion and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which required the king to renounce certain rights, respect certain legal procedures and accept that «the will of the king could be bound by law.» It established that the king may not levy or collect any taxes (except the feudal taxes to which they were hitherto accustomed) without the consent of a council. Magna Carta was the most significant early influence on the long historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law.

The Black Death

An epidemic of catastrophic proportions, the Black Death first reached England in the summer of 1348. The Black Death is estimated to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe’s population. England alone lost as many as 70 percent of its population, which passed from seven million to two million in 1400. The plague repeatedly returned to haunt England throughout the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. The Great Plague of London in 1665–1666 was the last plague outbreak.

The English Reformation

During the English Reformation, the external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with a Church of England, outside the Roman Catholic Church, under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation differed from its European counterparts in that it was a political, rather than purely theological, dispute at root.

John Wycliffe (c. 1320–1384), an English theologian and early proponent of reform in the Roman Catholic Church, worked tirelessly on an English translation of the Bible in one complete edition. Since his beliefs and teachings seemed to compare closely with Luther, Calvin, and other reformers, historians have called Wycliffe «The Morning Star of the Reformation.» The itinerant preachers, called Lollards, Wycliffe sent throughout England, created a spiritual revolution. Intense persecution, from both the religious and secular authorities, cracked down on the Lollards sending the movement underground.

John Wycliffe denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that the bread and wine used in the Eucharist changes in substance into the body and blood of Jesus. He was condemned in a Papal Bull in 1410, and all his books were burned. The seeds of reform that Wycliffe planted were not to blossom until a couple hundred years later.

The Tudors

The relatively unknown Henry Tudor, Henry VII, won the final conflict in the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where the Yorkist Richard III was killed, thus beginning the Tudor period, which lasted until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.

King Henry VIII (1491-1547) split with the Roman Catholic Church over a question of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Though his religious position was not at all Protestant, the resultant schism ultimately led to England distancing itself almost entirely from Rome. There followed a period of great religious and political upheaval, which led to the English Reformation, the royal expropriation of the monasteries and much of the wealth of the church. The dissolution of the monasteries had the effect of giving many of the lower classes (the gentry) a vested interest in the Reformation continuing, for to halt it would be to revive Monasticism and restore lands which were gifted to them during the Dissolution.

Henry VIII had one legitimate child and two illegitimate children who survived him. Edward VI of England, Henry’s legitimate heir, was only a boy of 10 when he took the throne in 1547. When Edward VI lay dying of tuberculosis in 1553, Mary I (1516-1558) took the throne amidst popular demonstration in her favor in London. Mary, a devout Catholic, also known as Bloody Mary, tried to re-impose Catholicism, which led to 274 burnings of Protestants, which are recorded especially in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. She was highly unpopular among her people, and the Spanish party of her husband, Philip II caused resentment around Court. Mary died at the age of 42, to be succeeded by her half-sister, who became Elizabeth I.

The reign of Elizabeth restored a sort of order to the realm. The religious issue, which had divided the country since Henry VIII, was put to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which created the Church of England in much the same form we see it today. The Act of Supremacy of 1559 re-established the English church’s independence from Rome, with parliament conferring on Elizabeth the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, while the Act of Uniformity of 1559 set out the form the English church would take, including establishing the Book of Common Prayer, and phrasing the delicate issue of transubstantiation. Much of Elizabeth’s success was in balancing the interests of the Puritans (radical Protestants) and «die-hard» Catholics.

The slave trade that established Britain as a major economic power can be attributed to Elizabeth, who granted John Hawkins the permission to commence trading in 1562. The number of Africans transported to England was so great due to the slave trade that by 1596, Elizabeth complained. She tried unsuccessfully to expel them via a Proclamation in 1601.

The Stuarts

Elizabeth died in 1603 without leaving any direct heirs. Her closest male Protestant relative was the King of Scots, James VI, of the House of Stuart, who, following the Union of the Crowns, became King James I of England. King James I & VI as he was styled became the first king of the entire island of Great Britain, though he continued to rule the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland separately. James survived a number of assassination attempts, notably the Main Plot and Bye Plots of 1603, and most famously, on November 5, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot, by a group of Catholic conspirators, led by Guy Fawkes, which was stoked up and served as further fuel for antipathy in England towards the Catholic faith.

British colonies

Plantations in Ireland, from 1608, formed a pattern for establishing colonies, and several people involved in those projects also had a hand in the early colonization of North America—Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake and Ralph Lane. In 1607, England built an establishment in Virginia (Jamestown), in what was to become the United States of America. This was the beginning of English colonization. Many English settled in North America for religious or economic reasons. While the first party religious pilgrims left for the New World in 1620, in the second half of the seventeenth century, those numbers increased dramatically, as these religious pilgrims sought a land where they could worship freely.

The English merchants holding plantations in the warm southern parts of America then resorted rather quickly to the slavery of Native Americans and imported Africans in order to cultivate their plantations and sell raw material (particularly cotton and tobacco) in Europe. The English merchants involved in colonization accrued fortunes equal to those of great aristocratic landowners in England, and their money, which fueled the rise of the middle class, permanently altered the balance of political power.

The empire took shape during the early seventeenth century, with the English settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, which would later become the original United States, as well as Canada’s Atlantic provinces, and the colonization of the smaller islands of the Caribbean such as Saint Kitts, Barbados and Jamaica. The sugar-producing colonies of the Caribbean, where slavery became central to the economy, were at first England’s most important and lucrative colonies.

Civil war

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations which took place between Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 until 1651. The English Civil War broke out in 1642, largely as a result of an ongoing series of conflicts between James’ son, Charles I, and Parliament. The defeat of the Royalist army by the New Model Army of Parliament at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 effectively destroyed the king’s forces. Charles surrendered to the Scottish army at Newark. He was handed over to the English Parliament in early 1647. He escaped and the Second English Civil War began, although it was to be only a short conflict, with parliament quickly securing the country. The capture and subsequent trial of Charles led to his beheading in January 1649 at Whitehall Gate in London. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651. The English monarchy was replaced with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a Protectorate (1653–1659), under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell. After a brief return to Commonwealth rule, in 1660 The Crown was restored and Charles II accepted parliament’s invitation to return to England.

During this period from 1649-1660, known as the «interregnum,» the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already-established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern without the consent of Parliament although this would not be cemented until the Glorious Revolution later in the century.

In 1665, the plague, swept through London, and in 1666, the Great Fire raged for five days, destroying approximately 15,000 buildings.

Glorious Revolution

The death of Charles II in 1685 meant his Catholic brother was crowned King James II & VII. England with a Catholic King on the throne was too much for both people and parliament and in 1689 the Dutch Protestant Prince William of Orange was invited to replace King James II in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. Despite attempts to secure his reign by force, James was finally defeated by William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. On February 13, 1689, parliament passed the Declaration of Right, in which it deemed that James, by attempting to flee on December 11, 1688, had abdicated the government of the realm, thereby leaving the Throne vacant. William and Mary were crowned together at Westminster Abbey on April 11, 1689.

William III of England encouraged the passage of the Act of Toleration 1689, which guaranteed religious toleration to certain Protestant nonconformists. It did not, however, extend toleration to Roman Catholics or those of non-Christian faiths. Thus the Act was not as wide-ranging as James II’s Declaration of Indulgence, which attempted to grant freedom of conscience to people of all faiths.

However, in parts of Scotland and Ireland Catholics loyal to James remained determined to see him restored to the throne and there followed a series of bloody though unsuccessful uprisings. As a result of these, any failure to pledge loyalty to the victorious King William was severely dealt with. The most infamous example of this policy being the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. Jacobite rebellions continued on into the mid-eighteenth century until the son of the last Catholic claimant to the throne, |James III & VIII, mounted a final campaign in 1745. The Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the «Bonnie Prince Charlie» of legend, were resoundingly defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

United Kingdom formed

Under the Acts of Union 1707, England (including Wales) and Scotland, which had been in personal union since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, agreed to a political union in the form of a unified Kingdom of Great Britain. The Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, which had been gradually brought under English control between 1541 and 1691, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.

Since 1707, England, while ceasing to exist as an independent political entity, has remained highly dominant in what is now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Due to her geographic size and large population, the dominant political and economic influence in the UK stems from England. London has remained the capital city of the UK and has built upon its status as the economic and political center of the UK.

Enlightenment Britain

Britain was an important part of the Age of Enlightenment with philosophical and scientific input and a literary and theatrical tradition. Over the next century England played an important role in developing Western ideas of parliamentary democracy, partly via the emergence of a multi-party system, as evidenced in the rise of the Whig and Tory political parties. There were significant contributions to literature, the arts and science. But, like other Great Powers, England was involved in colonial exploitation, including the infamous Atlantic slave trade, until the passing of the 1807 Slave Trade Act made Great Britain the first nation to permanently prohibit trade in slaves.

Confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures. In addition, Britain had an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard work. This Protestant work ethic has been regarded as one of the cornerstones of national prosperity.

The British Empire

After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in the Napoleonic Wars (1804-1815), Britain became the principal naval power of the nineteenth century. At its peak, the British Empire was the largest empire in history and for a substantial time was the foremost global power.

The Industrial Revolution

England led the Industrial Revolution, a period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when technological advances and mechanization transformed a largely agrarian society throughout Europe, causing considerable social upheaval. Much of the agricultural workforce was uprooted from the countryside and moved into large urban centers of production, as the steam-based production factories could undercut traditional cottage industries. The consequent overcrowding into areas with little supporting infrastructure saw dramatic increases in the rise of infant mortality (to the extent that many Sunday schools for pre-working age children, five or six, had funeral clubs to pay for each other’s funeral arrangements), crime, and social deprivation. Many workers saw their livelihoods threatened by the process, and some frequently sabotaged or attempted to sabotage factories. These saboteurs were known as Luddites.

Suffrage extended

During the early nineteenth century, the working classes began to find a voice. Concentrations of industry led to the formation of guilds and unions, which, although at first suppressed, eventually became powerful enough to resist government policy. Chartism is thought to have originated from the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, which gave the vote to the majority of the (male) middle classes, but not to the «working class.» Many people made speeches on the «betrayal» of the working class and the «sacrificing» of their «interests» by the «misconduct» of the government. In 1838, six members of Parliament and six working men formed a committee, which then published the People’s Charter.

But by the end of the Victorian era (1900), England lost its industrial leadership, particularly to the United States, which surpassed England in industrial production and trade in the 1890s, as well as to the German Empire.

Victorian England

England’s Victorian era marked the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire. Although commonly used to refer to the period of Queen Victoria’s rule between 1837 and 1901, scholars debate whether the Victorian period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians—actually begins with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The era was preceded by the Regency era and succeeded by the Edwardian period

By virtue of Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert, son of Duke Ernst I of the small German duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, her descendants were members of the ducal family of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha with the house name of Wettin. Victoria’s son Edward VII and his son George V reigned as members of this house.

World War I

The First World War was a global military conflict which took place primarily in Europe between 1914 and 1918. More than nine million soldiers and civilians died. The conflict had a decisive impact on the history of the twentieth century. The Entente Powers, led by France, Russia, the United Kingdom and later Italy (from 1915) and the United States (from 1917), defeated the Central Powers, led by the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman Empires. Russia withdrew from the war after the revolution in 1917.

High anti-German feeling among the people during World War I prompted the Royal Family to abandon all titles held under the German crown and to change German-sounding titles and house names for English-sounding versions. On July 17, 1917, a royal proclamation by George V provided that all agnatic descendants of Queen Victoria would be members of the House of Windsor with the personal surname of Windsor. The name Windsor has a long association with English royalty through the town of Windsor and Windsor Castle.

After the carnage of the Great War, Britain remained an eminent power, and its empire expanded to its maximum size, gaining the League of Nations mandate over former German and Ottoman colonies after World War I. By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world’s population. It covered about 14.2 million square miles, about a quarter of Earth’s total land area. As a result, its legacy is widespread, in legal and governmental systems, economic practice, militarily, educational systems, sports (such as cricket, rugby and football), and in the global spread of the English language and Anglican Christianity. At the peak of its power, it was often said that «the sun never sets on the British Empire» because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous colonies or subject nations.

Independence for the Irish Free State in 1922 followed the partition of Ireland two years previously, with six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remaining within the UK, which then changed in 1927 to the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

World War II

The Second World War was a worldwide military conflict which lasted from 1939 to 1945. It was the amalgamation of two conflicts, one beginning in Asia, in 1937, as the Second Sino-Japanese War and the other beginning in Europe, in 1939, with the invasion of Poland. It is regarded as the historical successor to World War I. The majority of the world’s nations split into two opposing camps: The Allies and the Axis. England fought with its Commonwealth allies including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India, later to be joined by further allies. Spanning much of the globe, World War II resulted in the deaths of over 60 million people, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The conflict ended in an Allied victory.

Wartime leader Winston Churchill and his successor Clement Atlee helped plan the post-war world as part of the «Big Three.» World War II, however, left England financially and physically damaged. Loans taken out during and after World War II from the United States and from Canada were economically costly, but, along with post-war U.S. Marshall aid, they started England on the road to recovery. As a result, the United States and Soviet Union emerged as the world’s two leading superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War for the next 45 years. Independence movements arose in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began traveling the road leading to integration. During the five decades following World War II, most of the territories of the Empire became independent. Many went on to join the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states.

Multi-ethnic welfare state

The immediate post-war years brought the establishment of the British Welfare State and one of the world’s first and most comprehensive health services, while the demands of a recovering economy brought people from all over the Commonwealth to create a multi-ethnic England. Although the new postwar limits of Britain’s political role were confirmed by the Suez Crisis of 1956, the international currency of the language meant the continuing impact of its literature and culture, while at the same time from the 1960s its popular culture found an influence abroad.

Following a period of economic stagnation and industrial strife in the 1970s after a global economic downturn, the 1980s saw the inflow of substantial North Sea oil revenues, and the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, under whom there was a marked break with the post-war political and economic consensus. Her supporters credit her with economic success, but her critics blame her for greater social division. From the mid-1990s onward these trends largely continued under the leadership of Tony Blair.

The United Kingdom was a member of the European Union from 1973 until January 31, 2020.

Government and politics

There has not been a Government of England since 1707, when the Kingdom of England merged with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, although both kingdoms have been ruled by a single monarch since 1603. Prior to the Acts of Union of 1707, England was ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England.

The Scottish and Welsh governing institutions were created by the UK parliament with support from the majority of people of Scotland and Wales in referenda in 1997, and are not independent of the rest of Britain. However, this gave each country a separate and distinct political identity, leaving England (with 83 percent of the UK population) as the only part of Britain directly ruled in nearly all matters by the British government in London. In Cornwall, a region of England claiming a distinct national identity, there has been a campaign for a Cornish assembly along Welsh lines by nationalist parties such as Mebyon Kernow.

Because Westminster is the UK parliament but also votes on local English matters (England has no parliament of its own) devolution of national matters to parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has refocused attention on a long-standing anomaly called the West Lothian question. Before Scottish devolution, purely-Scottish matters were debated at Westminster, but subject to a convention that only Scottish MPs could vote on them. The «question» was that there was no «reverse» convention: Scottish MPs could and did vote on issues relating only to England and Wales.

Welsh devolution has removed the anomaly for Wales, but highlighted the anomaly for England: Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on English issues, but purely Scottish and Welsh issues are debated in Scotland and Wales, not at Westminster. This problem is exacerbated by an over-representation of Scottish MPs in the government,sometimes referred to as the Scottish mafia; as of September 2006, seven of the 23 cabinet members were Scottish. In addition, Scotland traditionally benefited from moderate malapportionment in its favor, increasing its representation to a degree disproportionate to its population; only recently has the Boundary Commission turned its attention to this issue and not until the 2007 redrawing of boundaries has Scotland’s representation been in line with the rest of the UK.

In terms of national administration, England’s affairs are managed by a combination of the UK government, the UK parliament, a number of England-specific quangos, such as English Heritage, and the mostly unelected regional assemblies (a kind of nascent executive for each English region).

There are calls for a devolved English Parliament, and some English people and parties go further by calling for the dissolution of the union entirely. However, the approach favored by the Labour government was (on the basis that England is too large to be governed as a single sub-state entity) to propose the devolution of power to the regions of England. Lord Falconer claimed a devolved English parliament would dwarf the rest of the United Kingdom. Referenda would decide whether people wanted to vote for directly-elected regional assemblies to watch over the work of the non-elected regional development agencies.

Subdivisions

Historically, the highest level of local government in England was the county. These divisions had emerged from a range of units of old, pre-unification England (such as the kingdoms of Sussex and Kent) and further medieval reorganizations (sometimes using duchies such as Lancashire and Cornwall). These historical county lines were usually drawn up before the Industrial Revolution and the mass urbanization of England. The counties each had a county town and many county names were drawn from these (for example Nottinghamshire, from Nottingham).

A series of local government reorganizations took place since the latter part of the nineteenth century. The solution to the emergence of large urban areas was the creation of large metropolitan counties centered on cities (an example being Greater Manchester). The creation of unitary authorities, where districts gained the administrative status of a county, began with the 1990s reform of local government. Some confusion persists between the ceremonial counties (which do not necessarily form an administrative unit) and the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties.

Non-metropolitan counties (or «shire counties») are divided into one or more districts. At the very lowest level, England is divided into parishes, though these are not to be found everywhere (many urban areas for example are unparished). Parishes are prohibited from existing in Greater London.

England was also divided into nine regions, which do not have an elected authority and exist to co-ordinate certain local government functions across a wider area. Greater London is an exception, however, and is the one region which now has a representative authority as well as a directly elected mayor. The 32 London boroughs and the Corporation of London remain the local form of government in the city.

Economics

England’s economy is the second largest economy in Europe and the fifth largest economy in the world. It follows the Anglo-Saxon economic model. England’s economy is the largest of the four economies of the United Kingdom, with 100 of Europe’s 500 largest corporations based in London. As part of the United Kingdom, England is a major center of world economics. One of the world’s most highly industrialized countries, England is a leader in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors and in key technical industries, particularly aerospace, the arms industry and the manufacturing side of the software industry. London exports mainly manufactured goods and imports materials such as petroleum, tea, wool, raw sugar, timber, butter, metals, and meat, with France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain being the biggest importers of beef from England.

The central bank of the United Kingdom, which sets interest rates and implements monetary policy, is the Bank of England in London. London is also home to the London Stock Exchange, the main stock exchange in the UK and the largest in Europe. London, is one of the international leaders in finance and the largest financial center in Europe.

Traditional heavy and manufacturing industries declined sharply in England in the late twentieth century, as they have in the United Kingdom as a whole. At the same time, service industries have grown in importance. For example, tourism rose to be the sixth largest industry in the UK. The largest center for tourism is London, which attracts millions of international tourists every year. As part of the United Kingdom, England’s official currency is the pound sterling (also known as the British pound or GBP).

Transport

BAA Limited runs many of England’s airports, its flagship being London Heathrow Airport, the largest airport by traffic volume in Europe and one of the world’s busiest airports, and London Gatwick Airport, the second largest. The third largest is Manchester Airport. This is run by Manchester Airport Group, which also owns various other airports. Other major airports include London Stansted Airport in Essex, about 30 miles (50 km) north of London and Birmingham International Airport.

The growth in private car ownership in the latter half of the twentieth century led to a number of road-building programmes. Important trunk roads built include the A1 Great North Road from London to Newcastle and Edinburgh, and the A580 «East Lancs.» road between Liverpool and Manchester. The Preston Bypass was the first section of motorway and opened in 1958—it now forms part of the M6 motorway, the country’s longest motorway running from Rugby through North West England to the Scottish border.

The National Rail network consists of 10,072 route miles (16,116 route km) in Great Britain, of which the majority is in England. Urban rail networks are also well developed in London and several other cities, including the Manchester Metrolink and the London Underground, the oldest and most extensive underground railway in the world, and consisting of 253 miles (407 kilometers) of line and serves 275 stations.

There are around 4400 miles of navigable waterways in England, of which roughly half is owned by British Waterways. It is estimated that 165 million journeys are made by people on Britain’s waterways annually. The Thames is the major waterway in England, with imports and exports focused at Tilbury, one of the three major ports in the UK.

Demographics

With around 55 million inhabitants, England is the most populous nation in the United Kingdom, as well as being the most ethnically diverse. England would have the fourth largest population in the European Union and would be the 25th largest country by population if it were a sovereign state.

The country’s population is «aging,» with a declining percentage of the population under age 16 and a rising one of over 65. England is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, with 992 people per square mile (383 people per square kilometer) making it second only to the Netherlands.

The economic prosperity of England has made it a destination for economic migrants from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This was particularly true during the Industrial Revolution. Since the fall of the British Empire, numerous people from former colonies have migrated to Britain including the Indian sub-continent and the British Caribbean.

The continuous increase in population resulted from net immigration, from a rising birth rate, and increasing life expectancy.

Ethnicity

The generally accepted view is that the ethnic background of the English populace, before nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigration, was a mixed European one deriving from historical waves of Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Norman invasions, along with the possible survival of pre-Celtic ancestry. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, furthermore, brought much new immigration to England.

In some English cities the percentage of «minority groups» is large but is still less than half.

Ethnicity aside, the simplest view is that an English person is someone who was born in England and holds British nationality, regardless of his or her racial origin. The English frequently include themselves and their neighbors in the wider term of «British,» while the Scots and Welsh tend to be more forward about referring to themselves by one of those more specific terms. This reflects a more subtle form of English-specific patriotism in England; St George’s Day, the country’s national day, is barely celebrated, though celebrations have increased. Modern celebration of English identity is often found around its sports, one field in which the British Home Nations often compete individually—in football (soccer), rugby union, and cricket.

Religion

Unlike many countries, which are officially secular, the UK is an officially Christian country. This is reflected throughout British public life. The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, and acts as the «mother» and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Originally established as part of the Roman Catholic Church in 597 by Augustine of Canterbury on behalf of Pope Gregory I, the Church split from Rome in 1534 during the reign of Henry VIII of England. Some Church of England bishops sit in the House of Lords. The British monarch is required to be a member of the Church of England under the Act of Settlement 1701 and is the Supreme Governor. Roman Catholics are expressly forbidden from becoming monarch, stemming from conflict over the crown and whether Britain was in the past, Catholic or Protestant. The Church of England is based at Canterbury Cathedral and the Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior clergyman.

Other major Christian Protestant denominations in England include the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church. Smaller denominations include the Religious Society of Friends (the «Quakers») and the Salvation Army—both founded in England. There are also Afro-Caribbean Churches, especially in the London area.
The Roman Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in England in the nineteenth century. Attendances were considerably boosted by immigration, especially from Ireland and more recently Poland.

However, immigration has brought an enormous diversity of religious belief in England, levels of church attendance has declined, and there is a growing percentage that have no religious affiliation.

Language

The English language, which is spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue, although not officially designated as such. An Indo-European language in the Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family, it is closely related to Scots and Frisian. As the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged into England, «Old English» emerged; some of its literature and poetry has survived.

Used by aristocracy and commoners alike before the Norman Conquest (1066), English was displaced in cultured contexts under the new regime by the Norman French language of the new Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Its use was confined primarily to the lower social classes while official business was conducted in a mixture of Latin and French. Over the following centuries, however, English gradually came back into fashion among all classes and for all official business except certain traditional ceremonies, some of which survive to this day. But Middle English, as it had by now become, showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins; and in more recent years, Modern English has extended this custom, being always remarkable for its far-flung willingness to incorporate foreign-influenced words.

It is most commonly accepted that—thanks in large part to the British Empire, and now the United States—the English language became the world’s unofficial lingua franca, while English common law is also the foundation of many legal systems throughout the English-speaking countries of the world. English language learning and teaching is an important economic sector, including language schools, tourism spending, and publishing houses.

UK legislation does not recognize any language as being official, but English is the only language used in England for general official business.

The only non-Anglic native spoken language in England is the Cornish language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became extinct in the nineteenth century but has been revived and is spoken in various degrees of fluency, currently by around 2000 people. Languages spoken within ethnic minority communities include Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi, Urdu, Polish, Greek, Turkish, and Cantonese, as well as Romany.

Despite the relatively small size of the nation, there are a many distinct English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood elsewhere in the country. Use of foreign non-standard varieties of English (such as Caribbean English) is also increasingly widespread, mainly because of the effects of immigration.

Men and women

About half of British women work, and of these, half are part-time workers. The ideal of gender equality is widely shared, but inequality is evident in access to occupations by women and men, pay levels for similar kinds of work, and in the allocation of domestic tasks.

Marriage and the family

Historically most people in England lived either in conjugal extended families or nuclear families. This reflected an economic landscape where most people tended to have less spending power, meaning that it was more practical to stick together rather than go their individual ways. This pattern also reflected gender roles. Men were expected to go out to work and women were expected to stay at home and look after the families.

In the twentieth century, the emancipation of women, the greater freedoms enjoyed by both men and women in the years following the Second World War, greater affluence and easier divorce have changed gender roles and living arrangements significantly. The trend is a rise in single people living alone, the virtual extinction of the extended family (outside certain ethnic minority communities), and the nuclear family reducing in prominence.

From the 1990s, the break-up of the traditional family unit, when combined with a low interest rate environment and other demographic changes, has created great pressure on the housing market, in particular regarding the accommodation of key workers such as nurses, other emergency service workers and teachers, who are priced out of most housing, especially in South East England.

Some research indicates that in the twenty-first century, young people tend to live in the parental home for much longer than their predecessors. The high cost of living, combined with rising cost of accommodation, further education and higher education means that many young people cannot afford to live independent lives from their families.

Premarital sex and unmarried cohabitation are widely accepted. However, single motherhood caused by unstable cohabiting relationships, or marital breakdown, or as a means of obtaining welfare, is seen as a big problem because of its drain on the welfare budget, and subsequent problems of child abuse, and juvenile delinquency, rather than as a moral question.

Education

England is home to the oldest existing schools in the English speaking world: The King’s School, Canterbury and The King’s School, Rochester, believed to be founded in the sixth and seventh century respectively. There are at least eight existing schools in England which were founded in the first millennium. Most of these ancient institutions are fee-paying schools, although there are early examples of state schools in England, most notably Beverley Grammar School founded in 700. State and private schools and colleges have continued side by side since that time. Other famous English schools include Eton College (founded 1440), Harrow School (1572)Winchester College (1382), Tonbridge School (1553) and Charterhouse School (1611). The oldest surviving girls’ school in England is Red Maids’ School, founded in 1634.

England is home to the two oldest universities in the English speaking world: Oxford University (twelfth century) and Cambridge University (early thirteenth century). There are more than ninety universities in England and many of these (most notably the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London) consist of autonomous colleges many of which are world famous in their own right, for example University College, Oxford (founded 1249), Peterhouse, Cambridge (1284) and the London School of Economics (1895).

England’s high literacy rate of 99 percent is attributable to universal public education introduced for the primary level in 1870 and secondary level in 1900. The education is split into two main types; State schools which are funded through taxation and free to all, and private schools, which provide a paid-for education on top of taxes (also known as «Public» or «Independent» schools).

Most English (but not independent) schools usher students through nursery school, one of two primary school tracks, and one of two secondary tracks, of which sixth form is optional. About one-fifth of British students go on to post-secondary education (18+).

Education follows the national curriculum, which was introduced in 1988, which includes the core subjects English, mathematics, and science and the foundation subjects: Design and technology, [[information and communication technology], history, geography, modern foreign languages (MFL), music, art and design, and the subjects of the basic curriculum, physical education, citizenship education, plus compulsory religious education (RE) which has a unique place in British law.

Class

Traditionally, British society has been stratified into three classes, with the highest occupied by the aristocratic inheritors of old, landed wealth. Those in the working class typically grew up in a family supported by wages earned in industrial or agricultural labor, where neither parent had university education, and the family home was rented. The working class supports the trade union movement and the Labor Party. A middle-class person has parents with white-collar jobs, who are likely to have higher education, own their suburban house, and who see education as the key to advancement. They tend to support the Conservative Party, which stresses self-sufficiency and individualism. However, de-industrialization, increased social mobility, and the emergence of the knowledge economy have re-defined notions of class, so that numerous educated middle class people vote for the Labor Party.

Culture

Many of the most important figures in the history of modern western scientific and philosophical thought were either born in, or at one time or other resided in, England. Major English thinkers of international significance include scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford, philosophers such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and Thomas Hobbes, and economists such as David Ricardo and John Maynard Keynes. Karl Marx wrote most of his important works, including Das Kapital, while in exile in London, and the team that developed the first atomic bomb began their work in the England, under the wartime codename tube alloys.

Architecture

The earliest remnants of architecture in the United Kingdom are mainly Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury, and Roman ruins such as the spa in Bath. Many castles remain from the medieval period and in most towns and villages the parish church is an indication of the age of the settlement, built as they were from stone rather than the traditional wattle and daub.

Over the two centuries following the Norman conquest of 1066, and the building of the Tower of London], many great castles such as Caernarfon Castle in Wales and Carrickfergus Castle in Ireland were built to suppress the natives. Windsor Castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation. Large houses continued to be fortified until the Tudor period, when the first of the large gracious unfortified mansions such as the Elizabethan Montacute House and Hatfield House were built.

The English Civil War (1642—1649) proved to be the last time in British history that houses had to survive a siege. Corfe Castle was destroyed following an attack by Oliver Cromwell’s army, but Compton Wynyates survived a similar ordeal. Inigo Jones, from just before the Civil War, and who is regarded as the first significant British architect, was responsible for importing Palladian architecture to Britain from Italy. The Queen’s House at Greenwich is perhaps his best surviving work.

Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, one of the best-known British architects, Sir Christopher Wren, was employed to design and rebuild many of the ruined ancient churches of London, although his master plan for rebuilding London as a whole was rejected. It was in this period that he designed the building that he is perhaps best known for, St Paul’s Cathedral.

In the early eighteenth century baroque architecture—popular in Europe—was introduced, and Blenheim Palace was built. However, baroque was quickly replaced by a return of the Palladian form. The Georgian architecture of the eighteenth century was an evolved form of Palladianism. Many existing buildings such as Woburn Abbey and Kedleston Hall are in this style. Among the many architects of this form of architecture and its successors, neoclassicism and Romanticism, were Robert Adam, Sir William Chambers, and James Wyatt.

In the early nineteenth century the romantic medieval gothic style appeared as a backlash to the symmetry of Palladianism, and such buildings as Fonthill Abbey were built. By the middle of the nineteenth century, as a result of new technology, construction incorporated steel. One of the greatest exponents of this was Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace. Paxton also continued to build such houses as Mentmore Towers, in the still popular retrospective English Renaissance styles. In this era of prosperity and development British architecture embraced many new methods of construction, but ironically in style, such architects as August Pugin ensured it remained firmly in the past.

At the beginning of the twentieth century a new form of design—arts and crafts—became popular. The architectural form of this style, which had evolved from the nineteenth century designs of such architects as George Devey, was championed by Edwin Lutyens. Arts and crafts in architecture is symbolized by an informal, non-symmetrical form, often with mullioned or lattice windows, multiple gables and tall chimneys. This style continued to evolve until World War II.

Following the Second World War, reconstruction went through a variety of phases, but was heavily influenced by Modernism, especially from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Many bleak town center redevelopments—criticized for featuring hostile, concrete-lined «windswept plazas»—were the fruit of this interest, as were many equally bleak public buildings, such as the Hayward Gallery. Many Modernist-inspired town centers are today in the process of being redeveloped.

In the immediate post-war years, perhaps hundreds of thousands of council houses in vernacular style were built, giving working class people their first experience of private gardens and indoor sanitation.

Modernism remains a significant force in English architecture, although its influence is felt predominantly in commercial buildings. The two most prominent proponents are Lord Rogers of Riverside, who created Rogers’ the iconic London Lloyd’s Building and the Millennium Dome, and Lord Foster of Thames Bank, who created the Swiss Re Buildings (aka The Gherkin) and the City Hall (London).

Since England has one of the highest population densities in Europe, housing tends to be smaller and more closely packed, particularly compared to North America. The British have a particular affinity with the terraced house, dating back to the aftermath of the Great Fire of London. The majority of surviving housing built before 1914 is of this type, and consequently it dominates inner residential areas. In the twentieth century the process of suburbanization led to a spread of semi-detached and detached housing. In the aftermath of the Second World War, public housing was dramatically expanded to create a large number of council estates, although most units in these have since been bought by their tenants.

Art

The oldest art in the United Kingdom can be dated to the Neolithic period, and is found in a funerary context. But it is in the Bronze age that the first innovative artworks are found. The Beaker people, who arrived in Britain around 2500 B.C.E., were skilled in metal refining, working at first in copper, but later bronze and gold. The Wessex culture excelled in making gold ornaments. Works of art placed in graves or sacrificial pits have survived.

In the Iron Age, the Celts made gold ornaments, but stone and most likely wood was also used. This style continued into the Roman period, and would find a renaissance in the Medieval period. It also survived in the Celtic areas not occupied by the Romans, largely corresponding to the present-day Wales and Scotland.

The Romans brought with them the classical style, glasswork, and mosaics. Christian art from the fourth century, has been preserved in mosaics with Christian symbols and pictures. Celtic and Scandinavian art have in common the use of intricate, intertwined patterns of decoration.

Anglo-Saxon sculpting was outstanding for its time in the eleventh century, as proved by pre-Norman ivory carvings. Celtic high crosses show the use of Celtic patterns in Christian art. Scenes from the Bible were depicted, framed with the ancient patterns. Some ancient symbols were redefined. Murals were painted on the white-chalked walls of stone churches, and stained glass was used in church and other windows.

As a reaction to abstract expressionism, pop art emerged originally in England at the end of the 1950s.

Significant figures in English art include William Blake, William Hogarth, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Twentieth century artists included Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, and the pop artists Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake. New York-born Sir Jacob Epstein was a pioneer of modern sculpture. More recently, the so-called Young British Artists have gained some notoriety, particularly Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Notable illustrators include Aubrey Beardsley, Roger Hargreaves, and Beatrix Potter.

England is home to the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St. Ives, and the Tate Modern.

Cinema

England has been influential in the technological, commercial, and artistic development of cinema and probably second only to the USA in producing the greatest quantity of world-wide film stars. Despite a history of successful productions, the industry is characterized by an ongoing debate about its identity (including economic and cultural issues) and the influences of American and European cinema, although it is fair to say a brief «golden age» was enjoyed in the 1940s from the studios of J. Arthur Rank and Korda.

Modern cinema is generally regarded as descending from the work of the French Lumière brothers in 1892, and their show first came to London in 1896. However, the first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. The film is the first known instance of a projected moving image. The first people to build and run a working 35 mm camera in Britain were Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres. They made the first British film Incident at Clovelly Cottage in February 1895, shortly before falling out over the camera’s patent.

Clothing

There is no specifically British national costume. In England, certain military uniforms such as the Beefeater or the King’s Guard are considered to be symbolic of Englishness, though they are not official national costumes. Morris dancers or the costumes for the traditional English May dance are cited by some as examples of traditional English costume.

This is in large part due to the critical role that British sensibilities have played in world clothing since the eighteenth century. Particularly during the Victorian era, British fashions defined acceptable dress for men of business. Key figures such as Beau Brummell, the future Edward VII and Edward VIII created the modern suit and cemented its dominance. As such, it could be argued that the national costume of the British male is a three-piece suit, necktie and bowler hat — an image regularly used by cartoonists as a caricature of Britishness.

Cuisine

Although highly-regarded in the Middle Ages, English cuisine later became a source of fun among Britain’s French and European neighbours, being viewed until the late twentieth century as crude and unsophisticated by comparison with continental tastes. However, with the influx of non-European immigrants (particularly those of south and east Asian origins) from the 1950s onwards, the English diet was transformed. Indian and Chinese cuisine in particular were absorbed into English culinary life. Restaurants and takeaways appeared in almost every town in England, and «going for an Indian» became a regular part of English social life. A distinct hybrid food style composed of dishes of Asian origin, but adapted to British tastes, emerged and was subsequently exported to other parts of the world. Many of the well-known Indian dishes, such as Tikka Masala and Balti, are in fact Anglo-Indian dishes of this sort. Chicken Tikka Masala is often jokingly referred to as England’s national dish, in a reference both to its English origins and to its enormous popularity.

Dishes forming part of the old tradition of English food include: Apple pie, bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, cornish pasty, cottage pie, egg salad, fish and chips, full English breakfast, gravy, jellied eels, Lancashire hotpot, Lincolnshire sausage, mince pies, pie and mash, pork pie, shepherd’s pie, spotted Dick, steak and kidney pie, Sunday roast, toad in the hole, and Yorkshire pudding.

Engineering and innovation

As birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England was home to many significant inventors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Famous English engineers include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges.

Other notable English figures in the fields of engineering and innovation include: Richard Arkwright, industrial spinning machine inventor; Charles Babbage, computer inventor (nineteenth century); Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, http, html, and many of the other technologies on which the Web is based; James Blundell, a physician who performed the first blood transfusion; Hubert Cecil Booth, vacuum cleaner inventor; Edwin Beard Budding, lawnmower inventor; George Cayley, seat belt inventor; Christopher Cockerell, hovercraft inventor; John Dalton, pioneer of atomic theory; James Dyson, dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner inventor; Thomas Fowler, thermosiphon inventor; Robert Hooke, who proposed Hooke’s law of elasticity; E. Purnell Hooley, Tarmacadam inventor; Isaac Newton, who defined universal gravitation, Newtonian mechanics, infinitesimal calculus; Stephen Perry, rubber band inventor; Percy Shaw, «cat’s eye» road safety device inventor; George and Robert Stephenson, (father and son) railway pioneers; Joseph Swan light bulb developer; Richard Trevithick, builder of the earliest steam locomotive; Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers, inventors of the modern computer and its associated concepts and technologies; Frank Whittle jet engine inventor; and Joseph Whitworth, inventor of numerous modern techniques and technologies of precision engineering.

Folklore

Many of the England’s oldest legends share themes and sources with the Celtic folklore of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, a typical example being the legend of Herne the Hunter, which shares many similarities with the traditional Welsh legend of Gwyn ap Nudd. Successive waves of pre-Norman invaders and settlers, from the Romans onwards, via Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Norse, to the Norman Conquest, have all influenced the myths and legends of England. Some tales, such as that of The Lambton Wyrm show a distinct Norse influence, while others, particularly some of the events and characters associated with the Arthurian legends show a distinct Romano-gaulic slant.

The most famous body of English folk-tales concerns the legends of King Arthur, although it would be wrong to regard these stories as purely English in origin as they also concern Wales and, to a lesser extent, Ireland and Scotland. They should therefore be considered as part of the folklore of the British Isles as a whole. Post-Norman stories include the tales of Robin Hood, which exist in many forms, and stories of other folk heroes such as Hereward The Wake, and Dunn of Cumbria who, although being based on historical characters, have grown to become legends in their own right. There are historical figures (such as Sir Francis Drake and «Drake’s Drum») who have legends associated with them.

Literature

England has produced a wealth of significant literary figures. Early English writers includeThomas Malory and Geoffrey of Monmouth. These romantic writers were followed by a wave of more realistic writers, including Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane Austen (often credited with inventing the modern novel), Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, and H. G. Wells. In the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, J. R. R. Tolkien, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, and Ian McEwan all excelled. Tolkien became one of the most popular writers of the modern world, returning to a Romantic view of fiction. Children’s author J. K. Rowling has had huge success.

Important poets include Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot (an English Citizen from 1927), [Wilfred Owen]], John Betjeman, Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, and Ted Hughes.

Media

England has an unrivaled number of media outlets, and the prominence of the English language gives it a widespread international dimension. The BBC is England’s publicly-funded radio and television broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest broadcaster in the world. Funded by a compulsory television license, the BBC operates several television networks and BBC Radio stations both in England and abroad. The BBC’s international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in 33 languages globally. Most digital cable television services are provided by NTL: Telewest, and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview.

British newspapers are either quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as «broadsheets» due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market, and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right-of-center broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the «quality» newspapers. The Guardian is a more liberal (left-wing) «quality» broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper. A number of British magazines and journals have achieved world-wide circulation including The Economist and Nature.

Music

Composers from England have not achieved recognition as broad as that earned by their literary counterparts, and particularly during the nineteenth century, were overshadowed in international reputation by other European composers; however, many works of earlier composers such as Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and Henry Purcell are still frequently performed throughout the world today. A revival of England’s musical status began during the twentieth century with the prominence of composers such as Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, William Walton, Eric Coates, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, and Benjamin Britten.

In popular music, however, English bands and solo artists have been cited as the most influential and best-selling musicians of all time. Acts such as The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, The Smiths, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Black Sabbath, The Cure, Iron Maiden, David Bowie, Queen, Spice Girls, Oasis, The Police, Robbie Williams, Sir Elton John and Radiohead,are among the biggest selling in the world. England is also credited with being the birthplace of many pop-culture movements such as hard rock, British invasion, heavy metal, britpop, glam rock, drum and bass, grindcore, progressive rock, indie, punk, goth, shoegazing, acid house, and UK garage.

Science and philosophy

Prominent English figures from the field of science and mathematics include Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, J. J. Thomson, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Christopher Wren, Alan Turing, Francis Crick, Joseph Lister, Tim Berners-Lee, Andrew Wiles, and Richard Dawkins. England played an important role in the development of Western philosophy, particularly during the Enlightenment. Jeremy Bentham, leader of the Philosophical Radicals, and his school are recognized as the men who unknowingly laid down the doctrines for Socialism. Bentham’s impact on English law is also considerable. Aside from Bentham, major English philosophers include Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Bernard Williams, Bertrand Russell, and A.J. Ayer.

Theatre

Theatre was introduced to England from Europe by the Romans who built auditoriums across the country. By the medieval period theatre had developed with the mummers’ plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon, and Robin Hood. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors traveled from town to town performing for their audiences in return for money and hospitality. The medieval mystery plays and morality plays, which dealt with Christian themes, were performed at religious festivals.

The reign of Elizabeth I in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century saw a flowering of drama. Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare, wrote around 40 plays that are still performed in theaters across the world to this day. They include tragedies, such as Hamlet (1603), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605); comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1594—1596) and Twelfth Night (1602); and history plays, such as Henry IV, part 1—2. The Elizabethan age is sometimes nicknamed «the age of Shakespeare» for the amount of influence he held over the era. Other important Elizabethan and seventeenth-century playwrights include Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster.

During the Interregnum (1642—1660), English theaters were kept closed by the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. When the London theaters opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they flourished under the personal interest and support of Charles II. Wide and socially mixed audiences were attracted by topical writing and by the introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare’s time, all female roles had been played by boys). New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic drama, and Restoration comedy. The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1676), The Rover (1677) by the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1696), and William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700). Restoration comedy is famous or notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court.

In the eighteenth century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy lost favor, to be replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian opera. Popular entertainment became more important in this period than ever before, with fair-booth burlesque and mixed forms that are the ancestors of the English music hall. These forms flourished at the expense of legitimate English drama, which went into a long period of decline. By the early nineteenth century it was no longer represented by stage plays at all, but by the closet drama, plays written to be privately read in a «closet» (a small domestic room).

A change came in the late nineteenth century with the plays on the London stage by the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, all of whom influenced domestic English drama and revitalised it.

The West End of London has a large number of theaters, particularly centered around Shaftesbury Avenue. A prolific composer of the twentieth century, Andrew Lloyd Webber, has dominated the West End for a number of years and his musicals have travelled to Broadway in New York and around the world, as well as being turned into films.

Sport

A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union and rugby league, football, tennis, and badminton. Of these, association football, rugby and cricket remain the country’s most popular spectator sports. England contains more UEFA five-star and four-star rated stadia than any other country, and is home to some of the sport’s top football clubs. The England national football team are considered one of the game’s superpowers, having won the World Cup in 1966 when it was hosted in England. Since then, however, they have failed to reach a final of a major international tournament, though they reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in 1990 and the quarter-finals in 2002 and 2006 and Euro 2004.

The England national rugby union team and England cricket team are often among the best performing in the world, with the rugby union team winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup, and the cricket team winning The Ashes in 2005, and being ranked the second best Test Cricket nation in the world. Rugby union clubs such as Leicester Tigers, London Wasps and the Northampton Saints have had success in the Europe-wide Heineken Cup. At rugby league, the England national rugby league team competed more regularly after 2006, when England became a full test nation in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, when that team retired.

Thoroughbred racing originated under Charles II of England as the «Sport of Kings» and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National and the Epsom Derby.

Many teams and drivers in Formula One and the World Rally Championship are based in the England. The country also hosts legs of the Formula One and World Rallying Championship calendars and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the BTCC. British Formula One world champions include Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill (twice), Jim Clark (twice), John Surtees (who was also successful on motorcycles), Jackie Stewart (three times), James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, and Graham Hill’s son, Damon Hill. British drivers have not been as successful in the World Rally championship, with only Colin McRae and the late Richard Burns winning the title.

Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England. The 2012 Summer Olympics are to be hosted by London, England. London will become the first city to have hosted the modern Olympic Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and 1948.

Nomenclature

Alternative names include:

• the slang «Blighty,» from the Hindustani «bila yati» meaning «foreign» (which coincidentally resembles «Britain»)
• «Albion,» an ancient name, supposedly referring to the white (Latin alba) cliffs of Dover. Originally it referred to the whole island of Great Britain, and is still sometimes seen that way today, but is more often used for England. Following the Roman conquest of Britain, the term contracted to mean only the area north of Roman control and is today a relative of Alba, the Celtic languages name for Scotland.
• More poetically, England has been called «this sceptred isle…this other Eden» and «this green and pleasant land,» quotations respectively from the poetry of William Shakespeare (in Richard II) and William Blake (And did those feet in ancient time).

Slang terms sometimes used for the people of England include «Sassenachs» or «Sasanachs» (from the Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic respectively, both originally meaning «Saxon»), «Limeys» (in reference to the citrus fruits carried aboard English sailing vessels to prevent scurvy) and «Pom/Pommy» (used in Australian English and New Zealand English), but these may be perceived as offensive.

Symbols

The English flag is a red cross on a white background, commonly called the Cross of Saint George. It was adopted after the Crusades. Saint George, later famed as a dragon-slayer, is also the patron saint of England. The three golden lions or leopards on a red background was the banner of the kings of England derived from their status as Duke of Normandy and is now used to represent the English national football team and the English national cricket team, though in blue rather than gold. The English oak and the Tudor rose are also English symbols, the latter of which is (although more modernized) used by the England national rugby union team.

England has no official anthem; however, the United Kingdom’s «God Save the King» is widely regarded as England’s unofficial national anthem. However, other songs are sometimes used, including «Land of Hope and Glory» (used as England’s anthem in the Commonwealth Games), «Jerusalem,» «Rule Britannia,» and «I Vow to Thee, My Country.» Of these, only Jerusalem specifically mentions England.

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Boyce, David George. The Irish Question and British Politics, 1868-1996. Palgrave Macmillan, 1996. ISBN 978-0312161064
• Brewer, Ebenezer. Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Wordsworth Editions, 2006 (original 2001). ISBN 1840223103
• Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order. Basic Books, 2003. ISBN 0465023282
• Goldthorpe, John H., Catriona Llewellyn, and Clive Payne. Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 (original 1980). ISBN 978-0198272472
• Macfarlane, Alan. The Culture of Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1987. ISBN 978-0631136262
• Macfarlane, Alan. The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property, and Social Transition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ISBN 978-0521295703.
• Marden, Orison Swett, and George Raywood Devitt (eds.). Home Lover’s Library. Kessinger Publishing, 2003. ISBN 076615324X
• Sampson, Anthony. The Changing Anatomy of Britain. New York: Random House, 1983. ISBN 978-0394531434

External links

All links retrieved November 1, 2022.

• England Lonely Planet
• English Heritage
• Historic England
• Public Health England

England^[1] is a country^[2] located to the north-west of continental Europe and is the largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total population of the United Kingdom,^[3] whilst the mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and English Channel.

England became a unified state during the tenth century and takes its name from the Angles — one of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in the territory during the fifth and sixth centuries. The capital city of England is London, which is the largest city in the United Kingdom, and the largest city in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.^[4]

England ranks amongst the world’s most influential and far-reaching centres of cultural development.^[5][6] It is the place of origin of both the English language and the Church of England, It was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution^[7] and was the first country in the world to become industrialised. England is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science. The English political system for 1000 years has been based on Parliament, and for 800 years on the Magna Carta (‘Great Charter’), which defined individual rights. It built a worldwide British Empire, and the numerous countries that evolved from the Empire, including the United States of America, Canada, India and South Africa, adopted English Law and variations of the parliamentary system that has operated for 1000 years, as well as commitments to individual rights that were first established by the Magna Carta of 1215.

The Kingdom of England was a separate state until 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Etymology

England is named after the Angles (Old English genitive case, «Engla» — hence, Old English «Engla Land»), the largest of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in England in the fifth and sixth centuries, who are believed to have originated in the peninsula of Angeln, in modern-day northern Germany.

Their name has had a variety of different spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the name Anglii by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania,^[8] written around 98. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, together with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on «an island in the Ocean.»

The terms Angelfolc, Anglorum and Anglis were all used by Bede in Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) when referring to England and the English people.^[9]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary entry^[10], the word Angle is derived from the same root as the word angle, originally meaning a fish hook and in this instance referring to the shape of the district where the Angles originated.

History

Prehistoric England

Bones and flint tools found in Norfolk and Suffolk show that Homo erectus lived in what is now England around 700,000 years ago.^[11] At this time, England was linked to mainland Europe by a large land bridge. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and the Seine. These people were depopulated during the period of the last major ice age as with other inhabitants of the British Isles. In the subsequent recolonisation, after the thawing of the ice, genetic research^[12] shows that ‘England’ was the last area of the British Isles to be repopulated (circa 13,000 years ago). The migrants arriving during this period contrast with the other of the inhabitants of the British Isles, coming across land from the south east of Europe, whereas earlier arriving inhabitants came north along a coastal route from Iberia.

Roman conquest of England

By 43 ad, the time of the successful Roman invasion of England, Britain had already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Julius Caesar in 55 bc made landings and in 54 bc he defeated the Britons, led by Cassivellaunus. Like other regions on the edge of the empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans and their economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the late British Iron Age, especially in the south. After a century of weakness, the final Roman collapse came in 410.^[13]

Anglo-Saxon England

The History of Anglo-Saxon England begins with the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth century and ends with the Conquest by the Normans in 1066.

Fragmentary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the fifth and sixth centuries comes from the British writer Gildas (6th century) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the English people begun in the ninth century), saints’ lives, poetry, archaeological findings, and place-name studies.

The dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity is thought to have come from three directions — Rome from the south and Scotland and Ireland to the north and west.

Heptarchy is a term used to refer to the existence (as believed) of the seven petty kingdoms which eventually merged to become the Kingdom of England during the early tenth century. These were Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex.

The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As early as the time of Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised as Bretwalda, or «Lord of Britain». Generally speaking, the title fell in the seventh century to the kings of Northumbria, in the eighth to those of Mercia, and finally, in the ninth, to Egbert of Wessex, who in 825 defeated the Mercians at Ellendun. In the next century his family came to rule all England.

Kingdom of England

Originally, England (or Angleland) was a geographical term to describe the territory of Britain which was occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual nation state.

The Kingdom of England was not founded until the separate petty kingdoms were unified under Alfred the Great King of Wessex, who later proclaimed himself King of the English after liberating London from the Danes in 886.

For the next few hundred years, the Kingdom of England would fall in and out of power between several West-Saxon and Danish kings. For over half a century, the unified Kingdom of England became part of a vast Danish empire under Canute the Great, before regaining independence for a short period under the restored West-Saxon lineage of Edward the Confessor.

The Kingdom of England continued to exist as an independent nation-state right through to the Acts of Union and the Union of Crowns. However the political ties and direction of England were changed for ever by the Norman conquest in 1066.

Norman conquest

In 1066 William Duke of Normandy led the Norman invasion of England, killing King Harold at the Battle of Hastings and taking the English throne. It was an important watershed in English history for a number of reasons. The conquest linked England more closely with Continental Europe and lessened Scandinavian influence. The success of the conquest established one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe, created the most sophisticated governmental system in Europe, changed the English language and culture, and set the stage for English-French conflict that would last into the nineteenth century.

The events of the conquest also paved the way for a pivotal historical document to be produced — the Domesday Book. The Domesday Book was the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William the Conqueror.

To date, the Norman conquest remains the last successful military conquest of England.

Mediaeval

The next few hundred years saw England as an important part of expanding and dwindling empires based in France, with the «King of England» being a subsidiary title of a succession of French-speaking Dukes of territories in what is now France. Only when English kings realised that their losses in France meant that England was now their richest and most important possession did they accept the same «nationality» and language as their subjects in England. They used England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in France for many years (Hundred Years’ War); in fact the English crown did not relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until Calais was lost during the reign of Mary Tudor.

The Principality of Wales, under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales shared a legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called England and later England and Wales.

Reformation

The English Reformation was the process whereby the external authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with Royal Supremacy and the establishment of a Church of England outside the Roman Catholic Church and under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation differed from its other European counterparts in that it was more of a political than a theological dispute which was at the root of it.^[14] The break with Rome started in the reign of Henry VIII.

The English Reformation ultimately paved the way for the spread of Anglicanism in the church and other institutions.

English Civil War

For more information, see: English Civil War.

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations which took place between Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 until 1651. The first (1642–1645) and second (1648–1649) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war of (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

The Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II and the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a Protectorate (1653–1659): the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already-established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs could not govern without the consent of Parliament although this would not be cemented until the Glorious Revolution later in the century.

Charles II was the restored House of Stuart King of England in 1660.

Great Britain and the United Kingdom

When the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland merged to form the unified United Kingdom of Great Britain under the Acts of Union in 1707, both England and Scotland lost their individual political identities, while keeping separate legal identities. This union has subsequently changed its name twice: firstly on the merger with the Kingdom of Ireland following the Act of Union in 1800 creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, and then following the secession from the union of the Irish Free State under the terms of the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with the official name being changed in 1925. Throughout these changes, England retained a separate legal identity from its partners, with a separate legal system (English law) from those in Northern Ireland (Northern Irish law) and Scotland («Scots law»), and eventually the strong feelings of the Welsh were acknowledged when it was decided that the name would henceforth be «England and Wales».

Politics

There has not been a Government of England since 1707 when the Kingdom of England merged with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, although both kingdoms had been ruled by a single monarch since 1603 under James I. Prior to the Acts of Union 1707, England was ruled by a monarch and the Parliament of England.

Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland were given their own devolved parliaments shortly before the secession of the Irish Free State, and Northern Ireland continued to be the only region of the United Kingdom with a devolved government, until 1973. The Scottish and Welsh governing institutions were created by the UK parliament along with strong support from the majority of people of Scotland, and much weaker support in Wales, and are not independent of the rest of the United Kingdom. However, this gave each country a separate and distinct political identity, leaving England (83% of the UK population) as the only part of the UK directly ruled in nearly all matters by the British government in London. In Cornwall, a region of England claiming a distinct national identity, there has been a campaign for a Cornish assembly along Welsh lines by nationalist parties such as Mebyon Kernow.

In terms of national administration, England’s affairs are managed by a combination of the UK government, the UK parliament, a number of England-specific quangos, and the mostly unelected Regional Assemblies (a kind of nascent executive for each English Region).

There are calls for a «devolved» English Parliament, and some English people and parties go further by calling for the dissolution of the Union entirely. However, the major political parties on the whole consider that England is too large to be governed as a single sub-state entity.

Subdivisions

Historically, the highest level of local government in England was the county. These divisions had emerged from a range of units of old, pre-unification England (such as the Kingdoms of Sussex and Kent) and further mediaeval reorganisations (sometimes using duchies such as Lancashire and Cornwall). These historical county lines were usually drawn up before the industrial revolution and the mass urbanisation of England. The counties each had a county town and many county names were drawn from these (for example Nottinghamshire, from Nottingham).

A series of local government reorganisations have taken place since the latter part of the nineteenth century. The solution to the emergence of large urban areas was the creation of large metropolitan counties centred on cities (an example being Greater Manchester). The creation of unitary authorities, where districts gained the administrative status of a county, began with the 1990s reform of local government. Today, some confusion exists between the ceremonial counties (which do not necessarily form an administrative unit) and the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties.

Non-metropolitan counties (or «shire counties») are divided into one or more districts. At the very lowest level, England is divided into civil parishes, though these are not to be found everywhere (many urban areas for example are unparished). Civil parishes are prohibited from existing in Greater London.

England is now also divided into nine regions, which do not have an elected authority and exist to co-ordinate certain local government functions across a wider area. London is an exception, however, and is the one region which now has a representative authority as well as a directly elected mayor. The 32 London boroughs and the Corporation of London remain the local form of government in the city.

Geography

England comprises the central and southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain, plus offshore islands of which the largest is the Isle of Wight. It is bordered to the north by Scotland and to the west by Wales. It is closer to continental Europe than any other part of the UK, divided from France only by a 21-mile sea gap.

Most of England consists of rolling hills, but it is more mountainous in the north with a chain of low mountains, the Pennines, dividing east and west. The dividing line between terrain types is usually indicated by the Tees-Exe line. There is also an area of flat, low-lying marshland in the east, the Fens, much of which has been drained for agricultural use.

The list of England’s largest cities is much debated because in English the normal meaning of «city» is «a continuously built-up urban area»; these are hard to define and various other definitions are preferred by some people to boost the ranking of their own city. For the official definition of a UK (and therefore English) city, see City status in the United Kingdom. However, by any practical definition London is by far the largest urban area in England and one of the largest and busiest cities in the world (though the offical «City of London» has a population of only about 4000). Birmingham is the second largest, both in terms of the city itself and its urban conurbation. A number of other cities, mainly in central and northern England, are of substantial size and influence. These include: Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Hull.

The Channel Tunnel, near Folkestone, directly links England to the European mainland. The English/French border is halfway along the tunnel, but each country has some jurisdiction even up to the end stations.

The largest natural harbour in England is at Poole, on the south-central coast.

Climate

England has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round, though the seasons are quite variable in temperature. However, temperatures rarely fall below −5 °C (23 °F) or rise above 30 °C (86 °F). The prevailing wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet weather to England regularly from the Atlantic Ocean. It is driest in the east and warmest in the south, which is closest to the European mainland. Snowfall can occur in Winter and early Spring, though it is not that common away from high ground.

The highest temperature ever recorded in England is 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) on August 10, 2003 at Brogdale, near Faversham, in Kent.^[16] The lowest temperature ever recorded in England is -26.1 °C (-15.0 °F) on January 10, 1982 at Edgmond, near Newport, in Shropshire.^[17]

Major rivers

• Severn (the longest river basin in Great Britain)
• Thames
• Trent
• Humber
• Tyne
• Tees
• Ribble
• Ouse
• Mersey
• Dee
• Avon

Major conurbations

Largest city^[18]

The largest cities in England are much debated but according to the urban area populations (continuous built-up areas) these would be the fifteen largest conurbations (population figures taken from 2001 census):

Greater London Urban Area	8,278,251
West Midlands conurbation	2,284,093
Greater Manchester Urban Area	2,240,230
West Yorkshire Urban Area	1,499,465
Tyneside	879,996
Liverpool Urban Area	816,216
Nottingham City Area	666,358
Sheffield Urban Area	640,720
Greater Bristol	551,066
Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton	461,181
Portsmouth Urban Area	442,252
Leicester Urban Area	441,213
Bournemouth Urban Area	383,713
Reading/Wokingham Urban Area	369,804
Teesside	365,323

Economics

Financial centre^[19]
England’s economy is the second largest economy in Europe and the fifth largest economy in the world. It follows the Anglo-Saxon economic model. England’s economy is the largest of the four economies of the United Kingdom, with 100 of Europe’s 500 largest corporations based in London.^[20] As part of the United Kingdom, England is a major centre of world economics. One of the world’s most highly industrialised countries, England is a leader in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors and in key technical industries, particularly aerospace, the arms industry and the manufacturing side of the software industry.

London exports mainly manufactured goods and imports materials such as oil, tea, wool, sugar, timber, butter, metals, and meat,^[21] exporting over 30,000 tonnes of beef last year, worth around £75,000,000, with France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain being the biggest importers of beef from England.^[22]

The central bank of the United Kingdom, which sets interest rates and implements monetary policy, is the Bank of England in London. London is also home to the London Stock Exchange, the main stock exchange in the UK and the largest in the world. London, is an international leader in finance^[23] and the largest financial centre in Europe.

Traditional heavy and manufacturing industries have declined sharply in England in recent decades, as they have in the United Kingdom as a whole. At the same time, service industries have grown in importance. For example, tourism is the sixth largest industry in the UK, contributing 76 billion pounds to the economy. It employs 1,800,000 full-time equivalent people — 6.1% of the working population (2002 figures).^[24] The largest centre for tourism is London, which attracts millions of international tourists every year.

As part of the United Kingdom, England’s official currency is the pound sterling (also known as the British pound or GBP).

Demographics

England is both the most populous and the most ethnically diverse nation in the United Kingdom with about 53,000,000 inhabitants, or 84% of the UK’s total.^[25] England would have the fourth largest population in the European Union and would be the 25th largest country by population if it were a sovereign state.
The country’s population is ‘ageing’, with a declining percentage of the population under age 16 and a rising one of over 65. Population continues to rise and in every year since 1901, with the exception of 1976, there have been more births than deaths.^[26] England is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, with 383 people per square kilometre (992/sq mi),^[27] making it second only to the Netherlands.

There is a debate over the extent to which the population of England (and indeed that of United Kingdom as a whole) is composed of long-standing indigenous stock or descended from various groups of settlers and immigrants who have arrived over millennia. The Cheddar Man has been cited as demonstrating that a substantial proportion of the present day population may be descended from groups that populated the island in prehistory (The Times, 8 March 1997). The often given view of English ethnicity is that it is a mixed one with large influences from various waves of Celtic, Norse, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions.

The economic prosperity of England has also made it a destination for economic migrants from the periphery of the UK; this was particularly true during the Industrial Revolution.

Since the fall of the British Empire, many denizens of former colonies have migrated to the United Kingdom including the Indian sub-continent and the British Caribbean. A BBC published report of the 2001 census, by the Institute for Public Policy Research stated that the vast majority of immigrants settled in London and the South East of England. The largest groups of residents born in other countries were from the Ireland, India, Pakistan, Germany, and the Caribbean. Though Germany was high on the list, this was mainly the result of children being born to British forces personnel stationed in that country.^[28]

Culture

England has a vast culture that encompasses elements both old and new. The modern culture of England is sometimes difficult to identify and separate clearly from the culture of the wider United Kingdom, so intertwined are its composite nations. However, the traditional and historic culture of England is more clearly defined.

English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. London’s British Museum, British Library and National Gallery contain some of the finest collections in the world.

The English have played a significant role in the development of the arts and sciences. Many of the most important figures in the history of modern western scientific and philosophical thought were either born in, or at one time or other resided in, England. Major English thinkers of international significance include scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford, philosophers such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell and Thomas Hobbes, and economists such as David Ricardo, and John Maynard Keynes. Karl Marx wrote most of his important works, including Das Kapital, whilst in exile in London, and the team that developed the first atomic bomb began their work in the England, under the wartime codename tube alloys.

Architecture

England has played a significant part in the advancement of Western architecture. It is home to some of the finest mediaeval castles and forts in the world (see Castles in England), including Warwick Castle, the Tower of London and Windsor Castle (the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation). It is also known for its numerous grand country houses (see List of historic houses in England), and for its many mediaeval and later churches and cathedrals.

English architects have contributed to a number of styles over the centuries, including Tudor architecture, English Baroque, the Georgian style and Victorian movements such as Gothic Revival.

Among the best-known contemporary English architects are Norman Foster and Richard Rogers.

Art

England is home to the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St. Ives, and the Tate Modern.
Significant figures in English art include William Blake, William Hogarth, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, through to the influential William Morris in the late nineteenth, to L. S. Lowry, Henry Moore and Francis Bacon during the twentieth century, and names such as David Hockney and Damien Hirst in the present day.

Cuisine

Although highly-regarded in the Middle Ages, English cuisine later became a source of fun among the UK’s French and European neighbours, being viewed until the late twentieth century as crude and unsophisticated by comparison with continental tastes. For example, the humble chip is a popular accompaniment to many dishes; these are simply potatoes cut into strips and deep-fried or grilled. However, with the influx of non-European immigrants (particularly those of south and east Asian origins) from the 1950s onwards, the English diet was transformed. Indian and Chinese cuisine in particular were absorbed into English culinary life, with restaurants and takeaways appearing in almost every town in England, and ‘going for an Indian’ becoming a regular part of English social life. A distinct hybrid food style composed of dishes of Asian origin, but adapted to British tastes, emerged and was subsequently exported to other parts of the world. Many of the well-known Indian dishes in the western world, such as Tikka Masala and Balti, are in fact Anglo-Indian dishes of this sort. Chicken Tikka Masala is often jokingly referred to as England’s national dish, in a reference both to its English origins and to its enormous popularity.

Dishes forming part of the old tradition of English food include:

Engineering and innovation

As birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England was home to many significant inventors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Famous English engineers include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges.

Recent English inventors include James Dyson, inventor of the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner.

Other notable English figures in the fields of engineering and innovation include:

• Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, HTTP, HTML, and many of the other technologies on which the Web is based.
• Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine.
• Charles Babbage, inventor of the first computer (in the nineteenth century).
• Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers, inventors of the modern computer and its associated concepts and technologies.
• Richard Trevithick, builder of the earliest steam locomotive.
• Richard Arkwright, inventor of the first industrial spinning machine.
• Joseph Whitworth, inventor of many of the modern techniques and technologies of precision engineering.
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel, inventor (in addition to the above) of the propeller, and pioneer of many modern structural engineering and construction techniques.
• James Blundell, who performed the first blood transfusion.
• Hubert Cecil Booth inventor of the Vacuum cleaner.
• Edwin Beard Budding, inventor of the lawnmower.
• George Cayley, inventor of the seat belt.
• Thomas Fowler, inventor of the thermosiphon.
• Stephen Perry, inventor of the rubber band.
• E. Purnell Hooley, inventor of tarmac.
• Joseph Swan, developer of the light bulb.
• Percy Shaw, inventor of the «cat’s eye» road safety device.

Folklore

English folklore is rich and diverse. Many of the land’s oldest legends share themes and sources with the Celtic folklore of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, a typical example being the legend of Herne the Hunter, which shares many similarities with the traditional Welsh legend of Gwyn ap Nudd.

Successive waves of pre-Norman invaders and settlers, from the Romans onwards, via Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Norse to the Norman Conquest have all influenced the myth and legend of England. Some tales, such as that of The Lambton Wyrm show a distinct Norse influence, whilst others, particularly some of the events and characters associated with the Arthurian legends show a distinct Romano-Gaulic slant.^[29]

The most famous body of English folktales concerns the legends of King Arthur, although it would be wrong to regard these stories as purely English in origin as they also concern Wales and, to a lesser extent, Ireland and Scotland. They should therefore be considered as part of the folklore of the British Isles as a whole.

Post-Norman stories include the tales of Robin Hood, which exists in many forms, and stories of other folk heroes such as Hereward The Wake and Dunn of Cumbria who, although being based on historical characters, have grown to become legends in their own right.

Finally, other historical figures come to have legends associated with them (such as Sir Francis Drake and ‘Drake’s Drum’). These figures then move out of the realm of historical fact and into the realm of mythology.

Literature

For more information, see: English literature.

The English language boasts a rich and prominent literary heritage. England has produced a wealth of significant literary figures including playwrights William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, as well as writers Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell and Harold Pinter. Others, such as Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton and J.K. Rowling have been among the best-selling novelists of the last century. Among the poets, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and many others remain read and studied around the world. Among men of letters, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt and George Orwell are some of the most famous. England continues to produce writers working in all branches of literature, and in a wide range of styles; contemporary English literary writers attracting international attention include Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Zadie Smith.

Music

Composers from England have often not achieved recognition as broad as that earned by their literary counterparts, and particularly during the nineteenth century were overshadowed in international reputation by other European composers; however, many works of earlier composers such as Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and Henry Purcell are still frequently performed today, and a revival of England’s musical status began during the twentieth century with the prominence of composers such as Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, William Walton, Eric Coates, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius and Benjamin Britten.

In popular music, English bands and solo artists have been cited as among the most influential and best-selling musicians of all time. Acts such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, David Bowie, Queen, Oasis, Sir Elton John and
Coldplay are amongst the biggest selling in the world. England is also credited with being the birthplace of many pop-culture movements such as Britpop, glam rock, drum and bass, grindcore, progressive rock, punk, shoegazing, acid house and UK Garage.

Science and philosophy

Prominent English figures from the fields of science and mathematics include Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, J. J. Thomson, Charles Babbage, Stephen Hawking, Christopher Wren, Alan Turing, Francis Crick, Joseph Lister, Tim Berners-Lee, Andrew Wiles and Richard Dawkins. Many scientists from other UK nations have completed their achievements whilst working at English academic institutions; for example, the Scotsmen Alexander Fleming and James Clerk Maxwell.

England played an important role in the development of Western philosophy, particularly during the Enlightenment. Major English philosophers include Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Bernard Williams and Bertrand Russell. Jeremy Bentham, leader of the Philosophical Radicals, and his school are recognised as the men who unknowingly laid down the doctrines for Socialism.^[30] Bentham’s impact on English law is also considerable.

Sport

A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union and rugby league, football, tennis and badminton. Of these, association football, rugby and cricket remain the country’s most popular spectator sports. England contains more UEFA 5 star and 4 star rated stadia than any other country, and is home to some of the sport’s top clubs. The England national football team are considered one of the game’s superpowers (currently ranked 8th by FIFA and 7th by Elo), having won the World Cup in 1966 when it was hosted in England. Since then, however, they have failed to reach a final of a major international tournament, though they reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in 1990 and the quarter-finals in 2002 and 2006 and Euro 2004.

The England national rugby union team and England cricket team are often among the best performing in the world, with the rugby union team winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup, and the cricket team winning The Ashes in 2005, and being ranked the second best Test nation in the world. Rugby union clubs such as Leicester Tigers, London Wasps and the Northampton Saints have had success in the Europe-wide Heineken Cup. At rugby league, the England national rugby league team are to compete more regularly after 2006, when England became a full test nation in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, when that team retired after the 2006 Rugby League Tri-Nations.

Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England.

The 2012 Summer Olympics were hosted by London, England. It ran from 26 July to 12 August 2012. London became the first city to have hosted the modern Olympic Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and 1948.

Language

English language

For more information, see: English language and History of the English language.

As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue today (although not officially designated as such). The language arose primarily out of the West-Germanic dialects spoken by Germanic tribes (notably, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians) that invaded and settled Britain from the 5th century AD onwards. After the 9th century, when Danish and, to some extent, Norwegian Vikings settled in the north-eastern part of Britain, the language absorbed some features from the Scandinavian languages.

Used by aristocracy and commoners alike before the Norman Conquest (1066), English was displaced in cultured contexts under the new regime by the Norman French language of the new Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Its use was confined primarily to the lower social classes while official business was conducted in a mixture of Latin and French. Over the following centuries, however, English gradually came back into fashion among all classes and for all official business except certain traditional ceremonies, some of which survive to this day. But Middle English, as it had by now become, showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins; and more recent years, Modern English has extended this custom, being always remarkable for its far-flung willingness to incorporate foreign-influenced words.

It is most commonly accepted that the English language is now the world’s unofficial lingua franca,^[31] while English common law is also the foundation of many legal systems throughout the English-speaking countries of the world.^[32]

Additional languages

UK legislation does not recognise any language as being official,^[33] but English is the only language used in England for general official business. The other national languages of the UK (Welsh, Irish, Scots and Scottish Gaelic) are confined to their respective nations, except Welsh to some degree.

The only non-Anglic native spoken language in England is the Cornish language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became close to extinction in the 18th century but has been revived since the beginning of the 20th century and is spoken in various degrees of fluency, currently by around 2000 people.^[34] This has no official status (unlike Welsh) and is not required for official use, but is nonetheless supported by national and local government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Cornwall County Council has produced a draft strategy to develop these plans. There is, however, no programme as yet for public bodies to actively promote the language. Scots is spoken by some adjacent to the Anglo-Scottish Border, and Welsh is still spoken by some natives around Oswestry, Shropshire, on the Welsh border.

Most deaf people within England speak British sign language (BSL), a sign language native to the UK. The British Deaf Association estimates that 250,000 people throughout the UK speak BSL as their first or preferred language,^[35] but does not give statistics specific to England. Neither Cornish nor BSL are official languages of the UK and most British government departments and hospitals have limited facilities for deaf people. The BBC broadcasts several of its programmes with BSL interpreters.

Different languages from around the world, especially from the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations, have been brought to England by immigrants. Many of these are widely spoken within ethnic minority communities, with Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu, Polish, Greek, Turkish and Cantonese being the most common languages that people living in the UK consider their first language. These are often used by official bodies to communicate with the relevant sections of the community, particularly in big cities, but this occurs on an «as needed» basis rather than as the result of specific legislative ordinances.

Other languages have also traditionally been spoken by minority populations in England, including Romany.

Despite the relatively small size of the nation, there are a many distinct English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood elsewhere in the country. Use of foreign non-standard varieties of English (such as Caribbean English) is also increasingly widespread, mainly because of the effects of immigration.

Religion

Owing to immigration in the past decades, among other things, there is an enormous diversity of religious belief in England, as well as a growing percentage who have no religious affiliation. Levels of attendance in many denominations have been declining for some time. England today is, in practice, largely a secular country. Answers people give to questions about their religion vary with the form and context of the questions: in the census for 2011, the majority still put themselves down as Christian (though, if the trend from the 2001 census continues, this will no longer be true by the next census), but opinion polls commonly find only a minority identifying with any religion. Non-Christian religions are growing, as are some forms of Christianity.

Christianity

Christianity reached England through missionaries from Scotland and from Continental Europe; the era of St. Augustine (the first Archbishop of Canterbury) and the Celtic Christian missionaries in the north (notably St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert). The Synod of Whitby in 664 ultimately led to the English Church being fully part of Roman Catholicism. Early English Christian documents surviving from this time include the seventh century illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels and the historical accounts written by the Venerable Bede. England has many early cathedrals, most notably York Minster (1080), Durham Cathedral (1093) and Salisbury Cathedral (1220), In the 16th century, the Church was split from Rome over the issue of the annulment of King Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The split led to the emergence of a separate ecclesiastical authority, and later the influence of the Reformation, resulting in the Church of England and Anglicanism. The Church of England is an established church in a stronger sense than the Church of Scotland.

The sixteenth century break with Rome under the reign of King Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries had major consequences for the Church (as well as for politics). The Church of England remains the largest Christian church in England; it is part of the Anglican communion. Many of the Church of England’s cathedrals and parish churches are historic buildings of significant architectural importance.

Other major Christian Protestant denominations in England include the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church. Smaller denominations, but not insignificant, include the Religious Society of Friends (the «Quakers») and the Salvation Army — both founded in England. There are also Afro-Caribbean Churches, especially in the London area.

The Roman Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in England in the nineteenth century. Attendances were considerably boosted by immigration, especially from Ireland,a nd more recently from Poland.

Other religions

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, immigration from South Asia and the Middle East has resulted in a considerable growth in Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism in England. Cities and towns with large Muslim communities include Birmingham, Blackburn, Bolton, Bradford, Leicester, London, Luton, Manchester and Oldham. Cities and towns with large Sikh communities include London, Slough, Staines, Hounslow, Southall, Reading, Ilford, Barking, Dagenham, Leicester, Leeds, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and others.

The Jewish community in England is mainly located in the Greater London area, particularly the north west suburbs such as Golders Green;^[36] although Manchester and Gateshead also have significant Jewish communities.^[37][38]

Education

There is a long history of the promotion of education in England in schools, colleges and universities. England is home to the oldest existing schools in the English speaking world: The King’s School, Canterbury and The King’s School, Rochester, believed to be founded in the sixth and seventh century respectively. There are at least eight existing schools in England which were founded in the first millennium, including also Beverley Grammar School founded in 700. State and independent schools and colleges exist side by side. Other famous English schools include Eton College (founded 1440), Harrow School (1572) and Winchester College (1382). England is also home to the two oldest universities in the English speaking world: Oxford University (twelfth century) and Cambridge University (early thirteenth century). There are more than ninety universities in England and many of these (most notably the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London) consist of autonomous colleges many of which are world famous in their own right, for example University College, Oxford (founded 1249), Peterhouse, Cambridge (1284) and the London School of Economics (1895).

The state education system in England is run by the Department for Education (DfS). The education is split into two main types; State schools which are funded through taxation and free to all, and independent schools, which provide a paid-for education on top of taxes (including what are known as «Public» schools).

Education is the responsibility of Department for Education at national level. Locally, the Local Education Authorities still have functions, but the tendency has been to reduce these, as publicly funded schools have been encouraged to seek central funding.

Transport

BAA Limited runs many of England’s airports, its flagship being London Heathrow Airport, the largest airport by traffic volume in Europe and one of the world’s busiest airports, and London Gatwick Airport, the second largest. The third largest is Manchester Airport. This is run by Manchester Airport Group, which also owns various other airports. Other major airports include London Stansted Airport in Essex, about thirty miles (50 km) north of London and Birmingham International Airport, in Birmingham.

The growth in private car ownership in the latter half of the twentieth century led to a number of major road-building programmes. Important trunk roads built include the A1 Great North Road from London to Newcastle and Edinburgh, and the A580 road between Liverpool and Manchester. The Preston Bypass was the first section of motorway and opened in 1958 — it now forms part of the M6 motorway, the country’s longest motorway running from Rugby through North West England to the Scottish border. Other major roads include the M1 motorway from London to Leeds up the East of the country, the M25 motorway which encircles London, the M60 motorway which encircles Manchester, the M4 motorway from London to South Wales, the M62 motorway from Liverpool to Manchester and Yorkshire, and the M5 motorway from Birmingham to Bristol and the South West.

The National Rail network of 10,072 route miles (16,116 route km) in Great Britain, of which the majority is in England. Urban rail networks are also well developed in London and several other cities, including the Manchester Metro and the London Underground. The London Underground is the oldest and most extensive underground railway in the world, and as of 2007 consists of 253 miles (407 kilometres) of line^[39] and serves 275 stations.^[40]

There are around 4,400 miles of navigable waterways in England, of which roughly half is owned by British Waterways. It is estimated that 165 million journeys are made by people on Britain’s waterways annually. The Thames is the major waterway in England, with imports and exports focused at Tilbury, one of the three major ports in the UK. Ports in the UK handled over 560 million tonnes of domestic and international freight in 2005.^[41]

The government department overseeing transport is the Department for Transport.

English people

As an ethnic group, the English trace their heritage to the Romano-Britons,^[42] Anglo-Saxons,^[43] the Danish-Vikings^[44] that formed the Danelaw during the time of Alfred the Great and the Normans.^[45][46]

Regardless of ethnic connotations, the simplest view is that an English person is someone who is from England and holds British nationality, regardless of his or her racial origin. It has, however, been a notoriously complicated, emotive and controversial identity to delimit.

Centuries of English dominance within the United Kingdom has created a situation where to be English is, as a linguist would put it, an «unmarked» state. The English frequently include their neighbours in the wider term of «British», while the Scots and Welsh tend to be more forward about referring to themselves by one of those more specific terms.^[47] This reflects a more subtle form of English-specific patriotism in England; St George’s Day, the country’s national day, is barely celebrated.^[48]

It is believed by some historians that the ‘natural culture’ of England contains the legacies of Brythonic tribes of Celts and Anglo-Saxons that appeared in waves of gradual migration. It also is seen as being influenced by the Scandinavian legends such as Beowulf, and by the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a common early location for English identity.^[49]

The Scandinavian influences of the Normans are also hotly disputed as the Norse occupants of Normandy spent three to five generations in (Post Roman Frankia) France before advancing to England.^[50] Due to the inefficiency in determining the German population of England, which was greatly diminished by William the Conqueror, exactly how many of the Normans took «Celtic» wives preceding this invasion is unknown, and the issue may very well be unsolvable.^[51]

Modern celebration of English identity is often found around its sports, one field in which the British Home Nations often compete individually. The English Association football team, Rugby Union team and Cricket team often cause increases in the popularity of celebrating Englishness.

According to research and the analysis of names in the UK in 2006, the town of Ripley in Derbyshire has the highest proportion of people of ethnic-English origin.^[52] The analysis put 42.2 million adult voters in mainland Britain into two hundred ethnic groups, based on both given names and surnames. Of Ripley’s inhabitants, 88.5% have an English-ethnic background. Heanor, also in Derbyshire, was in second place, followed by Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and Boston, Lincolnshire.

Nomenclature

The country is named after the Angles, one of several Germanic tribes who settled in the country during the fifth and sixth centuries. In other languages, several patterns emerge in the words their speakers use to refer to England; the majority are similar to ‘England’; Celtic names mainly come from a reference to the Saxons, another tribe who settled in England; and a third group comprises unique names.

Alternative names for England include:

• the slang ‘Blighty’, from the Hindustani ‘bila yati’ meaning ‘foreign’
• ‘Albion’, an ancient name, supposedly referring to the white (Latin alba) cliffs of Dover. Originally it referred to the whole island of Great Britain, and is still sometimes seen that way today, but is more often used for England. Following the Roman conquest of Britain, the term contracted to mean only the area north of Roman control and is today a relative of Alba, the Celtic languages name for Scotland.

• More poetically, England has been called «this sceptred isle…this other Eden» and «this green and pleasant land», quotations respectively from the poetry of William Shakespeare (in Richard II) and William Blake (And did those feet in ancient time).

Slang terms sometimes used for the people of England include «Sassenachs» or «Sasanachs» (from the Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic respectively, both originally meaning «Saxon»), «Limeys» (in reference to the citrus fruits carried aboard English sailing vessels to prevent scurvy) and «Pom/Pommy» (used in Australian English and New Zealand English), but these may be perceived as offensive. Also see alternative words for British.

National symbols and insignia

The two main traditional symbols of England are the St George’s cross (the English flag), and the Three Lions coat of arms.

Other national symbols exist, but have varying degrees of official usage, such as the oak tree and the rose.

England’s National Day is St George’s Day (Saint George being the patron saint), which is on 23 April.^[53]

St George’s Cross

The St George’s Cross is a red cross on a white background. It is the official national flag of England. In the past it was rarely seen flying, but in recent times has experienced an increase in popularity. It is believed to have been adopted for the uniform of English soldiers during the Crusades of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From about 1277 it officially became the national flag of England.

St George’s Cross was originally the flag of Genoa and was adopted by England and the City of London in 1190 for their ships entering the Mediterranean to benefit from the protection of the powerful Genoese fleet. The maritime Republic of Genoa was rising and going to become, together with its rival Venice, one of the most important powers in the world. The English Monarch paid an annual tribute to the Doge of Genoa for this privilege. The cross of St George would become the official Flag of England.

A red cross acted as a symbol for many Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It became associated with St George and England, along with other countries and cities (such as Georgia, Milan and the Republic of Genoa), which claimed him as their patron saint and used his cross as a banner. It remained in national use until 1707, when the Union Flag (also known as the Union Jack, especially at sea) which English and Scottish ships had used at sea since 1606, was adopted for all purposes to unite the whole of Great Britain under a common flag. The flag of England no longer has much of an official role, but it is widely flown by Church of England properties and at sporting events. The Flag of St George has gained popularity in recent years, and is widely seen flown out of houses, or on cars during important sporting tournaments in which England is competing. (Paradoxically, the latter is a fairly recent development; until the late twentieth century, it was commonplace for fans of English teams to wave the Union Flag, rather than the St George’s Cross).

Three Lions

The arms of England are gules, three lions passant guardant or; the earliest surviving record of their use was by Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) in the late twelfth century.

Since union with Scotland and Ireland (or, today, Northern Ireland), the arms of England are no longer used on their own; instead they form a part of the conjoined Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom. However, both the Football Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board use logos based on the three lions. In recent years, it has been common to see banners of the arms flown at English football matches, in the same way the Lion Rampant is flown in Scotland.

In 1996, Three Lions was the official song of the England football team for the 1996 European Football Championship, which were held in England.

Rose

The Tudor rose is the national floral emblem of England, and was adopted as a national emblem of England around the time of the Wars of the Roses.^[54]

The rose is used in a variety of contexts in its use for England’s representation. Technically, the rose of England should always be a Tudor, or half-red-half-white rose,^[55] symbolising the end of both the Wars of the Roses and the subsequent marriage between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. This symbolism is reflected in the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom and the crest of the FA. However, the rose of England is often displayed as a red rose (which also symbolises Lancashire), such as the badge of the England national rugby union team. A white rose (which also symbolises Yorkshire) is also used on different occasions.

National anthem

England does not have an official national anthem, as the United Kingdom as a whole has «God Save the Queen» as its national anthem.

The following though are widely regarded as unofficial English national hymns:

• «I Vow to Thee, My Country»: words by Cecil Spring-Rice, music by Gustav Holst
• «Land of Hope and Glory»: words by A C Benson, music by Edward Elgar
• «Nimrod»: music by Edward Elgar
• «Jerusalem»: words by William Blake, music by Hubert Parry

To a lesser extent, Heart of Oak, the unofficial Royal Navy anthem has also been proposed. Music by Dr. William Boyce (1711–1779). English words by the famous actor David Garrick (1716–1779) in 1759.

«God Save the Queen», which is the national anthem for the UK as a whole, is usually played for English sporting events against teams from other countries (although «Land of Hope and Glory» has also been used as the English anthem for the Commonwealth Games and the England national rugby league team). «Jerusalem» has been sung before England cricket matches. «Rule Britannia» (Britannia being the Roman name for Great Britain a personification of the United Kingdom) was often used in the past for the English national football team when they played against another of the home nations but more recently «God Save the Queen» has been used by both the rugby union and football teams.

References

The Bronze Age began around 2500 BC with the appearance of bronze objects. The Bronze Age saw a shift of emphasis from the communal to the individual, and the rise of increasingly powerful elites whose power came from their prowess as hunters and warriors and their controlling the flow of precious resources to manipulate tin and copper into high-status bronze objects such as swords and axes. Settlement became increasingly permanent and intensive. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, many examples of very fine metalwork began to be deposited in rivers, presumably for ritual reasons and perhaps reflecting a progressive change in emphasis from the sky to the earth, as a rising population put increasing pressure on the land. England largely became bound up with the Atlantic trade system, which created a cultural continuum over a large part of Western Europe. It is possible that the Celtic languages developed or spread to England as part of this system; by the end of the Iron Age there is much evidence that they were spoken across all England and western parts of Britain.

The Iron Age is conventionally said to begin around 800 BC. The Atlantic system had by this time effectively collapsed, although England maintained contacts across the Channel with France, as the Hallstatt culture became widespread across the country. Its continuity suggests it was not accompanied by substantial movement of population. On the whole, burials largely disappear across England, and the dead were disposed of in a way which is archaeologically invisible. Hillforts were known since the Late Bronze Age, but a huge number were constructed during 600–400 BC, particularly in the South, while after about 400 BC new forts were rarely built and many ceased to be regularly inhabited, while a few forts become more and more intensively occupied, suggesting a degree of regional centralisation.

Contact with the continent was less than in the Bronze Age but still significant. Goods continued to move to England, with a possible hiatus around 350 to 150 BC. There were a few armed invasions of hordes of migrating Celts. There are two known invasions.

Around 300 BC, a group from the Gaulish Parisii tribe apparently took over East Yorkshire, establishing the highly distinctive Arras culture. And from around 150–100 BC, groups of Belgae began to control significant parts of the South. These invasions constituted movements of a few people who established themselves as a warrior elite atop existing native systems, rather than replacing them. The Belgic invasion was much larger than the Parisian settlement, but the continuity of pottery style shows that the native population remained in place. Yet, it was accompanied by significant socio-economic change. Proto-urban, or even urban settlements, known as oppida, begin to eclipse the old hillforts, and an elite whose position is based on battle prowess and the ability to manipulate resources re-appears much more distinctly.

In 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar, as part of his campaigns in Gaul, invaded Britain and claimed to have scored a number of victories, but he never penetrated further than Hertfordshire and could not establish a province. However, his invasions mark a turning-point in British history. Control of trade, the flow of resources and prestige goods, became ever more important to the elites of Southern Britain; Rome steadily became the biggest player in all their dealings, as the provider of great wealth and patronage. In retrospect, a full-scale invasion and annexation was inevitable.

After Caesar’s expeditions, the Romans began a serious and sustained attempt to conquer Britain in AD 43, at the behest of Emperor Claudius. They landed in Kent with four legions and defeated two armies led by the kings of the Catuvellauni tribe, Caratacus and Togodumnus, in battles at the Medway and the Thames. The Catuvellauni held sway over most of the southeastern corner of England; eleven local rulers surrendered, a number of client kingdoms were established, and the rest became a Roman province with Camulodunum as its capital. Over the next four years, the territory was consolidated and the future emperor Vespasian led a campaign into the Southwest where he subjugated two more tribes. By AD 54 the border had been pushed back to the Severn and the Trent, and campaigns were underway to subjugate Northern England and Wales.

But in AD 60, under the leadership of the warrior-queen Boudicca, the tribes rebelled against the Romans. At first, the rebels had great success. They burned Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium (modern-day Colchester, London and St. Albans respectively) to the ground. The Second Legion Augusta, stationed at Exeter, refused to move for fear of revolt among the locals. Londinium governor Suetonius Paulinus evacuated the city before the rebels sacked and burned it. In the end, the rebels were said to have killed 70,000 Romans and Roman sympathisers. Paulinus gathered what was left of the Roman army. In the decisive battle, 10,000 Romans faced nearly 100,000 warriors somewhere along the line of Watling Street, at the end of which Boudicca was utterly defeated. It was said that 80,000 rebels were killed, with only 400 Roman casualties.

Over the next 20 years, the borders expanded slightly, but the governor Agricola incorporated into the province the last pockets of independence in Wales and Northern England. He also led a campaign into Scotland which was recalled by Emperor Domitian. The border gradually formed along the Stanegate road in Northern England, solidified by Hadrian’s Wall built in AD 138, despite temporary forays into Scotland. The Romans and their culture stayed in charge for 350 years. Traces of their presence are ubiquitous throughout England.

In the wake of the breakdown of Roman rule in Britain from the middle of the fourth century, present day England was progressively settled by Germanic groups. Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, these included Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians. The Battle of Badon was credited as a major victory for the Britons, stopping the encroachment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for a period. The Battle of Deorham was critical in establishing Anglo-Saxon rule in 577. Saxon mercenaries existed in Britain since before the late Roman period, but the main influx of population probably happened after the fifth century. The precise nature of these invasions is not fully known; there are doubts about the legitimacy of historical accounts due to a lack of archaeological finds. Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, composed in the 6th century, states that when the Roman army departed the Isle of Britannia in the 4th century AD, the indigenous Britons were invaded by Picts, their neighbours to the north (now Scotland) and the Scots (now Ireland). Britons invited the Saxons to the island to repel them but after they vanquished the Scots and Picts, the Saxons turned against the Britons.

An emerging view is that the scale of the Anglo-Saxon settlement varied across England, and that as such it cannot be described by any one process in particular. Mass migration and population shift seem to be most applicable in the core areas of settlement such as East Anglia and Lincolnshire, while in more peripheral areas to the northwest, much of the native population likely remained in place as the incomers took over as elites. In a study of place names in northeastern England and southern Scotland, Bethany Fox concluded that Anglian migrants settled in large numbers in river valleys, such as those of the Tyne and the Tweed, with the Britons in the less fertile hill country becoming acculturated over a longer period. Fox interprets the process by which English came to dominate this region as «a synthesis of mass-migration and elite-takeover models.»

Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, power fluctuated between the larger kingdoms. Due to succession crises, Northumbrian hegemony was not constant, and Mercia remained a very powerful kingdom, especially under Penda. Two defeats ended Northumbrian dominance: the Battle of the Trent in 679 against Mercia, and Nechtanesmere in 685 against the Picts.

The so-called «Mercian Supremacy» dominated the 8th century, though it was not constant. Aethelbald and Offa, the two most powerful kings, achieved high status; indeed, Offa was considered the overlord of south Britain by Charlemagne. His power is illustrated by the fact that he summoned the resources to build Offa’s Dyke. However, a rising Wessex, and challenges from smaller kingdoms, kept Mercian power in check, and by the early 9th century the «Mercian Supremacy» was over.

This period has been described as the Heptarchy, though this term has now fallen out of academic use. The term arose because the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex were the main polities of south Britain. Other small kingdoms were also politically important across this period: Hwicce, Magonsaete, Lindsey and Middle Anglia.

The Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England was a process which began around 600 AD, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the northwest and the Roman Catholic Church from the southeast. It was essentially the result of the Gregorian mission of 597, which was joined by the efforts of the Hiberno-Scottish mission from the 630s. From the 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon mission was, in turn, instrumental in the conversion of the population of the Frankish Empire.

Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, took office in 597. In 601, he baptised the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelberht of Kent. The decisive shift to Christianity occurred in 655 when King Penda was slain in the Battle of the Winwaed and Mercia became officially Christian for the first time. The death of Penda also allowed Cenwalh of Wessex to return from exile and return Wessex, another powerful kingdom, to Christianity. After 655, only Sussex and the Isle of Wight remained openly pagan, although Wessex and Essex would later crown pagan kings. In 686 Arwald, the last openly pagan king was slain in battle and from this point on all Anglo-Saxon kings were at least nominally Christian (although there is some confusion about the religion of Caedwalla who ruled Wessex until 688).

The first recorded landing of Vikings took place in 787 in Dorsetshire, on the south-west coast. The first major attack in Britain was in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery as given by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, by then the Vikings were almost certainly well-established in Orkney and Shetland, and many other non-recorded raids probably occurred before this. Records do show the first Viking attack on Iona taking place in 794. The arrival of the Vikings (in particular the Danish Great Heathen Army) upset the political and social geography of Britain and Ireland. In 867 Northumbria fell to the Danes; East Anglia fell in 869.

From 865, the Viking attitude towards the British Isles changed, as they began to see it as a place for potential colonisation rather than simply a place to raid. As a result of this, larger armies began arriving on Britain’s shores, with the intention of conquering land and constructing settlements there.

Though Wessex managed to contain the Vikings by defeating them at Ashdown in 871, a second invading army landed, leaving the Saxons on a defensive footing. At much the same time, Æthelred, king of Wessex died and was succeeded by his younger brother Alfred. Alfred was immediately confronted with the task of defending Wessex against the Danes. He spent the first five years of his reign paying the invaders off. In 878, Alfred’s forces were overwhelmed at Chippenham in a surprise attack.

It was only now, with the independence of Wessex hanging by a thread, that Alfred emerged as a great king. In May 878 he led a force that defeated the Danes at Edington. The victory was so complete that the Danish leader, Guthrum, was forced to accept Christian baptism and withdraw from Mercia. Alfred then set about strengthening the defences of Wessex, building a new navy—60 vessels strong. Alfred’s success bought Wessex and Mercia years of peace and sparked economic recovery in previously ravaged areas.

Alfred’s success was sustained by his son Edward, whose decisive victories over the Danes in East Anglia in 910 and 911 were followed by a crushing victory at Tempsford in 917. These military gains allowed Edward to fully incorporate Mercia into his kingdom and add East Anglia to his conquests. Edward then set about reinforcing his northern borders against the Danish kingdom of Northumbria. Edward’s rapid conquest of the English kingdoms meant Wessex received homage from those that remained, including Gwynedd in Wales and Scotland. His dominance was reinforced by his son Æthelstan, who extended the borders of Wessex northward, in 927 conquering the Kingdom of York and leading a land and naval invasion of Scotland. These conquests led to his adopting the title ‘King of the English’ for the first time.

The dominance and independence of England was maintained by the kings that followed. It was not until 978 and the accession of Æthelred the Unready that the Danish threat resurfaced.

Alfred of Wessex died in 899 and was succeeded by his son Edward the Elder. Edward, and his brother-in-law Æthelred of (what was left of) Mercia, began a programme of expansion, building forts and towns on an Alfredian model. On Æthelred’s death, his wife (Edward’s sister) Æthelflæd ruled as «Lady of the Mercians» and continued expansion. It seems Edward had his son Æthelstan brought up in the Mercian court. On Edward’s death, Æthelstan succeeded to the Mercian kingdom, and, after some uncertainty, Wessex.

Æthelstan continued the expansion of his father and aunt and was the first king to achieve direct rulership of what we would now consider England. The titles attributed to him in charters and on coins suggest a still more widespread dominance. His expansion aroused ill-feeling among the other kingdoms of Britain, and he defeated a combined Scottish-Viking army at the Battle of Brunanburh. However, the unification of England was not a certainty. Under Æthelstan’s successors Edmund and Eadred the English kings repeatedly lost and regained control of Northumbria. Nevertheless, Edgar, who ruled the same expanse as Æthelstan, consolidated the kingdom, which remained united thereafter.

There were renewed Scandinavian attacks on England at the end of the 10th century. Two powerful Danish kings (Harold Bluetooth and later his son Sweyn) both launched devastating invasions of England. Anglo-Saxon forces were resoundingly defeated at Maldon in 991. More Danish attacks followed, and their victories were frequent. Æthelred’s control over his nobles began to falter, and he grew increasingly desperate. His solution was to pay off the Danes: for almost 20 years he paid increasingly large sums to the Danish nobles to keep them from English coasts. These payments, known as Danegelds, crippled the English economy.

Æthelred then made an alliance with Normandy in 1001 through marriage to the Duke’s daughter Emma, in the hope of strengthening England. Then he made a great error: in 1002 he ordered the massacre of all the Danes in England. In response, Sweyn began a decade of devastating attacks on England. Northern England, with its sizable Danish population, sided with Sweyn. By 1013, London, Oxford, and Winchester had fallen to the Danes. Æthelred fled to Normandy and Sweyn seized the throne. Sweyn suddenly died in 1014, and Æthelred returned to England, confronted by Sweyn’s successor, Cnut. However, in 1016, Æthelred also suddenly died. Cnut swiftly defeated the remaining Saxons, killing Æthelred’s son Edmund in the process. Cnut seized the throne, crowning himself King of England.

Cnut was succeeded by his sons, but in 1042 the native dynasty was restored with the accession of Edward the Confessor. Edward’s failure to produce an heir caused a furious conflict over the succession on his death in 1066. His struggles for power against Godwin, Earl of Wessex, the claims of Cnut’s Scandinavian successors, and the ambitions of the Normans whom Edward introduced to English politics to bolster his own position caused each to vie for control of Edward’s reign.

Harold Godwinson became king, probably appointed by Edward on his deathbed and endorsed by the Witan. But William of Normandy, Harald Hardråde (aided by Harold Godwin’s estranged brother Tostig) and Sweyn II of Denmark all asserted claims to the throne. By far the strongest hereditary claim was that of Edgar the Ætheling, but due to his youth and apparent lack of powerful supporters, he did not play a major part in the struggles of 1066, although he was made king for a short time by the Witan after the death of Harold Godwinson.

In September 1066, Harald III of Norway and Earl Tostig landed in Northern England with a force of around 15,000 men and 300 longships. Harold Godwinson defeated the invaders and killed Harald III of Norway and Tostig at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

On 28 September 1066, William of Normandy invaded England in a campaign called the Norman Conquest. After marching from Yorkshire, Harold’s exhausted army was defeated and Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October. Further opposition to William in support of Edgar the Ætheling soon collapsed, and William was crowned king on Christmas Day 1066. For five years, he faced a series of rebellions in various parts of England and a half-hearted Danish invasion, but he subdued them and established an enduring regime.

Although William’s main rivals were gone, he still faced rebellions over the following years and was not secure on the English throne until after 1072. The lands of the resisting English elite were confiscated; some of the elite fled into exile. To control his new kingdom, William initiated the «Harrying of the North», a series of campaigns, involving scorched-earth tactics, granting lands to his followers and building castles commanding military strongpoints throughout the land.

The Domesday Book, a manuscript record of the «Great Survey» of much of England and parts of Wales, was completed by 1086. Other effects of the conquest included the court and government, the introduction of the Norman language as the language of the elites, and changes in the composition of the upper classes, as William enfeoffed lands to be held directly from the king.

More gradual changes affected the agricultural classes and village life: the main change appears to have been the formal elimination of slavery, which may or may not have been linked to the invasion. There was little alteration in the structure of government, as the new Norman administrators took over many of the forms of Anglo-Saxon government.

The English Middle Ages were characterised by civil war, international war, occasional insurrection, and widespread political intrigue among the aristocratic and monarchic elite. England was more than self-sufficient in cereals, dairy products, beef and mutton. Its international economy was based on wool trade, in which wool from the sheepwalks of northern England was exported to the textile cities of Flanders, where it was worked into cloth. Medieval foreign policy was as much shaped by relations with the Flemish textile industry as it was by dynastic adventures in western France. An English textile industry was established in the 15th century, providing the basis for rapid English capital accumulation.

The Anarchy was a war of succession precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I, who drowned in the sinking of the White Ship in 1120. Henry sought to be succeeded by his daughter, known as Empress Matilda, but was only partially successful in convincing the nobility to support her. On Henry’s death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne, with the help of Stephen’s brother Henry of Blois, who was the bishop of Winchester. Stephen’s early reign saw fierce fighting with disloyal English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders, and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester.

In the initial years of civil war, neither side was able to achieve a decisive advantage; the Empress came to control the south-west of England and much of the Thames Valley, while Stephen remained in control of the south-east. Much of the rest of the country was held by barons who refused to support either side. The castles of the period were easily defensible, so the fighting was mostly attrition warfare comprising sieges, raiding and skirmishing. Armies mostly consisted of armoured knights and footsoldiers, many of them mercenaries. In 1141, Stephen was captured following the Battle of Lincoln, causing a collapse in his authority over most of the country. When Empress Matilda attempted to be crowned queen, she was forced instead to retreat from London by hostile crowds; shortly afterwards, Robert of Gloucester was captured at the rout of Winchester. The two sides agreed to a prisoner exchange, swapping the captives Stephen and Robert. Stephen then almost captured Matilda in 1142 during the siege of Oxford, but the Empress escaped from Oxford Castle across the frozen River Thames to safety.

The war dragged on for many more years. Empress Matilda’s husband, Count Geoffrey V of Anjou, conquered Normandy in her name during 1143, but in England neither side could achieve victory. Rebel barons began to acquire ever greater power in Northern England and in East Anglia, with widespread devastation in the regions of major fighting. In 1148, the Empress returned to Normandy, leaving the campaigning in England to her young son Henry FitzEmpress. In 1152, Stephen attempted to have his eldest son, Eustace, as the next king of England recognised by the Catholic Church, but the Church refused to do so. By the early 1150s, most barons and the Church were war weary so favoured negotiating a long-term peace.

Henry FitzEmpress re-invaded England in 1153, but neither faction’s forces were keen to fight. After limited campaigning, the two armies faced each other at the siege of Wallingford, but the church brokered a truce, thereby preventing a pitched battle. Stephen and Henry began peace negotiations, during which Eustace died of illness, removing Stephen’s immediate heir. The resulting Treaty of Wallingford allowed Stephen to retain the throne but recognised Henry as his successor. Over the following year, Stephen began to reassert his authority over the whole kingdom, but died of disease in 1154. Henry was crowned as Henry II, the first Angevin king of England, then began a long period of reconstruction.

The House of Plantagenet held the English throne from 1154 (with the accession of Henry II at the end of the Anarchy) to 1485, when Richard III died in battle. The reign of Henry II represents a reversion in power from the barony to the monarchical state in England; it was also to see a similar redistribution of legislative power from the Church, again to the monarchical state. This period also presaged a properly constituted legislation and a radical shift away from feudalism. In his reign, new Anglo-Angevin and Anglo-Aquitanian aristocracies developed, though not to the same degree as the Anglo-Norman once did, and the Norman nobles interacted with their French peers.

Henry’s successor, Richard I «the Lion Heart», was preoccupied with foreign wars, taking part in the Third Crusade, being captured while returning and pledging fealty to the Holy Roman Empire as part of his ransom, and defending his French territories against Philip II of France. His successor, his younger brother John, lost much of those territories including Normandy following the disastrous Battle of Bouvines in 1214, despite having in 1212 made the Kingdom of England a tribute-paying vassal of the Holy See, which it remained until the 14th century when the Kingdom rejected the overlordship of the Holy See and re-established its sovereignty.

John’s son, Henry III, spent much of his reign fighting the barons over Magna Carta and the royal rights, and was eventually forced to call the first «parliament» in 1264. He was also unsuccessful on the continent, where he endeavoured to re-establish English control over Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. His reign was punctuated by many rebellions and civil wars, often provoked by incompetence and mismanagement in government and Henry’s perceived over-reliance on French courtiers (thus restricting the influence of the English nobility). One of these rebellions—led by a disaffected courtier, Simon de Montfort—was notable for its assembly of one of the earliest precursors to Parliament. In addition to fighting the Second Barons’ War, Henry III made war against Louis IX and was defeated during the Saintonge War, yet Louis did not capitalise on his victory, respecting his opponent’s rights.

Over the course of King John’s reign, a combination of higher taxes, unsuccessful wars and conflict with the Pope made King John unpopular with his barons. In 1215, some of the most important barons rebelled against him. He met their leaders along with their French and Scot allies at Runnymede, near London on 15 June 1215 to seal the Great Charter (Magna Carta in Latin), which imposed legal limits on the king’s personal powers. But as soon as hostilities ceased, John received approval from the Pope to break his word because he had made it under duress. This provoked the First Barons’ War and a French invasion by Prince Louis of France invited by a majority of the English barons to replace John as king in London in May 1216. John travelled around the country to oppose the rebel forces, directing, among other operations, a two-month siege of the rebel-held Rochester Castle.

At the end of the 16th century, there was an upsurge in interest in Magna Carta. Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms. They argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights, and that Magna Carta had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus. Although this historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke used Magna Carta extensively in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings. Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of Magna Carta. The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century. It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the United States Constitution, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States. Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, rather than the rights of ordinary people, but the charter remained a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

The reign of Edward I (1272–1307) was rather more successful. Edward enacted numerous laws strengthening the powers of his government, and he summoned the first officially sanctioned Parliaments of England (such as his Model Parliament). He conquered Wales and attempted to use a succession dispute to gain control of the Kingdom of Scotland, though this developed into a costly and drawn-out military campaign.

His son, Edward II, proved a disaster. He spent most of his reign trying in vain to control the nobility, who in return showed continual hostility to him. Meanwhile, the Scottish leader Robert Bruce began retaking all the territory conquered by Edward I. In 1314, the English army was disastrously defeated by the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn. Edward’s downfall came in 1326 when his wife, Queen Isabella, travelled to her native France and, with her lover Roger Mortimer, invaded England. Despite their tiny force, they quickly rallied support for their cause. The king fled London, and his companion since Piers Gaveston’s death, Hugh Despenser, was publicly tried and executed. Edward was captured, charged with breaking his coronation oath, deposed and imprisoned in Gloucestershire until he was murdered some time in the autumn of 1327, presumably by agents of Isabella and Mortimer.

In 1315-1317, the Great Famine may have resulted in half a million deaths in England due to hunger and disease, more than 10 per cent of the population.

Edward III, son of Edward II, was crowned at age 14 after his father was deposed by his mother and her consort Roger Mortimer. At age 17, he led a successful coup against Mortimer, the de facto ruler of the country, and began his personal reign. Edward III reigned 1327–1377, restored royal authority and went on to transform England into the most efficient military power in Europe. His reign saw vital developments in legislature and government—in particular the evolution of the English parliament—as well as the ravages of the Black Death. After defeating, but not subjugating, the Kingdom of Scotland, he declared himself rightful heir to the French throne in 1338, but his claim was denied due to the Salic law. This started what would become known as the Hundred Years’ War.

Edward III declared himself rightful heir to the French throne in 1338, but his claim was denied due to the Salic law. This started what would become known as the Hundred Years’ War. Following some initial setbacks, the war went exceptionally well for England; victories at Crécy and Poitiers led to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny. Edward’s later years were marked by international failure and domestic strife, largely as a result of his inactivity and poor health.

Edward III died of a stroke on 21 June 1377, and was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson, Richard II. He married Anne of Bohemia, daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor in 1382, and ruled until he was deposed by his first cousin Henry IV in 1399. In 1381, a Peasants’ Revolt led by Wat Tyler spread across large parts of England. It was suppressed by Richard II, with the death of 1500 rebels.

Henry V succeeded to the throne in 1413. He renewed hostilities with France and began a set of military campaigns which are considered a new phase of the Hundred Years’ War, referred to as the Lancastrian War. He won several notable victories over the French, including the Battle of Agincourt. In the Treaty of Troyes, Henry V was given the power to succeed the current ruler of France, Charles VI of France.

Henry V’s son, Henry VI, became king in 1422 as an infant. His reign was marked by constant turmoil due to his political weaknesses. The Regency Council tried to install Henry VI as the King of France, as provided by the Treaty of Troyes signed by his father, and led English forces to take over areas of France. It appeared they might succeed due to the poor political position of the son of Charles VI, who had claimed to be the rightful king as Charles VII of France. However, in 1429, Joan of Arc began a military effort to prevent the English from gaining control of France. The French forces regained control of French territory. Hostilities with France resumed in 1449. When England lost the Hundred Years’ War in August 1453, Henry fell into mental breakdown until Christmas 1454.

In 1437, Henry VI (Henry V’s son ) came of age and began to actively rule as king. To forge peace, he married French noblewoman Margaret of Anjou in 1445, as provided in the Treaty of Tours. Hostilities with France resumed in 1449. When England lost the Hundred Years’ War in August 1453, Henry fell into mental breakdown until Christmas 1454.

Henry could not control the feuding nobles, and a series of civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses began, lasting from 1455 to 1485. Although the fighting was very sporadic and small, there was a general breakdown in the power of the Crown. The royal court and Parliament moved to Coventry, in the Lancastrian heartlands, which thus became the capital of England until 1461. Henry’s cousin Edward, Duke of York, deposed Henry in 1461 to become Edward IV following a Lancastrian defeat at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Edward was later briefly expelled from the throne in 1470–1471 when Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, brought Henry back to power. Six months later, Edward defeated and killed Warwick in battle and reclaimed the throne. Henry was imprisoned in the Tower of London and died there.

Edward died in 1483, only 40 years old, his reign having gone a little way to restoring the power of the Crown. His eldest son and heir Edward V, aged 12, could not succeed him because the king’s brother, Richard III, Duke of Gloucester, declared Edward IV’s marriage bigamous, making all his children illegitimate. Richard III was then declared king, and Edward V and his 10-year-old brother Richard were imprisoned in the Tower of London.

In summer 1485, Henry Tudor, the last Lancastrian male, returned from exile in France and landed in Wales. Henry then defeated and killed Richard III at Bosworth Field on 22 August, and was crowned Henry VII.

Henry VIII began his reign with much optimism. Henry’s lavish court quickly drained the treasury of the fortune he inherited. He married the widowed Catherine of Aragon, and they had several children, but none survived infancy except a daughter, Mary.

In 1512, the young king started a war in France. The English army suffered badly from disease, and Henry was not even present at the one notable victory, the Battle of the Spurs. Meanwhile, James IV of Scotland, due to his alliance with the French and declared war on England. While Henry was dallying in France, Catherine, and Henry’s advisers were left to deal with this threat. At the Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513, the Scots were completely defeated. James and most of the Scottish nobles were killed.

Eventually, Catherine was no longer able to have any more children. The king became increasingly nervous about the possibility of his daughter Mary inheriting the throne, as England’s one experience with a female sovereign, Matilda in the 12th century, had been a catastrophe. He eventually decided that it was necessary to divorce Catherine and find a new queen. Henry seceded from the Church, in what became known as the English Reformation, when the divorce from Catherine proved difficult.

Henry married Anne Boleyn secretly in January 1533 and Anne gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. The king was devastated at his failure to obtain a son after all the effort it had taken to remarry. In 1536, the queen gave birth prematurely to a stillborn boy. By now, the king was convinced that his marriage was hexed, and having already found a new queen, Jane Seymour, he put Anne in the Tower of London on charges of witchcraft. Afterwards, she was beheaded along with five men accused of adultery with her. The marriage was then declared invalid, so that Elizabeth, just like her half sister, became a bastard.

Henry immediately married Jane Seymour. On 12 October 1537, she gave birth to a healthy boy, Edward, which was greeted with huge celebrations. However, the queen died of puerperal sepsis ten days later. Henry genuinely mourned her death, and at his own passing nine years later, he was buried next to her.

Henry’s paranoia and suspicion worsened in his last years. The number of executions during his 38-year reign numbered tens of thousands. His domestic policies had strengthened royal authority to the detriment of the aristocracy, and led to a safer realm, but his foreign policy adventures did not increase England’s prestige abroad and wrecked royal finances and the national economy, and embittered the Irish. He died in January 1547 at age 55 and was succeeded by his son, Edward VI.

Edward VI was only nine years old when he became king in 1547. His uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset tampered with Henry VIII’s will and obtained letters patent giving him much of the power of a monarch by March 1547. He took the title of Protector. Somerset, disliked by the Regency Council for being autocratic, was removed from power by John Dudley, who is known as Lord President Northumberland. Northumberland proceeded to adopt the power for himself, but he was more conciliatory and the Council accepted him. During Edward’s reign England changed from being a Catholic nation to a Protestant one, in schism from Rome. Edward showed great promise but fell violently ill of tuberculosis in 1553 and died that August, two months before his 16th birthday.

Northumberland made plans to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne and marry her to his son, so that he could remain the power behind the throne. His plot failed in a matter of days, Jane Grey was beheaded, and Mary I (1516–1558) took the throne amidst popular demonstration in her favour in London, which contemporaries described as the largest show of affection for a Tudor monarch. Mary had never been expected to hold the throne, at least not since Edward was born. She was a devoted Catholic who believed that she could reverse the Reformation.

Returning England to Catholicism led to the burnings of 274 Protestants, which are recorded especially in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Mary then married her cousin Philip, son of Emperor Charles V, and King of Spain when Charles abdicated in 1556. The union was difficult because Mary was already in her late 30s and Philip was a Catholic and a foreigner, and so not very welcome in England. This wedding also provoked hostility from France, already at war with Spain and now fearing being encircled by the Habsburgs. Calais, the last English outpost on the Continent, was then taken by France. Mary’s death in November 1558 was greeted with huge celebrations in the streets of London.

After Mary I died in 1558, Elizabeth I came to the throne. Her reign restored a sort of order to the realm after the turbulent reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. The religious issue which had divided the country since Henry VIII was in a way put to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which re-established the Church of England. Much of Elizabeth’s success was in balancing the interests of the Puritans and Catholics. Despite the need for an heir, Elizabeth declined to marry, despite offers from a number of suitors across Europe, including the Swedish king Erik XIV. This created endless worries over her succession, especially in the 1560s when she nearly died of smallpox.

Elizabeth maintained relative government stability. Apart from the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569, she was effective in reducing the power of the old nobility and expanding the power of her government. Elizabeth’s government did much to consolidate the work begun under Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII, that is, expanding the role of the government and effecting common law and administration throughout England. During the reign of Elizabeth and shortly afterwards, the population grew significantly: from three million in 1564 to nearly five million in 1616.

The queen ran afoul of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, who was a devoted Catholic and so was forced to abdicate her throne (Scotland had recently become Protestant). She fled to England, where Elizabeth immediately had her arrested. Mary spent the next 19 years in confinement, but proved too dangerous to keep alive, as the Catholic powers in Europe considered her the legitimate ruler of England. She was eventually tried for treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded in February 1587.

The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia was first used in 1572 and often thereafter to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over the hated Spanish foe.

This «golden age» represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England’s past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repulsed. It was also the end of the period when England was a separate realm before its royal union with Scotland.

England was also well off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had ended due to foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in religious battles until the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Also, the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent. Due to these reasons, the centuries long conflict with France was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth’s reign. England during this period had a centralised, organised and effective government, largely due to the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically, the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.

In 1585 worsening relations between Philip II of Spain and Elizabeth erupted into war. Elizabeth signed the Treaty of Nonsuch with the Dutch and permitted Francis Drake to maraud in response to a Spanish embargo. Drake surprised Vigo, Spain, in October, then proceeded to the Caribbean and sacked Santo Domingo (the capital of Spain’s American empire and the present-day capital of the Dominican Republic) and Cartagena (a large and wealthy port on the north coast of Colombia that was the centre of the silver trade). Philip II tried to invade England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 but was famously defeated.

When Elizabeth died, her closest male Protestant relative was the King of Scots, James VI, of the House of Stuart, who became King James I of England in a Union of the Crowns, called James I and VI. He was the first monarch to rule the entire island of Britain, but the countries remained separate politically. Upon taking power, James made peace with Spain, and for the first half of the 17th century, England remained largely inactive in European politics. Several assassination attempts were made on James, notably the Main Plot and Bye Plots of 1603, and most famously, on 5 November 1605, the Gunpowder Plot, by a group of Catholic conspirators, led by Robert Catesby, which caused more antipathy in England towards Catholicism.

The First English Civil War broke out in 1642, largely due to ongoing conflicts between James’ son, Charles I, and Parliament. The defeat of the Royalist army by the New Model Army of Parliament at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 effectively destroyed the king’s forces. Charles surrendered to the Scottish army at Newark. He was eventually handed over to the English Parliament in early 1647. He escaped, and the Second English Civil War began, but the New Model Army quickly secured the country. The capture and trial of Charles led to the execution of Charles I in January 1649 at Whitehall Gate in London, making England a republic. This shocked the rest of Europe. The king argued to the end that only God could judge him.

The New Model Army, commanded by Oliver Cromwell, then scored decisive victories against Royalist armies in Ireland and Scotland. Cromwell was given the title Lord Protector in 1653, making him ‘king in all but name’ to his critics. After he died in 1658, his son Richard Cromwell succeeded him in the office but he was forced to abdicate within a year. For a while it seemed as if a new civil war would begin as the New Model Army split into factions. Troops stationed in Scotland under the command of George Monck eventually marched on London to restore order.

According to Derek Hirst, outside of politics and religion, the 1640s and 1650s saw a revived economy characterized by growth in manufacturing, the elaboration of financial and credit instruments, and the commercialization of communication. The gentry found time for leisure activities, such as horse racing and bowling. In the high culture important innovations included the development of a mass market for music, increased scientific research, and an expansion of publishing. All the trends were discussed in depth at the newly established coffee houses.

The monarchy was restored in 1660, with King Charles II returning to London. However, the power of the crown was less than before the Civil War. By the 18th century, England rivaled the Netherlands as one of the freest countries in Europe.

In 1680, the Exclusion Crisis consisted of attempts to prevent accession of James, heir to Charles II, because he was Catholic. After Charles II died in 1685 and his younger brother, James II and VII was crowned, various factions pressed for his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband Prince William III of Orange to replace him in what became known as the Glorious Revolution.

In November 1688, William invaded England and succeeded in being crowned. James tried to retake the throne in the Williamite War, but was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

In December 1689, one of the most important constitutional documents in English history, the Bill of Rights, was passed. The Bill, which restated and confirmed many provisions of the earlier Declaration of Right, established restrictions on the royal prerogative. For example, the Sovereign could not suspend laws passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, infringe the right to petition, raise a standing army during peacetime without parliamentary consent, deny the right to bear arms to Protestant subjects, unduly interfere with parliamentary elections, punish members of either House of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive bail or inflict cruel and unusual punishments. William was opposed to such constraints, but chose to avoid conflict with Parliament and agreed to the statute.

In parts of Scotland and Ireland, Catholics loyal to James remained determined to see him restored to the throne, and staged a series of bloody uprisings. As a result, any failure to pledge loyalty to the victorious King William was severely dealt with. The most infamous example of this policy was the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. Jacobite rebellions continued into the mid-18th century until the son of the last Catholic claimant to the throne, James III and VIII, mounted a final campaign in 1745. The Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the «Bonnie Prince Charlie» of legend, were defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act 1707 passed by the Parliament of Scotland. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland—which at the time were separate states with separate legislatures, but with the same monarch—were, in the words of the Treaty, «United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain».

The two countries had shared a monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his double first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I. Although described as a Union of Crowns, and in spite of James’s acknowledgement of his accession to a single Crown, England and Scotland were officially separate Kingdoms until 1707. Prior to the Acts of Union there had been three previous attempts (in 1606, 1667, and 1689) to unite the two countries by Acts of Parliament, but it was not until the early 18th century that both political establishments came to support the idea, albeit for different reasons.

The Act of Union of 1800 formally assimilated Ireland within the British political process and from 1 January 1801 created a new state called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which united Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland to form a single political entity. The English parliament at Westminster became the parliament of the Union.

The 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world’s dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants’ claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America.

In the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India. France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers. The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.

The signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France’s future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert’s Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years’ War therefore left Britain as the world’s most powerful maritime power.

In the 18th century England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rose to become the world’s dominant colonial power, with France as its main rival on the imperial stage. The pre-1707 English overseas possessions became the nucleus of the First British Empire.

«In 1714 the ruling class was so bitterly divided that many feared a civil war might break out on Queen Anne’s death», wrote historian W. A. Speck. A few hundred of the richest ruling class and landed gentry families controlled parliament, but were deeply split, with Tories committed to the legitimacy of the Stuart «Old Pretender», then in exile. The Whigs strongly supported the Hanoverians, in order to ensure a Protestant succession. The new king, George I was a foreign prince and had a small English standing army to support him, with military support from his native Hanover and from his allies in the Netherlands. In the Jacobite rising of 1715, based in Scotland, the Earl of Mar led eighteen Jacobite peers and 10,000 men, with the aim of overthrowing the new king and restoring the Stuarts. Poorly organised, it was decisively defeated. The Whigs came to power, under the leadership of James Stanhope, Charles Townshend, the Earl of Sunderland, and Robert Walpole. Many Tories were driven out of national and local government, and new laws were passed to impose greater national control. The right of habeas corpus was restricted; to reduce electoral instability, the Septennial Act 1715 increased the maximum life of a parliament from three years to seven.

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world’s leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal, through the activities of the East India Company. The development of trade and the rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history. Comparable only to humanity’s adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement, the Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists have said the most important effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population in the western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history.

The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Rapid industrialization first began in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s, with high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring after 1800. Mechanized textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France.

During the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament’s attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent. This was summarised at the time by the slogan «No taxation without representation», a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies’ sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans’ favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.

The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain’s most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the «first» and «second» empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterized the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith’s view that political control was not necessary for economic success.

Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to Australia. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770 James Cook charted the eastern coast while on a scientific voyage, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook’s botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation. Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples. Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world.

During his voyage, Cook visited New Zealand, known to Europeans due to the 1642 voyage of the Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman. Cook claimed both the North and the South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the indigenous Maori population and European settlers was limited to the trading of goods. European settlement increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with many trading stations being established, especially in the North. In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand.

The British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilized for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade. Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year a later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie’s companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward.

During the War of the Second Coalition (1799–1801), William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) provided strong leadership in London. Britain occupied most of the French and Dutch overseas possessions, the Netherlands having become a satellite state of France in 1796. After a short peace, in May 1803, war was declared again. Napoleon’s plans to invade Britain failed, chiefly due to the inferiority of his navy. In 1805 Lord Nelson’s fleet decisively defeated the French and Spanish at Trafalgar, ending any hopes Napoleon had to wrest control of the oceans away from the British.

The British Army remained a minimal threat to France; it maintained a standing strength of just 220,000 men at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, whereas France’s armies exceeded a million men—in addition to the armies of numerous allies and several hundred thousand national guardsmen that Napoleon could draft into the French armies when they were needed. Although the Royal Navy effectively disrupted France’s extra-continental trade—both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions—it could do nothing about France’s trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. France’s population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of Britain.

In 1806, Napoleon set up the Continental System to end British trade with French-controlled territories. However Britain had great industrial capacity and mastery of the seas. It built up economic strength through trade and the Continental System was largely ineffective. As Napoleon realized that extensive trade was going through Spain and Russia, he invaded those two countries. He tied down his forces in the Peninsular War in Spain, and lost very badly in Russia in 1812. The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent. The Duke of Wellington and his army of British and Portuguese gradually pushed the French out of Spain, and in early 1814, as Napoleon was being driven back in the east by the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians, Wellington invaded southern France. After Napoleon’s surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned, but when he escaped back into France in 1815, the British and their allies had to fight him again. The armies of Wellington and Blucher defeated Napoleon once and for all at Battle of Waterloo.

Simultaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, trade disputes and British impressment of American sailors led to the War of 1812 with the United States. A central event in American history, it was little noticed in Britain, where all attention was focused on the struggle with France. The British could devote few resources to the conflict until the fall of Napoleon in 1814. American frigates also inflicted a series of embarrassing defeats on the British navy, which was short on manpower due to the conflict in Europe. A full-scale British invasion was defeated in upstate New York. The Treaty of Ghent subsequently ended the war with no territorial changes. It was the last war between Britain and the United States.

The Great Game was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire over Afghanistan and neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia, and having direct consequences in Persia, British India, and Tibet.

Britain feared that Russia planned to invade India and that this was the goal of Russia’s expansion in Central Asia, while Russia feared the expansion of British interests in Central Asia. As a result, there was a deep atmosphere of distrust and talk of war between two of the major European empires.

According to one major view, The Great Game began on 12 January 1830, when Lord Ellenborough, the president of the Board of Control for India, tasked Lord William Bentinck, the governor-general, with establishing a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states blocking Russian expansion. This would protect India and also key British sea trade routes by stopping Russia from gaining a port on the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. Russia proposed Afghanistan as the neutral zone. The results included the failed First Anglo-Afghan War of 1838, the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845, the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848, the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878, and the annexation of Kokand by Russia.

Some historians consider the end of the Great Game to be the 10 September 1895 signing of the Pamir Boundary Commission protocols, when the border between Afghanistan and the Russian Empire was defined. The term Great Game was coined by British diplomat Arthur Conolly in 1840, but the 1901 novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling made the term popular, and increased its association with great power rivalry.

The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria’s reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain’s power and prosperity. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adoption of the germ theory of disease and pioneering research in epidemiology.

Domestically, the political agenda was increasingly liberal, with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform, improved social reform, and the widening of the franchise. There were unprecedented demographic changes: the population of England and Wales almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901. Between 1837 and 1901 about 15 million emigrated from Great Britain, mostly to the United States, as well as to imperial outposts in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Thanks to educational reforms, the British population not only approached universal literacy towards the end of the era but also became increasingly well-educated; the market for reading materials of all kinds boomed.

Britain’s relations with the other Great Powers were driven by antagonism with Russia, including the Crimean War and the Great Game. A Pax Britannica of peaceful trade was maintained by the country’s naval and industrial supremacy. Britain embarked on global imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa, which made the British Empire the largest empire in history. National self-confidence peaked. Britain granted political autonomy to the more advanced colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Apart from the Crimean War, Britain was not involved in any armed conflict with another major power.

The First Opium War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese seizure of private opium stocks at Canton to enforce their ban on the opium trade, which was profitable to British merchants, and threatening the death penalty for future offenders. The British government insisted on the principles of free trade and equal diplomatic recognition among nations, and backed the merchants’ demands. The British navy initiated the conflict and defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons, and the British then imposed a treaty that granted territory to Britain and opened trade with China. Twentieth century nationalists considered 1839 the start of a century of humiliation, and many historians considered it the beginning of modern Chinese history.

In the 18th century, the demand for Chinese luxury goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that seriously worried Chinese officials.

In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed Viceroy Lin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely. Lin wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria, appealing to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade. Lin then resorted to using force in the western merchants’ enclave. He arrived in Guangzhou at the end of January and organized a coastal defense. In March, British opium dealers were forced to hand over 2.37 million pounds of opium. On 3 June, Lin ordered the opium to be destroyed in public on Humen Beach to show the Government’s determination to ban smoking.

All other supplies were confiscated and a blockade of foreign ships on the Pearl River was ordered. The British government responded by dispatching a military force to China. In the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its superior naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire. In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties—which granted an indemnity and extraterritoriality to British subjects in China, opened five treaty ports to British merchants, and ceded Hong Kong Island to the British Empire. The failure of the treaty to satisfy British goals of improved trade and diplomatic relations led to the Second Opium War (1856–60). The resulting social unrest was the background for the Taiping Rebellion, which further weakened the Qing regime.

The Crimean War was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. The immediate cause of the war involved the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine (then part of the Ottoman Empire) with the French promoting the rights of Roman Catholics, and Russia promoting those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of the Russian Empire in the preceding Russo-Turkish Wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.

In July 1853, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities (now part of Romania but then under Ottoman suzerainty). In October 1853, having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia. Led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the Russian advance at Silistra (now in Bulgaria). Fearing an Ottoman collapse, the British and the French had their fleets enter the Black Sea in January 1854. They moved north to Varna in June 1854 and arrived just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra.

The allied commanders decided to attack Russia’s main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula. After extended preparations, allied forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but the British Army’s forces were seriously depleted as a result. A second Russian counterattack, at Inkerman (November 1854), ended in a stalemate as well. The front settled into the siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides.

Sevastopol finally fell after eleven months, after the French had assaulted Fort Malakoff. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed the development, owing to the conflict’s domestic unpopularity. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia from basing warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.

The British Raj was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent and lasted from 1858 to 1947. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. This system of governance was instituted on 28 June 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the company rule in India of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria. It lasted until 1947, when the British Raj was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.

Britain’s administration of Egypt and the Cape Colony contributed to a preoccupation over securing the source of the Nile River. Egypt was taken over by the British in 1882, leaving the Ottoman Empire in a nominal role until 1914, when London made it a protectorate. Egypt was never an actual British colony. Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda were subjugated in the 1890s and early 20th century; and in the south, the Cape Colony (first acquired in 1795) provided a base for the subjugation of neighbouring African states and the Dutch Afrikaner settlers who had left the Cape to avoid the British and then founded their own republics. Theophilus Shepstone annexed the South African Republic in 1877 for the British Empire, after it had been independent for twenty years. In 1879, after the Anglo-Zulu War, Britain consolidated its control of most of the territories of South Africa. The Boers protested, and in December 1880 they revolted, leading to the First Boer War. The Second Boer War, fought between 1899 and 1902, was about control of the gold and diamond industries; the independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic were this time defeated and absorbed into the British Empire.

The Sudan was the key to the fulfillment of these ambitions, especially since Egypt was already under British control. This «red line» through Africa is made most famous by Cecil Rhodes. Along with Lord Milner, the British colonial minister in South Africa, Rhodes advocated such a «Cape to Cairo» empire, linking the Suez Canal to the mineral-rich South Africa by rail. Though hampered by German occupation of Tanganyika until the end of World War I, Rhodes successfully lobbied on behalf of such a sprawling African empire.

Ever since Britain had taken control of South Africa from the Netherlands in the Napoleonic Wars, it had run afoul of the Dutch settlers who further away and created two republics of their own. The British imperial vision called for control over the new countries and the Dutch-speaking «Boers» (or «Afrikaners». The Boer response to the British pressure was to declare war on 20 October 1899. The 410,000 Boers were massively outnumbered, but amazingly they waged a successful guerrilla war, which gave the British regulars a difficult fight. The Boers were landlocked and did not have access to outside help. The weight of numbers, superior equipment, and often brutal tactics eventually brought about a British victory. To defeat the guerrillas, the British rounded up their women and children into concentration camps, where many died of disease. World outrage focused on the camps, led by a large faction of the Liberal Party in Britain. However, the United States gave its support. The Boer republics were merged into Union of South Africa in 1910; it had internal self-government but its foreign policy was controlled by London and was an integral part of the British Empire.

In 1912 the House of Commons passed a new Home Rule bill. Under the Parliament Act 1911 the House of Lords retained the power to delay legislation by up to two years, so it was eventually enacted as the Government of Ireland Act 1914, but suspended for the duration of the war. Civil war threatened when the Protestant-Unionists of Northern Ireland refused to be placed under Catholic-Nationalist control. Semi-military units were formed ready to fight—the Unionist Ulster Volunteers opposed to the Act and their Nationalist counterparts, the Irish Volunteers supporting the Act. The outbreak of the World War in 1914 put the crisis on political hold. A disorganized Easter Rising in 1916 was brutally suppressed by the British, which had the effect of galvanizing Nationalist demands for independence. Prime Minister Lloyd George failed to introduce Home Rule in 1918 and in the December 1918 General Election Sinn Féin won a majority of Irish seats. Its MPs refused to take their seats at Westminster, instead choosing to sit in the First Dáil parliament in Dublin.

A declaration of independence was ratified by Dáil Éireann, the self-declared Republic’s parliament in January 1919. An Anglo-Irish War was fought between Crown forces and the Irish Republican Army between January 1919 and June 1921. The war ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 that established the Irish Free State. Six northern, predominantly Protestant counties became Northern Ireland and have remained part of the United Kingdom ever since, despite demands of the Catholic minority to unite with the Republic of Ireland. Britain officially adopted the name «United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland» by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927.

The United Kingdom was a leading Allied Power during the First World War of 1914–1918. They fought against the Central Powers, mainly Germany. The armed forces were greatly expanded and reorganised—the war marked the founding of the Royal Air Force. The highly controversial introduction, in January 1916, of conscription for the first time in British history followed the raising of one of the largest all-volunteer army in history, known as Kitchener’s Army, of more than 2,000,000 men. The outbreak of war was a socially unifying event. Enthusiasm was widespread in 1914, and was similar to that across Europe.

Fearing food shortages and labour shortfalls, the government passed legislation such as the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, to give it new powers. The war saw a move away from the idea of «business as usual» under Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, and towards a state of total war (complete state intervention in public affairs) by 1917 under the premiership of David Lloyd George; the first time this had been seen in Britain. The war also witnessed the first aerial bombardments of cities in Britain.

Newspapers played an important role in maintaining popular support for the war. By adapting to the changing demographics of the workforce, war-related industries grew rapidly, and production increased, as concessions were quickly made to trade unions. In that regard, the war is also credited by some with drawing women into mainstream employment for the first time. Debates continue about the impact the war had on women’s emancipation, given that a large number of women were granted the vote for the first time in 1918.

The civilian death rate rose due to food shortages and Spanish flu, which hit the country in 1918. Military deaths are estimated to have exceeded 850,000. The Empire reached its zenith at the conclusion of peace negotiations. However, the war heightened not only imperial loyalties but also individual national identities in the Dominions (Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) and India. Irish nationalists after 1916 moved from collaboration with London to demands for immediate independence, a move given great impetus by the Conscription Crisis of 1918.

The Second World War started on 3 September 1939 with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France, on Nazi Germany in response to the invasion of Poland by Germany. The Anglo-French alliance did little to help Poland. The Phoney War culminated in April 1940 with the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. Winston Churchill became prime minister and head of a coalition government in May 1940. The defeat of other European countries followed – Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France – alongside the British Expeditionary Force which led to the Dunkirk evacuation.

From June 1940, Britain and its Empire continued the fight alone against Germany. Churchill engaged industry, scientists and engineers to advise and support the government and the military in the prosecution of the war effort. Germany’s planned invasion of the UK was averted by the Royal Air Force denying the Luftwaffe air superiority in the Battle of Britain, and by its marked inferiority in naval power. Subsequently, urban areas in Britain suffered heavy bombing during the Blitz in late 1940 and early 1941. The Royal Navy sought to blockade Germany and protect merchant ships in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Army counter-attacked in the Mediterranean and Middle East, including the North-African and East-African campaigns, and in the Balkans.

Churchill agreed an alliance with the Soviet Union in July and began sending supplies to the USSR. In December, the Empire of Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific including an attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor. Britain and America declared war on Japan, opening the Pacific War. The Grand Alliance of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union was formed and Britain and America agreed a Europe first grand strategy for the war. The UK and her Allies suffered many disastrous defeats in the Asia-Pacific war during the first six months of 1942.

There were eventual hard-fought victories in 1943 in the North-African campaign, led by General Bernard Montgomery, and in the subsequent Italian campaign. British forces played major roles in the production of Ultra signals intelligence, the strategic bombing of Germany, and the Normandy landings of June 1944. The liberation of Europe followed on 8 May 1945, achieved with the Soviet Union, the United States and other Allied countries. The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign of the War.

In the South-East Asian theatre, the Eastern Fleet conducted strikes in the Indian Ocean. The British Army led the Burma campaign to drive Japan out of the British colony. Involving a million troops at its peak, drawn primarily from British India, the campaign was finally successful in mid-1945. The British Pacific Fleet took part in the Battle of Okinawa and the final naval strikes on Japan. British scientists contributed to the Manhattan Project to design a nuclear weapon. The surrender of Japan was announced on 15 August 1945 and signed on 2 September 1945.

Britain had won the war, but it lost India in 1947 and nearly all the rest of the Empire by the 1960s. It debated its role in world affairs and joined the United Nations in 1945, NATO in 1949, and became a close ally of the United States. Prosperity returned in the 1950s, and London remained a world centre of finance and culture, but the nation was no longer a major world power. In 1973, after a long debate and initial rejection, it joined the Common Market.

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Last Updated: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:12:28 GMT