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| Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit ( French: God and my right) | |||||
| Official language | None; English is de facto | ||||
| Capital | London | ||||
| Capital's coordinates | 51° 30' N, 0° 10' W | ||||
| Largest city | London | ||||
| Area - Total | Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² | ||||
| PopulationFor the use of the word population in statistics, see statistical population. In the most common sense of the word, a population is the collection of people—or organisms of a particular species—living in a given geographic area. Populations are studied in - Total ( 20012001 is a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar), and also: The International Year of the Volunteer The United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations Events January January 1 A black monolith measuring approximately nine feet tall ap) - DensityFor other meanings of density, see density (disambiguation Density (symbol: rho Greek: rho) is a measure of mass per unit of volume. The higher an object's density, the higher its mass per volume. The average density of an object equals its total mass div | Ranked 1st UKA list of United Kingdom nations (and English regions) by population: Rank Name Population 1 England South East Greater London North West East West Midlands Yorkshire and the Humber South West East Midlands North East 49,138,831 8,000,550 7,172,036 6,729, 49,138,831 377/km² | ||||
| ReligionReligion sometimes used interchangeably with faith, is commonly defined as belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the practices and institutions associated with such belief. Borobudur, a Buddhist stupa built between 750 and 850 Adriaen | Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and is the mother branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. Christianity was planted in Britain in the first or second c ( Established ChurchIn English history, the Established Church is the Church of England, the church which is established by the Government, supported by it, and of which the monarch is the titular head. The Church of Scotland at one time held an analgous position with regard): 31,500,000 Roman CatholicThe Roman Catholic Church (often called simply the Catholic Church, but see Catholicism for other meanings of the term "Catholic Church") is a worldwide body of Christians in full communion with the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, and subscribing to the beliefs: 5,000,000 Methodist: 1,400,000 Muslim: 900,000 Jewish: 410,000 Sikh: 175,000 Hindu: 140,000 | ||||
| Unification | 9th century by Egbert of Wessex | ||||
| Currency | Pound Sterling (£) (GBP) | ||||
| Time zone | UTC, | ||||
| National Anthems | None officially; de facto (as part of the UK): God Save the Queen | ||||
England is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England is named after the Angles, one of a number of Germanic peoples who settled there in the 5th and 6th centuries. England has not had a separate political identity since 1707 when Great Britain was established as a political entity.
The names by which most of the various languages of Europe refer to England follow two distinct patterns. Virtually every continental European tongue uses a name similar to "England": "Angleterre" ( French), "Anglia" ( Hungarian), "Anglija" ( Slovene), "Inghilterra" ( Italian), "Engleska" ( Serbo-Croatian) and so on. The Celtic languages of northwest Europe, by contrast, use quite different names, e.g. "Bro-Saoz" ( Breton), "Pow Sows" ( Cornish) and "Sasana" ( Irish). The explanation lies in the tribal settlement of England in the Dark Ages and the different contacts between various peoples. The ancestors of the present-day Welsh and Cornish were driven west by the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon tribes; the Celtic names for England are variants on "land of the Saxons," since the Saxons were the western-most tribal groups. By contrast, it has been suggested that the Angles' geographic position along the eastern coast of England gave them a higher international profile as traders than the inland-dwelling Saxons. (See Wiktionary for a list of non-English names for England.)
Alternative names sometimes used for England have included the slang "Blighty", from the Hindustani "bila yati" meaning "foreign"; and " Albion," an ancient name popularised by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy in the 1st century, supposedly in reference to the white ( Latin alba) cliffs of Dover. (In its origins, however, the name applied to the whole island of Great Britain.) More poetically, England has been called "this scept'red 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).
"England" is sometimes, wrongly, used in reference to the whole United Kingdom, the entire island of Great Britain (or simply Britain), or indeed the British Isles. This usage pattern is frequently seen in documents from the USA. This is not only incorrect but can cause offence to people from other parts of the UK. Further, there are situations where, while the word "England" would be factually correct, British people would typically use the less-specific "Britain" or "The UK".
The inhabitants of England are the English. Slang terms sometimes used for them include "Sassenachs" (from the Scots Gaelic) and "Limeys" (in reference to the citrus fruits carried aboard English sailing vessels to prevent scurvy).
The English flag is St. George's cross, a thin red cross on a white field. A red cross acted as a symbol for many Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD. It became associated with Saint 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, began to use his cross as a banner. It remained in national use until 1707, when the Union Flag (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 rose is widely recognised as the national flower of England and is used in a variety of contexts, for example as the badge of the English Rugby Union team. The Three Lions badge performs a similar role for the English national football team, having its basis in the English royal arms first used by Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) in the late twelfth century.
England does not have an official anthem of its own but Jerusalem (incorporating the Blake phrase quoted above), I vow to thee my country and Land of Hope and Glory are all widely regarded - unofficially - as English national hymns (although the last more properly refers to Great Britain, not just England). At sporting events, God Save The Queen (the national anthem for the UK as a whole) is nonetheless usually played for the England football team, although Land of Hope and Glory has been used as the English anthem at the Commonwealth Games (where the four nations in the UK face each other independently).
Main article: History of England
Since the term "English" explicitly refers to peoples who arrived on the island of Great Britain relatively recently, it is anachronistic to talk of England's prehistory or ancient history, which (although rich and interesting) are properly dealt with as part of the history of the island of Great Britain as a whole. Suffice it to say that when the geographical region we call "England" was invaded inconsequentially by Julius Caesar in 55 BC, and then again more conclusively the next century by the Emperor Claudius, it was inhabited by Celtic tribes collectively called "Britons." The whole southern part of the island — roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales — became a part of the Roman Empire until finally abandoned early in the 5th century.
Unaided by Roman legions, Roman Britannia could not long resist the Germanic tribes who arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries, pushing the Britons back into modern-day Wales and Cornwall. The invaders fell into three main groups: the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles. As they became more civilised, recognisable states formed and began to merge with one another. (The most well-known state of affairs being the "Anglo-Saxon heptarchy".) From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the " Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the country of England was unified. In some sense, real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of "England" in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often regarded as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted, two generations later, by Alfred the Great (ruled 871– 899).
Some school histories of England begin with the Norman conquest in 1066, and the numbering system used for English monarchs treats that event as a blank slate from which to count. (For example, the Edward I who reigned in the 13th century was not the first king of England of that name, only the first since the conquest.) But although he unquestionably engineered a pivotal moment in the country's history, William the Conqueror did not "found" or "unify" the country; he took over a pre-existing England and gave it a Norman-French administration and nobility who gradually adopted the language and customs of the English over the succeeding centuries.
From the late 13th century, the neighbouring principality of Wales was joined to England, and gradually came to be a part of that kingdom for most legal purposes, although in the modern era it is more usually thought of as a separate nation (fielding, for example, its own athletic teams). The history of England as an independent country stretches on through the middle ages and renaissance to the reign of Elizabeth I, often remembered as a golden age in its history, notable both for its culture and mercantile success. Elizabeth's successor, James I was already king of Scotland (as James VI); and this personal union of the two crowns was followed a century later by the Act of Union 1707 which finally joined England and Scotland into the germ of the present-day United Kingdom. For the history of England after that date, see History of the United Kingdom.
Main article: Politics of the United Kingdom, Government of England
England ceased to be an independent political entity with the Act of Union with the Kingdom of Scotland in 1707, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. All of Great Britain has been ruled by the government of the United Kingdom since that date, though in 1999 the first elections to the newly created Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales left England as the only part of the Union with no devolved assembly or parliament such as exist in the other three nations of the United Kingdom. As all legislation for England is passed by Parliament at Westminster there are some complaints about the ability of, Northern Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Members of Parliament to "interfere" in purely English affairs when English MPs have no similar right of "interference". This apparent injustice is highlighted by both English and Scottish politicians, often those opposed to devolution, and has become popularly known as the West Lothian question.
There are calls by some for an English Parliament but the current Labour government favoured the establishment of regional governments, claiming that England was too large to be governed as a sub-state entity. In some regions, notably the South West and South East there is little interest, but in the north of England there was some support. A referendum on this issue was held in North East England on 4 November 2004. Voters decisively rejected the proposal.
Unlike the other nations of the Kingdom, there is very little call for independence of England from the UK. This is overwhelmingly due to its dominance in the Union. Those groups that do campaign for such a thing tend to be right-wing organisations with very little popular support.
Since the promulgation of the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan and the Act of Union 1536 with Wales, England has shared a legal identity with Wales as the joint entity of England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland retain separate legal systems and identities.
Main article: Subdivisions of England
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, whether they were Kingdoms, such as Essex and Sussex; Duchies, such as Yorkshire, Cornwall and Lancashire or simply tracts of land given to some noble, as is the case with Berkshire. Until 1867, they were subdivided into smaller divisions called hundreds.
These counties all still exist in, or near to, their original form as the traditional counties . In many places, however, they have been heavily modified or abolished outright as administrative counties. This came about due to a number of factors.
The fact that the counties were so small meant, and still means, that there was no regional government able to coordinate an overarching plan for the area. This was especially true in the metropolitan areas surrounding the cities, as the county lines were usually drawn up before the industrial revolution and the mass urbanisation of England.
The solution was the creation of large metropolitan counties centred on cities. These were later broken up, with several other counties, into unitary authorities, unifying the county and district/borough levels of government.
London is a special case, and is the one Region which currently has a representative authority as well as a directly elected mayor. The thirty-two London boroughs remain the local form of government in the city.Other than Greater London, the official Regions are:
The Regions hold very little power owing to their lack of accountability – regional authority is placed in the hands of unelected representatives of various interests. When, as seems likely, several Regions opt to replace these QUANGOs with elected assemblies, Local government in England will remain as variable and, some might say, confusing as ever.
Main article: Geography of England
England comprises most of the 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.
Most of England consists of rolling hills, but it is more mountainous in the north. 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, much of which has been drained for agricultural use.
England's six largest cities (in decreasing order of population) are; London, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Manchester.
The Channel Tunnel near Dover links England to the European mainland.
The highest temperature ever recorded in England was 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) on August 10, 2003 in Kent. [1]
The largest cities in England are as follows (in alphabetical order):
Main article: Economy of England
Main article: Demographics of England
England is both the most populous and the most ethnically diverse nation in the United Kingdom with around 49 million inhabitants, of which roughly a tenth are from non-White ethnic groups.
This population is made up of, and descended from, immigrants who have arrived over millennia. The principal waves of migration have been in c. 600 BC (Celts), the Roman period (garrison soldiers from throughout the Empire), 350–550 ( Angles, Saxons, Jutes), 800–900 ( Vikings, Danes), 1066 ( Normans), 1650–1750 ( European refugees and Huguenots), 1880–1940 ( Jews), 1950–1985 ( Caribbeans, Africans, South Asians), 1985— (citizens of European Community member states, East Europeans, Kurds, refugees).
The general prosperity of England has also made it a destination for economic migrants particularly from Ireland and Scotland. This diverse ethnic mix continues to create a diverse and dynamic language that is widely used internationally.
The simplest view is that an English person (or, in more old-fashioned terms, an "Englishman") is someone who is from England and holds British nationality, regardless of his or her racial origin. However, some recent immigrants always refer to themselves as "British" and never as "English." Actually, though, it is not unusual to hear any inhabitant of England refer to him- or herself as "British" rather than "English"; 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, (i.e. a British person, institution, custom, city, etc. is assumed English unless specified otherwise). The English not infrequently include their neighbours in the general term "British" while Scots, Welsh, and Irish, proud of their separate identities, tend to be more forward about referring to themselves by one of those more specific terms.
A person, therefore, using the term "English" to describe him or herself (regardless of personal history) is to some extent going out of his or her way to do so; hence he or she may also be seen (rightly or wrongly, and not necessarily pejoratively) as nationalistic.* While Scottish, Welsh, and Irish patriotism are widely exhibited, specifically English patriotism has often been viewed with suspicion, and most English people feel more comfortable identifying themselves with Britain as a whole, to avoid being seen as bullies by their Scottish, Welsh, and Irish neighbours. The extent to which specifically English patriotism is linked to a right-wing xenophobic agenda has recently been a topic of debate in the national press, with many English people trying to "reclaim" the term and the Cross of St. George from the far-right.
All these distinctions are only possible because there is no "English Citizenship" or legal definition of Englishness. Moreover, the hazy understanding many people have of the distinction between "England" and "Britain" compounds the confusion. At any rate, it is always safe, when in doubt, to refer to an "English" person as "British", since this will be correct even if not as precise as possible.
See also: Population of England for historical population estimates
Main article: Culture of England
As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue today (although not officially enshrined as such). An Indo-European language in the Germanic family, it is closely related to Dutch, suggesting geographic proximity between the ancient Dutch and ancient Anglo-Saxons before the latter invaded Britain. 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-French 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 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.
The law does not recognise any language as being official, but English is the only language used in England for general official business. The other national languages of the UK ( Welsh, Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic) are confined to their respective nations, and only Welsh is treated by law as an equal to English (and then only for organisations which do business on both sides of the Anglo-Welsh border or in Wales itself).
The only native spoken language in England other than English is the Cornish language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became extinct in the 19th century but has been revived and is spoken in various degrees of fluency by around 3,500 people. 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.
Most deaf people within England speak British sign language (BSL), a sign language native to Britain. The British Deaf Association estimates that 70,000 people throughout the UK speak BSL as their first or preferred language, but does not give statistics specific to England. Like Cornish, BSL has no official status, but has been granted a degree of recognition by the government. 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, including Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Chinese and Vietnamese. 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 large number of distinct English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood elsewhere in the country.
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