United Kingdom.
Travel /
Tourism.
The United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state in
Europe.
Lying off the north-western coast of the
European mainland, the country includes the island of
Great Britain , the north-eastern part of the island of
Ireland, and many smaller islands.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another state: the
Republic of Ireland.
Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the
Atlantic Ocean, with the
North Sea in the east and the
English Channel in the south. The
Irish Sea lies between
Great Britain and Ireland.
The UK has an area of 93,800 square miles (243,
000 km2), making it the 80th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe.
The United Kingdom is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 64.1 million inhabitants. It is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. Its capital city is
London, an important global city and financial centre with the second-largest urban area in Europe, and its metropolitan area is the largest in
European Union, with a population of about 14 million according
Eurostat.The current monarch—since
6 February 1952—is
Queen Elizabeth II. The UK consists of four countries:
England,
Scotland,
Wales, and Northern Ireland. The latter three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals,
Edinburgh,
Cardiff, and
Belfast, respectively.
Guernsey,
Jersey, and the
Isle of Man are not part of the United Kingdom, being
Crown dependencies with the
British Government responsible for defence and international representation.
The relationships among the countries of the United Kingdom have changed over time. Wales was annexed by the
Kingdom of England under the
Acts of Union of 1536 and 1543. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in a unified
Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, which in 1801, merged with the
Kingdom of Ireland to form the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the country, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK has fourteen
Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the
British Empire which, at its height in the
1920s, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history.
British influence can be observed in the language, culture, and legal systems of many of its former colonies.
The United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal
GDP and tenth-largest by purchasing power parity.
The country is considered to have a high-income economy and is categorised as very high in the
Human Development Index, currently ranking
14th in the world. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early
20th centuries. The UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific, and political influence internationally. It is a recognised nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fifth or sixth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946. It has been a member state of the European Union (EU) and its predecessor, the
European Economic Community (
EEC), since
1973; it is also a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations, the
Council of Europe, the G7, the G8, the
G20,
NATO, the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (
OECD), and the
World Trade Organization (
WTO).
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Text by wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
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- published: 23 Jan 2015
- views: 239