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The United Kingdom is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and its ancillary bodies of water, including the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, St George's Channel, and the Irish Sea. The United Kingdom is linked to France and Continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy composed of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who is also the Queen and Head of State of fifteen other Commonwealth Realms, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica. The Crown Dependencies of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, formally possessions of the Crown, form a federacy with the United Kingdom collectively known as the British Islands. The UK also has fourteen overseas territories, all remnants of the British Empire which at its height encompassed more than a quarter of the world's surface and population. Although Britain was the foremost great power during the 19th century, the economic cost of two world wars and the giving of independence to many of its empire states (including India, much of Africa, and Honk Kong) during the latter half of the 20th century diminished Britain's status in global affairs. However, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a nuclear power, a member of the G8, the world's fifth largest economy, and having the second highest defence spending, Britain remains an important political, economic and military world power. It is a member of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations. History The Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland had existed as separate sovereign and independent states with their own monarchs and political structures since the 9th century. The once independent Principality of Wales fell under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284. 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. Independence for the Republic of Ireland in 1922 followed the partition of the island of Ireland two years previously, with six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remaining within the UK, which then changed to the current name in 1927 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain was an important part of the Age of Enlightenment with philosophical and scientific input and an influential literary and theatrical tradition.Over the next century the United Kingdom played a leading role in developing Western ideas of parliamentary democracy with significant contributions to literature, the arts and science. The wealth of the British Empire, like other Great Powers, was also partly generated by colonial exploitation, including the industrialisation after 1750 of the slave trade, with Britain's 18th century shipping fleet, the largest in the world, taking African slaves to the Americas as part of the infamous triangular trade. At the beginning of the 19th however, Britain passed the Slave Trade Act and became the first nation to permanently prohibit trade in slaves. After the Industrial Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars, Britain became the principal power of the 19th century. At its peak, the British Empire, which is considered to be both the United Kingdom and areas that are legally separate entities from, but controlled by, the UK, stretched to almost one-third of the earth and encompassed a third of its population, making it in terms of population and territory the largest in history. Over the 19th century the country played an important role in the development of parliamentary democracy, partly via the emergence of a multi-party system. Developments of science and the arts, building on an 18th century inheritance of figures such as Isaac Newton, and particularly its earlier tradition of literature, were influential. At the end of the Victorian era, however, the United Kingdom lost its industrial leadership, particularly to the United States, which surpassed the UK in industrial production and trade in the 1890s, as well as to the German Empire. Britain remained the pre-eminent superpower, and its empire expanded to its maximum size by 1921, gaining the League of Nations mandate over former German and Ottoman colonies after World War I. After emergence from the war, the world's first large-scale international broadcasting network, the BBC, was created. The country's Labour movement had been in expansion since the late 19th century, and in 1924 the first Labour government came to power. Britain fought Nazi Germany in World War II, with its Commonwealth allies including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, later to be joined by further allies. 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 the United Kingdom financially and physically damaged. Economically costly wartime loans, loans taken in 1945 from the United States and from Canada, combined with post-war Marshall Plan aid from the United States started the United Kingdom on the road to recovery. 1945 saw the emergence 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 multiethnic Britain. 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 premiership of Margaret Thatcher, under whom a marked break with the post-war political and economic consensus saw, for her supporters, economic recovery, and, for her critics, greater social division. From the mid-1990s onward these trends have largely continued under the leadership of Tony Blair. The United Kingdom has been a member of the European Union since 1973. The attitude of the present Labour government towards further integration with this organisation is mixed, with the Conservative Party favouring a return of some powers and competencies to the state, and the Liberal Democrats supportive of current engagement. Geography Most of England consists of lowland terrain, with some mountainous terrain in the north-west (Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District), north (the upland moors of the Pennines and limestone hills of the Peak District) and south-west (Exmoor and Dartmoor) by the Tees-Exe line. Lower ranges include the limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck, Cotswolds and Lincolnshire Wolds, and the chalk downs of the Southern England Chalk Formation. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber Estuary. The largest urban area is Greater London. England's highest mountain is Scafell Pike, which is in the Lake District 978 m (3,208 ft). Scotland's geography is varied, with lowlands in the south and east and highlands in the north and west, including Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles at 1,344 m (4,406 ft). There are many long and deep sea arms, firths, and lochs. There are nearly eight hundred islands in Scotland, mainly west and north of the mainland, notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands. In total, it is estimated that the UK includes around one thousand islands. Wales is mostly mountainous, the highest peak being Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) at 1,085 m or 3,560 ft above sea level. North of the mainland is the island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn). Northern Ireland, making up the north-eastern part of Ireland, is mostly hilly. The province is home to one of the UK's World Heritage Sites, the Giant's Causeway, which consists of more than 40,000 six-sided basalt columns up to 12 m (40 ft) high. Lough Neagh, the largest body of water in the British Isles, by surface area (388 km² / 150 mi²), can be found in Northern Ireland [25]. The highest peak is Slieve Donard at 849 metres (2,786 ft) in the province's Mourne Mountains. The greatest distance between two points on the UK mainland of Great Britain is 1,350 km (839 miles) between Land's End in Cornwall (near Penzance) and John O'Groats in Caithness (near Thurso), a two day journey by car. When measured directly north-south it is a little over 1,100 km in length and is a fraction under 500 km at its widest. As a comparison, countries of very similar surface area include Romania, Ecuador, Ghana, Guinea, Uganda and Laos. Part of the information are from www.wikipedia.org respecting the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
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