What is "Britain"?

Question

*warning - silly question from uninformed foreigner coming up*

Is Great Britain the same as the United Kingdom? Is it a country? England, Scotland & Wales are countries (?), but in the papers they say that "one in 10 Brits leaves the country" (which country?) Shouldn't those three be provinces of GB? If not, what makes them countries, apart from their flags and rugby teams :)

Help,

Forgive-my-ignorance

Answer 1

after seeing your question and sharing it with my office - we have all now stopped working and are wondering what the answer to your question is aswell. sorry i cant help you but good question.

Answer 2

Nothing to forgive! It can be very confusing! Politically, Great Britain,or Britain, describes the combination of England, Scotland, and Wales. It includes outlying islands such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland, but does not include the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.

Over the centuries, Great Britain has evolved politically from several independent countries (England, Scotland, and Wales) through two kingdoms with a shared monarch (England and Scotland) with the union of the Crowns in 1603, a single all-island Kingdom of Great Britain from 1707, to the situation following 1801 in which Great Britain together with the island of Ireland constituted the larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The UK became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the 1920s (1922) following the independence of five-sixths of Ireland as first the Irish Free State, a Dominion of the then British Commonwealth, and then later as an independent republic outside the British Common wealth as the Republic of Ireland.

Answer 3

Britain is the island that includes England, Scotland and Wales. These are not provinces; these are countries thunder a centralized authority (a province generally does not have a separate and distinct national identity, or any history of self-rule. all three countried here are distinct enough to be called countries in their own right, not just provinces)

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or UK for short, also includes N. Ireland, and several islands and overseas territories.

Brit, British and Britain are often used to describe residents of the UK without differentiating where they specifically come from.