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The history of the United Kingdom begins in 1707 with the Treaty of Union and Acts of Union. The core of the United Kingdom as a unified state came into being with the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, [1] into a new unitary state called Great Britain. [a] Of this new state, the historian Simon Schama said:
The formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has involved personal and political union across Great Britain and the wider British Isles. The United Kingdom is the most recent of a number of sovereign states that have been established in Great Britain at different periods in history, in different combinations and ...
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, [m] is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England , Scotland , Wales , and Northern Ireland .
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. . It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century.
Most of Ireland seceded in 1922 creating the present-day United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. While the United Kingdom remains a unitary state in which Parliament is sovereign, a process of devolution began in the 20th and 21st centuries that saw Parliament restore self-government to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland were merged to create the Kingdom of Great Britain, and in 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland joined to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The British monarch was the nominal head of the vast British Empire, which covered a quarter of the world's land area at its greatest extent in 1921.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the union of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into one sovereign state, established by the Acts of Union in 1801. [4] It continued in this form for over a century.
The largest ethnic group in the United Kingdom is White British, followed by Asian British. Ethnicity in the United Kingdom is formally recorded at the national level through a census. The 2011 United Kingdom census recorded a reduced share of White British people in the United Kingdom from the previous 2001 United Kingdom census.