*The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give its full name) refers to the political union between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The UK is a sovereign state, but the nations that make it up are also countries in their own right.
Ordnance Survey [ with maps ]* The difference between UK, Great Britain and the British Isles
**De Valera disagreed that Ireland was part of the British Isles.
Thanks for fighting my ignorance. I always assumed that Great Britain and UK were two different words or phrases that meant the same thing.
Can someone explain why this distinction exists?
Did you mean “not synonymous with …”? because coterminous doesn’t quite make sense and I suspect those two (semi-overlapping) regions share a common boundary somewhere. But yes, I was under exactly that misapprehension. In fact I initially typed “the British Isles”. Oddly, I didn’t think Ireland was a part of that entity. In my head, that area was Great Britain (the big island and the little isles) and Ireland (half of which is part of the UK)with and a sea between the two entities.
That makes no sense, but a bit of googling shows you’re right. Gibraltar, Anguila, and the rest aren’t officially part of the UK, just under it’s jurisdiction.
Great Britain is the normal term for the geography of the place: United Kingdom of Great Britain is the present political status. Dating from 1801 and incorporating the previous Union with Scotland, 1707, and the stupid Union with Ireland ( abolishing the latter’s own parliament dominated by Irish aristos ) 1800. Between 1707 and 1801 it was just the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Obviously the English had had the Lordship of Ireland many centuries before they merged with the Scots… Since Angevin times.
I don’t care for the United Kingdom bit; a minor reason being that as with the United Provinces and the United States, it is geographically imprecise and could apply to all the other places in the world using that combination. There have been a dozen 'United States’; plus ‘America’ is prettier.
I dunno why we don’t incorporate far-flung territories as does France with Martinique and Corsica, where they are full French citizens. Just English grudgingness I guess.
ETA: And there were nearly a dozen ‘United Provinces’ although everyone assumes the Dutch.
Same for the the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. They’re not part of the UK, but are subject to its jurisdiction.
Because Great Britain is a geographical term and United Kingdom is a political term.
Evan, I know you like your flights of fancy and hand-wavey allusions, but that’s not correct, as you must surely know.
The present political status is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Probably, but most people omit dear old Ulster. It’s like people don’t think of it unless they have to.
The Channel Islands are considered part of the British Isles? Even though they’re off the coast of France, not Britain?
It’s no different from Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Isles, and American Samoa. Colonies aren’t part of the home country, just subject to their jurisdiction.
I think PM May is thinking of Ulster a lot these days. 
They may fail to consider Northern Ireland (not “Ulster”, part of which lies in the Republic of Ireland) but, nevertheless, “United Kingdom of Great Britain” is neither a correct nor a common usage. “United Kingdom” without any mention of Great Britain gets 1.28 billion google hits; “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” gets 12.7 million, but “United Kingdom of Great Britain” without any mention of either Ireland or Northern Ireland gets just 361,000.
Great Britain is both. Politically, the entirety of the UK is in either Great Britain or Northern Ireland. (Although there aren’t very many GB-specific institutions or offices left. Maybe just the Lord Chancellor?)
Agreed, nothing is simple and the Scots, like almost any other ethnic group, love to fight among themselves. There’s plenty of bad blood remember which clan murderously ambushed which clan, and whose side you take on that, etc. the fact remains - the Stuart King James was given the heave-ho when his son Charlie (who most likely would also be raised Catholic) was born.
Charlie and his son Charlie both landed in the highlands, where they had no problem finding warriors rallying to the cause to help Make Scotland Great Again. As they tried to move south - less so. BPCharlie got within 100 miles of London before he realized that the majority of the Island was not terribly willing to join his side - they just weren’t enthusiastic about the Georges either.
Catholic was a code word for those garlicky foreigners taking over - the Italian pope controlled by either the French or the Spanish, whichever was in ascendancy at the time. the way I’ve hear it explained - Catholic then was like “communist” today (or during the cold war). It was not so much a simple ideology of naïve believers, but a cover for the enemy to use to insinuate themselves into and control ye great country and pass control to the pope and his puppet master much as Western communists were spies and fifth column for Stalin and Mao. Heck, even JFK had to address this mindset about Catholics when he ran for president.
So Charlie(s) were perceived as both a threat to Protestantism and to independent government.
As an example, look at all the different places named Glencoe, which was the site of one of those massacres. Apparently, a lot of people were on the murderee side, since the name has been spread so widely.
There’s many places in the US and Canada with Scottish names. I’ve been doing research on them, well not just them, foreign names of all sorts. You can see my results at these pages:
List of non-US cities with a US namesake
List of non-Canadian cities with a Canadian namesake (I’m still working on places in Ontario for this list)
As you can see, in both countries, the list of Scottish names is second only to those from England.
We’ve getting off topic by talking about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite uprisings, but a few words more.
There were major legal restrictions on Catholics in both England and Scotland up to 1829.
No Catholic could
So for the king to be Catholic was a big deal.
Charlie’s father was James, the ‘Old Pretender’.
Charles himself was born and grew up in Italy. His mother was a Polish princess who spoke only French, Polish and bit of Italian. His father was half Italian and had spent almost his entire life in France and Italy. Charles could speak English (as his third language after Italian and French) but he spoke with a strange Italian-Irish accent because he had learned to speak English from Irishmen. So he was not particularly Scottish himself, but he was the heir of Scottish and British kings.
The reason that the Jacobite uprisings started in the Highlands was that it was easy to raise an army there. Elsewhere you had to convince and enlist individuals, but in the Highlands you only had to convince a few of the major clan Chiefs to support you, and they could raise private armies.
Members of the clan had to fight on their Chief’s orders, whether they wanted to or not. He could throw them off their land, take away their livelihood, and leave them and their families destitute. Chiefs had absolute power over their clans, outside the rule of law.
Initially, both Cameron and MacDonald refused to fight for Prince Charles and told him to go back to France. They wanted significant French support, including French regular soldiers, military supplies, and money, before they would take part in an uprising. It took many hours of discussions before Prince Charles convinced them to support him with the prospect of French help later if they had some success.
Most of Charles’ supporters were against the Union with England, but the Stuarts themselves weren’t. They claimed the thrones of both England and Scotland. If they had succeeded in their aims they would have been based in London like their ancestors. When Charles formally raised his flag at Glenfinnan on 19th August 1745, he read out a long detailed manifesto of his intentions and policies. It was so long that it took nearly half an hour to read, but there wasn’t even a single word in it about Scottish independence.
Later, at the urging of his followers, he promised that the Union would be dissolved, but whether he would have followed through with that is another matter.
Certainly if restored once more — it was less than a century since Charles II returned from exile — they would have kept all the unions, maybe under new arrangements to save the anti-union people embarrasment; yet James VIII/III definitely made breaking the Union a plank in the '15, and the '19 also. Then again it was under a decade old.
Speaking of O’Connell, a few years after Trafalgar, he claimed out of 100,000 Royal Navy sailors 70,000 had been Irish — in a speech against the new Irish Union wherein he pointed out the 1798 rebellion had been crushed ( he joined up to help crush it ), and so was no excuse for imposing Westminster parliament rule over Ireland.
I was using the word coterminous to mean “co-extensive” or “having the same boundaries”.
I think this would have seemed less strange if we were writing 100 years ago. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to think of India, Nigeria, Cyprus or Singapore as part of the UK. Now that there are only a few small legacy territories scattered around, we’re less used to the idea of places that are not being part of a sovereign country.
However, France does things differently; certain places outside Europe are legally part of France and the European Union: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion and French Guiana, as was Algeria until it became independent.
I’m trying real hard to think of a government body or officer which only applies to the island of Great Britain, and coming up short. I don’t think the Lord Chancellor is so limited. As SecState for Justice, the LC seems to have duties which apply throughout the UK.
The British Parliament and government have jurisdiction over all of the UK. Other bodies only have jurisdiction over Scotland (Scots Parliament and Courts), or England and Wales (courts) or only over Northern Ireland (N. Irish Assembly). But I can’t think of any body that has jurisdiction over GB but not Northern Ireland.
Some of them are actually self-governing and pursue local laws significantly different from the UK - for example, the Channel Islands have significantly looser gun laws and a recreational firearm culture. Also IIRC only Gibraltar is actually a part of the EU, the others aren’t.