United Kingdom

A union of four nations that industrialised first and governed a quarter of the world. England was unified in the tenth century, conquered by Normans in 1066, and developed institutions that constrained its monarchs unusually early - Magna Carta in 1215, a parliament that grew from taxation bargaining, a civil war that executed a king in 1649, and a settlement in 1688 that made parliament supreme. Union with Scotland came in 1707 and with Ireland in 1801. The industrial revolution began here in the eighteenth century, in coal, iron, textiles and steam, and remade the world economy; it was financed partly by Atlantic slavery, which Britain dominated and then, from 1807, suppressed with its navy. The empire covered a quarter of the earth's land at its height and left English, common law and a large number of contested borders. Two world wars, the loss of India in 1947 and Suez in 1956 ended the imperial role. The National Health Service dates from 1948, immigration from the Caribbean and South Asia reshaped the population, and devolution gave Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland their own legislatures. The country left the European Union in 2020. London is the capital. The country has about sixty-eight million people across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It has no single codified constitution. English is now spoken as a first or second language by well over a billion people. The BBC, founded in 1922, was the first national broadcaster of its kind. Its head of state is also monarch of fourteen other countries.

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