Batu tertua di Kepulauan Britania berusia 2,7 miliar tahun dan dapat ditemukan di Pulau Irlandia, Wales dan Skotlandia bagian barat laut.[13] Pada periodeSilurian, bagian barat laut berbenturan dengan bagian tenggara, yang awalnya merupakan bagian massa daratan kontinental berbeda. Topografi kepulauan ini termasuk sederhana dibandingkan dengan standar global.Ben Nevis, gunung tertinggi di kepulauan, hanya memiliki ketinggian 1.345 meter (4.413 ft),[6] danLough Neagh, danau terbesar dibandingkan danau-danau lain di kepulauan, memiliki luas 390 kilometer persegi (151 sq mi). Kepulauan ini memiliki iklim laut sedang, dengan musim dingin sejuk dan musim panas hangat.Arus Atlantik Utara membawa kelembapan yang signifikan dan meningkatkan temperatur sebesar 11 °C (20 °F) di atas rata-rata global di garis lintang serupa. Ini mengakibatkan lanskap yang telah lama didominasi oleh hutan hujan sedang, meskipun aktivitas manusia telah menghilangkan sebagian besartutupan hutan. Daerah ini dihuni kembali setelah periode glasial terakhirglasiasi Kuarter, pada tahun 12.000 SM, ketika Britania Raya masih menjadisemenanjung bagian benua Eropa. Irlandia kemungkinan terhubung dengan Britania Raya melaluijembatan es sebelum tahun 14.000 SM, dan belum dihuni hingga setelah tahun 8000 SM.[14] Britania Raya menjadi pulau pada tahun 7000 SM dengan tenggelamnyaDoggerland.[15]
SukuGael (Irlandia),Pikt (Britania Raya utara) danBriton (Britania Raya selatan), semuanya menuturkanbahasa-bahasa Keltik Kepulauan,[16] suku-suku ini menghuni kepulauan pada permulaan milenium ke-1 SM. Sebagian besar Britania Raya yang dihuni Britonik pernahditaklukkan oleh Kekaisaran Romawi dimulai dari tahun 43 Masehi. PopulasiAnglo-Saxon pertama datang seiring melemahnya Romawi pada abad ke-5, dan pada akhirnya populasi ini mendominasi wilayah yang kini bernama Inggris.[17] Invasi-invasi olehViking dimulai pada abad ke-9, disusul oleh permukiman-permukiman permanen lebih banyak dan perubahan politik, khususnya di Inggris. Penaklukan Inggris olehNorman pada tahun 1066 dan kemudian penaklukan sebagian Irlandia olehAngevin dimulai tahun 1169 menyebabkan kelas penguasa Norman yang baru menguasai sebagian besar Britania Raya dan beberapa bagian Irlandia. PadaAbad Pertengahan Akhir, Pulau Britania Raya terpisah menjadi negara Kerajaan Inggris dan Kerajaan Skotlandia, sementara kekuasaan di Irlandia berubah-ubah antarakerajaan-kerajaan Gaelik,penguasa-penguasa Hiberno-Norman danKekuasaan Irlandia yang didominasi orang Inggris, kemudian terbatas hanyaThe Pale.Persatuan Mahkota tahun 1603,Undang-Undang Persatuan 1707 danUndang-Undang Persatuan 1800 bertujuan mengkonsolidasikan Britania Raya dan Irlandia ke dalam satu unit politik bernama Kerajaan Bersatu Britania Raya dan Irlandia, sementara Pulau Man dan Kepulauan Channel masih menjadiDependensi Mahkota. Perluasan Imperium Britania Raya dan migrasi menyusulBencana Kelaparan Irlandia danPembersihan Dataran Tinggi menyebabkan tersebarnya sebagian populasi dan budaya kepulauan ini ke seluruh dunia, dan pengurangan populasi di Irlandia dengan cepat pada paruh kedua abad ke-19. Sebagian besar Irlandia memisahkan diri dari negara Britania Raya setelahPerang Kemerdekaan Irlandia dan kemudianPerjanjian Britania Raya-Irlandia (1919–1922), sementara enam county masih menjadi bagian negara Britania Raya dengan nama Irlandia Utara.
Sebagai istilah, "Kepulauan Britania" adalah namageografis dan bukanlah unit politik. Di Irlandia, istilah inidiperdebatkan,[8][18] dan ada keberatan terhadap penggunaannya.[19]Pemerintah Irlandia secara resmi tidak mengakui istilah tersebut,[20] dan kedutaannya di London menghindari penggunaannya.[21] "Britania Raya dan Irlandia" digunakan sebagai deskripsi alternatif,[19][22][23] dan "Kepulauan Atlantik" juga hanya sedikit digunakan dalam dunia akademik.[24][25][26][27] Dalam dokumen-dokumen resmi yang diciptakan bersama oleh negara Irlandia dan Britania Raya, seperti dalamPerjanjian Jumat Baik, mereka menggunakan istilah "kepulauan ini".[28][29]
^abCountry/Territory Index, Island DirectoryDiarsipkan 13 December 2018 diWayback Machine., United Nations Environment Programme. Retrieved 9 August 2015. Island FactsDiarsipkan 4 March 2016 diWayback Machine., Isle of Man Government. Retrieved 9 August 2015. Menurut UNEP, Kepulauan Channel memiliki luas daratan194 km2, Republik Irlandia memiliki luas70.282 km2, dan Britania Raya memiliki luas244.111 km2. Menurut Pemerintah Pulau Man, Pulau Man memiliki luas572 km2. Dengan demikian, luas daratan Kepulauan Britania adalah315,159 km2.
^The diplomatic and constitutional name of the Irish state is simplyIreland. For disambiguation purposes,Republic of Ireland is often used although technically not the name of the state but, according to theRepublic of Ireland Act 1948, the state "may be described" as such.
^Oxford English Dictionary: "British Isles: a geographical term for the islands comprising Great Britain and Ireland with all their offshore islands including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands."
^Alan, Lew; Colin, Hall; Dallen, Timothy (2008).World Geography of Travel and Tourism: A Regional Approach. Oxford: Elsevier.ISBN978-0-7506-7978-7.The British Isles comprise more than 6,000 islands off the north-west coast of continental Europe, including the countries of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. The group also includes the United Kingdom crown dependencies of the Isle of Man, and by tradition, the Channel Islands (the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey), even though these islands are strictly speaking an archipelago immediately off the coast of Normandy (France) rather than part of the British Isles.
^Woodcock, Nigel H.; Rob Strachan (2012).Geological History of Britain and Ireland. John Wiley & Sons. hlm. 49–50.ISBN978-1-1182-7403-3.
^Edwards, R.J.; Brooks, A.J. (2008). Davenport, J.J.; Sleeman, D.P.; Woodman, P.C., ed. "The Island of Ireland: Drowning the Myth of an Irish Land-bridge?".The Irish Naturalists' Journal: 19–34.
^abDavies, Alistair; Sinfield, Alan (2000),British Culture of the Postwar: An Introduction to Literature and Society, 1945–1999, Routledge, hlm. 9,ISBN978-0-415-12811-7,Some of the Irish dislike the 'British' in 'British Isles', while a minority of the Welsh and Scottish are not keen on 'Great Britain'. ... In response to these difficulties, 'Britain and Ireland' is becoming preferred official usage if not in the vernacular, although there is a growing trend amongst some critics to refer to Britain and Ireland as 'the archipelago'.
^"Written Answers – Official Terms"Diarsipkan 6 October 2012 diWayback Machine.,Dáil Éireann, Volume 606, 28 September 2005. In his response, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs stated that "The British Isles is not an officially recognised term in any legal or inter-governmental sense. It is without any official status. The Government, including the Department of Foreign Affairs, does not use this term. Our officials in the Embassy of Ireland, London, continue to monitor the media in Britain for any abuse of the official terms as set out in the Constitution of Ireland and in legislation. These include the name of the State, the President,Taoiseach and others."
^Sharrock, David (3 October 2006),"New atlas lets Ireland slip shackles of Britain",The Times, UK, diarsipkan dariversi asli tanggal 16 February 2007, diakses tanggal24 April 2020,A spokesman for the Irish Embassy in London said: 'The British Isles has a dated ring to it as if we are still part of the Empire. We are independent, we are not part of Britain, not even in geographical terms. We would discourage its useage [sic].'Parameter|url-status= yang tidak diketahui akan diabaikan (bantuan)
^Hazlett, Ian (2003).The Reformation in Britain and Ireland: an introduction. Continuum International Publishing Group. hlm. 17.ISBN978-0-567-08280-0.At the outset, it should be stated that while the expression 'The British Isles' is evidently still commonly employed, its intermittent use throughout this work is only in the geographic sense, in so far as that is acceptable. Since the early twentieth century, that nomenclature has been regarded by some as increasingly less usable. It has been perceived as cloaking the idea of a 'greater England', or an extended south-eastern English imperium, under a common Crown since 1603 onwards. ... Nowadays, however, 'Britain and Ireland' is the more favoured expression, though there are problems with that too. ... There is no consensus on the matter, inevitably. It is unlikely that the ultimate in non-partisanship that has recently appeared the (East) 'Atlantic Archipelago' will have any appeal beyond captious scholars.
^"Guardian Style Guide",The Guardian, London, 19 December 2008, diarsipkan dariversi asli tanggal 24 May 2023,A geographical term taken to mean Great Britain, Ireland and some or all of the adjacent islands such as Orkney, Shetland and the Isle of Man. The phrase is best avoided, given its (understandable) unpopularity in the Irish Republic. The plate in the National Geographic Atlas of the World once titled British Isles now reads Britain and Ireland.
^Norquay, Glenda; Smyth, Gerry (2002),Across the margins: cultural identity and change in the Atlantic archipelago, Manchester University Press, hlm. 4,ISBN978-0-7190-5749-6,The term we favour here—Atlantic Archipelago—may prove to be of no greater use in the long run, but at this stage, it does at least have the merit of questioning the ideology underpinning more established nomenclature.
^Schwyzer, Philip; Mealor, Simon (2004),Archipelagic identities: literature and identity in the Atlantic Archipelago, Ashgate Publishing, hlm. 10,ISBN978-0-7546-3584-0,In some ways 'Atlantic Archipelago' is intended to do the work of including without excluding, and while it seems to have taken root in terms of academic conferences and publishing, I don't see it catching on in popular discourse or official political circles, at least not in a hurry.
^Kumar, Krishan (2003),The Making of English National Identity, Cambridge University Press, hlm. 6,ISBN978-0-521-77736-0,Some scholars, seeking to avoid the political and ethnic connotations of 'the British Isles', have proposed the 'Atlantic Archipelago' or even 'the East Atlantic Archipelago' (see, e.g. Pocock 1975a: 606; 1995: 292n; Tompson, 1986) Not surprisingly this does not seem to have caught on with the general public, though it has found increasing favour with scholars promoting the new 'British History'.
^David Armitage;Michael Braddick (2002),The British Atlantic world, 1500–1800, Palgrave Macmillan, hlm. 284,ISBN978-0-333-96340-1,British and Irish historians increasingly use 'Atlantic archipelago' as a less metro-centric term for what is popularly known as the British Isles.
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