User:Howsoonhathtime/Sandbox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Summary
In classical times, several Greek and Roman Geographers used derivatives of the Celtic Languages term "Pretani" to describe the islands to the north west of the European mainland, although several included islands not currently viewed as part of the "British Isles", e.g. Thule. With the incorporation of most of Britain into the Empire, the term "Britannia" came to mean more specifically the Roman province of Britain.
Other early classical geographers, native writers in the post-Roman period and late Roman geographers used the general term "oceani insulae", simply meaning "islands of the ocean". Great Britain and Ireland were separately "Britannia" and "Hibernia". (Between about the fifth and eleventh centuries, Ireland was also called "Scotia".) During the period between the fall of Rome and the rediscovery and publication of Ptolemy's Geography during the Renaissance, the term "Oceani Insulae" was the term used in the most common reference book of the age, i.e. Isidore's Etymology.
The term "British Isles" entered the English language in late 16th or early seventeenth century as the description of Great Britain, Ireland and the surrounding islands, but was not in common use until at least the second half of the seventeenth century [1] and, in general, the modern notion of "Britishness" only started to become common after the 1707 Act of Union.[2] While it is probably the most common term used to describe the islands, use of this term is not universally accepted and is rejected by many people[3] in Ireland.
Nowadays, in addition to "British Isles", other terms are also commonly used, including "Great Britain and Ireland", "The British Isles and Ireland", "Britain and Ireland", and the deliberately vague "these islands". There are several other less common designations like "IONA" (Islands of the North Atlantic), "The Anglo-Celtic Isles", etc.
[edit] Pretanic Islands and Britanniae (320 BC - ~400 AD)
The earliest known names come from ancient Greek texts like the Massaliote Periplus [4][5] and Pytheas from around 320 BC. The main islands were called Ierne, for Ireland,[6] and Albion for Great Britain. One of the terms used to describe the inhabitants was the Ρρεττανοι, Priteni or Pretani, probably from a Celtic languages term.[7]. It is not known if these terms were used by the inhabitants to describe themselves.[8] The Greek writers also used a collective term for the islands, appearing as αι Πρετανικαι νησοι (Pretanic Islands)[9] and αι Βρεττανιαι (Brittanic Isles).[10] Later, in Roman geography, Pretannia was Diodorus' version of this description.
Then, in 55 and 54 BC Caesar invaded Britain and introduced the term Britannia.[11] Later, around AD 70 Pliny the Elder in Book 4 of his Naturalis Historia listed the islands he considered to be Britanniae as Great Britain, Ireland, The Orkneys, the Hebrides, Isle of Man, Anglesey, possibly one of the Friesan Islands, and islands that have been identified as Ushant and Sian. The list also includes Thule, most often identified as Iceland.[12] He refers to Great Britain as the island called Britannia, while noting that its former name was Albion. Around AD 150 Ptolemy included essentially the same main islands in the Britannias. Ireland is called Hibernia. and Great Britain, Albion. [13] Ptolemy also included Thule in the chapter on Albion, although the coordinates he gives have been mapped to the area around modern Kristiansund in western Norway.[14]
The Roman province of Britannia was subsequently established,[15] and Roman Britain stabilised to cover the island of Great Britain south of Hadrian's Wall. Inhabitants of the province called themselves Brittannus or Britto, and gave their patria (homeland) as Britannia or as their tribe.[16] The term Priteni came to be used for the barbarians north of the Antonine Wall who, after AD 300, were called Picts.[17].
[edit] Oceani insulae (43 AD - 17th Century)
In AD 43 Pomponius Mela, one of the earliest Roman geographers[18] described various islands, including Britain, Ireland and Thule, as "Septemtrionalis Oceani Insulae", meaning Islands of the Northern Ocean.
This term was also used by native writers of the post-Roman period. The Life of Saint Columba, a book about the sixth century Irish monk Saint Columba[19] and the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum of Bede from the early eighth century both use the term. Bede's work refers to Brittania solely as the island "formerly called Albion" and treats Ireland separately. Again, he refers to Britain as being Oceani insula or an "island of the ocean".[20].
Similarly, writers on mainland Europe used the term to describe the islands. The Goth Jordanes writing in the Getica, a history of the Goths, in (AD 551) described the various islands in the western Ocean as "islands of the ocean", naming various islands in the North Atlantic, and believing Scandinavia to be one of them.[21] More significantly, Isidore of Seville's Etymology, written in the early seventh century and one of the most used textbooks in Europe up to the Renaissance, [22] similarly lists Britain (Britannia), Ireland (called Scotia or Hibernia), Thule, and many other islands simply as "islands" or "islands of the Ocean" and uses no other collective term. No Priteni-derived collective reference was used.
Even into the 17th century, in parallel with the first uses of the term "British Isles", Peter Heylyn in Microcosmus described the Iles of the Ocean consisting of all the classically known offshore islands, i.e. Zeeland, Denmark, the British Isles, and those in the Northerne Sea.[23]
[edit] Britannica/Britanniae (1409 - 1560's) and British Isles (1577-date)
The terms Britain and British, although occasionally used in Great Britain through the dark and early middle ages began to appear with more frequency and more contemporary political significance from the 12th century onwards.
In parallel, the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geographia in 1300 and its translation back into Latin in 1409 [24][25] revolutionised map-making in Europe. One impact was the introduction of Ptolemy's terminology naming Hibernia and Albion as Island[s] of Britannia (or "Britannica") into the Renaissance world, [26] with this terminology used from the mid sixteenth century onwards by mapmakers like Sebastian Munster, Gerardus Mercator[27][28] and Ortelius who - in his atlas of 1570 based on Mercator - uses the title "Angliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae, sive Britannicar. insularum descriptio", which translates roughly as "A Representation of England, Scotland and Ireland, or Britannica's islands".[29]
The term "Brytish Iles" appeared in English with John Dee, the Welsh geographer, occultist [30] and sometime adviser to Queen Elizabeth I of England. Dee also coined the term British Empire, along with a claim of a British Ocean including Britain and Ireland as well as Iceland, Greenland and possibly extending to North America.[31] Current scholarly opinion is generally that "his imperial vision was simply propaganda and antiquarianism".[31] During the late Tudor era, Tudor diplomatic efforts interspersed with warfare aimed to bring Scotland under the English monarch and to consolidate rule in Ireland. Dee used the term Brytish Iles in 1577 in arguments claiming extensive North Atlantic territories for Elizabeth and for England.[32]
The Tudor era ended when Elizabeth was succeeded by her Stuart cousin king James VI of Scotland, who brought the English, Scottish and Irish thrones under his personal rule as King James I of England, proclaiming himself 'King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland' [33]. James aimed to consolidate England and Scotland under the title "Great Britain", although without real success. The first published use in English of "British Isles" was in 1621 by Peter Heylin in his Microcosmus[34]. Heylin grouped Ireland with Great Britain and the minor islands in this new term.[35] In explaining this unfamiliar[36] terminology to his readers, Heylin commented;
- that he inhabitants of Ireland must have come from Britain as it was the nearest land.
- that ancient writers, such as Ptolemy, called Ireland a "Brttiʃh Iland".
- that the first century Roman writer Tacitus observed that the habits and disposition of the people in Ireland were not much unlike the "Brittaines" (interestingly, Tacitus himself had treated Ireland and Britain separately and had also seen similarities between the Britons and the Gauls of the continent). [37]
Modern scholarly opinion[38][39] is that Heylyn "politicized his geographical books Microcosmus" in the context of what geography meant at that time, e.g. "Heylyn's work must be seen as political expressions concerned with proving or disproving constitutional matters." and "politics referred to discussions of dynastic legitimacy, of representation, and of the Constitution ... [Heylyn's] geography was not to be conceived separately from politics."
Following the Acts of Union of 1707, conflict with France gradually brought a popular enthusiasm for Britishness, mostly in Britain itself,[40] and the term British Isles came into more common use after this time.
[edit] Modern Uncertainty(1922-date)
As described above, since the seccession/independence of most of Ireland from the UK in 1922, although the term "British Isles" is still in common use, many people in Ireland reject it if applied to Ireland.
