The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom between 1801 and 1927. In 1922, the majority of Ireland seceded to form the Irish Free State. The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 amended the name of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to reflect the change in the country's boundaries, and the Act is conventionally considered to mark the point when the name of the state changed as well.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into being on 1 January 1801 under the terms of the Acts of Union 1800, by which the formerly separate kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were united. The Kingdom of Great Britain had itself been formed in 1707 by the union of the formerly separate kingdoms of England and Scotland.
The present-day United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a continuation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the same constitutional and parliamentary systems but covering only a portion of the previous territory. The southern part of Ireland that seceded from the union is now the Republic of Ireland. It covers the same territory as the old Irish Free State, but adopted a new constitution in 1937.
Read more about United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland: The Acts of Union, Ireland Under The Union, Early Irish Opposition To The Union, The Campaign For Irish "home Rule" and The British Response, Anglo-Irish War, Legacy, List of Monarchs
Famous quotes containing the words united, kingdom, britain and/or ireland:
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be “too clever by half.” The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.”
—John Major (b. 1943)
“Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)