United Kingdom
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | ||
| 92.1% White (mainly of British Isles descent, with minorities of other descent) 4.0% South Asian 2.0% Black 1.2% Mixed 0.4% Chinese 0.4% Other | ||
| - | ||
| - | Total | 243,610 km2 (79th) 94,060 sq mi |
| - | 1.34 | |
| - | 2010 estimate | |
| - | 2001 census | 58,789,194[3] |
| - | 254.7/km2 (51th) 659.6/sq mi | |
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country,[7][8] spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland.[9][10] Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain , is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and unitary state consisting of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.[11] It is governed by a parliamentary system with its seat of government in London, the capital, but with three devolved national administrations in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland respectively. The Channel Island bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man are Crown Dependencies, which means they are constitutionally tied to the British monarch but are not part of the UK.[12] The UK has fourteen overseas territories,[13] all remnants of the British Empire, which at its height in 1922 encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies.
The UK is a developed country, with the world's sixth largest economy by nominal GDP and the seventh largest by purchasing power parity.[4] It was the world's first industrialised country[14] and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries,[15] but the economic and social cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK
Geography
The total area of the United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 square kilometres (94,060 sq mi)[5] comprising of the island of Great Britain, the northeastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland) and smaller islands.[5] It lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, coming within 35 kilometres (22 mi) of the northwest coast of France , from which it is separated by the English Channel.[5]
Great Britain lies between latitudes 49° and 59° N (the Shetland Islands reach to nearly 61° N), and longitudes 8° W to 2° E. The Royal Greenwich Observatory, in London Northern Ireland shares a 360-kilometre (224 mi) land boundary with the Republic of Ireland.[5]
The United Kingdom Atlantic Ocean .[5] Eastern parts are most sheltered from this wind and are therefore the driest. Atlantic currents, warmed by the Gulf Stream, bring mild winters, especially in the west, where winters are wet, especially over high ground. Summers are warmest in the south east of England
England accounts for just over half of the total area of the UK England 's highest mountain is Scafell Pike (978 metres (3,209 ft)), which is in the Lake District. England
Scotland accounts for just under a third of the total area of the UK, covering 78,772 square kilometres (30,410 sq mi),[86] including nearly eight hundred islands,[87] predominantly west and north of the mainland, notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands. The topography of Scotland is distinguished by the Highland Boundary Fault – a geological rock fracture – which traverses the Scottish mainland from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. The faultline separates two distinctively different regions; namely the Highlands to the north and west and the lowlands to the south and east. The more rugged Highland region contains the majority of Scotland 's mountainous land, including Ben Nevis, which at 1,343 metres (4,406 ft) is the highest point in the British Isles.[88] Lowland areas, especially the narrow waist of land between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth known as the Central Belt, are flatter and home to most of the population including Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, and Edinburgh, the capital and political centre of the country.
The geography of Wales accounts for less than a tenth of the total area of the UK Wales is mostly mountainous, though South Wales is less mountainous than North and mid Wales. The main population and industrial areas are in South Wales, consisting of the coastal cities of Cardiff , Swansea and Newport and the South Wales Valleys to their north. The highest mountains in Wales are in Snowdonia, and include Snowdon (Welsh: Yr Wyddfa), which, at 1,085 m (3,560 ft) is the highest peak in Wales Wales
Northern Ireland accounts for just 14,160 square kilometres (5,470 sq mi) and is mostly hilly. It includes Lough Neagh, at 388 square kilometres (150 sq mi), the largest body of water in the UK and Ireland.[89] The highest peak in Northern Ireland is Slieve Donard at 849 metres (2,785 ft) in the Mourne Mountains.
France
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France officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a member state of the European Union located in its western region, with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents.[13] France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its main ideals expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as L’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is bordered (clockwise from the north) by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Spain and Andorra. France's overseas departments and collectivities also share land borders with Brazil and Suriname (bordering French Guiana), and the Netherlands Antilles (bordering Saint-Martin). France is linked to the United Kingdom by the Channel Tunnel, which passes underneath the English Channel .
France is one of the most developed countries [14] and possesses the fifth largest economy by nominal GDP[15] and eighth largest economy by purchasing power parity.[16] France France
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Geography
While Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe, France also has a number of territories in North America, the Caribbean, South America, the southern Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and Antarctica.[38] These territories have varying forms of government ranging from overseas department to overseas collectivity.
Metropolitan France covers 547,030 square kilometres (211,209 sq mi),[39] having the largest area among European Union members and slightly larger than Spain. France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the south-east, the Massif Central in the south-central and Pyrenees in the south-west. At 4,807 metres (15,771 ft) above sea-level, the highest point in Europe, Mont Blanc, is situated in the Alps on the border between France and Italy.[40] Metropolitan France also has extensive river systems such as the Loire, the Garonne, the Seine and the Rhône, which divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the Camargue, the lowest point in France (2 m/6.56 ft below sea level).[40] Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast.
Metropolitan France is situated between 41° and 51° North, on the western edge of Europe , and thus lies within the northern temperate zone. The north and northwest have a temperate climate, while a combination of maritime influences, latitude and altitude produce a varied climate in the rest of Metropolitan France.[43] In the south-east a Mediterranean climate prevails. In the west, the climate is predominantly oceanic with a high level of rainfall, mild winters and cool to warm summers. Inland the climate becomes more continental with hot, stormy summers, colder winters and less rain. The climate of the Alps and other mountainous regions is mainly alpine, with the number of days with temperatures below freezing over 150 per year and snow cover lasting for up to six months.
Tourism
With 81.9 million foreign tourists in 2007,[22] France is ranked as the first tourist destination in the world, ahead of Spain (58.5 million in 2006) and the United States (51.1 million in 2006). This 81.9 million figure excludes people staying less than 24 hours in France , such as northern Europeans crossing France on their way to Spain or Italy France features cities of high cultural interest (Paris being the foremost), beaches and seaside resorts, ski resorts, and rural regions that many enjoy for their beauty and tranquillity (green tourism). France also attracts many religious pilgrims to Lourdes, a town in the Hautes-Pyrénées département, that hosts a few million visitors a year.
Popular tourist sites include: (according to a 2003 ranking[73] visitors per year): Eiffel Tower (6.2 million), Louvre Museum (5.7 million), Palace of Versailles (2.8 million), Musée d'Orsay (2.1 million), Arc de Triomphe (1.2 million), Centre Pompidou (1.2 million), Mont-Saint-Michel (1 million), Château de Chambord (711,000), Sainte-Chapelle (683,000), Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg (549,000), Puy de Dôme (500,000), Musée Picasso (441,000), Carcassonne (362,000).
Netherlands
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The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in Northwestern Europe. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east. The capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague.
The Netherlands is often called Holland, a pars pro toto, as North and South Holland are actually two of its twelve provinces (see terminology of "the Netherlands"). The word Dutch is used to refer to the people, the language, and anything pertaining to the Netherlands
Being one of the first parliamentary democracies, the Netherlands The Hague
The Netherlands Netherlands
The Netherlands is known for its windmills, tulips, clogs, delftware, gouda cheese, visual artists, bicycles, traditional values, and civil virtues such as its social tolerance. The country has more recently become known for its liberal policies toward drugs, prostitution, immigration, homosexuality, euthanasia and abortion.
The Netherlands
Geography
Rivers
The country is divided into two main parts by three large rivers, the Rhine (Rijn) and its main distributaries, the Waal and the Meuse (Maas ). These rivers functioned as a natural barrier between earlier fiefdoms and hence created traditionally a cultural divide, as is evident in some phonetic traits that are recognizable north and south of these "Large Rivers" (de Grote Rivieren).
The southwestern part of the Netherlands is a river delta and two tributaries of the Scheldt (Westerschelde and Oosterschelde). Only one significant branch of the Rhine flows northeastward, the IJssel river, discharging into the IJsselmeer, the former Zuiderzee ('southern sea'). This river also forms a linguistic divide: people to the east of this river speak Low Saxon dialects (except for the province of Friesland, which has its own language).[26]
Floods
Over the centuries, the Dutch coastline has changed considerably as a result of human intervention and natural disasters. Most notable in terms of land loss is the 1134 storm, which created the archipelago of Zeeland in the southwest.
On 14 December 1287, St. Lucia's flood affected the Netherlands and Germany Netherlands
The disasters were partially increased in severity through human influence. People had drained relatively high lying swampland to use it as farmland. This drainage caused the fertile peat to compress and the ground level to drop, whereby they would lower the water level to compensate for the drop in ground level, causing the underlying peat to compress even more. The problem remains unsolvable to this day. Also, up until the 19th century peat was mined, dried, and used for fuel, further adding to the problem.
To guard against floods, a series of defences against the water were contrived. In the first millennium AD, villages and farmhouses were built on man-made hills called terps. Later, these terps were connected by dikes. In the 12th century, local government agencies called "waterschappen" (English "water bodies") or "hoogheemraadschappen" ("high home councils") started to appear, whose job it was to maintain the water level and to protect a region from floods. (These agencies exist to this day, performing the same function.) As the ground level dropped, the dikes by necessity grew and merged into an integrated system. By the 13th century, windmills had come into use in order to pump water out of areas below sea level. The windmills were later used to drain lakes, creating the famous polders.
In 1932, the Afsluitdijk (English "Closure Dike") was completed, blocking the former Zuiderzee (Southern Sea) from the North Sea and thus creating the IJsselmeer (IJssel Lake ). It became part of the larger Zuiderzee Works in which four polders totalling 2,500 square kilometres (965 sq mi) were reclaimed from the sea.[28][29]
[edit] Delta works
After the 1953 disaster, the Delta project, a vast construction effort designed to end the threat from the sea once and for all, was launched in 1958 and largely completed in 1997 with the completion of the Maeslantkering. The official goal of the Delta project was to reduce the risk of flooding in South Holland and Zeeland to once per 10,000 years. (For the rest of the country, the protection level is once per 4,000 years.) This was achieved by raising 3,000 kilometers (1,864 mi) of outer sea-dykes and 10,000 kilometers (6,214 mi) of inner, canal, and river dikes to "delta" height, and by closing off the sea estuaries of the Zeeland province. New risk assessments occasionally show problems requiring additional Delta project dyke reinforcements. The Delta project is one of the largest construction efforts in human history and is considered by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
Additionally, the Netherlands
[edit] Climate
The predominant wind direction in the Netherlands
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Avg. maximum temp. (°C) | 5.2 | 6.1 | 9.6 | 12.9 | 17.6 | 19.8 | 22.1 | 22.3 | 18.7 | 14.2 | 9.1 | 6.4 | 13.7 |
| Avg. minimum temp. (°C) | 0.0 | -0.1 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 7.5 | 10.2 | 12.5 | 12.0 | 9.6 | 6.5 | 3.2 | 1.3 | 5.7 |
| Avg. temp. (°C) | 2.8 | 3.0 | 5.8 | 8.3 | 12.7 | 15.2 | 17.4 | 17.2 | 14.2 | 10.3 | 6.2 | 4.0 | 9.8 |
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Avg. precipitation (mm) | 67 | 48 | 65 | 45 | 62 | 72 | 70 | 58 | 72 | 77 | 81 | 77 | 793 |
| Avg. hours sunshine | 52 | 79 | 114 | 158 | 204 | 187 | 196 | 192 | 133 | 106 | 60 | 44 | 1524 |
[edit] Nature
The Netherlands
Phytogeographically, the Netherlands Netherlands belongs to the ecoregion of Atlantic mixed forests. In 1871 the last old original natural woods (Beekbergerwoud) were cut down, and most woods today are planted monocultures of trees like Scots Pine and trees that are not native to the Netherlands.[citation needed] These woods were planted on anthropogenic heaths and sand-drifts (overgrazed heaths) (Veluwe).
[edit] Religion
The Netherlands is one of the most secular countries in Western Europe , with only 39% being religiously affiliated (31% for those aged under 35). Fewer than 20% visit church regularly.[59]
Currently Roman Catholicism is the single largest religion of the Netherlands Netherlands Asia . There are approximately 95,000 Hindus, of whom 85% originally came from Suriname. Netherland Sikhs are a religious minority in Netherland. They number around 12,000 and most of them live in or around Amsterdam Netherlands
Switzerland
| - | Total | 41,284 km2 (136th) 15,940 sq mi |
| - | 4.2 | |
| - | 2009 estimate | |
| - | 2007 census | 7,593,500 |
| - | 188/km2 (65th) 477.4/sq mi | |
| 2008 estimate | ||
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Switzerland (German: die Schweiz,[note 3] French: la Suisse, Italian: la Svizzera, Romansh: la Svizra), officially the Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica in Latin, hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe[note 4] w
here it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to the south, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.
Switzerland is a landlocked country whose territory is geographically divided between the Alps, the Central Plateau and the Jura that yields a total area of 41,285 km2 (15,940 sq mi). The Swiss population of approximately 7.7 million people concentrates mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found. Among them are the two global cities and economic centres of Zürich and Geneva. Switzerland Geneva
The Swiss Confederation has a long history of neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and was one of the last countries to join the United Nations. Switzerland is home to many international organisations, including the World Economic Forum, the International Olympic Committee, the Red Cross, the World Trade Organization and the second largest UN office. On the European level it was a founder of the European Free Trade Association and is part of the Schengen Agreement.
Geography and climate
Extending across the north and south side of the Alps, Switzerland
Contrasted landscapes between the 4,000 metres of the high Alps (Matterhorn on the left), the Sanetsch region and the plateau at Lake Lucerne
Contrasted climates between the most glaciated area in western Eurasia (Aletsch Glacier),[57] the cold temperate Jura (Vallée de Joux) and the southern canton of Ticino (Lake Lugano)
About a hundred of Switzerland
The more populous northern part of the country, comprising about 30% of the country's total area, is called the Middle Land Switzerland Lake Geneva .
The Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly between the localities,[60][61] from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the often pleasant near Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall so they are ideal for pastures and grazing. The winters in the mountains alternate with sun and snow, while the lower lands tend to be more cloudy and foggy in winter.[61] A weather phenomenon known as the föhn[60] can occur at all times of the year, even in winter, and is characterised by a relatively warm wind, bringing air of very low relative humidity. It blows mostly on the northern side of the Alps where it can trigger dangerous avalanches.[61] The driest conditions persist in the southern valleys of the Valais[60] above which valuable saffron is harvested and many wine grapes are grown, Graubünden also tends to be drier in climate[60] and slightly colder, yet with plentiful snow in winter. The wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time.[60] The eastern part tends to be colder than western Switzerland Switzerland
Demographics
Official languages in Switzerland
Religion
Switzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuchâtel) recognize official churches, which are either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons also the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of adherents.[121]
Christianity is the predominant religion of Switzerland Greeley
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