5分钟了解英国：超语速解析英国历史

Welcome to The United Kingdom (And a whole lot more) Explained by me, C.G.P. Grey.
欢迎收看我的英国（以及更多）介绍。

United Kingdom, England, Great Britain? Are these three the same place? Are they different places? Do British people secretly laugh those who use the terms incorrectly? Who knows the answers to these questions? I do, and I’m gonna tell you right now.
“英国”，“英格兰”，“大不列颠”？这三个词指的是同一个，还是不同地方？如果有人用错了词，英国人会偷笑吗？谁知道这些问题的答案？我知道，我现在来给你们解释。

For the lost: this is the world, this is the European continent and this is the place we have to untangle.
给那些不认地图的：这是世界，这是欧洲，这里就是让我们纠结的地方。

The area shown in purple is the United Kingdom. Part of the confusion is that the United Kingdom is not a single country but it instead is a country of countries. It contains inside of it four co-equal and sovereign nations.
紫色的区域就是英国，让人疑惑的可能是，英国并不是一个单一的国家，而是联合王国。它包含了四个地位平等的主权国家。

The first of these is England — shown here in red. England is often confused with the United Kingdom as a whole, because it’s the largest and most populous of the nations and contains the de facto capital city, London.
首先是英格兰，红色的部分。英格兰经常被误认是英国整体的代称，因为它最大，人口最多，以及拥有英国首都伦敦。

To the north is Scotland — shown in blue, and to the west is Wales — shown in white. And what’s often forgotten even by those who live in the United Kingdom, is Northern Ireland — shown in orange.
西面是威尔士，标成白色，另外，经常被人甚至是英国人遗忘的是，北爱尔兰，橙色部分。。

Each country has a local term for the population. While you can call them all ‘British’, it’s not recommended as the four countries generally don’t like each other.
每个国家都有自己的民族名称。虽然你可以都叫他们“英国人”，但是我不建议这样，因为四个地方的人们并不喜欢彼此。

The Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh regard the English as slave-driving colonial masters — no matter that all three have their own devolved Parliaments, and are allowed to vote on English laws despite the reverse not being true — and the English generally regard the rest as rural yokels who spend too much time with their sheep.
北爱尔兰，苏格兰和威尔士人认为英格兰人是驱使奴隶的殖民者——尽管它们三个都拥有独立的地方议会，可以投票表决英国法案，而英格兰就没有。英格兰人也常常认为其他三个地方的人们是农村来的土包子，花太多时间和羊待在一起。

However, as the four constituent countries don’t have their own passports, they are all British Citizens, like it or not. They are British Citizens of the United Kingdom, whose full name by the way is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
尽管如此，这四个国家并没有独立的护照。他们都是英国公民，不管喜欢不喜欢联合王国，全称是大不列颠及北爱尔兰联合王国。

So where’s Great Britain hiding?
那么大不列颠在哪？

Right here: the area covered in black is Great Britain. Unlike England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Great Britain is a geographical rather than a political term. Great Britain is the largest island among the British Isles.
这里，画出黑色的地图是大不列颠。不像英格兰，苏格兰，威尔士和北爱尔兰，大不列颠是一个地理概念，而不是政治概念。大不列颠是不列颠群岛中最大的岛屿。

Within the United Kingdom, the term ‘Great Britain’ is often used to refer to England, Scotland and Wales alone, with the intentional exclusion of Northern Ireland. This is mostly, but not completely true, as all three constituent countries have islands that are not part of Great Britain, such as The Isle of Wight, part of England, the Welsh Isle of Anglesey, the Scottish Hebrides, the Shetland Islands, the Orkney Islands and the Islands of the Clyde.
在英国，“大不列颠”通常指英格兰，苏格兰和威尔士，北爱尔兰被故意排除在外。这点大部分是对的，但不全对，因为他们都有不属于不列颠岛的小岛，像怀特岛、锡利群岛和兰迪岛属于英格兰，安格尔西岛属于威尔士，赫布里底群岛、设德兰群岛、奥克尼群岛和克莱德群岛属于苏格兰。

The second biggest island in the British Isles is Ireland.
不列颠群岛中的第二大岛是爱尔兰岛。

It is worth noting at this point that Ireland is not a country. Like Great Britain, it’s a geographical, not political term.
“爱尔兰”并不是一个国家。像不列颠一样，它是一个地理概念，不是政治概念。

The Island of Ireland contains on it two countries: Northern Ireland, which we have already discussed and the Republic of Ireland.
爱尔兰岛上有两个国家：北爱尔兰——我们之前谈过了——和爱尔兰共和国。

When people say they are Irish, they are referring to the Republic of Ireland, which is a separate country from the United Kingdom.
当人们提到“爱尔兰人”，通常指的是爱尔兰共和国，它是一个不属于联合王国的独立国家。

However, both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom are members of the European Union, even though England in particular likes to pretend that it’s an Island in the Mid-Atlantic, rather than 50 kilometers off the coast of France. But that’s a story for another time.
爱尔兰共和国和英国都是欧盟成员，虽然英国经常假装自己是一个位于大西洋中部的孤岛，而不是离法国海岸只有50公里的欧洲的一部分。这就是另一个故事了。

To review:
复习一下：

The two largest islands in the British Isles are Ireland and Great Britain. Ireland has on it two countries: the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, while Great Britain mostly contains three: England, Scotland and Wales. These last three, when combined with Northern Ireland, form the United Kingdom.
不列颠群岛中两个最大的岛是不列颠岛和爱尔兰岛。爱尔兰岛上有两个国家：爱尔兰共和国和北爱尔兰，而不列颠岛上又三个：英格兰、苏格兰和威尔士。后三个加上北爱尔兰组成了联合王国——英国。

Finished? No. There are still many unanswered questions, such as: Why, when you travel to Canada, is there British Royalty on the money?
完了吗？没有。还有一些未解的问题，比如，当你到加拿大旅游时，为什么钞票上印有英国女王？

To answer this, we need to talk about Empire.
为了解答这个问题，我们必须谈谈英帝国。

You can’t have gone to school in the English-speaking world without having learned that the British Empire once spanned a 1/4th world’s land and governed nearly a 1/4th world’s people.
如果你在英语圈上的学，就不可能不知道，英帝国曾经占有世界四分之一的土地，统治全球近四分之一的人口。

While it’s easy to remember the parts of the British Empire that broke away violently, we often forget how many nations gained independence through diplomacy, not bloodshed.
那些通过斗争取得独立的国家很容易记，但是我们经常忘记很多国家，是通过外交途径独立的，而不是流血战争。

These want-to-be nations struck a deal with the Empire, where they continued to recognize the monarch(y) as the head of state in exchange for a local, autonomous parliament.
这些希望独立的国家和英帝国签了协议，他们继续承认英国君主作为国家元首。作为交换，他们可以建立独立的自治议会。