England is one of the four constituent nations of the UK. Its territory comprises geographically the southern and central Britain, an island it shares with Scotland and Wales and about 100 smaller islands including the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. Bordered on the north by Scotland, west Wales, with its two land borders-northwest with the Irish Sea to the southwest with the Celtic Sea, the east by the North Sea and the south by the English Channel.

The territory of modern England has been inhabited by various cultures for about thirty-five thousand years, but takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who settled in place for the V and VI. It became a unified state in 927 and from the age of discovery, which began in the fifteenth century, has had a major cultural and legal impact worldwide. The English language, the Anglican Church and the Law of England, taken as a basis for the legal system in many other countries in the world, developed in England, and the parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations.

The Kingdom of England, which since 1284 also included Wales, was an independent state until 1707, when they signed the Act of Union with Scotland, to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801 Ireland joined the Kingdom of Great Britain creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until 1922. With independence and partition of Ireland from entoces is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.