Geography of Earth

Britain:

A large island off the European peninsula that has played a significant role in Earth history.  A group of language communities in the central section of the Island of Britain was the source of English, the precursor tongue for Anglic.   Also, the industrial revolution largely began in Britain.  Britain remains an important source of modern Terran culture producing variant memes at a higher rate than would be expected given the Island's population.

Throughout the pre-collapse period Britain was dominated by England, that was the first nation-state to emerge in post-Roman Europe.  English involvement in France triggered the creation of an effective French nation state.  English Common Law, along with the Napoleonic Code, was an important ancestor of  the current Terragen legal code.  English Common Law dates back to at least  c. 1150 BxY.  England became a parliamentary democracy in the -6th century (though with a constitutionally strong monarchy).  However, the power of parliament was sufficient to reintroduce the notion of democracy to Western Europe, and by its success proved democracy workable.  Throughout the -5th and -4th centuries Europe exercised near hegemonic global control.  Within Europe no one power was dominant, but outside Europe and central Eurasia Britain was the dominant European power because of its strong navyIn the -3rd century Britain declined in importance, ceding its global reach to the United States, a friendly nation state located in North America that was also English speaking.

During the Collapse, the British urban population declined precipitously, but the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge suffered much less that most other English cities. Their regional monopoly on education during the worst years of the collapse, combined with a long tradition of scholarship, led to the restoration of a united Britain.  As a sign of unity, Queen Henrieta was crowned in Cambridge Cathedral by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  She ruled for fifteen years from CambridgeParliament moved the capital back to London two years into the reign of her successor King Nelson.  The treaty admitting the Kingdom of Britain to the Bureaucracy ended the British monarchy during the reign of Nelson.  However, the monarchy was restored as a sign of national pride three years after the fall of the Bureaucracy.  An elderly Nelson Windsor declined to resume the throne in favor of his grand-daughter Victoria.

Britain is still noted for its prestigious Cosmoversity composed of Oxford, Cambridge, Midlands Non-Conformist Polytechnic, and Edinburgh.  The British Cosmoversity has a reputation for being even more indifferent to the Galactic Library that other comparable Terragen institutions of higher learning (such as the Multiversity of California), but gives an excellent education in the traditional Human arts of mathematics and science.  In the humanities, the British Multiversity is the equal of any Galactic institution of higher learning.  It also does research (some of which is secret) into Galactic knowledge using traditional Human scholarship to fill some of the gaps in the Galactic Library, and to find various "flaws."  This novel approach has produced much suggestive evidence to support the Alliance for Progress belief that the Library is not unbiased, and has revealed some suppressed but useful information. (by Robert Shaw, Contributing editor)


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