Politics in the British Isles Politics in the British Isles The British Isles comprise two sovereign states, Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and three dependencies of the British Crown, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man. Ireland is a unitary state and a republic. Since 1998, it shares certain common institutions with Northern Ireland, in the United Kingdom, from which it was partitioned in 1921. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and also a unitary state comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Also since 1998, the United Kingdom has devolved significant domestic powers (though differing in extent) to administrations in Northern
History of the British Isles Insular Celtic group. What languages were spoken in the islands before is unknown, though they are assumed to have been Pre-Indo-European. In 55 and 54 BC, Roman general and future dictator Gaius Julius Caesar launched two separate invasions of the British Isles, though neither resulted in a full Roman occupation of the island. From AD 40 to about AD 410, southern Britain was a part of the Roman Empire, with archaeologists referring to this area as "Roman Britain", and this time span the "Romano-British period" or the "Roman Iron Age". In and around the same time period, Ireland was being