Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain.
It shares a border with England to the south, and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the south-west.
In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.
The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707.
By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, thus forming a personal union of the three kingdoms. Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on May 1, 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain.
The Treaty of Union had been agreed in 1706 and enacted by the twin Acts of Union 1707, passed by the Parliaments of both kingdoms, despite popular opposition and anti-union riots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere).
The union also creates a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeds both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. (In 1801, Great Britain itself enters into a political union with the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; the Parliament of Ireland merging with that of Great Britain to form the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the United Kingdom has comprised Great Britain and Northern Ireland.)
Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles and other royal symbols of statehood specific to the pre-union Kingdom of Scotland. The legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland; Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law.[22] The continued existence of legal, educational, religious and other institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the 1707 union with England.[23]
Edinburgh, the country's capital and second-largest city, is the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which transforms Scotland into one of the commercial, intellectual, and industrial powerhouses of Europe.
Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, was once one of the world's leading industrial cities and now lies at the center of the Greater Glasgow conurbation.
Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee.
Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union.
This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europe's oil capital.
