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Britannia was originally the Latin name that the Roman Empire gave to the island of Great Britain and its possessions thereupon. It has since become a national personification of the United Kingdom.
Roman period
At the height of Roman Britain, the Empire included all of Britannia (first invaded by Julius Caesar in 55 BC), which was bordered by Hadrian's Wall, close to today's border between England and Scotland. To the Romans, northern Britain which remained unincorporated into the Empire was known as Caledonia. A southern part of what is now known as Scotland was occupied by the Romans for a brief period by the end of the Roman reign, keeping in place the Picts to the north of the Antonine Wall. The island of Great Britain has never been completely occupied, even in Roman days. People living in the Roman province of Britannia were called Britanni. Ireland was a separate region, which was never conquered by the Romans; it was called Hibernia.
There was a celtic goddess called Brigid who is one of the many sources of the personification of Britain. The Emperor Claudius paid a visit while Britain was being pacified and was honoured with the agnomen Britannicus as if he were the conqueror, but Britannia remained a place, not a female personification of the land, until she appeared on coins issued under Hadrian, which introduced a female figure labelled BRITANNIA.
Typical of the Romans, Britannia was soon personified as a goddess. Early portraits of the goddess depict Britannia as a beautiful young woman, wearing the helmet of a Centurion, and wrapped in a white toga with her right breast exposed. She is usually shown seated on a rock, holding a spear, and with a spiked shield propped beside her. Sometimes she holds a standard and leans on the shield. On another range of coinage, she is seated on a globe above waves: Britain at the edge of the 'known' world. Similar coin types were also issued under Antoninus Pius.
British revival
Britannia remained the Latin name for Great Britain, but after the fall of the Roman Empire it had lost most symbolic meaning until the rise of British influence and later, the British Empire, which at its height, ruled a quarter of the world's population and a quarter of the world's landmass.
As British power and influence rose in the 1700s, and after the unification of the Kingdoms of England (which included Wales) and Scotland in 1603 upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I and succession of her Scottish cousin, James VI of Scotland (or James I of England), Britannia became a more and more important symbol and a strong rallying point among Britons.
British power, which depended on the supremacy of its navy, lent these attributes to the image of Britannia. By the time of Queen Victoria, Britannia had been renewed. Still depicted as a young woman with brown or golden hair, she kept her Corinthian helmet and her white robes, but now she held Poseidon's three-pronged trident and often stood in the ocean, representing British naval power. She also usually held or stood beside a Greek hoplon shield, which sported the British Union Jack: also at her feet was often the British Lion, the national animal of England. Another change was that she was no longer bare breasted, due to the modesty of Victorian society.
In the Renaissance tradition, Britannia came to be viewed as the personification of Britain, in imagery that was developed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. When James I came to the throne, some elaborate pageants were staged. One pageant performed on the streets of London in 1605 was described in Anthony Munday's Triumphs of Reunited Britannia:
On a mount triangular, as the island of Britain itself is described to be, we seat in the supreme place, under the shape of a fair and beautiful nymph, Britannia herself...
Britannia first appeared on the farthing in 1672, followed by the halfpenny later the same year; the model used, then and later, was Charles II's mistress, the Duchess of Richmond. She then appeared on the penny coin between 1797 and 1970, and on the 50 pence coin since 1969. When the Bank of England was granted a charter in 1694, the directors decided within days that the device for their official seal should represent 'Brittannia sitting on looking on a Bank of Mony' (sic).
Perhaps the best analogy is that Britannia is to the United Kingdom and the British Empire what Marianne is to France or perhaps what Lady Liberty is to the United States of America. Like Lady Liberty, Britannia became a very potent and more common figure in times of war. During the 1990s a new term, Cool Britannia (a pun on the poem 'Rule Britannia' by James Thomson - 1748, and the song adapted from it, which is often used as an unofficial National Anthem), was used to describe the contemporary United Kingdom. The phrase referred to the fashionable London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester scenes, with a new generation of pop groups and style magazines, successful young fashion designers, and a surge of new restaurants and hotels. Cool Britannia represented late-1990's Britain as a fashionable place to be.
Namesakes
Today Britannia lives on in British symbols and British patriotism such as:
- Britannia silver, a high-grade alloy of silver introduced in Britain in 1697.
- Britannia coins, a series of British gold bullion coins issued since 1987, which have nominal values of 100, 50, 25, and 10 pounds.
- Britannia Airways, a charter airline, recently renamed Thomsonfly.
- HMS Britannia, eight vessels of the Royal Navy.
- Britannia Royal Naval College, the Royal Navy's officer training college.
- The former Royal Yacht Britannia, the Royal Family's personal yacht, recently retired in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- The patriotic song "Rule Britannia", set to music in 1740.
- Company names such as Britannia cars Britannia Building Society
Other uses:
- Britannia, the fictitious world in the Ultima series of computer games.
- Britannia Beach, British Columbia.
- Britannia metal, a pewter alloy that resembles silver.
- Britannia Industries Limited, a popular brand of biscuits and snacks in India.
References
See also
"Britannia"