Everything about Britannia Emblem totally explained
Deriving from
Pretannia,
Diodorus's Greek rendering of the indigenous name
Pretani,
Britannia was the preferred, early
Roman term for the island of
Great Britain, and after the failed attempt to invade and occupy
Scotland, was the name applied to the
Roman province in southern and central Britain (largely corresponding to modern
England and Wales).
Britannia was personified as a Goddess by the Romans, and in more recent times has become a figure of
national personification of the
United Kingdom.
Roman period
The Romans originally described the group of islands off north-west Europe as the
Britanniae, in the plural, consisting of
Albion (Great Britain),
Hibernia (Ireland) and many smaller islands. Over time, Albion came to be known as
Britannia, and the name for the group was subsequently dropped. The island was first invaded by
Julius Caesar in
55 BC. At the height of
Roman Britain, the Empire included most of the island of
Great Britain. The Romans built
Hadrian's Wall close to today's border between
England and
Scotland. The province was named Britannia, and the unincorporated area of northern Britain was called
Caledonia. A southern part of what is now known as Scotland was occupied by the Romans for about 20 years in the mid-second century AD, keeping in place the
Picts to the north of the
Antonine Wall. The Romans never completely occupied the island of Great Britain, and the Celtic tribes even prevented full consolidation of the southwest. People living in the Roman province of Britannia were called
Britanni.
Ireland was never conquered and 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 conquered 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.
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 garment 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's seated on a globe above waves: Britain at the edge of the 'known' world. Similar coin types were also issued under
Antoninus Pius.
Modern historians have noted similarities Britannia has in appearance to
Boudicca. Both are usually depicted with shields and wearing long dresses, and the physiognomy of both female figures in early depictions is remarkably similar.
British revival
Britannia remained the Latin name for
Great Britain. After the
fall of the Roman Empire, variations on the term appear in the titles of the 9th century
Historia Britonum and the 12th century
Historia Regum Britanniae which became tremendously popular during the
High Middle Ages.
It gained new symbolic meaning with the rise of British influence, and later the
British Empire, which at its height ruled a quarter of the world's population and landmass. With the death of
Queen Elizabeth I in
1603 came the succession of her Scottish cousin,
James VI of Scotland to the English throne. He became
James I of England, and so brought under his personal rule the Kingdoms of
England (and the dominion of
Wales),
Ireland and
Scotland. On
20 October 1604 King James proclaimed himself as "King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland", a title that continued to be used by many of his successors. With the constitutional unification of England and Scotland in
1707 and then with Ireland in
1800 Britannia became an increasingly important symbol and a strong rallying point among Britons.
British power, which depended on a liberal political system and the supremacy of the
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
hoplite shield, which sported the British
Union Flag: also at her feet was often the British
Lion, the national animal of
England which also appears on the Arms of
Scotland. Another change was that she was no longer bare breasted, due to the modesty of Victorian society. (The less puritanical French, in the same period, had no problem with the bare breasts of the famous "
Liberty Leading the People").
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
Duchess of Richmond. Stuart was famous at the time for refusing to become the mistress of Charles II, despite the King's strong infatuation with her. She then appeared on the
penny coin between
1797 and
1970, and on the
50 pence coin between
1969 and
2008 . In the spring of 2008, Britannia will be replaced with a design, according to the royal mint, "reflecting a more modern twenty-first century Britain". 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, and represented British liberties and democracy.
During the 1990s a new term,
Cool Britannia (a pun on the poem '
Rule Britannia' by James Thomson [1700- 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-1990s Britain as a fashionable place to be.
In
2008,
Gordon Brown announced that Britannia wouldn't feature on the next run of new 50p coins, and that she'd be replaced by modern symbols of
Great Britain. The decision courted some controversy, with tabloid press campaigns, in particular the Daily Mail, launched to
Save Britannia. The government has said however that Britannia will return on future editions of the 50p coin.
Wm. Roger Louis, Fellow of
St. Anthony's College,
Oxford, published a series of books on British history idiosyncraticaly entitled "Adventures with Britannia", "More Adventures with Britannia", "Still More Adventures with Britannia" and so on.
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.
- HMS Britannia, eight vessels of the Royal Navy.
- Britannia Royal Naval College, the Royal Navy's officer training college.
- Pugnaces Britanniae - War dog of Britain.
- The former Royal Yacht Britannia, the Royal Family's personal yacht, recently retired in Leith, Edinburgh Scotland.
- The patriotic song "Rule Britannia", set to music in 1740.
- Company names such as Britannia Building Society.
- The preserved steam locomotive No. 70000 Britannia, built in 1951 as the first of the BR 'standard' classes.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Britannia Emblem'.
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