Name: ___________________________Date: ______________ Class: ____________________
World Studies for Georgia Students-Grade 6
Chapter 5: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Section 2: A Brief History of the United Kingdom
Guided Reading
Instructions: Read the section and complete each item with words from
the passages in this section.
1. The history of the United Kingdom as a unified _________________ began in
1603 when King James VI of Scotland also inherited the crown of the Kingdom
of __________________, which included Wales.
2. In 1707, a single ____________________ of Great Britain was established
along with an official name change to the Kingdom of ________________
_________________. With the addition of the Kingdom of
_________________ in 1801, the country became the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland.
3. The British ________________ once covered the largest territory in history.
4. By the 1920s, almost ________________ of the world’s population was under
British control.
5. The cost was extraordinary and Britain no longer has the wealth to maintain its
_________________, so it granted independence to most of the Empire. The
new independent nations joined together as the British ___________________
of __________________.
6. Since the 1990s, however, _________________ movements in Northern
Ireland, Scotland, and __________________ have brought into question the
degree of unity of this union.
7. The United Kingdom has also been a leading member of the
__________________ ________________ (EU). However, in 2016, the people
of the United Kingdom voted to break ________________ from the European
Union. This move is commonly called the ________________ (a quick way of
saying the words Britain and exit).