ABSTRACT
"Mainland" Britain stretches about six hundred miles from north to south and no more than three hundred miles east to west. Overall, Britain's ninety-four thousand square miles makes it comparable in size to Oregon. Within that area, however, live over 57 million people, making Britain one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, second only to the Netherlands. The closest point to the continent on mainland Britain is located a mere twenty miles across the English Channel between Dover and Calais, France. Britain has had excellent energy resources, ranging from numerous deposits of coal and iron ore to recent discoveries of petroleum and natural gas in the North Sea. In addition to urbanization and ethnicity, religion, age, education, and class are other important social attributes of a population. Although feudalism had begun to deteriorate earlier, the Renaissance, and especially the Reformation, finished the process by changing traditional society.
