The Crown in the context of "Body politic"

The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. It is a megadiverse country, with the world's third-largest land area and third-largest population, exceeding 340 million.

Paleo-Indians first migrated from North Asia to North America over 12,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations. Spanish colonization established Spanish Florida in 1513, the first European colony in what is now the continental United States. British colonization followed with the 1607 settlement of Virginia, the first of the Thirteen Colonies. Enslavement of Africans was practiced in all colonies by 1770 and supplied most of the labor for the Southern Colonies' plantation economy. Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and lack of parliamentary representation sparked the American Revolution, leading to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War brought international recognition of U.S. sovereignty and fueled westward expansion, dispossessing native inhabitants. As more states were admitted, a North–South division over slavery led the Confederate States of America to attempt secession and fight the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the United States' victory and reunification, slavery was abolished nationally. By 1900, the country had established itself as a great power, a status solidified after its involvement in World War I. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as rival superpowers, competing for ideological dominance and international influence during the Cold War. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 ended the Cold War, leaving the U.S. as the world's sole superpower.

A monarch (/ˈmɒnərk/) is a head of state for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch usually exercises the highest authority and power in the state. Usually, a monarch either personally inherits the lawful right to exercise the state's sovereign rights (often referred to as the throne or the crown) or is selected by an established process from a family or cohort eligible to provide the nation's monarch. Alternatively, an individual may proclaim oneself monarch, or even usurp power, as many Ancient Greek tyrants did. If a young child is crowned the monarch, then a regent is often appointed to govern until the monarch reaches the requisite adult age to rule.

A dominion was any one of several largely self-governing countries that remained, especially in the first half of the 20th century, under the British Crown as parts of the British Empire and then the British Commonwealth of Nations. The list of dominions as at 1926 included Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa; later Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan also became dominions for short periods. Progressing from colonies, their degrees of colonial self-governance increased (and, in one case, decreased) but did so unevenly over the late 19th century through the 1930s. In the years following the Second World War, the British Empire was refashioned into the more modern (and more post-colonial) Commonwealth of Nations (after which the former dominions were often referred to as the Old Commonwealth). By the time this transition was formally finalised, in 1949, the old dominions had become more autonomous and independent nation states, each in their own right, either as a Commonwealth republic or a Commonwealth realm.

In 1925, the government of the United Kingdom created the Dominions Office from the Colonial Office, although for the next five years they shared the same secretary in charge of both offices. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa at the 1926 Imperial Conference through the Balfour Declaration of 1926, recognising Great Britain and the Dominions as "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations". Their full legislative independence was subsequently confirmed in the Statute of Westminster 1931. In the 1920s and 1930s, they began to represent themselves in international bodies, in treaty making, and in foreign capitals. Vestiges of empire and colonial rule lasted in some dominions late into the 20th century and indeed still exist today.

The Kingdom of Scotland was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England. During the Middle Ages, Scotland engaged in intermittent conflict with England, most prominently the Wars of Scottish Independence, which saw the Scots assert their independence from the English. Following the annexation of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles from Norway in 1266 and 1472 respectively, and the capture of Berwick by England in 1482, the territory of the Kingdom of Scotland corresponded to that of modern-day Scotland, bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest.

In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England, joining Scotland with England in a personal union. In 1707, during the reign of Queen Anne, the two kingdoms were united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union. The Crown was the most important element of Scotland's government. The Scottish monarchy in the Middle Ages was a largely itinerant institution, before Edinburgh developed as a capital city in the second half of the 15th century. The Crown remained at the centre of political life and in the 16th century emerged as a major centre of display and artistic patronage, until it was effectively dissolved with the 1603 Union of Crowns. The Scottish Crown adopted the conventional offices of western European monarchical states of the time and developed a Privy Council and great offices of state. Parliament also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy, but was never as central to the national life. In the early period, the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords—the mormaers and toísechs—but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships.

A princely state (also called native state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Raj that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an indigenous ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British Crown.

In 1920, the Indian National Congress party under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi declared swaraj (self-rule) for Indians as its goal and asked the princes of India to establish responsible government. Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in pushing Congress to confront the princely states and declared in 1929 that "only people who have the right to determine the future of the Princely States must be the people of these States". In 1937, the Congress won in most parts of India (excluding the princely states) in the 1937 state elections, and started to intervene in the affairs of the states. In the same year, Gandhi played a major role in proposing a federation involving a union between British India and the princely states, with an Indian central government. In 1946, Nehru observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India.

Jammu and Kashmir, also known as Kashmir and Jammu, was a princely state in a subsidiary alliance with the British East India Company from 1846 to 1858, and under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown from 1858 until British withdrawal and the partition of British India in 1947. Following the subsequent First Kashmir War between India and Pakistan, it became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: China, India, and Pakistan. The princely state was created after the First Anglo-Sikh War, when the East India Company, which had annexed the Kashmir Valley, from the Sikhs as war indemnity, then sold it to the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, for 75 lakh rupees.

At the time of the partition of India and the political integration of India, Hari Singh, the ruler of the state, delayed making a decision about the future of his state. However, an uprising in the western districts by the Gilgit Scouts against Hari Singh supported by informal militias from the neighbouring Northwest Frontier Province, and the Pakistani army personnel, forced his hand. On 26 October 1947, Hari Singh acceded to India in return for the Indian military being airlifted to Kashmir to counter the invasion by tribal militias from Pakistan, which were assisted by the Pakistani government and military leadership. The western and northern districts now known as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan passed to the control of Pakistan with the support of Gilgit Scouts, while the remaining territory stayed under Indian control, later becoming the Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan defined a cease-fire line dividing the administration of the territory with the intercession of the United Nations which was supposed to be temporary but still persists.

The British Raj (/rɑːdʒ/ RAHJ; from Hindustani rāj, 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent, lasting from 1858 to 1947. It is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially. As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. India was a participating state in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936.

This system of governance was instituted on 28 June 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the rule of the East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (who, in 1876, was proclaimed Empress of India). It lasted until 1947 when the British Raj was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Union of India (later the Republic of India) and Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and People's Republic of Bangladesh in the 1971 Proclamation of Bangladeshi Independence). At the inception of the Raj in 1858, Lower Burma was already a part of British India; Upper Burma was added in 1886, and the resulting union, Burma, was administered as an autonomous province until 1937, when it became a separate British colony, gaining its independence in 1948. It was renamed Myanmar in 1989. The Chief Commissioner's Province of Aden was also part of British India at the inception of the British Raj and became a separate colony known as Aden Colony in 1937 as well.

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. Since 1999, varying degree of powers have been devolved to the devolved national parliaments of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Each devolved parliament has different devolved powers, with Scotland being the most powerful amongst the three devolved parliaments. The central UK Parliament retains the power to legislate in reserved matters, including broadcasting, defence, and currency.

It meets at the Palace of Westminster in London. Parliament possesses legislative supremacy and thereby holds ultimate power over all other political bodies in the United Kingdom and the Overseas Territories. While Parliament is bicameral, it has three parts: the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The three parts acting together to legislate may be described as the King-in-Parliament. The Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation.

Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights sealed by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons who demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.

After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name "Magna Carta", to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes. His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law. However, Magna Carta was not unique; other legal documents of its time, both in England and beyond, made broadly similar statements of rights and limitations on the powers of the Crown. The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn. As time went by and the fledgling Parliament of England passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance.