The United Kingdom is often described as a small country.
It can certainly look that way on a map, partly because we are situated just off the north west coast of the great Eurasian land mass. The inhabitants of the UK essentially inhabit one island and the northern bit of another island slightly to the west of it.

Is the UK really that small though? It goes without saying we look small next to Europe and Asia but they themselves are obviously made up of lots of different nations.

Currently, there are 194 universally recognised countries in the world. Russia, Canada, the USA and China are the four largest in terms of area. The last three are actually very similar in size to each other in terms of land area. But Russia is a long way in front. The number two country, Canada, in fact, has only 58% of Russia’s size.

When its overseas territories are included, the UK comes 78th on this list. It is slightly smaller than New Zealand and Gabon but slightly larger than Guinea and Uganda. It is, however, clearly on the top half of the list though. The smallest countries are Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru.

On the other hand, the average size of a country in the world today is 296,423 square miles. This is roughly the size of Turkey, the 36th largest country. The UK’s land area is 95,960 square miles. So, we are officially below average size for a country in terms of area.

Population-wise, the UK is currently ranked 22nd, just behind France but comfortably ahead of Italy (as of 2018). China and India easily top this list. The USA, which has only a quarter of India’s population, comes a distant third.

The global population passed the seven billion mark in 2011 and is expected to hit eight billion in 2023. It is currently about 7.8 or 7.9 billion. The Covid-19 pandemic, despite resulting in a terrible toll of more than three million people having died so far, is unlikely to seriously slow this general increase.

The global population is rising at a faster and faster rate. It took until 1804, to hit the billion mark for the first time. By 1927, it had doubled and by 1974, it had doubled again reaching four billion. As mentioned, it should reach eight billion in a year or two and so will effectively have doubled again within a fifty-year period. It now increases by another billion roughly once every decade.

It is believed the global population fell from 450 million to 375 million as a result of the Black Death in the 14th century. The population didn’t return to its previous level for around 200 years. This seems to be the only time in history that the world’s population has actually fallen.

It is thought that 108 billion people have lived in total during the history of the Earth thus far. This is working on the assumption that the first ‘modern’ Homo sapiens who first walked the Earth around 50,000 years ago were the first humans. On this basis, roughly speaking, we can say about one in fifteen people who have ever lived are alive on the Earth right now. The average age of a person on Earth today is about 30 and in the UK it is about 40.

Of all the people currently living around 17% to 18% live in China. About the same percentage again live in India. Around one percent of the current population of the world live in the UK.
The UK population today is thought to be about 67 million people. This figure may need to be revised when the results of the 2021 Census have been revealed. Around 1.2 million people live in Devon, which is roughly the 11th most populous English county out of a total of 48. It is the fourth largest county in terms of size; smaller than North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Cumbria but larger than everywhere else.