Cornwall is a country located at the south-western tip of Great Britain, between the river Tamar, the Celtic Sea and the English Channel. it includes the archipelago of the Isles of Scilly. Cornwall is an administrative part of England, where it has the status of a ceremonial county. The Cornish people have developed and preserved a distinctive culture, with Celtic roots, bearing similarities to the cultures of neighbouring Wales and Brittany.
Formerly an independent kingdom, Cornwall was annexed by the Anglo-Saxon kings in the 9th century AD, to be integrated into the English feudal administration. Since then, and until today, it has retained a distinct territorial identity: first as an earldom, and then as a duchy.
Cornish people maintained their own local institutions (together with their English neighbours of Devon), the Stannary Parliaments, which existed until the 19th century to regulate aspects of tin production, a fundamental sector of the Cornish economy.