The British pound became the official currency of the United Kingdom when England and Scotland united to form a single country in 1707, but the pound was used as a form of money in the year 760.3 Until 1855, when printing began, the Bank of England wrote all banknotes by hand.
The British pound served as currency in the colonies of the British Empire, including Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many countries tied the value of their currencies to the price of gold. The gold standard offered a uniform way to determine value among world currencies. Before World War I, the United Kingdom used the gold standard to set the value of the British pound.
At the outbreak of World War I, the country abandoned the gold standard, then reinstated it in post-war 1925, only to abandon it again during the Great Depression. In 1971, the United Kingdom allowed the British pound to float freely, allowing market forces to determine its value. In 2002, when the euro became the common currency of most European Union (EU) member nations, the U.K. kept the GBP as its official currency.45