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A Brief History of The UK

From Prehistoric history to the Industrial Revolution

A Survey of British history

The first people to inhabit the British Isles were hunters, fishers and gatherers. Around 4000 B.C. a group of Neolithic immigrants arrived from Europe, settled down and started to cultivate the land. They introduced rituals and ceremonies. Famous monuments, like Stonehenge, were built in this period. The population began to divide into tribes.

Around 2000 B.C. the Celts, a group of people from central Europe, started settling across much of Britain and Ireland. They created a distinct Celtic-British culture of their own.

Julius Caesar's arrival in Britain dates back to 55 B.C. Romans built a gigantic wall, Hadrian's Wall, near Scottish border, to control and defend the area from Scottish tribes. They also built a network of roads. They introduced sanitation and sewage systems. The first conquest was carried out by Claudius and his troops in 43 AD. They gradually conquered all of what is now England and Wales but never managed to conquer Scotland. The Romans left the island in 410 AD.

410-800 A.D. - With the departure of the Romans, Britain was colonised by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. They settled in England and in some parts of Scotland, but not in Wales and Ireland. The country was divided into several kingdoms.

The Vikings (800-1066 A.D.)

The next invasions came from the Vikings from Scandinavia. They settled in many areas and dominated a large part of the country. Yorvik (now York) was their capital. Their legacy was the formation of the independent kingdoms of Scotland and England.

The Normans (1066-1154) In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. He became King William I of England and ruled the country under the Feudal System. The Normans built many stone churches and cathedrals, as well as castles to protect the land.

The monarchy was starting to become less dominant and in 1215 King John was forced by his feudal barons to sign the Magna Carta, the oldest constitutional charter in Europe, which imposed limits on the monarch's power. This part of the Middle Ages was marked by war (the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between England and France; the English lost all their possession in France except for Calais). There was the plague in 1348. It killed between 30% and 45% of the population.

The Tudors (1485-1603)

1455-1485 War of the Roses: Lancaster against York. Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster won and became known as Henry VII Tudor. This period had perhaps two of the country's strongest monarchs: Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I. Henry, who had six wives in his attempt to have a male heir, separated from the Catholic Church as the Pope would not allow him to divorce and remarry. He appointed himself head of the Protestant Church of England (Act of Supremacy - 1535). The six wives were: Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536); Anne Boleyn (1500-1536); Jane Seymour (1508-1537); Anne of Cleves (1515-1557); Catherine Howard (1521-1542); Catherine Parr (1512-1548).

Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Queen Elizabeth I reigned over a period of great discovery and exploration as well as cultural renewal. It was the beginning of the British Empire. The English Navy defeated the Spanish Armada, the so called invincibile Armada in 1588. Elizabeth I proved to be one of the most successful and influential monarchs in European History and undoubtedly, in the world. She was an effective communicator and an "influencer" of her time ahead of the times. She created her own myth, the myth of Elizabeth I: the Virgin Queen. She used paintings and a poet, Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen) to do that. She used pictures to represent herself. That was called the iconographic representation of Elizabeth. She was very good at marketing. She had a dream, the dream of a reformed Empire: she wanted a protestant Empire. She was also very good at negotiating with the Parliament. The English Renaissance flourished during the reign of Elizabeth, particularly the theatre: William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Johnson. On her death, the crown passed to her cousin James Stuart, King of Scotland.

The Stuarts (1603-1714) Elizabeth I was succeeded by her closest relative, a Stuart, King James VI of Scotland who became James I of England. He united England and Scotland for the first time in history. With James I now king of Ireland and England, as well as Scotland, it started to be difficult to maintain peace between the Catholics and Protestants. Civil War broke out in 1642 between Royalists, who supported the monarch, and Parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, who were against the absolute power held by the king and in favor of a more powerful parliament. King Charles I, who succeeded James, was executed in 1649 and later Cromwell, the leader of the parliamentary party, became head of the established republic as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland (The Act of Settlement in 1652). The Republic lasted 11 years from 1649 to 1660. After Cromwell's death, however, Monarchy was restored with King Charles II in 1660.

Charles II had to face two major catastrophes: the Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. He was succeeded by his brother James II whose reign proved disastrous. In the Battle of the Boyne (1690) James II was defeated by his daughter Mary's husband, the Protestant King of Holland William of Orange, whose accession to the throne in 1688 became known as the Glorious Revolution. William III was succeeded by Queen Anne (the second daughter of James II) who was the last Stuart ruler. Under her reign the Act of Union was passed in 1707, uniting England, Wales and Scotland into a single sovereign state, the Kingdom of Great Britain, ruled by a constitutional monarch with limited powers and a more powerful Parliament.

The Georgians (1714-1837) After Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, the crown passed to George I, from the House of Hanover. The Georgian period (there were four kings of the same name) saw social change, for example the abolition of slavery, and the increase in the power of Parliament. It was also a period of wars, notably the American War of Independence (1775-1783) and the Napoleonic Wars, with Nelson beating Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar and Wellington's Victory at Waterloo (1815). Under the Hanoverian Kings (George II 1727-60; George III 1760-1820; George IV 1820-1830; William IV 1830-1837; Victoria (1837-1901) Britain expanded abroad and at home and underwent social and economic changes that turned it into an industrial country, starting the process known as the Industrial Revolution.