British history earliest times

It is important to remember that, while ancient civilizations flourished in Africa and Asia, then in Greece and Rome, life id Britain was still primitive. In the history of world civilizations Britain was a very late starter.

About 100 BC the Celts spread across Britain and mixed with earlier settlers, a mixture which was the basis of the British population.

In AD 43, the Romans occupied Britain. The Romans won because they had a better trained army and because the Celtic tribes fought among themselves.

The Romans brought the skills of reading and writing to Britain. The Romans built towns with stone as well as wood, and had planned streets, markets and shops. Under the Romans the slave-owning system developed. Roman control of Britain came to an end as the empire began to collapse. In AD 409 Rome pulled its last soldiers out of Britain.

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes began to settle in Britain after AD 430. They gave the larger part of Britain its new name, England, ‘the land of Angles’. The Saxons divided the land into new administrative areas, based on shires, or counties. They introduced a three-field pattern of farming. The Angles developed a class system, made up of king, lords, soldiers and workers on the land.

In 865 the Vikings invaded Britain. Only King Alfred held out against the Vikings. He thought that it would be best to keep off the Danes by fighting them at sea, so he built ships bigger and faster than the Danish ships. King Alfred is considered to be the founder of the English fleet.

Later the Danish King Canute added England to his Empire (1016-1035).

The norman conquest

In 1066 the Normans defeated the English in a battle near Hastings. William of Normandy (William the Conqueror) was crowned king of England on in 1066. A new period had begun.

Ireland had been conquered by Norman lords in 1169 and later became the first English colony.

The wars

England tried to defeat Scotland. But the Scots created a popular resistance movement. At first it was led by William Wallace, but after his execution Robert Bruce was able to raise an army and defeat the English army in Scotland. Since 1314 for further three centuries Scotland remained independent.

During the Hundred Years War (1338-1453) Scotland supported France against England.

England had lost the war but two years later a new war broke up, later called the "Wars of the Roses" (1485-1509). Two noble English families were fighting for the English crown. Almost half the lords of the sixty noble families had died in the wars. It was this fact which made it possible for the Tudors to build an absolute monarchy.

By the end of the fifteenth century England was one of a number of countries where elements of a bourgeois economy were developing.

The new trading empire

In 1534 Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church. Now he was head of the state and head of the Church. He could control the Church and could keep its wealth in his own kingdom.

Between 1536 and 1543 Wales became joined to England under one administration. (West Wales was joined to England in 1284.) Elizabeth, Henry VIII’s daughter, became queen when her father died. She wanted to make England prosperous.

English ships had already been attacking Spanish ships as they returned from America loaded with silver and gold. This was the result of Spain's refusal to allow England to trade freely with Spanish American colonies.

Spain built a great fleet of ships, an ‘Armada’, but in 1588 the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English. England won naval supremacy.

Elizabeth encouraged English traders to settle abroad and to create colonies. This policy led directly to Britain's colonial empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Elizabeth died in 1603 and James VI, the king of Scotland, became king of England – James I.