The UKBy Marta Czekalska

Roman Britain

The first important exact date in British history is 55 b.c.e., the date of the first invasion of Britain by the Romans.

Society was radically transformed, first by Roman contact and then, through much of the island, by actual Roman rule. Roman Britain was referred by the Romans as Britannia

The collapse of central Roman authority in Britain after 410 was preceded by years of weakening Roman military. Southern Britain was also facing a fundamentally different type of outside threat than Roman Continental Europe.

Anglo-saxons & Scots peroid

From the middle of the fifth to the end of the sixth century, a New culture - the Anglo-Saxons - established its domination over most of Britain. Around the same time, the Scots were settling in what became Scotland. These two cultures became the foundation for what would be the dominant kingdoms of Britain—England and Scotland.

In the 11th century England increased contact with the Continent, particularly Normandy. It was important for prevent them from providing bases for Scandinavian raiders and for the health of the English wool trade. These connections were strengthened by royal intermarriage. Edward the Confessor spent much of his youth in exile at French courts. When Edward became king of England in 1042, he returned with Norman warriors and churchmen, the beginning of the Norman presence that would overwhelm England after Edward’s death.

The Norman Kingdom of England

The most famous date in English history is 1066, the year Duke William of conquered the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. William’s victory was precipitated by the death of Edward the Confessor in early January 1066. Edward had left no children, and the witan proclaimed Harold II Godwinson, from the powerful Anglo-Saxon family of Godwin, to be king. William, however, claimed that Edward had recognized him as the successor and that Harold had accepted this claim.

The decisive battle between the English and the Normans took place on October 14, 1066, at Hastings in Sussex. Harold, along with most of the fighting aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England, was killed in battle, and William was crowned king.

The Batt les of throne

William the Conqueror was succeeded as king of England by his second son, William II Rufus . This king gained a bad reputation for violence, irreligion, and sodomy. William Rufus died in a hunting accident in 1100. Robert, the next in the strict line of succession, was still off crusading so his seized the opportunity and succeeded William Rufus to the throne. Henry I defeated Robert reuniting kingdom and duchy.

Henry’s reign was particularly important in the development of English law and judicial procedures. The law worked outby the royal justices in Henry’s reign—the common law—would buildon Anglo-Saxon and Norman precedents to become one of the world’s great legal systems.

The Magna Carta The centralization and fiscal extortion practiced by the early Angevin dynasty led to

resentment on the part of the aristocracy. This came to a head under Richard’s brother and successor, King John. John lost Normandy and much of the inheritance of Henry II in France, with disastrous consequences for his prestige in England John needed money. His ruthlessness in squeezing money from his barons, including the confiscation of baronial lands and the promotion of gangsterish favorites, aroused massive resistance. John was forced to sign the Magna Carta—the great charter—in 1215. The Magna Carta was designed to stop the king’s abuses and safeguard the baronage’s feudal rights. It established right aristocratic control over the central government through the requirement that new taxes could only be imposed with the consent of a great council of the baronage. The Magna Carta guaranteed both rights of interest to the baronage, such as restrictions on wardship, and rights of all freemen in the kingdom, such as trial by peers. He later revoked the Magna Carta with the permission of the pope. This led to another civil war, with the participation of Louis, the son of the king of France. The war ended when John died and his nine-year-old son, Henry III, became king.

ParlamentParliaments began as great councils as called for in the Magna Carta. The move

from great councils to parliaments was precipitated by a crisis in 1258. Out of the desire to provide a crown for his second son and to oblige the papacy,

Henry had become involved in a war in Sicily by agreeing to guarantee the papal debts incurred there.The council of barons set forth an ambitious

program to make the king merely the head of a system of baronia councils that would actually rule the realm. This form of government forced Henry to the humiliation of having to rearrange his personal household to conform to what the barons wanted, but it was eventually brought down by divisions within the baronage and its own weaknesses and ambiguities. This was when the word parliamen t came into general use.

The Reformati on The most important monarch in the story of the

English Reformation was Henry VIII. Henry’s Reformation began by difficulties with the Catholic Church, in particular those surrounding his hopes for a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon to marry his lover, Anne Boleyn. Henry was particularly worried because Catherine had failed to give birth to the male heir who would cement the Tudor claim to the English throne. Frustrated in his attempts to win a divorce, Henry eventually removed the English church from the pope’s jurisdiction and put it under his own headship in the Act of Supremacy of 1534. Anne, too, failed to produce a son and heir for Henry, although like Catherine she did have a daughter, Elizabeth, who would eventually ascend the throne. Henry was succeeded by his much more Protestant son, Edward VI , the product of his union with his third wife, Jane Seymour.

Elizabethan EnglandThe reign of Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603 saw the formation of a distinctively

English Protestantism and conflicting religious parties. Her reign was also a key period in the definition of “Englishness” and the source of many of England’s historical myths. She created a new religious practice that brought together elements of both traditions and issued a new statement of church beliefs, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and a new prayer book, the Book of Common Prayer, guiding worship in the Church of England.

The Union of Crowns and the Formati on of the Briti sh State

The death of Elizabeth in 1603 was followed by the succession of the Scottish king James VI, who ruled as James I until his death in 1625. During James’s reign, the first British state—with England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland all ruled effectively by the king in London—was created.

Revoluti onary England

Stuarts wanted to force Scotland to choose Anglicanism as a national religion. It caused riots that forced Charles I to convene Parliament. He wanted the agreement for new taxes but opposition disagreed. When Charles I hadn’t found the solution for the problem, he asked Parlament again. There has to establish anti-absolutism reforms, and to strengthen the position of the opposition. After a failed attempt to capture opponents, losing control of the country Charles I left London But the biggest success was thanks to Oliver Cromwell, an outstanding leader, who stood at the head of an army of parliament and created an efficient cavalry regiment.However, the opposition began to split. The tension between the parliament made Cromwell had to act. He set out with his army and captured London.

The Government of Oliver Cromwell

The victory of the English Parliament over their king was followed by the victory of England over Scotland and Ireland. Cromwell defeated both the Irish rebellion and a Scottish attempt to restore. Using his control of the army to overthrow Parliament in 1653, Cromwell took the title Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Charles I I and the Restorati on Monarchy

The Restoration of 1660 was the restoration not only of the king but also of the institutions that had been abolished by the victorious Parliamentarians and that remained central to British life, such as the House of Lords and the episcopally organized Church of England. Charles II’s experience in exile on the Continent had shaped his personality in many ways. He became one of the least insular of early modern British kings. He did not share the anti-Catholic prejudices of many of his subjects and in fact converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.

The Roots of World EmpireBritain in the 18th century was more deeply involved with the word beyond

its shores than ever before. British ships plied the world’s oceans, displacing the Dutch from their leadership in world trade. African slaves, Indian cotton textiles, and Chinese tea all served to fill the coffers of British merchants. Not only British trade but British dominion was rising. The colonies in North America changed from isolated outposts to complex societies expanding into the American interior. The British colonies of the Caribbean, Jamaica, and Barbados, with their vast, slave-worked sugar plantations, were the source of immense wealth, even as slavery itself was increasingly controversial by the second half of the century. The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, traded with Native Americans for furs, although in the first part of the new century it was outpaced by French rivals. The East India Company, founded in 1600, had established a firm foothold in Bengal in northeastern India that became a base for further expansion by the mid-18th century.

the House of Hanover Two great conflicts between Britain and France, the War of the Spanish

Succession, was prompted by the death of Carlos (Charles) II of Spain without a direct heir in 1700. One important consequence of the war was domestic: the Act of Union of 1707, which made England and Scotland one country under the new name of United Kingdom of Great Britain. The act abolished the Scottish parliament, replacing i twith elected representatives to the English House of Commons and House of Lords, theoretically a new British parliament but in practice the English parliament with the addition of Scottish members.

When Anne died in 1714 and was succeeded by the German prince George, the elector of Hanover, first of the Hanoverian dynasty. George I was an unprepossessing man with no knowledge of English or familiarity with English institutions, but he was a respected statesman in much of central Europe and the Baltic.

The Industrial Revoluti onThe British economy in the late 18th century was transformed.

British domination of the seas was actually strengthened. England also had mechanics and engineers who combined practical experience with some training in Newtonian physics. The enclosure movement, in which Parliament handed over common community land to private landowners, coupled with rapid growth in the English population, meant that a large surplus workforce, unable to sustain itself on the land, was available for industry. Industrialism first emerged in the production and trade of textiles (light industry). The Industrial Revolution led to powerful social changes, especially in the growth of urbanization and new forms of labor. English urban areas, particularly London and the cities of the industrial north, grew at an astounding rate, and by the mid-19th century Britain was the first large nation to have a majority of its population living in cities. The new cities were overcrowded, with shoddy, quickly built housing for the working population and poor hygiene and waste disposal.

The Empire at Its Zenith

The empire was neither acquired nor maintained peacefully, and Victorian Britain was constantly engaged in wars on the colonial frontiers. Adopting a policy of “splendid isolation”, Britain shunned formal Continental alliances that might have drawn it into war with European great powers. This enabled it to maintain a small army and devote most of its military budget to the world’s dominant navy. Although there were also tensions and clashes between Britain and the United States, again the Iritish avoided war, increasingly deferring to the United States in affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

The British Empire under Queen Victoria was at its zenith of power and prestige. The empire included the legacy of British victories in the wars against France in the 18th and early 19th century and the new conquests that had been made since then. It was also the product of Britain’s world-leading industrial economy and unrivaled navy.

Britain and World War I

In 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria- Hungary by a Serbian nationalist led to a war that lasted until 1918 and involved every major world power. From the British point of view, the devastating conflict was the culmination of years of colonial and naval rivalry with the rising power of Germany. Masses of men volunteered, often with the hope that the war would be over quickly; in fact, it dragged on for four bloody years. The British army had to change from a small force mainly designed and equipped to fight small colonial wars to a mass army like those of the Continental powers France and Germany.

Casualties were massive: Between 750,000 and 800,000 Britons died in the war.

World War IIThe war’s early stages were marked by widespread popular support. Early optimism ended with the quick fall of Poland

and increasingly successful German attacks in western Europe. The German plan for the invasion of Britain was code-named Operation Sea Lion. Invasion was never attempted, and the

actual Battle of Britain was fought in the air. In the first major military campaign to be fought entirely from the air, heavily outnumbered British fighter pilots defeated the attempt of the German Luftwaffe to establish dominance of the skies.

UK forces played an important role in the Normandy landings of 1944, achieved with its ally the US. After Germany's defeat, the UK was one of the Big Three powers who met to plan the post-war world; it was an original signatory to the Declaration of the United Nations. However, the war left the UK severely weakened and depending financially on Marshall Aid and loans from the United States

After the glow of victory wore off, life was drab, food rationing was still in force, and there seemed few economic opportunities. In the years following 1945, many Britons who could afford to do so emigrated to Australia, Canada, or the United States.

In the last few decades, Britain has led a more humble existence than it did as a global empire. Some challenges—like those of economic development, an increasingly multicultural society, and terrorism—are challenges it has shared with other nations of the developed world. Others, such as the challenges of Welsh and Scottish devolution or the emotional shocks delivered by the royal family, have been more uniquely British. The future will bring many more, from the threat of economic disaster facing the world in 2009, to the end of the reign of the only queen most Britons have ever known. But only a fool would count out the society that gave the world William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, and the Industrial Revolution, to name but a few. Britain’s past will continue to shape its future.