British Culture

An approximation

First settlers

Nomads from mainland Europe (earliest human bone evidence found in 1994)

Later settlers came from north-central and occupied eastern Britain. Others arrived from the Iberian areas and populated south-west England, Ireland, the Isle of Man and western Scotland.

Norman Conquest

Important watershed in English history

Batle of Hastings in AD 1066 (last successful external military invasion of the country)

Great influence on the English people and their language.

Initiated many of the social and institutional frameworks of the British history (feudal system)

Ethnic & national diversity

Usually newcomers tended to concentrate initially in southern England and settlement patterns were not uniform over all of Britain at the same time.

Despite some intermixture between the various settlers, there were racial differences between the English and the people from Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

United Kingdom?

The UK

Political and military attempts long made by England to unite Wales, Scotland and Ireland under the English Crown.

Ireland was attacked in the 12th century. The later colonization and control of Ireland by the English became a source of hatred between the two countries.

Irish settlements in London and west-coast ports such as Liverpool.

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Ireland became part of the United Kingdom in 1801 but after civil unrest and political agitation, it was divided in 1921 into two political units.

Wales lost its independence in 1285 after years of bloody conflict witht the English. It was eventually integrated with England by a series of Acts of Union between 1536 and 1542.

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The English tried to conquer Scotland by military force, but were repulsed at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Scotland was to remain independent until the political union between the two countries in 1707 (creation of Great Britain)

England + Wales + Scotland = Protestantism

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Ireland = Catholicism colonization problems.

Britain = recent and unstable union of four old nations. The political entity called Great Britain in only slightly older than the United States of America, and the United Kingdom (1801) is younger.

Englishness Britishness (outsiders = colonial subjects)

The UK

Despite the tensions and bitterness between the four nations, there has been steady internal migration between them.

Newcomers arrived from overseas, including gypsies, blacks (associated with the slave trade) and a further wave of Jews, who in 1655 created the first permanent Jewish community.

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In the 16th and 17th century the country attracted a large number of refugees, such as Dutch Protestants and French Huguenots (largely Calvinists who escaped Catholic persecution, warfare and employment needs).

A second central development in British history was a number of industrial revolutions in the 18th and 19th century.

Post colonial immigration.

The UK

First World War = Jews and Poles escaped persecution in eastern Europe and settled in London.

Anti-foreigner feeling spread, increased by nationalism and spy mania caused by WWI (Aliens Act of 1905)

World Recession of the 1930s and WWII = Poles, Latvians, Ukrainians and other nationalities chose to stay in Britain.

Later in the 20th century, political and economic refugees arrived, such as Hungarians, Czechs, Chileans, Libyans, East Africans, Asians, Iranians, Vietnamese, to name a few.