British History For Dummies

Seán Lang

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470978191
• eBook ISBN: 9780470978368
• Edition: 3
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Royally confused about kings and queens? Never sure what happened when? Or where — England, Scotland, Ireland, or Wales? Learn the people and events that shaped British history

British History For Dummies, 3rd Edition is full of rip-roaring stories of power-mad kings, executions, invasions, high treason, global empire building, and forbidden love — not bad for a nation of stiff upper lips. Engaged travelers, lifelong learners, history buffs, and students will all enjoy this friendly and accessible guide written in, well, plain English. This book is for you if you studied British History in school (perhaps a while ago) or learned only a bit about Wales or Scotland or Ireland and want to know more. And if you've ever asked yourself, "What kingdoms are part of the United Kingdom?" or "Exactly how was the UK formed?" or "Which people make up the UK?" — you've come to the right place, to get those answers and so much more.

With an 8-page color insert so you can see who, what, and where the ensuing historical action takes place, you'll learn about the following people and events (and more):

• What led to the Roman invasion and about the Britons who resisted it
• How Britain was divided into Saxon and Celtic kingdoms
• How the Roman Church converted Celtic and British Christians
• When the Vikings arrived, and what other invaders followed
• The many battles of Henry II
• The forming of England's parliament
• How the Black Death affected Britain
• The Tudors vs. The Stuarts
• How the Industrial Revolution helped push advancements in farming and infrastructure
• All about the Victorians — everyone's favorite
• Britain's involvement in the Great War and World War II

Additionally, this edition is revised and expanded to include the historical parliamentary elections of 2010 and the British mission in Afghanistan, and you don't want to miss out. Pick up your copy of British History For Dummies, 3rd Edition today.

Part I

The British Are Coming!

In this part . . .

Britain is an ancient land, with a lot of history. It was formed thousands of years ago by the continental shifts of the Ice Age; the first people to come to Britain and to Ireland came on foot, before the ice melted and the seas came. In time they learned the arts of metal, first tin and copper, then bronze, and finally iron, the ‘daddy’ of all metals in the ancient world. With these metals they made weapons for hunting and fighting, and they crafted tools, learning painfully but steadily how to adapt this land, with its hills, dales, mountains, and lakes, and to tame it.

These people weren’t ‘English’ or ‘Irish’ or ‘Scots’ or ‘Welsh’ – that was all to come a lot later. But their descendants still live here, sometimes in the same places, and they laid the foundations of modern Britain and of Ireland. This part looks at who these people were, and at the culture they forged in the ages of stone and bronze and iron. This is the beginning.

Chapter 1

So Much History, So Little Time

In This Chapter

Listing the kingdoms that make up the United Kingdom

Figuring out how the UK was formed

Identifying the people who make up the UK

British history is a history of a variety of people inhabiting a variety of regions. In fact, all this variety is one of the reasons why the country’s name is so ridiculously long: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This name’s a mouthful, for sure, but it reveals a great deal about the people – past and present – who have inhabited these islands.

When you think of history lessons at school, what comes to mind – before your eyelids droop, that is? Probably endless lists of kings or Acts of Parliament and confusing tales of people named after places (‘Ah! Lancaster! Where’s Worcester?’) who spend their time swapping sides and cutting each other’s heads off. You may think of the stories of Drake playing bowls as the Spanish Armada sails up The Channel, or Robert the Bruce watching a spider spinning his web, or Churchill hurling defiance at Hitler. Good stories, yes, but is there a connection between these events and you? If you tend to think of history as merely a series of disconnected events, you miss the bigger picture: That history is about people.

British history is full of wonderful people (quite a few of whom were clearly stark raving mad, but that’s history for you) and exciting events – all of which helped make Britain the sort of place it is today. In examining what made Britain Britain, you’ll also discover that the British helped make the world. In that sense, whoever you are, British history is also probably part of your history. Enjoy.

A Historical Tin of Beans – But Not Quite 57 Varieties

British history is incredibly varied. That variety is partly because any country that can trace its history back to the mists of time is going to have a motley tale to tell, but it’s also because of the nature of the country itself. To get a glimpse of how the union was formed, head to the section ‘How the UK Was Born’. To find out who makes up the UK, see ‘You’re Not From Round ’Ere – But Then Again, Neither Am I’.

Where the name came from

The country’s full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Of course, no one actually calls the country by that name. You hear ‘United Kingdom’ in top international gatherings like the UN or the Eurovision Song Contest, and ‘the UK’ has become more common in recent years. Even so, most English people say ‘England’ when they mean ‘Britain’, but they’re in good company: The Victorians used to do that all the time, too – even the Victorian Welsh and Scots and, yes, Irish. You may think Britain would be a safe term to use, but apart from the fact that using it is a good way to get yourself lynched in Glasgow or West Belfast, Britain’s not actually accurate.

You see, Britain was the name the Romans gave to the whole island, which contains modern-day England, Wales, and Scotland. Ireland was Hibernia, so even Northern Ireland was never part of ‘Britain’. This old Roman distinction between Britain and Hibernia (or Ireland) is why the full name of the country is so cumbersome.

For a long time after the Romans went the term Britain disappeared and was only used to refer to the time before the Saxons – like in Shakespeare’s King Lear, for example. Educated people knew Britain was an ancient term for the whole island, but no one actually used it, or if they did, they used it to mean Brittany! When King James VI of Scotland became King of England in 1603 (see Chapter 13) he tried to revive the term Britain, but no one really took him up on it.

Then, a hundred years later, England and Scotland joined together in the Act of Union, and they had to think of a name for the new joint kingdom. Someone suggested ‘Great Britain’, which not only sounded good but was actually accurate – when England and Scotland united, they reformed the old Roman province of Britain, and the ‘Great’ helped to distinguish it from Brittany. When, a hundred years after that, another Act of Union brought Ireland into the fold, they didn’t just lump all three countries under the name Great Britain (because Ireland had never been part of Britain, great or small) so the name changed again to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. (To find out more about the Acts of Union, head to Chapter 15.)

When the Romans left, the Britons were the Celtic peoples they left behind. When the Angles and Saxons came raiding and settling, they subsumed the Britons of ‘England’ into the new people who eventually got called the English. So the people with the best right to be called British nowadays are actually the very people in Wales and Scotland who object to the term most strongly!

Before the Romans came, the whole island was one big patchwork of different tribes: No-one had any sense that some tribes were ‘Scottish’ and some ‘English’. In fact, since the Scots were an Irish tribe and the English, if they existed at all, lived in Germany, no one would have understood what either term meant!

England

After the Romans left, the Angles and Saxons set up a whole network of different kingdoms: Kent, East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, and some other less important ones. Not until the Vikings arrived did the English start to unite under a single king. It was this united kingdom that William the Conqueror took over when he won the Battle of Hastings in 1066. He would hardly have bothered if he was only going to become King of Wessex.

After the Norman invasion, although it was easier to speak of ‘England’, it was much harder to talk about ‘the English’. The ordinary people were of Saxon blood, but the nobles were all French – Normans to start with and later from other parts of France. A whole sweep of famous Kings of England including Richard the Lionheart, King John, the first three Edwards, and Richard II would never have called themselves English. Not really until Henry V and the Wars of the Roses can you talk of everyone from top to bottom being part of an English people.

Scotland

The Romans did have a sense of ‘Scotland’, or Caledonia as they called it, being a bit different, but that was just because they were never able to conquer it completely. There were Britons in Strathclyde and Picts in most of the rest of Caledonia, and then Scots came over from the north of Ireland and settled. It took a long time, but eventually these three groups all learned to get along with each other. It was a Scottish king, Kenneth MacAlpin, who finally managed to unite the groups, so the whole area came to be called after his people – ‘Scot-land’.

Wales

‘For Wales’, it used to say in indexes, ‘see England’! Which is desperately unfair, but for many years that was how the English thought about Wales. The Welsh are de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I: The British Are Coming!
• Part II: Everyone Else Is Coming! The Invaders
• Part III: Who's in Charge Around Here? The Middle Ages
• Part IV: Rights or Royals? The Tudors and Stuar ts
• Part V: On the Up: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
• Part VI: Don't Look Down: The Twentieth Century
• Part VII: The Part of Tens
• Cheat Sheet