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’.
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...
