Download History of Great Britain

History of Great Britain
4000 BC to 1500 BC Stone Age
man and the first farmers

This covers the period from the coming of man
to Britain (around 4000 BC) up to the Norman
conquest in 1066. The people left no literature,
but they did leave many burial chambers,
monuments and artifacts. It is believed that
Stone Age man migrated to Britain across the
land bridge that then joined Britain to the rest of
Europe. The rising water levels cut Britain off
from Europe and left these peoples to develop
separately and largely unmolested by any large
outside tribes or armies.
1500 BC to the Roman Invasion in
43 AD

Iron Age man started to change his living habits.
The explanation might be that with the
acquisition of the knowledge to make iron tools,
Or perhaps iron weapons made man more
aggressive and groups needed protection from
maurauding bands of armed thugs.
 Julius Caesar made a landing in Britain in 55
BC, but only suceeded in establishing a tempory
bridgehead. After another abortive attempt the
next year, he sailed away and the Romans left
Britain alone for another century, until they
landed in force in 43 AD
The Romans in Britain

The Romans did expand further into Scotland,
building the Antonine Wall across the Lowlands
(Glasgow to Edinburgh).
 The country appears to have enjoyed a period of
unprecedented peace - "the golden age of the
Villa". Around 300 AD the Roman Empire came
under sustained attack by the barbarian hordes
in central Europe and some troops were
withdrawn to help in that area. Northern Britain
started to suffer attacks from the Scots and
Picts.
 But
it was until 410 AD that the Roman
Emperor Constantine finally removed the
whole garrison of Britain to defend the
Rhine frontier from attack. The Romans
never returned to Britain
 Britain was to slip into a 600 year period of
wars and fragmentation.Of Angles and
Saxons invading, the Celts being pushed
West, and the country under almost
continuous Viking attack
410 to 1066 Anglo Saxon Britain
Viking raids the Norman invasion

The new Anglo Saxon invaders were not
organised centrally, as the Romans had been, or
as the Normans would be. They slowly colonised
northwards and westwards, pushing the native
Celts to the fringes of Britain. Roman Britain was
replaced by Anglo Saxon Britain, with the Celtic
peoples remaining in Cornwall, Wales and
Scotland. The Anglo Saxon areas eventually
combined into kingdoms, and by 850 AD the
country had three competing kingdoms as
shown on the map on the left
 Next
came another wave of Viking attacks.
The net effect was that the English kin,
Ethelred the Unready, found his kingdom
under attack on all coasts by Norsemen.
On Ethelred's death in 1016, the Viking
leader Cnut was effectively ruling England.
But on Cnut's death, the country collapsed
into a number of competing Earldoms
(shown on the left) under a weak king,
Edward the Confessor.
The Norman kings consolidate their
hold on Britain

The Duke of Normandy, known as William the
Conqueror, now became king of England, establishhing
a new Anglo-Norman state. England became a strong,
centralised country under military rule. Castles appeared
all over England to enforce Norman rule. England has
never been invaded since 1066. William was a harsh
ruler: he destroyed many villages to make sure the
English people did not rebel. The Normans' power was
absolute and the language of the new rulers, NormanFrench, has held a lasting effect on English.
The Middle Ages



, King Edward III, who already ruled a large part of
France, said that he was entitled to be king of all of
France as well as king of England. This caused a war
that lasted on and off until 1453, and is called the
Hundred Years War. Scotland helped France in this war.
There were famous battles at Crécy (1346) and
Agincourt (1415) in France, both won by the English.
In 1455 civil wars later called the Wars of the Roses
began.
. The wars ended in 1485 when the Yorkist King Richard
III was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth, and the
Welshman Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, came to the
throne of England.
The Tudors

Henry VIII, who come
to the throne in 1509,
Henry was a tyrant
and a despot. One
other bonus for Henry
from his split with
Rome was that he
gained control of the
monasteries - the
monastic buildings
and land were sold off
after the dissolution of
the monasteries in
1538.

Elizabeth's reign brought
in one of the most
glorious eras of British
history. Exploration,
colonisation, victory in
war, and growing world
importance. The Arts
flourished, this was the
age of Shakespeare and
Bacon. It was the age of
the sea dog, Drake and
Raleigh, Hawkins and
Frobisher
The Stuarts and the Civil War

King James I of England as well,
and was the first king of the whole
of Great Britain.
James believed that monarchs
were appointed by God, and could
rule as they pleased. This was
called The Divine Right of Kings
and led to trouble with parliament,
whose approval the king needed to
raise money.
 Civil
War broke out between armies
supporting parliament and those loyal to
the king. Parliament won
the First World War

Britain entered the First World War in 1914. By
the time it ended in 1918 over 8 million people
had died; 996,230 of them were from Britain and
the British Empire. During that war Britain had its
first taste of bombs dropped from the air, by
huge German airships called Zeppelins.
British working people had begun fighting for
their rights in Queen Victoria's reign. They
became more determined after the First World
War, and Britain's first Labour government came
to power in 1924.
World War Two
 The
British Army in Europe soon lost to the
Germans, who quickly conquered most of
continental Europe. Germany tried to
conquer Britain by first gaining air
supremacy. However the Germans lost the
Battle of Britain, the first battle to be fought
solely in the air
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