United Kingdom
Historie
Several species of humans have intermittently occupied Great Britain for almost a million years. The earliest
evidence of human occupation around 900.000 years ago is at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast, with stone tools and
footprints probably made by Homo antecessor. The oldest human fossils, around 500.000 years old, are of
Homo heidelbergensis at Boxgrove in Sussex. Until this time Britain had been permanently connected to the
Continent by a chalk ridge between South East England and northern France called the Weald-Artois Anticline,
but during the Anglian Glaciation around 425.000 years ago a megaflood broke through the ridge, and Britain
became an island when sea levels rose during the following Hoxnian interglacial.
Fossils of very early Neanderthals dating to around 400.000 years ago have been found at Swanscombe in Kent,
and of classic Neanderthals about 225.000 years old at Pontnewydd in Wales. Britain was unoccupied by humans between
180.000 and 60.000 years ago, when Neanderthals returned. By 40.000 years ago they had become extinct and modern humans
had reached Britain. But even their occupations were brief and intermittent due to a climate which swung between low
temperatures with a tundra habitat and severe ice ages which made Britain uninhabitable for long periods. The last of
these, the Younger Dryas, ended around 11.700 years ago, and since then Britain has been continuously occupied.
Academic study's now have concluded that an ice bridge existed between Britain and Ireland up until 16.000 years ago, but
this had melted by around 14.000 years ago. Britain was at this time still joined to the Continent by a land bridge known
as Doggerland, but due to rising sea levels this causeway of dry land would have become a series of estuaries, inlets
and islands by 7.000 BC, and by 6.200 BC, it would have become completely submerged.
Located at the fringes of Europe, Britain received European technological and cultural developments much later than Southern
Europe and the Mediterranean region did during prehistory. By around 4.000 BC, the island was populated by people with a
Neolithic culture. This neolithic population had significant ancestry from the earliest farming communities in
Anatolia, indicating that a major migration accompanied farming. The beginning of the Bronze Age and the Bell
Beaker culture (2450-1800 BC) was marked by an even greater population turnover, this time displacing more than 90%
of Britain's neolithic ancestry in the process.
In around 750 BC iron working techniques reached Britain from southern Europe and it is generally thought that by 500 BC
most people inhabiting the British Isles were speaking Common Brythonic.
There were a few armed invasions of hordes of migrating Celts. There are two known invasions. Around 300 BC, a group
from the Gaulish Parisii tribe apparently took over East Yorkshire, establishing the highly distinctive Arras
culture. And from around 150 - 100 BC, groups of Belgae began to control significant parts of the South.
In 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar, as part of his campaigns in Gaul, invaded Britain and claimed to have scored a number
of victories, but he never penetrated further than Hertfordshire and could not establish a province. After Caesar's expeditions,
the Romans began a serious and sustained attempt to conquer Britain in AD 43, at the behest of Emperor Claudius. They landed
in Kent with four legions and defeated two armies led by the kings of the Catuvellauni tribe. The Roman force, led
by Aulus Plautius, waited for Claudius to come and lead the final march on the Catuvellauni capital at Camulodunum
(modern Colchester), before he returned to Rome for his triumph. Over the next four years, the territory was consolidated and
the future emperor Vespasian led a campaign into the Southwest where he subjugated two more tribes.
But in AD 60, under the leadership of the warrior-queen Boudicca, the tribes rebelled against the Romans. At first,
the rebels had great success. In the decisive battle, 10.000 Romans faced nearly 100.000 warriors somewhere along the line of
Watling Street, at the end of which Boudicca was utterly defeated. Over the next 20 years, the borders expanded slightly,
but the governor Agricola incorporated into the province the last pockets of independence in Wales and Northern England.
He also led a campaign into Scotland which was recalled by Emperor Domitian. The border gradually formed along the Stanegate
road in Northern England, solidified by Hadrian's Wall built in AD 138, despite temporary forays into Scotland. The Romans
and their culture stayed in charge for 350 years.
In the wake of the breakdown of Roman rule in Britain from the middle of the fourth century, present day England was progressively
settled by Germanic groups. Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, these included Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians.
Seven kingdoms are traditionally identified as being established by these migrants. Three were clustered in the South east:
Sussex, Kent and Essex. The Midlands were dominated by the kingdoms of Mercia, Wessex and East Anglia. To
the north was Northumbria which unified two earlier kingdoms, Bernicia and Deira.
The first recorded landing of Vikings took place in 787 in Dorsetshire, on the south-west coast. The arrival of the Vikings
upset the political and social geography of Britain and Ireland. In 867 Northumbria fell to the Danes; East Anglia
fell in 869. Though Wessex managed to contain the Vikings by defeating them at Ashdown in 871. In May 878 Alfred, king
of Wessex led a force that defeated the Danes at Edington. Alfred's success was sustained by his son Edward, whose decisive
victories over the Danes in East Anglia in 910 and 911 were followed by a crushing victory at Tempsford in 917. His dominance was
reinforced by his son Æthelstan, who extended the borders of Wessex northward, in 927 conquering the Kingdom of York and
leading a land and naval invasion of Scotland. These conquests led to his adopting the title "King of the English" for
the first time.
Meanwhile, Gaelic-speakers in north-west Britain (with connections to the north-east of Ireland and traditionally supposed to have
migrated from there in the 5th century) united with the Picts to create the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.
There were renewed Scandinavian attacks on England at the end of the 10th century. Æthelred (978-1013) ruled a long reign
but ultimately lost his kingdom to Sweyn of Denmark, though he recovered it following the latter's death. However,
Æthelred's son Edmund II Ironside died shortly afterwards, allowing Cnut, Sweyn's son, to become king of England.
Under his rule the kingdom became the centre of government for the North Sea Empire (1013-1042) which included Denmark
and Norway.
In 1066, a Norman expedition invaded and conquered England. The Norman dynasty, established by William the Conqueror, ruled
England for over half a century before the period of succession crisis known as the Anarchy (1135-1154). Following the
Anarchy, England came under the rule of the House of Plantagenet, a dynasty which later inherited claims to the Kingdom
of France. During this period, Magna Carta was signed. A succession crisis in France led to the Hundred Years' War
(1337-1453), a series of conflicts involving the peoples of both nations. Following the Hundred Years' Wars, England became
embroiled in its own succession wars. The Wars of the Roses pitted two branches of the House of Plantagenet against one
another, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. The Lancastrian Henry Tudor ended the War
and established the Tudor Dynasty in 1485.
Under the Tudors and the later Stuart Dynasty, England became a colonial power. During the rule of the Stuarts, the
English Civil War took place between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, which resulted in the execution
of King Charles I (1649) and the establishment of a series of republican governments - first, a Parliamentary republic known
as the Commonwealth of England (1649-1653), then a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell known as the Protectorate (1653-1659). The Stuarts returned to the restored throne in 1660, though continued questions over religion and power resulted
in the deposition of another Stuart king, James II, in the Glorious Revolution (1688). England, which had subsumed
Wales in the 16th century under Henry VIII, united with Scotland in 1707 to form a new sovereign state called Great Britain.
The term 'United Kingdom' became official in 1801 when the parliaments of Britain and Ireland each passed an Act of Union,
uniting the two kingdoms and creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
After the defeat of France at the end of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), the United
Kingdom emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century (with London the largest city in the world from
about 1830) The British Empire was expanded to include India, large parts of Africa, and many other territories throughout the
world.
Britain was one of the principal Allies that defeated the Central Powers in the First World War (1914-1918). Alongside
their French, Russian and (after 1917) American counterparts, British armed forces were engaged across much of the British Empire
and in several regions of Europe, particularly on the Western Front.
Following years of political and military agitation for 'Home Rule' for Ireland, the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 established the
Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) as a separate state, leaving Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.
The country's official name thus became The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
In 1940, the Royal Air Force defeated the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Urban areas suffered heavy bombing during
the Blitz. The Grand Alliance of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union formed in 1941, leading the Allies against the
Axis powers. There were eventual hard-fought victories in the Battle of the Atlantic, the North Africa campaign and
the Italian campaign. British forces played important roles in the Normandy landings of 1944 and the liberation of Europe.
In the decades-long process of European integration, the UK was a founding member of the Western European Union, established
with the London and Paris Conferences in 1954. The UK, joined the European Economic Community in 1973, which became the European
Union in 1993. The UK left the EU in 2020.
In 1982, Argentina invaded the British territories of South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, leading to the 10-week Falklands War
in which Argentine forces were defeated. The inhabitants of the islands are predominantly descendants of British settlers, and
strongly favour British sovereignty, expressed in a 2013 referendum.
On 8 September 2022, Elizabeth II, the longest-living and longest-reigning British monarch, died at the age of 96. Upon
the Queen's death, her eldest child Charles, Prince of Wales, acceded to the British throne as Charles III.
I have visited the United Kingdom several times.
The pictures of these trips, are not yet available;
i have to digitalize them first.
During the Atlantic Odyssey (march/april 2011),
I visited some islands in the Atlantic Ocean
South Georgia
Gough-Island
Tristan da Cuhna
St Helena
Ascension
In may 2013 I made a visit to the Farn Islands
Please let me know when you're having questions.
i would be pleased to help you.
Things to do and other tips
