HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN

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This is a small book which will explain you the main facts of history of great Britain in a simple and easy way. It will guide you from the early Neolithic period, when people lived in small villages, through the Classical Era, when Romans arrived in Britain and started founding the first town centres, to the Medieval period, when modern aspects of GB started to form. This guide will help you to better understand the evolution of English history, of people who arrived and lived in Britain and their influence on modern United Kingdom. Having fun you will learn the main facts and features of a society that influenced and influences most of cultures in the world.

Chapter 1 - First inhabitants and arrival of the Celts

The Iberians

The first inhabitants of Great Britain arrived in the Neolithic period, about five thousand years ago. Since they arrived from the South, they are called the Iberians.

They were fishermen and hunters and we know mostly about them by archaeological remains, like cups of pottery called "beakers". Their most famous building is the megalith of Stonehenge. It is a very big construction, made of big stones put up on the ground to form a circle. Nobody knows what was their aim, but it must have been very important because they spent a lot of time and energy to build it in a period when it was difficult even to find something to eat.

The Celts

Then, around 700 BC, the Celts begun to arrive from north-west Germany. They used weapon made of iron, so they easy defeated the other population who lived in Britain, who used weapons of bronze or even of copper. They were warriors and fought from fast chariots. When they did not fight they were fishermen, farmers, hunters, metal workers and traders; they traded iron, tin and other goods between tribes.

They spoke an ancient language that remained in "Welsh" and "Gaelic" spoken in Wales and Scotland nowadays. We know even what they looked like: they were tall and muscular, had fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes.

They lived in small villages, led by a chief who was also their military leader. But there were also other people who were considered important in the tribe: the druids. They were not only priests but also teachers, doctors, judges and lawyers. They prayed in the middle of the forests and worshipped natural elements like the moon, the sun, rivers. They also had a holy element, water, which was considered as the door of the world after death and as the element which generates life. They also believed in the passage of the soul from a body to another (transmigration of the soul) and in immortality. It was also thought that life after death was still spent on Earth, in caves, hills or lakes.

The Celts communicated with their gods through sacrifice and offerings of precious objects. They mostly did animal sacrifices, but also recurred to human sacrifice when they needed a great help from divinities.

The Celts dominated Great Britain until the conquest of the island by the Romans, in 47 AD.

The Celts in Ireland

The Celts had a great influence on Irish culture. They dominated the island for a thousand years, from a century before Christ until the arrival of Christianity. Then the two cultures melted together and continued to influence Ireland until the conquest by Britain in 17^th century.

They arrived in two waves, one directly from the continent to the west of the country and the other through Britain to north-east. They overthrew the previous populations, who became part of the Celtic language and culture.

Since the Celts did not use writing, we know little about them before the arrival of Christianity (mid-fifth century), which spread the Roman alphabet in the island. In that period the country was divided into five major kingdoms, at war one another. Each kingdom was also divided in a large number of petty kingdoms, called tuatha, with a few thousand people in each. There was a hundred, a hundred and fifty of these tuatha in all. It was a society based on farming, with no cities or towns. They lived in small villages; the typical homestead was the rath, built on a hilltop and surrounded by a rampart and a fence. Today these buildings are called ëring fortsì and as rath left an imprint on town names, as Rathfriland.

The Celts gave great importance on family relationships. The typical family group was called derbhfhine and was made up of all those who descended by a great-grandfather. In the king's derbhfhine each member could succeed to the throne and was elected by the freemen of the tuatha. This system ensured that a qualified man would have gained the throne, but also provoked conflicts between members of the family.

The learned class had a special importance among the freemen. It included judges, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen and the filì. They were more than poets, wrote praise-poems for the king and updated his genealogy. They were feared for their sharpness of tongue but also for the magical power they were thought to have.

With the arrival of Christianity the two cultures melted together, creating a conservative society, so that many of its features remained unchanged until the seventeenth century.

The Celts left many marks on Ireland and on its people. There are lots of archaeological remains (habitation sites, sculptures, manuscripts, metalwork...), many place names and family names have Celtic origins, they left also one of the earliest vernacular (vulgar) literatures in Europe, their language was the most important of the island and today the only widely-spoken minority language, Irish music and folklore have Celtic origins too.

Chapter 2 - the Romans

The Romans invaded Britain for the first time in 55 BC under Julius Caesar, but did not succeed in conquering it. They did it only in the years 43-47 AD, under Emperor Claudius. This second invasion was not about economics or military security, it was a war of prestige. The Emperor had the opposition from the Senate, so he needed a quick political fix to secure his throne. After this war, the north-west of the island was only under military occupation, while south-east became Romanized.

Almost a century later, the Romans tried to conquer Caledonia, a town in the north, but they failed, so a great wall was built (Hadrian's Wall) in order to separate the "civilized" Britain from the "barbarian" tribes of the north.

In the Romanized Britain the ancient tribal centres were redesigned as Roman towns, with regular streets, forums, temples, bathhouses, theatres... New roads connected the towns one another, which were the basis of Roman administration and civilization. There were three kinds of towns: the coloniae, inhabited by Roman settlers; the municipia, where the people were given Roman citizenship; the civitates, which were the old Celtic tribal capitals. Many of these towns were army camps at first, called castra. This name remained in local town names ending in "caster", "chester" or "cester".

Even Britain's upper classes converted to Roman culture. They continued governing the land for the Romans, they ruled the land, collected taxes and maintained order. So under Roman domain Britain became richer and started to trade with other parts of the Empire.

But with the end of wars of expansion, subsidy ended too. Taxes increased and towns started to decline. The Emperors became more dictatorial, centralized administration and aimed to dragoon people into supporting the efforts.

But new tribes started to raid the Empire. In Britain the Anglo-Saxons, the Picts and the Irish attacked towns and villas. Then, when Italy itself was attacked, many troops were withdrawn to defend the homeland. No decision to decolonize Britain was made, soldiers and people were left alone against new invaders. Army pay stopped to arrive, soldiers became outlaws, mercenaries or farmers. The upper class lost the control it had over the land and people.

By 425 AD Britain was no more part of Roman Empire, towns were abandoned, barter replaced money and all the workshop closed. Later, in 550, a monk called Gildas wrote his De Excidio and Conquestu Britanniae, where he told about a Romano-British leader, Ambrosius Aurelianus, who fought against the invaders and who may have been the origin of the legend of king Arthur.

Chapter 3 - the Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain with the Picts and the Jutes at the end of the Roman dominion, at the beginning of the fifth . They raided towns and villages, drew the indigenous population to west and north and settled there.

At the end of 6^th century the Anglo-Saxons were established into seven major kingdoms. The most powerful ones were Nurthumbria in the North, Mercia in the Midlands and Wessex in the South. In the 9^th century al the kingdoms recognized the King of Wessex and all England was unified under an Anglo-Saxon king.

The first Anglo-Saxons who arrived in Britain were primitive tribes with a Nordic religion, an efficient military organization, a code of values based on a high sense of honour, fidelity to their chiefs and on family unit. The society was ruled by a chief or king, who was also the military leader. Then came the "earls", nobles by birth, and the "tegns", the king's companions. The others were freemen, who had to help maintaining roads, bridges and forts and had to provide military service if necessary. The Anglo-Saxons lived in villages where the farmland, woods and meadow were own communally.

They practised a primitive religion, venerated natural elements and believed that elfish spirits, dragons and monsters haunted caves and lakes. Then, in 597, St Augustine and other Benedictine monks (sent by pope Gregory 1^st) landed on the south and converted the royal family and king Ethelbert. Then the Celtic Church

Spread Christianity among common people; from Wales and Ireland these monks brought Christianity to the north. It unified the kingdom and opened it to the influence if Europe. Monasteries became important centres of cultures; they preserved Latin and introduced the writing. Treasures were collected, especially libraries of books.

The Roman Church contributed greatly to the power of kings. There were no established rules for the succession to the throne, so a coronation ceremony led by a bishop added a great deal of legitimacy to the new king. The first coronation was that of king Offa of Mercia.

In the 8^th and 9^th century Anglo-Saxons formed larger communities called "boroughs". They were at first military bases but then became centres of trade. They developed as fortresses and were inhabited by soldiers, merchants and their families.

Their language, known as Old English, was the language that then became the modern English.