The word England is derived from "Angles" and means Anglo land, so what is the origin of the name Britain?
The British are called "Anglo-Saxons", so were the "Anglo-Saic" the first ethnic group to settle in the British Isles?
Among the many European countries, why was the United Kingdom the first to formulate the Magna Carta of Freedom, and what are the national reasons behind it?
After the great voyage, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, etc. all colonized overseas, why was Britain the most successful?
In fact, the above four questions are related to the origin of the United Kingdom. In short, the British Isles already had indigenous peoples, the Anglo-Saxons were the later colonists, and the British royal family was not Anglo-Saxons, but also foreign colonists. Perhaps, it was precisely because of Britain's rich colonial experience that it dominated the colonial movement after the Great Voyage.
In 1903, in a cave in Somerset, England, experts found a complete skeleton from ten thousand years ago, the earliest ancient human found in Britain, which caused a sensation at the time. For more than a hundred years, the British have wanted to restore him to his original appearance, to discover where he came from, his age and other issues. Despite many unsolved mysteries, the British generally believe that he is a white man with pale hair, but the facts subvert the perception.
In recent years, scientists have drilled holes in the skull, extracted the complete genome, and finally proved that he was actually an ancient human with black skin, black or brown curly hair, and blue eyes. That is to say, it was black people from Africa who lived in the British Isles, not white people native to Europe.
The conclusion that "prehistoric Britons were black" and whether to write it into British textbooks is a headache for Britain.
Around the 13th century BC, during the reign of Emperor Wuding the Great of the Shang Dynasty in China, the Iberians (prehistoric peoples of Spain) living in the Iberian Peninsula migrated to southeast Britain. This is the earliest British recognized by the history of the British National.
About the 7th century BC, in the early years of China's Spring and Autumn Struggle for hegemony, the Celts, one of the three barbarian tribes living in western Europe and in the eyes of the Roman Empire, migrated to the British Isles and replaced the status of the Iberians as the ruling nation of Britain at that time, of which the Celts were a powerful tribe of the Bretons, and the name "Britain" originated from "Britann". Named in the British language spoken of most of the rivers of present-day England, and the Welsh language of the descendants of Britain, the Bretons had enormous influence on the island of Britain at the time.
After the Celts ruled the British Isles for about 600 years, they were invaded by the Roman Empire, first defeating Caesar's attack twice, but then Claudius I conquered the British Island. At the beginning of the 5th century, after the Withdrawal of the Roman Empire from England, the Celts did not come to power, and the British Isles welcomed another group of colonists.
After the evacuation of the Romans, two Germanic tribes living in southern Denmark and Germany, the Anglo and the Saxons, slowly conquered the British Isles. In the process of conquest, the anglo-Saxon clan organization disintegrated, began to transform into a semi-feudal, semi-slave society, and 200 years later they established seven great powers, known in history as the "Seven Kingdoms Era".
Thus, at this time, the Anglo-Saxons ruled most of the Territory of England. With the advance of the Anglo-Saxons, some Celts came under rule, some Celts migrated to the frontier areas, and today especially Ireland and Wales, almost all of them are Celtic descendants, and Irish and Welsh are of Celtic origin. In addition, the contradiction between Ireland and England was actually buried as early as the Anglo-Saxon landing on the British Isles.
At this point, the Majority of the British Peoples were formed, namely the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts. Of course, there are also some primitive indigenous, Iberian, Roman and other bloodlines.
At the end of the 8th century, the Anglo-Saxons faced a crisis, the Danes began to invade Britain, encroached on a large number of English lands, the two sides fought for a hundred years, and finally an Anglo-Saxon named Alfred defeated Denmark, forcing the Danes to sign a contract, but because of their inferior strength to Denmark, Alfred put the northeast of England under danish jurisdiction, known as the "Danish Zone".
As a result of his great contribution to the recovery of most of England, Alfred became the "King of the Anglo-Saxons", thus enjoying the title of "Great", and the only monarch in England to be awarded this title to date. After Alfred's death, his successor gradually regained the "Danish Quarter". At the beginning of the 11th century, Denmark made a comeback and the Anglo-Saxons confronted it fiercely.
The Danes were Nordics, one of the home of the widely known Vikings. Therefore, Denmark's attack on Britain was the first large-scale invasion of Britain by the Vikings, which lasted for more than 200 years, and also injected the pirate gene into Britain.
Although the Anglo-Saxons repelled the Danes, they not only failed to prevent the invasion of another Viking force, but also made them kings of England.
In 1066, Duke William from the Duchy of Normandy invaded England with great success and was crowned King William I of England (pictured below), known in history as "William the Conqueror". Since then, Britain has gone through many dynasties, but successive kings have a certain blood relationship with Duke William, and this is still the case.
So, who are the descendants of Duke William? In fact, he belonged to the Normans, and in the end he was a Viking. From the 7th to the 11th century AD, the Vikings invaded southern Europe, Western Europe, the British Isles and other places, and integrated with the local culture to form the Norman culture, one of which established the "Duchy of Normandy" in France, they accepted the French culture, and the other established the Kingdom of Sicily in Italy. In short, this stage of the Vikings going south, so that today European countries more or less have some Viking genes, not only genetics of blood, but also the Genes of Vikings to rob, kill, adventure, expand, colonize and so on.
After the Normans ruled England, many Normans were feudal lords, but the original Anglo-Saxons still maintained a lot of power, and there were still some small Celtic principalities on the British Isles. It should be noted that unlike the unified centralization of power in China, the European nobility had its own territory and army, which was more similar to the Spring and Autumn Period in China, so the power of ancient European kings was limited, and it was completely incomparable with the imperial power of ancient China.
In 1215, King John of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta of Liberty (the signature of the scene portrait), which is regarded as one of the landmark documents in the constitutional history of mankind. Many of the Britons who made this charter did not hesitate to praise it.
But Britain ruled by the Anglo-Saxons, the Kingdom of Sicily ruled by the Normans, Russia ruled by the Rus', ruled by the Rus 's (a branch of the Vikings), and so on...... Why didn't the Magna Carta of Freedom appear? In fact, when you understand the composition of the British nation at that time, you can understand that there are still some elements of "national confrontation", the original British ruler Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, and the later ruler Norman nobility, and the earlier ruler Celtic nobility, the Magna Carta of Freedom is also the result of the balance of power between the three.
Therefore, the British are composed of Iberians, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, etc., and what we often call Anglo-Saxons is actually only a part of the British race. However, in the process of multicultural integration, eventually the Anglo-Saxons gradually assimilated the Normans and so on, so that "Anglo-Saxons" became the racial name of all English.
It is worth mentioning that the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, essentially colonizers, have a wealth of experience and a long tradition of how to colonize, of which the Viking Normans also have the genes of robbery, killing, adventure and expansion, and after the great voyage, Britain can establish an unprecedented world's first colonial empire, which is undoubtedly inseparable from the national history of Britain.