Selasa, 25 Desember 2012
History of England
The history of England concerns the study of the human past in
one of Europe's oldest and most influential national territories. What is now England, a country within the United Kingdom, was inhabited by hominids 800,000 years ago as the discovery of
flint tools at Happisburgh in Norfolk have revealed.[1] The earliest evidence for early modern humans in North West Europe is a jawbone
discovered in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927, which was re-dated in 2011 to
between 41,000 and 44,000 years old.[2] Continuous human habitation dates to
around 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last glacial period. The
region has numerous remains from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age, such as Stonehenge and Avebury. In the Iron Age, England, like all of Britain south of theFirth of Forth, was inhabited by the Celtic people known as the Britons, but also by some Belgae tribes (e.g. the Atrebates, the Catuvellauni, the Trinovantes, etc.) in the south east. In AD 43
the Roman conquest of
Britain began; the Romans maintained control of their province of Britannia through to the 5th century.
The end of Roman rule in
Britain enabled the Anglo-Saxon
settlement of Britain, which is often regarded as the origin of
England and the English people. TheAnglo-Saxons, a collection of various Germanic peoples, established several kingdoms
that became the primary powers in what is now England and parts of southern Scotland.[3] They introduced the Old English language, which displaced the previous British language.
The Anglo-Saxons warred with British successor states in Wales, Cornwall, and the Hen Ogledd (Old North; the Brythonic-speaking parts
of northern England and southern Scotland), as well as with each other. Raids
by the Vikings were frequent after about AD 800, and
the Norsemen took control of large parts of what is
now England. During this
period several rulers attempted to unite the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, an
effort that led to the emergence of the Kingdom of England by the 10th century.
In 1066, the Normans invaded and
conquered England. The Norman Dynasty established by William the
Conquerer ruled England for over half a century before the period
of succession crisis known as The Anarchy. Following the Anarchy, England
came to be ruled by the House of Plantagenet, a
dynasty which also had claims to the Kingdom of France; a succession crisis in France
led to the Hundred Years Wars, a
series of conflicts involving both nations peoples and leaders. Following the
Hundred Years Wars, England became embroiled in its own succession wars; the War of the Roses pitted two branches of the House of
Plantagenet against one another, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. Henry Tudor, ended the War
of the Roses and established the Tudor dynasty.
Under the Tudors and later Stuart dynasty, England became a world colonial
power. During the rule of the Stuarts, England fought the English Civil War, which resulted in the
execution of King Charles I and the establishment of a series of
republican governments, first a Parliamentary republic known as theCommonwealth of
England, then as a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell known as The Protectorate. The Stuarts were restored to
the throne in 1660, though continued questions over religion resulted in the
deposition of another Stuart king, James II, in the Glorious Revolution.
England, which had conqueredWales in the 12th century, was united with
Scotland in the early 18th century to form a new sovereign state called Great Britain.[4][5][6] Following the Industrial
Revolution, Great Britain ruled a worldwide Empire, the largest in the world. Following a
process of decolonization in the 20th century the vast majority
of the empire became independent; however, its cultural impact is widespread
and deep in many countries of the present day.
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)