History of Great Britain

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Okay. What about it?

I meant your title is "History of Great Britain". But you didnt state:what about the 'history of great britain' you wanna talk about.

I'm actually most interested in the prehistoric period British history (I watch a lot of BBC history documentaries especially the ones with comedians do the comparing like "Griff" and Tony Robinson) but also anytime period is of interest. Post WWII things become somewhat boring.

Hitler wasn't the first German to introduce concentration camps, no. But the Germans in Namibia didn't invent them in 1905 either.

Actually you're both wrong.

The word "great" in the term "Great Britain" is like the 'great' in "the Great Lakes", and "the Great Barrier Reef". Its not a value judgment being made about any country named "Britain". There was no such nation of that offical name ever in history. And the modern political entity that is colloquially named after the island didnt exist until a few centuries ago. Britain is a big rock in the ocean created by nature. And the Romans were the first to call it "Great Britain" 2000 years before the UK was formed because its a big rock in the water (like Lake Michigan is a "Great lake"). "Great Britain" as opposed to "lesser Britain" (which is what they called "Ireland"). Later in the middle ages 'lesser Britain' came to mean the French province of Brittainy (but still opposed to the same Great Britain we know today).

Later still the three kingdoms on the physical island (England, Scotland, and Wales) gradually formed a "United kingdom", that was often referred to a "Great Britain".

Long story short: the modern UK includes Ulster in northern Ireland which is not physically part of the island of "Britain". But is part of "Britain" (the informal synonym for 'the United Kingdom).

Folks who live in the UK are called "British" because no one wants use a term like "United Kingdomites".

The actual “British” were people who were in the “British Isles” before the Anglo-Saxons invaded.

They were the Celtic "Britons".

Actually the earliest name the celts gave to their lands was Albion. So technically the island should be called Greater Albion

@Naturalplastic

Oh this makes sense. The island has always been a conglomerate of feuding kingdoms for thousands of years. It should have been named Warbandland.

The treatment of the local Namibians by the German colonists has flown under the radar historically. Among their less savoury exploits was organised hunting tours where German gentleman could hunt San bushmen for sport. Might actually have been worse than what the British did in South Africa.

Just "Albion".

Dude... the pair were "Albion, and Eiran". The earliest known name for the first and second biggest of the British Isles. Since Ireland had its own name of "Eiran" they didnt need to stick the word "great/greater" onto the name of "Albion".

So the earliest written records of the island come from Greek traders/geographers (4th century BC before the Romans) who claimed that the people of the island called the island "Albion".

Albion was a gaul/celtic name for the island that does not include Eire or Ireland. https://www.britannica.com/place/Albion-island-Europe

So while it didn't include Ireland the island of Britain was still made up various tribes who collectively told the greeks our land is "Albion" so I tacked on "greater" because it is a mishmash of remnant Palaeolithic tribes, Celts, Gauls and others of various description.

Keep things a little straighter please.

Gauls were themselves "Celts". But they did not live in Britain.

The Gauls lived on mainland western Europe. There lived over a large area, but centered in what is now France. They traded and warred with the Greeks and Romans while the Celtic tribes of Britain were like New Guinea tribes of today (off the edge of civilization). So it was the Gaulic names for Britain and Ireland that we know today (because the Gauls had contact with the Greeks and Romans), and not what the more remote actual natives of Iron Age Britain called their own homelands. Though the "Insular Celts" (as those natives are called by some scholars today) might well have had similar sounding names for their islands because they were part of the same pan Celtic culture as the Gauls.

Ceasar conquered Gaul, and made it a Roman province. And the Gauls gradually assimilated to Roman culture and language, and became the modern Romance speaking French. Later the Romans conquered most of Britain (basically all of England and Wales).

The Irish (whom the Romans called 'the Scotti" pronounced "SKOH-shee") overran the unconquered northern part of Britain, absorbed the native Picts, and became "the Scots".

After four centuries of occupation the Romans finnally withdrew from Britain as the whole western empire collapsed.

The Germanic Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, invaded southeast Britain, and became the English.

Some of the native Celtic Britons fled across the channel to northern France and became the modern Celtic speaking "Breton" of the province of Brittany in northwest France. In the Fifties Breton vegetable peddlers would work in Wales and in Cornwall, and found that they could converse with the local Cornish and Welsh customers in their native language.

But you're right that Britain in this post Roman time would have been like New Guinea today. Warring tribes and petty kingdoms.

This is roughly correct but we are largely reliant on Roman sources to gauge the accuracy of how tribal groups identified themselves in Britain prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasion. My understanding is that there were broad categories but they were by no means literally the same people who were identified.

For example the practice of bog burials where people were strangled and sacrificed in a bog made to a particular unknown diety was practiced all the way from the farthest reaches of Ireland and Scotland all the way through (what was) northern Gaul and up to north/west Europe. Infact the peat bog man of Denmark is the most famous body recovered, Forensic analysis of teeth/bone suggest those sacrificed travelled freely between the regions before the Romans arrived. Other strange occurrences in Britian was adoption of germanic gods, pottery, animals and weaponry long before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. This suggests the presence of germanic tribes in Britain, Conversely the Bretons of northern France are descendants from Britain who spoke the same languages in the lands which were to be occupied by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century AD.

The Roman historian Tacitus described the customs of the wild Germanic tribes beyond the Roman frontier. His description sounds like a modern Nat Geo doc about the tribes of New Guinea. With each tribe being more revolting than the last. And he even described a tribe in the area of that famous bog man in Denmark who had "the revolting custom of garroting sacrifice victims with rope and leaving them in the swamp".

OH...and he said that the name of that tribe was "the Angloi".

Apparently the "Angles" were one of the peoples who practiced that back when the Angles were in their original homeland on the European mainland (specifically a tiny area on the west coast of Jutland straddling the modern border between Germany and Denmark) before they crossed the North Sea to Britain with other Germanic tribes to become the "Anglosaxons".

Makes me proud of my Anglosaxon ancestry!

Yes I was reading how the pottery post invasion match the exact tribal regions identified by the venerable Bede.
Kent - Jutes
Northumbria, Mercia and east Anglia - Angles
Sussex, Wessex and Essex - Saxons

This seems like really good evidence that Bede's stories are at least in part true, The Hengist and Horsa story and how they outwitted the celtic chieftan Vortigen and how Horsa died fighting the Picts all now seem plausible to me., These stories and the myths of the Anglo-Saxons are far richer than Tolkien's tales and it would be great if more serious study is done on the myths and beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons as I don't think it was all the same as the Scandinavian groups who later occupied their lands.

The Jutes, Angles and Saxons all spoke a Germanic dialect closest to the last living descendent on mainland Europe which is Frisian. I know a Frisian man through my work and he has some really interesting beliefs about his culture/ancestry among which the ancestors of the north sea peoples who became the angles/saxons/jutes and Frisians were not ethnically german and were indigenous to the region, They may have been the original Beaker people.