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Names are hard, especially when it comes to
the British Isles.
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The island of “Britain” is home to England,
Scotland, and Wales, while the island of “Ireland”
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is composed of the Republic of Ireland and
the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland.
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This is not only a nightmare to keep track
of, but as we’ve seen, this is all subject
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to change, probably a little sooner than we
think.
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I say all this to clarify what we’re actually
gonna talk about in this video: England.
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Now, England is not only Not Britain, but
its history is plenty interesting all its
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own.
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So, to see how England grew from a simple
Roman province to the master of Britain and
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a major world power, let’s do some History!
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Our earliest documentation for England comes
with the arrival of Julius Cheekbones Caesar,
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who crossed over from Gaul in 55BC.
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The native Celts were none too pleased with
this new neighbor, so Rome stalled for a century
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until Emperor Claudius established the province
of Britannia.
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Roman influence in Britannia was rather slim
outside the main port cities, since it was
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hard enough to schlep all those armies across
the channel, they were happy to delegate certain
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responsibilities to the local kings.
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In 60 AD, one such Client King bequeathed
half his land to Rome, but when the empire
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glomped it all anyway, the late king’s wife
Boudicca led a rebellion that burned through
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several eastern cities, including Londinium,
before she was defeated in battle.
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Later Romans expanded outwards to the edge
of Caledonia before Hadrian said “NOPE”
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and built a wall across the island to stop
any hotshot general from getting ideas.
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The benefit of Britannia’s insulation was
that it didn’t see much disruption from
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the carousel of imperial civil wars, the downside
was that Britannia was the first province
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to be cut loose when barbarians started rolling
up in the 400s.
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The next several centuries are marked by constant
shuffling between small Romano-Britannic Kingdoms
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and a tidal wave of Northern European newcomers.
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The polite term for this is “Disorganized”
and the accurate term for this is “Gross”.
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The Early Medieval period saw raids and migrations
from Picts, Angels, Jutes, and Saxons, and
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while the map doesn’t stop fidgeting with
its borders anytime soon, the players get
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a little clearer by the late 600s.
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Here we can see 7 major Anglisc and Saxon
kingdoms of Northumbria, Kent, East Anglia,
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Mercia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, (those
last three being East, South, and West Saxony,
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in case you were wondering why England sexed-up
so many of its place names).
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These kingdoms weren’t entirely Britannic
nor fully Germanic; Just like the Romans,
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it was a case of gradual integration between
lots of small and unique groups of people;
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sometimes friendly, sometimes stabby.
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For a dash of literary context, the legendary
character of King Arthur is set specifically
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against the backdrop of these Germanic migrations.
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Historically speaking, our record gets a little
clearer in the Christian Monasteries of Northumbria,
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where the scholar Bede wrote the Ecclesiastical
History of England, our best source for this
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period.
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And monasteries all across Northumbria were
becoming magnificent palaces of literature
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and art throughout the 6 and 700s.
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Northumbria can have a little bit of a golden
age, as a treat.
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The good news is that this was really shiny,
but the bad news is that maybe this was a
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little too shiny, as the glittering attracted
our old pals the Vikings, who first rolled
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up to the island monastery of Lindisfarne
to save the priceless relics from the totally
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unrelated fires that started burning right
as the Vikings arrived.
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Weird.
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From there, the Vikings kept on coming, raiding
all up and down the coasts and even heading
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inland with the Great Heathen Army.
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This was especially bad news for the King
of Wessex, who was partway through conquering
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Mercia when the Scandinavians glomped their
way down the eastern coast.
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They didn’t have the means or the interest
to form a single unified state, but the laws
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of these incoming Danes held sway over a pretty
beefy stretch of land, so we call this thingy
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the “Danelaw” because when historians
aren’t creative, they’re at least direct.
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While the Danelaw became a shiny mercantile
midpoint between Ireland and Scandinavia,
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it was soon reverso-glomped by the kingdom
of Wessex.
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By 927, King Aethelstan had conquered all
the way to Northumbria, and began to style
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himself as King of England.
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So now, finally, we can actually discuss England
as a single state.
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In the century following, Northumbria played
hopscotch between English and Viking rule,
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and some wacky royal gymnastics resulted in
the Scandinavian Canute becoming king of England
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Denmark and Norway for two decades.
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But despite the near-constant tire-fire of
Scandinavian invasions and an extremely squiggly
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royal lineage, England had become impressively
well-run for the time, as the governing bureaucracy
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was organized and they knew how taxes worked.
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Not bad!
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But, as will become a running theme in the
next few centuries, there’s no getting over
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that pesky question of royal succession.
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After the death of King Edward in 1066, the
crown passed to Harold Godwinson, but two
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other parties wanted that shiny headwear for
themselves, namely King Harald Hardrada of
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Norway and Duke William of Normandy.
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Hardrada arrived to challenge Godwinson for
the title of One True Harold, but was beaten
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at the battle of Stamford Bridge.
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However, Godwinson’s luck ran out one month
later when — Omae Wa, Mou Shindeiru, NANI?
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And that’s the Norman Conquest in a nutshell!
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In contrast to the other assorted cases of
England being conquered, this one had lasting
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significance.
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Firstly, William was set on keeping his hot
new kingdom, so he invented this little doohickey
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called a Castle and built ‘em all over England
to protect his armies from the odd revolt,
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meanwhile he replaced the English aristocracy
with freshly imported Norman Barons.
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Now, the Normans, being from France, were
French.
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So they spoke their native language instead
of the local Old English.
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Over the centuries, these two languages smushed
into each other to create what we recognize
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as English, our beautiful disaster of a language.
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The last significant consequence was William
was still Duke of Normandy, and his supervisor,
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The King of France, was a little miffed that
he went and yoinked himself a kingdom.
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And this diplomatic hiccup would embroil England
and France in a casual 600-yearlong rivalry.
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Now, this is normally the point where English
history slavishly trails along the Royal family
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tree through all its twists and turns, but
this video is a summary, and I don’t care
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about Kings.
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Royal gymnastics are far too dull to be this
needlessly confusing.
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I say this now so we can skip the faff later.
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What matters to us here in the mid 1100s is
that the royal family married across the channel,
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so now the King of England became the Duke
of Normandy, the Count of Anjou, and the Duke
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of Aquitaine — England has never been taller.
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This Angevin period rewrites Anglo-Frankish
relations to the tune of “You got Chocolate
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in my Peanut Butter”.
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Anywho, with this absurdly large tax base
and access to half a Franceload of natural
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resources up and down the Atlantic coast,
the Angevin empire was an economic powerhouse.
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Of course, money means rich people and rich
people means armed robbery, so this period
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is the main historical setting for the legends
of Robin Hood, most closely associated with
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the reign of the Crusading King Richard the
Lionheart at the turn of the 13th century.
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Speaking of Military stuff, England took this
opportunity to hop westward and glomp onto
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the Dublin-y part of Ireland, they tried for
more but didn’t really get much else.
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Conquest is all well and good, but it’s
also expensive, and France was itching to
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get the rest of its France back, so the early
1200s saw Normandy, Anjou, and most of Aquitaine
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go poof.
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Meanwhile, the Barons were fed up with the
monarchy, that makes two of us, so they forced
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a few kings to sign a contract recognizing
that teamwork makes the dreamwork, as in,
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the Magna Carta makes Kings consult their
Barons, and this puts us on track to get Parliament
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a ways down the line.
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Elsewhere in Britain, King Edward Longshanks
conquered the Kingdom of Wales, and glomped
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Scotland for a hot second, but they broke
free.
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The problem for England was that Scotland
had allied with France, and by the mid-1300s,
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France was in a century-long win-streak.
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King Edward III was a big fan of the part
where England owned half of France, so he
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went for broke and claimed a right to the
French Kingship to justify a continental invasion.
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A bold strategy!
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It won’t work, but it took a century for
that to become apparent.
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From 1337 to 1453, England and France were
locked in a Hundred* Years’ War.
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Edward oversaw the first act, where the English
poured across the channel and thrashed the
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French army at the battle of Crecy.
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To explain why, we’ve gotta dig into the
real juicy stuff, economics.
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— Alright look, I minored in Econ, I have
to at least pretend like this was worth something,
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okay?
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It all comes down to how they collected taxes;
England had the sophistication to tax money
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and put it towards a professional army, while
France took payment in goods and conscription,
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so their army was bigger, sure, but far weaker.
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England’s advance would have pressed on
were it not for the surprise guest appearance
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of Plague.
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Soon after fighting resumed, the new French
King Charles V had a much better time than
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his predecessor, and pushed the English out
to the edges of Gascony and Calais.
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The third phase of the war is the spicy stuff
that shows up in all the Shakespeare plays.
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We’re talkin’ Battle of Agincourt, Henry
5, hella longbows, take that, Frenchies!
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Ahem, After the loss, France fell into a civil
war and almost collapsed until Joan Kickass
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D’Arc arrived to absolutely steamroll the
English.
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King Henry VI had exactly zero ways to handle
this, so England got swept right on out of
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there.
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By 1453 all they had left was a tiiiny little
sliver of Calais.
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Despite the war’s overt goal of Conquer
France, it inadvertently cemented a distinct
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English identity, through language, national
heroes, and insular geography.
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The other major consequence was, big shock,
another succession crisis.
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I’ve covered The War of the Roses before,
and I respect you too much to bore you with
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this.
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All that matters is a king died, and two families
spent a century stabbing each other over who
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would get the crown.
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Plot twist, both of them.
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Big ups to Henry VII for marrying the houses
of York and Lancaster together to create the
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Tudor Dynasty and resolve that mess.
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The Tudors managed to accomplish quite a bit
in their century-long runtime.
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The first order of business for King Henry
8 was to formalize the rules for royal succession,
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presumably because he had to read about the
War of the Roses and decided never again.
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But he also had outside problems, as King
Charles of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor
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Charles V, coincidentally the same Charlie,
was getting a smidge overpowered since he
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put the Pope under house-arrest.
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Further complicating matters was the little
fact that Henry’s first wife was also Charles’
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aunt, and she wasn’t bearing any Male Heirs.
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Henry deftly solved the three problems of
Charles, the Pope, and his Wife in one move,
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by going diet-protestant and forming his own
church.
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This new Church of England didn’t lean that
hard into Protestant theology, but the real
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swerve was that the church answered only to
the King.
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This quasi-reformist compromise wasn’t the
easiest thing in the world to enforce, but
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the Tudors made it work.
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Meanwhile, back in Geopolitics Land, Henry
made a new push into Ireland, and tried (and
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failed) to bully Scotland into uniting with
England.
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In the second half of the century, Queen Elizabeth
I held the fort against an increasingly aggressive
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Spain, way too hyped on Conquistador Cash
to remember what Hubris means.
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In 1588, Spain hucked an armada at England
in the hopes of conquering it, but English
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cannons and English Weather smashed the fleet
to bits.
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When Elizabeth died without an heir, the crown
passed to her nearest male relative, who happened
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to be King James VI of Scotland.
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So in 1603, James became King of Scotland
and England.
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Everything after the Union of the Crowns is
the Britain Plotline, where they glomp all
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the isles, make an empire, all that Rule Britannia
jazz.
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So this is where we’ll wrap our History
of England.
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And, I’ll be fully honest, sagas like this
give History a bad rap.
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At a glance, it’s a 1600-year-long Nightmare
that’s stuffed with more monarchs than anybody
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should be forced to remember, and it’s easy
to get bogged down in any one episode or to
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lose track entirely.
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But the good news is that just because English
Historians are sadistically meticulous and
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blindingly self-obsessed doesn’t mean we
have to be.
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Because if we zoom out a little bit, and focus
on England as a unit rather than a backdrop
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for royal gymnastics, the important kings
will make sense in context, and we avoid getting
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bogged down in the details.
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So we can clearly see the macro plot-progression
from Roman province, through the Heptarchy,
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into the conflicts with France, and out towards
the formation of Britain.
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So let English History show why The Big Picture
is often the Clearest, and also serve as an
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object lesson in the Historiographic benefits
of restraint.
00:11:11
Thank you so much for watching.
00:11:12
You can tell this is an OSP history video
because I run away at the slightest hint of
00:11:16
Early Modern Europe.
00:11:17
In any case, huge thanks to our Patrons, whose
names you can see scrolling across the screen
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right now.
00:11:22
If you want to support the channel and get
cool rewards, hop on over to Patreon.com/OSP.
00:11:25
Additionally, massive thanks to everybody
who participated in our Spring Break streams!
00:11:30
We had a great time, and managed to raise
a whopping $31,000 for Feeding America.
00:11:35
You’re all champions, and I’ll see you
in the next video.
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