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William the Conquerer

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BBC - History - William the Conqueror: A Thorough Revolutionary

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King William was a hard man, determined to use force to impose his will on the nation he had conquered. He was so successful at it, the Anglo-Saxons became second-class citizens in their own country.

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King Alfred

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The Importance of King Alfred to English Literature - All Empires

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The actual greatness of Alfred also shows in his decisions - he gathered to his court a number of intellectuals and was ready to help them in their work. Secondly, he also established schools by which the children of his courtiers and nobles, plus a number of commoner children, were educated.

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Venerable Bede

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Bede's ContributionsSources Source for information on Bede's Contributions: World Eras dictionary.

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British Colonisation in South Africa

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The arrival of the British at the Cape changed the lives of the people that were already living there. Initially British control was aimed to protect the trade route to the East, however, the British soon realised the potential to develop the Cape for their own needs.
Indigenous population
With colonialism, which began in South Africa in 1652, came the Slavery and Forced Labour Model. This was the original model of colonialism brought by the Dutch in 1652, and subsequently exported from the Western Cape to the Afrikaner Republics of the Orange Free State and the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. Many South Africans are the descendents of slaves brought to the Cape Colony from 1653 until 1822.

The changes wrought on African societies by the imposition of European colonial rule occurred in quick succession. In fact, it was the speed with which change occurred that set the colonial era apart from earlier periods in South Africa. Of course, not all societies were equally transformed. Some resisted the forces of colonial intrusion, slavery and forced labour for extended periods. Others, however, such as the Khoikhoi communities of the south-western Cape, disintegrated within a matter of decades.

Initially, a colonial contact was a two-way process. However, Africans were far from helpless victims in the initial encounter. Colonial contact was not simply a matter of Europeans imposing themselves upon African societies. For their part, African rulers saw many benefits to be had from maintaining relations with Europeans, and for a considerable period of time they engaged with Europeans voluntarily and on their own terms.

Most importantly, trade with Europeans gave African rulers access to a crucial aspect of European technology, namely firearms. More than anything else, those who had ownership and control over firearms were able to gather around themselves larger and larger groups of people. In short, the ownership of firearms turned into a status symbol and a means to gain political power.

Sadly, the article of trade in which Europeans showed the greatest interest, and which Africans were prepared to sacrifice, were slaves. The Atlantic slave trade stands at the centre of a long history of European contact with Africa. This was the era of the African Diaspora, an all embracing term historians have used to describe the consequences of the slave trade. Estimates of the number of slaves transported from their African homes to European colonial possession in the Americas range from 9 to 15 million people. Although a great deal of violence accompanied the trade in slaves, the sheer scale of operations involved a high degree of organisation, on the part of both Europeans and Africans. In other words, the Atlantic slave trade could not have taken place without the cooperation, or complicity, of many Africans.

As the number of transported salves increased, African societies could not avoid transformation, and 400 years of slave trading took their toll. Of course, not all African societies were equally affected, but countries such as Angola and Senegal suffered heavily.

The most important consequences of the Atlantic slave trade were demographic, economic, and political. There can be no doubt that the Atlantic slave trade greatly retarded African demographic development, a fact that was to have lasting consequences for the history of the continent. At best, African populations remained stagnant. The export of the most economically active men and women led to the disintegration of entire societies. The trade in slaves also led to new political formations. In some cases, as people sought protection from the violence and warfare that went with the slave trade, large centralised states came into being.

To read more visit our grade 10 archive lesson on Slavery
1820 Settlers
After the Napoleonic wars, Britain experienced a serious unemployment problem. Therefore, encouraged by the British government to immigrate to the Cape colony, the first 1820 settlers arrived in Table Bay on board the Nautilus and the Chapman on 17 March 1820. From the Cape colony, the settlers were sent to Algoa Bay, known today as Port Elizabeth.

Lord Somerset, the British governor in South Africa, encouraged the immigrants to settle in the frontier area of what is now the Eastern Cape. This was in order to consolidate and defend the eastern frontier against the neighbouring Xhosa people, and to provide a boost to the English-speaking population.

This period saw one of the largest stages of British settlement in Africa, and approximately 4,000 Settlers arrived in the Cape, in around 60 different parties, between April and June 1820. The settlers were granted farms near the village of Bathurst, and supplied equipment and food against their deposits. A combination of factors caused many of the settlers to leave these farms for the surrounding towns.

Firstly, many of the settlers were artisans with no interest in rural life, and lacked agricultural experience. In addition, life on the border was harsh and they suffered problems such as drought, rust conditions that affected crops, and a lack of transport. Therefore many settlers left the eastern border in search of a better life in towns such as Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and East London. The eastern border therefore never became as densely populated as Somerset had hoped.

The settlers who did remain as farmers made a significant contribution to agriculture, by planting maize, rye and barley. They also began wool farming which later became a very lucrative trade. Some of the settlers, who were traders by profession, also made a significant contribution to business and the economy. New towns such as Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth therefore grew rapidly.
Changing Labour Patterns: the slave trade and it abolition
Slavery affected the economy of the Cape, as well as the lives of almost everyone living there. Its influence also lasted long after the abolition of slavery in 1838.

In South Africa under Dutch settlement, there was a shortage of labour, especially on the wheat and wine farms. But the VOC did not want to spend its money on the expensive wages that European labourers demanded. Nor could the VOC use the Khoi people as slaves. The Khoi traded with the Dutch, providing cattle for fresh meat. The Khoi also resisted any attempts to make them change their pastoralist way of life.

The Dutch were already involved in the Atlantic slave trade and had experience in buying and controlling slaves. They thus imported slaves as the cheapest labour option. Slaves were imported from a variety of places, including the east coast of Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar), but the majority came from East Africa and Asia, especially the Indonesian Islands, which were controlled by the Dutch at the time. This explains, for instance, why there are a relatively large number of people of Malaysian descent in the Cape (the so-called Cape Malays).

Initially, all slaves were owned by the VOC, but later farmers themselves could own slaves too. Slaves were used in every sector of the economy. Some of the functions of the slaves included working in the warehouses, workshops and stores of the VOC, as well as in the hospital, in administration, and on farms or as domestic servants in private homes. Some slaves were craftsmen, bringing skills from their home countries to the Cape, while others were fishermen, hawkers and even auxiliary police. The economy of the Cape depended heavily on slave labour.

The lives of the slaves were harsh, as they worked very long hours under poor conditions. They were often not given enough healthy food and lived in overcrowded and dirty conditions. Slaves had no freedom at all "" they were locked up at night, and had to have a pass to leave their place of employment. As they were regarded as possessions, they were unable to marry, and if they had children, the children belonged to the slave's owner and were also slaves. They also had little chance of education. Women slaves were at risk of being raped by their masters and other slaves.

A traveller, Otto Mentzel, observed that: "It is not an easy matter to keep the slaves under proper order and control. The condition of slavery has soured their tempers. Most slaves are a sulky, savage and disagreeable crowd "¦ It would be dangerous to give them the slightest latitude; a tight hold must always be kept on the reins; the taskmaster's lash is the main stimulus for getting any work out of them." - Source: Mentzel, A Geographical and Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town, 1921

While there were many laws inhibiting the lives and movements of slaves, there were also rules to protect them, for example, female slaves could not be beaten. In theory, slave owners would be punished for treating their slaves badly "" for example, if they went so far as to beat them to death "" but the laws were often ignored.

The Abolition of Slavery Act ended slavery in the Cape officially in 1834. The more than 35 000 slaves that had been imported into South Africa from India, Ceylon, Malaysia and elsewhere were officially freed, although they were still bonded to their old masters for four years through a feudal system of "apprenticeship". For many years wages rose only slightly above the former cost of slave subsistence.

The abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves caused a lot of resentment and opposition from the Cape colonials towards the anti-slavery lobby, as embodied in the

London Missionary Society that had put pressure on the British government to take this decision. Even before emancipation, the publicised cases of missionary intervention on behalf of mistreated black workers on farms, sometimes even winning convictions against farmers, made them enemies of the largely Afrikaner farming community in the Cape. Reverends John

Philip, Johannes van der Kemp and John Read were the most hated missionaries because of their fight for the rights of oppressed black Cape residents.

In fact, one of the reasons for the Great Trek, which would lead to the migration of many white, Dutch-speaking farmers away from the Cape after 1833, was the abolition of slavery by the British government. The farmers complained that they could not replace the labour of their slaves without losing a great deal of money. Importantly, the abolition of slavery did not change the colonial-feudal "slave-master" relations between black and white. Instead, these slave-master relations imprinted themselves on South Africa's political, social and economic structures for years to come. Black people were "enslaved" by the oppressive laws of industrialisation, pass regulations, and labour ordinances such as the Masters and Servants Act of 1841, which made it a criminal offence for a worker to break a labour contract. It was only after 1994, and the dawning of democracy in South Africa, that all South Africans were truly emancipated from slavery.

For a useful and interesting article on slavery got to africanhistory.about.com
Expanding frontiers and trade Boer responses
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Cape settlers were expanding their territory northeast. The Trek Boers seeking fresh grazing for their cattle, primarily, led this expansion. These cattle farmers had no fixed dwelling places and many led a semi-nomadic existence, moving ceaselessly between summer and winter pastures. As most trek farmers had large families, the system encouraged swift expansion. The Cape Government had done nothing to hinder expansion inland since it provided a source of cheap meat.

As the trekkers' expansion increased, they inevitably came into conflict with, first, the Khoikhoi and later the Xhosa people into whose land they were encroaching. This marked the beginning of the subjugation of the Tembu, Pondo, Fingo and Xhosa in the Transkei. The Xhosa in particular fought nine wars spanning a century, which gradually deprived them of their independence and subjugated them to British colonial rule.

In the towns, tension was also increasing between settlers and the Dutch authorities, with the former becoming increasingly resentful at what they perceived as administrative interference. Soon the districts of Swellendam and Graaff-Reinette pronounced themselves independent Republics, though this was short-lived - in 1795 Britain annexed the Cape Colony.

This development and, in particular, the emancipation of slaves in 1834, had dramatic effects on the colony, precipitating the Great Trek, an emigration North and Northeast of about 12 000 discontented Afrikaner farmers, or Boers. These people were determined to live independently of colonial rule and what they saw as unacceptable racial egalitarianism.

The early decades of the century had seen another event of huge significance - the rise to power of the great Zulu King, Shaka. His wars of conquest and those of Mzilikazi - a general who broke away from Shaka on a northern path of conquest - caused a calamitous disruption of the interior known to Sotho-speakers as the difaqane (forced migration); while Zulu-speakers call it the mfecane (crushing).

Shaka set out on a massive programme of expansion, killing or enslaving those who resisted in the territories he conquered. Peoples in the path of Shaka's armies moved out of his way, becoming in their turn aggressors against their neighbours. This wave of displacement spread throughout Southern Africa and beyond. It also accelerated the formation of several states, notably those of the Sotho (present-day Lesotho) and of the Swazi (now Swaziland).

This denuded much of the area into which the Trekkers now moved, enabling them to settle there in the belief that they were occupying vacant territory. Of these Voortrekkers, about five thousand settled in the area that later became known as the Orange Free State (present day Free State). The rest headed for Natal (present day KwaZulu-Natal) where they appointed a delegation, under the leadership of Piet Retief to negotiate with the Zulu King, Dingaan (Shaka's successor), for land. Initially, Dingaan granted them a large area of land in the central and southern part of his territory but Retief and his party were later murdered at the kraal of Dingane.

The newly elected Voortrekker leader, Andries Pretorius, prepared the group for a retaliatory attack and the Zulu were subsequently defeated at the famous Battle of Blood River, 16 December 1838, leading to the founding of the first Boer Republic in Natal.
Xhosa response
Europeans who came to stay in South Africa first settled in and around Cape Town. As the years passed, they sought to expand their territory. This expansion was first at the expense of the Khoikhoi and San, but later Xhosa land was occupied as well. During the later half the 16th century, the Xhosa encountered eastward-moving White pioneers or Trek Boers in the region of the Fish River. The ensuing struggle was not so much a contest between Black and White races as a struggle for water, grazing and living space between two groups of farmers.

The first frontier war broke out in 1780 and marked the beginning of the Xhosa struggle to preserve their land, customs and way of life. It was a struggle that was to increase in intensity when the 1820 British settlers arrived on the scene.

This embittered struggle involved some of the greatest War Veterans in South Africa's history e.g. renowned warrior Maqoma (the father of Guerilla Warfare), Sir Harry Smith (military legend and England's favorite General), Chief Hintsa (martyr) and Adriaan van Jaarsveld (known as the ruthless 'red captain' among the Xhosa). It was also during these wars that the Trek-Boers developed the technique of the Laager as a way of defending themselves against a large enemy force.

Laager: A type of 'military camp', with 5-or more heavy wagons in a circle, and thorn trees thrust between the openings. In the middle were four wagons in a square, roofed over with planks and raw hides to serve as protection for women, children and the elderly. Here the farmers could defend themselves until reinforcements arrived or the enemy decided to retreat.

To read more about the VOC frontier wars and the British Frontier Wars visit SAHO's detailed feature on the Frontier Wars.

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The arrival of the British at the Cape changed the lives of the people that were already living there. Initially British control was aimed to protect the trade route to the East, however, the British soon realised the potential to develop the Cape for their own needs.

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British Colonisation in Malaysia

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Malaysia - The impact of British rule: The British presence in the region reflected several patterns: direct colonial rule in the Straits Settlements, relatively indirect control in some of the peninsula's east-coast sultanates, and family or corporate control in Borneo. Regardless of the political form, however, British rule brought profound changes, transforming the various states socially and economically.

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British Colonisation in South Africa

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The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.

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British Colonisation in India

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British Colonisation in India

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A chronology of key events:

India has been home to several ancient civilisations and empires, some dating back to more than 2,000 BC. Culture and religions have flourished over the millennia, and foreign influence has ebbed and flowed.

1858 - India comes under direct rule of the British crown after failed Indian mutiny.

1885 - Indian National Congress founded as forum for emerging nationalist feeling.

Mahatma Gandhi steered India to independence
Mahatma Gandhi's fading dream BBC - History - Historic Figures Mohandas Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
1920-22 - Nationalist figurehead Mahatma Gandhi launches anti-British civil disobedience campaign.

1942-43 - Congress launches "Quit India" movement.

1947 - End of British rule and partition of sub-continent into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority state of Pakistan.

Newly independent

1947-48 - Hundreds of thousands die in widespread communal bloodshed after partition.

1948 - Mahatma Gandhi assassinated by Hindu extremist.

1948 - War with Pakistan over disputed territory of Kashmir.

1951-52 - Congress Party wins first general elections under leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Regional tensions

1962 - India loses brief border war with China.

1964 - Death of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

1965 - Second war with Pakistan over Kashmir.

1966 - Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi becomes prime minister.

1971 - Third war with Pakistan over creation of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan.

1971 - Twenty-year treaty of friendship signed with Soviet Union.

1974 - India explodes first nuclear device in underground test.

Democratic strains

1975 - Indira Gandhi declares state of emergency after being found guilty of electoral malpractice.

1975-1977 - Nearly 1,000 political opponents imprisoned and programme of compulsory birth control introduced.

1977 - Indira Gandhi's Congress Party loses general elections.

1980 - Indira Gandhi returns to power heading Congress party splinter group, Congress (Indira).

1984 - Troops storm Golden Temple - Sikhs' most holy shrine - to flush out Sikh militants pressing for self-rule.

1984 - Indira Gandhi assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, following which her son, Rajiv, takes over.

1984 December - Gas leak at Union Carbide pesticides plant in Bhopal. Thousands are killed immediately, many more subsequently die or are left disabled.

1987 - India deploys troops for peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict.

1989 - Falling public support leads to Congress defeat in general election.

1990 - Indian troops withdrawn from Sri Lanka.

1990 - Muslim separatist groups begin campaign of violence in Kashmir.

1991 - Rajiv Gandhi assassinated by suicide bomber sympathetic to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers.

1991 - Economic reform programme begun by Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.

1992 - Hindu extremists demolish mosque in Ayodhya, triggering widespread Hindu-Muslim violence.

BJP to the fore

1996 - Congress suffers worst ever electoral defeat as Hindu nationalist BJP emerges as largest single party.

1998 - BJP forms coalition government under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

1998 - India carries out nuclear tests, leading to widespread international condemnation.

1999 February - Vajpayee makes historic bus trip to Pakistan to meet Premier Nawaz Sharif and to sign bilateral Lahore peace declaration.

1999 May - Tension in Kashmir leads to brief war with Pakistan-backed forces in the icy heights around Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir.

1999 October - Cyclone devastates eastern state of Orissa, leaving at least 10,000 dead.

Population: 1 billion

2000 May - India marks the birth of its billionth citizen.

2000 - US President Bill Clinton makes a groundbreaking visit to improve ties.

2001 January - Massive earthquakes hit the western state of Gujarat, leaving at least 30,000 dead.

2001 April - 16 Indian and three Bangladeshi soldiers are killed in border clashes.

A high-powered rocket is launched, propelling India into the club of countries able to fire big satellites deep into space.

2001 July - Vajpayee meets Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the first summit between the two neighbours in more than two years. It ends without a breakthrough because of differences over Kashmir.

2001 September - US lifts sanctions which it imposed against India and Pakistan after they staged nuclear tests in 1998. The move is seen as a reward for their support for the US-led anti-terror campaign.

Kashmir tensions rise

2001 October - India fires on Pakistani military posts in the heaviest firing along the dividing line of control in Kashmir for almost a year.

2001 December - Suicide squad attacks parliament in New Delhi, killing several police. The five gunmen die in the assault.

2001 December - India imposes sanctions against Pakistan, to force it to take action against two Kashmir militant groups blamed for the suicide attack on parliament. Pakistan retaliates with similar sanctions, and bans the groups in January.

2001 December - India, Pakistan mass troops on common border amid mounting fears of a looming war.

2002 January - India successfully test-fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile - the Agni - off its eastern coast.

2002 February - Inter-religious bloodshed breaks out after 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya are killed in a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat. More than 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, die in subsequent violence. Police and officials blamed the fire on a Muslim mob, but a 2005 government investigation said it was an accident. In 2012 a court convicts 32 people over the Naroda Patiya riots in Ahmedabad.

2002 May - Pakistan test-fires three medium-range surface-to-surface Ghauri missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. War of words between Indian and Pakistani leaders intensifies. Actual war seems imminent.

2002 June - UK, US urge their citizens to leave India and Pakistan, while maintaining diplomatic offensive to avert war.

2002 July - Retired scientist and architect of India's missile programme APJ Abdul Kalam is elected president.

2003 August - At least 50 people are killed in two simultaneous bomb blasts in Bombay.

Kashmir ceasefire, Congress in power

2003 November - India matches Pakistan's declaration of a Kashmir ceasefire.

2003 December - India, Pakistan agree to resume direct air links and to allow overflights.

2004 January - Groundbreaking meeting held between government and moderate Kashmir separatists.

2004 May - Surprise victory for Congress Party in general elections. Manmohan Singh is sworn in as prime minister.

2004 September - India, along with Brazil, Germany and Japan, launches an application for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

2004 November - India begins to withdraw some of its troops from Kashmir.

Asian tsunami

2004 December - Thousands are killed when waves of the Asian Tsunami devastates coastal communities in the south and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

2005 7 April - Bus services, the first in 60 years, operate between Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir and Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

2005 July - More than 1,000 people are killed in floods and landslides caused by monsoon rains in Mumbai (Bombay) and Maharashtra region.

2005 October - Bombs kill 62 people in Delhi. A little-known Kashmiri group says it is behind the attacks.

2006 February - India's largest-ever rural jobs scheme is launched, aimed at lifting around 60 million families out of poverty.

Nuclear deal

2006 March - US and India sign a nuclear agreement during a visit by US President George W Bush. The US gives India access to civilian nuclear technology while India agrees to greater scrutiny for its nuclear programme.

2006 11 July - More than 180 people are killed in bomb attacks on rush-hour trains in Mumbai. Investigators blame Islamic militants based in Pakistan.

2006 8 September - Explosions outside a mosque in the western town of Malegaon kill at least 31 people.

2006 November - Hu Jintao makes the first visit to India by a Chinese president in a decade.

2006 December - US President George W Bush approves a controversial law allowing India to buy US nuclear reactors and fuel for the first time in 30 years.

Train attack

2007 18 February - 68 passengers, most of them Pakistanis, are killed by bomb blasts and a blaze on a train travelling from New Delhi to the Pakistani city of Lahore.

2007 February - India and Pakistan sign an agreement aimed at reducing the risk of accidental nuclear war.

2007 March - Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh state kill more than 50 policemen in a dawn attack.

2007 April - India's first commercial space rocket is launched, carrying an Italian satellite.

2007 May - At least nine people are killed in a bomb explosion at the main mosque in Hyderabad. Several others are killed in subsequent rioting.

2007 May - Government announces its strongest economic growth figures for 20 years - 9.4% in the year to March.

First woman president

2007 July - Pratibha Patil becomes first woman to be elected president of India.

2008 July - Congress-led coalition survives vote of confidence brought after left-wing parties withdraw their support over controversial nuclear cooperation deal with US.

2008 July - Series of explosions kills 49 in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat state. The little-known militant Islamist group Indian Mujahideen claims responsibility.

2008 October - Following approval by the US Congress, President George W Bush signs into law a nuclear deal with India, which ends a three-decade ban on US nuclear trade with Delhi.

India successfully launches its first mission to the moon, the unmanned lunar probe Chandrayaan-1.

Mumbai attacks

2008 November - Nearly 200 people are killed and hundreds injured in a series of co-ordinated attacks by gunmen on the main tourist and business area of India's financial capital Mumbai. India blames militants from Pakistan for the attacks and demands that Islamabad act against those responsible.

2008 December - India announces "pause" in peace process with Pakistan. Indian cricket team cancels planned tour of Pakistan.

2009 February - India and Russia sign deals worth $700m, according to which Moscow will supply uranium to Delhi.

2009 May - Resounding general election victory gives governing Congress-led alliance of PM Manmohan Singh an enhanced position in parliament, only 11 seats short of an absolute majority.

2009 July - Pakistani, Indian premiers pledge to work together to fight terror irrespective of progress on improving broader ties.

A Dehli court rules that homosexual intercourse between consenting adults is not criminal, overturning a 148-year-old colonial law.

2009 December - The government says it will allow a new state, Telangana, to be carved out of part of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Violent protests for and against break out.

2010 February - Bomb explosion in a restaurant popular with tourists in Pune, in the western state of Maharashtra, kills 16 people.

2010 May - The solve surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Amir Qasab, is convicted of murder, waging war on India and possessing explosives.

2010 June - A court in Bhopal sentences eight Indians to two years each in jail for "death by negligence" over the 1984 Union Carbide gas plant leak. Thousands died in this, the world's worst industrial accident.

Ayodhya ruling

2010 September - Allahabad High Court rules that the disputed holy site of Ayodhya should be divided between Hindus and Muslims; the destruction of a mosque on the site by Hindu extremists in 1992 led to rioting in which about 2,000 people died.

2011 March - Results of 2011 census put India's population at 1.21 billion, an increase of 181 million over ten years.

2011 August - Prominent social activist Anna Hazare stages 12-day hunger strike in Delhi in protest at state corruption.

2011 November - Fourteen people, including a government minister, go on trial on charges for under-selling mobile phone licenses in return for bribes, in one of India's biggest ever corruption scandals.

2012 January - British author Sir Salman Rushdie cancels an appearance at a literary festival in India in response to threats from Islamic extremists who object to his book The Satanic Verses.

2012 June - Police in Delhi arrest Abu Hamza, also known as Syed Zabiuddin - allegedly a key figure in planning the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

2012 July - Pranab Mukherjee from the ruling Congress party is elected president, comfortably beating his rival P.A. Sangma.

2012 August - Court convicts 32 people over the 2002 religious riots in Gujarat, including former state minister Maya Kodnani.

2012 November - Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, the sole surviving gunman of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, is executed in Pune prison. The Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in August.

2013 February - Two explosions in crowded Dilsukhnagar area of central Hyderabad kill 16 people. Police suspect the Indian Mujahideen Islamist armed group.

2013 September - A court sentences four men to death for the gang rape and murder of a student in Delhi the previous December - a case that led to violent protests across India and new laws against rape.

2013 December - The Supreme Court reverses a 2009 Delhi High Court order decriminalising homosexual acts, saying parliament, not the courts, must resolve the issue.

BJP back in power

2014 May - The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi, win parliamentary elections by a landslide.

2014 September - Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi unveil landmark economic deals. China says it plans to build two industrial parks in India, as part of overall investment of twenty billion dollars in the next five years.

2014 December - India's governing BJP emerges for the first time as a major political player in the disputed Kashmir region after local elections, doubling its seats in the state assembly.

2015 February - The anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), headed by Arvind Kejriwal, wins a stunning victory in Delhi state elections, marking the BJP's first big setback since it triumphed in the 2014 general election.

2015 June - India arrests Naga separatist leader Khumlo Abi Anal over killing of 20 soldiers in ambush on Burmese border.

2015 June - India and Bangladesh sign a historic deal allowing more than 50,000 people living in border enclaves to choose which of the countries they live in.

2015 September - India launches its first space laboratory Astrosat in its biggest project since its Mars orbiter mission in 2014.

2016 September - Tens of millions of workers take part in a 24-hour strike to demand higher wages and to protest against the government's economic reforms.

2016 September - India signs a billion-dollar defence deal with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets.

2016 November - In a surprise announcement, the government withdraws high denomination notes from circulation causing chaotic scenes at banks across the country as customers try to exchange old notes.

2017 January - The government reaches a wide-ranging cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates, with a series of deals on energy, defence, trade and maritime affairs.

2017 May - Launches its so-called "South Asia satellite" from the country's space centre in Andhra Pradesh state. The satellite is designed to improve disaster relief and telecommunication links in the region.

2017 June - Along with Pakistan, India becomes a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an inter-governmental security grouping. India's membership sees the grouping's membership expand into South Asia.

2017 July-August - Row with China over disputed area of Himalayas, where China says Indian troops have been trespassing.

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India has been home to several ancient civilisations and empires, some dating back to more than 2,000 BC. Culture and religions have flourished over the millennia, and foreign influence has ebbed and flowed. 1858 - India comes under direct rule of the British crown after failed Indian mutiny.

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British Colonisation in Malaysia

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BRITISH IN MALAYSIA

The British attempted to colonize Borneo as early as 1771 but did not gain a foothold in Malaysia until 1786 when the British East India Company procured the island if Penang. The British gained control of what is now Malaysia when they threw out the Dutch in 1795, and over time through conquest and deals made with sultans. In 1819 Singapore was founded. It quickly became an important port.

Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei were all once part of he powerful kingdom of Brunei. In 1841, the Englishman James Brook was granted part of Sarawak by the Sultan of Brunei after he helped the sultan by putting down a tribal rebellion. In 1888, Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo (Sabah) became British protectorates and were separated from the rest of Borneo by British-Dutch agreement.

In 1826, Penang, Malacca and Singapore were combined as the Straits Settlement. These territories became quite valuable after the Suez Canal opened in 1869, providing a easy transportation route for Malayan tin and rubber to Europe.

The British formally made Malaysia a colony in 1867. The Federated Malay States, in southern Malaya, was formed in 1895 after the British intervened in the fratricidal wars of the sultans. The British gained control over northern Malaya through an agreement made with Thailand in 1909 and merged all the territory under their control to form Malaya.

By 1910 the pattern of British rule in the Malay lands was established. The Straits Settlements were a Crown Colony, ruled by a governor under the supervision of the Colonial Office in London. Their population was about half Chinese, but all residents, regardless of race, were British subjects. The first four states to accept British residents, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang, were termed the Federated Malay States: while technically independent, they were placed under a Resident-General in 1895, making them British colonies in all but name. The Unfederated Malay States (Johore, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu) had a slightly larger degree of independence, although they were unable to resist the wishes of their British Residents for long. Johore, as Britain's closest ally in Malay affairs, had the privilege of a written constitution, which gave the Sultan the right to appoint his own Cabinet, but he was generally careful to consult the British first.

How the British Entered in Malaysia

English traders had been present in Malay waters since the 17th century. Until the arrival of the British European power became fully apparent in Malaysia. Before the mid-19th-century British interests in the region were predominantly economic, with little interest in territorial control. Already the most powerful coloniser in India, they were looking towards southeast Asia for new resources. The growth of the China trade in British ships increased the Company's desire for bases in the region. Various islands were used for this purpose, but the first permanent acquisition was Penang, leased from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786. This was followed soon after by the leasing of a block of territory on the mainland opposite Penang (known as Province Wellesley). In 1795, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British with the consent of the Netherlands occupied Dutch Malacca to forestall possible French interest in the area.

When Malacca was handed back to the Dutch in 1815, the British governor, Stamford Raffles, looked for an alternative base, and in 1819 he acquired Singapore from the Sultan of Johor. The exchange of the British colony of Bencoolen for Malacca with the Dutch left the British as the sole colonial power on the peninsula. The territories of the British were set up as free ports, attempting to break the monopoly held by other colonial powers as the time, and making them large bases of trade. They allowed Britain to control all trade through the straits of Malacca. British influence was increased by Malayan fears of Siamese expansionism, to which Britain made a useful counterweight. During the 19th century the Malay Sultans aligned themselves the British Empire, due to the benefits of associations with the British and the belief in superior British civilisation.

In 1824 British hegemony in Malaya (before the name Malaysia) was formalised by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which divided the Malay archipelago between Britain and the Netherlands. The Dutch evacuated Malacca and renounced all interest in Malaya, while the British recognised Dutch rule over the rest of the East Indies. By 1826 the British controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements, administered first under the East India Company until 1867, when they were transferred to the Colonial Office in London.

Federated and Unfederated Malay States

The British were reluctant to acquire other commitments in the region, but periodic forays by Siam (now Thailand) into north Malay states, piracy supported by Malay rulers, and periodic conflicts between Malay rulers of tin-producing states and Chinese tin miners mobilized by Chinese secret societies all threatened British commercial interests and prompted the British to become increasingly involved in peninsular affairs. In the 1870s, the British adopted a system of indirect rule over Malay states that furnished the beginnings of a centralized state. In 1874 the British agreed to recognize and support a contender as the sultan of Pangkor in exchange for the sultan's acceptance of a British representative, or "resident," whose advice would be sought and followed on all issues except Malay custom and religion. British residents were later established in three other tin-producing states, which became known as "protected states." In 1896 the Malay rulers of these states and Pangkor signed the Treaty of Federation, which established the Federated Malay States. Malay rulers were invited to provide input into the federation's development, but in reality the new constitutional arrangements were designed to provide an appearance of Malay rule while effectively reducing traditional rulers to mere decorous bystanders.

A different governing arrangement was established with other Malay states that were more independent of British control than the Federated Malay States. Siam tenuously controlled the northern states of Kedah, Terengganu, Kelantan, and Perlis until a 1909 treaty between Britain and Siam placed those states under British influence. The sultans of these states refused to join the federation, but they did accept British advisers. Unlike residents, the advisers had no effective executive power and relied on diplomacy with the sultans for policy matters. The southern state of Johor also remained relatively independent of British influence until 1909, when the sultan accepted a British "financial adviser" with wide-ranging powers. Thus, by 1914 the Malay Peninsula was composed of 10 political entities: the Straits Settlements, four Federated Malay States, and five Unfederated Malay States.

Initially, the British followed a policy of non-intervention in relation between the Malay states. The commercial importance of tin mining in the Malay states to merchants in the Straits Settlements led to infighting between the aristocracy on the peninsula. The destabilisation of these states damaged the commerce in the area, causing British intervention. The wealth of Perak's tin mines made political stability there a priority for British investors, and Perak was thus the first Malay state to agree to the supervision of a British resident. British gunboat diplomacy was employed to bring about a peaceful resolution to civil disturbances caused by Chinese and Malay gangsters employed in a political tussle between Ngah Ibrahim and Raja Muda Abdullah. The Pangkor Treaty of 1874 paved the way for the expansion of British influence in Malaya. The British concluded treaties with some Malay states, installing "residents" who advised the Sultans and soon became the effective rulers of their states. These advisors held power in everything except to do with Malay religion and customs. [Source: Wikipedia]

Johore alone resisted, by modernising and giving British and Chinese investors legal protection. By the turn of the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British advisors. In 1909 the Siamese kingdom was compelled to cede Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu, which already had British advisors, over to the British. Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor and Queen Victoria were personal acquaintances, and recognised each other as equals. It was not until 1914 that Sultan Abu Bakar's successor, Sultan Ibrahim accepted a British adviser. The four previously Thai states and Johor were known as the Unfederated Malay States. The states under the most direct British control developed rapidly, becoming the largest suppliers in the world of first tin, then rubber.

British Rule in Colonial Malaya

Using divide and rule tactics, the British encouraged rivalries between Malaysia's different ethnic groups and between the sultans. In the early days of the British presence the sultans still held a lot of power. As time went on this power was reduced and Britain took firm control of the mainland.

The Malay Peninsula under British rule before World War II, future Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wrote was "divided into many different Malay states, and each state had its own treaty with the British. The treaties were for British 'protection,' it was said, not colonization. The British were not too repressive...Although the British actually controlled the administration fully, they managed to give the impression that locals had status and authority. The Malaysia sultans were called 'the rulers' by the British, although they were never really given any power to 'rule.'

Lasting British influence includes a parliamentary democracy with a largely ceremonial monarch. Mahathir Mohamad wrote: "The British did not send a 'governor' to our country, but an official they called a 'British Advisor.' In reality, however, his 'advise' had to strictly followed....The British were extremely clever at this form of semi-colonial rule: they would call things by one name, but in reality do quite another thing. What we did get from them was a well-organized administration and a fairly well-developed infrastructure. What we also got, however, was a psychological burden, was the belief that only Europeans could govern our country effectively...Most Asians felt inferior to European colonizers.

Transition to Capitalist Production in Malaysia

John H. Drabble of the University of Sydney wrote: "The nineteenth century witnessed an enormous expansion in world trade which, between 1815 and 1914, grew on average at 4-5 percent a year compared to 1 percent in the preceding hundred years. The driving force came from the Industrial Revolution in the West which saw the innovation of large scale factory production of manufactured goods made possible by technological advances, accompanied by more efficient communications (e.g., railways, cars, trucks, steamships, international canals [Suez 1869, Panama 1914], telegraphs) which speeded up and greatly lowered the cost of long distance trade. Industrializing countries required ever-larger supplies of raw materials as well as foodstuffs for their growing populations. Regions such as Malaysia with ample supplies of virgin land and relative proximity to trade routes were well placed to respond to this demand. What was lacking was an adequate supply of capital and wage labor. In both aspects, the deficiency was supplied largely from foreign sources. [Source: John H. Drabble, University of Sydney, Australia \+\]

As expanding British power brought stability to the region, Chinese migrants started to arrive in large numbers with Singapore quickly becoming the major point of entry. Most arrived with few funds but those able to amass profits from trade (including opium) used these to finance ventures in agriculture and mining, especially in the neighboring Malay Peninsula. Crops such as pepper, gambier, tapioca, sugar and coffee were produced for export to markets in Asia (e.g. China), and later to the West after 1850 when Britain moved toward a policy of free trade. These crops were labor, not capital, intensive and in some cases quickly exhausted soil fertility and required periodic movement to virgin land (Jackson, 1968). \+\

Tin in Malaysia

John H. Drabble of the University of Sydney wrote: "Besides ample land, the Malay Peninsula also contained substantial deposits of tin. International demand for tin rose progressively in the nineteenth century due to the discovery of a more efficient method for producing tinplate (for canned food). At the same time deposits in major suppliers such as Cornwall (England) had been largely worked out, thus opening an opportunity for new producers. Traditionally tin had been mined by Malays from ore deposits close to the surface. Difficulties with flooding limited the depth of mining; furthermore their activity was seasonal. From the 1840s the discovery of large deposits in the Peninsula states of Perak and Selangor attracted large numbers of Chinese migrants who dominated the industry in the nineteenth century bringing new technology which improved ore recovery and water control, facilitating mining to greater depths. [Source: John H. Drabble, University of Sydney, Australia \+\]

"By the end of the century Malayan tin exports (at approximately 52,000 metric tons) supplied just over half the world output. Singapore was a major center for smelting (refining) the ore into ingots. Tin mining also attracted attention from European, mainly British, investors who again introduced new technology - such as high-pressure hoses to wash out the ore, the steam pump and, from 1912, the bucket dredge floating in its own pond, which could operate to even deeper levels. These innovations required substantial capital for which the chosen vehicle was the public joint stock company, usually registered in Britain. Since no major new ore deposits were found, the emphasis was on increased efficiency in production. European operators, again employing mostly Chinese wage labor, enjoyed a technical advantage here and by 1929 accounted for 61 percent of Malayan output (Wong Lin Ken, 1965; Yip Yat Hoong, 1969). \+\

Rubber Plantations in Asia

Rubber plantation agriculture was introduced to Southeast Asia in the 19th century. It revolutionized parts of the economy there. Today, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand produce three quarters of the world's rubber as well as three quarters of the world's palm oil and large percentage of the coffee and cocoa crops.

Rubber trees were identified and studied in the Amazon by Sir Henry Wickham, who shipped 70,000 seedling to Kew Garden in 1876. Seedlings were sent from there to Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

In 1823 the Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh discovered that rubber dissolved in the coal-tar and the mixture could be applied to cloth. He invented the raincoat. In 1844, Charles Goodyear, an American hardware merchant, patented the vulcanization process, in which sulfur is added to rubber so that it doesn't melt in heat and go brittle in cold. Goodyear discovered the process after eight years of trying to make a useful rubber when he accidently dropped a mixture of India rubber and sulfur onto a hot stove. The rubber melted and bonded with the sulfur, producing vulcanized rubber. The air-inflated pneumatic rubber tires was invented by Scotsman J.B. Dunlop in 1887. After that the rubber industry really took off.

The rubber industry got off to a slow start in Asia and didn't really blossom until Brazilian rubber merchants tried to corner the market in 1905 and raised rubber prices high enough so that plantation owners in Asia could maker a profit. By 1915, three million acres of land was devoted to rubber in the Asia.

Latex could be grown much more efficiently and profitably on plantations in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries than in Brazil. Asian latex was much quality than wild latex form Brazil, which was filled with impurities. The British made a fortune with massive rubber plantations in Malaysia. Today, the United States alone imports over a billion dollars worth of the stuff every year.

Impact of Rubber on Malaysia

John H. Drabble of the University of Sydney wrote: "While tin mining brought considerable prosperity, it was a non-renewable resource. In the early twentieth century it was the agricultural sector which came to the forefront. The crops mentioned previously had boomed briefly but were hard pressed to survive severe price swings and the pests and diseases that were endemic in tropical agriculture. The cultivation of rubber-yielding trees became commercially attractive as a raw material for new industries in the West, notably for tires for the booming automobile industry especially in the U.S. Previously rubber had come from scattered trees growing wild in the jungles of South America with production only expandable at rising marginal costs. Cultivation on estates generated economies of scale. In the 1870s the British government organized the transport of specimens of the tree Hevea Brasiliensis from Brazil to colonies in the East, notably Ceylon and Singapore. There the trees flourished and after initial hesitancy over the five years needed for the trees to reach productive age, planters Chinese and European rushed to invest. The boom reached vast proportions as the rubber price reached record heights in 1910. Average values fell thereafter but investors were heavily committed and planting continued (also in the neighboring Netherlands Indies [Indonesia]). By 1921 the rubber acreage in Malaysia (mostly in the Peninsula) had reached 935 000 hectares (about 1.34 million acres) or some 55 percent of the total in South and Southeast Asia while output stood at 50 percent of world production. [Source: John H. Drabble, University of Sydney, Australia \+\]

"As a result of this boom, rubber quickly surpassed tin as Malaysia's main export product, a position that it was to hold until 1980. A distinctive feature of the industry was that the technology of extracting the rubber latex from the trees (called tapping) by an incision with a special knife, and its manufacture into various grades of sheet known as raw or plantation rubber, was easily adopted by a wide range of producers. The larger estates, mainly British-owned, were financed (as in the case of tin mining) through British-registered public joint stock companies. For example, between 1903 and 1912 some 260 companies were registered to operate in Malaya. Chinese planters for the most part preferred to form private partnerships to operate estates which were on average smaller. Finally, there were the smallholdings (under 40 hectares or 100 acres) of which those at the lower end of the range (2 hectares/5 acres or less) were predominantly owned by indigenous Malays who found growing and selling rubber more profitable than subsistence (rice) farming. These smallholders did not need much capital since their equipment was rudimentary and labor came either from within their family or in the form of share-tappers who received a proportion (say 50 percent) of the output. In Malaya in 1921 roughly 60 percent of the planted area was estates (75 percent European-owned) and 40 percent smallholdings (Drabble, 1991, 1). \+\

"The workforce for the estates consisted of migrants. British estates depended mainly on migrants from India, brought in under government auspices with fares paid and accommodation provided. Chinese business looked to the "coolie trade" from South China, with expenses advanced that migrants had subsequently to pay off. The flow of immigration was directly related to economic conditions in Malaysia. For example arrivals of Indians averaged 61 000 a year between 1900 and 1920. Substantial numbers also came from the Netherlands Indies. \+\

"Thus far, most capitalist enterprise was located in Malaya. Sarawak and British North Borneo had a similar range of mining and agricultural industries in the 19th century. However, their geographical location slightly away from the main trade route and the rugged internal terrain costly for transport made them less attractive to foreign investment. However, the discovery of oil by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch-Shell starting production from 1907 put Sarawak more prominently in the business of exports. As in Malaya, the labor force came largely from immigrants from China and to a lesser extent Java. The growth in production for export in Malaysia was facilitated by development of an infrastructure of roads, railways, ports (e.g. Penang, Singapore) and telecommunications under the auspices of the colonial governments, though again this was considerably more advanced in Malaya (Amarjit Kaur, 1985, 1998) \+\

Life in Malaysia Under British Colonial Rule

Describing an ordinary Malayan town in the 1930s, Mahathir Mohamad wrote, "The rich families lived in the northern part of town; we lived in the southern. And the Europeans of course, lived in there own quarters . They were very exclusive with their own clubs and private golf course and did not mix with the local population."

At official diners in the 1920s and 30s, waiters wore headdresses and guest were entertained by Filipino bands on the veranda. While on picnic people ate from "tiffin" lunch boxes.

In many cases British men arrived without their wives. In some cases Japanese brothels were set up to accommodate them. In the town of Sandakan in northern Borneo, nine such brothels, operated from the early 1900s to World War II. Most of the girls were sex slaves sold by their families and bonded to their brothels where they worked. One Malay man told a Japanese newspaper, "They were very beautiful in their kimonos, and they wore lots of makeup. People like us farmers could not afford Japanese prostitutes. White men got the prettiest ones, followed by the Chinese coolies from the plantations, because they had money and were bachelors."

Hill Stations

In the intense Asian summers, the English gentry and their servants fled the cities for the hill stations in the cooler mountains. The British built 96 hill stations in India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Burma. The Dutch built some in Indonesia, the French in Vietnam and the Americans in the Philippines. Most were built between 1820 and 1885. Simla, the largest hill station, was the capital of British India for most of the year and headquarters for the imperial army.

The first hill stations were built in 1820 after it was discovered that British soldiers fighting Gurhkas in the foothills of the Himalayas felt better and came down with less diseases in the high altitude than soldiers stationed at low altitudes.

The hill stations began as sanatoriums and convalescent centers, but it wasn't long before they became places where healthy upper class people went to escape the heat of the lowland plains. Most of the hill stations were located above 6,000 feet because that seemed to be the ceiling of malaria-carrying mosquitos. Naturally cool air proved to be the perfect remedy for a world where air conditioning, insect repellant and antibiotics had not been invented.

Most hill stations were built on ridge tops. Now, while this had its advantages in fighting disease. It was not practical for supplying water, especially when trees were cut down and ground water levels drops. In the early days there were no scenic train rides. Visitors were brought up the slopes in bullock carts, on horseback, or in sedan chairs. A few walked.

Book: Great Hill Stations of Asia by Barbara Crossette (Harper Collins/ Westview, 1998)

Hill Station Life

The hill station were complete towns with sanitariums, churches, cottages, clubs, libraries and activities. Social activities went on almost around the clock and status and rank was rigidly defined. The hill stations were set up like towns back home. They featured comfortable cottages, steepled churches, clubs, schools, tearooms, and gardens with European flowers.

The atmosphere at the hill stations was both formal, strange and hedonistic. People attended full dress balls, drank a lot, slept in closed rooms to avoid the "miasma," indulged in extramarital affairs and had sex with prostitutes. One chronicler wrote, "I verily believe that when the white man penetrates the interior to found a colony, his first act is to clear a space and build a clubhouse."

One journalist described hill station life as "ball after ball, each followed by a little backbiting." Another said, "There is a theory that anyone who lives above 7,000 feet starts having delusions, illusions and hallucinations. People who, in the cities, are the models of respectability are known to fling more than stones and insults at each other when they come to live up here. "

Hill station residents lived quite well. Dinners often features a large selection of wines, ales and spirits, a choice of soups, fish, joints of Bengal mutton, Chinese capons, Keddah fowls, Sangora ducks, Yorkshire hams, Java potatoes and Malay ibis, rice, curry and fruit. Some Indians were invited. Describing the bejeweled maharajahs in Simla, Aldous Huxley wrote," At the Viceroy's evening parties the diamonds were so large they looked like stage gems. It was impossible to believe that pearls in the million-pound necklaces were the genuine excrement of oysters."

Arrival of Chinese and Indians in Malaysia

The first Chinese to enter Southeast Asia were Buddhist monks, maritime traders and representatives of the Imperial Chinese government.. In ancient and medieval times, Chinese traders utilized Southeast Asian ports on maritime Silk Road but in the early days much of this trade was carried out by Arab mariners and merchants. Regular trading between China and Southeast Asia didn't really begin in earnest until the 13th century. Chinese were attracted by trade opportunities in Malacca, Manila, Batavia (Jakarta). Some of the most detailed descriptions of Angkor Wat and other Southeast Asian civilizations came from Chinese travelers and monks. The Chinese eunuch explorer Zheng He (1371-1433) helped establish Chinese communities in parts of Java and the Malay Peninsula in part, many historians believe, to impose imperial Chinese control.

Beginning in the late-1700s, large numbers of Chinese---mostly from Guangdong and Fujian provinces and Hainan Island in southern China---began emigrating to Southeast Asia. Most were illiterate, landless peasants oppressed in their homelands and looking for opportunities abroad. The rich landowners and educated Mandarins stayed in China. Scholars attribute the mass exodus to population explosion in the coastal cities of Fujian and prosperity and contacts generated by foreign trade.

So many people left Fujian for Southeast Asia during the late 18th century and early 19th century that the Manchu court issued an imperial edict in 1718 recalling all Chinese to the mainland. A 1728 proclamation declared that anyone who didn't return and was captured would be executed.

Most of the Chinese who settled in Southeast Asia left China in the mid 19th century after a number treaty ports were opened in China with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 after the first Opium War. The ports made it easy to leave and with the British rather than imperial Chinese running things there were fewer obstacles preventing them from leaving. British ports in Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, gave them destinations they could head to.

A particularly large number of Chinese left from the British treaty ports of Xiamen (Amoy) and Fuzhou (Foochow) in Fujian province. Many were encouraged to leave by colonial governments so they could provide cheap coolie labor in ports around the world, including those in colonial Southeast Asia. Many Chinese fled the coastal province of Fujian and Zhejiang after famines and floods in 1910 and later during World War II and the early days of Communist rule. Many of the legal and illegal immigrants from China continue to come from Fujian.

Unlike some colonial powers, the British always saw their empire as primarily an economic concern, and its colonies were expected to turn a profit for British shareholders. Malaya's obvious attractions were its tin and gold mines, but British planters soon began to experiment with tropical plantation crops - tapioca, gambier, pepper and coffee. But in 1877 the rubber plant was introduced from Brazil, and rubber soon became Malaya's staple export, stimulated by booming demand from European industry. Rubber was later joined by palm oil as an export earner. All these industries required a large and disciplined labour force, and the British did not regard the Malays as reliable workers. The solution was the importation of plantation workers from India, mainly Tamil-speakers from South India. The mines, mills and docks also attracted a flood of immigrant workers from southern China. Soon towns like Singapore, Penang and Ipoh were majority Chinese, as was Kuala Lumpur, founded as a tin-mining centre in 1857. By 1891, when Malaya's first census was taken, Perak and Selangor, the main tin-mining states, had Chinese majorities. [Source: Wikipedia]

Life of Chinese and Indians in Malaysia

Peranakan Chinese-Malay culture flourished in southwest Malaysia from the 17th century to its peak at the turn of the 20th. The Peranakan culture, also known as Baba-Nyonya - men were called babas, women were nyonyas - incorporated Dutch, English, Portuguese and Indian influences.

The Chinese mostly arrived poor; yet, their belief in industriousness and frugality, their emphasis in their children's education and their maintenance of Confucian family hierarchy, as well as their voluntary connection with tightly knit networks of mutual aid societies (run by "Hui-Guan", or non-profit organisations with nominal geographic affiliations from different parts of China) all contributed to their prosperity. In the 1890s Yap Ah Loy, who held the title of Kapitan China of Kuala Lumpur, was the richest man in Malaya, owning a chain of mines, plantations and shops. Malaya's banking and insurance industries were run by the Chinese from the start, and Chinese businesses, usually in partnership with London firms, soon had a stranglehold on the economy. Since the Malay Sultans tended to spend well beyond their means, they were soon indebted to Chinese bankers, and this gave the Chinese political as well as economic leverage. At first the Chinese immigrants were mostly men, and many intended to return home when they had made their fortunes. Many did go home, but many more stayed. At first they married Malay women, producing a community of Sino-Malayans or baba people, but soon they began importing Chinese brides, establishing permanent communities and building schools and temples. [Source: Wikipedia +]

The Depression of the 1930s, followed by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, had the effect of ending Chinese emigration to Malaya. This stabilised the demographic situation and ended the prospect of the Malays becoming a minority in their own country. +

The Indians were initially less successful, since unlike the Chinese they came mainly as indentured labourers to work in the rubber plantations, and had few of the economic opportunities that the Chinese had. They were also a less united community, since they were divided between Hindus and Muslims and along lines of language and caste. An Indian commercial and professional class emerged during the early 20th century, but the majority of Indians remained poor and uneducated in rural ghettos in the rubber-growing areas. +

Attitude of the Malays Towards the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia

Traditional Malay society had great difficulty coping with both the loss of political sovereignty to the British and of economic power to the Chinese. By the early 20th century it seemed possible that the Malays would become a minority in their own country. The Sultans, who were seen as collaborators with both the British and the Chinese, lost some of their traditional prestige, particularly among the increasing number of Malays with a western education, but the mass of rural Malays continued to revere the Sultans and their prestige was thus an important prop for colonial rule. A small class of Malay nationalist intellectuals began to emerge during the early 20th century, and there was also a revival of Islam in response to the perceived threat of other imported religions, particularly Christianity. In fact few Malays converted to Christianity, although many Chinese did. The northern regions, which were less influenced by western ideas, became strongholds of Islamic conservatism, as they have remained. [Source: Wikipedia +]

The one consolation to Malay pride was that the British allowed them a virtual monopoly of positions in the police and local military units, as well as a majority of those administrative positions open to non-Europeans. While the Chinese mostly built and paid for their own schools and colleges, importing teachers from China, the colonial government fostered education for Malays, opening Malay College in 1905 and creating the Malay Administrative Service in 1910. (The college was dubbed "Bab ud-Darajat" - the Gateway to High Rank.) A Malay Teachers College followed in 1922, and a Malay Women's Training College in 1935. All this reflected the official British policy that Malaya belonged to the Malays, and that the other races were but temporary residents. This view was increasingly out of line with reality, and contained the seeds of much future trouble. +

The Malay teacher's college had lectures and writings that nurtured Malay nationalism and anti-colonialist sentiments. Due to this it is known as the birthplace of Malay nationalism. In 1938 Ibrahim Yaacob, an alumnus of Sultan Idris College, established the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (Young Malays Union or KMM) in Kuala Lumpur. It was the first nationalist political organisation in British Malaya, advocating for the union of all Malays regardless of origin, and fighting for Malay rights and against British Imperialism. A specific ideal the KMM held was Panji Melayu Raya, which called for the unification of British Malaya and Dutch East Indies. +

In the years before World War II, the British were concerned with finding the balance between a centralised state and maintaining the power of the Sultans in Malaya. There were no moves to give Malaya a unitary government, and in fact in 1935 the position of Resident-General of the Federated States was abolished, and its powers decentralised to the individual states. With their usual tendency to racial stereotyping, the British regarded the Malays as amiable but unsophisticated and rather lazy, incapable of self-government, although making good soldiers under British officers. They regarded the Chinese as clever but dangerous - and indeed during the 1920s and '30s, reflecting events in China, the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang) and the Communist Party of China built rival clandestine organisations in Malaya, leading to regular disturbances in the Chinese towns. The British saw no way that Malaya's disparate collection of states and races could become a nation, let alone an independent one. +

Migrants and the Malaysian Economy Before World War II

John H. Drabble of the University of Sydney wrote: "By the 1920s the large inflows of migrants had created a multi-ethnic population of the type which the British scholar, J.S. Furnivall (1948) described as a plural society in which the different racial groups live side by side under a single political administration but, apart from economic transactions, do not interact with each other either socially or culturally. Though the original intention of many migrants was to come for only a limited period (say 3-5 years), save money and then return home, a growing number were staying longer, having children and becoming permanently domiciled in Malaysia. The economic developments described in the previous section were unevenly located, for example, in Malaya the bulk of the tin mines and rubber estates were located along the west coast of the Peninsula. In the boom-times, such was the size of the immigrant inflows that in certain areas they far outnumbered the indigenous Malays. In social and cultural terms Indians and Chinese recreated the institutions, hierarchies and linguistic usage of their countries of origin. This was particularly so in the case of the Chinese. Not only did they predominate in major commercial centers such as Penang, Singapore, and Kuching, but they controlled local trade in the smaller towns and villages through a network of small shops (kedai) and dealerships that served as a pipeline along which export goods like rubber went out and in return imported manufactured goods were brought in for sale. In addition Chinese owned considerable mining and agricultural land. This created a distribution of wealth and division of labor in which economic power and function were directly related to race. In this situation lay the seeds of growing discontent among bumiputera that they were losing their ancestral inheritance (land) and becoming economically marginalized. As long as British colonial rule continued the various ethnic groups looked primarily to government to protect their interests and maintain peaceable relations. An example of colonial paternalism was the designation from 1913 of certain lands in Malaya as Malay Reservations in which only indigenous people could own and deal in property (Lim Teck Ghee, 1977). [Source: John H. Drabble, University of Sydney, Australia \+\]

"Prior to World War II the international economy was divided very broadly into the northern and southern hemispheres. The former contained most of the industrialized manufacturing countries and the latter the principal sources of foodstuffs and raw materials. The commodity exchange between the spheres was known as the Old International Division of Labor (OIDL). Malaysia's place in this system was as a leading exporter of raw materials (tin, rubber, timber, oil, etc.) and an importer of manufactures. Since relatively little processing was done on the former prior to export, most of the value-added component in the final product accrued to foreign manufacturers, e.g. rubber tire manufacturers in the U.S. \+\

"It is clear from this situation that Malaysia depended heavily on earnings from exports of primary commodities to maintain the standard of living. Rice had to be imported (mainly from Burma and Thailand) because domestic production supplied on average only 40 percent of total needs. As long as export prices were high (for example during the rubber boom previously mentioned), the volume of imports remained ample. Profits to capital and good smallholder incomes supported an expanding economy. There are no official data for Malaysian national income prior to World War II, but some comparative estimates are given in Table 1 which indicate that Malayan Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person was easily the leader in the Southeast and East Asian region by the late 1920s. \+\

"However, the international economy was subject to strong fluctuations. The levels of activity in the industrialized countries, especially the U.S., were the determining factors here. Almost immediately following World War I there was a depression from 1919-22. Strong growth in the mid and late-1920s was followed by the Great Depression (1929-32). As industrial output slumped, primary product prices fell even more heavily. For example, in 1932 rubber sold on the London market for about one one-hundredth of the peak price in 1910 (Fig.1). The effects on export earnings were very severe; in Malaysia's case between 1929 and 1932 these dropped by 73 percent (Malaya), 60 percent (Sarawak) and 50 percent (North Borneo). The aggregate value of imports fell on average by 60 percent. Estates dismissed labor and since there was no social security, many workers had to return to their country of origin. Smallholder incomes dropped heavily and many who had taken out high-interest secured loans in more prosperous times were unable to service these and faced the loss of their land. \+\

"The colonial government attempted to counteract this vulnerability to economic swings by instituting schemes to restore commodity prices to profitable levels. For the rubber industry this involved two periods of mandatory restriction of exports to reduce world stocks and thus exert upward pressure on market prices. The first of these (named the Stevenson scheme after its originator) lasted from 1 October 1922- 1 November 1928, and the second (the International Rubber Regulation Agreement) from 1 June 1934-1941. Tin exports were similarly restricted from 1931-41. While these measures did succeed in raising world prices, the inequitable treatment of Asian as against European producers in both industries has been debated. The protective policy has also been blamed for "freezing" the structure of the Malaysian economy and hindering further development, for instance into manufacturing industry (Lim Teck Ghee, 1977; Drabble, 1991). \+\

Malaysia had very few secondary industries before World War II. The little that did appear was connected mainly with the processing of the primary exports, rubber and tin, together with limited production of manufactured goods for the domestic market (e.g. bread, biscuits, beverages, cigarettes and various building materials). Much of this activity was Chinese-owned and located in Singapore (Huff, 1994). Among the reasons advanced are; the small size of the domestic market, the relatively high wage levels in Singapore which made products uncompetitive as exports, and a culture dominated by British trading firms which favored commerce over industry. Overshadowing all these was the dominance of primary production. When commodity prices were high, there was little incentive for investors, European or Asian, to move into other sectors. Conversely, when these prices fell capital and credit dried up, while incomes contracted, thus lessening effective demand for manufactures. W.G. Huff (2002) has argued that, prior to World War II, "there was, in fact, never a good time to embark on industrialization in Malaya."

Early Twentieth Century of Malaysia

By the late nineteenth century, stable forms of government had emerged in Malaysia, and its economy and culture began to assume characteristics that would endure for decades. In the late 1800s, copious deposits of tin ore were discovered in the northwestern state of Perak, and this led to substantial growth in mining and the creation of administrative and transportation infrastructure to service the tin industry, which in turn enabled the growth of other industries along the west coast, such as rubber plantations. This early export diversification helped the economy respond to changing international prices for primary commodities and generally aided economic growth. [Source: Wikipedia +]

In addition, an ethnic Malay identity began to emerge in this period. Although ethnic Malays shared a common religion in Islam and a common language in Malay, their social identities were often localized to their respective states, and their political loyalties were generally to their respective sultans. By contrast, the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia often occupied particular economic niches, which helped instill in them more distinct and salient ethnic identities. This situation began to change in the early 1900s with the emergence of Malay cultural organizations and publications. These entities had numerous political differences but generally claimed that Malays share a common ethnicity and thus promoted the emergence of the Malay nation. +

Image Sources:

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, Compton's Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

&copy 2008 Jeffrey Hays

Last updated June 2015

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The British attempted to colonize Borneo as early as 1771 but did not gain a foothold in Malaysia until 1786 when the British East India Company procured the island if Penang. The British gained control of what is now Malaysia when they threw out the Dutch in 1795, and over time through conquest and deals made with sultans.

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The Hundred Years' War

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BBC - History - British History in depth: The Hundred Years War

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The causes, key events and effects of this pivotal conflict in English history, by Maurice Keen

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The Hundred Years' War

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Hundred Years’ War | Summary, Causes, Effects, Combatants, Timeline, & Facts

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Hundred Years’ War, intermittent struggle between England and France in the 14th–15th century over a series of disputes, including the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown. By convention it is said to have lasted from 1337 to 1453, but there had been periodic fighting since the…

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The Hundred Years' War

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The name the Hundred Years' War has been used by historians since the beginning of the nineteenth century to describe the long conflict that pitted the kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to 1453. Two factors lay at the origin of the conflict: first, the status of the duchy of Guyenne (or Aquitaine)-though it belonged to the kings of England, it remained a fief of the French crown, and the kings of England wanted independent possession; second, as the closest relatives of the last direct Capetian king (Charles IV, who had died in 1328), the kings of England from 1337 claimed the crown of France.

Theoretically, the French kings, possessing the financial and military resources of the most populous and powerful state in western Europe, held the advantage over the smaller, more sparsely populated English kingdom. However, the expeditionary English army, well disciplined and successfully using their longbows to stop cavalry charges, proved repeatedly victorious over much larger French forces: significant victories occurred by sea at Sluys (1340), and by land at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). In 1360, King John of France, in order to save his title, was forced to accept the Treaty of Calais, which granted complete independence to the duchy of Guyenne, now considerably enlarged to include almost a third of France. However, his son Charles V, with the help of his commander in chief Bertrand du Guesclin, by 1380 had succeeded in reconquering almost all the ceded territory, notably by a series of sieges.

After a hiatus, Henry V of England renewed the war and proved victorious at Agincourt (1415), conquered Normandy (1417-1418), and then attempted to have himself crowned as the future king of France by the Treaty of Troyes (1420). But his military successes were not matched by political successes: although allied with the dukes of Burgundy, the majority of the French refused English domination. Thanks to Joan of Arc, the siege of Orleans was lifted (1429). Then Paris and the lle-de-France were liberated (1436-1441), and after the French army had been reorganized and reformed (1445-1448), Charles VII recaptured the duchy of Normandy (the Battle of Formigny, 1450), and then seized Guyenne (the Battle of Castillon, 1453). The end of the conflict was never marked by a peace treaty but died out because the English recognized that the French troops were too strong to be directly confronted.

English territory in France, which had been extensive since 1066 (see Hastings, Battle of) now remained confined to the Channel port of Calais (lost in 1558). France, at last free of the English invaders, resumed its place as the dominant state of western Europe.

The Reader's Companion to Military History. Edited by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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The name the Hundred Years' War has been used by historians since the beginning of the nineteenth century to describe the long conflict that pitted the kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to 1453.

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Norman Conquest

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Harold Godwinson

Harald Hardrada

William of Normandy

When Edward the Confessor died, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex , was immediately crowned king and became Harold II. The royal council, known as the Witan , supported him. He gathered an army to defend the kingdom.

Edgar Ethling was Edward's closest direct relative, but this was a distant connection as he was Edward's father's grandson by his first marriage. Edgar was weak and lacked credibility due to being a child in exile in Hungary.

Harald Hardrada was king of Norway. He invaded Yorkshire with a fleet of ships, but was defeated and killed by Harold's army at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

While Harold II was in the north of England fighting Hardrada, William, Duke of Normandy invaded Sussex. Harold rushed back south to fight him.

On 14 October 1066, Harold II fought William's army at the Battle of Hastings and lost. Harold was killed, perhaps with an arrow in his eye - although this is disputed by some historians.

William was crowned king of England on Christmas Day 1066, but it took years more fighting to conquer the whole country. His cruellest campaign was the 'Harrying of the North' in 1069, where he slaughtered the inhabitants of the north-east and destroyed their food stores so that even the survivors starved to death.

The Norman Conquest changed the face of England forever. William ruled as unquestioned conqueror and the Saxons became merely an unpaid workforce for their new lords (see ). The feudal system and the Domesday Book

The Norman Conquest also changed the history of Europe - adding the wealth of England to the military might of Normandy made the joint-kingdom a European super-power.

In warfare, it was the start of the age of the knight-on-horseback.

You may wish to compare the Norman Conquest with the Glorious Revolution, covered in the UK government through time , the only other successful invasion in England's history after AD1000 - they were very different.

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BBC Bitesize - KS3 History - The Norman Conquest - Revision 1

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Harold Godwinson Harald Hardrada William of Normandy When Edward the Confessor died, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex , was immediately crowned king and became Harold II. The royal council, known as the Witan , supported him. He gathered an army to defend the kingdom.

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Norman Conquest

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The story of how Duke William of Normandy invaded England in 1066 and effectively ended Anglo-Saxon rule in Britain.

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Norman Conquest

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What was the Norman Conquest?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Norman Conquest, the military conquest of England by William, duke of Normandy, primarily effected by his decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066) and resulting ultimately in profound political, administrative, and social changes in the British Isles.

Invasion of England

The conquest was the final act of a complicated drama that had begun years earlier, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, last king of the Anglo-Saxon royal line. Edward, who had almost certainly designated William as his successor in 1051, was involved in a childless marriage and used his lack of an heir as a diplomatic tool, promising the throne to different parties throughout his reign, including Harold Godwineson, later Harold II, the powerful earl of Wessex. The exiled Tostig, who was Harold's brother, and Harald III Hardraade, king of Norway, also had designs on the throne and threatened invasion. Amid this welter of conflicting claims, Edward from his deathbed named Harold his successor on January 5, 1066, and Harold was crowned king the following day. However, Harold's position was compromised, according to the Bayeux Tapestry and other Norman sources, because in 1064 he had sworn an oath, in William's presence, to defend William's right to the throne.

From almost the beginning of his reign, Harold faced challenges to his authority. Tostig began raiding the southern and eastern coasts of England in May, eventually joining forces with Harald III. Harold was able to keep his militia on guard throughout the summer but dismissed it early in September, when he ran out of supplies and his peasant soldiers needed to return to their fields for the harvest. This left the south without defenses, exposing it to invasion by William. Before William arrived, however, Harald III and Tostig invaded in the north; Harold hastened to Yorkshire, where at Stamford Bridge (September 25) he won a smashing victory in which both Harald III and Tostig perished.

Meanwhile, on the Continent, William had secured support for his invasion from both the Norman aristocracy and the papacy. By August 1066 he had assembled a force of 4,000-7,000 knights and foot soldiers, but unfavourable winds detained his transports for eight weeks. Finally, on September 27, while Harold was occupied in the north, the winds changed, and William crossed the Channel immediately. Landing in Pevensey on September 28, he moved directly to Hastings. Harold, hurrying southward with about 7,000 men, approached Hastings on October 13. Surprised by William at dawn on October 14, Harold drew up his army on a ridge 10 miles (16 km) to the northwest.

Harold's wall of highly trained infantry held firm in the face of William's mounted assault; failing to breach the English lines and panicked by the rumour of William's death, the Norman cavalry fled in disorder. But William, removing his helmet to show he was alive, rallied his troops, who turned and killed many English soldiers. As the battle continued, the English were gradually worn down; late in the afternoon, Harold was killed (by an arrow in the eye, according to the Bayeux Tapestry), and by nightfall the remaining English had scattered and fled. William then made a sweeping advance to isolate London, and at Berkhamstead the major English leaders submitted to him. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066. Sporadic indigenous revolts continued until 1071; the most serious, in Northumbria (1069-70), was suppressed by William himself, who then devastated vast tracts of the north. The subjection of the country was completed by the rapid building of a great number of castles.

Consequences of the conquest

The extent and desirability of the changes brought about by the conquest have long been disputed by historians. Certainly, in political terms, William's victory destroyed England's links with Scandinavia, bringing the country instead into close contact with the Continent, especially France. Inside England the most radical change was the introduction of land tenure and military service. While tenure of land in return for services had existed in England before the conquest, William revolutionized the upper ranks of English society by dividing the country among about 180 Norman tenants-in-chief and innumerable mesne (intermediate) tenants, all holding their fiefs by knight service. The result, the almost total replacement of the English aristocracy with a Norman one, was paralleled by similar changes of personnel among the upper clergy and administrative officers.

Anglo-Saxon England had developed a highly organized central and local government and an effective judicial system ( see Anglo-Saxon law). All these were retained and utilized by William, whose coronation oath showed his intention of continuing in the English royal tradition. The old administrative divisions were not superseded by the new fiefs, nor did feudal justice normally usurp the customary jurisdiction of shire and hundred courts. In them and in the king's court, the common law of England continued to be administered. Innovations included the new but restricted body of "forest law" and the introduction in criminal cases of the Norman trial by combat alongside the old Saxon ordeals. Increasing use was made of the inquest procedure-the sworn testimony of neighbours, both for administrative purposes and in judicial cases. A major change was William's removal of ecclesiastical cases from the secular courts, which allowed the subsequent introduction into England of the then rapidly growing canon law.

William also transformed the structure and character of the church in England. He replaced all the Anglo-Saxon bishops, except Wulfstan of Dorchester, with Norman bishops. Most notably, he secured the deposition of Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury-who held his see irregularly and had probably been excommunicated by Pope Leo IX-and appointed in his place Lanfranc of Bec, a respected scholar and one of William's close advisers. Seeking to impose a more orderly structure on the English episcopacy, the king supported Lanfranc's claims for the primacy of Canterbury in the English church. William also presided over a number of church councils, which were held far more frequently than under his predecessors, and introduced legislation against simony (the selling of clerical offices) and clerical marriage. A supporter of monastic reform while duke of Normandy, William introduced the latest reforming trends to England by replacing Anglo-Saxon abbots with Norman ones and by importing numerous monks. Although he founded only a small number of monasteries, including Battle Abbey (in honour of his victory at Hastings), William's other measures contributed to the quickening of monastic life in England.

Probably the most regrettable effect of the conquest was the total eclipse of the English vernacular as the language of literature, law, and administration. Superseded in official documents and other records by Latin and then increasingly in all areas by Anglo-Norman, written English hardly reappeared until the 13th century.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Adam Augustyn.

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Norman Conquest | Definition, Summary, & Facts

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Norman Conquest, the military conquest of England by William, duke of Normandy, primarily effected by his decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066) and resulting ultimately in profound political, administrative, and social changes in the British Isles.

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Scandinavian Invasion

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The influence of Scandinavian in Britain and Ireland can be seen by examining placenames which are of Viking origin. In England these are mostly in the Danelaw. In Scotland they are found on Shetland and Orkney as well as the north-west of the mainland with the offshore islands.

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Scandinavian Invasion

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English is a Germanic language, as are German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. Near the end of the Old English period English underwent a third foreign influence, the result of contact with another important language, the Scandinavian.The age of Vikings, starting around year 750 AD, had an important role in the making of modern Europe. The Scandinavian colonisation of the British Isles had a considerable effect on the English language and vocabulary, as well as culture. There are many hundreds of Scandinavian place-names that can still be found in the British Isles, an endings such as -by, -ness, and -thorp, are some typical Scandinavian place-name elements. The Vikings had a influence on the English language itself, judging by the amount of words that were borrowed and the fact that they are part of everyday vocabulary even today.

Began in the eigth century a change, possibly economic, possibly political ocurred in the area and proveked among them a spirit of unrest and adventurous enterprise. They began a series of attacks upon all the lands adjacent to the North Sea and the Baltic. Their activities began in plunder and ended in conquest. The Danes were the group who founded the dukedom of Normandy and finally conquered England. The period of their activity, extending from the middle of the eight century to the beginning of the eleventh, is popularly known as the Viking Age.
2. THE SCANDINAVIAN INVASION OF ENGLAND.
The Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth century to the eleventh, with the Viking attacks on Europe beginning around 750 AD (Barber 1993:127). The Scandinavians were excellent sailors, and they had impressive ships and navigational However, the Vikings were mostly seen as barbaric warriors, rather than tradesmen, and the areas of western Europe that suffered the most from Viking attacks were Britain and Ireland.
There are several possible reasons why the Scandinavians took to the sea and headed for the British Isles; one might have been overpopulation in the harsh and poor landscape of the north.

Another reason was that in the old Scandinavian society it was customary to leave inheritances to the eldest son, which led to the younger sons wanting to seek their fortune elsewhere, perhaps at sea. However, the major reason might have been the fall of the Frisians, who were, until the late eighth century, the greatest maritime power of North-West Europe. This opened up the sea-routes and thus enabled the Scandinavians to travel south (Barber 1993:127).

The first Viking attacks on England took place around 800 AD and started as merely plundering raids, but some fifty years later the attacks had become more serious and groups had even started spending the winters in Britain (128). Previously these expeditions had been seasonal; winter was not a good time for war or travel, neither by sea nor by land. They found that winters in the south were milder, there was plenty of good land to take and, of course, the seas stayed open, so there was no reason to return home.

3. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE DANES IN ENGLAND.

From around 800 AD waves of Danish assaults on the coastlines of the British Isles were gradually followed by a succession of Danish settlerss. Danish raiders first began to settle in England strting in 865, when brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless wintered in East Anglia. They soon moved north and in 867 captured Northumbria and it´s capital, York.

Some indication of their number may be had from the fact that more than 1,400 places in England bear Scandinavian names.

The area occupied by the Danelaw was roughly the area to the north of a line drawn between London and Chester, excluding the portion of Northumbria to the east of the Pennines.

Five fortified towns became particularly important in the Danelaw: Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Lincoln.

The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be seen in the North of England and the East Midlands, and is particularly evident in place-names: name endings such as -howe, -by ("village") or "thorp" ("hamlet") having Norse origins. There seems to be a remarkable number of Kirby/Kirkby names, some with remains of Anglo-Saxon building indicating both a Norse origin and early church building Scandinavian names blended with the English -ton give rise to typical hybrid place-names.

Old East Norse and Old English were still somewhat mutually comprehensible. The contact between these languages in the Danelaw caused the incorporation of many Norse words into the English language, including the word law itself, sky and window, and the third person plural pronouns she, they, them and their. Many Old Norse words still survive in the dialects of Northeastern England.

Four of the five boroughs became country towns - of the counties of Leicestershire, Linconlnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. However, Stamford failed to gain such status-perhaps because of the nearby autonomous territory of Rutland.

4. THE AMALGAMATION OF THE TWO PEOPLES.

The amalgamation of the two peoples was greatly facilitated by the close kinship that existed between them. The policy of the English kings in the period when they were re-establishing their control over the Danelaw was to accept as an established fact the mixed population of the district and to devise a modus vivendi for its people. In this effort they were aided by the natural adaptability of the Scandinavian.
The Danes assimlated to most of the ways of English life. Many of them early accepted Christianity.
But these large centres and the multitude of smaller communities where the Northmen gradually settled were absorbed later into the general mass of the English population.
5. THE RELATION OF THE TWO LANGUAGES.
The relation between the tow languages in the distric settled by the Danes is a matter of inference rather than exact knowledge. Although in some places the Scandinavians gave up their language early there were certainly communities in with Danish or Norse remained for some time the usual language.

6. THE TEST OF BORROWED WORDS.

The similarity between Old English and the language of the Scandinavian invaders makes it at ties very difficult to decide whether a given words in Modern English is a native or a borrowed word. Many of the more common words of the two languages were identical. The most reliable test depends upon differences in the development of certain sounds in the North Germanic and West Germanic areas. While native words like ship, shall, fish have sh in Modern English, words borrowed from the Scandinavian are generally still pronounced sk: sky, skin, skill, bask, whisk.
7. SCANDINAVIAN PLACE-NAMES.

One very noticeable difference between the area where the Scandinavians settled and the rest of England is the hundreds of place-names with Scandinavian origin in the Danelaw.

The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was threefold: over a thousand words eventually became part of Standard English; numerous places in the East and North-east of England have Danish names; and many English personal names are of Scandinavian origin. Scandinavian words that entered the English language included landing, score, beck, fellow, take, busting, and steersman.

The vast majority of loan words did not appear in documents until the early twelfth century; these included many modern words which used sk- sounds, such as skirt, sky, and skin; other words appearing in written sources at this time included again, awkward, birth, cake, dregs, fog, freckles, gasp, law, moss, neck, ransack, root, scowl, sister, seat, sly, smile, want, weak, and window. Some of the words that came into use are among the most common in English, such as both, same, get, and give.

The system of personal pronouns was affected, with they, them, and their replacing the earlier forms. Old Norse influenced the verb to be; the replacement of sindon by are is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin, as is the third-person-singular ending -s in the present tense of verbs.

There are more than 1,500 Scandinavian place names in England, mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (within the former boundaries of the Danelawmarker): over 600 end in -by, the Scandinavian word for "village" or "town" - for example Grimsby, Naseby, and Whitby; many others end in -thorpe ("farm"), -thwaite ("clearing"), and -toft ("homestead").

However, it is important to remember that the Vikings did not populate all the places with Scandinavian names in the Danelaw. It is possible that the Anglo-Saxons adopted their naming tradition and, similarly, places were often renamed; thus, we cannot count on the place-name when deciding whether a place was originally a Scandinavian settlement.
Townend (2002:48) discusses three possible scenarios concerning place-names where there is
contact between speakers of two different languages:
1. The speakers of the incoming language may use the names they encounter without changing them.
2. The incomers may coin their own names, unrelated to the existing ones.
3. The incomers may adapt the names they encounter, to suit their own speech habits.
Concerning the Anglo-Scandinavian relationship, all three possibilities were probably in use, but it is the third option that appears to be the most common one. Speakers then either change the phonetic sounds in the foreign name, or translate the name into their own language, by sound or by element.

The distribution of family names showing Scandinavian influence is still, as an analysis of names ending in -son reveals, concentrated in the north and east, corresponding to areas of former Viking settlement. Early medieval records indicate that over 60% of personal names in Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire showed Scandinavian influence.

8. SCANDINAVIAN LOANWORDS AND THEIR CHARACTER.

Naturally, the massive migration and settlement that the Scandinavians undertook led to extensive use of the Norse tongue in the area of the Danelaw, and we can see evidence of it even today through its influences on the English language. Scandinavian vocabulary penetrated nearly every area of the language (Jones 1984:422), but most words of Scandinavian origin in English are concrete everyday words. A few examples follow here:
o The nouns bank, birth, booth, egg, husband, law, leg, root, score, sister, skin, trust, wing and window.
o The adjectives awkward, flat, happy, ill, loose, low, odd, sly, ugly, weak, and wrong.
o The verbs to cast, clip, crawl, cut, die, drown, gasp, give, lift, nag, scare, sprint, take, and want. And of course the present plural of 'to be', are.
o The pronouns both, same, they, them and their A few examples of later borrowings from the Scandinavian languages are fjord, saga, ski, slalom, smorgasbord and viking.
The fact that even the pronouns 'they', 'them' and 'their' were accepted into the language shows what massive effectsthe Viking settlement had. Of course, since the development of the Old English pronouns had led to them being very similar and a cause of ambiguity and misunderstandings, it was easy to accept the Norse varian. Nevertheless, it is very unusual that grammatical items are borrowed.

It can be difficult to recognise the Scandinavian words since the languages are so closely related; many words that look Scandinavian are actually native English words. For instance, arm, foot, tree, cow, stone, land, eat, and drink are all recorded in early Old English .

Odenstedt continues by mentioning certain ways to decide whether a word is a Scandinavian loan:
1. Germanic /sk/ became /∫ / (sh) in all positions. This change occurred later in Scandinavia, and therefore words like shall, shoulder and shirt are native English words whereas skin, sky and skirt are Scandinavian words.
2. In early Old English the Germanic /g/ before front vowels became /j/, and /k/ became /t/. In Old Norse /g/ and /k/ remained. Thus, child, choose and yield are all native words, while give, gift, kid and kindle are Scandinavian.
3. Date of first appearance. For instance, the Old English word for 'take' was niman, but in late Old English tacan is found. The Old Norse word was taka, which shows that it must have been borrowed from the Scandinavians. In the same way, the word for 'law' was originally æ but a later recording is lagu, which comes from Old Norse.
In fact, judging by the large number of Scandinavian words in the legal area, The Vikings had a considerable impact upon the law and order of the Anglo-Saxons. Some examples are fellow ('partner'), law, and outlaw. Even more Scandinavian words related to the legal area existed in Old English but were later replaced. Not only did the Scandinavian peoples bring their laws and customs to the Danelaw, but their view on law and legal custom was to a great extent acknowledged by all of England.

9. THE RELATION BETWEEN BORROWED AND NATIVE WORDS.

It will be seen from the words in the above lists that in many cases the new words could have supplied no real need in the English vocabulary.
They made their way into English simply as the result of the mixture of the two peoples. The Scandinavian and the English words were being used side by side, and the survival of one or the other must often have been a matter of chance. Under such circumstances a number of things might happen:

a) Where words in the two languages coincides more or less in form and meaning, the modern word stands at the same time for both its English and Scandinavian ancestors.
b) Where there were differences of form, the English words often survived.
Some confusion must have existed in the Danish area between the Scandinavian and the English form of many words, a confusion that is clearly betrayed in the survival of such hybrid forms as shriek and screech. All this merely goes to show that in the Scandinavian influence on the English language we have to do with the intimate mingling of the two tongues. The results are just what we should expect when two rather similar languages are spoken for upwards of two centuries in the same area.

10. PERIOD AND EXTENT OF INFLUENCE.
It is possible to estimate the extent of the Scandinavian influence by the number of borrowed words that exist in Standard English. That number is about 900.
These are almost always words designating common everyday things and fundamental concepts. There are, according to Wright, the editor of the English Dialect Dictionary, thousands of Scandinavian words that are still a part of the everyday speech of people in the north and east of England and in a sense are much as part of the living language as those that are used in other parts of the country and have made their way into literature.
Locally, at least, the Scandinavian influence was tremendous. The period during which this large Danish element was making its way into English was doubtless the tenth and eleventh centuries. This was the time in which the merging of the two people was taking place.

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The Scandinavian Invasion: The Viking Age

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English is a Germanic language, as are German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. Near the end of the Old English period English underwent a third foreign influence, the result of contact with another important language, the Scandinavian.The age of Vikings, starting around year 750 AD, had an important role in the making of modern Europe.

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Scandinavian Invasion

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The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was threefold: over a thousand words eventually became part of Standard English; numerous places in the East and North-east of England have Danish names; and many English personal names are of Scandinavian origin. Scandinavian words that entered the English language included landing, score, beck, fellow, take, busting, and steersman.The vast majority of loan words did not appear in documents until the early 12th century; these included many modern words which used sk- sounds, such as skirt, sky, and skin; other words appearing in written sources at this time included again, awkward, birth, cake, dregs, fog, freckles, gasp, law, moss, neck, ransack, root, scowl, sister, seat, sly, smile, want, weak, and window from Old Norse meaning "wind-eye". Some of the words that came into use are among the most common in English, such as to go, to come, to sit, to listen, to eat, both, same, get, and give. The system of personal pronouns was affected, with they, them, and their replacing the earlier forms. Old Norse influenced the verb to be; the replacement of sindon by are is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin, as is the third-person-singular ending -s in the present tense of verbs.
There are more than 1,500 Scandinavian place names in England, mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (within the former boundaries of the Danelaw): over 600 end in -by, the Scandinavian word for "village" or "town" - for example Grimsby, Naseby, and Whitby; many others end in -thorpe ("farm"), -thwaite ("clearing"), and -toft ("homestead").
The distribution of family names showing Scandinavian influence is still, as an analysis of names ending in-son reveals, concentrated in the north and east, corresponding to areas of former Viking settlement. Early medieval records indicate that over 60% of personal names in Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire showed Scandinavian influence.

Extract from wikipedia.org

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The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was threefold: over a thousand words eventually became part of Standard English; numerous places in the East and North-east of England have Danish names; and many English personal names are of Scandinavian origin.

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Roman Invasion

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This article was first published in the April 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine
The Roman invasion of Britain is an old, old story. However, the reconstruction and display of the Hallaton helmet - a ceremonial Roman helmet found in an Iron Age shrine - in 2012 reminds us that relations between the invaders and the Britons were more complex than we normally imagine. Did Britons really, as the helmet's discovery implies, fight side by side with the Romans against their own people? Why might they have swapped their loyalties? And, even with local support, was it really an easy ride for the Romans?

By combining the latest archaeological discoveries - such as the Hallaton helmet - with reports written by ancient historians, we can piece together the events and motives of the time. From these, startling questions arise: were the Britons more prepared than the Romans who first marched into this unexplored world? And what opportunities for personal advancement did some Britons seize, while others continued to put up such a determined resistance that, in 400 years of Roman occupation, Britain never truly lost its identity as a military frontier province? Just what was the real story?

Why did Caesar only come, look and leave again?

Rome first invaded Britain back in 55 BC. Julius Caesar had just spent three years conquering Gaul, but he knew that Britons were supporting the Gallic resistance there. A punitive attack to put the interfering Britons in their place was due. He intended not only to prove Rome's might, but to return laden with booty and with military and political glory for himself - for the invasion and the conquest of a new, untamed land was an accepted traditional route to political success.

So he led two legions across the channel and arrived on the south coast of Britain in August 55 BC. However, the tidal waters at Deal made it impossible to beach his ships and his army was forced to wade ashore in full armour, leaving them in no state to meet the local warriors who were waiting for them. The Romans survived but victory eluded both sides because the Britons used guerrilla tactics and avoided a pitched battle of the kind that the Roman army was accustomed to.

When the weather worsened and the Roman fleet was virtually destroyed in a storm, Caesar retreated and limped homehaving underestimated the resistance he would meet. He returned the following year, 54 BC, for a face-saving expedition, this time with more soldiers and the addition of cavalry to counter the Britons' devastating, whirling war chariots. Shocked, the Britons buried their differences and united together under Cassivellaunus, the king of the Catuvellauni tribe. Tribal enmities proved too ingrained though and Cassivellaunus was betrayed: Caesar extracted tribute and eventually returned triumphant to Rome, but he never came back to Britain.

What led Claudius to invade?

It was nearly 100 years before Rome invaded Britain again. After Caesar's expedition, the geographer Strabo had written, rather defensively perhaps, that "although the Romans could have held Britain, they scorned to do so, because they saw that there was nothing at all to fear from the Britons (for they are not strong enough to cross over and attack us), and", he continued, "they saw that there was no corresponding advantage to be gained by seizing and holding their country".

Nonetheless, the limping, trembling and militarily inexperienced Emperor Claudius knew (like Caesar) that he needed military success to thrive in power, and that a prestigious invasion could provide him with the greatest honour any Roman could hope for: a triumphal procession in Rome and all the glory and popularity that went with it. A victorious invasion of a barbarian land would also serve to boost Roman morale and to distract from troubles at home.

He was well equipped. Three years earlier, Emperor Caligula had drafted legions specially to invade Britain but had never used them. They were idle and dangerously restless, so, when a request for help came from Verica of the Atrebates tribe (who had been ousted from power by Caratacus, king of the Catuvellauni tribe), Claudius was ready.

How did the invasion commence in AD 43?

The emperor gave command of the invasion to the general Aulus Plautius, who led legions, cavalry and auxiliary troops across to Britain. They arrived unopposed in three groups - though it is not clear where they landed: Richborough and the Solent have been suggested - defeated Catuvellaunian attacks and reached a river, perhaps the Medway or the Thames. The Britons were carelessly encamped on the west side, thinking the Roman army couldn't cross the fast, wide river without a bridge, but the Romans had recruited Celts who were practiced at swimming in full armour. These auxiliary troops crossed to the enemy camp and maimed the horses that drew the formidable battle chariots. The Roman advance towards London continued and the Catuvellaunian king Caratacus fled to Wales (where he instigated opposition to Rome for years).

No other tribe could come close to the military strength of the Catuvellauni and, one by one, they surrendered to Rome. Aulus Plautius now sent a message to Claudius, inviting him to come to Britain and to personally make a triumphal entry into Colchester. Some weeks later, Claudius arrived, together with war elephants. This wasn't just for show, for their smell was known to drive enemy horses mad and the Britons' skill in chariots was likely to be a real threat, even now. Colchester was taken, and Claudius declared Britain conquered. After just 16 days, he headed home to receive the applause and glory of a triumphal entry into Rome. Plautius was left to consolidate the conquest across the rest of Britain.

How strong was the Roman army?

Aulus Plautius commanded perhaps up to 40,000 professional soldiers in Britain. This army's true strength, though, lay not just in numbers or in the mix of regular legionaries and skilled auxiliaries but in the way the soldiers trained together, spent their adult lives in military service together and, following precise orders, fought in a disciplined and controlled manner. The Britons, on the other hand, were fierce warriors who fought for individual honour, as and when required.

The contrasts were highly visual too: the Romans were heavily armoured (one legionary alone probably wore more iron in his helmet, breastplate and weaponry than most Britons saw in their lifetime) and they advanced as a unified whole, shields protecting neighbours, and with short, stabbing swords that encouraged close teamwork and close combat. The Britons, however - so the Romans tell us - looked more like beasts than men: they howled battle shrieks and cries and fearlessly stripped off for battle, painted themselves with the blue dye of the woad plant, and caked their long wild hair and tousled beards and moustaches with limed water into white spikes. They excelled at ambushes and quick strikes, and fought so skilfully that they could launch spears and wield shields and swords at full gallop, leap on and off the chariots at speed, and even in mid-battle stand on the pole and run up and down from the chariot to the rugged but agile ponies.

The Romans' speed was more measured: despite the weight of equipment they carried, they were hardened to long and swift marches, after which they would dig ramparts and set up marching camps each night. They would build strategic wooden (and later stone) forts for a more permanent presence - theirs was no hit and run invasion. The message was clear - they were here to stay.

Did the Britons know the Romans were coming?

The arrival of the Romans was not a surprise to the Britons. Previous contact between them certainly existed: trade had, for decades, brought cultural influences such as coins and amphorae of wine to Britain; some Britons had fought with the Gauls against Rome in Caesar's Gallic War - the military might and ambitions of Rome were not just recognised but had been experienced; and Caesar tells us some tribes, learning of the invasion from traders, sent envoys to him in Gaul to sue for peace.

Nonetheless, the channel must have provided a buffer, a sense of protection, not just for the Romans, but for the Britons too who were engrossed in their own local tribal disputes. The first Romans may have seemed like just another border challenge.

After Caesar's failed incursions, the Britons may even have felt rather superior. It was only the arrival of around 40,000 soldiers in AD 43 that prompted them to work together: either they were shocked into it (and therefore not so prepared after all), or perhaps they had already considered and prepared for the undignified possibility of having to join forces against the common enemy.

What did the Romans think Britain would be like?

The Romans viewed the Britons as deeply barbaric. Rumours of druidic rites and human sacrifices, and tales of enemies being headhunted were so rife that Claudius's soldiers refused to set sail across the channel until his freedman, Narcissus, was sent to shame them into action - it took the humiliation of a telling-off by an ex-slave to overcome their fear and to get them moving. Some 15 years later, Roman soldiers would again be rooted to the spot in terror when attacking the druid stronghold of Anglesey: the Romans were definitely leaving their comfort zone and entering an alien land.

Tacitus, the Roman historian, would express their fear when he imagined a Briton chief pronouncing "our very remoteness, in a land known only to rumour, has, until now, protected us".

It was such rumours of barbarism that inspired the Romans to believe they would be doing these Britons a favour by conquering them, occupying the country and enforcing the civilised ways of Rome on them.

Did the Romans have support from native Britons?

The traditional view of the invasion is a straightforward tale of the organised Romans sailing over, marching across the land, and subduing the primitive Britons. The reality appears less clear-cut.

The Britons' loyalties were divided: a warrior people, they sought status by violently taking other tribes' lands and their people as slaves, and their inability to abandon the traditional in-fighting of these tribal rivalries weakened them and indirectly helped the Romans.

While the Britons were certainly tough and warlike, they were also opportunistic and capable of changing loyalties as it suited them: the cut-throat inter-tribal conflicts often provided the Romans with allies. Celtic soldiers even served in the Roman army, either to help to defeat a tribal enemy or to get ahead personally - a conscious decision to side with the potential winners and to receive a reward (such as the Hallaton helmet, perhaps?). Indeed, some tribal chiefs openly surrendered to the Romans in order to share the victory and to acquire power and status, for being a puppet chief of the Romans would rake in the material benefits and luxuries of the empire and could be preferable to honourable defeat and slaughter.

Despite this, the Britons were no walkover: their warriors' skills in chariot warfare and guerrilla tactics were highly effective in reducing the efficiency of the trained Roman units. It was only in the south-east that the Romans really silenced the opposition.

The Roman conquest of Britain was never a foregone conclusion though: even nearly 20 years on, an excessively heavy Roman rule would prompt the rebellion of the Iceni, led by Queen Boudica, whose followers would raze the new Roman towns of London, St Albans and Colchester to the ground in an uprising in which 70,000 people would be killed before the Romans regained control. Further north and in Wales, the Britons continued to resist violently. They were never really settled or Romanised at ground roots level, and the army remained an active presence throughout the occupation.

Because we talk of 'Roman Britain' we tend to forget that most of Scotland, despite some Roman incursions, remained unconquered and was never truly won over. And Ireland was never invaded. 'Roman Britain' was essentially only Roman England and (less securely) Wales.

When did the invasion finish and the occupation begin?

Claudius considered the occupation of Britain to have begun as soon as Colchester fell: the tribes encountered up to that point had capitulated and he ordered inscriptions to be set up around the empire glorifying his defeat of 11 tribal kings.

There was still much work to be done though. An army headed northwards, from Colchester and the Catuvellauni territories into the Midlands, while Vespasian (the future emperor) led an army west, taking 20 Iron Age forts including Maiden Castle. By AD 47, the Romans held England from the river Humber in the north to the estuary of the river Severn in the south-west. It was a remarkable achievement.The concept of a 'Roman Britain' can be applied only to urban life. It might be said to have existed once the Britons began to accept and adopt Roman ways; when they considered themselves part of the empire and made Rome work to their personal advantage.

The peaceful and thriving south did truly adopt Roman culture, but the north remained a military zone, and Wales was frequently troublesome. Roman Britain was a land linked by a web of forts and military roads and it is telling that, unlike any other Roman provinces, no Briton who ever went to Rome itself made it big there.

Nonetheless, right from the moment when the first British chiefs yielded, Rome's eagle had them in her grip. Roman Britain had tentatively begun and, from now on, the everyday life of urban Britons would look increasingly Roman.

How much do we really know about this story?

The archaeological evidence for the invasion years is sparse, yielding little more than shadows of wooden forts and echoes of violent warfare, such as the artillery bolts that litter Maiden Castle. This is why the Hallaton helmet, ritually buried at a Leicestershire Iron Age shrine within a mere two years of AD 43, is so important. This rich gift from Rome, heavy with 'victory' symbols, suggests serious collaboration by the locals.

Of course, it could have been stolen, a trophy of a raid, but archaeology combines with Roman literature (there were no writers in the illiterate British Iron Age) to reveal that some ambitious Britons were quick to seize opportunities for personal advancement. The Greek historian of Rome, Cassius Dio, recorded that Celtic soldiers served in the Roman army, but even before Claudius's invasion, Strabo reckoned that dues from British trade were richer pickings than any invasion might supply.

Through such trade, Roman culture seeped in. Iron Age coins mimicked Roman coinage (one chief's coins bore the image of a Roman-style helmet - an interesting symbol when we consider the Hallaton helmet) and archaeologists found fine Roman dining ware even in the royal huts of the northern Brigantian stronghold at Iron Age Stanwick.

Within a few years of the invasion, buildings like Fishbourne Palace and Brading Villa and towns like London and St Albans would appear, but the Romans didn't have it all their own way. Even as victors they recorded continuing tales of frightened Roman soldiers and terrifying resistance. The Britons were clearly fierce, headstrong and independently minded.

Rome may have declared herself the master of Britain, but many Britons made Rome serve their own purposes. As more details, like the Hallaton helmet, emerge from archaeology, each new clue adds to the complex and fascinating story that is the Roman invasion of Britain.
Gillian Hovell is the author of Roman Britain (Crimson Publishing, 2012). For more information, visit www.muddyarchaeologist.co.uk

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The Roman invasion: Whose side were the Britons on?

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The display of the Hallaton helmet reconstruction in 2012 sparked debate about how far Britons colluded with the Romans on their invasion in AD 43. Here, Gillian Hovell considers this and other key questions about the start of the Roman occupation

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Roman Invasion

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The Roman invasion of Britain was a determined military and political effort to project Roman power in the Northeastern Atlantic.

Although Julius Caesar had visited Britain in 55BC (Before the birth of Christ) and reported that the soil was good, there was plenty of food and people that could be used as slaves, the Romans did not have a large enough army to invade and conquer Britain.

It was AD (Anno Domini [after the birth of Christ]) 43 before the Romans, under the Emperor Claudius, were ready to conquer Britain.

The Romans crossed the Channel from Boulogne and set up a base at Richborough in Kent. Different legions were sent to conquer different parts of Southern Britain. The 2nd legion set up their first base at Fishbourne, near Chichester in Sussex, then continued to Exeter where they set up their main base. The 20th legion, established their base at Colchester, the 14th legion at Leicester and the 9th at Longthorpe near Peterborough. Eleven British Kings surrendered to Claudius immediately while King Caratacus was easily defeated by the 20th legion and escaped to Wales.

By AD 47 half the country had been conquered but some Kings, like Caratacus still resisted the Romans. Caratacus lost another battle to the Romans near the river Severn in AD 51 but escaped again and hid in the camp of the Brigantes tribe. However, the Queen of the Brigantes told the Romans that Caratacus was hiding with them. The Romans captured Caratacus and sent him to Rome as a slave.

In AD 60, King Prastagus of the Iceni tribe, who had signed a peace treaty with the Romans, died. His wife, Boudicca, became Queen and intended to remain at peace with the Romans. However, the Romans said that all Prastagus's land and possessions now belonged to them. They attacked the Iceni tribe, took their land and Prastagus's two daughters. Boudicca was not happy and planned revenge on the Romans.

Boudicca joined forces with the Trinovantes and together they raised an army to fight the Romans. Boudicca's army captured and burned London, Colchester and St Albans. The Romans were forced to raise the largest army they had ever had to defeat Queen Boudicca. The Romans killed anyone who had fought them. Boudicca poisoned herself to prevent the Romans from capturing her.

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The Romans - Invasion of Britain - History

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The Roman invasion of Britain was a determined military and political effort to project Roman power in the Northeastern Atlantic. Although Julius Caesar had visited Britain in 55BC (Before the birth of Christ) and reported that the soil was good, there was plenty of food and people that could be used as slaves, the Romans did not have a large enough army to invade and conquer Britain.

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Roman Invasion

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Caesar's Summer Vacation
In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar, then general of the Roman armies in Gaul, decided that it would be a good move to try a little summer invasion of Britiain. It may have been a move intended to gain prestige back home in Rome, but it was a move that made sense. The Celts in Gaul had been receiving aid from their close relations in southern England. British Celts may even have fought with related tribes in Gaul against the Romans. Certainly J. C. complained that defeated Gauls would slip away to Britain to regroup. Tackling the British Celts made sense in the battle to secure Gaul for Rome.

Caesar's invasion proved successful but inconclusive. Landing in present day Kent, he did battle with several tribes that summer, and did very well, thank you. The following summer he returned for more, easily defeating the first real historical British figure we know of, King Cassivellaunus. Remember that British "kings" at this time were really no more than tribal chiefs. There was no such thing as a unified "Britain", and there was no such thing as a unified Celtic army to meet the Roman advance.

Julius Caesar left after two summers fighting, exacting a promise of tribute from the defeated tribes, but it was not for another century that Rome would try to extend its influence in England. In the meantime, however, the contacts between the Roman Empire and Celtic Britain grew. Trade flourished, and it is suggested that some Celtic princes were sent to Rome to be educated.

One important social change that occurred at this time was that kingship became hereditary, rather than a post awarded to the best war leader. This change was to have disastrous consequences; several princes fled to Rome to appeal for help in succession squabbles. Rome was happy to use this as a convenient excuse for invasion.

The Pretext
In 43 A.D. Claudius became Emperor of Rome. Needing a public relations coup to secure his tenuous position (nothing ever changes in politics, does it?) he decided to revive the dream of expanding the Empire to the British Isles. The pretext was conveniently provided by Caratacus, king of the Catavellauni tribe. Caratacus invaded the territories of the Atrebates, whose king, Verica, fled to Rome and appealed for help. Claudius was quite happy to respond.

Britain was regarded with some mystical awe by the Romans, and at first Claudius' troops, 40,000 of them, refused to disembark from the invasion boats. Once they screwed up their courage, however, they made a good job of it, sweeping up from the landing place at Richborough in modern Kent in a three pronged attack. We know more about the southern prong, at least partly because it was commanded by a future Emperor of Rome, Vespasian.

The fight in the South
Vespasian's 2nd Legion marched through Sussex and Hampshire, the lands of the Atrebates, who were friendly to Rome, meeting their first real opposition from the Durotriges tribe in Dorset. They overran the hill fort of Hod Hill, and in an unusual move, built their military camp in one corner of the enclosure, where it can be seen today. Then they pushed on to present day Exeter, capturing twenty hill forts in all.

Maiden Castle
A grim reminder of this invasion is still to be seen at Maiden Castle in Dorset, where the Romans left behind a war cemetery full of enemy remains. The Celtic inhabitants had attempted to defend the fort with the aid of some 54,000 sling stones brought up from Chesil Beach, but this primitive artillery was no match for the discipline and experience of the Roman legions.

The two other prongs of attack pushed towards north Wales and north to York. By summer Claudius himself was able to land and receive the submission of twelve chieftains.

Tribal Troubles
The plan at first was to limit the conquest to the lowlands of modern England, so a border was established by 47 A.D. along the route of the Fosse Way, the great Roman road running from Exeter to Lincoln. It was a nice idea, but the Romans weren't through dealing with their old friend Caratacus, who had fled to Wales. With the help of the Silures in the south-east and the Ordovices in the north, Caratacus made life on the frontier unpleasant. The Romans had little choice but to deal the troublesome tribes.

Caratacus and his warriors were defeated in a battle near Snowdonia in 51 A.D., and Caratacus himself fled north to the territory of the Brigantes. The Brigantian Queen, Cartimandua, hopeful of staying on good terms with the Romans and keeping her own territories in the bargain, promptly handed him over to the invaders. He was sent to Rome and publicly displayed as a prisoner. There he is said to have uttered the lines, "Why do you, with all these grand possessions, still covet our poor huts?"

The new capital (s)
The first Roman capital of the new province of Britannia was at Colchester. It didn't take the Romans long, however, to realize the strategic importance of the Thames river as a communication and transport highway. A small existing settlement was built up to become a trade and administrative centre. The Romans called it Londinium. We know it today as London.

London became the hub at the centre of a major network of roads built primarily to serve troop movement and administrative communication. Not entirely by accident they also served the expansion of trade that quickly made London the most important town, and eventually the capital, of the new province of Brittania.

Client Kingdoms
The Romans followed the formula in Britain that had been so successful elsewhere; rather than try to conquer with force, they established "client kingdoms" on the borders of territory they directly controlled. Basically this meant that certain Celtic tribes, in return for not being overrun, agreed to ally themselves to Rome. Treaties with tribes in the north and in East Anglia created buffers on the frontiers while the process of mopping up resistance continued.

Dealing with the druids
Part of this mopping up took the form of eradicating the Druids. By the standards of their time the Romans could be tolerant of the religions of the peoples they conquered. However, the Druids represented not just a religious hierarchy, but real political and administrative authority among the Celts. And to give the Romans their due, they seem to have been genuinely horrified by what they considered the grisly and uncivilized practices of the Druids.

The Romans were big on the benefits of the civilization they were bringing to the people they conquered. They saw themselves as on a mission to expand the Empire and bring the Roman way of life to all the poor souls bereft of its benefits. Curiously, this is the same attitude later employed by those who built the British Empire.

MORE Roman Britain:
Back: Celtic Britain
Next: Boudicca's Revolt

Also see " Roman London" in our " London History" section, and our map of Roman London. See also Roman attractions - places to see tagged with 'Roman')

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Caesar's Summer Vacation In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar, then general of the Roman armies in Gaul, decided that it would be a good move to try a little summer invasion of Britiain. It may have been a move intended to gain prestige back home in Rome, but it was a move that made sense.

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German Invasion

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1919 - 1925 A family business

Life returns to normal after the war and Otto manages the family owned bank. As Germany's Weimar Republic is plunged into an economic and political crisis, civilian unrest increases and the seeds for the Nazi party and Hitler's rise to power are sown.

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Life returns to normal after the war and Otto manages the family owned bank. As Germany's Weimar Republic is plunged into an economic and political crisis, civilian unrest increases and the seeds for the Nazi party and Hitler's rise to power are sown.

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German Invasion

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Germanic and French influences on the English language, 5th-13th centuries:
English is a Germanic language. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes who invaded England 5 th century were Germanic peoples. The Vikings, who raided and settled in parts of England from the 8 th until the 11 th centuries spoke Old Norse, which was also a Germanic language. The Vikings contributed many words to the English language. Nonetheless, Old English, the form of English spoken in England from the 5 th until the 10 th century was primarily derived from the German of Anglo-Saxons.

Many words in the English language also come from Latin, the language of the Romans. During the Middle Ages (500-1000), the clergy was by far the most educated group in society and Latin was the language of the church. The Anglo-Saxons were originally polytheists. Christianity declined after they invaded and settled in England in the 5 th century. In the 6 th century, however, Christian missionaries brought Christianity back to England. The subsequent conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity resulted in many Latin words entering the English language.

The French language is a Romance language heavily derived from Latin, with some influence from the Franks, a Germanic people who conquered what is now France in the 5 th century. The French spoken in Normandy or Norman French, has had a tremendous influence on the English language. Normandy is a region in northwest France along the English channel. Normandy was named after Viking invaders in the 10 th century (Normandy=Northmen). The Vikings settled in Normandy and Viking leader Rollo became the first duke of Normandy, although the Vikings after him in Normandy all came to speak a form of medieval French known as Norman French.

In 1066, William the Duke of Normandy, a descendant of Rollo, defeated an Anglo-Saxon army under Harold of England at the battle of Hastings. Harold was killed in this battle and William became the king of England. In a brutal conquest that killed up to 20% of England's population, William proceeded to wipe out the Anglo-Saxon nobility and replace them with Norman nobles. These Norman nobles spoke Norman French. French remained the language of the king and his court, the nobles and the government from 1066 until the 13th century. It then began to slowly die out and was absorbed into what is now called Middle English. The vast majority of people in England during this period such as peasants were largely Anglo-Saxon and largely retained their language.

Some Norman French words came to replace old Anglo-Saxon words, while other Norman French words were used along with Anglo-Saxon words with the same or similar meaning. As Norman French was the language of the upper class of England for several generations, it was more prestigious. Words in English today that have their origin in either Latin or Norman French are often considered more sophisticated or abstract. By contrast, words in English today with Anglo-Saxon roots that have the same or similar meaning are often seen as more ordinary, common or even more direct. This is due in large part to the fact that Norman French was the language of the elites (e.g. the nobility), while the commoners (e.g. peasants) were Anglo-Saxons. Below are some paired examples of words from modern French and German that illustrate this phenomenon continues to some extent to this day:

French: Apprendre=To learn, similar to the English word apprehend

German: Learnen=To learn

French: Comprendre=To understand, similar to the English word to comprehend

German: Verstanden=To understand

French: Dormir=To sleep, similar to English words dormant, dormitory

German: Schlafen=To sleep

French: Parler=To speech, similar to the English word parliament

German: Sprechen=To speech

French: Penser=To think, similar to the English word pensive

German: Denken=To think

French: Boire=To drink, similar to the English word beverage

German: Trinken=To drink

French: Voire=To see, similar to the English word visual

German: Sehen=To see

French: Chanter=To sing, similar to the English word chant

German: Singen=To sing

French: Porter=To bring, to take, similar to the English word (noun) porter

German: Bringen=To bring

French: Descendre=To go down, similar to the English word descend

German: Fallen=To fall

French: Defendre=To forbid, to ward off, similar to the English word defend

German: Verbotten=To forbid

French: Donner=To give, similar to the English word donation

German: Geben=To give

French: Main=Hand, similar to the English word manual

German: Hand=Hand

French: Doigt=Finger, similar to the English word digital or digit

German: Finger=Finger

French: Pied=Foot, similar to the English word pedal or pedestrian

German: Fuss=Foot

French: Terre=Land, similar to the English word territory or terrestrial

German: Land=Land

French: Poulet=Chicken, similar to the English word poultry

German: Hühner=Chicken, similar to the English word hen

French: Retard=Late or behind schedule

German: Spat=Late

French: Amour=Love, similar to the English word amorous

German: Lieb=Love

French: Le roi (noun)=King, similar to the English words royal and regal

German: Der Koenig (noun)=King

French: Le Vent=Wind, similar to the English word (verb) to vent

German: Wind=Wind

French: Froid=Cold, similar to the English word frigid

German: Kalt=Cold

French: Naissance=Birth, similar to the English word natal

German: Geboren=To be born

In English today, words such as "visual," "terrestrial," "frigid," "comprehend," "pensive," "amorous," "regal" and "beverage" are generally considered more sophisticated ways of expressing the same or similar concepts as words such as "see," "land," "cold," "understand," "think," "love," "king" and "drink."

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Germanic and French influences on the English language

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Germanic and French influences on the English language, 5th-13th centuries: English is a Germanic language. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes who invaded England 5 th century were Germanic peoples. The Vikings, who raided and settled in parts of England from the 8 th until the 11 th centuries spoke Old Norse, which was also a Germanic language.

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German Invasion

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HISTORY > OLD ENGLISH (c. 500 - c. 1100)

Invasions of Germanic Tribes | The Coming of Christianity and Literacy | The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Language | The Vikings | Old English after the Vikings

More important than the Celts and the Romans for the development of the English language, though, was the succession of invasions from continental Europe after the Roman withdrawal. No longer protected by the Roman military against the constant threat from the Picts and Scots of the North, the Celts felt themselves increasingly vulnerable to attack. Around 430AD, the ambitious Celtic warlord Vortigern invited the Jutish brothers Hengest and Horsa (from Jutland in modern-day Denmark), to settle on the east coast of Britain to form a bulwark against sea raids by the Picts, in return for which they were "allowed" to settle in the southern areas of Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

But the Jutes were not the only newcomers to Britain during this period. Other Germanic tribes soon began to make the short journey across the North Sea. The Angles (from a region called Angeln, the spur of land which connects modern Denmark with Germany) gradually began to settle in increasing numbers on the east coast of Britain, particularly in the north and East Anglia. The Frisian people, from the marshes and islands of northern Holland and western Germany, also began to encroach on the British mainland from about 450 AD onwards. Still later, from the 470s, the war-like Saxons (from the Lower Saxony area of north-western Germany) made an increasing number of incursions into the southern part of the British mainland. Over time, these Germanic tribes began to establish permanent bases and to gradually displace the native Celts.

All these peoples all spoke variations of a West Germanic tongue, similar to modern Frisian, variations that were different but probably close enough to be mutually intelligible. The local dialect in Angeln is, at times, even today recognizably similar to English, and it has even more in common with the English of 1,000 years ago. Modern Frisian, especially spoken, bears an eerie resemblance to English, as can be seen by some of the Frisian words which were incorporated into English, like miel (meal), laam (lamb), goes (goose), bter (butter), tsiis (cheese), see (sea), boat (boat), stoarm (storm), rein (rain), snie (snow), frieze (freeze), froast (frost), mist (mist), sliepe (sleep), blau (blue), trije (three), fjour (four), etc.
The influx of Germanic people was more of a gradual encroachment over several generations than an invasion proper, but these tribes between them gradually colonized most of the island, with the exception of the more remote areas, which remained strongholds of the original Celtic people of Britain. Originally sea-farers, they began to settle down as farmers, exploiting the rich English farmland. The rather primitive newcomers were if anything less cultured and civilized than the local Celts, who had held onto at least some parts of Roman culture. No love was lost between the two peoples, and there was little integration between them: the Celts referred to the European invaders as barbarians (as they had previously been labelled themselves); the invaders referred to the Celts as weales (slaves or foreigners), the origin of the name Wales.
Despite continued resistance (the legends and folklore of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table date from this time), the Celts were pushed further and further back by the invaders into the wilds of Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland, although some chose to flee to the Brittany region of northern France (where they maintained a thriving culture for several centuries) and even further into mainland Europe. The Celtic language survives today only in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland, the Welsh of Wales, and the Breton language of Brittany (the last native speaker of the Cornish language died in 1777, and the last native speaker of Manx, a Celtic language spoken on the tiny Isle of Man, died as recently as the 1960s, and these are now dead languages).
The Germanic tribes settled in seven smaller kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: the Saxons in Essex, Wessex and Sussex; the Angles in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria; and the Jutes in Kent. Evidence of the extent of their settlement can be found in the number of place names throughout England ending with the Anglo-Saxon -ing meaning people of (e.g. Worthing, Reading, Hastings), -ton meaning enclosure or village (e.g. Taunton, Burton, Luton), -ford meaning a river crossing (e.g. Ashford, Bradford, Watford) -ham meaning farm (e.g. Nottingham, Birmingham, Grantham) and -stead meaning a site (e.g. Hampstead).

Although the various different kingdoms waxed and waned in their power and influence over time, it was the war-like and pagan Saxons that gradually became the dominant group. The new Anglo-Saxon nation, once known in antiquity as Albion and then Britannia under the Romans, nevertheless became known as Anglaland or Englaland (the Land of the Angles), later shortened to England, and its emerging language as Englisc (now referred to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon, or sometimes Anglo-Frisian). It is impossible to say just when English became a separate language, rather than just a German dialect, although it seems that the language began to develop its own distinctive features in isolation from the continental Germanic languages, by around 600AD. Over time, four major dialects of Old English gradually emerged: Northumbrian in the north of England, Mercian in the midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the southeast.

Although many of the Romano-Celts in the north of England had already been Christianized, St. Augustine and his 40 missionaries from Rome brought Christianity to the pagan Anglo-Saxons of the rest of England in 597 AD. After the conversion of the influential King Ethelbert of Kent, it spread rapidly through the land, carrying literacy and European culture in it wake. Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 601 AD and several great monasteries and centres of learning were established particularly in Northumbria (e.g. Jarrow, Lindisfarne).

The Celts and the early Anglo-Saxons used an alphabet of runes, angular characters originally developed for scratching onto wood or stone. The first known written English sentence, which reads "This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman", is an Anglo-Saxon runic inscription on a gold medallion found in Suffolk, and has been dated to about 450-480 AD. The early Christian missionaries introduced the more rounded Roman alphabet (much as we use today), which was easier to read and more suited for writing on vellum or parchment. The Anglo-Saxons quite rapidly adopted the new Roman alphabet, but with the addition of letters such as ("wynn"), (thorn), (edh or eth) and 3 (yogh) from the old runic alphabet for certain sounds not used in Latin. later became "uu" and, still later, "w"; and were used more or less interchangeably to represent the sounds now spelled with th; and 3 was used for "y", "j" or "g" sounds. In addition, the diphthong (ash) was also used; "v" was usually written with an "f"; and the letters "q", "x" and "z" were rarely used at all.
Old English literature flowered remarkably quickly after Augustines arrival. This was especially notable in the north-eastern kingdom of Northumbria, which provided England with its first great poet (Caedmon in the 7th Century), its first great historian (the Venerable Bede in the 7th-8th Century) and its first great scholar (Alcuin of York in the 8th Century), although the latter two wrote mainly in Latin. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is usually considered to be "Cdmon's Hymn", composed between 658 and 680. Northumbrian culture and language dominated England in the 7th and 8th Centuries, until the coming of the Vikings, after which only Wessex, under Alfred the Great, remained as an independent kingdom. By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect had become the dominant, and effectively the official, language of Britain (sometimes referred to as the koin, or common dialect). The different dialects often had their own preferred spellings as well as distinctive vocabulary (e.g. the word evil was spelled efel in the south-east, and yfel elsewhere; land would be land in West Saxon and Kentish, but lond further north; etc).

About 400 Anglo-Saxon texts survive from this era, including many beautiful poems, telling tales of wild battles and heroic journeys. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cdmon's Hymn, which was composed between 658 and 680, and the longest was the ongoing Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But by far the best known is the long epic poem Beowulf.

Beowulf may have been written any time between the 8th and the early 11th Century by an unknown author or authors, or, most likely, it was written in the 8th Century and then revised in the 10th or 11th Century. It was probably originally written in Northumbria, although the single manuscript that has come down to us (which dates from around 1000) contains a bewildering mix of Northumbrian, West Saxon and Anglian dialects. The 3,182 lines of the work shows that Old English was already a fully developed poetic language by this time, with a particular emphasis on alliteration and percussive effects. Even at this early stage (before the subsequent waves of lexical enrichment), the variety and depth of English vocabulary, as well as its predilection for synonyms and subtleties of meanings, is evident. For example, the poem uses 36 different words for hero, 20 for man, 12 for battle and 11 for ship. There are also many interesting "kennings" or allusive compound words, such as hronrad (literally, whale-road, meaning the sea), banhus (bone-house, meaning body) and beadoleoma (battle-light, meaning sword). Of the 903 compound nouns in Beowulf, 578 are used once only, and 518 of them are known only from this one poem.

Old English was a very complex language, at least in comparison with modern English. Nouns had three genders (male, female and neuter) and could be inflected for up to five cases. There were seven classes of strong verbs and three of weak verbs, and their endings changed for number, tense, mood and person. Adjectives could have up to eleven forms. Even definite articles had three genders and five case forms as a singular and four as a plural. Word order was much freer than today, the sense being carried by the inflections (and only later by the use of propositions). Although it looked quite different from modern English on paper, once the pronunciation and spelling rules are understood, many of its words become quite familiar to modern ears.

During the 6th Century, for reasons which are still unclear, the Anglo-Saxon consonant cluster "sk" changed to "sh", so that skield became shield. This change affected all "sk" words in the language at that time, whether recent borrowings from Latin (e.g. disk became dish) or ancient aboriginal borrowings (e.g. skip became ship). Any modern English words which make use of the "sk" cluster came into the language after the 6th Century (i.e. after the sound change had ceased to operate), mainly, as we will see below, from Scandinavia.

Then, around the 7th Century, a vowel shift took place in Old English pronunciation (analogous to the Great Vowel Shift during the Early Modern period) in which vowels began to be pronouced more to the front of the mouth. The main sound affected was "i", hence its common description as "i-mutation" or "i- umlaut" ( umlaut is a German term meaning sound alteration). As part of this process, the plurals of several nouns also started to be represented by changed vowel pronunciations rather than changes in inflection. These changes were sometimes, but not always, reflected in revised spellings, resulting in inconsistent modern words pairings such as foot/ feet, goose/ geese, man/ men, mouse/ mice, as well as blood/ bleed, foul/ filth, broad/ breadth, long/ length, old/ elder, whole/ hale/ heal/ health, etc.
It is estimated that about 85% of the 30,000 or so Anglo-Saxon words gradually died out under the cultural onslaught of the Vikings and the Normans who would come after them, leaving a total of only around 4,500. This represents less than 1% of modern English vocabulary, but it includes some of the most fundamental and important words (e.g. man, wife, child, son, daughter, brother, friend, live, fight, make, use, love, like, look, drink, food, eat, sleep, sing, sun, moon, earth, ground, wood, field, house, home, people, family, horse, fish, farm, water, time, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, strong, work, come, go, be, find, see, look, laughter, night, day, sun, first, many, one, two, other, some, what, when, which, where, word, etc), as well as the most important function words (e.g. to, for, but, and, at, in, on, from, etc). Because of this, up to a half of everyday modern English will typically be made up of Old English words, and, by some estimates, ALL of the hundred most commonly-used words in modern English are of Anglo-Saxon origin (although pronunciations and spellings may have changed significantly over time).

By the late 8th Century, the Vikings (or Norsemen) began to make sporadic raids on the east cost of Britain. They came from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, although it was the Danes who came with the greatest force. Notorious for their ferocity, ruthlessness and callousness, the Vikings pillaged and plundered the towns and monasteries of northern England - in 793, they sacked and looted the wealthy monastery at Lindisfarne in Northumbria - before turning their attentions further south. By about 850, the raiders had started to over-winter in southern England and, in 865, there followed a full-scale invasion and on-going battles for the possession of the country.

Viking expansion was finally checked by Alfred the Great and, in 878, a treaty between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings established the Danelaw, splitting the country along a line roughly from London to Chester, giving the Norsemen control over the north and east and the Anglo-Saxons the south and west. Although the Danelaw lasted less than a century, its influence can be seen today in the number of place names of Norse origin in northern England (over 1,500), including many place names ending in -by, -gate, -stoke, -kirk, -thorpe, -thwaite, -toft and other suffixes (e.g. Whitby, Grimsby, Ormskirk, Scunthorpe, Stoke Newington, Huthwaite, Lowestoft, etc), as well as the -son ending on family names (e.g. Johnson, Harrison, Gibson, Stevenson, etc) as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon equivalent -ing (e.g. Manning, Harding, etc).

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, an early North Germanic language not that dissimilar to Anglo-Saxon and roughly similar to modern Icelandic (the word viking actually means a pirate raid in Old Norse). Accents and pronunciations in northern England even today are heavily influenced by Old Norse, to the extent that they are largely intelligible in Iceland.

By the time Alfred the Great came to the throne in 871, most of the great monasteries of Northumbria and Mercia lay in ruins and only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. But Alfred, from his capital town of Winchester, set about rebuilding and fostering the revival of learning, law and religion. Crucially, he believed in educating the people in the vernacular English language, not Latin, and he himself made several translations of important works into English, include Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He also began the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which recounted the history of England from the time of Caesar's invasion, and which continued until 1154.

He is revered by many as having single-handedly saved English from the destruction of the Vikings, and by the time of his death in 899 he had raised the prestige and scope of English to a level higher than that of any other vernacular language in Europe. The West Saxon dialect of Wessex became the standard English of the day (although the other dialects continued nontheless), and for this reason the great bulk of the surviving documents from the Anglo-Saxon period are written in the dialect of Wessex.

The following paragraph from Aelfrichs 10th Century Homily on St. Gregory the Great gives an idea of what Old English of the time looked like (even if not how it sounded):

Eft he axode, hu re eode nama wre e hi of comon. Him ws geandwyrd, t hi Angle genemnode wron. a cw he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for an e hi engla wlite habba, and swilcum gedafena t hi on heofonum engla geferan beon."
Among the literary works representative of this later period of Old English may be listed the Battle of Maldon, an Old English poem relating the events of the Battle of Maldon of 991 (the poem is thought to have been written not long after) and the Old English Hexateuch, a richly illustrated Old English translation of the first six books of the Bible, probably compiled in Canterbury in the second quarter of the 11th Century. lfric of Eynsham, who wrote in the late 10th and early 11th Century and is best known for his Colloquy, was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, many of which were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th Century. A number of other Christian, heroic and elegiac poems, secular and Christian prose, as well as riddles, short verses, gnomes and mnemonic poems for remembering long lists of names, have also come down to us more or less intact.

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The History of English - Old English (c. 500 - c.1100)

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HISTORY > OLD ENGLISH (c. 500 - c. 1100) Invasions of Germanic Tribes | The Coming of Christianity and Literacy | The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Language | The Vikings | Old English after the Vikings More important than the Celts and the Romans for the development of the English language, though, was the succession of invasions from continental Europe after the Roman withdrawal.

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King Henry V

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Contents

1. Henry V: The Warrior-Prince

2. Henry V: A Pious King Prepares for War

3. Henry V: The Battle of Agincourt

4. Henry V: Second French Campaign, Marriage, Death

5. Henry V: Legacy

One of the most renowned kings in English history, Henry V (1387-1422) led two successful invasions of France, cheering his outnumbered troops to victory at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt and eventually securing full control of the French throne. His portrayal in three of Shakespeare's histories made him a paragon of English spirit and chivalry-though his wartime actions reveal a more ruthless approach.

Henry V: The Warrior-Prince

Henry was born in August of 1386 (or 1387) at Monmouth Castle on the Welsh border. His father, Henry of Bolingbroke, deposed his cousin Richard II in 1399. With Henry IV's ascension, the younger Henry became Prince of Wales and spent eight years leading armies against the rebellious Welsh ruler Owain Glyndwr. In 1403 Henry fought alongside his father against their former ally Henry "Hotspur" Percy in the Battle of Shrewsbury. During the battle, the younger Henry was hit in the face with an arrow but was saved by the daring surgical removal of the arrowhead.

Did you know? Henry V was the first king of England since the Norman invasion to use English as his primary language. His predecessors had all preferred French.

Stories of the rakish young "Prince Hal" (expanded upon in Shakespeare's "Henry IV") are difficult to prove, though there may have been father-son tensions during the last years of Henry IV's reign.

Henry V: A Pious King Prepares for War

Henry IV died in 1413, and the 26-year-old prince took the throne as Henry V. Conspiracies soon arose among his onetime friends to unseat him in favor of Richard II's heir Edmund Mortimer. In 1415 Henry executed Lord Scrope and the earl of Cambridge, the leading plotters, and defeated a rebellion led by his old associate John Oldcastle (the model for Shakespeare's Falstaff).

Meanwhile, Henry was making demands of France-first for the return of Aquitaine to England in fulfillment of a 1360 treaty, then for a 2-million-crown payment, then for the king's daughter Catherine's hand in marriage. In 1415 Henry gathered his army and sailed for France.

Henry V: The Battle of Agincourt

Henry abandoned plans to attack Paris after the victorious but costly siege of Harfleur, in which one-third of his army died of dysentery. On October 25, 1415-the feast day of St. Crispin-Henry's army defeated a much larger French force at Agincourt. Henry's army of about 6,000 battled up to 30,000 French soldiers, who were forced by the terrain to advance in narrow formations that made them easy targets for Henry's archers. The French advance was impeded by mud and their own mounting dead. All the while, Henry kept control of the battle, encouraging his troops and fighting hand-to-hand.

After the English took so many prisoners that Henry worried they might overpower their guards, he violated the rule of war by ordering their immediate execution. All told, the French lost as many as 7,000, while the English dead numbered at most a few hundred. Though not militarily decisive, the victory at Agincourt won Henry important allies and gained him a hero's welcome on his return to England.

Henry V: Second French Campaign, Marriage, Death

In 1417 Henry attacked France again, capturing Caen and Normandy and taking Rouen after a six-month siege in which he refused to aid 12,000 expelled residents left to starve between the city walls and the English lines. In 1420 the French king Charles VI sued for peace. The Treaty of Troyes placed Henry in control of France for the remainder of Charles VI's life and promised that the English line would succeed to the French throne. Henry married Charles' daughter Catherine. The royal couple arrived in England in 1421, and their only son, the future Henry VI, was born soon after.

Henry returned to France to deal with territories allied with the disinherited dauphin, the future Charles VII. In May of 1422 Henry won his last victory in the Siege of Meaux. He died on August 31, 1422, of battlefield dysentery.

Henry V: Legacy

Henry VI was less than a year old when he took the English and French thrones. By the time he was deposed in 1461, he had lost most of the French territories his father had won and England was riven by the War of the Roses.

In 1599 Shakespeare wrote his "Henry V," including the St. Crispin's Day "band of brothers" speech by which the eponymous king is most frequently remembered.

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Henry V: The Warrior-Prince Henry V: A Pious King Prepares for War Henry V: The Battle of Agincourt Henry V: Second French Campaign, Marriage, Death Henry V: Legacy One of the most renowned kings in English history, Henry V (1387-1422) led two successful invasions of France, cheering his outnumbered troops to victory at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt and eventually securing full control of the French throne.

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King Henry V

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Henry V: Henry V, king of England (1413-22) of the House of Lancaster, son of Henry IV. As victor of the Battle of Agincourt (1415, in the Hundred Years' War with France), he made England one of the strongest kingdoms in Europe.

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William Tyndale

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William Tyndale, (born c. 1490-94, near Gloucestershire, England-died October 6, 1536, Vilvoorde, near Brussels, Brabant), English biblical translator, humanist, and Protestant martyr.

Tyndale was educated at the University of Oxford and became an instructor at the University of Cambridge, where, in 1521, he fell in with a group of humanist scholars meeting at the White Horse Inn. Tyndale became convinced that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of the church and that all believers should be able to read the Bible in their own language.

Because of the influence of printing and a demand for Scriptures in the vernacular, William Tyndale began working on a New Testament translation directly from the Greek in 1523. After church authorities in England prevented him from translating the Bible there, he went to Germany in 1524, receiving financial support from wealthy London merchants. His New Testament translation was completed in July 1525 and printed at Cologne. Again under pressure, this time from the city authorities, Tyndale fled to Worms, where two more editions were published in 1525. The first copies were smuggled into England in 1526, where they were at once proscribed.

When the New Testament was finished, Tyndale began work on the Old Testament. The Pentateuch was issued in Marburg in 1530, each of the five books being separately published and circulated. Tyndale continued to work on the Old Testament translation but was captured in Antwerp before it was completed. Condemned for heresy, he was executed by strangulation and then burned at the stake at Vilvoorde in 1536.

At the time of his death, 18,000 copies of his New Testament had been printed; however, only two complete volumes and a fragment remain today, at London's British Library. Tyndale's greatest achievement was the ability to strike a felicitous balance between the needs of scholarship, simplicity of expression, and literary gracefulness, all in a uniform dialect. The effect was the creation of an English style of Bible translation, tinged with Hebraisms, that was to serve as the model for future English versions for nearly 400 years, beginning with the King James Version of 1611.

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William Tyndale | Biography, Bible, Death, & Facts

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William Tyndale, English biblical translator, humanist, and Protestant martyr. He believed that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of the church. He translated the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into English before being executed for heresy.

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William Tyndale

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Christian History | Learn the History of Christianity & the Church

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Translator of the first English New Testament

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William Caxton

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Caxton was the first English printer and a translator and importer of books into England.

Caxton was born in around 1422 in Kent. He went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a merchant, later moving to Bruges, the centre of the wool trade, where he became a successful and important member of the merchant community. From 1462 to 1470 he served as governor of the 'English Nation of Merchant Adventurers', which allowed him to represent his fellow merchants, as well as act as a diplomat for the king.

Caxton affiliated himself with the household of Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, sister of the English king Edward IV. She became one of his most important patrons and encouraged him with his translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' from French to English. In the early 1470s Caxton spent time in Cologne learning the art of printing. He returned to Bruges in 1472 where he and Colard Mansion, a Flemish calligrapher, set up a press. Caxton's own translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' was the first book printed in the English language.

In 1476 Caxton returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England. Amongst the books he printed were Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', Gower's 'Confession Amantis' and Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime, books which were known for their craftsmanship and careful editing. He was also the translator of many of the books he published, using his knowledge of French, Latin and Dutch. He died in 1492.

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Discover the biography of William Caxton who brought printing to England in the 15th century

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William Caxton

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"We should note the force, effect, and consequences of inventions which are nowhere more conspicuous than in three discoveries that the ancients didn't know; namely printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass. These three have changed the whole aspect and state of things throughout the world."

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, Novum organum, Aphorism 129

William Caxton was born 1422 in the Weald of Kent, England. He is the first English printer and, as a translator and publisher, he exerted an important influence on English literature and language.

Caxton went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a merchant, later moving to Bruges, Belgium the centre of the wool trade as well as an important centre in the trade of paintings and manuscripts, where he became a successful and important member of the merchant community. From 1462 to 1470 he served as governor of the 'English Nation of Merchant Adventurers' in the Low Countries, which allowed him to represent his fellow merchants, as well as act as a diplomat for the King of the day. This also allowed him to accrue significant wealth and influence. Sometime in 1470 he ceased to be governor and entered the service of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV, the King of England, possibly as her financial adviser.

In this period Caxton's interests were also turning to literature. Although printing with movable type had been invented in 11th-century China, in Europe the technology was not developed until the mid-15th century. The first full-scale book produced with moveable type was printed in the 1450s by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, but Caxton had realised the English literature demand needed more. In March 1469, and heavily encouraged by Margaret, he had begun to translate Raoul Le Fèvre's ' Recueil des histoires de Troye' from French to English, which he subsequently laid aside and did not finish until September, 1471. In the early 1470's Caxton spent some time in Cologne, Germany learning the art of printing. As a university city as well as an important commercial centre, Cologne was an ideal location for the fledgling book trade. By the 1470s it had become the most important centre of printing in north-west Germany.

He returned to Bruges in 1472 where he and Colard Mansion, a Flemish calligrapher, set up a press. Caxton's own eventual translation of 'Recueil des histoires de Troye' (Eng. - A collection of the histories of Troy) was the first book in history printed in the English language. In the epilogue of Book III of the completed translation he tells how his "pen became worn, his hand weary, his eye dimmed" with copying the book; so he "practised and learnt" at great personal cost how to print it. He set up a press in Bruges about 1474, and the Recueil, the first book printed in English, was published there in 1475. Caxton's translation from the French of ' The Game and Playe of the Chesse' (in which chess is treated as an allegory of life) was published in 1476. Caxton printed two or three other works in Bruges in French, but toward the end of 1476 he returned to England and established his press at Westminster. From then on he devoted himself to writing and printing.

Most continental printers produced books in Latin, the international language of the day, in order to be able to sell them in a number of countries. Caxton, on the other hand, mainly produced books in English for a local market. Although printed books could reach a much wider audience than manuscripts, they were still a luxury in Caxton's day and were thus aimed at fairly wealthy people. However, printing soon led to books becoming available at a cheaper price, and Caxton was part of the beginning of a major change in the way in which people acquired books for information and for entertainment.

Despite the wider readership of the printed book, printers still had to keep in favour with the aristocracy. 1483, the year that saw the second edition of the Canterbury Tales, also saw the death of Edward IV, a major supporter of Caxton's work. When the throne was seized by his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Caxton lost little time in acknowledging the new regime. The next year his ' Ordre of Chyvalry or Knyghthode' was wisely dedicated to Richard III. The defeat of Richard by Henry VII in 1485 established the Tudor dynasty and restored Caxton's connections at court. A few years later he was commissioned to print the parliamentary statutes passed under Henry VII. For the first time, they were printed in English rather than French - a measure of technological and social change in the age of Caxton.

Just as Martin Luther made the dialect of his home region the standard form of German through his Bible translation, Caxton was responsible for the form of English which was to become the standard. He adopted a special variety of Middle English; the so-called 'King's English' commonly used in London and its surroundings, for his translations and spread this language variety throughout England by his trade. If this was a conscious choice cannot absolutely be asserted, but he had an acute sense of language through his time spent abroad and was aware of the problem of dialect variation in England. Therewith other dialects of the vernacular were marginalised, lost their importance and sometimes died out. So Caxton's introduction of printing marks a turning point in the development of English as a national and later on international language.

The English language was changing rapidly in Caxton's time and the works that he was given to print were in a variety of styles and dialects. Caxton was a technician rather than a writer, and he often faced dilemmas concerning language standardisation in the books that he printed - similarly his successor Wynkyn de Worde faced similar problems. Caxton is credited with standardising the English language through printing-that is, homogenising regional dialects and largely adopting the London dialect. This facilitated the expansion of English vocabulary, the regularisation of inflection and syntax, and a widening gap between the spoken and the written word. It is asserted that the spelling of "ghost" with the silent letter 'h' was adopted by Caxton due to the influence of Flemish spelling habits.

As a successful merchant and businessman he made little attempt to educate or lead public taste, but printed what it was easy for him to know was popular, or what the prevailing predilection for religious writings made a certain success. Romances and poetry were another reasonable venture, while a few works of instruction completed his list. He also worked under patronage in many instances, so that of seventy-seven original works published by him we know that for twenty-three of them he was assured of financial support, and the favour of influential personages.

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How did William Caxton influence and change modern English Language?

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"We should note the force, effect, and consequences of inventions which are nowhere more conspicuous than in three discoveries that the ancients didn't know; namely printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass. These three have changed the whole aspect and state of things throughout the world."

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William Caxton

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William Caxton, (born c. 1422, Kent, England-died 1491, London), the first English printer, who, as a translator and publisher, exerted an important influence on English literature.

In 1438 he was apprenticed to Robert Large, a rich mercer, who in the following year became lord mayor of London. Large died in 1441, and Caxton moved to Brugge, the centre of the European wool trade; during the next 30 years he became an increasingly prosperous and influential member of the English trading community in Flanders and Holland. In 1463 he took up duties as "Governor of the English Nation of Merchant Adventurers" in the Low Countries-a post of real authority over his fellow merchants. Sometime in 1470 he ceased to be governor and entered the service of Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, possibly as her financial adviser.

In that period Caxton's interests were turning to literature. In March 1469 he had begun to translate Raoul Le Fèvre's Recueil des histoires de Troye, which he laid aside and did not finish until September 19, 1471. In Cologne, where he lived from 1470 to the end of 1472, he learned printing. In the epilogue of Book III of the completed translation, entitled The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, he tells how his "pen became worn, his hand weary, his eye dimmed" with copying the book; so he "practised and learnt" at great personal cost how to print it. He set up a press in Brugge about 1474, and the Recuyell, the first book printed in English, was published there in 1475. Caxton's translation from the French of The Game and Playe of the Chesse (in which chess is treated as an allegory of life) was published in 1476. Caxton printed two or three other works in Brugge in French, but toward the end of 1476 he returned to England and established his press at Westminster. From then on he devoted himself to writing and printing. The first dated book printed in English, Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, appeared on November 18, 1477.

Caxton, William Cassell's Illustrated History of England, Volume 2, published by Cassell and Company, Limited, 1909

Although a pioneer of printing in England, Caxton showed no great typographical originality and produced no books of remarkable beauty. Kings, nobles, and rich merchants were Caxton's patrons and sometimes commissioned special books. His varied output-including books of chivalric romance, conduct, morality, history, and philosophy and an encyclopaedia, The Myrrour of the Worlde (1481), the first illustrated English book-shows that he catered also to a general public. The large number of service books and devotional works published by Caxton were the staple reading of most literate persons. He also printed nearly all the English literature available to him in his time: The Canterbury Tales (1478? and 1484?) and other poems by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower's Confessio amantis (1483), Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur (1485), and much of John Lydgate. Caxton translated 24 books, some of them immensely long. By the time of his death, he had published about 100 items of various kinds.

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

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history of publishing: England

...to England was a native, William Caxton. After learning to print at Cologne (1471-72), Caxton set up a press at Bruges (about 1474), where he had long been established in business. His first book, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, was his own translation from the French, and its...

Earth sciences: Knowledge of Earth composition and structure

...volcanoes were brought together in William Caxton's Mirrour of the World (1480). Earthquakes are here again related to movements of subterranean fluids. Streams of water in the Earth compress the air in hidden caverns. If the roofs of the caverns are weak, they rupture, causing cities and castles to fall...

English language: Orthography

William Caxton, who set up his wooden printing press at Westminster in 1476, was much concerned with spelling problems throughout his working life. Noah Webster produced his Spelling Book, in 1783, as a precursor to the first edition (1828) of his American Dictionary of the... ...

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This article was most recently revised and updated by William Caxton, (born c. 1422, Kent, England-died 1491, London), the first English printer, who, as a translator and publisher, exerted an important influence on English literature. In 1438 he was apprenticed to Robert Large, a rich mercer, who in the following year became lord mayor of London.

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William the Conquerer

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William the Conquerer

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William I: William I, duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England from 1066, one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages.

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King Alfred

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Everything you need to know about the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great (849-899), including facts about his life, accomplishments, his family, his death and his burial place...
Q: Who was King Alfred?

A: Alfred was the fifth son of King Æthelwulf (839-58), ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex - the area south of the river Thames. When he was born at Wantage in 849, it might have seemed unlikely that Alfred would ever become king, but in a period of increasing Viking attacks, his four brothers all died as young adults.

Alfred took over as king of Wessex in 871 (bypassing his nephew Aethelwold, son of the late king Aethelred) in the middle of a year of nine major battles between the West Saxons and Vikings, which the former were lucky to survive. Alfred was also tested in 878 when he was forced to retreat to the marshes of Athelney (Somerset), scene of some of the legendary stories about him, including the well-known burning of the cakes.

However, Alfred came back to win a decisive victory in the same year over his Viking opponent Guthrum at Edington (Wiltshire). There were further serious Viking attacks in the 890s, but by this time Alfred had made military improvements and was better able to resist them with the help of West Mercian [an Anglo-Saxon kingdom north of Wessex] and Welsh allies.

In 868 Alfred had married Ealhswith, a descendant of the Mercian royal house, probably as part of a long-term West Saxon plan to bring the royal houses of the two provinces closer together.

They had two sons and three daughters, who survived to adulthood. The middle daughter became abbess of Shaftesbury nunnery, one of two religious houses founded by Alfred. The other was at Athelney, perhaps in thanksgiving for his escape there from the Vikings.

The other two daughters entered into diplomatic marriages to the ruler of Mercia (this was Aethelflaed, who became the 'Lady of the Mercians') and the Count of Flanders. Little is known of Alfred's 'spare', his second son, Æthelweard, but his heir, Edward the Elder, succeeded their father in 899, and continued the family success story.
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Q: Alfred is well known for his victories against the Vikings. What can you tell us about them?

A: Alfred's priority was survival in the face of Viking attacks. There had been four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time of Alfred's birth, but before his death all but Wessex had been overrun by the Vikings, and their kings killed or exiled.

Having survived by the skin of his teeth all-out Viking attacks in the 870s, when the other provinces fell, Alfred then enacted a series of military reforms to make Wessex less vulnerable in the future. Most important was a network of fortified and garrisoned sites that created 'fortress Wessex', which the Vikings were unable to penetrate to any great extent in the 890s.

Alfred also organised a rota of military service to make keeping forces in the field for any length of time more viable; the field army could respond quickly to a request for aid from a local garrison should the Vikings attack. The king also overhauled his naval forces, bringing in experienced Frisian sailors to help with his new designs for ships.

Q: What else is Alfred famous for?

A: There are many Anglo-Saxon kings who were great military commanders - what makes Alfred stand out is that he was also interested in learning, and in the promotion of English as a written language.

Here we can see the impact of the great religious and cultural movement from across the Channel, known as the Carolingian Renaissance, which had also much influenced his father. Alfred recruited Carolingian scholars [from what is now France and western Germany], as well as others from within Britain to act as his advisers on improving educational and religious standards in Wessex.

He himself studied key works with them, and these seem to have had a profound effect on his own understanding and concept of duty, which he felt others at his court should share. He assisted in the translation of some of these works from Latin into Old English, so that they could be more readily understood within his kingdom.

Alfred's resistance to the Vikings required a major commitment from his subjects, and so he may well have been attracted to the Carolingian emphasis on obedience to the king as a religious duty, and perhaps also sought to reinforce an English, Christian identity in opposition to a Scandinavian, pagan one.

The title 'King of the Anglo-Saxons' was one he used towards the end of his reign, as he became increasingly influential beyond Wessex itself.

Q: Why is King Alfred significant?

A: Military and intellectual activities were in themselves sufficient to have established Alfred's reputation, but what really made him stand out to succeeding generations was the fact that his Welsh adviser Asser wrote a biography of the king in 893.

This work undoubtedly contains useful information about Alfred and his family, but it is also based on classical, Biblical and Carolingian ideals of kingship, which can cause a difficulty in distinguishing idealisation from fact.

It may be significant that Alfred is not known to have endorsed the work or ordered its circulation. It may not be how he thought of himself or how he wanted to be remembered.

But in the 19th century, when there was great interest in Anglo-Saxon origins of the English state and character, there were no such doubts. Alfred was "the most perfect man in history", and the famous statue in Winchester was erected in 1901 as the climax to international celebrations of the millenary of his death.

Q: In the December 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine, Alex Burghart asked whether we're guilty of overplaying Alfred's greatness. What do you think?

A: Alex Burghart was right to suggest that Alfred's reputation is in danger of being exaggerated. As a result of being the only Anglo-Saxon king to have a contemporary biography, he has been sometimes handed the credit by later writers for everything of note that happened in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Alfred did not invent Anglo-Saxon law or the navy, though he did write laws and design ships. There was also an element of luck in his survival at the beginning of his reign, and in the fact that the Vikings were more interested in eastern England that was closer to their homelands.

Mercian involvement was crucial to his success in defeating the Vikings in the 890s. But to a certain extent Alfred made his own 'luck', a quality much prized in Anglo-Saxon leaders, and the qualities of intellectual curiosity, inventiveness and an essential attention to detail come through in Asser's account, for all its problems.

Alfred does seem to have been a rather exceptional ruler, but it seems to have been a case of the right person in the right place at the right time.

Q: Where, when and how did King Alfred die, and who was he succeeded by?

A: Alfred died on 26 October 899. The exact circumstances and the place of his death are not known.

He was laid to rest at first in the cathedral in Winchester, the Old Minster, but his elder son and successor at once commissioned work on a bigger, grander church - the New Minster immediately to the cathedral's north. It seems to have been intended as a burial place for the new dynasty of English kings founded by Alfred.

The bodies of Alfred and Ealhswith were transferred to New Minster, to be joined eventually by Edward himself and other members of the royal family. Edward continued and developed the policies of his father, and used the idea of garrisoned, fortified centres offensively against Viking-settled areas of eastern England.

By 920 he had extended his rule to the river Humber, and Edward's own son Aethelstan (who reigned from 924-39) gained control of the rest of England to create the country more or less as we know it today.

Q: What might we learn from the discovery of a piece of pelvic bone, most likely belonging to King Alfred or to his son, Edward?

A: In 1110 the monks of New Minster relocated to the suburb of Hyde in the north of Winchester, because of the cramped conditions in the centre, and took with them the bodies of Alfred, Edward and Ealhswith, which were laid in honoured positions in front of the High Altar.

It was thought that their bodies had been lost when the site was dug up for a prison in the late 18th century. In the 19th century an amateur historian claimed he had dug up their bones, but no one locally believed him, and it appears that he had in any case been digging in the wrong part of the site.

These bones were the ones buried in an unmarked grave in St Bartholmew's graveyard in Hyde. Radio-carbon testing established once and for all that they were later medieval in date.

However, Dr Katie Tucker, the osteoarchaeologist from the University of Winchester who led investigations, checked whether there might be other human bones of interest from the previous excavations at Hyde Abbey.

Part of a male pelvis found near the High Altar produced a radio-carbon date centring on the 10th century, thus raising the possibility that it could be part of the body of either Alfred or his son, Edward. This leaves us with the exciting possibility that further remains of them might be recovered.

Asser provides no physical descriptions of either Alfred or Edward, so the thought that we might one day be able to rediscover their appearance and give them a proper reburial is an enticing prospect.
Barbara Yorke is professor emerita of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, from which she has recently retired after a long career. Her research interests lie with early medieval British history, with special interests in kingship, conversion, Wessex, women, religion and 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2014

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Alfred the Great is famous for his victories against the Vikings, and is the only English monarch known as 'the Great'. But how much do you know about him? Barbara Yorke, professor emerita of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, brings you the facts about the Anglo-Saxon king

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King Alfred

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Alfred, king of Wessex (871–899), a Saxon kingdom in southwestern England. He prevented England from falling to the Danes and promoted learning and literacy. Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle began during his reign. Learn more about Alfred’s life and rule.

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Venerable Bede

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Who Was the Venerable Bede?

The Venerable Bede - also known as St Bede - is widely regarded as the greatest of all the Anglo-Saxon scholars. He lived and died in between the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow in the North East of England between 673 and 735 AD and wrote or translated some forty books on practically every area of knowledge, including nature, astronomy, and poetry. He also wrote the first martyrology (a chronicle about the lives of the saints).

However, his most famous writing was on theology and history and his best known work is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Read more about the Life and Death of Bede.

Why Was the Venerable Bede Important?

Although Bede was a polymath and religious figure who described himself as having " devoted [his] energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church" and for whom "study, teaching, and writing had always been [his] delight", he is remembered today as the earliest English historian, whose work has shed light on a period of English history that would have otherwise been unknown.

He is often referred to as ' The Father of English History.'

Bede's Association with Durham

The Venerable Bede's bones have been in Durham Cathedral since 1022. They were brought from Jarrow by a monk called Alfred who had them buried alongside Cuthbert's relics, where they remained until they were moved to the Cathedral's Galilee Chapel in the 14 th century.

Why is Bede called the 'Venerable' ?

In fact, 'the Venerable Bede' comes from the Latin inscription on Bede's tomb in Durham Cathedral, reading:

HIC SUNT IN FOSSA BEDAE VENERABILIS OSSA
Here are buried the bones of the Venerable Bede

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The Venerable Bede - also known as St Bede - is widely regarded as the greatest of all the Anglo-Saxon scholars. He lived and died in between the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow in the North East of England between 673 and 735 AD and wrote or translated some forty books on practically every area of knowledge, including nature, astronomy, and poetry.

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Venerable Bed

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St. Bede the Venerable, Bede also spelled Baeda or Beda, (born 672/673, traditionally Monkton in Jarrow, Northumbria [England]-died May 25, 735, Jarrow; canonized 1899; feast day May 25), Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian, and chronologist. St. Bede is best known for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People"), a source vital to the history of the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon tribes.

During his lifetime and throughout the Middle Ages, Bede's reputation was based mainly on his scriptural commentaries, copies of which found their way to many of the monastic libraries of western Europe. The method of dating events from the time of the incarnation, or Christ's birth-i.e., ad (anno Domini, "in the year of our Lord")-came into general use through the popularity of the Historia ecclesiastica and the two works on chronology. Bede's influence was perpetuated at home through the school founded at York by his pupil Archbishop Egbert of York and was transmitted to the rest of Europe by Alcuin, who studied there before becoming master of Charlemagne's palace school at Aachen.

Nothing is known of Bede's parentage. At the age of seven he was taken to the monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth (near Sunderland, Durham), founded by Abbot St. Benedict Biscop, to whose care he was entrusted. By 685 he was moved to Biscop's newer monastery, of St. Paul, at Jarrow. Bede was ordained a deacon when 19 years old and priest when 30. Apart from visits to Lindisfarne and York, he seems never to have left Wearmouth-Jarrow. Buried at Jarrow, his remains were removed to Durham and are now entombed in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral.

Bede's works fall into three groups: grammatical and "scientific," scriptural commentary, and historical and biographical. His earliest works included treatises on spelling, hymns, figures of speech, verse, and epigrams. His first treatise on chronology, De temporibus ("On Times"), with a brief chronicle attached, was written in 703. In 725 he completed a greatly amplified version, De temporum ratione ("On the Reckoning of Time"), with a much longer chronicle. Both these books were mainly concerned with the reckoning of Easter. His earliest biblical commentary was probably that on the Revelation to John (703?-709); in this and many similar works, his aim was to transmit and explain relevant passages from the Fathers of the Church. Although his interpretations were mainly allegorical, treating much of the biblical text as symbolic of deeper meanings, he used some critical judgment and attempted to rationalize discrepancies. Among his most notable are his verse (705-716) and prose (before 721) lives of St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne. These works are uncritical and abound with accounts of miracles; a more exclusively historical work is Historia abbatum ( c. 725; "Lives of the Abbots").

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In 731/732 Bede completed his Historia ecclesiastica. Divided into five books, it recorded events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar (55-54 bce) to the arrival in Kent (597 ce) of St. Augustine of Canterbury. For his sources, he claimed the authority of ancient letters, the "traditions of our forefathers," and his own knowledge of contemporary events. Bede's Historia ecclesiastica leaves gaps tantalizing to secular historians. Although overloaded with the miraculous, it is the work of a scholar anxious to assess the accuracy of his sources and to record only what he regarded as trustworthy evidence. It remains an indispensable source for some of the facts and much of the feel of early Anglo-Saxon history.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

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Saint Bede the Venerable | Biography, Facts, & Legacy

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Saint Bede the Venerable, Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian, and chronologist. He is best known for his historical writings that document the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon tribes. The method of dating events from the time of Christ's birth came into general use through his works.