Hi, I’m an American.
But I do know some things about Not-America.
So today on Knowing Better we’re going international and talking about the history of the United
Kingdom.
Since the history of Britain is like, five times longer than that of America, I’m going
to have to skate over some stuff, but mostly just everything that happened before 1066.
Just to set the scene for you, before the Romans showed up, the island was inhabited
by the Celts, which came to the islands between 500 and 400 BC.
There’s actually some dispute over whether these people were actually Celts or whether
the Romans just called them that in a situation similar to American Indians, because they
had just conquered the Celts in Gaul, but if you ask anyone from their whether they’re
Celtic or not, they will say yes… so for our purposes they were Celts.
800 years ish later, the Angles from the Jutland Peninsula, in what we call Denmark now, and
the Saxons from…
Saxony in modern day northern Germany came…
The Angles are where the name – look I shouldn’t have to spell everything out for you right?
Like you can figure it out…
Anglish…
English.
It’s not that far of a jump.
Anyway, the two together are the Anglo-Saxons and they’re usually what we think of when
we think of white English people.
They landed on the eastern half of Britannia, which would later become England.
And around the same time, the Britons from Brittany, in France, landed on the western
half, which would later become Wales and still strongly identifies as Celtic.
There were some small kingdoms here and there blah blah, that doesn’t matter.
What does matter is how many there were, but I’ll get back to that, remind me.
Anyway, our story begins when William the Conqueror, a Norman, from Normandy, in France,
did the thing that he’s named for.
He conquered all of the kingdoms and created the Kingdom of England.
Somewhat fun fact, he was the Duke of Normandy when he did this, so for a brief moment the
King of England was a vassal of the King of France… but let’s not overcomplicate things.
But this is where our story begins.
Map of the world.
England.
Side note, England and France are like the Real Housewives of Europe.
They hate each other, talk smack about each other, and even get in the occasional fight
which can last up to 100 years.
But if any outsider comes around looking to start something, they become BFFs so fast
it’ll make your head spin.
England and France have a crazy complicated and intertangled history, but there’s one
bit that’s always annoyed me so let’s clear that up right now.
How do you say this?
If you said Ye, you’re wrong, and you should backhand yourself in the face.
The English didn’t have the letter Y.
All of the typesets were manufactured in France, which did have the letter y.
The th sound in Old English was represented by a letter known as thorn.
The French typesets didn’t have that letter, so the English substituted this weird character
that had no use to them.
So how do you pronounce this?
The olde inn.
The letter was used everywhere, including the King James bible… as in, thou shalt
not mispronounce the word ye any longer.
There are other fun crossovers though.
Like this, what is this animal called?
Good job, it’s a chicken, ten points.
What is its meat called?
This… this isn’t a trick question, it’s also chicken.
That’s how it should be, there’s the animal, and you kill it and eat it, and it’s still
that animal.
But since the English and French invaded each other so many times, English is confused.
What is this animal?
Yeah, and it’s meat is beef, which is a French word.
Or this?
Pork, another French word.
And mutton, the list goes on.
Anyway, sorry, you know how I get with tangents.
Wales was brought into the picture pretty quickly.
William the Conqueror established a frontier with several lordships surrounding the principality
of Wales.
Wales didn’t have a King, it had a Prince, and it kind of still…
I’m getting ahead of myself.
That lasted around 500 years and Wales was officially brought into the fold in 1536.
It was given everything equal to England, representation in parliament, lordships, everything
was equal.
Which is why England and Wales are like this son *cross fingers*.
I mean look at this map of the Brexit vote and try to tell me you can see the difference
between England and Wales.
Wales really didn’t start their identity thing until the 1950s and 60s, when they thought
that their language and culture might die out so they started to try and preserve it.
The Welsh are very much still Celtic and you can definitely see it in their language.
This is a very common Welsh first name, Llewellyn, it’s not that difficult to pronounce, it’s
actually kind of cool, but then there’s also towns like this.
Just up the road from ….. C’mon man I mean… there’s four L’s
in a row there you can’t do that.
Anyway Wales didn’t get their own parliament until 1998.
So while people always say that Wales is a country…
c’mon.
Anyway under those same Acts of Union in 1536, the Prince of Wales became a title given to
the heir apparent to the King or Queen of England.
They have almost no power there and it’s almost entirely symbolic, but still, even
though Wales was more or less conquered by the King of England, they still have a Prince.
Which if you watch… since you watch Game of Thrones, this should remind you of somewhere.
Dorne.
In fact, Westeros is very much modeled after the British Isles.
Here’s the British Isles, Great Britain and Ireland.
And here’s Westeros.
Take Ireland, flip it around and enlarge it.
Then take Great Britain, flip it, *bop it, twist it*… and there you go, Westeros.
The similarities don’t end there though.
Aside from the fact that there is a Prince of Wales and a Prince of Dorne – you already
forgot to remind me didn’t you?
Guess how many kingdoms were in England before William the Conqueror came along.
I’ll give you a hint, it was called the Heptarcy.
Seven, there were seven kingdoms.
Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Wessex, Essex, Sussex, and Kent.
But wait, there’s more.
In Westeros, the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms is known as the Wall.
And it separates the civilized realm from the wildlings and grumpkins and snarks.
In the real world, it was called Hadrian’s Wall, and it likewise separates the civilized
realm from the wildlings, grumpkins, and snarks.
Although, while The Wall looks like this, Hadrian’s Wall looks like this.
I’m pretty sure even Wheatley could scale that wall but hey, I’m not judging.
It was built in 122 AD they probably did the best they could.
Hadrian’s Wall isn’t actually the border between England and Scotland, it’s pretty
close, in some places it’s only half a mile off, and in others it’s 60 or 70.
But still it’s pretty close alright?
So Scotland.
How Scotland came to be part of the UK is… complicated.
James VI, the King of Scotland, inherited the throne of England (1603) by being the
second cousin of- Look like Westeros, all the lords and dukes and kings and queens married
each other and they’re all related to each other somehow.
The family tree looks like an overly complicated web, CGP Grey has a video where he does his
best explaining all of this, link in the description.
Anyway so he became James I, King of England, while also being James VI, King of Scotland.
They weren’t united, so he was king of two separate places and had two different numbers
after his name.
Scotland then tried to start a few colonies in the New World that didn’t go so well
so they ended up in a lot of debt.
England offered to forgive and assume that debt if they united, which they did, forming
the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.
So their flag went from looking like this, to looking like this.
Like Wales, it got its own parliament in 1998, but unlike Wales, Scotland has always been
pretty independent… and may be again if the UK goes through with Brexit.
Again, look at this map, it should be pretty obvious where Scotland is.
But while we’re looking at this map, see that bit in Northern Ireland?
How did that get there?
Ireland is its own country with its own crazy history and will likely get its own video
at some point, just like many of the others I will be talking about, so forgive me if
I skate over a few things for now.
The Irish call their island this… which if you’re like me, your first inclination
is to pronounce it like - My life for Aiur - but really, their language is also Celtic,
so they pronounce it like this…
So that’s kind of a buzzkill…
Anyway, in 1542, the Kingdom of Ireland was established and King Henry VIII of England
was named the King of Ireland.
Much like the situation with Scotland, he was King of both places but not one united
kingdom.
That happened in 1800, when the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were all joined
together to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Ireland is famously hyper-Catholic and England is….
Not.
So there were a lot of wars and fights between the native Irish and the British settlers
on the island.
In 1920 they divided Ireland up unto Northern and Southern Ireland, which was renamed the
Irish Free State in 1922 when it broke away from the UK but was still part of the commonwealth.
Thus renaming the UK to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and (just) Northern Ireland.
Again, glossing over some things, in 1949 Ireland also broke away from the British Commonwealth
and became its own independent republic.
So what is this commonwealth thing?
You’ve heard me say it a few times in this video and in previous videos.
It’s the much nicer, more modern term for the former British Empire.
The first bits of the British Empire were on islands in the Caribbean, but more famously,
in America.
In 1607 Jamestown, Virginia was established and later became the colony of Virginia.
Just to shatter the American myth that the first colonists were Pilgrims fleeing religious
persecution… no.
The first Americans were here looking for profit.
Shortly afterwards though, various religious groups like the Pilgrims came to America forming
the colonies of Plymouth, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
The English and the Dutch were in a lot of fights with each other over establishing overseas
territories, they butted heads quite a few times, but the first was in 1664, when the
English captured New Netherlands and its main city, New Amsterdam…
Which if you ever watched Animaniacs, you should know what they renamed it to…
Even Old New York was once new Amsterdam, why they changed it I can’t say, people
just liked it better that way.
I should probably do a video on the rest of that song… it’s actually a pretty interesting
story.
I wonder if it has anything to do with why Oklahoma has a panhandle?
Anyway, that’s enough about the thirteen colonies, it’s not like anyone lives there
anyway right?
So in the North, in 1670, they established the Hudson’s Bay Company in Rupert’s Land.
This is important because it, along with the thirteen colonies, became a flashpoint between
Britain and France in the Seven Years’ War.
When France lost, they gave up their colony of New France… which was made up of Quebec
and Ontario.
In 1867, most of the British territories in North America were united to form the Dominion
of Canada.
Except Newfoundland, which was its own country all the way up until 1949 when it joined Canada.
During World War 2, there were still Newfoundland regiments in the British Army.
Anyway, since Quebec and Ontario used to be New France, that’s why Canada’s official
languages are both English and French… and why every once in a while Quebec toys around
with the idea of secession.
Canada didn’t become a fully independent country until 1982, though it remains part
of the Commonwealth, with the Queen as its head of state.
In 1606, the Dutch found a new continent in the southern hemisphere and named it New Holland,
a few years later they found some islands to the east of it and named them New Zealand.
Holland and Zealand are both provinces of the Netherlands, so like the British, they
didn’t really venture too outside of the box when it came to coming up with creative
names for things.
Anyway, in 1783 the British lost their penal colonies in North America and wanted to make
up for it by establishing new colonies for prisoners elsewhere.
So that very same year, they established the colony of New South Wales on the continent
of New Holland….
Which they mistakenly renamed Australia.
*Would you like to know more?* I made a video about that a while back.
They also just sort of took New Zealand from the Dutch at the same time with little resistance.
Australia is still part of the Commonwealth, and like Canada, became fully independent
in 1986, again with the Queen still being the head of state.
New Zealand on the other hand is not fully independent, but is a self-governing Dominion,
still recognizing the Queen as head of state.
But that wasn’t the last time those troublesome American colonies forced the British to look
elsewhere.
America was by far the largest exporter of cotton, especially to the British.
In 1861, most of America’s cotton-growing states went into rebellion and the subsequent
blockade stopped any American cotton from reaching Britain.
So they were forced to look elsewhere.
Namely India… and later Egypt, but…
India.
The British already controlled a good portion of India under the East India Company, but
their control greatly expanded once… cotton happened.
In 1876, the Queen of England was declared the Empress of India… and since slavery
had been illegal in the British Empire since 1833, they just brutalized the Indians instead.
Here’s a throwback to your elementary school history class…
what was the British colonial trade system that said that all raw goods had to be shipped
to England for manufacturing, and then sold back to the colonies that it came from?
Mercantilism.
If you got that wrong you have to hit the like button or something I dunno, saying that
stuff usually works for other youtubers right?
So all of the raw cotton was exported from India, manufactured in England, and then sent
back to India as finished textiles.
Which is why Gandhi, during India’s independence movement, said, “Machinery in the past has
made us dependent on England, and the only way we can rid ourselves of the dependence
is to boycott all goods made by machinery.
This is why we have made it the patriotic duty of every Indian to spin his own cotton
and weave his own cloth.”
Gandhi’s movement successfully got India its independence in 1947, along with Pakistan
– and everything has been peaceful ever since.
Neither country has any tie to Britain, not even with the Queen being head of state.
They are as fully independent as the United States.
So there you have it, a very very brief history of how the United Kingdom came to be and how
losing America forced them to form the British Empire…
At one point governing over a quarter of the world’s population with territory on every
continent.
Sorry world… our bad.
But hey it all worked out in the end right?
So the next time someone tells you that Wales is its own country or that the sun never sets
on the British empire, hopefully now, you’ll know better.
Oi mate, that was well wicked.
Do you think we’ll ever see the likes of the British Empire again?
Let me know down in the comments.
And don’t forget to colonize that subscribe button… by clicking it.
I know a lot of you have been asking about the return of Psychology videos, and if you
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do that.