Although there are few notices of the first inhabitants of the island, it’s known that before the calciolitich there were advanced cultures in Wiltshire, to whom is related the construction of beautiful megalithic monuments like Stonehenge, correspondent to a transition period, when invasions coming from continental Europe introduced the use of brass or bronze instruments.
When Caesar undertook the conquest of Britain, the island were occupied by the Celtics and many wild and militant native tribes who offered serious resistance to the Roman legions. In the fifth century the Romans left Britain, that was invaded by Anglos and Saxons. In the reign of Egbert the Great it was invaded by the Danish, who managed to subjugate the country and to impose their kings from 1017 to 1042.

It’s in that date that Edward the Confessor managed to restore the Anglo-Saxon monarchy but when he died in 1066 there was a dispute to the crown between his brother-in-law and successor Harold II Duke of Normandy and William the Conqueror, who passed to England, defeated his rival in Hastings and proclaimed itself king, founding the Norman dynasty. In 1154 began to reign the Angevin dynasty with Enrique II Plantagenet (1154-1189).

It was followed by Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199) one of the heads of the 3rd Crusade who died in the war that he maintained against Philip of France. John Lackland (1199-1216), brother and successor of Richard, caused the rebellion of the clergy and the barons and had to sign the Magna Carta. Edward III began the war of the Two Roses, that extended during the reigns of Edward IV (1422-1461) and Richard III (1483-1485) who died in the battle of Bosworth. After him, Henry VII was proclaimed king (1485-1509), and started to reign the Tudor dynasty.

These favored the Reformation and founded the maritime power of England. Henry VIII (1509-1547) constituted the Anglican Church. During the reign of the young Henry VI (1547-1553), Somerset established the Protestantism and, although Lady Jane Grey (1553), rejected by the catholics, reigns only for days and Mary I (1553-1558), persecuted the protestants, the reformed religion prevailed again with Elizabeth (1558-1603) who established the Anglicanism definitively. It was in her reign that the maritime and colonial power of England began as also their industry and commerce; the literature reaches their apogee, but also the absolute regime prevails. The Stuarts followed the Tudors. Jacob I (VI of Scotland), son of Mary Stuart, reigned from 1603 to 1625 and united definitively under a single sceptre the crowns of Scotland and England but, with his absolutism and resistance to recognize the rights of the Parliament, prepared the civil war that burned in the reign of his son Charles I (1625-1649) and cost to this one the crown and the life.

The parliamentary Republic were established (1649-1653), whose supreme power were soon trusted to Oliver Cronwell with the title of Lord Protector (1659-1660). The Stuarts recovered the throne. The unfortunate government of Charles II (1660-1685) and Jacob II (1685-1689) made them unpopular and bring the Revolution that inaugurated in Europe the modern political right and has an echo, one hundred years later, in the French Revolution.
The Parliament offered the crown to William III of Orange (1689-1702) who reigned with his wife Mary I, daughter of Jacob II, demoted and fugitive in France. William was followed by Ana (1703-1714), another daughter of Jacob. During her reign, the union of England and Scotland settled down. Ana died without successor, because all their children had died before her, so the crown has passed to the house of Hannover, the one that reigns at the moment and whose kings have been to date the following ones: George I (1714-1727); George II (1727-1760); George III (1760-1820), to whose reign corresponds the independence of the colonies of North America (the United States), the creation of the vast empire of the Indians, the French Revolution and the alliances against the Republic and the Empire, the insurrection of Ireland and its political fusion with the Great Britain under the name of United Kingdom of the Great Britain and Ireland; George IV (1820-1830); William IV (1830-1837), in whose reign an important parliamentary reform became, were abolished the black people slavery and were reformed the laws of pauperism; Victoria (1837-1901), in whose reigned the British Empire extends and there’s a bloom of the sciences, the arts, the industry and the commerce; Edward VII (1901-1910) who in order to maintain British imperialism, political and commercial supremacy of the Great Britain in all the countries of the Globe, and jealous of the threatening superiority of Germany, successfully obtained powerful alliances to be able to face the Triple Alliance the day of the great shock, that already approached and he sagaciously previewed; George V, who raised the throne in 1910 and reigned until 1936.

He led England when the great European war exploded in 1914 and had to defend the above mentioned British imperialism against the German imperialism. Great Britain and their allies won the war and then, the Irish, by the right granted to the small nationalities to govern by themselves, asked for their independence. When they saw their petition neglected, they taken up arms until 1921 when an agreement was reached by which Ireland were considered an English dominion. Later, the already weak bonds that united the Free State of Ireland with the United Kingdom went lost until the definitive separation that took place in 1949 with the constitution of the Irish Republic as an independent State, being only affected to the United Kingdom the Northern Ireland, constituted by six counties of the province of Ulster.

Dead Jorge V by the end of January of 1936, was proclaimed king his son Edward, prince of Wales, that raised to the throne with the name of Edward VIII but who reigned little time, because in December of the same year, and for reasons of sentimental nature (to marry with a divorced American woman), abdicated in the person of his brother Albert, Duke of York, that followed him in the throne with the name of George VI. On September 1 of 1939 Germany attacks Poland and two days later Great Britain and France, by virtue of the agreements subscribed with this country, declared the war to Germany, beginning therefore the World War II, that lasted until 1945.

After the victory, Great Britain joined the other nations in the organization of a world-wide peace, often agreeing with the points of view of the United States. In 1951, the Labour Party, that was in the power from the end of the great war and under whose regime the British Empire was cracked deeply and suffered great reduction the prestige of England, had to yield the position to conservatives in the government of the Great Britain. George VI died in 1952 and her daughter Elizabeth followed him in the throne, and took the name of Elizabeth II. During her reign, Great Britain lost the control of the Suez Channel and saw dismantle her colonial empire, although good part of their old colonies belongs at the moment to the British Commonwealth.