There were perhaps half a million people living in the islands – comprised of Britons, Gaels and Picts – a network of tribes collectively known as the Celts. These were thought to be descended from Britain’s original Neolithic population of just a few hundred, part of the wave of migrations that had swept up from southern Europe.

Although Julius Caesar launched two aborted Roman incursions in 55 and 54BC, the Roman period only really began with the invasion ordered by Claudius in AD43.

A permanent army of occupation was stationed here, drawing on the native population for much of its labour force. This led to the near-annihilation of the indigenous Celtic cultures, particularly in the south of England.

The Roman forces eventually started withdrawing from Britain towards the end of the fourth century AD. Their departure was formally marked by an instruction from the Emperor Honorius in 410 that the people would have to defend themselves against the new invasion force of Saxons.

After the Romans

Between about AD400 and 600, Britain was settled by marauding forces from three Germanic tribes – the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, known as the “Anglo-Saxons”. After them came Frisians from the Netherlandish islands, Franks from along the Rhine and what is now northern France, and Suevi from Sweden.

The Germanic invasions were momentarily checked (and even reversed) in the fifth century – these actions were traditionally attributed to a mythical war leader, who became known to legend as King Arthur. By then, though, indigenous British culture had already been fairly comprehensively wiped out.

The next great wave of invasions took place from 787, in the form of Danish and Norwegian warriors, or Vikings. The early stages of their brutal, ongoing occupation stamped out much of the established Christian culture of Britain. But the influence of the Norse Vikings was effectively brought to an end in England in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings, and they concentrated their attentions on Scotland for the next 40 years.

1066, and all that...

In 1066, a new aggressive force arrived from northern France in the shape of William the Conqueror’s Norman army. Where the Saxon invasions had created the basis of the modern English language, and the Vikings added Nordic influences to it, the Normans were responsible for the French elements.

The Norman incursion also saw the first significant arrivals of Jewish people. Although they were to play a key role in the economy for the next three centuries, there was a lot of institutionalised prejudice against them. In 1290, they were eventually expelled altogether by Edward I. A tax was levied on the native population to pay for their transportation out of England. Most settled in France or Germany.

It was only in the 1650s that the Jewish community was readmitted to England, during the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. This was done largely for reasons of economic convenience because many sectors, most notably agriculture, were suffering from a lack of the finance they had previously provided.

Other European migrations between 1250 and 1700 included merchants from Lombardy in northern Italy, and the German and Baltic towns of the Hanseatic League; Flemish and Walloon settlers fleeing war in the Low Countries; small numbers of gypsies during Elizabeth I’s reign; Protestant Huguenots fleeing Catholic France in the period after the Thirty Years War (the 1640s onwards) and German religious refugees from the Palatinate, who arrived during the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714).

Slaves, merchants and refugees

From the 1550s onwards, Africans and later West Indians began coming to England, as a result of the country’s involvement in the slave trade. Some came directly from Africa and the Caribbean on slave ships, others via the United States. Their presence was a political issue as early as the 1590s, when Elizabeth I felt their numbers had become too great.

By the end of the 18th century, there was a significant black workforce of around 20,000 in London and the port cities of Britain. These had been supplemented during the course of the century by much smaller arrivals from India, as a result of colonisation.

In the 19th century, the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842, which opened China to trade with Britain, and lent Hong Kong to the British Crown on lease for 150 years, brought in a modest number of Chinese – mostly merchant seamen.

In the 1880s, there was a substantial influx of Jewish refugees from the Russian empire. These people did not have anything like the resources of their west European predecessors in the time of Cromwell, and had no labour skills. At the time they represented the largest inward movement of non-Christian people in British history (around 120,000). In the 1930s, a further wave of Jewish political refugees arrived from Nazi Germany and occupied Europe.

© TopFoto.co.uk/ PA / David Cheskin

And the early 20th century

The two world wars saw large numbers of refugees coming to Britain, principally Belgians (including a large contingent of wounded soldiers) during the first world war, and Poles (fleeing combined German and Russian persecution) in the 1930s. Many German and Italian prisoners-of-war stayed on to work in post-war Britain after 1945.

An acute shortage of labour in the years of post-war reconstruction, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, saw large-scale recruitment from Europe. The new workers came from central and eastern Europe, mainly Germany, Italy, Poland, Austria and Ukraine.

There was also a contingent of 492 from the Caribbean, who arrived on June 22nd, 1948, on the Empire Windrush, which is where our story begins…