Romans arrive and conquer large parts of the British isles. The Romans withdraw from the British isles after nearly 400 years, around 410 CE. There is evidence of black people in Britain since the Roman times. Yet, a major increase of black people in Britain does not happen until the slave trade in the 17th and the 18th centuries.
In the 400s, Germanic tribes invade the British isles after the Romans have left. They are known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. English cultural identity is widely believed to have been significantly shaped especially by the Angles and Saxons, and a traditionally white, English identity is often referred to today as an Anglo-Saxon identity.
The ancestors to those who would later call themselves the Celts arrive from the European continent.
From the 700s – c. 1066, the Vikings raid the British Isles and Ireland and control parts of Britain and Ireland at various stages.
In 1066, the Normans invade the British isles. The French-speaking Normans are descendants of Vikings, or Norsemen, who had settled in Normandy in France around 900.
Jewish people are expelled from England and more than three hundred English Jews are executed. But Jewish immigration resumes centuries later.
The British begin their slave trade in 1562. An estimate of twelve to thirteen million lives will be torn from their homes and families and sold like cattle up until the 19th century. By 1770, Britain is the biggest slave trading country in the world.
In 1685, fifty thousand Protestant Huguenots flee to Britain from religious persecution in Catholic France. In the 1500s there had been similar waves of Protestant refugees from Holland and France.
In the 1700s, thousands of people from Germany, Poland flee to Britain because of political unrest and wars on the European Continent.
Slaves are brought to colonies in America and the Caribbean, but a number of Africans also end up in Britain as domestic servants. By the late 1700s, between 10,000 and 30,000 people of African descent live in Britain.
