War

[jjt]

Who was the last ever nation to invade Britain?

[Drusilla]

The French in 1797, apparently.

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Wales-History/Fishguard.htm

[gary baldy]

The Channel Islands were invaded by Germany in WW2.

[henneth]

Are we talking full on successful invasions here?

The Romans and Normans are the only serious contenders in this question and even they didn't fully control all of the island of Great Britain, hence Hadrian's and later the Antonine Walls of the second century and the weakness of Norman juristiction any further north of the midlands for decades after the conquest, and very little of it across the borders with Scotland until the time of John Balliol and other vassels of the Plantagenets.

The French invasion of a few farms outside of Fishguard in 1797 ranks alongside the stories of Anne Frank and Grace Darling as fillers for an edition of 'Blue Peter' when the Editors got nothing else to broadcast.

I can hear Janet Ellis right now, voicing over a rather crude drawing of women on a hillside in traditional Welsh dress "...the silly French soldiers had mistaken the women for an English regiment and the invasion was lost before it even began..."

Next week, Dr Barnardo....

[vehelpfulguy]

William of Orange (with Mary) "invaded" England in 1688.

I put invaded in quotes because they were sort of invited by some people in England to become King or Queen, but were not sure how welcome they would be so bought an army.

They met no resistance, so it was a peaceful invasion, but an invasion none the less.

[JudgeJ]

The Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic are a United Kingdom Overseas Territory, open to any British Citizen and are an associated territory of the European Union.

They were invaded and occupied by Argentinian Forces in April 1982. The invaders were expelled following their surrender to the British Task Force in mid-June of the same year. 258 British lives were lost.

[Octavius]

Don't dispute that those darn frenchies popped over in 1797, prior to that Scotland invaded England in 1745.

Technically the British also invaded The Falklands in 1982 after a short spell of occupation and castilian cultural change.

[Gef]

henneth, you seem to be belittleing Anne Frank and Grace Darling. Why?

[steak2]

we are still being invaded every day are not we

[bondy]

The Normans weren't a nation they came from Normandy in France! So I guess the Romans - though you could say they were a city state and not a nation

[isca]

Good stuff henneth. Its worth pointing out that the romans never sucessfully conquered Cornwall either. Although possibly they took one look at the locals and thought better of it.

Like in the Asterix books. Only with more pasties.

[Pinotage]

The United States during WWII under the pretext of helping us. They still have sovereign military bases on our soil from which they launch attacks on other countries, listen to our electronic messages in their monitoring stations on our soil.

We pay billions for our military actions supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan without getting anything in return, although it was only afew years ago we finished paying them billion in gold for WWII debts.

Yup, the US owns us.