Migration, empire and the people

6 Main Themes summarised: MIGRATION The Long Second Millennium began and ended with major migration around the British Isles. The European continent was the source of immigration in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, through Danish and the Norman French  invasions, confronting the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that had themselves been established by European migrants. When the British started to establish colonies overseas, it was not Europe but the wider world that became the focus  of migration. Migrating British traders, missionaries, soldiers and sailors confronted local people who gradually became Britain's imperial subjects. In the later twentieth century the former colonial peoples came to the mother country to work, bringing greater diversity to the British nation.