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• How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?

The UK is about as equal as most Western democracies are, in both the better and worse ways. Racism and sexism very obviously still exist, there are areas in various cities where poverty is rampant and structural racism places people in colour in those environments, and so on, but pride marches are a thing and few politicians are outwardly saying that women deserve less rights or anything, just in the more covert ways. An overwhelming majority of people support the right to an abortion. The main issue that dominates recent discussion is about trans rights; most here will be familiar with the designation of the UK as "TERF Island", which is about right. The right for trans people to exist is hotly debated, as if this isn't an inherently dehumanizing discussion. The other major social issue that conservatives love to discuss is immigration, with the mere existence of a lifeboat containing a dozen or two brown-skinned people arriving on the shores of a country containing nearly 70 million treated as a DEFCON 1 event signalling the end of British civilization as we know it. Despite immigration numbers being pretty low compared to the current population; despite the UK's long history of taking over foreign nations and thus prompting migrating between those places; and despite the UK playing a proud role in destabilizing and bombing their way through countries whose citizens flee and try and find refuge in the UK; the discussion about immigration is only limited to the typical rhetoric about how every person of color is a benefits-hoarding dragon keeping 36 jobs in their attic and keeping them from "real" (read: white) British citizens, and how they're not allowed to oppress our gays - only WE'RE allowed to do that!

Going to reverse the last two bulletpoints:

• If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

Britain once had indigneous people who inhabited the island, though I'm very unfamiliar with the pre-Roman history; needless to say that the Romans came along in AD 43 and had taken the place over in about a generation. Like in most places the Romans went, much of their institutions and even structures had a large impact of our history - so large that it's often difficult to determine what doesn't somehow originate from the Roman Empire. Once Rome collapsed, as far as I'm aware, the UK had a similar history as the rest of the continent - keeping some of the Roman institutions, watching them decay, repairing what could be repaired and otherwise surviving, with the cultural group which existed during this time being called the Anglo Saxons. The UK became an arena in 1066 in the Norman Conquest, resulting in the Viking force being defeated and the Normans taking control. These were then replaced by the Plantagenets, to whom Richard the Lionheart of Crusades fame belonged. Then came the Tudors, the Stuarts, and finally Oliver Cromwell in the mid 17th century, who started a civil war and won, creating the Commonwealth, but his failson fucked up and the royalty came back de jure (really it still existed de facto). Then came the monarchs that people, including myself, actually give a modicum of a shit about, including George III who presided over the defeat to America and Victoria I, who had a whole period named after her.

During this period, the British Empire rose, presiding in four main arenas: North America, Africa, India and surrounding areas, and the Pacific - though not necessarily concurrently. Britain and other European nations had a lot of interest in the Caribbean due to the potential profit of cash crops, transporting and enslaving tens of millions of African and Caribbean-indigneous slaves in the worst atrocities on the planet up to that point in history. Britain and France also bickered over America and Canada, while Britain and the Netherlands bickered over India, creating their respective East India Companies. Eventually, a British focus on naval prowess and a relatively more modern economy, as well as the advantages of industrialization and early capitalism, led to them taking a commanding lead over their European counterparts overseas, with Britain generally coming out on top in wars. There was never a substantial period of consistent supremacy - Britain was deeply afraid of a European invasion and thus made even more ships than necessary in order to handle both a sprawling foreign empire and their foes right next to them. India became their economic "jewel" in the 19th century as America achieved and maintained independence and slavery was abolished, while directly causing mass famines both in India and around the world which killed tens of millions more people, and then they ventured further into Africa and killed yet more fucking people. This obviously culminated in World War 1 as European nations had less territory to exploit and had to fight each other more directly than ever before for supremacy, and again in World War 2.

By this time, the British Empire was very clearly declining as America's neoimperialist star rose. In the decades that followed, nations declared independence and despite some very brutal fights in some cases, the trend was generally that Britain would, as it imagined, very magnanimously let these new infant nations which they had "raised" or "uplifted" have independence; things would go well for a short period of time; and then inevitably collapse into infighting as the legacies of colonialism and the still very much still existing neocolonialism and capitalist exploitation kept them in poverty and subservience to Britain and the United States, thus fueling narratives that Britain was "the only empire that fell without very much bloodshed," and also racist ideas, upon watching these nations fall into infighting, that this was somehow their true nature coming out as soon as the paternalistic figure stepped away.

• Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?

As stated, nations withdrew from the British Empire, with Britain left with the spoils of centuries of obscene quantities of exploitation, leaving them in a good position. These riches were never remotely evenly distributed, but the complex web of social and economic factors from the empire, as well as propaganda, created a country which was considerably less radical than various other nations at the time of WW1. This is not to say that socialist and even communist groups did not gain prominence in the inter-war period, because some did. However, for a variety of reasons (such as the goddamn Sankey Committee and the missed opportunities there) the environment never turned as revolutionary as it did in Russia or Italy, and the optimistic post-war period crashed into an purposefully-caused economic recession due to the fucking neoclassical economists which then curtailed hope of creating a better country until World War 2, more or less. After this, the contradictions were difficult to contain much longer and institutions like the National Health Service were created to reform the country rather than risk revolution as the Soviets pressured Europe into improving worker conditions or tempt revolution. Thatcher came along and dramatically reformed the country in the other direction, crushing the miners' strikes and truly inaugurating the period of exporting everything that isn't nailed down to places with less labour rights, which is the same period we are in a good 50 years on.