East Anglia is a peninsula of eastern England. It was named after one of the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the Kingdom of the East Angles, which was in turn named after the homeland of the Angles, in northern Germany, who had settled in the former lands of the Iceni during the previous century.

The Kingdom of the East Angles, initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, formed about the year 520 by the merging of the North and the South Folk, was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms (as defined in the 12th century writings of Henry of Huntingdon). For a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around the year 616, East Anglia was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, and its king Raedwald was Bretwalda (overlord of the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms). But this did not last: over the next forty years, East Anglia was defeated by the Mercians twice, and it continued to weaken relative to the other kingdoms until in 794, Offa of Mercia had its king Æthelberht killed and took control of the kingdom himself.

The independence of the East Anglians was restored by a successful rebellion against Mercia (825–827), in course of which two Mercian kings were killed attempting to crush it. On 20 November 870 the Danes killed King Edmund and took the kingdom, which they named East Anglia (see Ivar the Boneless). The Saxons retook the area in 920, only to lose it again in 1015–1017, when it was conquered by Canute the Great and given as a fiefdom to Thorkell the Tall, who was made earl of East Anglia in 1017.

East Anglia is now generally held to include Cambridgeshire with the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Sometimes Essex is also considered part of the region.

Much of East Anglia consisted of marshland and bogs until the 17th century, despite the construction of early sea barriers by the Roman Empire. During the 17th century the alluvial land was converted into arable land by means of systematic drainage using a collection of drains and river diversions. East Anglia was a rich area of the country up until the effects of the Industrial Revolution moved manufacturing to the Midlands and the North - earnings being based on wool and textiles.

The area is still characterised by its flatness, consisting of fenland and reclaimed marshland, though much of Suffolk and Norfolk is undulating. The flatness of the area is noted in Noel Coward's 'Private Lives' ("Very flat, Norfolk") and the history of its waterways and drainage forms the backdrop to Graham Swift's 'Waterland'.

During the Second World War, the RAF and the United States Air Force constructed many air bases in East Anglia for the heavy bomber fleets of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Nazi-occupied Europe. East Anglia was chosen because it had considerable open space and level terrain and it was relatively close to the continent, thus shortening flights and allowing for greater bomb loads. Remnants of some of these bases are still visible.

The principal East Anglian cities include Norwich, Peterborough, Cambridge and Ely. Ipswich, Colchester and Huntingdon are some of the major towns.

The nine Government Office regions, formed in 1994, were adopted in place of the eight standard statistical regions in 1999. Since then East Anglia is defined as Level 2 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics within the East of England, comprising the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire including Peterborough.

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