Transcript The UK

The first important exact date in British history is 55
b.c.e., the date of the first invasion of Britain by the
Romans.
Society was radically transformed, first by Roman contact
and then, through much of the island, by actual Roman
rule. Roman Britain was referred by the Romans as
Britannia
The collapse of central Roman authority in Britain after
410 was preceded by years of weakening Roman
military. Southern Britain was also facing a
fundamentally different type of outside threat than
Roman Continental Europe.
From the middle of the fifth to the end of the sixth
century, a New culture - the Anglo-Saxons established its domination over most of Britain.
Around the same time, the Scots were settling in what
became Scotland. These two cultures became the
foundation for what would be the dominant kingdoms
of Britain—England and Scotland.
In the 11th century England increased contact with the
Continent, particularly Normandy. It was important for
prevent them from providing bases for Scandinavian
raiders and for the health of the English wool trade.
These connections were strengthened by royal
intermarriage. Edward the Confessor spent much of
his youth in exile at French courts. When Edward
became king of England in 1042, he returned with
Norman warriors and churchmen, the beginning of the
Norman presence that would overwhelm England
after Edward’s death.
The most famous date in English history is 1066, the year
Duke William of conquered the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
England. William’s victory was precipitated by the death of
Edward the Confessor in early January 1066. Edward had
left no children, and the witan proclaimed Harold II
Godwinson, from the powerful Anglo-Saxon family of
Godwin, to be king. William, however, claimed that Edward
had recognized him as the successor and that Harold had
accepted this claim.
The decisive battle between the English and the Normans
took place on October 14, 1066, at Hastings in Sussex.
Harold, along with most of the fighting aristocracy of AngloSaxon England, was killed in battle, and William was
crowned king.
William the Conqueror was succeeded as king of England by
his second son, William II Rufus . This king gained a bad
reputation for violence, irreligion, and sodomy. William
Rufus died in a hunting accident in 1100. Robert, the next
in the strict line of succession, was still off crusading so his
seized the opportunity and succeeded William Rufus to the
throne. Henry I defeated Robert reuniting kingdom and
duchy.
Henry’s reign was particularly important in the development
of English law and judicial procedures. The law worked
outby the royal justices in Henry’s reign—the common
law—would buildon Anglo-Saxon and Norman precedents
to become one of the world’s great legal systems.
The centralization and fiscal extortion practiced by the early Angevin dynasty
led to resentment on the part of the aristocracy. This came to a head under
Richard’s brother and successor, King John. John lost Normandy and much of
the inheritance of Henry II in France, with disastrous consequences for his
prestige in England John needed money. His ruthlessness in squeezing money
from his barons, including the confiscation of baronial lands and the
promotion of gangsterish favorites, aroused massive resistance. John was
forced to sign the Magna Carta—the great charter—in 1215. The Magna Carta
was designed to stop the king’s abuses and safeguard the baronage’s feudal
rights. It established right aristocratic control over the central government
through the requirement that new taxes could only be imposed with the
consent of a great council of the baronage. The Magna Carta guaranteed both
rights of interest to the baronage, such as restrictions on wardship, and rights
of all freemen in the kingdom, such as trial by peers. He later revoked the
Magna Carta with the permission of the pope. This led to another civil war,
with the participation of Louis, the son of the king of France. The war ended
when John died and his nine-year-old son, Henry III, became king.
Parliaments began as great councils as called for in the Magna Carta. The move from
great councils to parliaments was precipitated by a crisis in 1258.
Out of the desire to provide a crown for his second son and to oblige the papacy,
Henry had become involved in a war in Sicily by agreeing to guarantee the papal
debts incurred there.
The council of barons set forth an ambitious
program to make the king merely the head of
a system of baronia councils that would
actually rule the realm. This form of
government forced Henry to the humiliation
of having to rearrange his personal household
to conform to what the barons wanted, but it
was eventually brought down by divisions
within the baronage and its own weaknesses
and ambiguities. This was when the word
parliamen t came into general use.
The most important monarch in the story of the
English Reformation was Henry VIII. Henry’s
Reformation began by difficulties with the
Catholic Church, in particular those
surrounding his hopes for a divorce from his
first wife, Catherine of Aragon to marry his
lover, Anne Boleyn. Henry was particularly
worried because Catherine had failed to give
birth to the male heir who would cement the
Tudor claim to the English throne. Frustrated
in his attempts to win a divorce, Henry
eventually removed the English church from
the pope’s jurisdiction and put it under his own
headship in the Act of Supremacy of 1534.
Anne, too, failed to produce a son and heir for
Henry, although like Catherine she did have a
daughter, Elizabeth, who would eventually
ascend the throne. Henry was succeeded by
his much more Protestant son, Edward VI , the
product of his union with his third wife, Jane
Seymour.
The reign of Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603 saw the formation of a
distinctively English Protestantism and conflicting religious parties.
Her reign was also a key period in the definition of “Englishness”
and the source of many of England’s historical myths. She created a
new religious practice that brought together elements of both
traditions and issued a new statement of church beliefs, the Thirtynine Articles of Religion, and a new prayer book, the Book of
Common Prayer, guiding worship in the Church of England.
The death of Elizabeth in 1603 was followed by
the succession of the Scottish king James VI,
who ruled as James I until his death in 1625.
During James’s reign, the first British state—
with England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland all
ruled effectively by the king in London—was
created.
Stuarts wanted to force Scotland to choose Anglicanism as a national
religion. It caused riots that forced Charles I to convene Parliament.
He wanted the agreement for new taxes but opposition disagreed.
When Charles I hadn’t found the solution for the problem, he
asked Parlament again. There has to establish anti-absolutism
reforms, and to strengthen the position of the opposition. After a
failed attempt to capture opponents, losing control of the country
Charles I left London But the biggest success was thanks to Oliver
Cromwell, an outstanding leader, who stood at the head of an army
of parliament and created an efficient cavalry regiment.
However, the opposition began to split. The tension between the
parliament made Cromwell had to act. He set out with his army and
captured London.
The victory of the English
Parliament over their king was
followed by the victory of
England over Scotland and
Ireland. Cromwell defeated
both the Irish rebellion and a
Scottish attempt to restore.
Using his control of the army to
overthrow Parliament in 1653,
Cromwell took the title Lord
Protector of England, Scotland
and Ireland.
The Restoration of 1660 was the restoration not
only of the king but also of the institutions that
had been abolished by the victorious
Parliamentarians and that remained central to
British life, such as the House of Lords and the
episcopally organized Church of England. Charles
II’s experience in exile on the Continent had
shaped his personality in many ways. He became
one of the least insular of early modern British
kings. He did not share the anti-Catholic
prejudices of many of his subjects and in fact
converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.
Britain in the 18th century was more deeply involved with the word
beyond its shores than ever before. British ships plied the world’s
oceans, displacing the Dutch from their leadership in world trade.
African slaves, Indian cotton textiles, and Chinese tea all served to
fill the coffers of British merchants. Not only British trade but British
dominion was rising. The colonies in North America changed from
isolated outposts to complex societies expanding into the American
interior. The British colonies of the Caribbean, Jamaica, and
Barbados, with their vast, slave-worked sugar plantations, were the
source of immense wealth, even as slavery itself was increasingly
controversial by the second half of the century. The Hudson’s Bay
Company, founded in 1670, traded with Native Americans for furs,
although in the first part of the new century it was outpaced by
French rivals. The East India Company, founded in 1600, had
established a firm foothold in Bengal in northeastern India that
became a base for further expansion by the mid-18th century.
Two great conflicts between Britain and France, the War of the
Spanish Succession, was prompted by the death of Carlos (Charles)
II of Spain without a direct heir in 1700. One important
consequence of the war was domestic: the Act of Union of 1707,
which made England and Scotland one country under the new
name of United Kingdom of Great Britain. The act abolished the
Scottish parliament, replacing i twith elected representatives to the
English House of Commons and House of Lords, theoretically a new
British parliament but in practice the English parliament with the
addition of Scottish members.
When Anne died in 1714 and was succeeded by the German prince
George, the elector of Hanover, first of the Hanoverian dynasty.
George I was an unprepossessing man with no knowledge of
English or familiarity with English institutions, but he was a
respected statesman in much of central Europe and the Baltic.
The British economy in the late 18th century was transformed.
British domination of the seas was actually strengthened. England also
had mechanics and engineers who combined practical experience with
some training in Newtonian physics. The enclosure movement, in which
Parliament handed over common community land to private landowners,
coupled with rapid growth in the English population, meant that a large
surplus workforce, unable to sustain itself on the land, was available for
industry. Industrialism first emerged in the production and trade of textiles
(light industry). The Industrial Revolution led to powerful social changes,
especially in the growth of urbanization and new forms of labor. English
urban areas, particularly London and the cities of the industrial north,
grew at an astounding rate, and by the mid-19th century Britain was the
first large nation to have a majority of its population living in cities. The
new cities were overcrowded, with shoddy, quickly built housing for the
working population and poor hygiene and waste disposal.
The British Empire under Queen Victoria was at its zenith of power and prestige. The empire included the
legacy of British victories in the wars against France in the 18th and early 19th century and the new conquests
that had been made since then. It was also the product of Britain’s world-leading industrial economy and
unrivaled navy.
The empire was neither acquired nor maintained
peacefully, and Victorian Britain was constantly
engaged in wars on the colonial frontiers.
Adopting a policy of “splendid isolation”, Britain
shunned formal Continental alliances that might
have drawn it into war with European great
powers. This enabled it to maintain a small army
and devote most of its military budget to the
world’s dominant navy. Although there were also
tensions and clashes between Britain and the
United States, again the Iritish avoided war,
increasingly deferring to the United States in
affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
In 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria- Hungary by a Serbian nationalist led to a war that
lasted until 1918 and involved every major world power.
From the British point of view, the devastating conflict was
the culmination of years of colonial and naval rivalry with
the rising power of Germany. Masses of men volunteered,
often with the hope that the war would be over quickly; in
fact, it dragged on for four bloody years. The British army
had to change from a small force mainly designed and
equipped to fight small colonial wars to a mass army like
those of the Continental powers France and Germany.
Casualties were massive: Between 750,000 and 800,000
Britons died in the war.
The war’s early stages were marked by widespread popular support. Early optimism ended with the quick fall of Poland
and increasingly successful German attacks in western Europe.
The German plan for the invasion of Britain was code-named Operation Sea Lion. Invasion was never attempted, and
the actual Battle of Britain was fought in the air. In the first major military campaign to be fought entirely from the
air, heavily outnumbered British fighter pilots defeated the attempt of the German Luftwaffe to establish
dominance of the skies.
UK forces played an important role in the Normandy landings of 1944, achieved with its ally the US. After Germany's
defeat, the UK was one of the Big Three powers who met to plan the post-war world; it was an original signatory
to the Declaration of the United Nations. However, the war left the UK severely weakened and depending
financially on Marshall Aid and loans from the United States
After the glow of victory wore off, life was drab, food rationing was still in force, and there seemed few economic
opportunities. In the years following 1945, many Britons who could afford to do so emigrated to Australia, Canada,
or the United States.
In the last few decades, Britain has led
a more humble existence than it did
as a global empire. Some challenges—
like those of economic development,
an increasingly multicultural society,
and terrorism—are challenges it has
shared with other nations of the
developed
world.
Others,
such as the challenges of Welsh and
Scottish devolution or the emotional
shocks delivered by the royal family,
have been more uniquely British.
The future will bring many more,
from the threat of economic disaster
facing the world in 2009, to the end of
the reign of the only queen most
Britons have ever known. But only a
fool would count out the society that
gave the world William Shakespeare,
Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill,
and the Industrial Revolution, to name
but a few. Britain’s past will continue
to shape its future.