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Istorie Si Civilizatie Engleza - Colipca Gabriela
Istorie Si Civilizatie Engleza - Colipca Gabriela
din Galai
Facultatea de Litere
Specializarea:
Limba i literatura romn Limba i literatura englez
Istorie i civilizaie
englez
Conf. dr. Gabriela Iuliana Colipc
Anul I, Semestrul I
D.I.D.F.R.
British History
and Civilization
Course tutor:
Associate Professor Gabriela Iuliana Colipc, PhD
Galai
2010
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. GREAT BRITAIN. GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND. BRITISH
INSULARITY
2. INVASIONS AND PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT IN THE
BRITISH ISLES
2.1. Ancient Britain
2.1.1. The Stone Age: the Megalithic Men
2.1.2. The Bronze Age: the Beaker People
2.1.3. The Iron Age: the Celts
2.1.4. The Romans
2.2. The Middle-Ages
2.2.1. The Anglo-Saxons
2.2.2. The Vikings
2.2.3. The Normans
2.3. Battles of Britain
2.3.1. The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588)
2.3.2. Fighting the German Luftwaffe (1940)
2.4. Practical Applications (1)
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Table of Contents
4.4.6. Political Life in the Victorian Age
4.4.7. The Rise of a Third Party
4.5. Political Life in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Britain
4.5.1. Reforms in Edwardian Britain
4.5.2. The Interwar Depression
4.5.3. Post World War II Britain. The Welfare State
4.5.4. Britain, Europe and the USA
4.5.5. Troubles in Ireland
4.5.6. Margaret Thatchers Conservative Administration
4.5.7. Tony Blairs Labour Administration
4.6. Practical Applications (3)
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The small estuaries of the Scottish coastline, where most of the Scottish rivers (the Forth, the Clyde,
etc.) flow into the ocean are called firths.
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King Canute;
William I.
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3. 8. The Stuarts
As Queen Elizabeth I died heirless, the throne was passed to her
nephew James, son of Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots, who thus
inaugurated, by combining the thrones of England and Scotland for the first
time, the first line of kings of the United Kingdom. James I (1603-25) had
British History and Civilisation
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1066;
1455-1485;
1605;
1688;
1917;
1204;
1476;
1642-1649;
1775-1783;
1936;
1215;
1531;
1649-1660;
1825;
1947.
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5. Write one paragraph about the contribution to British history of each of the
following personalities:
Richard II; Richard III; Henry VIII; Mary I;
Elizabeth I;
Charles I;
Charles II; George III; Queen Victoria;
George VI.
6. Write an essay about the achievements and/or failures of the British kings
and/or queens of: a) the sixteenth century; b) the seventeenth century; c) the
eighteenth century; d) the nineteenth century; e) the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries.
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to make sure that the powerful members from the shires and
towns, who had a great deal of control over popular feeling,
supported him,
to frighten the priests and the bishops into obeying him,
to frighten the Pope into giving in to his demands.
The paradox was that, while using Parliament to strengthen his policy and to
make new laws for the Reformation, Henry VIII actually increased
Parliaments authority.
Parliament further strengthened its position under Edward VI by
ordering the new Prayer Book to be used in all churches and forbidding the
Catholic mass.
Mary I could not persuade Parliament to accept Philip of Spain as the
king of England after her death.
Parliament only met when the monarch ordered it. To be more
specific, during the first 44 years of Tudor rule, Parliament met only 20 times.
Then Parliament was summoned a little more often by Henry VIII to make the
laws for the Church Reformation. After Elizabeth Is Reformation Settlement
in 1559, for the next 44 years, the Parliament met only 13 times.
During the sixteenth century, power moved from the House of
Lords to the House of Commons, as the latters representatives became
richer and more influential than the Lords. (Hence, the idea of getting rid of
the House of Lords emerged for the first time.) The size of the House of
Commons nearly doubled, because the Welsh boroughs and counties were
included next to the English ones. (That does not mean they represented the
people; the MPs simply supported royal policy.)
Taking all these into account, the functions of the Parliament under the
Tudors could be summarized as follows:
to agree to the taxes needed;
to make the laws which the Crown suggested;
to advise the Crown, but only when asked to do so.
Therefore, MPs were granted:
freedom of speech;
freedom from fear of arrest;
freedom to meet and speak to the monarch.
To avoid giving Parliament too much power by asking it to vote for
new taxes, the Tudors tried (unwisely) to get money in other ways. For
example, in 1600, Elizabeth I sold monopolies which gave a particular
person/company total control over a trade. The next year (1601), Parliament
complained about the bad effect on free trade of these monopolies.
Besides, Elizabeth and her chief adviser, Lord Burghley, sold official
positions in the government. Furthermore, as they grew old, both Queen
Elizabeth and Lord Burghley became more careless and slower at making
decisions. They allowed the tax system to become less efficient, and failed to
keep information on how much money people should be paying. England
needed a tax reform, which could only be carried out with the agreement of
the Parliament. Or both Parliament and the JPs in charge of collecting the
taxes avoided the matter of tax. The Queen also avoided open discussion on
money with the Parliament, so the problem had to be solved by Elizabeths
successors.
Parliament naturally began to think that it had a right to discuss money
and law-making. By the end of the sixteenth century, it was beginning to
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1836 Further reforms legalized civil marriages and extended the civil
rights of law prisoners.
This tempestuous revolutionary era that closed the eighteenth century and
continued during the first third of the nineteenth century marked the
emergence of the bourgeoisie as the new rulers of society while the
working class began to draw the battle line as a class-conscious
opponent.
4.4.5. The Chartist Movement
Since 1824 workers had been allowed to join together in unions. Most
of these unions were small and weak. Although one of their aims was to
make sure employers paid reasonable wages, they also tried to prevent other
people from working in their particular trade. As a result, the working classes
still found it difficult to act together. Determined employers could still quite
easily defeat strikers who refused to work until their pay was improved, and
often did so with cruelty and violence. Soldiers were sometimes used to force
people back to work or break up meetings.
In 1838, working together for the first time, unions, workers and
radicals formed the Workingmens Association in London and submitted a
Charter in Parliament calling for universal manhood suffrage, vote by
secret ballot, other changes in electoral procedure but, above all, for
getting a different kind of Member of Parliament who had first-hand
experience of the sufferings of the poor. The Charter was rejected by
Parliament in 1839. As a consequence, serious riots occurred in Birmingham,
Newport and elsewhere. The Chartists were not united for long. They were
divided between those ready to use violence and those who believed in
change by lawful means only. Many did not like the idea of women also
getting the vote, partly because they believed it would make it harder to
obtain voting rights for all men, and this demand, which had been included in
the wording to the first Charter, was quietly forgotten. But riots and political
meetings continued.
The second national convention of the Chartists was again rejected in
1842 and a great strike was organised in the Midlands. Troops were quickly
poured by the new railroads, the two principal leaders, William Lovet and
Fergus O'Connor were sent to prison and the troubled Midlands were
pacified. The goals of the Chartists were to be achieved along decades of
social reform policy and by 1911 all the six political points of the Charter had
been actually conceded, turning what might have become a bloody revolution
into peaceful evolution.
4.4.6. Politics in the Victorian Age
After 1865, a much stricter two party system developed, demanding
greater loyalty from its membership. The two parties were the Tory/
Conservative Party (they believed in established values and the
preservation of traditions; supported business and commerce; had strong
links with the Church of England and the professions; opposed what they
saw as radical ideas.) and the Liberal (former Whig) Party (a more
progressive force supporting social reform and economic freedom without
government restrictions). They developed greater party organisation and
order.
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British History and Civilisation
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1332;
1689;
1838;
1912;
1973;
1628-1629;
1815;
1884;
1921;
1979;
1651;
1817;
1893;
1926;
1983;
1653;
1820;
1909;
1946;
1997.
One of the main functions of the Witan was to choose the king.
The tenants-in-chief of the Norman Curia Regis often struggled with
the king for power.
Magna Carta contributed to reinforcing English feudalism.
Edward III summoned the first English Parliament.
The forms of English parliamentary life abolished the distinction of
feudalism by their intermarriage of classes.
During the sixteenth century, the power of the House of Lords
exceeded that of the House of Commons.
Parliament agreed with Queen Elizabeth I selling monopolies to make
money for the crown.
James I and Charles Is belief in the divine right of kings made them
try to rule without Parliament.
By the victories of Marston Moor and Naseby, Parliament won the
right to survive as the supreme legislative body in England.
Cromwells republican regime maintained both Houses of Parliament.
Fear of Charles IIs interest in the Catholic Church and of the
monarchy becoming too powerful resulted in the emergence of first
political parties in Britain.
Robert Walpole was the first Prime Minister in British history.
John Wilkes attacked Robert Walpole in his newspaper The North
Briton.
The Castlereagh administration supported reform.
The Reform period inaugurated in 1830 represented the capitulation of
English landed gentry to the middle class.
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British History and Civilisation
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Selected Bibliography
Selected Bibliography
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