The division of the world history

- Ancient history – from the 5th millenium before Christ up to the 5th century of
A.D. (primitive and slave owning society)
- Middle Ages (Early Middle Ages – the 5th – the 11th cc.; Developed Middle
Ages – the 12th – the 13th cc.; Late Middle Ages – the 14th – the 16th cc.) – the 5th –the
16th
cc. (feudalism)
- New History – the 17th c. – up to nowadays (capitalism, free market
economy).
1. Ancient Britain. Early Middle Ages
A) The first known inhabitants are the Iberians, who came in 3000-2000 B.C.
from the Spanish peninsula (Iberia is the second name). The Iberians may be forefathers of
dark-haired inhabitants of Wales.
They settled in Cornwall, in Ireland and along the coast of Wales and Scotland. The
main social unit of the people was a kinship group. They left many places of civilization:
remains of their dwellings, their weapons and different other relics of their culture, like
burial places, man-made hillforts, stone constructions (stonehenge – висячі камні) –
megalithic culture.
The size and splendor of their numerous monuments show that they were a wellorganized
people. Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric site in Europe. It was built
between 2200-1300 B.C. It is thought to have been a prehistoric temple. This construction
consists of two circles of upright stones, standing in groups of twos, 8,5 metres high. They
are joined on the top, by other flat stones. Stonehenge is still a mystery. Was it a temple?
Was it a sacred place where early man worshiped the sun? Was it a sort of observatory?
B) In 1700 B.C. an Alpine race came to the territory of modern England. The race
was called “the Beaker Folk” as they left a characteristic relic of their civilization, - a
drinking vessel called “beaker”. They knew how to use bronze and employed metal tools
and weapons. They gradually merged with the Iberians.
C) The Celts
In the 8th – 7th cc. B.C. the Celts dominated Europe. Soon after 700 B.C. the first
wave of Celtic invaders entered Britain from the territories which are now France and
Germany. The first celtic invaders were the Gaels. About 2 centuries later they were
followed by the Brythons. In the 1st century B.C. the most powerful celtic tribe, the
Belgae, invaded the island.
The Brythons probably gave their name to the whole country. In the course of time
the Celts merged with the Iberians and the Alpine people.
The celts lived in clans; clans were united into large kinship groups and those into
tribes.
The basic activity was farming; they owned common property and were all equal.
They were tall, blue-eyed people, lived in villages. In the last centuries of B.C. and the
first centuries of A.D. the Celts were in a period of transition from primitive communal
society to class society. Their women were very independent. They could be prophets,
warriors. Some women were even made tribal chiefs and were called queens.
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The Celts were pagans. They worshiped nature and believed that everything in the
surrounding world was ruled by gods. They sacrificed not only animals, but also human
beings to satisfy their gods. Their priests were called druids. They were very powerful.
The Celts became forefathers of the Welsh, the Scots and Irish whose national
languages are of a Celtic origin. There are some words of the Celtic origin in Modern
English: the names of rivers, hills, lakes and towns (Avon – “a river”, Derwent – “clear
water”). Nowadays the revival of the national languages can be observed. Welsh is spoken
by 20 %, it is studied at schools in Wales; Scottish Gaelic is spoken in Highlands, Irish
Gaelic is spoken by very few people.
The Halloween (October 31, All Hallow’s Day) has Celtic origin. October 31 was
the eve of the Celtic New Year.
D) the Romans
In 55 B.C. and 54 B.C. a Roman army headed by Julius Caesar made 2 attempts to
conquer Britain but failed. The actual Roman invasion of Britain began in 43 A.D. under
the Emperor Claudius. Since that time up to 410 Britain was one of the provinces of the
Roman Empire.
As for the relics of culture, they built 20 large and 100 smaller towns (York,
Lincoln, Colchester, roads, bridges, amphitheatres, walls, their houses had central heating
and were connected with roads.
Latin words in Modern English: “castra” (camp) in names of cities and towns
(Winchester, Lancaster,”vallum” (wall), “via strata” (street).
At the end of the 4th century the slave-owning Roman Empire was in the process of
decay. The Romans had to leave Britain to defend their own country from the barbaric
tribes. The Celts remained independent for some period of time.
E) the Anglo-Saxons
From the middle of the 5th c. (449) the Celts had to defend their country against the
attacks of Germanic tribes from the Continent. The Jutes and the Angles came from the
Jutland Peninsula. The Saxons came from the territory lying between the Rhine and the
Elbe rivers. They were barbaric people and destroyed the Roman civilization. They
established 7 kingdoms: Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, East Anglia, Mersia, Kent.
At the end of the 8th c. supremacy passed to Wessex. The Anglo-Saxons lived in villages.
People of the village formed a community. The land was in a communal ownership. In the
7th-9th cc. the process of social disintegration led to the formation of such social groups: as
ceorls (toilers) and thanes (predecessors of landlords). The society was passing to the
beginning of the feudal class organization.
F) the Danish invasion
A.L. Morton, a historian, points out the following positive aspects of the Danish
invasion: as the Danes had a superior culture to that of the English, they promoted the
material development of England. First of all they brought the great iron axe into the
country. Due to this big forest areas were cleaned and used for fields and pastures.
 Secondly, in comparison with the stay-at-home Saxons, the Danes were trading and
towndwelling people. So their invasion led everywhere to town building and increased trade.
Besides, the English improved their craft in shipbuilding under the Danish influence. On
the whole, the Danish invasion promoted consolidation of the nation and accelerated the
process of feudal development. Scandinavian words in the English vocabulary: adjectives
– happy, low, loose, ill, ugly, weak; verbs – to take, to die, to call; nouns – sister, husband,
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sky, fellow, window, leg, wing, harbor, etc.,; geographical names – the names of towns
with the endings “by” or “toft” (Grimsby, Whitsby, Lowesstoft, etc.)
G) the Norman Conquest
- 1066, William the Conqueror (a distant relative of the last Anglo-Saxon king).
- Played an important role in the development of the English people. William followed
the policy of strengthening the king’s power and developing an absolute monarchy.
Under William feudalism was developed in its full form. In 1086 the king arranged a
registration of all the holders of arable land and pastures. As a result of the census the
king got a clear idea of the economic state of the country and the class structure of
Anglo-Norman society. The population of the country was about two million people.
2. Developed Middle Ages
A) Foreign relations
After the Norman Conquest the kings of England were also proclaimed Dukes of
Normandy and even extended their domain in France. So William’s followers had their
estates both in France and in England. For at least a century the ruling class in England
had a double nationality. Up to the end of the 13th c. French was a state language.
Due to the double national character of kings and barons they were at home both in
England and in France. That’s why foreign relations with the Continent increased greatly
at that time. London was becoming a center of the commerce of Northern Europe. The
southern ports became very important. The list of imports was considerably increased
(wine from Gascony, fine cloths and spices from the East, etc.). Export included wool,
lead, tin and cattle. At that period skilled artisans began to enter England too. The
Normans were skilled builders in stone. Building of monumental cathedrals and castles
started at that time.
B) the Great Charter and the beginning of Parliament
the Great Charter
- In the 11th-13th cc. England was an absolute monarchy. The nobles looked for some
political ways of increasing their political power and limiting the king’s power. In 1215
the nobles, the churchmen and the merchants composed a document, the Great Charter,
limiting the king’s power and made the king sign it. The Great Charter proclaimed the first
constitutional rights for the propertied people (the right to a fair and legal trial, “no
taxation without representation”) and guaranteed municipal liberties to some towns. The
Great Charter marks a clear stage in the collapse of English feudalism. Feudal society was
based on link between lord and vassal. While creating the document the lords were not
acting as the king’s vassals but as a class.
The beginning of Parliament
In 1258 they elected a council of nobles and called it a parliament (a French word
meaning “a discussion meeting”). In 1265 the first Parliament was convened with the
barons, the clergymen and two knights from each shire and 2 representatives from the
leading towns of the country. At first it consisted only of the House of Lords. In the 13th c.
under Edward 1 Parliament was divided into the House of Lords and the House of
Commons, which consisted of knights, merchants and other wealthy freemen from shires.
Since that time Parliament set pattern for the future by including elected representatives
from urban and rural areas. The leading House was the House of Lords. The form of
political government of England was a feudal monarchy.
Parliament limited the king’s power and took control of the treasury and demanded
the king to keep to Magna Charter.
C) Lifestyle, language and culture in the 11-13th centuries
- The Normans spoke a Norman dialect of French, a language of Latin origin. The
Anglo-Saxons spoke English, a language of a Germanic origin. French became a state
language. The clergy used Latin. Thus three languages were used at the same time. In
the course of time the conquerors gradually learned to speak English. Many of them
married Anglo-Saxon wives and their children learned to speak English. So the
language of the natives won but its vocabulary was greatly influenced by French
- In modern English simple everyday words are mostly Anglo-Saxon, like eat, land,
house and others. But the vocabulary was enriched with such Norman-French words
denoting new feudal relations as manor, noble, baron, serve, obey; or such military
terms as arms, troops, quard, navy, battle, victory and many others characterizing the
lifestyle of the Norman aristocracy. Many synonyms were formed in the English
language when French names were given to already existing English words and
correspondingly they belonged to the literary layer and to the common layer, for
example, chair for stool, belly for stomach. Two languages gradually formed one rich
English language which got the status of a national literary language in the 14th c.
3) Late Middle Ages
A) General characteristics. Peasants’ revolts
General characteristics
The 13th c. was the peak of feudalism. In the 14th c. little by little money
commodity economy began to replace the primitive feudal natural economy. Instead of
exchange of goods the towns and manors began to sell them for money. Peasants could
now pay their rent in money instead of kind. Both home and foreign trade extended.
England traded very actively with France, Flanders, Holland, Norway.
The most important good was becoming wool, a key to the economic development
at that time. Many hilly areas, especially in the eastern and northern countries became
sheep breeding areas. Towns were beginning to develop wool processing industry. Foreign
markets were open to receive English wool. This meant that trade was developing on an
international scale, and merchant capital was appearing on the scene.
The 13th c. witnessed the birth of the new class of gentry, small landowners.
Wealthy peasants, craftsmen who accumulated an income of 40 could be knighted and
become landowners. The gentry began to hire wage labourers. The appearance of the
phenomenon of hired labour reflected the crisis of the manor.
Money commodity economy was also called commutation. The old feudals were
against this system. They preferred to let the land on lease. The lease holders had to pay
rent in money and perform other obligations of the feudal cycle. The great lords tried to
get still more land. The village community was quickly disintegrating and the great lords
took advantage of it seizing the common land, evicting peasants from their strips of land
and using them for pastures.
These changes led to the process of class disintegrating among free peasants, to
their division into the rich and the poor. Some of them lost their lands and became
homeless. They went to town to become hired labourers, or they were made villeins and
had to serve their new masters.
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Peasants’ revolts
The conditions of peasants grew much worse in the 14th c. Because of the process of
enclosing their lands. They were driven away from their land. In 1348 the Black Death
came to the country. Out of 4 million people only 2 million remained. There was a
shortage of the working hands, so they were more cruelly exploited. The Government
adopted the Statute of Labourers according to which everyone under 60 had to work
otherwise committed to jail. The last straw was the introduction of a tax payment for every
person over the age of 15. A lot of peasants’ revolts started. In 1381 was the biggest one,
headed by Wat Taylor.They demanded the abolition of serfdom, confiscation of church
land. They failed but this revolt shook the feudal system.
B) Corruption of the church
There was another aspect to the discontent of the wide masses. The Roman Catholic
church was becoming more and more sinfully corrupt arousing anger and discontent. This
growing corruption was publicly condemned by simple village priests. One of them was
John Wycliff.
John Wycliff’s followers, the Lollards, were more radical. They were poor priests,
wandering from village to village and preaching anti-Catholic ideas. They condemned the
privileges of the Catholic church, they criticized the injustice of feudalism, demanding
abolition of serfdom, of heavy taxes. They demanded social equality. The most radical of
Lollards was John Ball.
But Henry 1V was deeply loyal to the Church and began persecuting the Lollards
and executing them by burning.
C) the Wars of the 14th-15th cc.
In the period between the 13th and 15th cc. The royal power in England was very
weak. Especially the 14th and 15th cc. were disastrous for Britain because of the effect of
feudal wars and plagues. 1337- 1437 were the years of the Hundred Years’ War between
Britain and France for the commercial influence. The English lost it. The War of the Roses
was the most serious civil discord between the most powerful feudal families of the
Lancastrians and the Yorkists for the royal power. The Yorkists came to power in 1461
(Edward 1V, Edward V, Richard 111) and ruled till 1485 when Richard 111 was killed in
the battle with Henry the Tudor, who became Henry V11. Thus the Tudor Dynasty came
to power. Henry V11 established an absolute monarchy resting on the new nobility and the
rising bourgeoisie who needed a strong royal power to protect trade and keep in check the
old nobility.
D) Language and culture in the 14th-15th century
By the end of the 14th c. English became an official language, based on the London
dialect. Geoffrey Chaucer’s work “Canterbury Tales” gives a powerful description of that
period. The formation of the national language reflected the territorial unity. Thus the
period of the 14th-15th cc. is considered to be the time of the formation of the English
nation. Education developed enormously. A lot of new schools opened. The major
technical invention is the usage of printing press in 1476.
LECTURE 2
1) Britain in the 16th century
A) Reformation of the church
The next Tudor monarchs –Henry V111, Edward V1, Mary, Elizabeth 1. The
Tudor monarchs Henry VII and Elizabeth I made a significant contribution into the further
political, economic and social development of England. Henry VIII carried out the greatest
religious reform of the time, the Reformation of the Church. In 1534, by the Act of
Supremacy the English Church was separated from the Roman Church. Henry became the
Civic Head of the Anglican Church. A new religion of Protestantism was adopted.
Protestants believe in the authority of the Bible, rather than in the authority of the tradition
or of the Pope. They also believe in the importance of preaching and studying God’s word
in the Bible. Protestant services are rather plain compared to Catholic services. (In Britain
and the USA today most people are Protestants).
The Reformation caused a deep conflict between the new believers and Catholics
which lasted for a century.
B) Previous accumulation of wealth
The Tudor period is thought as the most glorious period in English history. It
provided the previous accumulation of wealth and prepared the ground for transition to
capitalism and welcomed renaissance ideas.
C) The epoch of Elizabeth
Elizabeth 1 (1558-1603). Her main goals were to find a peaceful solution to the
problems of the English Reformation, to solve the religious conflict between the
Protestants and the Catholics and to make the country prosperous.
Under Elizabeth I the Anglican Church, basically Protestant, but preserving some
Catholic practices, was finally established with a regular church attendance and Bible
teaching. The second half of the 16th c. was characterized by the beginning of the
country’s colonial expansion and rapid commercial growth. Elizabeth encouraged English
merchants to settle abroad and create colonies. This policy led to the foundation of
Britain’s colonial empire in the 17-18th cc. The first colony was Virginia in North
America.
After the Victory in the war with Spain (1588) England became acknowledged as a
strong European sea power.
Elizabeth also welcomed the development of new Renaissance ideas, which were
reflected in all spheres of spiritual life: in philosophy, literature and arts. The term
“renaissance’ refers to the combined intellectual and artistic transformations of the 15th
and 16th centuries, including the emergence of humanism, protestant individualism,
Copernican astronomy (the study of the universe) and the new geographical discoveries,
especially the discovery of America. The 16th c. was a great period of secularization of life
and arts.
D)Tudor Parliaments
England was a feudal monarchy with a strong royal power. Parliament continued
to function on a limited basis. It was used for law making and raising money.
During the 16th c. power moved from the House of Lords to the House of
Commons. The members of Parliament (MPs) in the Commons represented richer and
more influential classes than the House of Lords. In fact, the idea of getting rid of the
House of Lords, still a real question in British politics today, was first suggested in the
16th c.
During the 16th c. the size of the Commons nearly doubled, as a result of the
inclusion of Welsh boroughs and counties and the inclusion of more English boroughs. In
order to control discussion in Parliament, the Crown appointed a “Speaker”. His job in
Tudor times was to make sure that Parliament discussed what the monarch wanted
Parliament to discuss, and that it made the decisions which he or she wanted.
The Tudor dynasty was the peak of English Absolutism. At the same time it
showed the first signs of struggle between absolute monarchy on the one hand and the new
nobles and bourgeoisie on the other.
E)Language and Culture
Both rich and poor lived in small family groups. In spite of hard conditions of life,
most people had a larger and better home to live in than ever before. At the beginning of
the Tudor period English was still spoken in a number of different ways. There were still
reminders of the Saxon, Angle, Jute and Viking invasions in the different forms of
language. Since the time of Chaucer, in the middle of the 14th century, London English had
become accepted as standard English. Printing made this standard English more widely
accepted among the population.
2) Britain in the 17th century
A)Economic and social development
Elizabeth died in an agrarian country. But the 17th c. was the period of changes in the
country’s economic life and in the people’s minds. Firstly all England turned from a wool
producer into a manufacturer of woolen clothes. Shipbuilding, metallurgy, coalmining
were gaining might too. At the same time new branches of industry began to develop –
production of cotton, prints, silk, glass, soap, etc. Immigration of skilled artisans from
other countries was encouraged and it led to the springing up of new manufacturing
 centers.
The advent of new capitalist relations could be observed in the countryside too. The
process of enclosing lands for pastures destroyed the common open field system. Most
peasants lost their lands and became wage labourers; when the arable farming became
important again many of them returned to their lands as hired workers. The social structure
of
the Country was as follows: King, the feudal nobility, the bourgeoisie (the great city
magnates,
the middle merchant class and the petty bourgeoisie), workmen.
With the Stuart dynasty begins a new order of things. The direct line of the Tudors ceased in
Elizabeth. The line of the Stuarts introduced the kings of Scotland to the English throne.
After
all the ages of conflict to unite the two kingdoms under one crown, was a good idea. But it
was
not the direction towards which England had striven. It happened so that they had not
mounted
the throne of Scotland, but Scotland sent its king to rule over England.
The reign of Tudors was characterized by almost unresisted absolutism. With coming of the
Stuarts a mighty struggle for constitutional liberties started and lasted till the last Stuart
monarch was expelled from the throne, and the independence of people was placed on a
firm
basis.
The first half of the 17th century faced serious changes in society. Economic power moved
into the hands of the merchants and the gentry. But the further development was hampered
by
the survival of feudal relations, by absolute royal power. The bourgeoisie and the gentry
demanded the right to direct the state policy in their own interests. It could be achieved by
establishing the supremacy of Parliament over King. The House of Commons was already
gaining power. The Crown could no longer raise money or govern without cooperating with
thе merchants and the gentry.
The Tudors were lucky not to have these problems. The Stuarts were not wise enough to
accept changes. In general the political developments of the period resulted from basiс
changes in thinking in the 17th century. By the time the last Stuart monarch, Queen Ann,
died, a new age of reason and science had arrived.
B)The Bourgeois Revolution
The B.R. was the greatest political event in Europe in the 17th c. It paved way for the
development of a new economic system of capitalism. The new classes of the merchants
and the gentry became very strong economically but they did not have political power. The
further progress of free enterprising was hampered by the survival of the old feudal
relations. So a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy became inevitable.
The bourgeoisie could get political power only by establishing the supremacy of the House
of Commons over the House of Lords. The conflict was speeded up by the policy of royal
 absolutism which the ruling kings (the Stuarts, the Scottish dynasty, James 1 and Charles І)
led at that time.
The bourgeoisie adopted a new ideology - Puritanism (a branch of Protestantism)
which was basically antiroyal, republican. The puritans were severely persecuted. Many of
them fled to America where they founded first English colonies in America.
The conflict grew into the civil war between the king and Parliament. The Bourgeois
Revolution passed through some stages (the constitutional period, the civil war, the
English Republic, the Protectorate and the Glorious Revolution: 1640-1658; 1688). As a
result Parliament got supremacy over the monarch. It was proclaimed in the Bill of Rights
in 1689. Britain became a parliamentary monarchy. The power of the feudal aristocracy
was replaced by that of the bourgeoisie.
The most important role during the revolution was played by Oliver Cromwell (1599-
1658). Cromwell continued Britain's policy of colonization. He ruthlessly subdued Ireland
and conducted wars with Denmark, Spain and Holland for the commercial supremacy in
the world.
LECTURE 3
Britain in the 18th-19th centuries
1. Britain in the 18th century
a) Government. Colonial policy
The last of the Stuarts, Queen Ann, died in 1714. The Protestant ruler of Hanover
(Germany) became George I. During his reign government power was increased greatly
because the new king spoke only German and did not seem interested in his new kingdom.
The idea of the «cabinet» was developed at that time. The chief rule was that all members of
the cabinet were together responsible for policy decisions. Any minister who disagreed
deeply with other cabinet ministers was expected to resign. The author of this idea was
Robert Walpole, who remained the greatest political leader for twenty years. He became the
first Britain's Prime Minister. It was he who made sure that the power of the king would
always be limited by the constitution. The limits to monarchy were as follows: the king
could
not remove or change laws, the king was dependent on Parliament for his financial income
and for his army, the king was supposed to «choose» his ministers. Even today the
government of Britain is «Her Majesty's Government». Judges were not supposed to
account for their actions either to the king or to the government. Besides, the law «Habeas
Corpus Act» was adopted, guaranteeing the safety of the British subjects' immunity and
property against arbitrary treatment. Thus England was becoming a constitutional
monarchy.
The colonial policy
In the 18th c. the main rival of Britain was France. The British won the 7 Year War
with France (1756-1763) and occupied the French possessions in North America (Canada).
By 1775 Britain had founded 13 colonies in North America which were soon lost as a result
of the American War of Independence.
The British began to colonize India, which was completely invaded in the middle of
 the 19th c. They discovered Australia in 1769 and annexed it next year. In the 70s of the
18th
c. the British laid hands on Gibraltar - an important strategic point in the Mediterranean. In
the 40s-50s of the 19th c. New Zealand was colonized. In 1882 Egypt was invaded. In 1890
Africa was divided into the areas of European influence. Britain succeeded in taking over
most of the African areas, especially in the South). In the 20th c. as a result о the WW1
Britain got Kenya, Tanganyika, Nigeria and some other African territories.
The period after the WWII was characterized by the collapse of the colonial system.
The majority of the British colonies won their political independence at the end of the 50s
and the beginning of the 60s. Since 1931 the former British colonies and dominions have
become members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Nowadays the Commonwealth
includes 49 states (former colonies, dominions and some dependent territories). Some
colonies wished to continue with the imperial arrangement (they are afraid of being
swallowed up by their nearest neighbours), e.g. Gibraltar, St. Helena, the Falklands/Malvinas
and Belize. For British government, on the one hand this is a source of pride, but on the other
hand it causes embarrassment, because the possession of colonial territories does not fit with
the image of a modern democratic state, and it causes irritation because it costs the British
taxpayer money.
The members of the Commonwealth are closely connected politically and economically.
b) The Industrial Revolution
Britain's industrial development in the 19th с.
The Industrial Revolution started in the 60s of the 18th c. and lasted 100 years. It meant
transition from manual labour at manufactures to mechanical labour at factories. It
established the capitalist mode of production as an economic structure. The revolution started
in cotton industry with the invention of "Jenny" (a spinning machine) by James Hargrieves
and putting it into pracrice in the 70s-80s.
The invention of a steam engine (James Watt) promoted the development of machine
building: locomotives, steamboats and different mechanical tools. The growth of
mechanical equipment and new means of transport promoted me development of metallurgy.
Heavy industry became the main branch of economy. The accumulative produce of British
factories was more than that of the rest of me world taken together. In the middle of the 19th
c. Britain was called "the world workshop".
The Industrial Revolution greatly changed the sphere of social relations. The
process of industrialization was accompanied by a ruthless exploitation of workers. It led to
the antagonistic division of classes: the bourgeoisie and the industrial workers. It gave rise
to unemployment and there started a wide migration within the country as well as abroad: the
USA, Canada, Australia. During this period there were also built many new industrial cities
in the north-west and in the Midlands of England.
C) Changes in the countryside
The 18th c. was the time of the agrarian revolution. Parliament passed laws allowing
the landowners to enclose lands since land had become private property after the feudal
«holding» rights were abolished. By the middle of the century there was no more common
 land in England. Peasantry as a class disappeared.
Farming began to develop quickly in the 18th century. There were a number of
improvements in farming methods. Britain and Holland were better at farming than any
other country in Europe. Improved use of land made it possible to grow wheat almost
everywhere. Cattle breeding increased greatly too. There appeared big farms.
D) England and France
The French revolution of 1789 had created fear all over Europe. The British
government was also afraid that the revolution would spread to Britain. But it was slower
than other European states to make war on the French republic. Though in 1793 Britain
went to war after France had invaded the Low Counties (today, Belgium and Holland). One
by one the European countries were defeated by Napoleon, and forced to ally themselves
with him. Most of Europe fell under Napoleon's control. Britain decided to fight France at
sea because it had a stronger navy, and because its own survival depended on control of its
trade routes. British policy was to damage French trade by preventing French ships,
including their navy, from moving freely in and out of French seaports. «The commander of
the British fleet, Admiral Horatio Nelson, won brilliant victories over the French navy, near
the coast of Egypt, at Copenhagen, and finally near Spain, at Trafalgar in 1805, where he
destroyed the French-Spanish fleet. Nelson was himself killed at Trafalgar, but became one
of Britain's greatest national heroes. His words to the fleet before the battle of Trafalgar,
«England expects that every man will do his duty», have remained a reminder of patriotic
duty in time of national danger. In the same year a British army landed in Portugal to fight
the French. This army, with its Portuguese and Spanish allies, was eventually commanded
by Wellington, a man who had fought in India. But fighting the French on land was an
entirely different matter. Almost everyone in Europe believed the French Army and its
generals to be the best in the world. Wellington was one of the very few generals who did
not. «I am not afraid of them», he wrote on his appointment as commander. «I suspect that
all the Continental armies were more than half beaten before the battle was begun. I, at least,
will not be frightened beforehand». Like Nelson he quickly proved to be a great
commander. After several victories against the French in Spain he invaded France.
Napoleon, weakened by his disastrous invasion of Russia, surrendered in 1814. But the
following year he escaped and quickly assembled an army in France. Wellington, with the
timely help of the Prussian army, finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium in June
1815".
2. England in the 19th century
a) Chartism
The process of mechanization on the one hand and the end of Napoleonic Wars in
1815, which decreased the production of goods for export almost completely, on the other
hand, flung men out of work by thousands. Unemployment was made worse by 300.000
men from Britain's army and navy, who were then looking for jobs. People looked for jobs at
any wages and any conditions. The working day lasted from fifteen to eighteen hours.
Children's labour was used in mines and at factories.
At the same time the price for bread rose quickly. Parliament wanted to protect
 locally grown corn from cheap imported corn. It led to increase in price of almost
everything.
But wages remained the same. The general level of living was extremely miserable.
The so-called Poor Law Act of 1834 provided less help for the needy than before.
Many people had to live in the working houses at «starvation wages».
The economic crises of 1830-32,1836-38 made the life of common labourers
unbearable. There was a danger of mass riots, people began to break machines. Being
frightened by people's discontent Parliament adopted the first Reform Bill in 1832 which
gave more rights to voters. Forty-one English cities were represented in Parliament for the
first time.
Since 1824 workers had been allowed to join together in unions. This program helped
the working people to grow politically. They were coming to realize the necessity of getting
legislative rights in order to improve their economic conditions.
An important role in this movement was played by Chartism - a politically organized
movement of the working people of England for their economic and political rights in the
30s-50s.
In 1836 « The London Workers' Association» worked out a People's Charter. The
Charter demanded the following rights: universal suffrage, secret vote, abolition of property
qualification (the right for a man without property of his own to be an M.P.), an election
every year. From 1839 to 1847 Chartists worked out three petitions to Parliament about the
People's Charter, signed by from one to five million people, having added to them some
economic demands (an 8-hour working day, prohibition of children's labour). But the
petitions were rejected by Parliament. These years were accompanied by riots, hunger
marches, strikes and political meetings.
In 1847 fearing a new rise of people's anger Parliament passed a Bill limiting the
working day by 10 hours.
Chartism was the first example of a truly national political movement of the working
class. It contributed to the development of further political and social reforms.
B) England in the 2nd half of the 19th c.
Industrial Development And Colonial Expansion
In 1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations
inside the Crystal Palace to show the greatness of Britain's industry. It mined more than
half of the world's output of coal. Britain produced steamboats, steam engines, woolen and
cotton cloth, different machinery. The accumulative produce of British factories was more
than that of the rest of the world taken together. The greatest example of Britain's industrial
power in the middle of the 19th c. was the railway system. By 1870 the latter was almost
complete. The trade turnover of England and its colonies alone was nearly one third of the
world's one.
The bulk of society was the middle class - commercial people, industrialists, who
often came from poor beginnings. They were self-made people believing in hard work, a
regular style of life and being careful with money.
The country was getting richer and richer. It was much due to the policy of
 colonial expansion.
Political Life
In the second half of the 19th c. the supremacy in Parliament passed completely to
the House of Commons and the king's power was limited to the minimum. Queen
Victoria (1819-1901) was the first to accept the just role of a constitutional monarch.
The second half of the 19tb c. was characterized by the foundation of different political
and trade union organizations. They led the fight for democratic changes in the country. The
most important idea of the 19th c. was mat everyone had me right to personal freedom.
Between 1867-1884 some Reform Bills were carried out improving the legislative system.
In 1872 voting was carried out in secret for the first time. Between 1875-1914 the conditions
for the poor improved as the prices fell down. In 1870 and 1891 two Education Acts were
passed.
All children had to go to school up to the age of 13. A university system began to develop
quickly. England started to build "redbrick" universities in the new industrial areas. They
taught more science and technology to prepare specialists for Britain's industry. More
attention was also taken of workers' homes, of factory conditions and public health. The
authority of the church was weakened. Church attendance became lower. People had other
ways of spending their Sundays: going to museums, parks and libraries, pubs and travelling.
In the 70s the main bourgeois parties, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, were
formed on the basis of the Tories and the Whigs correspondingly. The leading party formed
government, the other one formed the opposition. In 1900 the Labour Party was established.
During the Victorian age a set of values was established which emphasized hard work for
one's
own benefit, thrift, family life, responsibility, absolute honesty in public life and extreme
respectability in sexual matters.
LECTURE 4
BRITAIN IN THE 20th CENTURY
1) Britain before World War 1 (Loss of the leading position)
Loss of the world's superiority
From the end of the 19th c. Britain began to lose its world supremacy. Other countries,
Germany, for example, had greater natural resources, including coal and iron. With the
development of the British empire many British people invested their money to different
fields
of industry in colonies which were based on cheap labour and it was more profitable than to
invest money in home industries. Britain was being transferred into a parasitic state, living
more on income from foreign investments. British workers produced less than those in other
countries. Britain was behind other countries in science and technology, as well as in
management skills. And did little to change it.
Public schools, the private system of education for the richer middle class, did not
encourage business or scientific studies.
Britain found that Germany, France and the USA were increasingly competing with it.
After the IWW Germany took the lead, after the IIWW the USA.
 2) World War I
World War I broke out as a result of an economic and colonial rivalry of the
leading capitalist countries.
Germany's threat to France and German invasion of neutral Belgium made Britain
declare war on Germany on August 4. It was a long and bloody struggle.
Germany nearly defeated the Allies, Britain and France, at the beginning of the war. It
had better trained soldiers, better equipment and a clear plan of attack. The first successful
battle of the Anglo-French forces was at the River Marne, deep inside France.
Britain and Germany fought at sea too. From 1915 German submarines started to sink
merchant ships bringing supplies to Britain. At the battle of Jutland, in 1916, Admiral
Jellicoe got victory over the Germans. If he had failed in that battle Germany would have
gained control over the seas surrounding the British Isles and would have made Britain
surrender.
On August 8,1918 the allied forces carried out a major breakthrough surrounding and
destroying 16 German divisions. Germany was defeated and on November 11,1918 the
Armistice was signed.
The country lost 750,000 people in World War I. The cruelty and stupidity of that
war was best expressed by Britain's «war-poets», especially by Wilfred Owen, who died on
the battlefield. His poems influenced public opinion, persuaded many that the war had been
an act against God and man.
3) Britain between the World Wars, World War II
In the 20s -30s England (as well as other capitalist countries) was deeply effected by
the world wide economic crisis Powerful new Nazi and Fascist governments were taking
over in Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain. The danger of war was clear. There were
wellwishers of fascism in England too. Non-fascist countries, like England, France, chose the
policy (the Tory Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain), of silent encouragement of Hitler's
preparations for the coming war with the aim of turning aggression against the Soviet
Union.
Great Britain rendered material and financial help to Germany
On September 1,1939 Germany declared war on Poland. England being an ally of
Poland was forced to declare war on Germany, but it was «the phony war» (without active
war actions). It lasted till April 1940 when Germany attacked Norway. The war was coming
west. France was defeated, the air attacks of Britain started, Chamberlain resigned and
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. The war became a matter of life or death for
Britain. Hitler's invasion plan of Britain «Operation Sea-Lion» was stopped because
Germany opened the second front against the USSR. With the beginning of war actions
against the USSR - the USA and Britain expressed their readiness to create an antifascist
coalition. In July 1941 the Anglo-Soviet treaty of united actions against Germany was
signed in Moscow. In December 1941 the USA declared war on Japan when the American
Naval base of Pearl Harbour was attacked by the Japanese. This added new dimensions to
the war.
Since 1942 (according to the Anglo-Soviet Treaty) definite material help was
 rendered to the USSR. British sailors displayed their courage and stamina. The second front
was opened only in June 6, 1944 (D-Day) in Norway. Later in September 1944 the
AngloAmerican army reached the western border of Germany. The most vigorous fight
happened in the Ardennes, (South-East Belgium). On the 9th of May 1945 the joined
forces of the USSR, Britain and the USA got victory over fascist Germany. England lost
303,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians in that war.
4) The Post War period
The post-war period was characterized first of all by the collapse of the colonial
system. Since 1931 the British Empire was called the British Commonwealth of Nations.
The majority of the former British colonies won their political independence at the end
of the 50s and beginning of the 60s.
The post-war Labour government (1945-1951) headed by Clement Attlee
converted Britain to a welfare state. In 1944, for the first time, the government introduced
free secondary education compulsory for children up to 15, and promised to provide more
further and higher education. In 1946 the National Health Service was set up which gave
the right to free medical treatment. In 1948 the National Assistance Act provided
financial help for the old, the unemployed and those unable to work through sickness, for
mothers and children.
Progress in these areas was the result of new ideas about basic human rights. Basic
political rights were adopted in the 17th c., the 18th c., at the end of the 19th c. and the
beginning of the 20th c.: freedom of speech, of press, the right to a universal secret vote.
In the 20th c. people began to demand basic social rights: the right to work, the right to
free education, the right to proper health care, the right to care in old age, equality of
men and women.
In 1949 Britain joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In 1951 the Labour government was replaced by the Conservative government of
Winston Churchill. The early 1950s brought steady economic recovery. In order to restore
the country's economy immigration from the Caribbean and South Asia was encouraged.
In the post-war period there have been eight Labour governments and eleven
Conservative governments.
In 1979 the Conservatives came to power. The Conservative government was led by
Margaret Thatcher, the first woman Prime Minister in European history. She remained in
her
office up to 1990. The main aim of Thatcher's government was to give Britain a strong
fullmarket economy. Thatcher herself promoted the virtues of individual initiative and of
getting
ahead by hard work and merit. In order to revive economy the government closed down
defficient enterprises, carried out the program of state-owned industries privatization. As a
result the British turned into the nation of shareholders. The level of well-being of the
middle class became rather high.
Thatcher's critics accused her of neglecting the system of education and health service,
of creating a sharper division between the rich and the poor.
 The 70s were noted for the feminist movements. Women won the legal right to free
abortion, in 1975 the Equality Pay Act came into force and Parliament also passed the Sex
Discretion Act making discrimination between men and women unlawful in employment
and various other fields.
In 1990 Margaret Thatcher was succeeded by John Major, who became the leader of the
Conservative Party and Prime Minister. John Major's government continued to follow the
main guidelines of the previous government, though giving more attention to the social
sphere. It is true to say now that the British have never been better housed, the health of the
nation is looked after as never before, the educational standards are rising.
In 1997 the position of the Prime Minister was won by Anthony Blair, a leader of the
Labour Party.
During the last decades both the Conservative and Labour Parties were agreed on the
need to keep up the «welfare state», in particular to avoid unemployment. Britain became in
fact a social democracy, in which both main parties agreed on basic values, and disagreed
mainly about methods. Though the difference in methods becomes less noticeable in the
policies of the present Labour government of Tony Blair.
Britain is a highly developed industrial state. It has one of the largest amounts of invested
capital abroad. London has remained one of the most important centres of international
finance,insurance and other services. Britain plays a decisive role in the functioning of the
Commonwealth. It covers some 14 million square miles - territory inhabited by more than
700 million people.
In the 20th c. the monarchy has been represented by the House of Windsor: George V
(1910-1936), Edward VIII (1936-abdicated), George VI (1936-1952) and Elizabeth II
(b.1952).
Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations, loose voluntary association of political entities that give
symbolic or actual allegiance to the British crown, or did so at one time or another. These
entities include 51 sovereign nations and several dependencies. The sovereign
Commonwealth nations are Great Britain, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas,
Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Cyprus, Dominica,
The Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi,
Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan,
Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,
Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland,
Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Western Samoa,
Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Union (now Republic) of South Africa withdrew from the
Commonwealth in 1961, but rejoined in 1994. Pakistan left the Commonwealth in 1972, but
became a member again in 1989. Fiji withdrew in 1987. The Republic of Ireland is
associated with it for commercial purposes but is not a member.
Relations between Britain and the other Commonwealth countries are maintained
through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and the foreign offices of the
individual nations. Member countries exchange high commissioners whose status is
 equivalent to that of ambassadors. A Commonwealth secretariat, established in 1965,
provides a clearinghouse for information of common concern to member countries and
assists existing agencies in promoting Commonwealth cooperation. In those countries that
do not have their own heads of state the British sovereign is represented by a
governorgeneral.
The designation Commonwealth of Nations was first used officially at the Imperial
Conference of 1926, as applied to «the group of self-governing communities composed of
Great Britain and the Dominions.» This definition was embodied in the Statute of
Westminster, enacted by the British Parliament in 1931. When India became a republic in
1949 it continued its membership in the Commonwealth, setting a precedent that has been
followed by many former British colonies.
The Commonwealth has no official policymaking body, and the only formal political
consultations among the member governments are the periodic meetings of their prime
ministers to discuss common problems.
American Studies
History of the USA
(Early history till Civil war)
Outline
1. Early history and Colonial Era
2. American Revolution
3. Civil
1.Early history and Colonial Era
A new land. Around the year 1000, a group of Icelandic Vikings under Leif Ericson sailed to
the eastern coast of North America. They landed at a place they called Vinland. Remains of a Viking
settlement have been found in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. The Vikings may also have
visited Nova Scotia and New England. But they didn’t start any permanent settlements, and they
soon lost contact with the new continent. Five hundred years later Christopher Columbus, a mariner
from Italy, mistakenly believed that he could reach the Far East by sailing west from Europe. In
1492, he persuaded the king and queen of Spain to give him money for such a voyage. Columbus
sailed west, but he did not reach Asia. Instead he landed on one of the Bahama Islands in the
Caribbean Sea. The Spanish established some of the earliest settlements in North America—St.
Augustine in Florida (1565), Santa Fe in New Mexico (1609) and San Diego in California (1769).
When Columbus returned to Europe with stories that there was much gold in America, each
European king wanted to have a colony in America. This way there appeared European colonies in
North America.
Early settlements. The first successful English colony in America was founded at Jamestown,
Virginia, in 1607. Of the first 105 colonists, 73 died of hunger and disease within seven months of
their arrival. But the colony survived and grew and became wealthy. The Virginians earned money
by growing tobacco, which they sold to England. In New England, the northeastern region of what
is now the United States, several settlements were established by English Puritans. These settlers
believed that the Church of England had adopted too many practices from Roman Catholicism, and
they came to America to escape persecution in England and to found a colony based on their own
religious ideals. One group of Puritans, called the "Pilgrims," crossed the Atlantic in the ship
Mayflower and settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. A much larger Puritan colony was
established in the Boston area in 1630. The Puritans hoped to build "a city upon a hill"—an ideal
community. Since that time, Americans have viewed their country as a great experiment, a model
for other nations. New England also established another American tradition—a strain of often
intolerant moralism. The Puritans believed that governments should enforce God's morality. They
strictly punished drunks, adulterers and heretics. One Puritan who disagreed with the decisions of
the community, Roger Williams, protested that the state should not interfere with religion. He set up
the neighboring Rhode Island colony, that guaranteed religious freedom and the separation of
church and state. Over time, the British colonies in North America were also occupied by many non-
British national groups. German farmers settled in Pennsylvania, Swedes founded the colony of
Delaware,and African slaves first arrived in Virginia in 1619. In 1626, Dutch settlers purchased
Manhattan Island from local Native American, or "Indian" chiefs and built the town of New
Amsterdam; in 1664, the settlement was captured by the English and renamed New York.
Colonial Era. America today is a mixture of different cultures. This multiculturalism started
in the colonial period. By 1770, several cities appeared, each supporting newspapers, shops,
merchants and craftsmen. Philadelphia, with 28,000 inhabitants, was the largest city, followed by
New York, Boston. Unlike most other nations, the United States never had a feudal aristocracy.
There was much land and all had an opportunity to achieve economic independence, if not
prosperity. All of the colonies had a tradition of representative government. The English king
appointed many of the colonial governors, but they all had to rule in cooperation with an elected
assembly. Only landowning white men could vote, but most white men had enough property to vote.
Britain could not have direct control over her American colonies. London was too far away, and the
colonists were too independent-minded. By 1733, English settlers had occupied 13 colonies along
the Atlantic coast, from New Hampshire in the north to Georgia in the south. The French controlled
Canada and Louisiana, which included the Mississippi river valley. Between 1689 and 1815, France
and Britain fought several wars, and North America was drawn into every one of them. By 1756,
England and France were fighting the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French and
Indian War. The Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, gave Britain such territories as Canada and all of
North America east of the Mississippi River. Britain's victory led directly to a conflict with its
American colonies. The British government started new taxes on sugar, coffee, textiles and other
imported goods. The Quartering Act forced the colonies to house and feed British soldiers; and with
the passage of the Stamp Act, special tax stamps had to be attached to all newspapers, legal
documents and licenses. These measures seemed quite fair to British politicians, who had spent
large sums of money to defend their American colonies during and after the French and Indian War.
Surely, they reasoned, the colonists should pay a part of those expenses. But the Americans feared
that the new taxes would make trading difficult, and that British troops stationed in the colonies
might be used to cut the civil liberties which the colonists had enjoyed before. Americans also have
always insisted on having some control over the system of taxation which supports their
government. Colonial Americans insisted that they could be taxed only by their own colonial
assemblies. "No taxation without representation" was their idea. In 1765, representatives from nine
colonies met as the "Stamp Act Congress" and protested against the new tax. Merchants didn’t want
to sell British goods, and most colonists simply refused to use the stamps. So British soldiers were
sent to Boston. Later the British removed all the new taxes except the tax on tea. In 1773, a group of
patriots responded to the tea tax by staging the "Boston Tea Party": Dressed as Indians, they boarded
British merchant ships and threw 342 boxes with tea into Boston harbor. British Parliament then
passed the "Intolerable Acts": The independence of the Massachusetts colonial government was
sharply cut, and more British soldiers were sent to the port of Boston, which was now closed to
shipping. The representatives of the first Continental Congress met and colonists began to organize
militias and to collect and store weapons and ammunition.
2.American Revolution
Revolution. On April 19, 1775, 700 British soldiers marched from Boston to take control of
the colonial arms depot in the town of Concord. At the village of Lexington, they met 70 militiamen.
Someone—no one knows who— fired a shot, and the American War of Independence began. In
May 1775, a second Continental Congress had met in Philadelphia and began to function as a
national government. It started a Continental Army and Navy under the command of George
Washington. It printed paper money and opened diplomatic relations with foreign
T. . 3 powers. Thomas Jefferson and others, wrote a Declaration of Independence, which
the Congress adopted on July 4, 1776. The Declaration explained the philosophy behind the
revolution—that men have a natural right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"; that
governments can rule only with "the agreement of the governed"; that any government may be
dissolved when if it doesn’t protect the rights of the people. This theory of politics came from the
British philosopher John Locke, and it is central to the Anglo-Saxon political tradition. At first, the
war went badly for the Americans. But in October 1777, British army surrendered at Saratoga, in
northern New York. Encouraged by that victory, France took an opportunity to humble Britain, her
traditional enemy. A Franco-American alliance was signed in February 1778. American troops
generally fought well, but they might have lost the war if they had not received the money from the
French and the help from the powerful French Navy. The Treaty of Paris, signed in September 1783,
recognized the independence of the United States and gave the new nation all the territory north of
Florida, south of Canada and east of the Mississippi River.
Devising a Constitution. The 13 colonies were now "free and independent states"—but not
yet one united nation. Since 1781, they had been governed by the Articles of Confederation, a
constitution that set up a very weak central government. Under the Articles of Confederation,
Congress could not make laws or raise taxes. There was no federal judiciary and no permanent
executive. The individual states were almost independent. In May 1787 George Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and other people met in Philadelphia with the task to revise the
Articles of Confederation. The delegates wrote a new Constitution instead. It established a stronger
federal government with the power to collect taxes, conduct diplomacy, have armed forces, and
regulate foreign trade and trade among the states. It started a Supreme Court and gave executive
power to an elected president. Most importantly, it established the principle of a "balance of power"
among the three branches of government—the executive, the legislative and the judicial. Under this
principle, each branch was given means to check and balance the activities of the others. The
Constitution was accepted in 1788, but only after much debate. Many Americans feared that a
powerful central government would take away the liberties of the people, and in 1791, 10
amendments—the Bill of Rights-were added to the Constitution. This document guaranteed freedom
of religion, a free press, free speech, the right of citizens to bear arms, protection against illegal
house searches, the right to a fair trial by jury and protection against "cruel and unusual
punishments." The Constitution and the Bill of Rights thus balanced two conflicting but
fundamental aspects of American politics—the need for a strong, central government and the need
to ensure individual liberties. America's first two political parties divided along those ideological
lines. The Federalists supported the idea of a strong president and central government; the
Democratic Republicans defended the rights of the individual states. This party was liked by small
farmers; the Federalist party was the party of the prosperous classes, and it disappeared by 1820.
3. Civil War
Sectional Conflict. The words of the Declaration of Independence—"that all men are created
equal"—were meaningless for the 1.5 million black people who were slaves. Though the
importation of slaves was outlawed in 1808, and many Northern states moved to abolish slavery, the
Southern economy was based on large plantations, which used slave workers to grow cotton, rice,
tobacco and sugar. In 1820, Southern and Northern politicians discussed the question if slavery
would be legal in the western (newly acquired) territories. Congress agreed on a compromise:
slavery was permitted in the new state of Missouri and the Arkansas territory, and it was not
permitted everywhere west and north of Missouri. But the question of slavery did not disappear. The
nation
T. . 4 was also divided over the question of high tariff, which protected Northern industries
but raised prices for Southerners. In 1846 the United States acquired the territories which are now
the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. The acquisition of these new territories returned a
troubling question: Would newly acquired territories be open to slavery? In 1850, Congress voted
another compromise: California was a free state, and the inhabitants of the Utah and New Mexico
territories were allowed to decide the question themselves. Congress also passed the Fugitive Slave
Act, which helped Southerners to recapture slaves who had escaped to the free states. Harriet
Beecher Stowe of Massachusetts wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, a powerful anti-slavery novel which
made people support the abolition of slavery. The issue of slavery became, in American politics,
economics and cultural life, the central point of dispute. In 1858, Senator Douglas of Illinois (who
supported slavery) competed with Abraham Lincoln (who didn’t support slavery) to win the position
of the senator.
Civil War. Lincoln lost the senatorial seat, but in 1860 he and Douglas faced each other again
—as the Republican and Democratic candidates for president. By now the tension between North
and South was extreme. Southern whites now believed that the North was preparing to end slavery
by war. Southerners said they would leave the Union if Lincoln won the presidential election. The
majority of people in Southern states voted against Lincoln, but the North supported him and he
won the election. A few weeks later, South Carolina voted to leave the Union. It was soon joined by
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North
Carolina. These 11 states proclaimed themselves an independent nation— the Confederate States of
America—and the American Civil War began. Southerners said that they were fighting not just for
slavery. The South called that war a war for independence—a second American Revolution. The
Confederates (=the Southerners) had the advantage of fighting on their home territory. They had
good soldiers and generals, but they were not so many as Union (Northern) forces. The Southern
railroad network and industrial base could not support that war. Lincoln's two priorities were to keep
the United States one country and to rid the nation of slavery. Indeed, he understood that if he made
the war a battle against slavery he could win support for the Union at home and abroad.
Accordingly, on January 1, 1863, he published the Emancipation Proclamation, which gave freedom
to all slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy. The Southern army (Confederates) won
some victories in the early part of the war, but in the summer of 1863 their commander, General
Robert E. Lee, met a Union army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle ever fought on American soil
started. After three days of fighting, the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on the
Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses Grant captured the important city of Vicksburg. Union
forces now controlled the entire Mississippi Valley, splitting the Confederacy in two. On April 2,
1865, Lee was forced to leave Richmond, the Confederate capital, later he was captured, and soon
all other Confederate forces surrendered. On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated by the actor John
Wilkes Booth. The Civil War was the most traumatic episode in American history. All of America's
later wars would be fought beyond the boarders of the United States. The Civil was devastated the
South and subjected that region to military occupation. America lost more soldiers in this war than
in any other—a total of 635,000 dead on both sides. The war resolved two fundamental questions
that had divided the United States since 1776. It put an end to slavery, which was completely
abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. It also decided, once and for all, that
America was not a collection of semiindependent states, but a single indivisible nation.
History of the USA
(Early history till Civil war)
Outline
4. Reconstruction and post-war period
5. World War I
6. Great Depression
7. World War II
4. Reconstruction and post-war period
Reconstruction. The victory of the North in the American Civil war proved that the US was
an indivisible nation, but much was destroyed in the course of the conflict, and the secondary goal of
the war, the abolition of the system of slavery, was imperfectly achieved. The war devastated the
southern states, the economy of these states was destroyed. The abolition of slavery did not ensure
the equality for former slaves. The authorities in southern states tried to do everything to block black
people from voting. Congress proposed to start the program of "Reconstruction”, or reform, of the
Southern states, occupied after the war by the army of the North. By 1870 Southern states were
governed by groups of blacks, whites and transplanted Northerners. Many Southern blacks were
elected to state governments and to the Congress. Although some corruption existed in these
"reconstructed" state governments, they did much to improve education, develop social services and
protect civil rights. Most Southern whites didn't like Reconstruction to such an extent that some of
them formed the Ku Klux Klan, a violent secret society that hoped to protect white interests by
terrorizing blacks. By 1872 the federal government had suppressed the Klan, but white Democrats
continued to use violence and fear to regain control of their state governments. Reconstruction came
to an end in 1877, when new constitutions had been ratified in all Southern states and all federal
troops were withdrawn from the South. Despite Constitutional guarantees, Southern blacks were
now "second-class citizens"— that is, they were subordinated to whites, though they still had limited
civil rights. In some Southern states, blacks could still vote and be elected to office. There was racial
segregation in schools and hospitals, but trains, parks and other public facilities could still generally
be used by people of both races. Toward the end of the century, this system of segregation and
oppression of blacks grew far more rigid. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States
Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution permitted separate facilities and services for the two
races, if these facilities and services were equal. Southern state authorities started separate and
unequal facilities for blacks. There began strict segregation in public transportation, theaters, sports,
and even elevators and cemeteries. Most blacks and many poor whites lost the right to vote because
of their inability to pay the poll taxes (which had been started again to exclude them from political
participation) and because they were illiterate. Blacks were legally free, but they still lived and were
treated very much like slaves.
Moving West. In the years following the end of the Civil War in 1865, Americans settled the
western half of the United States. Miners searching for gold and silver went to the Rocky Mountain
region. Farmers, including many German and Scandinavian immigrants, settled in
T. . 6 Minnesota and the Dakotas. Big herds of cattle grazed on the plains of Texas and
other western states, managed by hired horsemen (cowboys) who became the most celebrated and
romanticized figures in American culture. Most of these horsemen were former Southern soldiers or
former slaves. The cowboy was America's hero: he worked long hours in the open air for low
wages. But he was not so violent as movies later represented him to be.
Individual Growth. During this period, the United States was becoming the world's leading
industrial power, and great fortunes were made by shrewd businessmen. The first transcontinental
railroad was completed in 1869. The petroleum industry prospered, dominated by John D.
Rockefeller's giant Standard Oil Company. Andrew Carnegie, who came to America as a poor
Scottish immigrant, built a big empire of steel mills and iron mines—which he sold in 1901 for
nearly 500 thousand million dollars. An electrical industry was created by a series of inventions—
the telephone, the phonograph, the light bulb, motion pictures, the alternating-current motor and
transformer. In Chicago, architect Louis Sullivan used steelframe construction to develop a
peculiarly American contribution to the cities of the world—the skyscraper. The United States has
always been hospitable to inventors, experimenters and entrepreneurs. The freedom to develop new
enterprises largely explains the vitality of the American economy. But unrestrained economic
growth created many serious problems. Some businesses grew too big and too powerful. The United
States Steel Corporation, formed in 1901, was the largest corporation in the world, producing 60
percent of the nation's steel. To limit competition, railroads agreed to mergers and standardized
shipping rates. "Trusts"— huge combinations of corporations—tried to establish monopoly control
over some industries, especially oil. These giant enterprises could produce goods efficiently and sell
them cheaply, but they could also set prices and destroy smaller competitors. Farmers in particular
complained that railroads charged high rates for transporting their products. In 1890 the Sherman
Antitrust Act banned big trusts, mergers and business agreements. These measures were not very
effective at the beginning, but they established the principle that the federal government could
regulate industry for the common good.
Overseas expansion. With the exception of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867,
American territorial expansion had come to a stop in 1848. However, in 1890 politicians, newspaper
editors and Protestant missionaries proclaimed that the "Anglo-Saxon race" had a duty to bring the
benefits of Western civilization to the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. At the height of
this period (1895), a revolt against Spanish colonialism started in Cuba. America took part in this
conflict (Spanish-American war) and the United States acquired much of Spain's empire—Cuba, the
Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam. The United States also annexed the Hawaiian islands. American
troops left Cuba in 1902, but the new republic was required to grant naval bases to the United States.
The Philippines were granted limited self-government in 1907 and complete independence in 1946.
In 1953 Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth within the United States, and in 1959
Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state of the Union.
5. World War I
War and peace. When the First World started in Europe in August 1914, US President W.
Wilson led a foreign policy of strict neutrality. But in May 1915, a German submarine sank the
British liner Lusitania, killing 128 American passengers. America sold thousands of millions of
dollars in munitions and other goods to the Allies, largely on credit. In April 1917, Wilson asked
Congress for a declaration of war. "The world must be made safe for democracy," Wilson
proclaimed as America entered "the war to end all wars."
T. . 7 When war was declared the American army was a small force of 200,000 soldiers. A
full year passed before the United States Army was ready to make a major contribution to the Allied
war effort. WWI ended on 11 November 1918. In January 1918, Wilson had outlined his war aims
—the Fourteen Points. These called for, among other things, open diplomacy, freedom of the seas,
free international trade, disarmament and a just settlement of colonial disputes. The map of Europe
would be redrawn to establish independent states for every national group, and a world association
of nations would be organized to protect the peace. In 1919, Wilson went to Europe to draft the
peace treaty. Wilson succeeded in establishing the League of Nations, but many Americans feared
that such a world organization might drag the United States into another foreign war. The United
States never ratified the Versailles Treaty and never joined the League of Nations.
Isolation and prosperity. The majority of Americans did not regret the defeated treaty,
because they were disillusioned with the results of the war. After 1920, the United States turned
inward and withdrew from European affairs. At the same time, Americans were growing
increasingly suspicious of and hostile toward foreigners in their country. In 1919, a series of terrorist
bombings produced what became known as the "Red Scare." As a result several hundred foreign-
born political radicals—anarchists, socialists and communists—were deported, although most of
them were innocent of any crime. The 1920s were the years of Prohibition: in 1920, alcoholic drinks
were outlawed by a Constitutional Amendment. But drinkers cheerfully evaded the law in thousands
of "speakeasies" (illegal bars), and gangsters made fortunes supplying illegal liquor. The Ku Klux
Klan, revived in 1915, attracted millions of followers and terrorized blacks, Catholics, Jews and
immigrants. At the same time, there was a flowering of black literature—the "Harlem
Renaissance"—and jazz caught the imagination of many white Americans, including composer
George Gershwin. The controversies of the decade were summed up in the celebrated 1925
"monkey trial," in which John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution
in the Tennessee public schools. The trial received national attention because it embodied the great
cultural problem of the 1920s—the clash between modern ideas and traditional values. For business,
the 1920s were golden years of prosperity. The United States was now a consumer society. The
businessman became a popular hero; the creation of wealth – a noble calling. One of the most
admired men of the decade was Henry Ford, who had introduced the assembly line into automobile
production. Ford was able to pay high wages and still earn enormous profits by manufacturing the
Model T—a simple, basic car that millions of buyers could afford. For a moment, it seemed that
America had solved the eternal problem of producing and distributing wealth. There were, however,
fatal mistakes in the prosperity of the 1920s. Overproduction of crops depressed food prices, and
farmers suffered. Industrial workers were earning better wages, but they still did not have enough
purchasing power to continue buying the flood of goods that poured out of their factories. With
profits soaring and interest rates low, plenty of money was available for investment, but much of
that capital went into reckless speculation. Thousands of millions of dollars poured into the stock
market, and frantic bidding made the prices of shares far above their real value. As long as the
market prospered, speculators could make fortunes overnight, but they could be ruined just as
quickly if stock prices fell. The bubble of this fragile prosperity finally burst in 1929 in a worldwide
depression, and by 1932 Americans were facing the worst economic crisis of modern times.
6. Great depression
Great depression started on October 29, 1929—"Black Tuesday"—a wave of panic selling of
stocks swept the New York Stock Exchange. Once started, the collapse of share and other security
prices could not be stopped. By 1932, thousands of banks and many businesses
T. . 8 had failed. People lost jobs, industrial production was cut in half. The measures of
the then government were ineffective. The situation turned for the better with the election of
Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt as President in 1932, who promised "a New Deal for the American
people." Roosevelt was a former governor of New York State. "The only thing we have to fear is
fear itself," Roosevelt said. Within three months—the historic "Hundred Days"—Roosevelt had
rushed through Congress a great number of laws to aid the recovery of the economy. The Works
Progress Administration (WPA) was one of the most effective of the New Deal measures, probably
because it was based on the belief, originating with the Puritans and almost universally accepted
among later Americans, that working for one's livelihood is honorable and dignified, but receiving
help which one doesn't earn— "charity"—is demeaning and robs people of their independence and
their sense of self worth. Financed by taxes collected by the federal government, the WPA created
millions of jobs by undertaking the construction of roads, bridges, airports, hospitals, parks and
public buildings. Roosevelt's New Deal programs did not end the Depression. Although the
economy improved as a result of this program of government intervention, full recovery was finally
brought by the production and selling of military equipment for British army fighting in the Second
World War.
7. World War II
World War II. In September 1939, war started in Europe. Roosevelt announced that the
United States would be neutral, but not indifferent. The United States gave the British military and
other goods. On December 7, 1941 Japanese bombers struck at Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii.
The United States immediately declared war on Japan. Four days later, Japan's allies, Germany and
Italy declared war on the United States. The Americans feared that Germany might develop a
nuclear weapon and the government spent $2 thousand million on the top-secret Manhattan Project,
which produced and tested an atomic bomb in 1945. American forces helped British and Soviet
forces fight Germans in Europe and in the Pacific. The Germans surrendered on May 5, 1945. In the
hope of bringing the war to a swift end, President Harry Truman ordered the use of the atomic bomb
against Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9). Japan agreed to surrender on August 14.
T. . 9
(Cold War - the early 21st century)
Outline
8. Cold War and internal policy of50-60-s
9. Decades of change
10.End of the XXth century
11. The early XXI
8. Cold War and internal policy of 50-60-s
Cold war. After the war, tensions quickly developed between the United States and the Soviet
Union. The two powerful countries were fighting for the spheres of influence in different parts of the
world. In 1947 US Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a help program to rebuild
destroyed Europe, the Soviets rejected the offer. Over four years it paid out $12.5 thousand million
and helped to restore the economies of Western Europe. In May 1947 Berlin was divided into a
western zone under American, British and French occupation and an eastern zone under Soviet
domination. On June 25, 1950 armed with Soviet weapons and acting with Stalin's approval, North
Korea's army invaded South Korea. President Truman sent American troops there. The American
troops were not a success there, so Republican Senator McCarthy stated that the US State
Department and the army were full of Communists. His accusations destroyed the careers of some
diplomats. Later McCarthy was denounced for his actions.
Prosperity and civil rights. From 1945 until 1970, the United States enjoyed a long period
of economic growth. For the first time, the great majority of Americans could enjoy a comfortable
standard of living. At the same time, the United States was moving slowly in the direction of racial
justice. E.g. in 1954, in the decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme
Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional: nevertheless, southern states
continued to resist those democratic moves. In 1955, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a boycott
of segregated public transportation that ended segregation on city buses in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1957, the governor of Arkansas tried to prevent black students from enrolling in an all-white high
school in the state capital of Little Rock. To enforce obedience to the law requiring integration,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops.
New Frontier and great society. In 1960, Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected president.
Under his presidency there was an unsuccessful effort to overthrow the Communist rule of Fidel
Castro in Cuba. In October 1962 Kennedy imposed a blockade on Cuba when Americans learnt that
the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed
to remove the missiles, in return for an American promise not to invade Cuba. In the 1960s Martin
Luther King, Jr. led a nonviolent campaign to desegregate southern restaurants, interstate buses
theaters and hotels. His followers were met by hostile police. In
T. . 10 1963 Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was not a universally
popular president, but his death was a terrible shock to the American people. The new president was
Lyndon Johnson. He persuaded Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed
racial discrimination in public accommodations and in any business or institution receiving federal
money. Johnson pushed through Congress many social programs: federal aid to education, the arts
and the humanities; health insurance for the elderly (Medicare) and for the poor (Medicaid). The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally enabled all black Americans to vote.
9. Decades of Change
Vietnam war. Like the war in Korea the Vietnam war was a result of the US policy during the
Cold War. Vietnam, a colony of France wanted to become independent, but the US believed that
Communists were behind the independence movement, and so opposed it. US helped the French
with supplies. In 1954 Vietnam was divided into the Communist North and the anti-communist
South. The US forces used bombs against Vietnamese troops, used chemicals to destroy crops,
which had a terrible effect both on people and on land. There was extreme violence and cruelty
committed by both sides. As the war escalated it lost support in the US and other countries. Soldiers
were traumatized by this war. About 1972-1975 the war ended. South Vietnam became Communist.
This war divided the US society. There were violent conflicts between the students (who were to
join the army) and the police. Four students were shot and killed by the police in Kent State
University in Ohio. The people couldn't find answers why US fought in that war. The veterans,
when they returned home, were not respected by people. They had to cope with that in addition to
the moral trauma they received in Vietnam.
Decades of change. In 1970s following the example of blacks, other minorities— Hispanics,
Asians, American Indians, homosexuals— demanded a broadening of their rights. In the 1970s a
women's liberation movement demanded legal abortion, day-care centers for children of working
mothers, equal pay and jobs for women. In the 1972 election Nixon easily defeated George
McGovern, a Democrat. During the campaign, however, five men were arrested for breaking into
the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate hotel building in Washington, D.C. Journalists
discovered that those men were connected with President Nixon. Nixon denied that fact and didn't
want to give the tapes with the recordings of his conversations to the investigating committee of the
Congress. The tapes proved that President Nixon was directly involved in that affair. By the summer
of 1974, it was clear that Congress was likely to impeach and to convict the president. On August 9,
1974 Richard Nixon became the only American president to resign his office. Since the mid-1970s
American domestic politics have been influenced by several trends— the end of the Cold War, a
declining industrial sector, and the rise of a global economy.
Politics since Watergate. In the last quarter of the 20th century Americans paid attention to
such questions as the health of the economy, the illegal use of drugs, a growing crime rate, the
quality of education, dependency on welfare, high health costs, and race relations. Domestic politics
during the administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill
Clinton centered on economic issues.
 End of the Cold War. During the Presidency of such presidents as Nixon and Kissinger.
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter the relations between the USA and the USSR were a little better than
before. But when Reagan became President he revived Cold War antagonisms. The president
restarted the arms race, called the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and gave money and weapons to
anti-Communist forces in Latin America, e.g. Nicaragua. Reagan also supported plans for the
Strategic Defense Initiative, known as Star Wars. George Bush took office in 1989 and a series of
revolutionary changes happened. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachov became leader of
T. . 11 the USSR. Under Gorbachev, freedom increased but the economy became worse.
From 1989 to 1990, the Communist Party in the USSR lost control of the government, and
Communists lost power in the Eastern European countries too. The Republics of the Soviet Union
became independent countries and the Cold War was over. In the 1980s and 1990s the United States
begins its fight against terrorism at home and abroad. Terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in
New York City in 1993. In 1995 a bomb exploded in a truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and destroying much of the building.
Toward a global economy. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the United States moved
toward a postindustrial economy, which is based more on services and information processing than
on manufacturing. In the 1970s industrial production declined, and the manufacturing sector became
smaller. The service sector, however, became bigger. Some service workers were highly paid, such
as computer technicians, engineers, and managers. Most service workers, however, worked in low-
paying jobs, such as retail sales, fast food. The decline of manufacturing and the loss of jobs were
closely tied to the development of a global economy. In a global economy, capital and business
relationships cross national and regional boundaries. More women started to work and it changed
the economy too. By 1997, about 60 percent of women were in the labor force, representing 46
percent of all workers. Women generally received less wages than men. Women managers
complained about a glass ceiling that limited their career advancement.
A changing population. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the United States underwent
social changes as well as economic ones. By the century's end Americans were more diverse. More
immigrants came from Asia and Latin America than from Europe. There were more illegal
immigrants than before. Hispanic immigrants were the fastest-growing group. From 1970 to 1990
the number of Hispanics in the United States grew from 9 million to 22.4 million.
10.The early 21 century By the end of the 20th century the Cold War had ended, and the
United States economy prospered. But in 2001 more than a million people lost their jobs. It
reminded the country that economic good times were not guaranteed to last forever.
An increasingly diverse population. The United States had a larger, more diverse population
than ever as the 21st century began. According to the 2000 census, the population grew to more than
281 million people during the 1990s. Hispanic Americans and the Asian American population grew
very fast. The American family also changed. For the first time in American history, married
couples with children represented less than a quarter of all U.S. households (23.5 percent, down
from 38.8 percent in 1970). The number of single mothers, single fathers, and unmarried couples
grew. Many married couples now wait longer to have children. Two troubling trends, divorce and
out-of-wedlock births, slowed their growth in the 1990s.
 The Bush administration. In the year 2000 President Clinton's second term came to an end.
The main candidates were Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, and Texas governor George W.Bush,
the son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush. This election was like no other in U.S.
history. For five weeks after the election, the outcome of the race between Bush and Gore remained
undecided. The critical state was Florida, where Bush led by just a few hundred votes. Gore won the
nation's overall popular vote by more than 500,000 votes out of 105 million cast, but Bush had 271
electoral votes to Gore's 266, and so Bush became President.
Terrorist Attacks on the United States. American life changed very much on the morning
T. . 12 of September 11, 2001. Terrorists made attacks on the World Trade Center towers
in New York City. About 3,000 people died in the attacks. The U.S. government quickly identified
the hijackers as members of Al-Qaeda, an organization that, according to U.S. officials, connected
and coordinated all Islamic terrorist groups around the world. Its leader, a Saudi businessman named
Osama bin Laden, started jihad, or holy war, against the United States for its activities in the Middle
East. The group made its headquarters in Afghanistan, where it was supported by the country's
rulers, an Islamic fundamentalist movement known as the Taliban. In early October the United
Slates went to war, bombing Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. In 2003 a congressional
committee concluded in its report that the U.S. intelligence agencies failed to share information with
each other and failed to take action based on the information they did have.
War with Iraq. After the war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration turned
its attention to Iraq. Although a U.S.-led coalition had defeated Iraq in the Persian Gulf War in 1991
(the war started after Iraq invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait), Iraq's leader, Saddam
Hussein, remained in power. After that war ended, the United Nations (UN) ordered Iraq to destroy
its biological and chemical weapons. Weapons inspectors were sent to Iraq to monitor its
disarmament. However, in 1998 Iraq announced that it would no longer cooperate with the UN, and
UN weapons inspectors left the country. In 2002 the Bush administration put a renewed focus on
Iraq as part of its war on terrorism. It claimed that Iraq supported terrorist organizations and still had
an arsenal of banned weapons. The United States pressed the UN to force Iraq to allow weapons
inspectors back into the country. In October the U.S. Congress passed a resolution authorizing the
president to use military force against Iraq if Iraq did not cooperate with the UN. In March 2003
U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. By mid-April they had captured the capital city of Baghdad and other
major population centers and overthrown the regime of Saddam Hussein. In May President Bush
declared that major war operations in Iraq had ended. However, in the months that followed more
U.S. troops were killed by guerrillas than during the invasion itself. By July 2004, about 900 U.S.
soldiers had been killed since the invasion began. There were estimates that about from 2.000 to
10.000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in that war. Saddam Hussein was arrested in
December 2003, but unrest in the country didn't finish. The US specialists didn't find any weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq. In January 2004 the head of the Iraq Study Group group, David Kay,
resigned and told Congress that "we were all wrong, probably" about the existence of such weapons.
Kay said the group not only could not find weapons of mass destruction but more importantly could
not discover any of the facilities needed to produce such weapons.
Presidential elections. In the year 2004 Senator John F. Kerry, Democratic Party's candidate,
opposed the then President G.W. Bush as the candidate from the Republican party for the
Presidential election. G.W. Bush won the election and remained in office for his second term. In
2008 the USA elected B. Obama as President. In 2016 Donald Trump competed with Hillary
Clinton and won the election by taking the majority of the Electoral College votes.