a brief history of Britain 英国历史简述_英语国家概况英国历史

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A Brief History of Britain

by Pam Barrett

When French and British construction workers met beneath the English Channel in 1990, Britain became linked to Continental Europe for the first time in 7,000 years.For it was then, when the last Ice Age ended, that melting ice flooded the low-lying lands, creating the English Channel and the North Sea and turning Britain into an island.This fact of being “set apart” was one of the two seemingly contradictory factors which would affect every aspect of the country’s subsequent history.The other was a genius for absorbing every invader and immigrant, creating a mongrel breed whose energies would establish an empire incorporating a quarter of the population of the planet.Early settlers: Stone Age people arrived, probably from the Iberian peninsula, in around 3000 BC.They lived by farming but left few traces.The most dramatic ancient monument is Stonehenge in Wiltshire, built during the next 1,000 years.How and why it was built was a mystery, but it must have had religious and political significance.The Beaker people, named after their pottery, were next to arrive.But a more importance wave of immigration, in 700 BC, was that of the Celts from eastern and central Europe.The ancestors of the Highland Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, they left behind a rich legacy of intricate and beautiful metalwork.The Romans: British recorded history began when Julius Caesar first croed the English Channel in 55 BC.Roman rule continued for nearly 400 years, failing to subjugate only Scottish tribes, whose raiding parties were contained by Emperor Hadrian who built a defended wall right acro the north of England.Eventually, threatened by barbarians at the gates of Rome, they abandoned Britain, leaving behind them a network of towns, mostly walled, a superb road system, and a new religion, Christianity.The next wave of invaders from central Europe – Angles, Saxons and Jutes – gradually pushed the native Celts west into Wales and north into Scotland.Anglo-Saxon dominance, too, lasted for four centuries, though it did not extend to Scotland, where a separate kingdom was forged by the Picts and the Scots.Although the Anglo-Saxons were a ferocious bunch, constantly squabbling, they laid the foundations of the English state, dividing the country into shires and devising an effective farming system.Their Teutonic religion, worshipping gods such as Woden and Thor, eclipsed Christianity until, at the end of the 6th century, the monk Augustine(once heard to remark “O Lord, make me chaste, but not yet”)converted the kings and the nobles.Monasteries sprang up, becoming places of learning.Treasures contained in the monasteries were a lure for the Vikings, whose ruthle raids from acro the North Sea began in the 9th century.Initially they were defeated at sea by Alfred the Great, founder of the British Navy, but eventually they too were aimilated.Canute, the Danish leader, became king of Britain.The Norman Conquest: Links with Normandy, the part of France settled by the Vikings, were strong, and in 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, claimed the English throne.His triumph at the battle of Hastings decisively changed English history.As W.C.Sellar and R.J.Yeatman put it in their claic humorous history 1066 And All That: “The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.”

William parceled out the land to barons in return for their loyalty, and the barons parceled out land in turn to leer nobles in return for goods and services.At the bottom were the peasants, whose feudal status resembled slavery – hence the potency of the Robin Hood legend, celebrating the Nottingham outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor.Although much of the Norman kings’ energies were devoted to protecting their borders, there was a great flowering of Norman culture, producing many erudite historians and scholars.In 1167 Oxford University was founded.Thanks to the influence of William Shakespeare’s history plays, much of the next period of English history is popularly remembered through his view of the shifting alliances of the Plantagenet and Tudor kings who ruled from 1154 to 1547.During this period of conflict and disease – the Black Death alone killed nearly half the population in 1348-49 – the royal succeion was by no means aured.Power struggles propelled to the throne those who could command the greatest military backing from the majority of the rival barons, a proce vividly illustrated by the Wars of Roses, the tules between the House of Lancaster and York between 1455 and 1485.Frequent strife with France(including the intermittent Hundred Years’ War from 1337 to 1453)dominated international relationships.Internally, Wales was subjugated by 1288, though Scottish independence was recognized when Robert Bruce defeated English forces at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.Britain’s most famous king, Henry VIII, is remembered not only for his six wives(two of whom he had beheaded)but also for bringing about the Reformation, making England a Protestant rather than a Catholic country.His quarrel centred on the Pope’s refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who could not oblige him with a male heir.Doctrinal differences aside, however, Henry capitalized on a growing distaste for the church’s exceive privilege and wealth, and was thus able to get away with seizing enough monastic lands and property to finance his rule.Under Henry, Wales was formally united with England in 1536.The Age of Elizabeth: England entered its Golden Age under Elizabeth I, Henry’s daughter by Anne Boleyn.The Elizabethan Age has a swashbuckling ring to it: the Virgin Queen and her dashing courtiers;the defeat of the Spanish Armada;Sir Walter Raleigh’s discovery of tobacco in Virginia;Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world.Poetry, plays and pageantry flourished during her 45-year reign.When Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen”, died without an heir, the throne paed to James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, inaugurating the Stuart dynasty and effectively joining together the two kingdoms.The Stuart period was one of conflict between Crown and Parliament.James I, a staunch believer in the Divine Right of Kings, would have preferred no Parliament at all, and Charles I diolved Parliament and initiated an 11-year period of absolute rule.The upshot was a civil war from 1622 to 1649;Charles lost and was beheaded.A period of republicanism followed, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, but after his death the monarchy was restored and prospered under Charles II.His brother, who succeeded him as James II, was le circumspect and tried to restore absolute monarchy and the Catholic religion.The newly emerging political parties, growing in confidence, forced him to flee and invited his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, Prince William of Orange, to take the throne.This “Glorious Revolution”, although bloodle, was nonethele a revolution and paved the way for Parliament’s permanent dominance over the Crown.In 1707 an Act of Union united England and Scotland, although Scotland was allowed to retain its own Church and legislature.Many Scots felt that the union was bulldozed through by English politicians’ intent on improving their international trade prospects, and Scottish preure to unravel the union is still a political iue.Political pragmatism triumphed again in 1714 when, a reliable Protestant monarch being needed in a hurry, a search through the family tree came up with George I of Hanover in Germany.Although he spoke no English and had little interest in his subjects, he founded a dynasty which was to span 115 years and encompa an expanding empire and an industrial revolution.The age of empire: Despite the lo of its American colonies in 1783, Britain’s trade-driven adventurism was undiminished, giving it control of West Africa and India, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, some Caribbean island, and Australia and New Zealand.At home, farmers embraced more efficient and profitable methods, which led to the eviction of many peasant farmers who either emigrated to the New World, carrying with them a resentment that would bequeathed to future generations, or left the land to find work in the towns, which rapidly became overcrowded.This combination of landowners with surplus capital to invest and laborers in search of a living was one reason why British became the first country to industrialize.Political stability helped too, as did the security of being an island, natural resources, good trade arrangements and a native genius for inventing things.The Scottish inventor James Watt modified and improved the steam engine in the 1770s, opening the way for the efficient powering of trains, ships and factory machinery.The invention of the Spinning Jenny and the power loom created ma production in textiles.The smelting of iron with coke, instead of charcoal, hugely increased the production of iron.A maive building program of railways, roads and canals created a new cla of industrialist, whose fortunes rivaled those of the aristocracy.But it also created abominable working conditions in mines and factories, conditions which led to the slow and painful development of trade unionism.Political reforms, seized elsewhere in Europe by revolution, came gradually in Britain.Parliamentary seats were distributed more fairly among the growing new towns, but voting was still based on property ownership and universal suffrage didn’t come until 1918(and even then was scarcely universal since it excluded women under 30).The problem that dominated parliamentary debate during this period was the intractable Irish Question.The resentment over centuries of British rule in Ireland bubbled to the surface after the potato famines of the mid-1840s, when about 20 percent of Ireland’s population died of starvation and more than a million people emigrated to escape a similar fate.Demands for Irish independence grew but they were demands which many English politicians, conscious of the security problems of having an independent and poibly none-too-friendly neighbor to their west, were reluctant to grant.As with today’s IRA campaign, the debate had a backdrop of violence.Today, however, the Victorian Age is remembered as a time of exuberant self-confidence, symbolized by the building in London of the Crystal Palace to showcase Britain’s industrial and technical achievements in the Great Exhibition of 1851.But many of London’s inhabitants might well have wondered when they would benefit from all these accomplishments.For them, the squalor and crime which Charles Dickens portrayed so evocatively in his novels were all too real.Working-cla life improved considerably during the last quarter of the 19th century.Many homes had gas lighting and streets were cleaned by the new municipal councils.A new police force contained crime.The music hall provided inexpensive entertainment in towns.Bicycles became a common method of transport, and a trip by train to seaside resorts was for many a highlight of summer.In London, trains in the world’s first underground railway began puffing their way through smoke-filled tunnels between Paddington and Farrington in 1863.Art and drama flourished.By the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the country was feeling quite pleased with itself.Britannia ruled the waves, and anything seemed poible.The 20th century: But all good things come to an end.The Boer War of 1900 ended in victory for the British in South Africa but damaged its international reputation.France, Germany and America were becoming powerful competitors for world markets.The newly united German state was flexing its military muscles.The Edwardian era of the early 20th century, seemingly an idyllic time, was built on shifting sands.Dragged into World War I by a complex web of international alliances, Britain faced unimaginable carnage in which more than a million of its young men died.Social unrest at the end of the war, though le devastating than in the defeated Germany, gave more power to women(who had shouldered a heavy burden while the men were at war)and led to a General Strike by diatisfied workers in 1926.The Irish Question was partly answered with the creation of an independent Irish free State, but six Protestant-dominated counties in the north stayed under UK rule – a time bomb which exploded in 1969.The shock waves from the 1929 New York Stock Market crash plunged Britain into depreion, throwing millions out of work, especially in the industrial areas of northern England, south Wales and Clydeside in Scotland.The monarchy was rocked by crisis in 1936 when Edward VIII, who had just become king, decided to marry the twice-divorced Mrs Wallis Simpson.His family, the church and the government opposed the match, forcing him to abdicate.His brother, a reluctant George VI, restored the monarchy’s popularity, not least through the support which he and his wife Elizabeth(later the Queen Mother)gave to their subjects during the German air raids of World War II.Although Britain’s island status saved it from invasion, this war involved civilians in an unprecedented way.Cities like Coventry were devastated by bombing and the Blitz radically changed the face of London for the first time since the Great Fire of 1666.Many children were sent to live in the countryside.Most social inequalities were set aside during the war and, when peace returned in 1945, voters turned to the Labour party in hope that it could develop an even greater egalitarianism.It laid the basis of a welfare state, providing free medical care for everyone as well as financial help for the old, the sick and the unemployed.But the war had left Britain broke.While Germany and Japan rebuilt their industries almost from scratch, helped by international aid, Britain was left to patch together a severely damaged economy.It could no longer sustain an empire, and gradually its colonies became independent.Many former subjects, especially from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent, settled in Britain, raising fears of racial conflict that, despite some serious tensions, were never(quite)fulfilled.As the austere 1950s gave way to the ’60s, things started to look up.New universities were built, a motorway network launched, and a reinvigorated culture promoted by a group of writers dubbed “the angry young men”.Much of the explosion of new talent came from the north of England: actors like Albert Finney, playwrights like Alan Sillitoe, and pop groups galore, led by the Beatles.The swinging Sixties, powered by a newly affluent youth, had arrived.Britain’s heavy industry might be in trouble, but in fashion and pop music it led the world.The good times died in the 1970s as inflation and unemployment soared and labour unrest led to endle strikes.Joining the European Community in 1973 seemed to produce few obvious economic benefits and revenues from North Sea oil were quickly spent rather than invested.Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 promising tough new policies.Her popularity quickly faded, but was revived in 1982 by the Falklands War when an invading Argentinean force was beaten off the South Atlantic islands, remnants of the old empire.Although she went on to win two further elections convincingly, by 1990 her popularity, always firmer abroad than at home, was so shaky that her party, fearing that she would not win them the next election, replaced her with a le combative leader, John Major.He duly won the 1992 election, but a reinvigorated Labour Party under Tony Blair won in 1997.The overall problems did not change, though.The economy remained weak, distrust of the European Community did not abate, nationalism simmered in Wales and Scotland, the conflict in Northern Ireland dragged on, and the Royal Family’s private life continued to obse the tabloid pre.It was busine as usual, in fact – which, in a country obseed by continuity, was immensely reauring.