Если у вас возникли сложности с курсовой, контрольной, дипломной, рефератом, отчетом по практике, научно-исследовательской и любой другой работой - мы готовы помочь.
Предоплата всего
Подписываем
a good deal better than in most societies of that time. They were technically equal to men, owned property, and could choose their own husbands. They could also be war leaders, as Boudicca (Boadicea) later proved.
Druids. Another area where oral traditions were important was in the training of Druids. There has been a lot of nonsense written about Druids, but they were a curious lot; a sort of super-class of priests, political advisors, teachers, healers, and arbitrators. They had their own universities, where traditional knowledge was passed 011 by rote, They had the right to speak ahead of the king in council, and may have held more authority than the king. They acted as ambassadors in time of war, they composed verse and upheld the law. They were a sort of glue holding together Celtic culture.
The Celts worshipped the Nature. They believed in many nameless spirits who lived in their rivers, mountains and thick forests. They sacrificed not only animals but also human beings to their gods. They believed in another life after death.
The Celts loved war. If one wasn't happening they'd be sure to start one. The main problem with the Celts was that they couldn't stop fighting among themselves long enough to put up a unified front. Each tribe was out for itself, and in the long run this cost them control of England. So when the Romans started their invasion, they were unable to fight them.
In the 1st century the Roman Empire became the strongest slave-owning state in the Mediterranean. It was the last and the greatest of the civilizations of the ancient world. One of the last countries to be conquered by Rome was France, or Gaul, as it was then called. In 55 B.C. a Roman Army led by Julius Caesar crossed the Channel and invaded Britain. The Celts made a great impression on the Romans who saw them for the first time in battle, but they were not strong enough to drive the Romans off. But the first Roman invasion of Britain did not last long as the Roman soldiers were needed to defend their own country which was often attacked by Barbarian tribes. So the Roman legions left Britain but only to be back in A.D. 43 when the emperor Claudius began the second Roman conquest of Britain, establishing bases at present-day London and Colchester. By A.D. 85, Rome controlled Britain south of the Clyde River. There were a number of revolts in the early years of the conquest, the most famous being that of Boadicea. hi the 2d century A.D., Hadrian's Wall was constructed as a northern defence line. Under the Roman occupation towns developed, and roads wrere built to ensure the success of the military occupation. These roads were the most lasting Roman achievement in Britain, long serving as the basic arteries of overland transportation in England. Colchester, Lincoln, and Gloucester were founded by the Romans as colonia, settlements of ex-legionaries.
Trade contributed to town prosperity; wine, olive oil, plate, and furnishings were imported, and lead, tin, iron, wheat, and wool were exported. This trade declined with the economic dislocation of the late Roman Empire and the withdrawal of Roman troops to meet barbarian threats elsewhere. Barbarian incursions became frequent. In 410 an appeal to Rome for military aid was refused, and Roman officials subsequently were withdrawn.
As Rome withdrew its legions from Britain, Germanic peoples—the Anglo- Saxons and the Jutes—began raids that turned.into great waves of invasion and settlement in the later 5th cent. The Jutes and Angles came from Juteland Peninsula. In 449 the Jutes landed in Kent and this was the beginning of the conquest. By the 7th century several kingdoms were formed on the territory of Britain. Kent was set up by the Jutes in the South-East, in the southern and southeastern parts of the country the Saxons formed a number of kingdoms - Sussex, Wessex, and Essex. Further north were the settlements of the Angles. In the North they founded Northumbria, which has left its name in the present county of Northumberland; Mercia was formed in the middle, and East Anglia - in the east of the country.
The Celts fell back into Wales and Cornwall and across the English Channel to Brittany. They new conquerors brought about new changes. They disliked towns, preferring to live in small villages. In the course of time they destroyed the Roman towns, the roads were broken, the stones being used as building material.
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were closely akin in speech and customs, so they gradually merged into one people. They called the Celts “welsh” which meant “foreigners” as they could not understand their language. But gradually, the Celts who were in minority, merged with the conquerors, adopted their customs and learned to speak their language. Only the Celts who remained independent in Wales, Western Scotland and Ireland spoke their native language.
At first the Anglo-Saxons spoke Various dialects, but gradually the dialect of the Angles of Mercia became predominant. So all people of Britain were referred to as the English after the Angles and the new name of England was given to the whole country.
The Anglo-Saxons were pagans when they came to England. They worshipped gods of nature and held springs, wells, rocks, and trees in reverence. Religion was not a source of spiritual revelation, it was a means of ensuring success in material things. For example, you might pray to a particular goddess for a successful harvest, or for victory in battle, A few of the main Anglo-Saxon gods were Tiw, Odin, Thor, and Friya, whose names are remembered in our days of the week Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
There is a possibility that female slaves may have been sacrificed on the death of a male owner and included in the grave to accompany him in the next world. Society was divided into several social classes, which might vary from place to place. At the top was the king. Fie was essentially a war leader.He was expected to provide opportunities for plunder and glory for his followers.The-king who did not provide land, slaves, or plunder might wake up dead one fine morning. Below the king there were two levels of freemen, the upper class thanes and the lower class ceorls (churls). The division between the two was strictly in terms of
land owned. A man could only be a thane if he owned at least five hides of land (a hide was defined as the amount of land necessary to provide a living for one family). Aside from the ownership of land, a ceorl could actually be a richer man than the thane. Below the thanes and ceorls were the slaves.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms followed Germanic religions. Pope Gregory I decided to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. In 597 he sent a mission of 41 monks under the leadership of the monk Augustine to Aethelbert, the king of Kent. He chose Canterbury, the capital of the Kentish kingdom, to be the centre from which Christianity spread throughout England. Aethelbert was chosen because he was married to Bertha, a Frankish Christian princess. By 700 all England was Christian. The Pope was the head of the church. Many monasteries were built and they became centres of religion and culture. One of the monks, the Venerable Bede, was a great scholar. He wrote the first history of the English people. But the Anglo-Saxon tribes kept much of their old pagan culture. They told legends about brave warriors fighting monsters and dragons. One of such legends was about a warrior named Beowulf. In the 8th century an epic poem was written, called “Beowulf', which became known as the most important work of the Anglo-Saxon literature.
Late in the 8th cent., and with increasing severity until the middle of the 9th cent., raiding Vikings (known in English history as Danes) harassed coastal England and finally, in 865, launched a full-scale invasion. They were first effectively checked by King Alfred of Wessex and were with great difficulty confined to the Danelaw, where their leaders divided land among the soldiers for settlement. Alfred's successors conquered the Danelaw to form a united England, but new Danish invasions late in the 10th cent, overcame ineffective resistance. The Dane Canute ruled all England by 1016. At the expiration of the Scandinavian line in 1042, the Wessex dynasty in the face of Edward the Confessor regained the throne. He spent so much time on religious work that later he failed to carry out his royal duties. As a result, the nobles increased their hold on the country. Edward approached old age without a son to succeed him. hi the interests of continuity he was expected to name an heir. The two chief candidates were Harold Godwinson, a prominent earl, and William. Duke of Normandy, There is no sign that Edward had actually promised the throne to William. Harold made a better choice politically within the realm. There is a story that Harold had sworn an oath, which he later claimed was taken under duress, to defer in favour of William. However it may have happened, Edward named Harold as his heir.
Edward died 011 January 5,1066. On the same day Harold was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. But William did not agree with such course of events. So he led an army of 5000 Norman archers and knights across the sea to England. They met Harold’s army in battle near Hastings, a town on the southern coast of England. By nightfall of October, 14th, the English were defeated. On Christmas Day, William, known as William the Conqueror, was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey, in London. The conquest of England in 1066 by William, duke of Normandy (William I of England), ended the Anglo-Saxon period. Under William's rule, the English people learned Norman customs, the French language; they built castles, cathedrals and monasteries in the French style. The freeman (ceorl) of the early Germanic invaders had been responsible to the king and superior to the serf. Subsequent centuries of war and subsistence fanning, however, had forced the majority of freemen into serfdom, or dependence on the aristocracy of lords and thanes, who came to enjoy a large measure of autonomous control over manors granted them by the king. The central government evolved from tribal chieftainships to become a monarchy in which executive and judicial powers were usually vested in the king. The aristocracy made up his witan, or council of advisers. The king set up shires as units of local government ruled by earldormen. In some instances these earldormen became powerful hereditary earls, ruling several shires. Subdivisions of shires were called hundreds. There were shire and hundred courts, the former headed by sheriffs, the latter by reeves. Agriculture was the principal industry, but the Danes were aggressive traders, and towns increased in importance starting in the 9th cent.
A new era in English history began with the Norman Conquest. William I introduced Norman-style political and military feudalism. He used the feudal system to collect taxes, employed the bureaucracy of the church to strengthen the central government, and made the administration of royal justice more efficient.
After the death of William's second son, Henry I, the country was subjected to a period of civil war that ended one year before the accession of Henry II in 1154. Henry II's reign was marked by the sharp conflict between king and church that led to the murder of Thomas a Becket. Henry carried out great judicial reforms that increased the power and scope of the royal courts. During his reign, in 1171, began the English conquest of Ireland. xAs part of his inheritance he brought to the throne Anjou, Normandy, and Aquitaine. The'defense and enlargement of these French territories engaged the energies- of successive English kings. In their need for money the kings stimulated the growth of English towns by selling them charters of liberties.
Conflict between kings and nobles, which had begun under Richard I, came to a head under John, who made unprecedented financial demands and whose foreign and church policies were unsuccessful. A temporary victory of the nobles bore fruit in the most noted of all English constitutional documents, the Magna Carta (1215). The recurring baronial wars of the 13th cent, were roughly contemporaneous with the first steps in the development of Parliament.
Edward I began the conquest of Wales and Scotland. He also carried out an elaborate reform and expansion of the central courts and of other aspects of the legal system. The Hundred Years War with France began (1337) in the reign of Edward III. The Black Death first arrived in 1348 and had a tremendous effect on economic life, hastening the breakdown (long since under way) of the manorial and feudal systems, including the institution of serfdom. At the same time the fast- growing towns and trades gave new prominence to the burgess and artisan classes.
In the 14th cent, the English began exporting their wool, rather than depending on foreign traders of English wool. Later in the century, trade in woolen cloth began to gain on the raw wool trade. The confusion resulting from such rapid social and economic change fostered radical thought, typified in the teachings of John Wyclif, and the revolt led by Wat Tyler. Dynastic wars (known in the history as the wars of the Roses), which weakened both the nobility and the monarchy in the 15th cent., ended with the accession of the Tudor family in 1485.
The reign of the Tudors (1485-1603) is one of the most fascinating periods in English history. Henry VII restored political order and the financial solvency of the crown, bequeathing his son, Henry VIII, a full exchequer. Henry VIII, who come to the throne in 1509, was a man who left his stamp on history. His six marriages in search of a male heir led to two daughters (Mary and Elizabeth) and a son Edward (who died young). Henry's need for a divorce led to a row with the pope who refused to grant Henry one. Henry countered by dissolving the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, and setting up the Church of England. A Church of England with Henry at the head could then allow Henry to divorce his wife. Of the Six the pneumonic goes - divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. He divorced the two European wives, Anne of Cleeves and Catherine of Aragon. The English ladies were more easily dispensable, Henry was a tyrant and a despot. Completely ruthless, and he let nothing and nobody get in his way. Cardinal Wolsey was banished, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More were executed.
One other bonus for Henry from his split with Rome was that he gained control of the monasteries - the monastic buildings and land were sold off after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538. Many of the buildings fell into decay, and they lost their farmlands forever. In 1536, Henry VIII brought about the political union of England and Wales. Henry and his minister Thomas Cromwell greatly expanded the central administration. During Henry's reign commerce flourished and the New Learning of the Renaissance came to England. Several factors—the revival of Lollardry, anticlericalism, the influence of humanism, and burgeoning nationalism—climaxed by the pope's refusal to grant Henry a divorce from Katharine of Aragon so that he could remarry and have a male heir—led the king to break with Roman Catholicism and establish the Church of England.
As part of the English Reformation (1529-39), Henry suppressed the orders of monks and friars and secularized their property. Although these actions aroused some popular opposition, Henry's judicious use of Parliament helped secure support for his policies and set important precedents for the future of Parliament. England moved farther toward Protestantism under Edward VI; after a generally hated Roman Catholic revival under Mary I, the Roman tie was again cut under Elizabeth I, who attempted without complete success to moderate the religious differences among her people.
Henry's elder daughter Mary was a Catholic - and a militant Catholic at that.Her efforts as a queen to restore Catholicism to England made her the most unpopular queen in British history and the means that she used to pursue her aims earned her the nickname "bloody Mary". There were 283 Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake in her reign. Among the martyrs were Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury), Ridley (Bishop of London) and Latimer (a leading preacher).
A loveless marriage to the King of Spain produced no children. So when Mary died she was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth.
The Elizabethan age was one of great artistic and intellectual achievement, its most notable figure being William Shakespeare. A long conflict with Spain, growing partly out of commercial and maritime rivalry and partly out of religious differences, culminated in the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), although the war continued another 15 years.
Inflated prices (caused, in part, by an influx of precious metals from the New World) and the reservation of land by the process of inclosure for sheep pasture (stimulated by the expansion of the wool trade) caused great changes in the social and economic structure of England. The Elizabethan poor laws were an attempt to deal with this problem. Rising prices affected the.monarchy as well, by reducing the value of its fixed customary and hereditary revenues. The country gentry were enriched by the inclosures and by their purchase of former monastic lands, which were also used for grazing. The gentry became leaders in what, toward the end of Elizabeth's reign, was an increasingly assertive Parliament.
Queen Elizabeth died, leaving no children. She was also known as the Maiden Queen. The accession in 1603 of the Stuart James I, who was also James VI of Scotland, united the thrones of England and Scotland. The chronic need for money of both James and his son, Charles I, which they attempted to meet by unusual and extralegal means; their espousal of the divine right of kings; their determination to enforce their high Anglican preferences in religion; and their use of royal courts such as Star Chamber, which were not bound by the common law, to persecute opponents, together produced a bitter conflict with Parliament that culminated (1642) in the English civil wrar.
In the war the parliamentarians, effectively led at the end by Oliver Cromwell, defeated the royalists. The king was tried for treason and beheaded (1649). The monarchy was abolished, and the country was governed by the Rump Parliament, the remainder of the last Parliament, (the Long Parliament) Charles had called (1640), until 1653, when Cromwell dissolved it and established the Protectorate. Cromwell brutally subjugated Ireland, made a single commonwealth of Scotland and England, and strengthened England's naval power and position in international trade. When he died (1658), his son, Richard, succeeded as Lord Protector but governed ineffectively.
The threat of anarchy led to an invitation by a newly elected Parliament (the Convention Parliament) to Charles, son of Charles I, to become king, ushering in the Restoration (1660). It was significant that Parliament had summoned the king, rather than the reverse; it was now clear that to be successful the king had to
cooperate with Parliament. The Whig and Tory parties developed in the Restoration period. Although Charles II was personally popular, the old issues of religion, money, and the royal prerogative came to the fore again. Parliament revived official Anglicanism, but Charles's private sympathies lay with Catholicism. He attempted to bypass Parliament in the matter of revenue by receiving subsidies from Louis XIV of France.
Charles's brother and successor, James II, was an avowed Catholic. James tried to strengthen his position in Parliament by tampering with the methods of selecting members; he put Catholics in high university positions, maintained a standing army (which later deserted him), and claimed the right to suspend laws. The birth (1688) of a male heir, who, it was- assumed, would be raised as a Catholic, precipitated a crisis.
In the Glorious Revolution, Whig and Tory leaders offered the throne to William of Orange (William III), whose Protestant wife, Mary, was James's daughter. William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen by Parliament in 1689. The Bill of Rights confirmed that sovereignty resided in Parliament. The Act of Toleration (1689) extended religious liberty to all Protestant sects; in subsequent years, religious passions slowly subsided.
By the Act of Settlement (1701) the succession to the English throne was determined. Since 1603, with the exception- of the 1654-60 portion of the interregnum, Scotland and England had remained two kingdoms united only in the person of the monarch. When it appeared that WTlliam's successor, Queen Anne, Mary's Protestant sister, would not have an heir, the Scottish succession became of concern, since the Scottish Parliament had not passed legislation corresponding to the Act of Settlement. England feared that under a separate monarch Scotland might ally itself with France, or worse still, permit a restoration of the Catholic heirs of James II—although a non-Protestant succession had been barred by the Scottish Parliament. On its part, Scotland wished to achieve economic equality with England. The result was the Act of Union (1707), by which the two kingdoms became one. Scotland obtained representation in- (what then became) the British Parliament at Westminster, and the Scottish Parliament was abolished.
The beginnings of Britain's national debt (1692) and the founding of the Bank of England (1694) were closely tied with the nation's more active role in world affairs. Britain's overseas possessions were augmented by the victorious outcome of the War of the Spanish Succession, ratified in the Peace of Utrecht (1713). Britain emerged from the War of the Austrian Succession and from the Seven Years War as the possessor of the world's greatest empire. The peace of 1763 confirmed British predominance in India and North America. Settlements were made in Australia toward the end of the 18th cent.; however, a serious loss was sustained when 13 North American colonies broke away in the American Revolution. Additional colonies were won in the wars against Napoleon I, notable for the victories of Horatio Nelson and Arthur Welleslev, duke of Wellington.
In Ireland, the Irish Parliament was granted independence in 1782, but in 1798 there was an Irish rebellion. A vain attempt to solve the centuries-old Irish problem was the abrogation of the Irish Parliament and the union (1801) of Great Britain and Ireland, with Ireland represented in the British Parliament.
Domestically the long ministry of Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42), during the reigns of George I and George II, was a period of relative stability that sawr the beginnings of the development of the cabinet as the chief executive organ of government.
The 18th cent, was a time of transition in the growth of the British parliamentary system. The monarch still played a very active role in government, choosing and dismissing ministers as he wished. Occasionally, sentiment in Parliament might force an unwanted minister on him, as when George III was forced to choose Rockingham in 1782, but the king could dissolve Parliament and
use his considerable patronage power to secure a new one more amenable to his views.
Important movements for political and social reform arose in the second half of the 18th cent. George Ill's arrogant and somewhat anachronistic conception of the crown's role produced a movement among Whigs in Parliament that called for a reform and reduction of the king's pow?er.
George III was succeeded by George IV and William IV. During the last ten years of his reign, George III was insane, and sovereignty was exercised by the future George IV. This was the “Regency” period. In the mid- 18th cent., wealth and power in Great Britain still resided in the aristocracy, the landed gentry, and the commercial oligarchy of the towns. The mass of the population consisted of agricultural laborers, semiliterate and landless, governed locally (in England) by justices of the peace. The countryside was fragmented into semi-isolated agricultural villages and provincial capitals.
However, the period of the late 18th and early 19th cent, was a time of dynamic economic change. The factory system, the discovery and use of steam power, improved inland transportation (canals and turnpikes), the ready supply of coal and iron, a remarkable series of inventions, and men with capital who were eager to invest—all these elements came together to produce the epochal change known as the Industrial Revolution.
The impact of these developments on social conditions was enormous, but the most significant socioeconomic fact of all from 1750 to 1850 was the growth of population. The population of Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland)' grew from an estimated 7,500,000 in 1750 to about 10,800,000 in 1801 (the year of the first national census) and to about 23,130,000 in 1861. The growing population provided needed labor for industrial expansion and was accompanied by rapid urbanization. Urban problems multiplied. At the same time a new period of inclosures (1750-1810; this time to increase the arable farmland) deprived small farmers of their common land. The Speenhamland System (begun in 1795), which supplemented wages according to the size of a man's family and the price of bread, and the Poor Law of 1834 were harsh revisions of the relief laws.
In the 1820s the reform impulse that had been largely stifled during the French Revolution revived. Catholic Emancipation (1829) restored to Catholics political and civil rights, hi 1833 slavery in the British Empire was abolished. (The slave trade had been ended in 1807.) Parliamentary reform was made imperative by the new patterns of population distribution and by the great growth during the industrial expansion in the size and wealth of the middle class, which lacked commensurate political power. The general elections that followed the death of George IV brought to power a Whig ministry committed to parliamentary reform. The Reform Bill of 1832 enfranchised the middle class and redistributed seats to give greater representation to London and the urban boroughs of England. Other parliamentary legislation established the institutional basis for efficient city government and municipal services and for government inspection of factories, schools, and poorhouses.
The reign of Victoria (1837-1901) covered the period of Britain's commercial and industrial leadership of the world and of its greatest political influence. Initial steps toward granting self-government for Canada were taken at the start of Victoria's reign, while in India conquest and expansion continued. Great Britain's commercial interests, advanced by the British navy, brought on in 1839 the first Opium War with China, which opened five Chinese ports to British trade and made Flong Kong a British colony, The aggressive diplomacy of Lord Palmerston in the 1850s and 60s, including involvement in the Crimean War, was popular at home.
From 1868 to 1880 political life in Great Britain was dominated by Benjamin Disraeli and William E. Gladstone, who differed dramatically over domestic and foreign policy. Under Disraeli (1874-80) the British acquired the
Transvaal, the Fiji Islands, and Cyprus, fought frontier wars in Africa and Afghanistan, and became the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company. Gladstone strongly condemned Disraeli's expansionist policies, but his later ministries involved Britain in Egypt, Afghanistan, and Uganda.
In the last decades of the 19th cent, competition with other European powers and enchantment with the glories of empire led Britain to acquire vast territories in Asia and Africa. By the end of the century the country was entangled in the South African War (1899-1902). Great Britain’s period of hegemony was ending, as both Germany and the United States were surpassing it in industrial production.
Victoria was succeeded by her son Edward VII, then by his son, George V. The Liberals, in power 1905-15, enacted much social legislation, including old-age pensions, health and unemployment insurance, child health laws, and more progressive taxation. The budget sponsored by David Lloyd George to finance the Liberals' program brought on a parliamentary struggle that ended in a drastic reduction of the power of the House of Lords (1911). Grow'ing military and economic rivalry with Germany led Great Britain to form ententes with its former colonial rivals, France and Russia.
In 1914, Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality, which since 1839 Britain had been pledged to uphold, caused Britain to go to war against Germany. Although the British emerged as victors, the war took a terrible toll on the nation. About 750,000 men had died and seven million tons of shipping had been lost, hi the peace settlement Britain acquired, as League of Nations mandates, additional territories in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. But the four years of fighting had drained the nation of wealth and manpower.
The postwar years were a time of great moral disillusionment and material difficulties. To the international problems stemming directly from the war, such as disarmament, and war debts, were added complex domestic economic problems, the task of reorganizing the British Empire, and the tangled Irish problem.
Northern Ireland was created in 1920, and the Irish Free State, or the Irish Republic as it is called now, in 1921-22.
The basic domestic economic problem of the post—World War I years was the decline of Britain's traditional export industries, which made it more difficult for the country to pay for its imports of foods and raw materials. In 1926 the country suffered a general strike. Severe economic stress increased during the worldwide economic depression of the late 1920s and early 30s. During the financial crisis of 1931, George V asked MacDonald to head a coalition government, which took the country off the gold standard, ceased the repayment of war debts, and supplanted free trade with protective tariffs modified by preferential treatment within the empire and with treaty nations.
Recovery from the depression began to be evident in 1933. Although old export industries such as coal mining and cotton manufacturing remained depressed, other industries, such as electrical engineering, automobile manufacture, and industrial chemistry, were developed or strengthened. George V
was succeeded by Edward VIII, after whose abdication (1936) George VI came to
the throne, hi 1937, Neville Chamberlain became prime minister.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, and all the dominions of the Commonwealth except Ireland followed suit. Chamberlain broadened his cabinet to include Labour representatives, but after German victories in Scandinavia he resigned (May, 1940) and was replaced by Winston S. Churchill. France fell in June, 1940, but the heroic rescue of a substantial part of the British army from Dunkirk (May-June) enabled Britain, now virtually alone, to remain in the war.
* j j
The nation withstood intensive bombardment, but ultimately the Royal Air Force was able to drive off the Luftwaffe. Extensive damage was sustained, and great urban areas, including large sections of London, were devastated. The British people rose to a supreme war effort: American aid provided vital help. In 1941,
Great Britain gained two allies when Germany invaded the USSR (June) and the United States entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7). Britain declared war on Japan on Dec. 8.
The wartime alliance of Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States led to the formation of the United Nations and brought about the defeat of Germany (May, 1945) and Japan (Sept., 1945). The British economy suffered severely from the war. Manpower losses had been severe, including about 420,000 dead; large urban areas had to be rebuilt, and the industrial plant needed reconstruction and modernization. Leadership in world trade, shipping, and banking had passed to the United States, and overseas investments had been largely liquidated to pay the cost of the world wars. This wras a serious blow to the British economy because the income from these activities had previously served to offset the import-export deficit.
hi 1945, the first general elections in ten years were held (they had been postponed because of the war) and Clement Attlee and the Labour party were swept into power. Austere wartime economic controls were continued, and in 1946 the United States extended a large loan. The United States made further assistance available in 1948 through the Marshall Plan, hi 1949 the pound wras devalued (in terms of U.S. dollars, from $4.03 to $2.80) to make British exports more competitive.
The Labour government pursued from, the start a vigorous program of nationalization of industry and extension of social services. The Bank of England, the coal industry, communications facilities, civil aviation, electricity, and internal transport were nationalized, and in 1948 a vast program of socialized medicine was instituted (many of these programs followed the recommendations of wartime commissions). Also in 1948, Labour began the nationalization of the steel industry, but the law did not become effective until 1951, after Churchill and the Conservatives had returned to office. The Conservatives denationalized the trucking industry and all but one of the steel companies and ended direct economic controls, but they retained Labour's social reforms. Elizabeth II succeeded George VI in 1952.
.In postwar foreign affairs Great Britain's loss of power was also evident. Britain had undertaken to help Greece and Turkey resist Communist subversion, but the financial burden proved too great, and the task was assumed (1947) by the United States. The British Empire underwent rapid transformation. British India w^as partitioned (1947) into two self-governing states, India and Pakistan, hi Palestine, unable to maintain peace between Arabs and Jews, Britain turned its mandate over to the United Nations. Groundwork was laid for the independence of many other colonies; like India and Pakistan, most of them remained in the Commonwealth after independence. Great Britain joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949) and fought on the United Nations' side in the Korean War (1950-53).
Britain supported U.S. policy in Vietnam. The policy of granting independence to colonial possessions continued; however, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) became a problem when its government, representing only the white minority, unilaterally declared its independence in 1965. Another problem was Spain's demand for the return of Gibraltar. A major crisis erupted in Northern Ireland in late 1968 when Catholic civil-rights demonstrations turned into violent confrontations between Catholics and Protestants. British army units were dispatched in an unsuccessful attempt to restore calm. In 1972 the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Parliament and government and assumed direct control of the province.
In the elections of Oct., 1974, the Labour party won a slim majority; Wilson became as prime minister. The early 1970s brought the development of oil and natural gas fields in the North Sea, which helped to decrease Britain's reliance on coal and foreign fuel. Wilson resigned and was succeeded by James Callaghan in Apr., 1976. Neither Wilson nor Callaghan was able to resolve growing
disagreements with the unions, and unrest among industrial workers became the dominant note of the late 1970s. In Mar., 1979, Callaghan left office after losing a no-confidence vote.
hi May, 1979, the Conservatives returned to power under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who set out to reverse the post-war trend toward socialism by reducing government borrowing, freezing expendittires, and privatising state- owned industries. Thatcher also managed to break union resistance through a series of laws that included the illegalization of secondary strikes and boycotts. A violent, unsuccessful yearlong miners' strike (1984-85) was Thatcher's most serious union confrontation.
Thatcher gained increased popularity by her actions in the Falkland Islands conflict with Argentina; she led the Conservatives to victory again in 1983 and 1987, the latter an unprecedented third consecutive general election win. In 1985, Great Britain agreed that Flong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. hi 1986, the Channel Tunnel project was begun with France; the rail link with the European mainland opened in 1994.
A decade of Thatcher's economic policies resulted in a marked disparity between the developed southern economy and the decaying industrial centres of the north. Her unpopular stands on some issues, such as her opposition to greater British integration in Europe, caused a Conservative party revolt that led her to resign in Nov., 1990, whereupon John Major became party leader and prime minister. Despite a lingering recession, the Conservatives retained power in the 1992 general election.
A peace initiative opened by Prime Minister Major in 1993 led to cease-fires in 1994 by the Irish Republican Army and Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. Peace efforts foundered early in 1996, as the IRA again resorted to terrorist bombings. In July, 1997, the IRA declared a new cease-fire, and talks begun in September of that year. An accord reached in 1998 provided for a new regional assembly to be established in Belfast, but formation of the government was hindered by disagreement over guerrilla disarmament. With resolution of those issues late in 1999, direct rule was ended in Northern Ireland.
The Major government was beset by internal scandals and by an intraparty rift over the degree of British participation in the European Union (EU), but Major called a Conservative party leadership election for July, 1995, and easily triumphed. In Nov., 1995, three divisions of British Rail were sold off in Britain's largest-ever privatization by direct sale. Britain's sometimes stormy relationship with the EU was heightened in 1996 when an outbreak of “mad cow disease” in England led the EU to ban the sale of British beef; the crisis eased when British plans for controlling the disease were approved by the EU. Although the EU ban was ended in 1999, France continued its own ban on British beef, causing a strain in British-French relations and within the EU.
In the elections of May, 1997, Labour won 418 seats in the House of Commons by following a centrist political strategy. Tony Blair, head of what he called the “New Labour” party, became prime minister. In August, Britain mourned Princess Diana, the former wife of Prince Charles, who was killed in a car accident in Paris. Blair's pledge to decentralize government was endorsed in September, when Scotland and Wales both voted to establish legislative bodies, giving them a stronger voice in their domestic affairs. A bill passed by both houses of Parliament in 1999 stripped most hereditary peers of their right to sit and vote in the Flouse of Lords.
Timeline for King George V
1910 George V becomes King and Emperor of India on the death of his father, Edward VII.
1914 Anglican Church in Wales is disestablished.
1914 The heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire is assassinated. Outbreak of World War I.
1918 The end of World War I. Armistice signed on 11 November.
1919 Third Afghan War. Afghanistan gains independence from Britain
1919 A flu-pandemic (known as Spanish Flu) rages around the world killing over 50 million people.
1928 All women over the age of 21 get the vote.
1928 George V falls seriously ill with blood poisoning of the lung.
1932 George V makes the first annual Christmas broadcast on radio.
Timeline for King Edward VIII
1936 Edward VIII succeeds his father, George V, as King on 20 January.
1936 Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
1936 Germany, under Adolf Hitler, reoccupies the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.
1936 Britain begins to rearm as political tension increases in Europe and the prospect of military conflict in the region becomes more evident.
1936 Fire destroys Crystal Palace, once the home of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park but now located in Sydenham, south London.
1936 J.M. Keynes publishes his book General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money an internationally influential study of modern economics.
1936 The BBC inaugurates the world’s first television service at Alexandra Palace in London.
1936 On 10 December Edward signs the Instrument of Abdication over his wish to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson. Witnessed by all his brothers, it is a simple declaration of his intent to renounce the throne for himself and all his descendants. He is subsequently created Duke of Windsor.
Timeline for King George VI
1936 George VI accedes to the throne upon the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII
1940 Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister.
1940 Battle of Britain fought in the skies over England between the RAF and German Luftwaffe.
1948 National Health Service establishes free medical treatment.
Timeline for Queen Elizabeth II
George VI.
including Australia and New Zealand
1955 Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister and is succeeded by Anthony Eden.
1957 The Gold Coast becomes independent as Ghana, the first British colony in Africa to receive its independence.
1959 Queen Elizabeth tours Canada and the United States
1966 Aberfan disaster leaves 116 children dead
1969 Prince Charles is invested as Prince of Wales.
1969 Troubles break out in the North of Ireland
1973 Britain joins the European Community.
1977 Celebration of the Silver Jubilee of the Queens accession
1979 Margaret Thatcher succeeds James Callaghan, becoming Britain's first woman Prime Minister.
1982 Britain goes to war with Argentina over control of the Falkland Islands 1984 Miners strike again but is defeated by Thatcher.
1990 Margaret Thatcher resigns as Prime Minister after 11 years and is succeeded by John Major.
2012 Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee of 60 years since her accession to the throne.
13
13