History

For people in Britain today, the chief significance of the prehistoric period is its sense of mystery. This sense finds its focus most easily in the astonishing monumental architecture of this period, the remains of which exist throughout the country.

The Roman province of Britannia covered most of present-day England and Wales, where the Romans imposed their own way of life and culture, making use of the existing Celtic aristocracy to govern and encouraging them to adopt Roman dress and the Latin language. The remarkable thing about the Romans is that, despite their long occupation of Britain, they left very little behind. To many other parts of Europe they bequeathed a system of law and administration which forms the basis of the modern system and a language which developed into the modern Romance family of languages. In Britain, they left neither. Moreover, most of their villas, baths and temples, their impressive network of roads, and the cities they founded, including Londinium (London), were soon destroyed or fell into disrepair.

The Roman occupation had been a matter of colonial control rather than large-scale settlement. But during the fifth century, a number of tribes from the European mainland invaded and settled in large numbers. Two of these tribes were the Angles and the Saxons. These Anglo-Saxons soon had the south-east of the country in their grasp. In the west, their advance was temporarily halted by an army of (Celtic) Britons under the command of the legendary King Arthur. Nevertheless, by the end of the sixth century, they and their way of life predominated in nearly all of present-day England. Celtic culture and language survived only in present-day Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

The Anglo-Saxons had little use for towns and cities. But they had a great effect on the countryside, where they introduced new farming methods and founded the thousands of self-sufficient villages which formed the basis of English society for the next thousand or so years.

When they came to Britain, the Anglo-Saxons were pagan. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Christianity spread throughout Britain from two different directions. By the time it was introduced into the south of England by the Roman missionary St. Augustine, it had already been introduced into Scotland and northern England from Ireland, which had become Christian more than 150 years earlier.

The successful Norman invasion of England (1066) brought Britain into the mainstream of western European culture. Unlike the Germanic invasions, the Norman invasion was small-scale. There was no such thing as a Norman area of settlement. Instead, the Norman soldiers who had invaded were given the ownership of land -and of the people living on it. A strict feudal system was imposed. Great nobles, or barons, were responsible directly to the king; lesser lords, each owning a village, were directly responsible to a baron. Under them were the peasants, tied by a strict system of mutual duties and obligations to the local lord, and forbidden to travel without his permission. The peasants were the English-speaking Saxons. The lords and the barons were the French-speaking Normans. This was the start of the English class system. As an example of the class distinctions introduced into society after the Norman invasion, people often point to: the fact that modern English has two words for the larger farm animals: one for the living animal (cow, pig, sheep) and another for the animal you eat (beef, pork, mutton). The former set come from Anglo-Saxon, the latter from the French that the Normans brought to England. Only the Normans normally are meat; the poor Anglo-Saxon peasants did not!

The system of strong government which the Normans introduced made the Anglo-Norman kingdom the most powerful political force in Britain and Ireland. Not surprisingly therefore, the authority of the English monarch gradually extended to other parts of these islands in the next 250 years. By the end of the thirteenth century, a large part of eastern Ireland was controlled by Anglo-Norman lords in the name of their king and the whole of Wales was under his direct rule (at which time, the custom of naming the monarch's eldest son the 'Prince of Wales' began). Scotland managed to remain politically independent in the medieval period, but was obliged to fight occasional wars to do so.

It was in this period that Parliament began its gradual evolution into the democratic body which it is today. The word 'parliament', which comes from the French word parler (to speak), was first used in England in the thirteenth century to describe an assembly of nobles called together by the king.

In its first outbreak in the middle of the fourteenth century, bubonic plague (known in England as the Black Death) killed about a third of the population of Great Britain. It periodically reappeared for another 300 years. The shortage of labour which it caused, and the increasing importance of trade and towns, weakened the traditional ties between lord and peasant. At a higher level of feudal structure, the power of the great barons was greatly weakened by in-fighting (The Wars of the Roses).

Both these developments allowed English monarchs to increase their power. The Tudor dynasty (1485 -1603) established a system of government departments staffed by professionals who depended for their position on the monarch. The feudal aristocracy was no longer needed for implementing government policy. It was needed less for making it too. Of the traditional two 'Houses' of Parliament, the Lords and the Commons, it was now more important for monarchs to ger the agreement of the Commons for their policies because that was where the newly powerful merchants and landowners were represented.

Unlike in much of the rest of Europe, the immediate cause of the rise of Protestantism in England was political and personal rather than doctrinal. The King (Henry VIII) wanted a divorce, which the Pope would not give him. Also, by making himself head of the 'Church of England', independent of Rome, all church lands came under his control and gave him a large new source of income.

It was therefore patriotism as much as religious conviction that had caused Protestantism to become the majority religion in England by the end of the century. It took a form known as Anglicanism, not so very different from Catholicism in its organization and ritual.

In the seventeenth century, the link between religion and politics became intense. At the start of the century, some people tried to kill the king because he wasn't Catholic enough. By the end of the century, another king had been killed, partly because he seemed too Catholic, and yet another had been forced into exile for the same reason.

This was the context in which, during the century. Parliament established its supremacy over the monarchy. Anger grew in the country at the way the Stuart monarchs raised money without, as tradition prescribed, getting the agreement of the House of Commons first. In addition, ideological Protestantism, especially Puritanism, had grown in England. Puritans regarded the luxurious lifestyle of the king and his followers as immoral. They were also anti-Catholic and suspicious of the apparent sympathy towards Catholicism of the Stuart monarchs.

This conflict led to the Civil War (The Civil War), which ended with complete victory for the parliamentary forces. James's son, Charles I, became the first monarch in Europe to be executed after a formal trial for crimes against his people. The leader of the parliamentary army, Oliver Cromwell, became 'Lord Protector' of a republic with a military government which, after he had brutally crushed resistance in Ireland, effectively encompassed all of Britain and Ireland.

But by the time Cromwell died, he, his system of government, and the puritan ethics that went with it (theatres and other forms of amusement had been banned) had become so unpopular that the executed king's son was asked to return and become King Charles II.

Not long before this century began, Britain lost its most important colonies (north American ones) in a war of independence. At the start of the century, it was locked in a war with France, during which an invasion of the country was a real possibility. Soon after the end of the century, it controlled the biggest empire the world had ever seen.

The growth of the empire was encouraged by a change in attitude during the century. Previously, colonization had been a matter of settlement, commerce, or military strategy. The aim was simply to possess territory, but not necessarily to govern it. By the end of the century, colonization was seen as a matter of destiny. During the century, Britain became the world's foremost economic power. This, together with long years of political stability unequalled anywhere else in Europe, gave the British a sense of supreme confidence, even arrogance, about their culture and civilization. The British came to see themselves as having a duty to spread this culture and civilization around the world. Being the rulers of an empire was therefore a matter of moral obligation.

There were great changes in social structure. Most people now lived in towns and cities. They no longer depended on country landowners for their living but rather on the owners of industries. These owners and the growing middle class of tradespeople and professionals held the real power in the country. Along with their power went a set of values which emphasized hard work, thrift, religious observance, the family, an awareness of one's duty, absolute honesty in public life, and extreme respectability in sexual matters. This is the set of values which are now called Victorian.

Middle-class religious conviction, together with a belief that reform was better than revolution, allowed reforms in public life. These included not only political reforms, but also reforms which recognized some human rights (as we now call them). Slavery and the laws against people on the basis of religion were abolished, and laws were made to protect workers from some of the worst excesses of the industrial mode of production. Public services such as the post and the police were begun.

Despite reform, the nature of the new industrial society forced many people to live and work in very unpleasant surroundings. Writers and intellectuals of this period either protested against the horrors of this new style of life (for example, Dickens) or simply ignored it. Many, especially the Romantic poets, praised the beauties of the countryside and the virtues of country life. This was a new development. In previous centuries, the countryside wasn't something to be discussed or admired. But from this time on, most British people developed a sentimental attachment to the idea of the countryside.

/Britain for Learners of English/

1. How old is Stonehenge? Is Stonehenge the largest stone circle in the world? What was the purpose of Stonehenge?