Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica

Cultura Inglesa

Actividad 1

Presentado por:

Erick Eduardo Hernández Rodríguez 1723735

Juan Carlos Meneses Rodríguez 1767391
Debanhy Lizeth Garza Renteria 1659945
Aldair Addebarán Aguirre Lara 1597601
Martin Guillermo Esquivel Tapia 1545856
Bryan Alexis Carranza Reta 1668023

1 FEBRERO de 2018
 HISTORICAL CONTEXT
United Kingdom, island country located off the northwestern coast of mainland
Europe. The United Kingdom comprises the whole of the island of Great Britain—
which contains England, Wales, and Scotland—as well as the northern portion of
the island of Ireland. The name Britain is sometimes used to refer to the United
Kingdom as a whole. The capital is London, which is among the world’s leading
commercial, financial, and cultural center. Other major cities include Birmingham,
Liverpool, and Manchester in England, Belfast and Londonderry in Northern
Ireland, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and Swansea and Cardiff in Wales.

The origins of the United Kingdom can be traced to the time of the Anglo-Saxon,
the story started after the Romans progressively abandoned Britannia in the 5th
century as their Empire was falling apart and legions were needed to protect
Rome. With the Romans gone, the Celtic tribes started fighting with each others
again, and one of the local chieftain had the idea to request help from the
Germanic tribes from the North of present-day Germany and South of Denmark.
These were the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who arrived in the 5th and 6th
centuries.

The place was in peace but from the second half of the 9th century, the Norse
from Scandinavia started invading Europe, the Swedes taking up Eastern
Europe, Russia (which they founded as a country) and the Byzantine Empire, the
Norwegians raiding Scotland and Ireland, discovering and settling in the Faroe
Islands, Iceland and Greenland (and were in fact the first Europeans to set foot
in America in 1000 AD), while the Danes wrought havoc throughout Western
Europe, as far as North Africa.

The formation of the current UK couldn´t be understood if we don´t mention the

next part of its history After having settled in their newly acquired land, the
Normans, adopted the French feudal system and French as official language.

During that time, the Kings of Wessex had resisted and eventually vanquished
the Danes in England in the 10th century. But the powerful Canute the Great
(995-1035), king of the newly unified Denmark and Norway and overlord of
Schleswig and Pomerania, led two other invasions on England in 1013 and 1015,
and became king of England in 1016, after crushing the Anglo-Saxon king,
Edmund II.

Edward the Confessor (1004-1066) succeeded to Canute's two sons. He

nominated William, Duke of Normandy, as his successor, but upon his death,
Harold Godwinson, the powerful Earl of Wessex, crowned himself king. William
refused to acknowledge Harold as King and invaded England with 12,000 soldiers
in 1066. King Harold was killed at the battle of Hastings (by an arrow in the eye,
as the legend as it), and William the Conqueror become William I of England. His
descendants have sat on the throne of England to this day. William I (1027-1087)
ordered a nationwide survey of land property known as the Domesday Book, and
redistributed land among his vassals. Many of the country's medieval castles
were built under William's reign (eg. Dover, Arundel, Windsor, Warwick,
Kenilworth, Lincoln...).

After all the conquest process England started to establish a solid monarchy.
The English royals after William I had the infamous habit to contend for the
throne. William's son, William II was killed while hunting, and it is believed that he
was in fact murdered, so that William's second son, Henry, could become king.
Henry I's succession was also agitated, with his daughter Matilda and her cousin
Stephen (grandson of William I) starting a civil war for the throne. Although
Stephen won, Matilda's son succeeded him as Henry II (1133-1189). It is under
Henry II that the University of Oxford was established.

The following struggle of Henry II's two children was made famous by the legend
of Robin Hood. Richard I "Lionheart" was hardly ever in England, too busy
defending his French possessions or fighting the infidels in the Holy Land. During
that time, his brother John "Lackland" usurped the throne and startled another
civil war.

John's grandson, Edward I "Longshanks" (1239-1307) spent most of his 35-year

reign fighting wars, first against his barons led by Simon de Montfort (see
Kenilworth), then on the 9th Crusade, back home annexing Wales, and last but
not least against the Scots, led by William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, whose
proud resistance was immortalised in the Hollywood movie Braveheart.

Edward I' son, Edward II, was all his father wasn't. He didn't like war, preferring
to party with his friends. He also happened to be gay, which led to his
imprisonment and tragic murder by his wife and her lover (see Gloucester).

Buy it was until 1543 that England absorbed other countries to make the United
Kingdom, England had absorbed Wales and Cornwall by 1543, through
parliamentary incorporation, political and cultural integration of the ruling elites,
and administrative cohesion across church and state.

Henry VIII is remembered in history as one of the most powerful kings of England.
Except for getting married six times, desperate for a male heir, Henry changed
the face of England, passing the Acts of Union with Wales (1536-1543), thus
becoming the first English King of Wales, then changing his title of Lord of Ireland
into that of (also first) King of Ireland (1541).

The next Act of Union was sign until 1707, in this case Scotlan was rescued by
England as an act of altruism in wich England rescued an impoverished Scotlan.
Certainly the Scottish balance of trade appeared far from healthy, with imports
hugely exceeding exports.

Scottish government was also hard pressed financially. But several caveats are
necessary. The impoverishment of government doesn't necessarily mean the
impoverishment of the country.

The adverse balance was calculated on taxed trade, not on trade conducted. The
balance took no account of imported goods re-exported or reprocessed as
manufactures for domestic consumption.

Above all, the balance took no account of the invisible earnings from the thriving
Scottish carrying trade from the Baltic to the Caribbean.

The financial capacity of Scottish commercial networks was powerfully

demonstrated in the first four months of 1707, before the union became operative
on 1 May.

The East Indies remained the preserve of English commercial interests.

Marginally increased reparations were traded off against drastically scaled down
investment from what the English ministry had been prepared to offer in return
for political incorporation.

By agreeing that reparations and investment should be met by the raising of taxes
to English levels, the Scots were effectively financing their own dividends from
union.

The Scottish negotiators also accepted a drastic reduction in their nobility eligible
for the House of Lords, their numbers being restricted to 16 elected peers. No
less significant, only 45 Scottish MPs were to be returned from the shires and
burghs to the Commons.

Scottish representation was less than that of Cornwall. In effect, the English
parliament became the British parliament with marginal readjustment to
accommodate Scottish interests.

The last addition to United Kingdom was Ireland. The perceived threat during the
1780s was compounded in the next decade by the French Revolution, when
Ireland, like Scotland prior to 1707, was seen as the back door to invasion of
England from France. But it was not until moves commenced in Westminster in
support of Catholic emancipation that the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland was
convinced that incorporating union was more attractive than power-sharing.

After the United Irishmen had courted an abortive French invasion in 1798, the
British state moved from oppressive reprisals to advocating union.
Prominent in this British reaction was Henry Dundas, the dominant Scottish
politician. He and his political clients were to the fore, arguing the case for political
incorporation both at Westminster and in the country at large, based on the
reputed advantages that Scotland had enjoyed since 1707.

The Act of Union that was duly negotiated between Britain and Ireland in 1800
again represented the continuation of the English parliament, but with less
marginal adjustments in terms of political representation to accommodate Irish
interests.

Whereas the Treaty of Union had secured the Presbyterian Kirk, the distinctively
Catholic faith of the Irish was disparaged by the Act of Union.

Catholic emancipation remained a distant prospect, not an immediate

commitment. Although fiscal dues were not equalised until the 1820s, union for
Ireland, as for Scotland in 1707, led to protracted economic recession.

With industrialisation largely confined to Belfast and Dublin, the Irish lacked the
entrepreneurial levers or the commitment to empire which had enabled the Scots
to grasp the economic opportunities gradually opened up by political
incorporation.

Reasons for the creation of the United Kingdom

 England absorbed Wales and Cornwall through Parliamentary incorporation,
political and cultural integration of ruling elites and administrative cohesion
across church and state
 Protestant Reformation
 Oliver Cromwell
 Disputes over politics causing civil wars in 17th and 18th centuries
 Incorporation of Scotland due to trade imports exceeding exports
 Several Acts of Union in 1707 and again in 1800
 Moves in support of Catholic emancipation
 Conquering of Wales in 1270 and 1280 by King Edward I
 Welsh districts modeled on the English system
 Union of the crowns by Act of the Union 1707
The formation of the United Kingdom.

The Union of different countries in History can be by many reasons, such

as invasion, independence, treatments, or conquest, new fundations etc.

Although the English dominion over Wales came from a long time ago, it
not be until 1536, the year where Henry VII imposed the English Letters by
the Act of Union, in this act England and Wales were finally united and this
union give way tot he conformation oft he current state, wich some still
today we continue to call simply “England“.

In 1800 in Ireland, an Act of Union took place and thus it happened to

form together with England and Scotland the then known like united
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

In 1919 the War of Independence of Ireland begins. And it ended after two
years with the participation of the island. And that is how the Irish Free
State was created, later converted into a Republic, and maintaining
Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, which waited until 1927
to definitively change its name to how it is known today "United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.

And one of the curiosities is that the evolution of the conformation of the
United Kingdom can be reflected in the very evolution of its famous flag,
known as "Union Flag" or "Union Jack".
Religion.

The religion in UK It dates back from his creation in 1707. The Agreement
of Union that led to the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
assured that there would not be a Protestant in the succession, as well the
link between Church and State still in.

Since the census of 2009, in the United Kingdom, the Christianism is still
the principal religion, followed by the Islam, the Hinduism, sijism, the
Judaism and the Buddhism in terms of followers. Though every country
that shapes the United Kingdom has a long tradition of the Christianity
that is before the own Great Britain, in the practice they all have relatively
low levels at the religious observance.

These days the roman catholic church in England and Gales is the most
biggest church with about five million members, mostly in England. The
Church has five provinces: Birmingham, Cardiff, Liverpool, Southwark y
Westminste.

The civil war

The English civil war was the fight between the whom they were
supporting the king Carlos I and those that they were supporting the
parliament. As well as his father, Jaime I, Carlos was believing in the divine
right of the king, whose government was coming directly from God. This
belief faced Carlos with the parliament. Carlos became king in 1625 and
immediately star a fight with de parliament about his right to put in prison
the persons who were objecting to him, to impose the religion and to
receive taxes.

Carlos was put in prison in the Wight island, from where he conspired
again to begin a war with the Scotch help. A second phase of the fight
begun, with revolts of the realists and an attempt of invasion on the part
of the Scots, though this one failed.

In 1648, the parliamentarians who still were respecting the king were
extracted of the parliament by Oliver Cromwell. The rest of the members
of the " parliament rump “, it found guilty Carlos of betray and was
executed it in 1649.
Language
English is the official language of the United Kingdom, spoken by about 60
million residents over the age of 3, which is about 98% of the population. It is
estimated that 700,000 people in the UK speak Welsh, which is an official
language in Wales. There are also around 1.5 million people in the country who
speak Scots, but there is a debate about whether this is a different language or
a variety of English. There is also a significant number of people speaking Irish
in Northern Ireland, with large communities also in Glasgow, Liverpool,
Manchester and London.

When it comes to dialect varieties in England, English can be divided into four
major regional dialects: South West English, South East English, Midlands
English, and Northern English. There are several local subdialects in each of
these regions. For example, in the Northern region, there is a difference
between the Yorkshire dialects, the Geordie dialect which is used in the area
around Newcastle, and the Lancashire dialects, with local urban dialects such
as Scouse in Liverpool and Mancunian in Manchester.

Regarding the accents of the English, there are some significant differences
across the country, such as the ones in the West Country, where two groups of
accents exist. There is also a huge variation within the London urban area, with
various accents such as Cockney, Estuary English, and Received
Pronunciation.

Other languages spoken in the UK

In 2011 a census was conducted to see how well non-native speakers could
speak English, and to find out what their first language was. According to the
results, the list of the main 20 languages spoken in the country was:

- English (or Welsh if in Wales) 49,808,000 or 92.3%

- Polish 546,000 or 1%
- Punjabi 273,000 or 0.5%
- Urdu 269,000 or 0.5%
- Bengali (with Sylheti and Chatgaya) 221,000 or 0.4%
- Gujarati 213,000 or 0.4%
- Arabic 159,000 or 0.3%
- French 147,000 or 0.3%
- All other Chinese (excludes Mandarin and Cantonese) 141,000 or 0.3%
- Portuguese 133,000 or 0.2%
- Spanish 120,000 or 0.2%
- Tamil 101,000 or 0.2%
- Turkish 99,000 or 0.2%
- Italian 92,000 or 0.2%
Bibliography

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/acts_of_union_01.shtml

https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/acts_of_union_01.shtml#
top

https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-creation-of-the-united-kingdom-and-the-
incorporation-of-ireland.html

http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-uk-language

circulodeaficiones.blogspot.mx/2011/06/la-formacion-del-reino-unido.html?m=1

https://www.absolutviajes.com/la-religion-en-inglaterra-2/

https://www.enciclopediahistoria.com/2014/09/la-guerra-civil-inglesa-
1642-1660.html