Isključivo za internu upotrebu

An illustrated history of Britain - Possible exam questions

for UBS1:
 The biggest change during the Roman occupation was the growth of
large farms, called “villas”. These belonged to the richer Britons who
were, like the townspeople, more Roman than Celt in their manners.
Each villa had many workers. The villas were usually close to towns so
that the crops could be sold easily. (page 10)
 The Anglo-Saxon established a number of kingdoms: Essex (East
Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), Middlesex
(probably a kingdom of Middle Saxons), East Anglia (East Angles). The
three largest kingdoms, those of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex,
were the most powerful. (page 12)
 It was not until a century later that one of these kings, King Offa of
Mercia (757-796), claimed “kingship of the English”. He did not control
all of England. (page 12)
 In 597 Pope Gregory the Great sent a monk, Augustine, to re-establish
Christianity in England. He went to Canterbury, the capital of the king
of Kent. He did so because the king’s wife came from Europe and
was already Christian. Augustine became the first Archbishop of
Canterbury in 601. (page 13 and 14)
 King Offa arranged for his son to be crowned as his successor, he
made sure that this was done at a Christian ceremony led by a
bishop. (page 14)
 The king who made the most use of the Church was Alfred, the great
king who ruled Wessex from 871 to 899. He used the literate men of
the Church to help establish a system of law, to educate the people
 and to write down important matters. He started Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, the most important source, together with Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History of the English People, for understanding the
period. (page 15)
 The message of Christianity was spread in Ireland by a British slave,
Patrick, who became the “patron saint” of Ireland. (page 19)
 It was most unpopular with people, because they felt they could not
escape from its findings. It so reminded them of the paintings of the
Day of Judgement, or “doom”, on the walls of their churches that
they called it the “Doomsday” Book. The Doomsday Book still exists,
and gives us an extraordinary amount of information about England
at this time. (page 25)
 To William the important difference between Normandy and England
was that as duke of Normandy he had to recognize the king of
France as his lord, whereas in Enland he was king with no lord above
him. (page 25)
 When William died, in 1087, he left the Duchy of Normandy to his
elder son, Robert. He gave England to his second son, William, known
as “Rufus” (Latin for red) because of his red air and red face. When
Robert went to fight the Muslims in the Holy Land, he left William II
(Rufus) in charge of Normandy. (page 25)
 John was forced to sign a new agreement. This new agreement was
known as “Magna Carta”, the Great Charter, and was important
symbol of political freedom. (page 28)
 At a public ceremony at Caernarfon Edward I made his own baby
son (later Edward II) Prince of Wales. From that time the eldest son of
the ruling king or queen has usually been made Prince of Wales.
(page 32)
 Henry IV spent the rest of reign establishing his royal authority. But
although he passed the crown to his son peacefully, he had sown the
seeds of civil war. Half a century later the nobility would be divided
between those who supported his family, the “Lancastriants”, and
those who supported the family of earl of March, the “Yorkists”. (page
52)
 Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion did not start as a national revolt. At first he
joined the revolt of Norman-Welsh border lords who had always tried
to be free of royal control. But after ten years of war Owain Glyndwr’s
border rebellion had developed into a national war, and in 1400 he
was proclaimed Price of Wales by his supporters. (page 52)
 This was far more popular with the Welsh people than Edward I’s trick
with his newborn son at Caerton in 1284. (page 52)
 Owain Glyndwr was never captured. He did for Wales what William
Wallace had done for Scotland a century earlier. He created a
feeling of national identity. (page 52)
 About Walter Scott (page 55)
 Following the example of Paris, universities were founded in Scotland
at St. Andrews in 1412, Glasgow in 1451 and at Aberdeen in 1495.
(page 56)
 The year 1485 has actually been taken to mark the end of the Middle
Ages in England. (page 57)
 Until Tudor times the local forms of speech had been spoken by lord
and peasant like. From Tudor times onwards the way people spoke
began to show the difference between them. Educated people
began to speak “correct” English, and uneducated people
continued to speak the local dialect. (page 85)
 Literacy increased greatly during the mid-sixteenth century, even
though the religious houses, which had always provided traditional
education, had closed. By the seventeenth century, about half of the
population could read and write. (page 85)
 Thomas More, wrote a study of the ideal nation, called Utopia, which
became extremely popular throughout Europe. (page 85)
 There was also considerable interest in the new painters in Europe,
and England developed its own special kind of painting, the
miniature portrait. (page 85)
 Literature was England’s greatest art form. Playwrights like Christopher
Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare filled the theatres with
their exciting new plays. (page 85)
 Nothing shows the adventurous spirit of the age better than the
“soldier poets”. These were true Renaissance men who were both
brave and cruel in war, but also highly educated. Sir Edmund
Spenser, who fought with the army in Ireland, was one. Sir Walter
Raleigh, adventurer and poet, was another one. (page 85)
 The only king of England ever to be executed was a Stuart. The
republic that followed was even more unsuccessful, and by popular
demand the dead king’s son was called back to the throne. (page
87)
 Another Stuart king was driven from his throne by his own daughter
and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. William became king by
Parliament’s election, not by right of birth. (page 87)
 The Anglican Church supported James as head of the English
Church. And he disliked the Presbyterian Kirk in Scotland because it
had no bishops. It was a more democratic institution and this gave
 political as well as religious power to the literate classes in Scotland.
(page 89)
 In 1642 Charles tried to arrest five MPs in Parliament. Although he was
unsuccessful, it convinced Parliament and its supporters all over
England that they had good reason to fear. (page 91)
 The Royalists, known as “Cavaliers”, controlled most of the north and
west. Their short hair gave the Parliamentarian soldiers their popular
name of “Roundheads”. (page 91)
 On 31 January 1649 King Charles was executed. (page 92)
 From 1649 to 1660 Britain was a republic, but the republic was not a
success. Cromwell and his friends created a government far more
severe than Charles’s had been. They had got rid of the monarchy,
and they now got rid of the House of Lords and the Anglican Church.
(page 93)
 From 1653 Britain was governed by Cromwell alone. He became
“Lord Protector”, with far greater powers than King Charles had had.
His efforts to govern the country through the army were extremely
unpopular, and the idea of using the army to maintain law and order
in the kingdom has remained unpopular ever since. (page 93)
 Cromwell’s government was unpopular for other reasons. For
example, people were forbidden to celebrate Christmas and Easter,
or to play games on Sunday. (page 93)
 When Cromwell died in 1658, the Protectorate, as his republican
administration was called, collapsed. (page 93)
 Like the Civil War of 1642, the Glorious Revolution, as the political
results of the events of 1688 were called, was completely unplanned
and unprepared for. (page 95)
 In 1701 Parliament finally passed the Act of Settlement to make sure
only a Protestant could inherit the crown. It stated that if Mary had no
children the crown would pass onto her sister Anne. (page 96)
 In 1666 the Cambridge Professor of Mathematics, Sir Isaac Newton,
began to study gravity, publishing his important discovery in 1684. In
1687 he published Principia, on “the mathematical principles of
natural philosophy”, perhaps the greatest book in the history of
science. Newton’s work remained the basis of physics until Einstein’s
discoveries in the twentieth century. Newton’s importance as a
“founding father” of modern science was recognized in his own time.
(page 100)
 Newton had been encouraged and financed by his friend, Edmund
Halley, who is mostly remembered for tracking a comet (Halley’s
Comet) in 1682. (page 100)
 It was no accident that the greatest British architect of the time,
Christopher Wren, was also Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. (page
100)
 In 1666, following a year of terrible plague, a fire destroyed most of
the city of London. Eighty-seven churches, including the great
medieval cathedral of St Paul, were destroyed. Wren was ordered to
rebuild them in the modern style, which he did with skill. (page 100)
 Government power was increased because the new king spoke only
German, and did not seem very interested in his new kingdom.
Among the king’s ministers was Robert Walpole, who remained the
greatest political leader for over twenty years. He is considered
Britain’s first Prime Minister. (page 108)
 Walpole built on the political results of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
It was he who made sure that the power of the king would always be
limited by constitution. (page 108)
 The most important of Walpole’s political enemies was William Pitt
“the Elder”, later Lord Chatham. Chatham wanted Britain to be
economically strong in the world. (page 109)
 The war against France’s trade went all over the world. In Canada,
the British took Quebec in 1759 and Montreal the following year.
(page 109)
 In 1773 a group of colonists at the port of Boston threw a shipload of
tea into the sea rather than pay tax on it. The event became knows
as “the Boston Teaparty”. (page 112)
 Many British politicians openly supported the colonists. They were
called “radicals”. (page 112)
 Two of the more important radicals were Edmund Burke and Tom
Paine. Paine was the first to suggest that the American colonists
should become independent of Britain. Burke, who himself held a
mixture of both radical and conservative views, argued that the king
and his advisers were once again too powerful, and that Parliament
needed to get back proper control of policy. (page 113)
 In Ulster, the northern part of Ireland, Protestants formed the first
“Orange Lodges”, societies which were against any freedom for the
Catholics. (page 113)
 In order to increase British control Ireland was united with Britain in
1801, and the Dublin parliament closed. The United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland lasted for 120 years. (page 113)
 John Wilinson, built the largest ironworks in the country. He built the
world’s first iron bridge, over the River Severn, in 1779. (page 121)
 James Watt made a greatly improved steam engine in 1769. (page
121)
 In 1781 Watt produced an engine with a turning motion, made of iron
and steel. It was a vital development because people were now no
longer dependent on natural power. (page 121)
 In 1799 some of these rioters, known as Luddities, started to break up
the machinery which had put them out of work. The government
supported the factory owners, and made the breaking of machinery
punishable by death. (page 123)
 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, and
destroyed the French-Spanish fleet. Nelson was himself killed at
Trafalgar, but became one of Britain’s greatest national heroes.
(page 128)
 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 finally defeat Napoleon at Waterloo in
Belgium in June 1815. (page 128)
 In order to avoid the workhouse, many looked for a better life in the
towns. Between 1815 and 1835 Britain changed from being a nation
of country people to a nation mainly of townspeople. (page 132)
 In 1851, an official population survey was carried out for the first time.
It showed that the nation was not religious as its people had
believed. Only 60 percent people of the population went to church.
(page 141)
 From 1846 until 1865 the most important political figure was Lord
Palmerston. He was a Libelar, but like Peel he often went against his
own party’s ideas and values. (page 142)
 In 1868 the first congress of trade unions met in Manchester,
representing 118,000 members. The following year the new Trades
Union Congress established a parliamentary committee with the
purpose of achieving worker representation in Parliament. (page 143)
 In 1839 it attacked China and forced it to allow profitable British trade
in opium from India to China. The “Opium Wars” were one of the
most shameful events in British colonial history. (page 145)
 When Russia and Ottoman Turkey went to war Britain joined the Turks
against Russia in Crimea in 1854, in order to stop Russian expansion
into Asiatic Turkey in the Black Sea area. (page 145)
 Charles Parnell, a Protestant Irish MP, demanded fuller rights for the
Irish people, in particular the right to self-government. (page 150)