英美概况复习--the Great Britain

Unit One: The Country 1. Briefly discuss the international influence which the UK exercises on today’s world stage.  By the turn of the 20th century, the United Kingdom had built up a huge overseas empire, which at its height in 1922 encompassed almost a quarter of the world’s land surface, the largest empire in history. Today it has fourteen overseas territories, all remnants of the British Empire. British influence can continue to be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. Queen Elizabeth II remains the head of the Commonwealth of Nations and head of state of each of the Commonwealth realms. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless remains a major power with strong economic, cultural, military and political influence worldwide. It is a developed country, with the fifth (nominal GDP) or sixth (PPP) largest economy in the world. It is a nuclear power and has the second or third highest defence spending in the world. It is a Member State of the European Union, holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the G8, NATO, OECD, World Trade Organization and the Commonwealth of Nations. The UK today pursues an active global approach to foreign policy, which invariably involves a close military and political relationship with the United States. Britain's global presence and influence is further amplified through its trading relations and its armed forces, which maintain approximately eighty military installations and other deployments around the globe. 2. Discuss the differences between the terms of “British Isles”, “United Kingdom”, “Great Britain”, and “England”. (1) The British Isles The British Isles is a geographically term which includes Great Britain, the whole of Ireland, and all the offshore islands, most notably the Isle of Man which has its own parliament and laws. Or, in detail, it is consists of the following islands: ● Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) ● Ireland (the Republic of Ireland, a country west of England across the Irish Sea (not part of the United Kingdom) ● Northern Ireland ( part of the United Kingdom) ● The Orkney and Shetland Islands (islands off the northeast coast of Scotland) ● The Isle of Man (an island in the Irish Sea) ● Hebrides (including the Inner Hebrides, Outer Hebrides and Small Isles). All are islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. ● The Isle of Wight (an island off the southern coast of England) ● Isles of Scilly (an island off the southwest coast of England) ● Lundy Island (an island off the southwest coast of England) ● The Channel Islands (a group of small islands in the English Channel, off   the coast of Normandy, France. The principal islands of the group include Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark.) ● Plus about five thousand other offshore small islands. Map of the British Isles (2) Great Britain  Great Britain can be a geographical term referring to the island on which England, Wales and Scotland are situated, together with numerous smaller islands, which comprise the main territory of the United Kingdom. It has an area of 229,850 km2 (88,745 sq. mi.) and is the largest island of the British Isles. Great Britain can also be a political term serving as the official name for the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, and the principality of Wales. Great Britain Great Britain is very often, but incorrectly, used as a synonym for the sovereign state properly known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom (UK) for short, but Great Britain and the United Kingdom refer to different areas. If you look at the full name of the UK, you will see that the UK includes Great Britain AND Northern Ireland. Great Britain                          United Kingdom Sometimes people use the shortened name Britain instead of Great Britain, to mean the same thing, but in the strict sense Britain only refers to England and Wales. The name Britain goes back to Roman times when they called England and Wales "Britannia" (or "Britannia Major", to be distinguished from "Britannia Minor", ie Brittany in France). The Roman province of Britannia only covered the areas of modern England and Wales. The area of modern Scotland was never finally conquered. (3) The United Kingdom The official name of the United Kingdom (UK) is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island. It is made of: ● England - The capital is London ● Scotland - The capital is Edinburgh ● Wales - The capital is Cardiff ● Northern Ireland - The capital is Belfast. People in the UK are called British although they have different nationalities. The United Kingdom (UK) was formed in on January 1, 1801 and constituted and still constitutes the greater part of the British Isles. In history it was the union of what were once four separate nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. When the Irish Free State ceased to be part of the Union in 1922, the title changed to include “Northern Ireland”. The United Kingdom (4) England Located in north-west Europe and in the southern part of Great Britain, England is the largest country (historically it is called a country or nation) in Great Britain and the UK. It is sometimes wrongly used in reference to the whole United Kingdom, the entire island of Great Britain, or indeed the British Isles. This is not only incorrect but can cause offence to people from other parts of the UK. England has not had a separate political identity since 1707, when Great Britain was established as a political entity. There is no government or parliament just for England. England 1. How has climate affected the Southern way of life? Why are Southerners, in general, so conservative? Key Points: The South has mild winters and hot summers, making it an ideal place for agricultural industry. For a long time, southern agriculture was characterized by plantation economy, controlled by slave-owners and landed gentry class, whose vested interest in plantation economy made them conservative virtually in every aspect, politically, economically and socially. Historically, the South was hierarchical in its social structure, giving rise to a caste system based on black salves and indentured servants, with big plantation owners sitting at the top. The Southern slow-paced agricultural life has produced what people there call “the Southern way of life”, which in principle, cherishes rural virtues, emphasizes community life, suspects modernization, and rejects moral sins.. 2. Traditionally, New Englanders have always attached great importance to education. Why is that and what are the implications? Key Points: Education is important to Puritans as a way of seeking truth from the Bible. It is true for both clergymen and laymen. Education is important to the cultivation of republican virtues for public-minded New Englanders, who launched the public school movement as early as the early 19th century. Education is believed to be the best vehicle for common people to realize their potential and ultimately their personal worth. Being a place that stresses equality and democracy (as reflected in its town meeting and congregationalism), New England has always led the nation in making education available to all people across the board. Education has developed rapidly in the area at all levels, from elementary- and secondary-level education to college and university education, and from public to private education. Unit Two: The People 1. Discuss how the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish have defined themselves in term of their individual nationalities. People from various ethnic groups reside in the United Kingdom. For most of the last millennium, the lands now constituting the United Kingdom were largely inhabited by English, Scots, Irish, Welsh people. The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English, whose identity as a people is of early medieval origin. Today the largest single English population resides in England, forming the largest part of the racially-based classification used in the 2001 UK census known as White British. It is difficult to clearly define the origins of the English, owing to the close interactions between the English and their neighbours in the British Isles, and the waves of immigration that have added to England's population at different periods. The English are often believed to be a mixture of several closely related groups that have settled in what became England, such as the Angles, Saxons, Norse Vikings and Normans. Another complication in defining the English is a common tendency for the words "English" and "British" to be used interchangeably. This blurring is a sign of England's dominant position with the UK, and it is also problematic for the English when it comes to conceiving of their national identity. The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language. The origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, although Celtic languages seem to have been spoken in Wales far longer. As with all ethnic groups, the term Welsh people applies to people who identify themselves as Welsh, and who are identified by others as Welsh. They may perceive themselves, or be perceived, as having a shared cultural heritage, or shared ancestral origins. In modern use in Wales, "Welsh people" may also refer to anyone born or living in Wales. The Irish people are an ethnic group who originated in Ireland, which has been populated for around 9,000 years, with the last group of the people's earliest ancestors supposedly representing the "pure" Gaelic ancestry, and still serving as a term for the Irish race today. The main groups that interacted with the Irish in the Middle Ages include the Scottish people and the Vikings, with the Icelanders especially having some Irish descent. The Anglo-Norman invasion of the High Middle Ages, the English plantations and the subsequent English rule of the country introduced the Normans, Welsh, Flemish, Anglo-Saxons, and Bretons into Ireland. On 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, six of the traditional nine counties of the historic Irish province of Ulster formulated Northern Ireland as a distinct subdivision of the UK. At the time of the 2001 UK Census, Northern Irish population was 1,685,000, constituting between a quarter and a third of the island's total population and about 3 per cent of the population of the UK. People from Northern Ireland are British citizens but may additionally be recognised as Irish citizens, as a result of the 1998 Belfast Agreement between the British and Irish governments. However, a 1999 survey showed that 51 per cent of Protestants felt "Not at all Irish" and 41 per cent only "weakly Irish" where 77 per cent of Catholics polled said they felt "strongly Irish". The Scots people are a nation and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland. Historically, as an ethnic group, they emerged from an amalgamation of Celts, Picts, Gaels and Brythons. In modern use "Scottish people" or "Scots" refers to anyone born in Scotland. In another sense, it applies to people who are descended from the Scots and who identify ethnically as Scots. While the Latin word Scoti originally applied to a particular, 5th century, Gaelic tribe that inhabited areas in the north of Ireland and western Scotland, and continued to be synonymous with the Gaelic language until the 15th century. Today the term Scots is now used to describe all Scottish people. Though usually considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been incorrectly used for the Scottish people, but this use has been primarily by people outside of Scotland. 2. Critically examine the Britishness in the contemporary UK population. Britishness is a term referring to a sense of national identity of the British people, and common culture of the United Kingdom. Britishness only became synonymous with a national civic identity with the formation in 1707 of the united Kingdom of Great Britain, which became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and in turn, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with the secession of what became the Republic of Ireland. Following the 1707 Act of Union, it became common for the people of the Kingdom of Great Britain to have a "layered" identity, that is, to think of themselves as simultaneously British and also Scottish, English, and/or Welsh. In the present day, the term “Britishness” is often associated with a desire to develop the sense of British identity for political reasons by appealing to British patriotism, British nationalism or British unionism, and in this capacity is reported as controversial. Across all Scottish and Welsh groups, regardless of people’s ethnic backgrounds, national identification is much stronger than identification with Britain, although those identities are not seen as incompatible or mutually exclusive. The situation is different in England, where there is a sharp difference in the ways in which white English and ethnic minority people think of themselves. Most white English people see themselves as English, first and foremost, but also as British. By contrast, most ethnic minority people (except for black Africans) see themselves as British, to the exclusion of any identification with England, since they strongly associate England with white English people. Thus, perhaps against expectations, it would seem that ethnic minority people (except for black Africans) who live in England are the ones who most strongly identify themselves as British. Unit Three: History 1. Discuss how England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have gradually become united in history creating the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom today is broken down into four constituent Home Nations: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Each of these nations bears its own history, with all but Northern Ireland having been independent states at one point. Prior to 1707 which marked the founding of the United Kingdom, the history of the British Isles roughly spans Celtic tribes of the Iron Age, Roman invasion between AD 43 and 410; thereafter invasion by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries; invasions by the Vikings in the 9th century, through to the Norman conquest of England in 1066; the development of the separate states of England and Scotland from the 9th century, and competition and cooperation between those states. The British Isles faced no further successful military incursion after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, allowing England and Scotland to each develop political, administrative and cultural institutions including representative governance, law systems, and distinguished contributions to the arts and sciences, upon which the United Kingdom was built. In 1603, upon the death of his unmarried and childless first cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, James VI, King of Scots, acceded to the throne of England, thus uniting Scotland and England under one monarch. Although termed the Union of the Crowns, properly speaking this was merely a personal or dynastic union. The Crowns remained both distinct and separate, despite James's best efforts to create a new "imperial" throne of “Great Britain”. England and Scotland continued to be independent states until the Acts of Union in 1707 during the reign of the last monarch of the Stuart Dynasty, Queen Anne. The 1707 Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain, which shared a single constitutional monarch and a single parliament at Westminster. A further Act of Union in 1800 added the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The early years of the United Kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings which ended with defeat at Culloden in 1746. Later, victory in the Seven Years' War, in 1763, led to the dominance of the British Empire which was the foremost global power for over a century and grew to become the largest empire in history. By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. And as a result, the culture of the United Kingdom, and its industrial, political and linguistic legacy, is widespread. In 1922, the territory of what is now the Republic of Ireland gained independence, leaving Northern Ireland as a continuing part of the United Kingdom. As a result, in 1927 the United Kingdom changed its formal title to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", usually shortened to the "United Kingdom", the "UK" or "Britain". 2. Discuss how the British Empire expanded, reached its apex but then declined. During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain and Portugal pioneered European exploration of the globe and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (following the 1707 Act of Union, Britain) the dominant colonial power in North America and India, creating the British Empire. However, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after a war of independence was a blow to Britain, depriving it of its most populous colonies. Despite this setback, British attention soon turned towards Africa, Asia and Oceania. Following the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815, Britain enjoyed a century of effectively unchallenged dominance, and expanded its imperial holdings across the globe. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, which were reclassified as dominions.