britain

Britain

Period 1

Western Europe

Island

The United Kingdom includes

  • England

  • Wales

  • Scotland

  • Northern Ireland 

Magna Carta - 1215 first document that gives people basic rights

Period 2

Renaissance - Part of northern renaissances (Shakespeare)

Age of exploration

  • Late to travel to the New World because they are dealing protestant reformation and religious issues

  • 1609 England travels into the new world and establishes the colony of Jamestown

  • England (because they are late) take land in the eastern part of the now united states called the 13 Colonies as well as most of Canada and Australia 

  • English products include tobacco and other food sources

  • England is a part of the Atlantic Ocean slave trade

Protestant Reformation

  • Henry VIII uses the protestant reformation as a way to gain power and divorce his first wife

  • Through the act of supremacy bands the catholic church establishes the new church as Angligine, the church of England, English protestant

  • The new head of the church as well as the king (Henry)

  • Also enriches the monarchy by confiscating all wealth and property

  • Upon Henry's death, all three of his children become kings and queens of England and consistently go back and forth from making England a protestant country back to catholic and back to the protestant 

  • This all comes to a head in 1588 the Spanish armada attempts to invade England to turn England back into a catholic country

  • Armada fails due to English fire ships and bad weather

  • When the Spanish armada fails Queen Elizabeth the first establishes angle in England forever

English civil wars

  1. Strips the dictatorship powers of the English king (1640s)

  2. Glorious Revolution (1688) establishes the English king as a constitutional monarch who shares power with the English parliament and the English people get the English Bill of Rights  

Period 3

Enlightenment 

Thomas Hobbes - Writes Leviathan in which he advocates people are naturally bad and need a dictatorship

John Locke - disagrees with Hobbes and advocates that all people are blank slates when born as well as having natural rights (life liberty property)

  • Humans in the state of nature are products of their environment

  • Social contract theory 

  • States that if a ruler is unjust the people have a right to rebel (justification of enlightenment revolutions)

Natural rights - life liberty right own property

Industrial revolution

England first country to do this due to having no real political issues

Becomes first because

  • Inventor of new tech (steam engine 1789 James Watt)

  • Have coal deposits under the country to power all new tech

  • First to utilize steel (railroads and skyscrapers)

  • Create a factory system to manufacture goods that people will buy

  • First to utilize and invent capitalism (1776 adam smith)

  • First to bring and sell manufactured goods all over the world due to their large navy

  • Largest navy from period to world war II

The first country to practice imperialism because they are the first to industrialize

The main areas they take over are

  • South Africa

  • South Asia - India

  • East Asia - china

Reasons for imperialism are

  • To make a greater profit

  • Gain resources and cheap labor

Cecil Rhodes (the guy straddling Africa with telegraph lines)↑ 

British imperialist who ventures into South Africa and makes a great profit through diamond mining
Eventually wants to bring back colonialism into Africa

Wants to control the continent through new techs such as railroads and telegraph

Suez Canal late 18th-century technology advancement connecting the red sea, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean

Built by the British and French that allowed for far faster transportation to their Asian properties during imperialism 

Many natives died building this

Rudder Kipling 

British author who lives in India and writes the poem “White Man's Burden”

It is ok to make a profit during imperialism but Europeans should at least leave natives with something in return

Education medicine clothes overall make their lives better

Rarely utilized

Justification for imperialism

Social Darwinism - stronger nations overtaking weaker nations 

Period 4

World War I

England was a member of the allies (Britain France Italy Russia, USA starting in 1917)

England involved on the Western front 

One of four winners of world war I who helps write up the treaty of versa

Interwar years

The mandate system

Post world war I former ottoman empire control by the British and French

British and french allow various Muslim ethnic groups self-determination into what kind of countries they want 

The problem includes…

  • the Balfour Declaration 1917 

    • the British seemly allow the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine even tho they have already allowed Palestinian Muslims to create their own country in the same spot

  • Munic pact/conference

    • 1938 England and France meet with nazi Germany, results include Hitler gaining the country of Czechoslovakia with the promise of not seeking or taking any other territory

British prime minister neville chamberlain uses APPEASEMENT 

World War II

Starts on September 1st, 1939 when Hitler breaks the Munich Pact and invaded Poland

Results in Britain and France declaring war on Germany

By 1940 Hitler has taken much of Western Europe and only England remains his enemy

Hitler launches the battle of Britain (areal Bombardment of major English cities, London, and industrial factories that produce)

Winston Churchill refuses to surrender and the bombing eventually stops in June of 1941 when Hitler begins invading the soviet union

Church Hill seeks the USA as an Allie starting in 1940 (Atlantic Charter)

And also borrows ships from the USA (lend-lease Act)

Allows America to make weapons for England in American factories (destroyer for base agreement)

By 1944 England and the USA opened a second front against Germany with the invasion of northern France called d day

England was one of the big winners of world war II but the country is destroyed

Cold War

Member of NATO allies of the USA 

England Joins European Union (EU)Decolonization 

Loses most of its imperialism properties because world war II destroyed its infrastructure and economic capabilities and loss of milt men

India, china Africa Rica