britain
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2023-03-30 14:40:28
britain
britain
Why is the UK divided in this way?
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, referred to as "the United Kingdom". The British mainland is located in the British Isles to the northwest of the European continent, surrounded by the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, the Irish Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. The land area is 244100 square kilometers (including inland waters). The United Kingdom is divided into four parts: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, with London as its capital. England has 130400 square kilometers, Scotland has 78800 square kilometers, Wales has 20800 square kilometers, and Northern Ireland has 14100 square kilometers. In 2020, the population of the UK was 67081 thousand， sports fitness .
In the 13th century, the Magna Carta and the British Parliament were born. In 1688, the Glorious Revolution established the constitutional monarchy, and later became the first country in the world to complete the industrial revolution, rapidly expanding its national strength. From the 18th century to the early 20th century, the territory under British rule spanned seven continents in the world, making it the most powerful country and the largest colonial empire in the world at that time. Its colonial area was 111 times the size of its native land, known as the Empire without Sunset. In both world wars, victory was achieved, but the national strength was seriously damaged. By the second half of the 20th century, the British Empire had disintegrated and the capitalist superpower had been replaced by the United States. The United Kingdom is a Commonwealth Head of State, a member of the Group of Seven, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Britain is a highly developed capitalist country and one of the four largest economies in Europe. Its citizens have a high standard of living and a good social security system. The UK is the world's largest net exporter of financial services, and its position as a global financial center will not be shaken for a short time. In 2021, the gross domestic product was 2.2 trillion pounds, up 7.4% year-on-year. The per capita GDP is £ 32555.
History of war
Why did Britain sell Dunkirk to France? 2022-11-01 09:24
In addition to the famous evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II, as early as the Middle Ages, Britain and France wrote a history around Dunkirk that was constantly in turmoil. Why did Britain sell Dunkirk, an important continental bridgehead? What role did Dunkirk play in the history of Anglo-French relations details
Content from
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Liverpool and other national days June 11th National Anthem "God Bless the King" National Code GBR Official Language English Currency Pound Sterling Time Zone UTC Political System Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy National Leader Charles Philippe Arthur George Mombarton Windsor (King), Richie Sunak (Prime Minister) Population 67081000 (2020) Population density 280.6 people per square kilometer (2018) Major ethnic groups English, Welsh, Scottish The main religions of Irish people are Protestants (Anglican, Presbyterian), with a land area of 244100 km ² (Including inland waters) Water area ratio 1.34% International telephone area code 44 International domain name abbreviation. uk Road access Left driving country motto I grant authority (God, I have authority) Legal system Common law country structure Single system National flower Rose national tree Summer oak national bird Red breast robin composition Great Britain Island, Northern Ireland climate type Temperate marine climate Famous company HSBC Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Unilever's largest city, London's main institutions of higher learning, such as Cambridge University, Oxford University, Imperial College of Technology, and other aliases, never sets the sun. Empire's GDP is 2.2 trillion pounds (2021). Per capita GDP is 32555 pounds (2021)
Early civilization
Human activity has existed early in the British Isles. In the 13th century BC, the Iberians came from the European continent to settle in the southeast of Great Britain.
After about 700 BC, the Celts living in western Europe continued to move into the British Isles, including a group called the Britons, from which the name Britain may have originated. The Celts were known to use iron tools, plows, and technology to advance, and they had used currency. The development of productive forces has led to the gradual disintegration of Celtic society.
The invasion of Rome
In 54 BC, Caesar led the Roman Legion twice to invade Britain, both of which were repulsed by the British. In AD 43, Roman Emperor Claudius I led an army to invade Britain. After conquering Britain, it became a province of the Roman Empire. By 409, the Roman garrison had been forced to withdraw entirely from Britain, and Roman rule over Britain was over.
medieval times
Anglo Saxon
great charter
In the early 5th century, after the Romans withdrew, the Anglo Saxons living near the mouth of the Elbe River in Germany and southern Denmark, as well as the Jutes from the lower reaches of the Rhine River and other Germanic tribes, conquered Britain. The Anglo people refer to Britain as "Anglo", which means "land" to the Anglo people. Old English, on the other hand, inherited their language.
By the beginning of the 7th century, the invaders had established seven powerful countries: this period was known as the "Seven Country Era" in history. When the Anglo Saxons invaded, they were clan tribal organizations. During the invasion, the original clan organization disintegrated, and with the development of productive forces, land gradually became private property, with the emergence of nobles, large landowners, dependent farmers, and slaves. Village communes have become a form of transition from clan commune land ownership to feudal land ownership, and are generally considered to be the beginning of the feudal process of British society. At the end of the 6th century, Christianity was introduced into England. Americans refer to the British and British descent as Anglo Saxons.
Danish invasion
Anglo Saxon
From the end of the 8th century, the Scandinavians, with Denmark as the main body, repeatedly invaded Britain.
In 879, King Alfred and the Danes concluded a treaty that placed the northeast of England under Danish jurisdiction, known as the "Danish region.". In the early 10th century, the successors of King Alfred gradually regained the Danish region. In the early 11th century, the Danes made a comeback. During the Danish occupation, the process of feudalization in England accelerated.
Norman Conquest
After the death of King Edward the Confessor, there were no descendants. William, Duke of Normandy of France, led an army invasion in 1066. In October of the same year, he entered London and was crowned King William I, known as "William the Conqueror" in history.
The powerful monarchy established by William after his conquest played a positive role in consolidating the feudal order. John was forced to accept the Magna Carta in June 1215 and compromise with the feudal lord. The Magna Carta is essentially a feudal document that protects the interests of feudal lords; But there are also progressive provisions such as protecting citizens' freedom of trade. But John soon denied the charter, and civil war continued between the monarch and his subjects.
The United Kingdom Parliament, also known as the Westminster Parliament, originated in the 13th century and is the highest judicial and legislative body in Britain. In 1341, the Parliament was divided into two chambers, a bicameral system consisting of the monarch, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, exercising the highest legislative power of the country.
Watt Taylor Uprising
In 1380, King Richard II increased the poll tax to collect the costs of the Hundred Year War between England and France, leading to the outbreak of the uprising in May 1381. The leader was the mason Watt Taylor, known as the "Watt Taylor Uprising" in history. Although the uprising was defeated, it shook the feudal serfdom in England. At the end of the 14th century, the British serfdom had actually disintegrated. In the 15th century, the vast majority of serfs redeemed their personal freedom and became self-employed farmers. They were legally divided into freehold farmers and registered farmers. Monetary land rent has become the main form of land rent, and the feudal landlord class has also undergone changes. New nobles have emerged from wealthy farmers, landowning merchants, and small and medium-sized nobles, who adopt capitalist management methods. The rule of the old nobles fell into crisis, and the feudal chivalry system gradually disintegrated. After the Rose War of 1455-1485, the power of the old nobles was greatly weakened, creating favorable conditions for the development of capitalist relations. Henry VII, supported by the new nobles and the bourgeoisie, ascended the throne and began the rule of the Tudor dynasty.
The Hundred Year War between Britain and France
From 1337 to 1453, the war between Britain and France for territorial expansion and the struggle for the throne was the longest war in the world, which lasted intermittently for 116 years. At that time, it was also an era of the Black Death epidemic. Under the dual impact of the war and the epidemic, the economies of Britain and France were greatly damaged and the people were unable to make a living. England lost almost all of its French territory, but it also led to the rise of nationalism in England. At the end of the war, Britain had embarked on a path of centralization. Later, England pursued a "continental balance of power" policy towards the European continent, and turned to overseas development, becoming the world's largest empire.
primitive accumulation of capital
Britain defeats the Spanish Armada
The enclosure movement was one of the important means of primitive capital accumulation in Britain. England and Wales merged in 1536. From the 15th to 16th centuries, the wool weaving industry became the "national industry" of Britain, and the demand for wool multiplied. The landlord converted the farm into a pasture, and also concentrated small estates into large areas through enclosure or encroachment on public lands. As a result, a large number of self employed farmers lost their land and went bankrupt, becoming vagrants. The king enacted a series of bloody legislation from 1530, forcing vagrants to be employed by new nobles and capitalists. Overseas plunder and trade are also important ways of primitive accumulation. After the 16th century, Britain successively organized many trading companies to carry out pirate plunder, and dock officials, customs officers, naval officers, and even senior local officials colluded with pirates. Pirate J. Hawkins trafficked black people to become rich, while F. Drake plundered Spanish American colonies under the auspices of Elizabeth I, and conducted a world-wide voyage that shocked Europe from 1577 to 1580. In 1588, Britain defeated the Spanish Armada and took the first step in seizing world maritime hegemony.
Autocratic monarchy
In 1603, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, there were no heirs. King James VI of Scotland inherited the British throne and became known as James I, beginning the reign of the Stuart dynasty (1603-1649, 1660-1714). From the second half of the 16th century to the first half of the 17th century, the capitalist economy developed rapidly, and the increasingly powerful bourgeoisie and new nobles became increasingly unable to tolerate the autocratic rule of feudal monarchy. However, James I and Charles I ignored these changes and insisted on the "divine grant of monarchy", leading to the intensification of conflicts. In November 1641, Parliament presented the "Great Protest" to the king; In January of the following year, the king failed in his attempt to arrest the opposition leader of Parliament and fled the capital. In August, he declared war on Parliament in Nottingham.
A cavalry force led by Cromwell, mainly composed of Puritan farmers and artisans, the New Model Army defeated the Royal Army at the Battle of Nasby in June 1645. The following year, the king was captured, and at the end of 1647, King Charles fled. In February 1648, the monarchy forces seized the opportunity to provoke a civil war. Under the joint attack of the independents and the egalitarians, the monarchy forces were defeated again, and the second civil war ended. In December 1648, Cromwell cleared the Presbyterian faction from the Parliament; On January 30, 1649, Charles I was beheaded. In April 1653, Cromwell dispersed the remaining parliament, and in December established a protectorate government to exercise military dictatorship.
In February 1660, the Stuart dynasty was restored. The "Glorious Revolution" that erupted in 1688-1689. The Bill of Rights it announced limited the monarchy and expanded parliamentary power, laying the foundation for the British constitutional monarchy. Since then, the British parliamentary monarchy has gradually formed and developed. 1707 merged with Scotland.
The Renaissance
Compared with continental Europe, the British Renaissance movement occurred later. However, after the Tudor dynasty and the era of Queen Elizabeth, the establishment of Britain as a nation state, the vigorous development of industry and commerce, the increasingly expanding cultural ties with the world, and the breaking through of the shackles of the Holy See, all of which led to the rise of the late Renaissance. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the "Three Giants" emerged in England: Shakespeare, Bacon, and Harvey, which were the most outstanding representatives in the fields of art, humanities, and science during this period. During this period, the arts, humanities, and sciences of Britain permeated and blended with each other. While strengthening ties between different fields, they were also constantly enriching and deepening their respective fields.
industrial revolution
The United Kingdom was the first industrialized country in the world, first completing many scientific discoveries and inventions, such as the steam engine, penicillin, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), Dolly sheep, and jet engines. The financial market in London has attracted many companies from around the world to take advantage of business opportunities in the UK. Over the past two hundred years, various schools and colleges in Britain have developed with the country's world-renowned technological, industrial, and financial revolutions. However, its history of outstanding education in the world is even longer, dating back to the founding of Oxford University (1185) and Cambridge University (1209) in the 12th century.
Colonial expansion
The British colonies expanded violently in the 19th century. In 1801, Ireland was merged, and the official name of Britain became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The aggression against Asia continued to expand. The British Empire refers to a great empire composed of the British mainland and its autonomous territories, colonies, territories, trusteeships, and protectorates. It is the largest country with the largest territorial area and the largest global colonial empire in history. The empire reached its peak in the early 19th century, with a population of about 400 to 500 million, accounting for a quarter of the world's population at that time; The territory is approximately 33.67 million square kilometers, accounting for a quarter of the total land area of the world. After the Spanish Empire in the 16th century, the Empire was known as the "Empire without Sunset".
In the mid-19th century, Britain launched two opium wars to invade China, forcibly occupying Hong Kong Island and participating in suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom revolution in China; Suppress the Indian National Uprising of 1857-1859 and strengthen the rule over India. In 1876, the Conservative Party B. Disraeli Cabinet crowned Queen Victoria as Queen of India. After that, Britain was also known as the British Empire or the British Empire (after India gained independence in 1947, the British monarch lost his title as emperor). In addition, it has expanded its aggression in Iran, Myanmar, South Africa, Egypt, East Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and other places, gradually infiltrating South America, becoming the largest investor there. In 1867, Canada became the first autonomous territory of Britain.
World War
Churchill at the Yalta Conference
After the 1870s, Britain gradually lost its industrial monopoly position. The rising United States gradually caught up with and surpassed Britain, leading to an unprecedented intensification of conflicts between them. In the early 20th century, Germany became a British competitor. Faced with the grim situation, the British government has actively expanded its armaments, especially its navy.
In order to deal with Germany, Britain abandoned the "glorious isolation" foreign policy pursued in the 19th century. After 1907, the "Three Country Treaty" of Britain, France, and Russia was actually formed. In August 1914, the First World War broke out. In 1917, Britain finally defeated Germany's "unrestricted submarine warfare" and maintained its maritime dominance.
