British history for dummies

440 Pages·2006·2.881 MB·English

by  Sean Lang

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British History
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
2
ND EDITION
by Sean Lang
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British History For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
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ISBN-13: 978-0-470-03536-8
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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About the Author
Sean Langstudied history at Oxford and has been teaching it to school, col-
lege, and university students for the past twenty years. He has written text-
books on nineteenth and twentieth century history, and is co-editor of
Modern History Review. Sean regularly reviews textbooks for the Times
Educational Supplement and has written on history teaching for the Council of
Europe. He is a Research Fellow in History at Anglia Ruskin University and
Honorary Secretary of the Historical Association, and is currently undertak-
ing research on women in nineteenth-century British India.
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Author’s Acknowledgements
Thanks to Richard Dargie, Fr Feidhlimidh Magennis, and Jasmine Simeone for
helping me to keep it genuinely British. To Jason Dunne and Daniel Mersey at
Wiley for encouraging and chivvying me to keep the chapters flowing in. And
to all my students, past and present, at Hills Road and Long Road Sixth Form
Colleges in Cambridge: You shaped this book more than you know.
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Publisher’s Acknowledgements
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Contents at a Glance
Introduction.................................................................1
Part I: The British Are Coming!......................................9
Chapter 1: So Much History, So Little Time..................................................................11
Chapter 2: Sticks and Stone Age Stuff............................................................................23
Chapter 3: Woad Rage and Chariots: The Iron Age in Britain.....................................35
Part II: Everyone Else Is Coming! The Invaders .............49
Chapter 4: Ruled Britannia..............................................................................................51
Chapter 5: Saxon, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll...................................................................65
Chapter 6: Have Axe, Will Travel: The Vikings..............................................................81
Chapter 7: 1066 and All That Followed..........................................................................97
Part III: Who’s in Charge Around Here?
The Middle Ages.......................................................113
Chapter 8: England Gets an Empire.............................................................................115
Chapter 9: A Right Royal Time: The Medieval Realms of Britain.............................131
Chapter 10: Plague, Pox, Poll Tax, and Ploughing – and Then You Die...................149
Part IV: Rights or Royals? The Tudors and Stuarts.......163
Chapter 11: Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown.........................................165
Chapter 12: A Burning Issue: The Reformation..........................................................183
Chapter 13: Crown or Commons?.................................................................................201
Chapter 14: Old Problems, New Ideas.........................................................................219
Part V: On the Up: The Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries..........................................231
Chapter 15: Let’s Make a Country................................................................................233
Chapter 16: Survival of the Richest: The Industrial Revolution...............................253
Chapter 17: Children of the Revolutions.....................................................................267
Chapter 18: Putting on My Top Hat: The Victorians..................................................285
Chapter 19: The Sun Never Sets – but It Don’t Shine Either.....................................301
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Part VI: Don’t Look Down: The Twentieth Century........319
Chapter 20: The Great War: The End of Innocence – and Everything Else?............321
Chapter 21: Radio Times...............................................................................................335
Chapter 22: TV Times....................................................................................................351
Chapter 23: Interesting Times.......................................................................................365
Part VII: The Part of Tens..........................................381
Chapter 24: Ten Top Turning Points............................................................................383
Chapter 25: Ten Major Documents...............................................................................387
Chapter 26: Ten Things the British Have Given the World
(Whether the World Wanted Them or Not)..............................................................391
Chapter 27: Ten Great British Places to Visit..............................................................395
Chapter 28: Ten Britons Who Should Be Better Known............................................399
Index.......................................................................405
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Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................1
About This Book...............................................................................................1
Conventions Used in This Book.....................................................................2
Foolish Assumptions.......................................................................................3
How This Book Is Organised...........................................................................3
Part I: The British Are Coming!.............................................................3
Part II: Everyone Else Is Coming! The Invaders..................................4
Part III: Who’s in Charge Around Here? The Middle Ages.................4
Part IV: Rights or Royals? The Tudors and Stuarts............................4
Part V: On the Up: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.........5
Part VI: Don’t Look Down: The Twentieth Century............................5
Part VII: The Part of Tens......................................................................6
Icons Used in This Book..................................................................................6
Where to Go from Here....................................................................................7
Part I: The British Are Coming! ......................................9
Chapter 1: So Much History, So Little Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
A Historical Tin of Beans – But Not Quite 57 Varieties..............................12
England..................................................................................................13
Scotland.................................................................................................13
Wales......................................................................................................13
Ireland....................................................................................................14
And all those little islands...................................................................14
How the UK Was Born....................................................................................15
England: Head Honcho........................................................................15
The conquest of Scotland....................................................................16
The conquest of Wales.........................................................................17
The conquest of Ireland.......................................................................17
You’re Not From Round ‘Ere – But Then Again, Neither Am I..................18
Any such thing as a native Briton?.....................................................18
Immigrants............................................................................................19
Whose History Is It Anyway?........................................................................20
Kings and queens.................................................................................20
What about the workers?....................................................................21
A global story........................................................................................22
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British History For Dummies, 2nd Edition
Chapter 2: Sticks and Stone Age Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
What a Load of Rubbish! What Archaeologists Find.................................24
Going through the trash......................................................................24
Examining the tools..............................................................................24
Looking at tribal societies of today....................................................25
Uncovering prehistoric man.........................................................................25
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.....................................................25
Why the ruckus?...................................................................................26
The Stone Age.................................................................................................26
Hey, hey – we’re the monkeys! The Neanderthals...........................27
Meet your ancestors............................................................................28
Plough the Fields, Don’t Scatter: The Neolithic Revolution.....................30
Rolling Stones: A National Institution..........................................................31
Giving It Some Heavy Metal: The Bronze Age.............................................32
And the bronze goes to . . ...................................................................33
Beakermania..........................................................................................33
Chapter 3: Woad Rage and Chariots: The Iron Age in Britain . . . . . . .35
The Iron Age: What It Was and How We Know What We Know................35
Written accounts from others ............................................................36
Look what I found down the bog: Bodies..........................................38
Figuring Out Who These People Were.........................................................38
Looking for patterns............................................................................38
Celts in Britain? Maybe, maybe not...................................................39
Life in Iron Age Britain...................................................................................41
Warring tribes.......................................................................................41
Trading places......................................................................................41
A touch of class....................................................................................43
Bring me my chariot, and fire!............................................................44
Hit the woad, Jack................................................................................44
This Is NOT a Hoax: The Belgians Are Coming!..........................................45
More Blood, Vicar? Religion in the Iron Age...............................................46
Ye gods!..................................................................................................46
Head cases............................................................................................47
Sacrificing humans...............................................................................48
Part II: Everyone Else Is Coming! The Invaders..............49
Chapter 4: Ruled Britannia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
A Far-Away Land of Which We Know Virtually Nothing............................51
The Gallic Wars.....................................................................................52
Welcome to England!............................................................................53
They’re Back – with Elephants!....................................................................54
Caratacus fights the Romans..............................................................54
One angry lady: Boudica.....................................................................55
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Table of Contents
Roman in the Gloamin’: Agricola..................................................................56
‘And What Have the Romans Ever Given Us in Return?’...........................57
Sorry, no aqueducts.............................................................................58
Another brick in the wall.....................................................................58
Urban sprawl.........................................................................................59
Get your kicks on Route LXVI.............................................................59
All that foreign food.............................................................................60
The Roman way of life.........................................................................61
Saints alive! Christianity arrives!........................................................61
Time to Decline and Fall . . . and Go............................................................62
Trouble up North..................................................................................62
Roman emperors, made in Britain.....................................................63
Gothic revival........................................................................................63
Exit Romans, stage left.........................................................................64
Chapter 5: Saxon, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
They’re Coming from All Angles!..................................................................66
Welcome to our shores!.......................................................................66
The Overlord of All Britain: Vitalinus the Vortigern........................66
Disunited Kingdoms.......................................................................................69
Celtic kingdoms....................................................................................69
Saxon kingdoms....................................................................................71
We’re on a Mission from God........................................................................73
Keeping the faith to themselves: The British Christians.................73
Sharing the faith: The Celtic Church..................................................74
Enter the Roman Church.....................................................................76
Winds of Change.............................................................................................78
The rise of Mercia.................................................................................78
I don’t want to worry you, but I saw three ships
come sailing in: The Vikings............................................................79
Chapter 6: Have Axe, Will Travel: The Vikings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
The Fury of the Norsemen............................................................................82
A pillaging we will go...........................................................................82
Setting up base on the Isle of Man.....................................................83
Some Seriously Good Kings..........................................................................84
Scotland the brave: Kenneth MacAlpin.............................................85
We’ll poke your eye out in the hillsides: The Welsh........................85
The English kings: Egbert, Alfred, and Athelstan.............................86
The Vikings Are Gone – Now What?.............................................................89
They’re back – and this time it’s personal........................................89
Showdown in Ireland............................................................................91
Scotland wasn’t much better..............................................................92
Cnut: Laying down the Danelaw.........................................................93
The Messy Successions Following Cnut......................................................93
Kings for (just over) a day..................................................................94
Edward the Confessor..........................................................................95
The men who would be king...............................................................96