BRITISH-ORIGIN CULTURE and CIVILIZATION VOL I

Violeta Negrea

Acknowledgements
As this book is necessarily the compendium of the work of many people, past and present, who have sought our interest and knowledge, thanks are due first to these. The Encyclopedic entries on geography, history, language, education, religion, institutions, industry in the first volume and legislation, legends, customs, arts, fashion, humor, politics, in the second one represent a comprehensive source of information for anyone interested in the culture and the civilization of the English language speaking countries. It focuses on the heritage of a culture and civilization nucleus situated originally on the territory of Great Britain that brought its message on large area in the world: United States, Canada, New Zeeland, Australia, India, etc. Too many students spell history b o r i n g. They regard history and culture as jumble disconnected facts. The word they use to describe history is "irrelevant." The result is that too many students are ignorant of the most basic information about history and culture as they disconnect them. Knowledge about the past is more important than ever in the 21st century. Our society's most pressing problems are rooted in history. Knowledge of history is essential if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past and to understand the present. Students without an understanding of historical culture lack an essential component of citizenship and of global understanding. The book is meant to m ake student understand and love history and culture. Writing a book, as a spare-time activity, requires considerable forbearance from those who have to live with the author, and special gratitude has been due for this alone to my husband. As he has also cheerfully shouldered the duty of an adviser his part in the production of this book does not fall far short of co-authorship.

Violeta Negrea

I. The Spread of British Culture and Civilization Commonwealth The spread and influence of the English civilization seems to have a clear chronology beginning with the first Atlantic crossing of Columbus in 1492 and ending, conventionally, with the age of revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Europeans were the first to connect the Atlantic sides into a single entity, integrating national, regional and local histories into a broader perspective. It is a particular zone of exchange and interchange, circulation and transmission. The British Atlantic world was made by migration on both sides of the ocean and became a mass movement within and beyond the British Isles after 1500, at all social levels. Migration has emerged as a normal activity, a regular part of life cycle, a common response to personal ambition, economic hardship or perceived opportunities elsewhere. From roughly 1580 to the middle of the seventeenth century population growth in England, Wales and Lowland Scotland generated enhanced rates of long-distance migration to Ireland and Europe, fed the growth of London, and crucially produced hundreds of thousands of ablebodied English men to labour in colonial and commercial ventures overseas, making America highly derivative of English. It had a great impact creating a British identity because of the erosion of regional cultures, bringing people from remote parts of Britain into contact with each other. Those patterns both ensured the success of early imperial aspirations and made those ventures distinctly English in character. A rare passenger list for London in 1635 suggests the extent of the migration phenomenon: factors and merchants, mariners, seasonal fishermen, soldiers and officers would have sailed for India, Indonesia, Africa, Turkey, Moscow, Lisbon, Calcutta and other. More over, they enjoyed recreational travels: entertainment travel, not only to the continent but also to Asia and to the Mediterranean Sea between 1600 and 1800 became later an experience ritualized in the 18th century as Grand Tours and represented another key factor of the English culture and civilization spread over. While the growth in population provided English men power for military and maritime ventures around the globe, it was the American endeavour that benefited in particular from this population growth and migration movement. Enough colonies endured to give the English a permanent foothold in North America and the Caribbean. More particularly, enough migrants to the colonies endured and replenished population depleted by attacks of the native Americans and European rivals (the Spanish and the French especially) and by endemic and epidemic diseases. In the seventeenth century approximately 300,000 English migrated to the Americas along with 20,000-40,000 Irish, 7,000 Scots and a smattering of people from the continent, primarily to the West Indies. A big exodus from the Highlands began in the 17th century when the population growth prompted many to leave the region permanently inhabited to destinations overseas. An important feature of transatlantic migration is the dominance of the Caribbean, the destination for 68 per cent of all travels across the Atlantic. But these destinations of the overwhelming majority of migrants were places characterized by high mortality, low fertility, male majorities and stunted family formation throughout colonial period. These features circumscribed the ability of new-comers to transfer Old World culture: migrant streams comprised in overwhelming numbers of young men who could not reproduce their home cultures intact. Towards 1800, British migration looked differently: British America contained a small minority of British subjects: Canada had a francophone majority, while enslaved Africans and people of African descent vastly outnumbered creoles and Europeans in the West Indies which replaced ex-slaves with migrant labor from Asia and India in the decades to come. The British America was demographically British no more. But if demography did not always dictate destiny, it altered the landscape as surely as any other source of historical change.

In 1584 Richard Hakluyt the younger presented Queen Elisabeth a program for England's westward expansion. The successful staple trades raised the stakes in the English Atlantic Empire and determined its institutional structure. The Commonwealth passed its first Navigation Act in 1651 and re-enacted and revised it at the Restoration in 1660. Other acts that followed aimed to reserve the valuable colonial trade for the citizens of the empire and excluded the foreigners: all the trade to and from the colonies was to be carried in English or colonial ships; the captain and at least three quarters of the crew were to be English or colonial men, encouraging the expansion of the empire. The most valuable colonial commodities were required to be carried directly to an English or colonial port, to facilitate taxation, as a major income stream for the state, but also to rival other destinations such as Amsterdam. The English became increasingly able to provide convenient carriage at competitive rates, it made its commercial fleet grow from 70,000 tones in 1660 to over 500,000 tones in 1770 and a more than five fold increase in the value of colonial trade between the middle of the 17th century and the American Revolution. Between 1688 and 1815 tax revenues increased much more rapidly than the economy at large. The American tobacco was established as the most valuable commercial British product after 1612 in Virginia until the end of the colonial period. Colonists also experienced cotton, sugar cane and grain and rice crops in Barbados and Jamaica that stimulated massive demand for hand. Commodities produced in South America and the Caribbean were ginger, pimento, drugs and spices that became sometimes subject of re-exportation to pay a wide range of imported needs and desires such as naval stores from the Baltic or luxuries from Levant. The Northern colonies became also providers of ships, shipping and other commercial services throughout the world that purchased additional needed labor. By the late eighteenth century British exports included a wide range of textiles, metal wares, clothing accessories, earthenware, glass, paper and furnishings. American consumers displayed some autonomy in taste and preferences, especially the more marginal groups. The slaves on the Caribbean plantations preferred bright and gaudy colour tissues and ribbons, while the Europeans kept informed in Europe on fashion. British colonial projects were initiated by individual partnerships of joint-stock companies who detained charters and privileges from the crown. Settlers soon obtained proprietary rights and England's world was peopled with hundreds of independent producers all able to sell to competing merchants and ships captains. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the British set about constructing an empire in the Atlantic colonies. Surplus population was transplanted out to new lands in America and set to work producing valuable cash commodities. The colonies provided Britain with substitutes for a wide range of imports and an over plus for sale in European markets. As American production increased and real prices fell, luxuries such as sugar and tobacco became available to all, fundamentally changing British consumption patterns in ways which helped to stretch limited resources. The colonies also provided a growing market for British manufactured goods, encouraging product diversification and improved organization in industry to reduce unit costs. The long term contribution of the colonial empire to the increasing commercialization of the British economy, culture and civilization from the early 17th onward is enormous. Needless to say, not all the effects of the increasing importance of the Atlantic trade were benign. But it is clear that empire shaped the economic priorities, institutional framework, and accumulation of capital and acquisition of knowledge, skills and capabilities in important and lasting ways, not only in Britain but in all region of its Atlantic empire. Religious expectations were disappointing, as the British colonizers assumed that it would cement loyalty to the crown. Native Americans largely rejected the prospects of Anglican conversion. Diversity became a fact of life in Britain and its dominions. Christianity was also profoundly influenced by the settlers' societies' interaction with the African Diaspora. The

lasting British religious presence in the Atlantic basin began after 1600, when the Protestant Reformation had re-shaped the religious landscape not only in England but also on the Continent. But the encounter with Indian and African alternative belief systems had also a profound impact on the religious culture of the European invaders. A sense of religious community bound together believers in Britain, Ireland, North America and the Caribbean. Catholicism formed one abiding component of that broader culture, though it changed with time. When encountered with Native America and Africa, British Christians failed to convert Indians, but they found their own faith transformed by the encounter with the African spirituality too. The societies of colonial America had imported some patterns of social inequality from Britain, but they developed others that were peculiarly their own. They represented different outcomes of a dynamic of economic and social change unlashed in the 16th century and sustained in part by the emergence of the Atlantic economy. The shared language and family resemblance of the societies of the British Atlantic world are important reminders of the influence of common origins and shared traditions. But the differences to be observed are even more telling testimony to the variety of potentials inherent in any social situation, and the unpredictability of their development over time. 1.1. Explorers, Traders and Settlers In the 16th and early 17th centuries, when Elizabeth I and then James I were monarchs, English adventurers and traders began exploring the world beyond the limits of Europe, across the oceans: - 1454 - Amerigo Vespuci, 1497 John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), 1579, Francis Drake, etc The long and remarkable voyages took the small sailing ships of the time across the Atlantic, to the far north of Canada, around the southernmost tip of South America, into the Pacific, and around the Cape of Good Hope to reach India and the islands of the East Indies (now Indonesia). The explorers were followed by other British people who saw exciting opportunities in the new lands and new sea routes. There were others who were taken to the new lands as a punishment. In the 18th century, about 30,000 people were 'transported' to North America, having been convicted of crimes. Transportation was an alternative to hanging and was a standard punishment for even small offences, such as stealing a loaf of bread. Thus by 1700, Britain had colonies in North America and the West Indies, and its trading companies were busy exploiting the riches of India and the frozen wastes of Canada. 1.2. Slave trade It was in the 17th century that the terrible slave trade began. The plantation owners of the West Indies had realised that sugar was more suited to their climate than tobacco. The cultivation of sugar, however, needed many workers. The indigenous people of the West Indies (the Amerindians) were not considered suitable for such work and their numbers anyway had been reduced by diseases brought by the Europeans. So the plantation owners looked overseas. During the 17th century European traders began doing business with the people on the coasts of West and Central Africa. These traders started to transport people from Africa across the Atlantic to work on the sugar plantations. The people that were taken, however, had no choice in the matter - they were slaves who were bought and sold like any other items of trade. The British established what became known as the triangular trade: the ships carried their sick and unhappy cargoes across the Atlantic between The Western European coasts, West and Central Africa, and American Eastern Coasts. Many died in the wretched conditions on the slave ships. Once arrived in the West Indies, they were sold to plantation owners. The ships then carried sugar back across the Atlantic to be sold in Europe. In Britain the ships would load up with guns, metal goods and textiles which were taken to West Africa to exchange for the slaves. The whole business was highly profitable and many British fortunes were made.

By the mid-1700s, about 70,000 slaves a year were being taken across the Atlantic, half of them in British ships. It is estimated that in total some 4 million Africans were sold into slavery by British traders. They were either sold to British colonies in the West Indies or were sold to other colonies in North America. The British traders did not capture the slaves themselves. They worked through African chiefs who wanted the goods the British brought, and were prepared to raid their enemies' territories to capture new slaves. The descendants of the African slaves who were taken across the Atlantic now make up the black population of the United States, and form the largest ethnic group in most Caribbean islands. 1.3. Australia, India, South Africa In 1768-79, the three voyages of James Cook to the South Pacific brought the British into contact with the huge land of Australia. Troublesome people were taken to the other side of the world, especially since criminals could not be transported to America any more. In 1788 the first convict colony was established at Botany Bay in Australia - 737 men, women and children. In total, 162,000 convicts were sent to Australia before the practice ended in 1868. Most settled in Australia once they were free. The British viewed Australia as an empty land, disregarding the rights of the aboriginal peoples. They hunted these people down. Many aborigines were killed or died of the new diseases brought by the white men. It is only now that the ancient land rights of the aboriginal peoples are being recognised. In India, the East India Company was becoming more aggressive. Where Indian states would not co-operate, they took them over. By the 1780s the company ruled over 20 million Indians. In 1815 a long period of European warfare ended. Around the world, agreements were made concerning the ownership of colonies, and Britain took over control of Cape Colony (later South Africa). A Dutch company settled at the Cape in the mid-17th century. They defeated the indigenous inhabitants and decided to import slaves. They came from the East Indies and the east coast of Africa. Early on in the colony's history some white farmers moved into the interior of the Cape, taking their slaves with them. There were constant disagreements between these farmers and the officials of the Dutch East India Company. The British meanwhile had seen the error of their ways where slavery was concerned. Led by Christian evangelists, a successful campaign was launched to end both the slave trade, and slavery itself. The British officials at the Cape were keen to help slaves achieve their freedom. This became a source of bitterness between the British and the Dutch farmers, who moved ever further into the interior, to be free of British control. As they did so, they came into conflict with some powerful groups of Africans that led to a prolonged period of war. 1.4. Changing Political Views In the first 300 years of the British Empire the prime motive behind expansion had been making money through trade. However, in the 19th century the British developed loftier views about their colonial responsibilities. Thomas Buxton, a British MP campaigner to end slavery he said in 1837: 'The British Empire has been singularly blessed by Providence ... Can we suppose otherwise than that it is our office to carry civilisation and humanity, peace and good government, and above all, knowledge of the true God, to the uttermost ends of the Earth?' British Christian missionaries took themselves to remote parts of the Empire to spread the word of the Lord. They took with them all the arrogant preconceptions of the Victorian age about what constituted 'civilisation'. They condemned the houses, the form of dress, the customs, the medicine of the people with whom they worked. Instead they offered a Victorian way of life and provided a Christian education, teaching their converts to read the Bible. In most areas of Africa the missionaries were not very successful. The number of people who became converted to Christianity remained small. However, the missionaries played their part in the spread of empire.

1.5. Industry Age At the end of the 18th century a series of British technological breakthroughs led to the industrial revolution. Businessmen built factories in the cities where the new machines, powered by coal, made large-scale production possible. The factories needed labour. People from the countryside poured into the towns and cities to take the jobs which were now on offer, even though working conditions and pay were wretched. Britain was the first country to industrialise, and it was making more goods than could be sold in the home market - overseas markets were needed. The industrial revolution transformed transport too. Across Britain a network of railways was built at astonishing speed. The British pioneered new technology in sailing, so that ships of the past were replaced by much faster steamships. Towards the end of the century the British were building two-thirds of the world's ships, thus ensuring the continuation of British domination of the high seas. The combination of industrialisation and new, faster forms of transport ensured British domination of the world's trade. The British developed a system of trade within the Empire which was vastly profitable to the factory owners of Britain, but which was of little benefit to the people of the colonies. Raw cotton was shipped from India to England where it was processed in the cotton mills of Lancashire; the cotton cloth was then taken back to India to be sold. Wool from Australia was made into blankets in the mills of Yorkshire, and taken back to Australia to be sold. 1.6. Emigration and Settlement The century saw a rapid rise in emigration, as British people (and Irish) sailed to the new territories to make a new life. There was a flood of emigrants after 1815 when unemployment in Britain was high. About 6 million British people emigrated to Canada, Australia and New Zealand between 1815 and 1914. They were encouraged to do so by offers of free passages. Smaller number of British settlers sailed to South Africa. But until the end of the 19th century British possessions were limited as colonies were expensive to run. They were happy to let explorers, traders and missionaries open up and run their own activity. What caused this dramatic change in thinking? At the end of the 19th century British industrial dominance was being challenged, especially by Germany and by the United States of America. This meant that Britain faced more competition in the search for new markets for its manufactured goods. More important than economic factors however, were those of politics. Other European countries Germany, France, Portugal and Belgium - began looking at the new territories possible source of raw materials and market placements. 1.7. End of the Empire There was still some expansion to come. At the end of the First World War, Britain took on the administration of some colonies which had previously been run by countries defeated in the war. For example, it took over Tanganyika (now Tanzania) which before the war had been controlled by Germany. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Empire was made up of three kinds of colony. There were the lands to which British people had emigrated - Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. There was India - in a category of its own. And there were the others - the colonies in Africa, Asia, South Pacific, the Caribbean. These included strings of islands, sometimes quite remote from anywhere else, such as St Helena and Ascension in the South Atlantic. In 1920 the Empire was at its height. The British had taken control of these small places as useful stopping places for their ships. British people only made up 12% of the peoples of the Empire. But all peoples had the English monarch as their head of state, used the English language for official purposes and for education, and adopted the English legal system. But the lands where British people had settled in large numbers wanted to run their own affairs. From 1897 until 1945 the leaders of these countries met regularly at Imperial

Conferences. After discussion about the status of these countries the word 'dominion' began to be used. In 1926 the terms of Dominion status were agreed in the Balfour Report. These countries and Britain were described as: ' ...autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations'. In 1931 the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster which allowed the Dominions to become independent nations. But the colonies were not thought of as being able to run their own affairs. Small groups of British officials administered enormous areas, imposing British justice, keeping law and order and charging taxes. The building of schools and hospitals was often left to the missionaries. II. Short Historical Review of the English Language 1. English the Language of Globalization You can hear it being spoken everywhere. 380 million of people speak it as a native language and 2/3 of it as a secondary language. A third of the entire population of the world learns it and half of the population of the world is believed to learn it up to 2050. It is considered the language of globalization of the international business, of the politics and of the diplomatic affairs. It can be seen in the posters in Cote dIvoire, can be heard in the pop music concertos in Tokyo or the official documents in Phnom Penh are also drafted in it. Bjorn, from Island sings her songs in English, The Deutsche Welle radio broadcasts in English; it is taught in economic high schools all over the world. This is the same language that was spoken only by low educated people in Britain at 1300, as Robert Gloucester said, but which passed a long, long history of transformation. This is now a language of globalization. Is that because English is an easy language to learn? It seems that its irregular verbs, its strange grammar, the difference between its spelling and the pronunciation represent huge difficulties for its learners. It is also so highly spread all over the world, that even for the native speakers it became difficult to understand each other because of its numberless idioms. But even without it, English is a language of complexity. Because of the diversity of its roots, English is a flexible language representing its force. New words are easy to adapt. Every year dictionaries are publishing new terminology specific for different newly born professions and the so called teenspeak. English developed rapidly at the same time with the growth of the British Colonies where the sun never sets. That was the beginning. When Germany and Japan negotiated alliance in 1940 against USA and Great Britain, their foreign ministers had their talks and speeches inEnglish. But it seems that its triumph as a global language is due to the successful United States. But this is also a source of misunderstandings, as a language is not only an instrument of communication, but it also deposits cultural and identity elements of a nation. But the triumphant march of the language called English towards globalization represents but the American culture. For many peoples in the world this is defendant attitude, because it conquers lands where native languages vanish. Its last victims are Catawba (spoken in Massachusetts), eyak (Alaska), livone, (Leetonia) but most of the dead languages are situated in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Mexico, Cameron, Australia, and Brasilia. Some specialists pretend that up to the end of this century, half of the languages spoken in the world will disappear. It seems that this is unavoidable. The TV and radio broadcasting, although so much blamed, contribute to the life keeping of some languages, less spoken. But it is also possible that the number of several language speakers should increase, while the linguistic competence in other languages such as the Arab ones should decrease isolating their peoples.

Thus, is that a real triumph of the globalization language? 2. English A Language of Germanic Origin English is a language of Germanic Origin although the first inhabitants of the isles were not. It belongs to the Indo-European language family that originated probably in central or south-eastern Europe and it is composed of the following main brands: Indian Germanic, Albanian Iranian Celtic Armenian Slavic (or Italic Hittite Slavonic) Hellenic Baltic Tocharian - The Germanic language brand falls into three main groups: East Germanic North Germanic West Germanic West German brand is subdivided into High German (the roots of the languages spoken nowadays in Austria, and Switzerland), and the Low German languages that falls into Old Saxon Old Low Franconian Old Frisian Old English

This last one is a result of a mixture of several Germanic dialects brought over by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The first Indo European Language that was spoken in Britain was Celtic, then, after the Roman conquest, Latin became the language of administration, army and trade, Christian religion. It was spoken especially by the upper classes that were completely romanized. The Germanic tribes that conquered Britain after the departure of the Roman troops were Saxon, Angli and Jutes, according to Bede, the historian. As their dialect was called Enzlisc (English), the territory lived by this population began to be referred to as Engle-land (land of the Angles) and later England. The Jutes settled in Kent, Southern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, the Saxons in the present Essex and the Angles occupied the greatest part of what is now England and Lowland. The linguistic consequences were extremely important as the languages spoken at that time account for the various English dialects. After having studied the different stages of the language evolution, the historians state that Old English was an analytic language, i.e. the relations between words are established by inflections, whereas Modern English became synthetic, i.e. the inflections have disappeared and the grammar relationship between words are established by form of words and word order. The main dialects and their specific characteristics coming from the Old English are: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish. The language spoken in old times was enriched by affixation and composition. Although the original language of Britain was Celtic, very few language elements have survived; they are to be found mainly in place names, especially in the west. The name of Kent is derived from the Celtic Canti-Cantion, or Gloucester, Worcester, Litchfield are purely Celtic. The influence of Celtic was slight, probably because the Germanic conquerors had enough words to name various notions existing at that time. 9

The Roman civilization had also an important impact upon the language spoken in old times by the inhabitants of the isles. The influence began long before the English came to Britain. Some of the Latin words still in use today can be traced back to this period. 597, the introduction of Christianity into Britain started second wave of the Latin influence, and about 450 new words were adopted in Old English. Most of them were fully accepted and assimilated, as they could be converted into parts of speech or combined with native affixes or words, resulting in many hybrid derivatives and compounds. The Norman Conquest in 1066 is considered the starting point for the second stage in the evolution of the English language. The Normans implemented feudal institutions, so, the system here reached a higher regularity and completeness than in most other European countries. The important political, economic positions and the great estates came mostly in Norman hands. French remained the dominant language spoken for about 2 hundred years, as it was used in law courts and schools and by the feudal aristocracy in England. It also shared with Latin the fields of science, education and literature. But most of the population continued to speak English. After the conquest, the kings of England continued to be Dukes of Normandy, and many noblemen had estates on both sides of the Channel. After 1204, after the loss of Normandy, many English noblemen had to give up the lands they had there, as no economic interest was available. French continued to be used, but not as a mother tongue, but as a fashionable and nobleman language. English of that time was enriched by adopting many French words. The Hundred Years War, the peasants rising in 1381 and the gradual decline of feudalism, the development of the town bourgeoisie contributed to the disuse of French and steadily increasing importance of English. By the 15the century the inability to speak and even to write French became almost general. Middle Ages literature reflects fully the linguistic this situation. The only works written in English between 1150 and 1250 were almost exclusively religious, the most important being Orrmulum, the Ancren Riwle and the Genesis and Exodus. The outstanding exceptions to this kind of literature were Laymans Brut and the Owl and the Nightingale. The establishment of the English as a national language was a long process along the one of England becoming a national state. It was the East Midland dialect that became the centre of the other dialects grouping, as it enjoyed economic, political and cultural prestige. It is particularly the dialect spoken in London, as it displayed a commercial prosperity described by Tacitus 1 in his Annals: Londinium copia negociatorum et commeatuum. The dialect became the standard due to the diversity of London speech and to the development of education, trade, crafts that made possible to diffuse. Even Geoffrey Chaucer contributed to its development by his works. Renaissance brought the beginnings of the Modern English at the opening years of the 16th century. The evolution was a gradual and continuous process in close connection with the geographical discoveries, the development of industry, commerce and the ever better means of communication due to the capital accumulation. A large number of literary works such as Wyatt and Surreys poems, Spensers Fairies Queen, the works of William Shakespeare, enriched the language by vocabulary and structure. The contact with the people from the newly discovered lands, with the Italian art and literature, made possible a large scale of borrowings from Italian then Spanish later, from the languages of the American Indians, The exclusive study of Latin and Greek authors also brought new and important borrowings that met the needs of economic political, social, scientific and artistic domain of the time, in which English was very poor. But the borrowings were not approved by scholars of that time, such as Sir John Checke who protested against John Elliot who used inkhorn terms. In his Arte of Rhetoric (1553), Thomas Wilson recommended plain speaking, without any straunge ynkehorne terms. But borrowings had also defenders, for the vernacular did need many new terms. But the foreign borrowings were not limited to words taken from

10

Latin and Greek. According to the New English Dictionary, there were 50 languages as sources for the newly built language.1 The historical events that took place on the second half of the 17th century, the Revolution of 1648 and the industrial revolution too, represented sources to the enrichment of the English language. But these events did not bring about any profound, far-reaching linguistic transformation. They simply added a certain number of words and expressions to the English vocabulary or brought others into wide use. The Puritan ideology influenced greatly the Early Modern literature of the 17th century by a very important linguistic document the Authorized Version of the Bible that appeared in 1611. John Milton translated the Bible from Greek language. John Bunyans Pilgrims Progress was also a subject of biblical influences, but his language is also representative for the language used by the people at large. During the 18th century the vocabulary of politics was enriched by the contribution of French revolution through a specific vocabulary: democratic, revolution, demagogic, diplomacy, regime, terrorism, propaganda. The language also borrowed vocabulary from German in the technical domain: bismuth, quartz, zinc, etc. The English language was also enriched by borrowings coming from the American continent: Indian words hickory (a sort of walnut), moccasin, totem, toboggan, etc., Mexican words: chili, coyote; Cuba: barbeque, guava, iguana, savannah; Peru, Brazil: condor, llama, pampas, puma, tapioca, poncho, etc or Australia: boomerang; kangaroo, wombat. In the 18th century grammar began to represent a subject to study. Grammarians assess the necessity of codifying the rule of the English language. George Campbell was the first to make this attempt. The 19th century is characterized by the full development of capitalism, the World War I and the World War II determined the appearance of numberless new words in the field of science and technology and of new field of knowledge, mirroring the evolution of human society using certain grammar ways: a) conversion that seems to be the most frequent: - Ape (n) to ape (v) - Blitz (n) to blitz (v) Verbs with or without an adverbial particle could be also converted into nouns. Thus, people who are active are in the swim and the one well informed is in the know, or those that are active and acquisitive are on the go or on the make. b) Composition: Different various parts of speech are easily and freely converted: - Air-man - earthquake-damaged - used-car market - hairdo - teenage - do-it-yourself project c) shortening - cabinet cab - moving picture movie O. K. Amer. Adj. She got her parents O.K. (there are several opinions about the origins of O.K. It may come from Obadiah Kelly ( a railway goods-agent) or from Old Keokuk an Indian chief, or from Omnis korrecta used once by teachers for marking students examination papers; it may also come from Aux Cayes a place in Haiti where the best rum was made; or from a Choctaw word okay , meaning it is so) O.K. Amer. Adj. She got her parents O.K. (there are several opinions about the origins of O.K. It may come from Obadiah Kelly ( a railway goods-agent) or from Old Keokuk an Indian chief, or from Omnis korrecta used once by teachers for marking students examination papers;

11

it may also come from Aux Cayes a place in Haiti where the best rum was made; or from a Choctaw word okeh , meaning it is so) In the nineteenth and twentieth century grammatical trends point out certain new synthetical features by formation of compounds, but also to an accentuation of the analytical character of the language by the ever growing importance of word order that leads to simplification and economy of effort. There have also been developed recent approaches to sentence analysis: - the structural method (Charles C. Fries in The Structure of English - New York 1952). The author points out that the meaning of a sentence is a combination of lexical meanings, i.e. the relationship of the words to each other. He rejects analyzing the English sentence by the traditional parts of speech into form-words but function-words - the method of immediate constituents analysis developed by Barbara Strang in Modern English Structure London, 1962, and R. E. Wells in Language. The successive hierarchical structure of the sentence can be understood by breaking down the sentence until it is reduced to morphemes. - The method of transformational grammar, adopted and developed by Noam Chomsky in Syntactic Structures published in Hague, 1962. It is based on Z. S. Harris distributional analysis based on the mathematical concept of transformation (of the form but not the value of an expression) The contemporary dialects of the English language publicly recognized and spoken in the respective regions of the country are the Scottish, the Northern, the Western, the Central, the Eastern, the Southern ones. The dialectal words and phrases reflect the life and the activity of the respective places. The meaning of certain dialectal words became archaic or has disappeared in Standard English (to admire to wonder; proper- handsome), and other have changed their meaning (in Yorkshire cake often means bread and bread sometimes means cake) Every profession and trade has also developed its own vocabulary and style. Partly they are known only by the specialists, but there are quite a number of terms that come into a wide use, either because they designate things and notions which come to be popularized, or because they have widened their meaning. The differences between occupational dialects or jargons are far easier to establish than those between the different social dialects. Thus the vocabulary and the style of sometimes, excessive verbal courtesy used in Law Courts is different from the one used in advertisements, for example, where sometimes a vulgar, striking, lively, concentrated language is used. These account for all sorts of derivatives, often euphemistic and modified spellings. Here are some examples: vegemato juice = (vegetable and tomato juice) Bar-B-Q = barbeque Fits-U (a brand of spectacles) U-otto-buy = used cars

12

3. American English As a result of the leading position of the US in the world affairs, English has become an international language spread all over the world through advertising, tourism, telecommunications, informatics, and cinema. As a result, not only the British English, but also its idioms spoken as official in countries like Australia or New Zeeland are influenced by Americanisms. The British immigrants coming from U.K. in the 17th century brought several dialects spoken in different regions. Then the language developed independently adding new words from the natives and from the settlers of other origins that brought also some contributions from their places: French, Dutch, and German. The English language helped the immigrants keep their country united. Changes that occurred in the English language spoken on the American territory have a historical explanation. The new settlers found new names for the surrounding plants and animals that resembled with the ones existing in their original country. The American fir tree became laurel, and birds with black feathers became blackbird. They also named the unknown plants or animals and natural phenomena from the Indian or from other settlers: tapioca, succotash (a dish of green maize and beans boiled together), blue-grass, eggplant, potato bug, catfish, mud-hen, pitch pine. Whereas early American compounds were often self-explanatory, recent ones are frequently rather elliptical. One needs to know that romances of the boy-meets-girl type of accounts, presented in never-ending installments were frequently sponsored by manufactures of toilet and laundry soaps, that brought their names of soap opera. A range of terms referring to navigation in the British Isles extended their meaning to any kind of transportation in the United States, e.g. aboard, to board, crew, freight, to ship, etc. Extension of meaning is one of the major ways of developing the American English vocabulary. Here are some examples: - clerk shop assistant - conservative moderate - date appointment - fix to arrange - to figure to reckon, estimate, calculate - lunch/luncheon snack - vacation any period of holiday Extension and narrowing of meaning are commonly based on metaphors: colonizer a person who casts a fraudulent vote in another district - bureau chest of drawers - corn maize - to commute to travel regularly from ones home to ones place of work - politician wire-puller Nowadays the growing population coming from the Hispanic world that settled in the Southern states keeps using their original language making the Americans be afraid of a possible division of their country. That is why the English Only Movement appeared which wants to make English the only one language spoken on the American territory. Supporters consider that this will keep the country together and they suggest that immigrants should be taught English. But other wings consider that this is not necessary because the immigrants' children will want to learn English anyway, and that will lead obviously to social unity. The easiness of the language to form words made possible the spread out of new vocabulary like electricity, television typewriter, etc in the English speaking world and not only. -

13

The different spelling makes the difference between British and American English too. Thus, the use of some suffixes, the use of z instead of s or British irregular verbs made regular, makes the American English distinctive. Here are some samples: British: America flavour - flavor centre - center connection - connexion traveler - traveller realise - realize learnt - learned dreamt - dreamed colour..........................................- color There are also some words or grammar constructions used differently: British: American: gotten: (received) I've gotten my Christmas present. She is in hospital. She is in the hospital. Subjunctive is more used in American English than in British English. It is vital that they be stopped at once. Americans use a more direct language, so that polite forms of British English may be considered formal and unnatural: I'm afraid that. Would you mind if.. As for the American English, the language does not provide any information about social status or origins of the people. Still, the New Yorkers make use of their accent for judgments about their fellow citizens, while the Bostonian accent is considered to belong to the old, rich families of "New England". But there is an accent called southern drawl which is considered by professional people less acceptable from socially point of view, especially in small towns, where sensitiveness is higher to accent used by newcomers. The American pronunciation differs from the British one only by intonation and rhythm There are also very little differences in grammar. The General American English (GAE) is considered as a standard associated with Midwest accent and spoken across most of the northern states. There are also 4 dialects to be considered, The Northern, the Coastal Southern, the Midland and the Western. Their main difference is expressed in accent, but there are also some specific words to be encountered only in certain regions, such as grits which is particular for the Southern regions. Increasing differences can be noticed within the western dialects as they were influenced by the Mexican and Spanish. Since black slaves were brought mainly there and most of the African Americans still live there, old vocabulary is in use: hand for farmer or kinfolk for relative. But the most distinctive character for the southern drawl is the oral accent: the final r is not pronounced any more and the diphthongs are replaced with simple vowels so mine is pronounced [ma:n] and the plural for you is [y'all]. The social attitude toward the Black English and the Cajun English spoken in the southern regions reflects, in fact the hostility against the social groups they represent. The differences between the economic, social, political, cultural traditions, customs, and mentality, led to variations between the everyday vocabulary of Britain and that of the United States. Britain American grilled (meat) cornmeal tart 14 broiled Indian meal pie

fresh butter sweet butter dressing gown bathrobe trousers pants lounge-suit business suit minerals soft drinks wallet billfold banking account bank-account sleeping partner silent partner wage-sheet payroll rise raise in pay "The very few differences that appeared in American English are considered sometimes a peculiar virtue and claims to consideration, while the Britisher is often moved to look upon them as representing a degradation of the language. In fact, neither of the two varieties is superior to the other and the language and the civilizations that it represents, has gained a lot by its expansion over the American continent". (William Archer America and the English Language, New York, 1960, p 4) 4. Differences between British, Canadian and American Spelling Canadian English generally follows British spelling, but often the American alternative is possible too. Australian English also generally follows the British tradition. acknowledgement ageing, aging aeroplane aesthetics among, amongst analyse annex, annexe apologise, apologize balk, baulk banister, bannister behaviour behove blonde (for female) burnt, burned cancelled candour capitalise catalogue catalyse centre acknowledgement, acknowledgment aging, ageing airplane aesthetics among, amongst analyze, analyse annex apologize balk banister, bannister behaviour, behavior behoove blond, blonde burned, burnt cancelled candour, candor capitalize catalogue catalyze, catalyse centre, center acknowledgment, acknowledgement aging airplane aesthetics, esthetics among analyze annex apologize balk banister behavior behoove blond, blonde burned, burnt canceled, cancelled candor capitalize catalog(ue) catalyze center

15

cheque (noun, money) chequered chilli, chili cigarette colour connection, connexion cosy counsellor criticise, criticize defence dialogue dietician, dietitian dispatch, despatch doughnut Dr (A contracted form of a word, ending with the same letter as the full form, is not followed by a full stop). draught (current of air) dreamt, dreamed emphasise encyclopedia, encyclopdia endeavour enquiry, inquiry enrol favour fibre flautist flavour foetus, fetus forever, for ever fulfil gauge generalise glamour

cheque checkered chili cigarette colour, color connection cozy, cosy counsellor, counselor criticize defence, defense dialogue dietitian, dietician dispatch doughnut Dr.

check checkered chili cigarette, cigaret color connection cozy counselor criticize defense dialog(ue) dietician, dietitian dispatch donut, doughnut Dr.

draft dreamt, dreamed emphasize encyclopedia endeavour, endeavor inquiry, enquiry enrol, enroll favour, favor fibre flutist*, flautist flavour, flavor fetus forever fulfil gauge generalize glamour, glamor

draft dreamed, dreamt emphasize encyclopedia endeavor inquiry enroll favor fiber flutist flavor fetus forever fulfill, fulfil gauge, gage generalize glamour, glamor

16

gonorrhoea grey gynaecology haemorrhage harbour harmonise, harmonize haulier homeopathy, homoeopathy honour humour initialise instalment jail, gaol jewellery judgment, judgement kerb (noun) kilometre labour lasagne leant, leaned learnt, learned licence (noun) license (verb) litre manoeuvre marvellous maximize, maximise meagre metre (unit of length) modelled modelling mould neighbour net, nett (amount of money) oestrogen, estrogen offence

gonorrhea grey gynecology, gynaecology hemorrhage harbour, harbor harmonize hauler homeopathy honour, honor humour, humor initialize instalment, installment jail jewellery jewelry judgment, judgement curb kilometre, kilometer labour, labor lasagna leaned learned, learnt licence license, licence litre manoeuvre, maneuver marvellous maximize meagre, meager metre, meter modelled modelling mould, mold neighbour, neighbor net estrogen offence, offense 17

gonorrhea gray gynecology hemorrhage harbor harmonize hauler homeopathy honor humor initialize installment jail jewelry judgment curb kilometer labor lasagna leaned learned license license liter maneuver marvelous maximize meager meter modeled modeling mold neighbor net estrogen offense

omelette organisation, organization optimize, optimise pdiatrics, pediatrics paedophile, pedophile parallelling, parallelled pedlar, peddler pleaded plough practise (verb) practice (noun) pretence programme (TV), program (computer) pyjamas rancour realise, realize recognise, recognize rigour saleable saviour savour sceptical skilful slipped disc smelt, smelled speciality sulphur theatre theatregoer titbit towards travelling

omelette, omelet organization optimize pediatrics pedophile paralleling, paralleled peddler, pedlar pleaded plow, plough practise, practice practice pretense, pretence program, programme pyjamas rancour, rancor realize recognize rigour, rigor saleable saviour, savior savour, savor sceptical, skeptical skilful, skillful slipped disc smelled specialty, speciality sulphur, sulfur theatre, theater theatregoer, theatergoer tidbit toward, towards travelling

omelet, omelette organization optimize pediatrics pedophile paralleling, paralleled peddler pleaded, pled plow practice practice pretense program pajamas rancor realize recognize rigor saleable, salable savior savor skeptical skillful, skilful slipped disk smelled specialty sulfur theater theatergoer tidbit toward, towards (unusual) traveling, travelling

18

tumour tyre valour vapour vice vigour visualize, visualise wagon, waggon woollen

tumour, tumor tire valour, valor vapour, vapor vice vigour, vigor visualize wagon woollen, woolen

tumor tire valor vapor vise, vice vigor visualize wagon woolen

5. English language in Commonwealth and others The official English language spoken in Canada by the two thirds of the countrys population is strongly influenced by the second official language spoken by the immigrants of French extraction. The language spoken by their descendants coming from United States after the Independence War was strengthened by the one coming from Scotland and Ireland. Briticisms are strongly found in areas of fashionable English schools and universities mainly in Ontario: summer holidays, sweets, tram, meat-pie, braces, etc. But the English spoken in areas closer to the border of the United States is certainly similar to the one spoken in this country, having only some lexical peculiarities, and also some differences in pronunciations. But Americanism are used all over: dry goods, guess, sidewalk, store, rooster, etc As expected, the language spoken in Australia and New Zeeland borrowed and adopted linguistic elements and sometimes structures of the language spoken by the aboriginals. The inhabitants from Europe came across anew environment: different land animals, plants, phenomena, food, music instruments, customs, etc. The English language used by the new settlers improved by their native names, such as: - Kangaroos Koala bear Didgeridoo (musical instrument) Billabong (small swift-flowing stream of the North East) bush (woodland, untitled district) Corroboberee (native dance) The Europeans gave different meanings to existing words: cockatoo is the name of a small farmer. Derivation and composition were forms of new vocabulary: outback place remote from towns black trackers native people used to find wanted ones When gold was discovered, the language improved by new words too:

- diggings - fossick - (to search) - mullock (refuse with no gold content) The man that settled illegally on a piece of land was called squatter making possible the denomination of a new social group. The present vocabulary has also improved with new words used by the new settlers in their trade: - jackaroo (a trainee manager) - offsider (assistant) - rouseabout (handyman) 19

Some vocabulary element s may have come from old English dialects used no more in Great Britain, but with adapted meaning. - barrack (to cheer (Irish) to brag - dinkum (honest) Lincolnshire fair play, genuine - There also specific Australian idioms that are not used in any other place: - to be in the gun (to be criticized) - to stage a barrel party (an informal meal) The pronunciation of the Australian English is also specific for this geographical area. It is to be noticed the tendency that of the diphthong [ei] to become [ai]. The language is also characterized by the glottal stop and the plosive consonants into affricates. The long vowels are stressed by raising the tongue and closing the mouth, and the diphthongs become, this way, triphtongs. - tea: [ti] - too:[tu] - In New Zeeland the English speaking comers preserved their language closer to the British English. There a re only few native words borrowed: - hoot (money) - kit {basket) - In South Africa the two official languages are English and Afrikaans (an artificial language combined from Dutch and all the native language that were spoken in the territory). The English spoken in this country was influenced by the language used formerly by the conquerors of that land by turn: the Bushmen; the Hottentots; the Bantus, the Portuguese, the Dutch. - Here are some Africadrisms (words borrowed from the languages spoken by the slaves coming from Africa): - trek =journey in ox-wagon, migration - vlei : valley - karoo elevated plateau (Hottentot) - voortreker : first settler, pioneer Gnu a sort of an antelope Original English words acquired new meanings according to the new lexical and linguistic environment. - camp: a part of a farm wired or fenced in - lands: the very part of a farm that is cultivated - There are also formal similar meanings of American English words. - store keeper - cookies (original Dutch) - Pronunciation has been strongly influenced by the Afrikaans language especially the vowels: - pin [pen] - cab [ceb] and the higher pitch and the tendency to pronounce the r and give full value to unstressed syllables (extraordinary). 6. Hybrid Languages Based on English The hybrid languages are the result of the intercourse of English with languages spoken by colonized people during the English Empire in the 18th century. They developed in different geographical areas where the British traders used to negotiate importing and exporting goods, and became lingua franca for these regions as this one was for Levant

20

Pidgin English (business English, as it was pronounced by Chinese traders) is the language that is developed in the Far East ports and it was adopted even by other European traders and sailors who spread it to the uneducated Japanese or to the populations of the Pacific Islands. It is also spoken by the Chinese living in America nowadays. Its main characteristic is the simplicity of grammar: no inflections are used. The plurals are expressed by using full, plenty, all or piece (piece).Possession is expressed by using the word belong or belongy: How much belong/belongy?(What is the price?). The pronoun he is used for any gender: One girl he come. My pronoun is used for both I and me. Goods belongy my. Another language is known under the name Beach la-mar from the Portuguese bicho de mar. meaning sea slug, corrupted into b^eche de mar in French (sea spade). It operates with the same lack of inflections for gender or plural. No forms of tenses are used for the verbs. Kroo is the language spoken by Kroo Negroes in Liberia and New Guinea in the Western Africa. These languages are not studied and few materials are available.

III. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 1. General Presentation The British Isles are composed geographically of Great Britain (England, Wales, and Scotland) and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is a member of the European Community. The largest of the British Isles is called Great Britain. The second one comprises Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Western Scotland is separated from the main land by the Hebrides archipelago and Orkney and Shetland are placed on the North East. The Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and the Channel Isles are self-governing and they do not belong to the United Kingdom. The Isle of Wight (off the Southern coast of England), Scilly Islands (South cost of England, Lundy Island (off the South-West coast of England) and the Channel Islands (two islands off the Southern coat of England close to the French Normandy) and the many other off shore island belong to the same geographical term of British Isles. Britain has an area of 242,500 sq. km and its climate is a mild temperate one. The daily weather is mainly influenced by depressions moving fast across the Atlantic being subject to frequent changes but to few temperature extremes. The average annual rainfall is fairly well distributed between 1,600 mm in the mountainous areas and less than 800 mm over central and eastern regions. The driest months are from March to June and the wettest ones from September to January. The population of United Kingdom was, at mid 1990 - of around 57,411 million people with a density of 245 persons per sq km. The full name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Up until the XVII centuries there had been four countries in the British Isles: Engalnd, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Easch one had its own sense of identity, its own history, even its own language. There was no such word as British. The peoples were English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. By the end of the XVII century the word British was used for the first time in Rule Britania song was composed and Union Flag created. The Union flag or the Union Jack symbolizes the administrative union of the countries of the United Kingdom. It is made of the individual flags of the kingdom's countries all united under the Sovereign - the countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. 21

St. George is the patron saint of England. His emblem, a red cross on a white background is the flag England and a part of the British flag. St. George's emblem was adopted by Richard the Lion Heart in the 12th century. Saint George was a brave soldier who protested against the torture of the Christians and died for his belief. In times of great peril he is called upon to help save the country from its enemies. Union Jack is an alternative name for the Union Flag acknowledged by the Admirality and Parliament in the early XXth century. The term "jack" refers to the flag thaty is flown from the bowspit of a ship denoting nationality. The exacty origin of the name is still unclear. It may get the name from the "jack" of naval vessels from which the original Flag is flown. The motto of England is "Dieu et mon droit" (God and my right) that was first used by Richard I in 1198 and adopted as a royal motto of England by Henry VI. The Coat of Arms of UK. Is a shield bsupported by the English Lion on the left, and on the right by a unicorn of Scotland. (the unicorn is chained because in medieval times a free unicorn was considered a very dangerous beast (only a virgin could tame it). The coat feastures both the motto of the British Monarchs (Dieu et mon Droit) and the motto of the Order of the Garter "Honi soit qui mal y pense" on a representation of the Garter behind the shield. The Royal Coat of Arms is used only by the Queen in her capacity as a sovereing. In its version used by the government, the crown is shown resting directly on the shield, with the helm, crest and mantling not displayed. The Shield has four quadrants. The first and the fourth represent England and contain three gold lion pasant, with their right forepaws raised and their chad facing the viewer on a red field, the second quadrant represents Scotland and contains a red lion rampant on gold field. The third quadrant represents Ireland and contanis the gold harp of Ireland on ablue field. Wales was recognized as a principality by the creation of the Prince of Wales long before the incorporation of the quarterings for Scotland and Ireland in the Royal Arms. The British National Anthem is God Save the Queen which originates in a patriotic song first performed in 1745. It became the National Anthem from the beginning of the 19th century: God Save the Queen! Long live our noble Queen! God Save the Queen Send her victoriuos Happy and glorious Long to reign over us God save the Queen! The national flower of UK is the rose since the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) between the Royal House of Lancaster and the Royal House of York. The British society is considered to be divided into three main groups of social classes: the Upper class whci consists of people with inherited wealth and includes some of thye oldest families, most of them entitled aritocrats. They are defined by their education, and their pastimes including traditonal sporting life including hunting, shooting and fishing. The Middle class includes industrialists, professionals, business people, tradesmen, etc., while 22

the working class people include mostly agricultural, mine and factory workers. The class status is defined by the way people speak, their clothes, interests, education, and even the food they eat. Historical Outlook British Pre-historical Age The prehistorical era is the one that the population of Europe witness the achievement of writing and the development of the rural civilization in the IV and III millennium, before Christ, and the emerging and development of the towns in the second and first millennium, before Christ. Then, the newly self-imposed Celtic leaders develop their social communities in the middle of Europe. The old bronze culture begins to develop from Portugal to Holland, and on both sides of the Channel, Wessex and Bretagne, become the trade centre with copper, zinc, gold and amber. Ireland spreads its artistic handicrafts on the continent. This is the very moment of the megalithic moment of the Stonehenge, when the population could afford it. Towards the 1500 B.C. the wealthiness was declining, because of the scarcity of these metals. The discovery of tin led to the development of another type of culture. The new habit of the funeral urn that appeared on the British Islands spread on the continent, mythology started its development: the fire, the wagon, the sun are added to the old rituals of fertility. In the VIII century, when people used to settle on hill tops, iron began to determine the use of bronze that led to an important change of the social relationship and habits. The rich owners of that period appreciate luxury objects coming from the land of Greece and then from the Etruscan area. Starting from 800 before Christ, there are two main stages of iron history corresponding to the archaeological sites considered as characteristic: Hallstatt in Austria and in La Teve in Switzerland where the Celts spread it the first migration wave. Some of the first main groups of the migratory Celts settled in London as the core of the strong settlements were in the antique Britannia, as the Romans used to call it. They develop the fortified cities as the one of Maiden Castle and begin to work the natural resources as the woods, land, salt mines and different metals that they turned into arms, agricultural tools and handicrafts. The clear picture of an Early Iron Age settlement on the gravels of the London region comes from much farther west, on the site of London Airport at Heathrow. Archaeologists found on Caesars Camp a hamlet of a quadrangular enclosure, defended by a ditch and a bank. Its northern part had been a cluster of eleven circular wooden huts with thatched roofs. It is clear that it was a community consisting of several families. A rectangular temple was also found, consisting of a shrine surrounded by a colonnade of posts, very much like a translation into wood and thatch of the stone build Greek temples of the Mediterranean. It is suspected that scattered through the neighbouring countryside were similar small farming communities linked by kingship religion and trade, but with little sense of political unity beyond a tendency to cooperate briefly in self-defence in the face of a common danger. The European expansion starts with trading relationship: the Roman producers exported wine, oil and ceramics. In 58, before Christ, Caesar, the Roman emperor fights against Vercingetorix and conquers the Gaelic territory that belonged to a Celtic population. From that moment most of Europe fell under the control of the Roman Empire. 1.2. The Roman British Isles A substantial contemporary work of this time is 'The Ruin of Britain" - a tract written in 1504s by a British monk named Gildas. His purpose was to denounce the evils of his days in the most violent possible language. The Venerable Bede, a monk in the Northumbrian 23

monastery of Yarrow completed his Great Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731. There are also the Anglo Saxon Chronicles supplying information about the southern English kingdoms. The written sources, the archaeological findings make evidence of the fact that the history of the Anglo Saxon settlements began under the Roman Empire. Claudius, the Roman emperor is the one that lands on the Britannia territory in 43, before Christ and conquers Camulodunum (Colchester), marking the Roman history of the isles. The territory is then defended according to the needs, by four, then by three legions situated at Carleton (Ssca Silurum), York (Eboracum) and Chestier (Chestria). The forces assembled to sail to Britain comprised four legions and about the same number of auxiliary troops, around 40,000 men in all The Roman disciplined military machine had to be faced by the British forces that retained their old character. The invasion met with fierce resistance from some of the British tribes, but others surrendered easily or joined the Romans. It might have saved Rome much trouble and expense if it had limited its conquest to the area it already controlled. London was founded as a supply port; it is possible that from the beginning it was intended to become the administrative centre of Britain as well, but its position at the hub of the radiating system of the main roads was being built, very soon made it also the business centre of the province. When the Romans came to Britain, the London Clay surface was covered by oak forest with dense undergrowth of hazel, hawthorn and brambles. In the wet alluvial soil of Thames, would have been thickets of alder and willow. The river had served as a great waterway into Britain throughout prehistory and settlers were attracted to the more open country on its banks, especially where the river could be crossed by fords, where they could scatter its rural population in units no larger than a small village, gaining living by mixed farming and fishing. Similar settlements became later the city of London, which was called Londinium by the Roman emperors. The Roman city of Londinium did not lack monuments and statues, but only a few fragments have survived. One of the most important archaeologists that excavated and studied the remains of the city was Sir Christopher Wren; he traced back some buildings and their use, streets and the London Roman Wall. The main archaeological finds can be seen in Guildhall and London Museum. The work of organizing Britain as a regular Roman province progressed. Its governorship enjoyed high status of an ex-consul and carried with it the command of an exceptionally large group of legions. In its first century and a half as a province, men of particular distinction were regularly chosen. It was not only a military challenge where reputation could be won, but Britain also regarded as a land of natural abundance. By AD 47 the exploitation of Britain's mineral resources had began, especially silver. The 50's were a decade of urban development. Only the agricultural hinterland remained largely unchanged and the progress towards the universal adoption of the money economy was slow. However, by D.A. 60, with the governor Suetonius Paullinus, the province looked set to progress steadily. But the British can bear to be ruled by others, but not to be their slaves as Tacitus commented about the British character. When Prasutagus, in AD 61, the client king of the Iceni had left half of his possessions to the Roman Emperor and family, expecting that this would protect his kingdom and family they were treated this as if it were an unconditional surrender. In answer to Boedicia's protest, her wife, she was flogged and her daughter raped. Rousing her own tribe and her neighbours, she swept through southern Britain, burning Colchester, London and Verulamium (near St Albans), torturing every Roman or Roam

24

sympathiser she could catch. The governor only just avoided the total loss of the province. Nero, who was the Roman Emperor of that time, had been inclined to abandon Britain altogether. The recovery of Britain one decade after Bodicea appraisal was genuine but unspectacular. But the outbreak of the civil war across the empire in AD 69 revived the spectre of generals fighting for supremacy. By AD 83-84 a succession of governors had carried Roman forces to the far north of Scotland and garrisons reached the edge of the Highlands and were pressing ahead with Romanization. The period from AD 70 to 160 is the age when Britain truly became Roman and its lasting features as part of the empire emerged. The phenomenon of the absorption into the Roman system was determined by the devolution of the burden of routine administration to the local aristocracies that re-planned the client kingdoms. In the beginning and middle of the second century, the development of the cities and towns of the Roman Britain came to their full extent. The administrative centres of the civitates were provided with civic centres: the forum and basilica that provided market, law courts, civic offices and council chambers; the public baths which provided the urban centre for relaxation and social life; public monuments honouring imperial figures and local authorities; theatres and amphitheatres. The flourishing of the towns depended equally on the emergence of a lively urban population made up of officials, professions, traders and skilled artisans. But the urban expansion could not, of course, have rested solely on the basis of a relatively small native aristocracy that accepted the Roman ways. But spread of town life was followed by the appearance of "villas" in the country side indicating that the British gentry retained their connection with the land. There were also veterans discharged from the legions that settled in cities deliberately founded: Colchester, Lincoln, and Gloucester. Some of the inhabitants were immigrants or visitors from other parts of the empire. Nevertheless, the population of Roman Britain remained overwhelmingly Celtic. In the time of Hadrian, - man of restless and extraordinary character and energy a wall was built on the line to which Roman forces had been withdrawn in stages over the thirty years since the extreme point of expansion. The Hadrian's Wall was brilliantly original. Similarly, the agricultural colonisation of the East Anglia involved water engineering on a grand scale. Hadrianic London saw the demolition of the old forum and basilica and their replacement with a complex twice the normal size In the Antonine period the development reached its first peak, as the empire is generally considered to have been enjoying a golden age of tranquillity and prosperity. In Britain the economic Roman system had been adopted. It was based on a money economy and large scale, and long distance trade. Roman fashion was dominant and classical art and decorations widely adopted. The most important artistic impact on the Britons of Roman conquest was the introduction of figurative style, particularly in sculpture, wall-painting and mosaic, but also in minor arts and crafts jewellery, pottery, furniture, household goods. The Roman pottery alone reveals the existence of a "throw away society" that is quite different from what went before or came after. Roman Britain was a religious kaleidoscope, ranging from the formal rites of the Roman State Jupiter, Juno and Minerva and the Imperial Cult that had been grafted on to it, through a wide range of religious imports to the local Celtic cults. In the 160s the mood began to change. In the reign of the next emperor, Marcus Aurelius, barbarian pressure on the frontiers of the empire became serious. The cities and the towns, lying on the main roads, were the obvious targets for tribes or war parties on the move. Walls were a first-rate form of the civic defence and their prevalence in Britain must indicate a great awareness of threat.

25

By middle of the century, rampant inflation had severely damaged confidence in the currency. At this point almost total disaster stuck as barbarians attacked in both East and West. It is not surprising to find London and York being chosen as twin capitals when Britain was divided into two provinces. This was in line with the new policy to reduce the member of the legions under the command of any one provincial governor and thus the temptation to revolt. The planned conquest of Scotland was called off but security of the frontiers, was, however, accomplished. In the 270's the imminent collapse of the empire was averted. Major changes had taken place in the Roman State in those few years which take us into the period called "Late Roman Empire". The dividing force was the Emperor Diocletian who initiated, through his reforms, a period of change that transformed the Roman State. The new order must have arrived, in full force in Britain after the re-conquest by Caesar in the West, Constantinos I, father of Constantine the Great. Towards the end of this century, in 395 when Theodosius, the Roman emperor dies and the empire is divided into two as a consequence of religious misunderstandings: The Eastern Roman Empire, including Constantinople and having as a runner Arcadius and the Western Roman Empire, including Mediolanum (Milan) and Ravenna, run by Honorius. He was also capable of thinking and acting on the basis of Diocletian's conservative but immense reform, to set patterns for centuries to come. So, the first half of the fourth century can be called the last Golden Age of the Roman Empire due to Constantine. Socially and economically the State Empire in the West was marked by a polarisation of wealth and, to some extent, power between the greater landed aristocracy on one hand and emperor, court and army on the other. The financial administration of the provinces was different from that in the early Empire. Though the financial headquarters was in London, the old provincial procurators had disappeared. The governors of the individual British provinces were responsible to the vicarius for the taxation. The command structure for the army no longer had to correspond with the provinces. A new category of mobile field forces appeared having higher status and remuneration. The final element in the Constantinian equation was the Church. The crisis of the third century coincided with a widespread desire for a more personal religion that offered consolation and meaning in this world and a better life in the next. Recent research has indicated a considerable amount of Christianization in the fourth century. The Golden Age did not long outline Constantine himself. His death in 337 left the empire divided between his two sons within the dominions of the younger Constantine. Towards the end of the II century the Roman Empire had to give up defending the wall built by Antoninus in the Northern part of Britain, as it wastes its power in the European territories. This is to be understood as an economic and monetary fall. The commercial exchange is restricted; the rural population finds the towns as a refuge, beyond their walls. The monetary system also washes its values when the content of valuable metals diminishes. The feeling of insecurity and unrest is favourable to the development of Christianity that expands remarkably, in spite of the persecutions against it that started in the third century. Border problems became acute by 360, the moment when Scots from Ireland and Picts from Scotland attacked the Roman British Empire. In 360 a palace conspiracy ended in the murder of Constantine and the elevation of an officer of Germanic descent named Magnentius. After one year and a half Paulus was appointed with the aim of hunting down dissidents who introduced the reign of terror in which false evidence played a dominant part, horrifying even the most loyal officers and that left Britain in a weaker state to resist the barbarian troubles now pressing on them.

26

The nadir came in 367: Picts, Scots and Attcotti invaded Britain. Franks and Saxons attacked the coast of Gaul. Both the central imperial command Emperor Valentinian and the senior officers responsible for Britain were taken by surprise. The barbarians ranged unchecked in small bands, looting, destroying, taking prisons, or killing at will. Both civil authority and military discipline broke down. Theodosius was the one that saved the situation temporarily, and subsequent reconstruction of Britain seems to have been both brilliant and thorough. The barbarian's war parties and lands were picked off one by one and the Saxons defeated at sea. Forts were rebuilt and damaged cities restored. The five centuries that elapsed from that moment on up to the year 1000 were decisive for the building of the old continent. This is the period when different migratory populations settle in specific areas giving birth to countries that are known nowadays. This is the period when the Western Europe of Latin culture with a Germanic shift is separated by the Eastern Europe of Greek culture with a strong Slavic shift. This is the great migration era. The period is characterized by migratory waves coming from different places of the world: the Visigoths, Ostrogoths directed to the South West, the Vandals and Alans, that crossed the Rhine, the Burgunds, Francs and Alamanni to the West and Jutes, Angles and Saxons to Brittany; the Longobards to Italy. To the East of Rhine, the Saxons, Frisian, Turingians, Bavarians settle while the country of the Avars makes form beyond the Danube River. The 7th century witnesses two important migratory waves of the Slaves that settle between the Danube, Nistre and Vistula, spreading then to Volga and Ladoga Lake, to the West towards the Baltic Sea, and also to the Eastern Alps and Bohemian Mountains and the third one to the Southern Danube. Europe is also the subject of Muslim invasion as the second wave, after having conquered Constantinople and divided Byzantium. They also conquer Spain, before being stopped at Poitiers in 732. The IX and X century are also migratory periods. Europe is invaded by the Muslim Sarazins, that settled in Gallia and Sicily and the Vikings coming from the North that plundered first and then they settled in Normandy and the British Isles. In this last period its worth mentioning the Hungarians that invaded the central Panonic field. The consequences of the invasion are of political nature, as the Western Roman Empire is replaced by little tribal states of Germanic origins, i.e. soldiers grouped under the leadership of a strong family representing an entire nation. These groups break up and regroup back into different structures according to their political interests of their leaders. This is the time when the Angles and Saxons settle and draw their own country on the British Isles. Under these circumstances, Britain successfully took on the barbarian invaders and henceforth broke decisively with Roman rule. They have lost confidence in the system of emperor, bureaucracy and army as the best way of securing their still prosperous way of life. By that time after groups of well-to-do Roman provincials were starting to settle down tolerably comfortably, employing, in alliance with or under the rule of barbarians. But for the weakened middle and artisan classes the change must have been disastrous according to the archaeological supports: the massive pottery industry comes to an apparently abrupt end; by 420-30 coinage ceases to be in regular use. These facts, incidentally, make the dating of the

27

end of the occupation of Roman sites in the fifth century more difficult than in earlier periods. 1.3. Early Middle Ages In the first three centuries after the year 1000, the Western European settlements come to a remarkable demographic and economic expansion, until a new political and social organization makes its room: feudalism. It is based on the principle of awarding a piece of land (feodum) vassals by the landlords in exchange of some services, by oath of allegiance (homagium). The whole Western society is rebuilt starting from the very individual level, under the Church ruling that vouched for loyalty agreements. This is also the time of feudal monarchy when the kings were placed on the top of the feudal hierarchy sometimes by violent operations as it happened with the Norman Conquest in Britain when William became king in 1066. The feudal character is also dominant in the way they rule their land and servants: a representative example is the British Magna Charta issued in 1215 by which the power of the landlords is acknowledged by the country-less King John whose power is limited. It is also to be understood that the feudal social organization led both to the settlement of national states, and the affirmation of a new social layer of the bourgeoisie. They were grouped in trade associations protected by the landlords under loyalty agreements, and awarded specific privileges called franchises. In 1066 the country was a farming land originally owned outright by the men who settled and cleared them and inherited by their children. But these independent farms had no defence against the Viking raids or resources to tide them over disasters like cattle sickness, a series of bad harvests, fire or storm. Small land owners had surrendered their n nominal ownership of the land to some protectors who in turn, held the land in duty to this process of freedom loss was in fact the gain of a social system, the end of anarchy somebody higher. By 1066 the system was elaborate and stable. The social strata were made of serfs or slaves, cottagers or cottars, then villeins - farming around fifty acres, then thanes - who drew rents in kind from the villeins, then earls - each ruling one of the six great earldoms that covered the country and above all - the king. In parallel to this secular social ladder was the hierarchy of the church, from village priests to archbishops. Nobody was above the law. Women used to card, spin, and dye, wove the wool and make clothes, boil the meat and bake the bread, milk the sheep and goats, perhaps cows, make the butter and cheese, love and scold the children, feed the hens, work in the field at harvest, probably make the pots and brew the beer. The children, not burden by school, herded animals, according to their size: gees or sheep or goats or pigs Of course they went to church where they could hear the sermon of the priest in their language as religious works had been translated from Latin. Out of doors they played some kind of football that evolved later to the esoteric complexities of cricket. Indoors they played drafts or checkers and clever people played chess. They hunted and fished through necessities, but both have always had an element of sport. The rivers, now polluted, were teeming with fish, even salmon water mill commonly paid a tax of eels and the forest was full of game; but deer were strictly the King's or earl's prerogative. The arts and crafts of England were known and valued all over Western Europe, especially the illumination of manuscript, embroidery and gold and silver; and there was a lively tradition of English prose. Such works of art were mainly creation of the church or the 28

patronage of the rich. The pagan custom of burying treasures with the dead had ended at the coming of Christianity. The villagers celebrated festivals of the church and also pagan festivals that were preserved in spite of the church. The sense of belonging to an English state, under English law was created before 1066. The idea of unity of the English people according to Bede (English historian: Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation in 720s) "goes back to the Anglo Saxon pagan peoples who worshipped sticks and stones at the edge of the world" as Pope Gregory famously put it. In the 10th century, when the English nation included Danes, Norsemen, Britons, Saxons and Angles, the kings who created the kingdom of England still saw their task as the fulfilment of the promises implied in Bede: an English people under one king. Bede gave the English history which all could share, an interpretation which made sense of their past and their future. The English language was a response to the new unity and identity trends. The old subject-object-verb language became a subject-verb-object language, as was the speech of the Scandinavian Viking settlers, and this had already became English, common speech before Chaucer's day. The state had institutional structures which in the long run of the English history have tended towards allowing citizens certain freedoms to pursue their own work and happiness while protecting them from oppression. The West Saxon dynasty in the Viking Age organized the society for war, with heavy burdens on land owners and peasantry. They based their territorial units on the old shires, on Roman or British territorial grouping. Throughout the Middle Ages the boroughs the hundreds and their courts were crucial for taxation, justice, policing, law, military defence, and for the administration of the oaths which bound individuals on kin groups to king and community. Above the level of the hundred there was the old sheriff - which is still an office in USA administered the shire through bailiffs, now held office in each hundred (originally the bailiff was the king's justicer employed in the hundred for the detection of crime). The hundred was the key unit of local administration. The shires were still working institutions into the twentieth century, to which the reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave a new lease of age until the reorganization of 1974. The sense of chosen people became a workable conception of the society of order and mutual obligation. When King Edward died, without any children, there were at least six choices to elect an heir. The hereditary claim of King William was only by marriage. The news that king Edward was dead, and also that Harold was immediately crowned, made William angry, as he was not given any chance to make his claims. All the courts in Europe knew that he was Edward's heir, so he could not accept the news and do nothing about it. He decided to sail in force to England that very summer, to challenge Harold in battle and claim his just inheritance. There is practically no account of the events from the English side; for many years after, the English were too devastated by their disaster to write any entries in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. The battle took place on the field of Hastings which is now partly covered by the buildings of the Abbey William that was founded there as a penance for the slaughter, and by the town that grew up round it. The English never became Norman; they remained most stubbornly English, absorbed the invaders and made of the mixture of a new kind of Englishness. Duke William of Normandy was acclaimed king in 1066 in Westminster Abbey on the very Christmas Day. The Norman guards outside the abbey, believing that inside something wrong happened, because of the shouts and acclamations, they set fire to the neighbourhood houses. The crowds rushed outside, and only the monks, the bishop and a few clergy managed to complete the ceremony of consecration of the king. The position of the new king was a precarious one, in spite of his victory at Hastings. He promissed that every man should be protected by law according to his rank. But the measure of his promises was seen in the 29

chronicle written by the Norman Monk Orderic Vitalis, which became the most important source for the history of England and Normandy between the Conquest and 1141. Every man's land was given to the new king's own followers and kinsmen. As a result, the Norman rulers had to face risings every year and they used to live in military operational units, as they had no particular aptitude for war and no feudal hierarchy, but a well preserved administrative one that dated back to Carolingian times: there were quotas imposed and obliged to serve in the royal family. They built castles to dominate the subject population. England received not just a new royal family, but also a new ruling class, a new culture and language. By the 1086 there were only two nerving English lords of any account, and most of the landlords were Normans. After 1070 no Englishman was appointed a bishop. By 1086 the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was no more and its place was taken by new Norman elite who retained its old lands on the Continent so the two separate countries, England and Normandy, now became a simple cross-Channel political community. From now on, until 1204, the histories of England and Normandy were inextricably interwoven. The Angevin conquest of 1153-4 had, as an effect, the arrival of the Court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine that reinforced the dominance of French culture. At this time the foreignness of English was the most striking. The old institutions and laws became illegal; the old English custom of local government, with local hearings in the vernacular had been done away with. In ecclesiastical architecture, although churches built in England at that time, often contain some recognizably English elements, their design came from abroad, sometimes from the Mediterranean world: Italy, Sicily or even Byzantium and France. The castles were strengthened with iron and stone and new ones were built. They had fire places, latrines, richly decorated chapels and water cisterns to avoid the need to continually fetch water from the well within the bailey. William of Sens, of French origin was called to rebuild the choir of Canterbury Cathedral after the fire of 1174. Similarly, the cathedral of Westminster Abbey was heavily influenced by French models. Its influence in the field of music, literature, architecture, French became a truly international rather than just a national language as it was used by any one who considered himself civilised. A well educated Englishman was trilingual: English would be his mother tongue; he would have some knowledge of Latin and he would speak French fluently. French was vital in the cosmopolitan society. It was the language of law and estate management, as well as the language of song and verse, of chanson and romance. But popular culture, represented by the tale, lasted for long. Comics, novels and stories still evoke the Norman yoke, with plucky free Saxon pitted against regimented Continental despots: Robin Hood stands up for the right of the oppressed Saxons against the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. The legend of King Arthur was fixed in the popular imagination soon after the Norman Conquest. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (History of the Kings of Britain), Arthur was a hero, a Napoleon of the Dark Ages. He has been the inspiration of the great medieval romances of Chrtien de Troyes and Thomas Mallory, the epics of Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. The myth has lost none of its appeal and power in modern literature, film and popular culture: from Disney and Bresson to Indiana Jones and Monty Python the novels about Arthur show no sign of drying up. About 2,000 writes and charters survived from this historical period: whole classes of the population were concerned with documents in terms of business. In the late twelfth century throughout England an increasing number of schools al all levels were established and by the 1220's two universities, first at Oxford and then at Cambridge, had been established. After 1071, William I, the Conqueror held on England was fairly secure. The Welsh and the Scots did not trouble him. Scandinavian rulers continued to look upon England with acquisitive eyes but their threat was never materialised. His attention was

30

drawn especially by the vulnerability of Normandy as his neighbours took every opportunity to diminish his power. He died in one of his minor battle, in July 1087. His youngest son, William II, had restored his father's kingdom to its former frontiers, including England, the Conqueror's vast acquisition. Yet, in spite of all his success as a generous leader of his soldiers, William's reputation has remained consistently low. He made his feudal lords his vassals to secure the frontiers that stretched England and Normandy. Although a serious-minded churchman, accustomed to the conventional piety and sober discretion of his father' court, he never married and he died without an heir. A hunting accident brought his life to an abrupt end. Henry, his youngest brother, was there when the king died, and he took possession of the treasury: he went straight to Westminster where he was crowned. As for the domestic affairs, the Gregorian reform movement placed the king in a difficult position: he tried to strengthen the unity between the state and the church, but it was Theobald Becket, a London Citizen of Norman origin nominated as archbishop of Canterbury that made this unity fell apart. After he was supported by the king for the nomination, he felt responsible for the community of monks and he refused Henry II to enjoy the same customs and privileges over the church. Less than a year later Becket was exiled. When he came back he was killed in the cathedral of Canterbury by an official delegation. The king swore innocent of any involvement with this crime. Thomas Becket became the most potent saint of the day. The Angevin empire was a time of economic growth. An important change was that land became a commodity, a piece of property which could be bought and sold used as a security for loans. This change helped fuel inflation which was stimulated further by imports of silver for works of art. The wool trade stimulated the growth of towns, and particularly of ports. Territories in Nantes, Toulouse, and Norman Vexim were recovered. The sheer size of his empire inevitably stimulated the development of local administration which could deal with routine matters of justice, finance. Government became increasingly complex and beaurocratic. Richard I (1189-1199) acquired an unchallenged position by his alliance with Philip Augustus. Since he had been made duke of Aquitaine in 1172, he spent most of his life on the Continent, in Crusades as he felt responsible to assist the kingdom of Jerusalem. When Richard suffered a deadly wound in 1199, when being engaged in suppressing a rebellion led by the count of Angouleme and the viscount of Limoges, the different parts of the Angevin Empire chose John as his successor. In his time inflation tended to erode the real value of royal revenues, and many families and religious houses were in financial difficulties. As a result, John levied frequent taxes and tightened up the laws governing the forest (a profitable but highly unpopular source of income) through Magna Charta, issued in 1215, which stipulated "judgement by peers or by law of the land so that to no one will sell, to no one will deny or delay right of justice". When he was excommunicated for his order to confiscate all church properties, he became vulnerable to rebellion and invasion. When he died, in 1216, he left a country torn into two by a civil war which was going badly. Henry III, John's nine years old son, (1226-1272) began to rule in his own right most until 1232. Most of the struggles for power took place in the council chamber and appeals to arms were rare and brief. As a part of some conciliatory moves, Magna Charta was amended and reissued. But he had to give up claims to Normandy, Anjou and Poteau and did homage to Luis IX for Gascoigne. The government initiated a far reaching programme of reform. The Parliament was founded, although it was not a new body. The term Parliament first appeared when the Courts of Law were reorganized at the end of Henry III's minority, as a court of final appeal, a role that it has never lost. Henry was a good family man: he happily married to Eleanor of Province in 1236 and he provided generously for his wife family when life became difficult for his half-brothers.

31

He rebuilt Westminster Abbey. Henry's heir of the throne, Edward, was on a crusade when he received the news about his father death and he proclaimed himself a king. He was the last Plantagenet king to hold court at Bordeaux. His leaving, in 1289, marked the end of an era. As a result of an inquiry into the activity of royal and baronial officials, he issued new laws on a wide range of subjects. They were mainly concerned with the rights and the liberties of the king. He was also the one to begin the era of perpetual wars. The Crown expanded its territories in North and West Wales to form a principality that covered half of the country: this was conferred on the king eldest son as the first English born Prince of Wales. Firmness, fairness and conciliation marked the relation between the new governors and the Welsh population. Edward I exerted equally the power over Scotland although the country had its own monarch and the Scotsmen's sense of independence was fierce. He took advantage of being invited to settle the question of succession and he declared himself "Lord Superior" of Scotland. Edward I also stripped Ireland of its resources of men, money and supplies for his wars and castle-building in Wales and Scotland. That led to administrative abuse and decay of order. In this time England had reached the peak of its medieval population levels. A figure of five million inhabitants may be suggested for England in 13,330, with 10 % living in towns. It was a prosperous society and the peasantry shared in the general prosperity. Society had grown more prosperous through the growth of exchanges, and the expansion of the market economy. The number of markets continued to increase, to serve the needs of the local exchanges; it was also an increase in the number of those who did not support themselves from the produce of their own holdings: wage labourers, craftsmen, those engaged in extractive and manufacturing industry. They were dependant on the market, which made them vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of grain. A merchant of Bruges in 1250's, surveying the main sources of his trade, noted that "from England come wood, lead, tin, coal and cheese". England was a country rich in minerals, which supplied the raw materials for the manufacturing industry of Western Europe. The cloth industry was based on household system of production and corresponded to different stages of the output. In the fifteenth century the cloth went further afield to the Baltic and Mediterranean. In the region of Toulouse the marriage-contracts often specified the source of the cloth that was to be provided for the bride. In the early fourteenth century this came from Flanders and Brabant, but in the 1450s it was the English cloth that was often specified. Ordinances of the local variety made by the king's council and the civic officers made the prices of foodstuffs, takeaway meals and accommodation to be fixed. Doctors were to be properly qualified, and prostitutes, whether qualified or not, were to be kept off the streets. Archaeological findings show some other professional occupations: coal, linen, iron, pottery, kilns. The records of royal governments show coal put to military use, as fuel for smelting the iron used for siege engines and to cast anchors for the royal barges. There were individual "free" miners also who had small holdings and worked at mining only part-time. Silver vessels were widespread in late Medieval England. The chalice and pattern found in twelfth century priest's burial are typical of many such. In the thirteenth century the main chalice in each church would be made of silver but also a wide variety of pewter spread to households of all levels. In May 1337, Philip VI of France declared Gascony forfeit. It was not to be until the 1450's than one of his successors was able to carry this judgement out. The intervening period is commonly referred to as the Hundred Years War. Edward proclaimed that it was he who was the rightful king of France, his title descending via his mother Isabella. The king's claims in France, the victories he had won brought uncertainty to France. Richard of Bordeaux, then aged ten, was crowned as Richard III.

32

Edward III introduced to England the first striking clocks, the earliest of which was installed in the keep of Windsor Castle in 1361. The clocks were made in England but the technology was imported from Italy. The king taste was clearly revealed by his residences: his bath-houses must have been among the wonders of the day. There was water supply at Westminster. He established the Order of Garter and he became famous for his shows organized each year on St. George's Day. In the time of war, the profession of arms developed into the famous tournaments, a peaceful warfare in which all the knightly class of England" processed in their finest clothes, their tunics in red velvet and their caps of white fur. After the procession, on the three following days, battle was joined. This was left to the professionals. The ladies, watching on the sidelines, were central to the whole concept of chivalry. A dramatic and most significant fourteenth-century European history was the Black Death, between 1349-1399 which originated in Central Asia. It spread by sea from the Mediterranean, and along the shipping lanes which linked it with Northern Europe. The fearful mortality rolled on, following the course of the sun into every port of the kingdom. People died in great numbers. It is impossible to provide exact figures for neither the church nor the state kept any register of the deaths. Alongside the plague there was also a whole range of infection diseases - influenza, typhoid and tuberculosis against which there was no inoculation. The fall in the population had important repercussion in the English village. The peasants moved away and their manpower and service were lost to the lords and to the village community entirely. The first very clearly visible on the ground was the decay of buildings. The abandonment of some settlements does not seem surprising either. The difficulties of everyday life, the new poll taxes imposed for the one hundred years war against France, the corruption at the court, the grievances of individuals and community quickly grew into a major revolt. The events were so dramatic. The prophet of the rioters was John Ball, and their general was Watt Tyler that turned the groups into a force with some sense of discipline. The demands were clear and the arguments well-rehearsed. They required that labor services be performed only on the basis of free contract, though they wanted also the right to rent land at fixed price. 1.4. Tudor's Age The economic growth encouraged trade and urban renewal, inspired a housing revolution, enhanced the sophistication of English manners and bolstered new and exciting attitudes among individuals derived from Reformation ideas and Calvinist theology. England became economically healthier, more expansive and more optimistic under Tudors than at any time since the Roman occupation. But there were still pernicious evils of the society: inflation, speculation in land, enclosures, unemployment, vagrancy, poverty, urban squalor. Certainly, a vigorous market arose among dealers in defective titles to land, with resulting harassment of many legitimate occupiers. Rising population, after the Black Plague, especially the urban population, put in tense strain on the markets themselves: demand for food often outstripped supply, and agricultural prices began to rise faster than industrial prices from the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII, which accelerated the sixteenth century progress. But the greatest triumph of Tudor England was its ability to feed itself. The mass mortality on a national scale was absent from Tudor's England with a possible exception of Mary's government after 1555, when a serious mortality crisis occurred. But the starvation crisis in England were abating, rather than worsening, over time. Despite the vicissitudes of price index, the consequences of changed patterns in agriculture and proliferation of vagabondage, multiple occupations - domestic self-employment and cottage industries flourished in this age. Town dwellers grew vegetables, kept animals and brewed beer, wagelabourers employed by great households received meat and drink in addition to cash income. 33

The Tudor practiced their belief that ability good service and loyalty to the regime, irrespective of a man's social origins and background, were primary grounds of appointments, promotions, favours, rewards. This belief was most evident in Henri VII's use of royal patronage by which the Crown awarded grants of offices, lands, pensions, annuities or other valuable prerequisites to its executives and dependants, and was thus its principal weapon of political control, its most powerful motor of political ascendancy. But the revenues of the Tudors were increasingly inadequate in proportion to the expanding functions of central beaurocracy. Henry VIII, who succeeded, began his triumphant reign by marrying his late brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon. With the Tudor dynasty apparently secure, England had started to become vulnerable. His first divorce dropped into the religious maelstrom of his time. Although Catherine had borne five children, only the Princess Mary had survived, but the king demanded the security of a male heir to protect the fortunes of the Tudor's dynasty. That is why he soon believed that papal primacy was a ploy of human invention to deprive kings and emperors of their legitimate inheritances. His divorce made him believe in his royal supremacy over English Church. So he took charge of his policy and government. And finally threw off England's allegiance to Rome in an unsurpassed burst of revolutionary statute-making: some acts by which all English jurisdiction, both secular and religious, now sprang from the king and abolished the pope's rights to decide English ecclesiastical cases. Henry VIII now controlled the English Church as its supreme head in both temporal and doctrinal matters. Monasteries were dissolved in 1536. The process was interrupted by a rebellion, the "Pilgrimage of Grace", which was brutally crushed by the use of Martial law. The process that followed was the wholesale destruction of fine Gothic construction, melting down of medieval metal works and jewellery and sacking of libraries - the most extensive acts of licensed vandalism perpetrated in the whole of the British history. Anne Boleyn was already pregnant when the king married her, and the future Elisabeth I was born. Henry was bitterly disappointed that she was not the expected son, blaming Anne and God. Anne was ousted and executed in 1536. Henry immediately married Jane Seymour, but she died 12 days later after she gave birth to Price Edward. The next wife he married next was Anne of Cleves to win European allies, but she didn't suit; they divorced easily, as the union was never consummated. Catherine Howard came next as Henry's fifth queen. She was executed in 1542 for adultery, and finally he married Catherine Parr. Internally, he conceived the English hegemony within the British Isles Wales, Ireland and Scotland. The Union of England and Wales had been legally accomplished by Parliament in 1536. Wales was made subject to the full operation of royal writs and to English laws. English language became fashionable. Englishmen regarded the Union as the dawn of a civilizing pro\cess, the Welsh men, by contrast, considered the annexation as crude, for it was not a treaty between negotiating partie, as was the case with Scotland in 1707. Tudor Irish Policy had begun with Henry VII's decision that all laws made in England were automatically to apply to Ireland and that the Irish Parliament could only legislate with the king of England's prior consent. In the wake of Irish pressure and the revolt of the American Colonies, the British Parliament abandoned its control over Ireland in 1783. The Act of Union of 1801 reversed the change in favour of direct rule from Westminster. By right of Birth, as well as under Henry VIII's will, Mary, Catherine of Aragon's daughter, was the lawful successor. She succeeded in being safely enthroned at Westminster. Mary's true goal was always England's reunion with Rome; persecution was a minor aspect of her programme, although he burnt a minimum 274 persons; She was not successful in her intend to restore Catholicism in the country. 34

Elisabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn ascended the throne in 1558 and she ruled England for forty-four years. It was the time that the Anglican Church became the strength of Tudor's domestic stability. It was plainly Protestant, even if it retained altars and vetements. After 1559 the Catholic cause was directly linked to that of dynastic intrigue which aimed to depose Elisabeth in favour of Mary Stuart, of Scotland. Her grandmother had been Henry's sister, Margaret, so she hoped that the Virgin Queen die and she would succeed her in a Catholic coup. But when she lost the battle at Longside and fled to England, Elisabeth imprisoned her and executed her in 1587. One of the most important successes of Elisabeth's external politics was the defeat of the Spanish Armada which tried to invade England and control the English Channel. The country had gained considerable prestige, but Elisabeth never again committed her whole fleet in battle at once. Elisabeth's last years were tainted by the cumulative strain of a war economy, the Irish crisis, Essex's rebellion and series of localized famines. These years mark also the first key phase of the English housing revolution. Probate inventories suggest that the average size of the Tudor house was three rooms at the beginning of the dynasty. Towards the end of Elizabethan's reign it was four or five rooms, but after 1610-40 saw the figure rise to six or more rooms. 1.5. The Stuarts The population of England had been growing to a steady progression of economic output and on the family planning habits of the population. In 1600 England consisted of a series of regional economies achieving self-sufficiency. Most market towns were places where the produce of the area was displayed and sold. By the end of the century, England had for long been the largest free trade area in Europe. Gradually, a single, integrated national economy was emerging. Agricultural and manufactured goods exchanging led to the shop age. By the 1690, most towns, even the small ones, had shops in the modern sense. The towns, in which hundreds gathered regularly for local courts and commissions, encouraged the service and leisure industries. Some small centres of manufacturing towns, such as Birmingham and Sheffield or cloth-furnishing towns, such as Manchester or Leeds or shipbuilding towns such as Chatham, became notable urban centres. Some of them increasingly concentrated on the sales of services. The age of the spa and the resort was dawning. Patterns of migration begin to be admitted: young people moved to take apprentiship or tenancies at farms. The other was subsistence migration of those often travelling long distances to find employment opportunities. An increasing number of people were forcibly transported as a punishment for criminal acts, particularly in the 165o's. In addition to the transatlantic settlers, an unknown number of crossed the English Channel and settled in Europe making for religious houses or mercenary military activity. Whereas the sixteenth century had seen England become a noted haven for religious refugees, in the 17th century, Europe and America received religious refugees from England. The only significant immigration in the 17th century was of Jews who flocked in after the Cromwellian regime had removed the legal bars on their residence and of French Huguenots escaping from Louis XIV's persecution in the 1680s. From social point of view England of the 17th century was that of gentry and peerage. Everybody had an economic status: husbandman, cobbler, merchant, attorney, etc, but the peerage and gentry were noble, everybody else was ignoble or churchlish. The gentleman or nobleman derived his income and he had time and leisure to devote himself to arts of government. He was independent in judgement and trained to make decisions. He rented out his lands, wore cloth and learn read Latin; the yeoman was a working farmer, wore leather, 35

read and wrote in English. By the end of the 17th century, there was an emerging social group of men whose interests, wealth and power grew out of: they invested in trade, government loans, in mineral resources, in improved farming. It became known as aristocracy. While rivalries in the colonial spheres were intensifying, no territories were ceded and expansion continued steadily. The monarchy lacked coercitive power: there was no standing army or organized police power. The guards which protected the king and performed ceremonial functions were created by the Restoration. The Crown's control of schools and universities, of pulpits, of the press was never complete, and it may have declined with time. The dynasty was dominated by several Civil Wars. It is probable that at some moments in more than on in ten of all adult males was in arms. Armies had to be raised in every region and money and administration were to sustain them. The two traditional war parties were the King's army and the Parliament's Army but the hostility of the populace to both sides made the fruits of victory hard to pick. To win the wars, Parliament used to impose massive taxation and granted extensive powers, even arbitrary to its agents. Their source was mainly religious and against centralized military rule. But the people became convinced that the Civil War had never solved anything, but a much more radical transformation of political institutions was necessary. From 1649-53 England was governed by the Rump Parliament which assumed unto itself all legislative and executive powers. Oliver Cromwell decided to call an assembly of saints whose task was to institute a programme that he hoped it would bring the people to recognize and to own the promises and prophecies of God. From December 1653 until his death in September 1658, Cromwell ruled England as Lord Protector and Head of the State. By executing Charles, the first Stuart, Cromwell cut himself from justifications of political authority rooted in the past. His self justification lay in the future, in the belief that he was fulfilling God's will. To achieve the future promissed by God, Cromwell governed arbitrarily. Ironically, he was offered the Crown. He became source of instability of the regime he ran. With his death, the republic collapsed. Eighteen months after Cromwell's death, one section of the army decided that free elections should be held and Charles II was recalled and his reign was declared to have begun at the moment of his father's death. The Restoration Settlement sought to limit royal powers by handing power back from the centre to the localities. He sought to restore the Church of England, but with reforms that would make it acceptable to the majority of moderate Puritans. Finally he assented to the Act of Uniformity which restored the Old Church and promoted religious tolerance for all non Anglicans. His son James continued his father's policy so he issued a Declaration of Indulgence giving the Catholics and any other religion on the territory full freedom which is still in force nowadays. The abolition of monarchy and the experience of republican rule had a very limited impact. The democratic ideologies were incompatible with the development of a global British Empire that started to expand into the West Indies and along the Eastern seaboard of North America, into extensive trade networks with South America, West Africa, India and Indonesia. This could only be sustained by a massive increase in the ability of the state in the second Civil War of 1688. The British revolution does not stand as a turning point. It may have achieved little, even less about political and social institutions, but it deeply affected the intellectual values: it gave way to the age of pragmatism and individualism. When John Locke wrote in his "Treaties of the Government" (1690) that all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order, their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit without asking the leave of depending upon the will of any man, he was proclaiming a message only 36

made possible by the disillusionment with old ideas, but a message which was to make much possible in the decades to come. 1.6. The Making of the British Empire The early sixteenth century marked a new period in the British Isles History. In the 14th and 15th century, after the fall of the Norman Empire, independent centres of local powers were spread in many areas of the land and by the mid 17th century they were incorporated within a larger whole. Large scale emigration was characteristic for the twelfth and thirteen century, and Ireland became the first attraction for colonists from Scotland, Wales and England. In Scotland, the government of Elisabeth enjoyed a good deal of influence which increased when James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English Crown in 1603 and the country witnessed the gradual incorporation within a London-based empire. In 165o Oliver Cromwell's army conquered Scotland that came into a parliamentary union with England in 1707. So far as Ireland was concerned, it was under Thomas Cromwell, during the 1530's, that the Irish magnates were stopped in their ascendancy to rule the country. The Irish system of land holding, based upon the rights of the kin would be replaced by the British freehold transmitted by primogeniture. The pro-English landlords of the east-coast rose in favour of a peaceful extension of Anglicisation, according to the model of Wales that was seen as a "backward" society, successfully "modernized" under English auspices. The extension of southern English influence of "law and order" to Northern England, Wales and Ireland were linked to the religious changes of the sixteenth-century in Europe. It was during Cromwell's years that the government was placed behind a Lutheran-style Reformation when the symbols of change were the royal supremacy, the translation of the Bible into vernacular, clerical marriage and the dissolution of the monasteries. Monarchy, Reformation and common law became all powerful symbols of a national unity. The conditions for the emergence of an empire were due to economic and political developments: the rise of cloth industry that led to a prosperous society, and the political, administrative centralization around London that made possible its authority upon the rest of the British Isles. The culture of London, with relatively high rates of literacy, growing number of grammar schools, the expansion of colleges and halls at Oxford and Cambridge, a growth of industry and the development of the city as a financial and trading centre were taking on a character different from that of the north and west. The civil war of the Roses made possible the rise of a monarchy based upon the power of London. There were also the House of Commons and the House of Lords that came also to reflect the political and cultural dominance of the South East of the territory. The impact of the Reformation provided an additional impulse towards the assertion of full cultural dominance by the South over the rest of England and Wales. The decisive decades were the 1530, 40, and 50 during which the ideas of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin made rapid headway in the literature areas of the South and East. During the 1530's Thomas Cromwell dissolved the monasteries and the chantries that were dedicated to saying messes and prayers for the dead. The spread of the Reformation ideas in the South determined the social reactions in the North and West against the changes in Church known under the name of "Pilgrimage of Grace", indicating unmistakably that the North attempted to put an end to the Southern encroachment. On the contrary, Robert Kelt's rebellion in the South, pressed for the carrying out of the more radical aspects of the Reformation, by a wider access to education for the poor and the freeing of bondmen. The religious development in the South is usually considered as a sign of progress, but the values of Northern culture deserve the same 37

sympathetic treatment as it placed loyalty to "good lordship", "blood" and "name" above loyalty to a bureaucratic southern-based Crown. The Union of Wales with England during the years 1536-42 led to the opening up of Wales to direct intervention by the Westminster government. By the end of the seventeenth century an English empire had come into existence throughout the British Isles. The Acts of Union became parts of the administrative Revolution, but their intention did not necessarily happen on the ground. Much changed after the Acts of Union, but much also remained unchanged, as the distinctive cultures of North, South and West, embedded in kingship, land-holding and general outlook, did not appear overnight. The power of families created at these times was not to be challenged until the nineteenth century after industrialization had wrought its own revolution. In Wales, as in Ireland, the Reformation initially made little impact at the popular level. A Welsh translation of the Bible was produced in 1588 for use in the churches, but in so dispersed and rural a society, with many local dialects, no single translation sufficed. In some ways, the Counter Reformation was more successful. Rural Wales remained, like rural Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, very much a traditional society in which local institutions such as wise man of the village, the fair, and the wake and kingship ties retained their hold in the face of attempts of "Anglicisation" by an English oriented gentry and clergy. It was not until the 18th century that these popular cultures finally collapsed. The impact of the English food market was also a powerful instrument of social change. Farmers in the Welsh Lowlands responded to the English demand for meat, butter, cheese and wheat. Pressures grew for enclosure on the English model. The gentry attended the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In Scotland radical religious and social change came a generation later than in Wales. The Bible translation of the Bible was an important instrument of Anglicisation. The history of Ireland during this period has followed its own distinctive path. The sixteenth century saw the collapse of feudalism. The revolts which took place in Ireland during the sixteenth century aimed to retain an established feudal world against the unwelcome pressure of a "modernising" state. Cultural differences also played their part in leading to charges of atrocity and counter-atrocity. Nevertheless, the success of the English administration was supported by powerful interests within Ireland, notably the towns. The social and political revolution was enforced by the English common law. It was now possible for an Irish parliament to meet and draw upon representatives of shires and boroughs from all over Ireland. Political and administrative influence passed into the hands of those Protestant settlers who had arrived during the Elizabethan reign. Religious criteria were introduced as a condition for inheriting land. The aim of the Crown policy in the sixteenth century had been to create a class of landlords and tenants holding their estates under the common law. Social unrest took place at different moments when the English monarchy faced severe political crisis in both Scotland and England. They were accompanied by widespread killing and punitive actions. An English-style Parliament was set up and the term Confederation was used for political reasons. During the confederate period the divisions between north and south reemerged accentuated by the plantation of Ulster. The Cromwellian conquest brought about the downfall of the Old English interests in Ireland. The New English Planters now styled themselves as "Old Protestants" to distinguish themselves from the "New Protestants" of the Cromwell army.

38

After 1688 France was to become a permanent rival of England in the battle for supremacy overseas. The Nine Year War (1688-1697) and the War of the Spanish succession (1702-13) involved Britain in both Continental and colonial warfare and the social burden of debt grew. The successive governments kept borrowing and the function of the taxes which were raised was merely to pay the interest charges on the debt. The achievement s of these years had a price in the social tensions and political conflicts that made possible the "South Sea Bubble", the general financial crash which went with it. The financial interests represented by the Bank of England had enjoyed a more than a favourable return on its investment during the wars. The Torry ministers of Queen Anne had encouraged the formation of the South Sea Company in 1711. It s management members had a strong interest in quick profits that depended heavily on the seas which offered the most promising prospects, deriving from the Anglo-Spanish treaty that had given the Company a monopoly of the Spanish slave-trade and a valuable share in the Spanish American markets for European goods. Speculators were encouraged constantly to invest and the constant inflows of funds justified new issues of stock. The inevitable was created by corruption and the nave investing public: when confidence eventually failed and the bubble burst, the consequences were catastrophic, particularly for those who had sold substantial assets in lands or other forms of property to buy at absurdly inflated prices. The Parliament rushed through a statute severely restricting joint-stock companies for the future, but more dramatic action was needed to protect the National Debt and save the face of the Court. Moreover, the Bubble was part of an international crisis with matching disasters in Paris and Amsterdam. Great scandals disfigured public life at this time. The South Sea Bubble is a mirror of the emerging early prosperity mid-eighteenth century. The general climate of this period involved anxiety on the part of the Church men. Theological speculations and polemical debate marked the progress of the early Enlightenment in England. But it also witnessed a considerable expansion of arts: theatre, with its political role that determined mounting campaigns of effective criticism: John Gay's opera depicted the Court of George II as a kind of thieves' kitchen; Sir Robert Walpole was also a satire subject of Henry Fielding: Pope's Dunciad, Swift's Travels, Bolimbroke's Craftsman all are products of remarkable polemical social satire. The characteristics of the century literature are the retreat into classicism, the appeal to country values, the attraction of the rural idyll and the criticism of the emerging moneyed world. The same satire of the 18th century society was the subject of painting. The industrial revolution locates its birth firmly in the mi-eighteenth century. Low food prices permitted higher spending on consumer goods and thereby encouraged the newer industries of the most striking developments was the construction of a nation wide turnpike system. By 1770, when the canals were beginning to offer stiff competition for freight, the turnpike system supplied a genuinely national network of relatively efficient transport, reducing to little further improvement until 1820, when Macadam and Telford were to achieve further striking savings. By the 1750s the full importance of the thirteen American colonies began to be appreciated not only because of the competition with France but also because of the implications of domestic terms. Urban improvement reflected the economic growth and raise of material life: the emphasis was on space, hygiene, and order. Many of the better preserved Georgian towns of today owe their character to this period of urban development. Sewers and water-mains were extensively laid or redesigned; streets and pedestrian walks were cobbled and paved. Houses were systematically numbered, squares cleared, restored and adorned with statuary and flora. Village architecture change more gradually: the parliamentary enclosure acts had an important economic impact. Substantial capitalist farmers were coming to dominate, 39

becoming a close counterpart in the development of industrial urban society. Against dearth and high prices, the bottom social classes, the poor organized combinations to defeat their master and clubs to provide an element of insurance, but the attempts to enforce the old apprenticeship laws were ineffective against the joint efforts of capitalist manufacturers and unskilled laborers to cheat them. The friendly clubs intended to provide pensions and sickness benefits. But the measures to suppress riots were rarely excessive and punishment was used in an exemplary way on a small number of those involved. If the poor looked to the state in vain, they looked to Church with but faint hope. The Church of the eighteenth century has a poor reputation for what would today be called social policy. Charity is voluntary and informal. Subscription and associations built schools, endowed hospitals, established poor houses, and supervised benefit societies. The paradox is that natural religion in the early 18th century had produced a growing emphasis on monks rather than faith. Charity was the most obvious expression of religious devotion, but rational religion did not offer much spiritual consolation to those who lacked the education on the intellect to be rational. It was left to that rebellious daughter of the Church, the Methodist movement to offer the poor recompense in the next world for their sufferings in this. England was the outstanding example in eighteenth century Europe of a plutocratic society. Most important of all perhaps was the emphasis laid on the flexible definition of the English Gentleman. Anyone, it appeared, who chose to dress like a gentleman was treated like one. Middle class, even lower-class aped the fashion, manners and opinions of polite society. This, it seems dear, was the authentic mark of a society in which all social values, distinctions and customs gave way before the sovereign power of cash. The sense of morals was built by equal/democratic treatment of the people, regardless their rank, without remission for noblemen. The system provides a crucial clue to the social stability of the period. The national income agricultural contribution went down to a third; land became the subject of investment, trade, and manufacturing. It was a considerable distance stretched between the mercantile fortunes in the towns ruling the capital, and the small tradesmen or craftsmen who were the backbone of commercial England "the new nation of shopkeepers", a phrase often attributed to Napoleon but in fact used by Adam Smith considerably earlier. Frequently self-made and always dependent on aggressive use of their talents, they were genuine "capitalists" in terms of investment of their labour and their profits in entrepreneurial activity, whether commercial or professional. Politically, their supremacy was rarely challenged in towns and in rural parishes they more nearly represented the ruling class, the lofty oligarchs and lordly magnates. Education was represented by grammar schools that offered scholarly education to relatively humble children, but the clergy teachers, although they did their best, rarely surmounted the discouraging effects of low salaries and poor support. The Scottish contribution to the European achievement of the age in the fields as diverse as moral philosophy, political economy and medical science was substantial. The disciplined and innovative instruction offered new foundations like Hertford in Oxford, or the genuine progress of mathematical scholarship at Cambridge. The characteristically middle class devices of subscription and fees brought into existence a great mass of practical, progressive education designed to fit the sons of middle class to staff the professions and the world of business. The result was emphatically a middle-class culture, with an unmistakable pragmatic tone. The Society of Arts founded in 1758, was an appropriate expression of the pragmatic spirit. Even the monthly magazines, designed primarily with a view to entertainment, featured myriad of inventions and speculations of an age deeply committed to the exploration of the physical world. 40

The 18th century will also be associated with the amusements of a fashionable oligarchic society, represented by the great spa towns: Bath, Tunbridge, Dulwich, Epsom, Sydenham Wells and others provided attractive resorts for those seeking country air and mineral salts. Dancing, playing cards, tea-drinking and general social mixing were commonplace by the middle of the century. The cultural achievements of the mid-century required neither sophistication nor subtlety. The moralistic interest in the social life takes the form of adventure stories of Smolett and Fielding and later of sentimental movement towards the domestic morality of the middle class with its stress on family life and its devotion to Calvinistic conceptions of virtue against heroic, but also on hierarchical notions of personal honour. The mechanics of politics were all influenced by awareness of large political nation that led to polemical warfare in the newspapers, prints and pamphlets. The social changes whish made their mark on mid-Georgian England were profound, exclusive and of the utmost consequence for the future. The Imperial civil servants planned a new and rosy future for the transatlantic colonies. The American colonies would form a vast, loyal market for British manufacturers, a continuing source of essential row materials and of revenues for the Treasury. The West Indies would also maximize profits of a flourishing slave trade, and provide a steady flow of tropical products. The exotic character of the new possessions, made the impact of the new empire particularly powerful: men returned from service in the East India Company used their allegedly-gotten wealth to buy their way in Parliament. The "nabobs" arrived. American empire was even greater. The cyclical crisis in Anglo-American relations began with the Stamp Act and culminated with the rebellion war in 1775. The outcome was determined in favour of the New United States. The thirteen colonies were lost irretrievably. The Americans defended the rights of the seventeenth century Englishmen. In due course, the outcome was determined in favour of the United States; but almost more important than the overseas consequences of the American war were the domestic implications. Difficult imperial questions were treated with a mixture of caution and innovations. The Irish had demanded parliamentary independence of Westminster 1782 and achieved a measure of home rule. In 1791 Canada was given a settlement which was to endure, albeit uneasily, until 8967. The economic problems caused an industrial society, and fundamental questions were raised about government, Parliament and the political system generally. An outcry of reformers rose against the waste and inefficiency of the court system. But the mid-1780 there was a growing sense of commercial revival and financial recovery: prosperity removed the stimulus to reform, more efficiently than any argument could. 1.7. Mid-eighteenth century Revolution Time Industrialization was gradual and relative in its impact. Karl Marx understood that capitalist industrialization failed to improve conditions of the working class. After 1917 Soviet Russia tried to prove the planned industrialization a viable alternative that proved finally to be a fiasco. The liberal economists restated the case for industrialization achieved through the operation of the free market. What market Britain off were qualitative changes, notably in patterns of marketing, technology and government intervention. Feudal title became effective ownership, the key to commercial exploitation. Trade more than industry still characterized the British economy. Besides agriculture, three sectors were dominant coal, iron and textile. The first two provided much of the capitalist equipment, infrastructure and options for future development; but textiles made up over 5o percent of export. Wool had always been England's great speciality, though linen dominant on the Continent was expanding in Ireland and Scotland. Cotton rose largely through its adaptability to machine 41

production and the rapid increase in the supply of raw materials that slavery in the South America made it possible. The rising demand meant that resistance to its introduction by the labour force was overcome, John Kay's shuttle loom destroyed when he tried to introduced it but taken up along with James Hardgrave's hand operated spinning Jenny and Richard Arkwright's water-powered spinning frame. Cotton technology spread to other textiles slowly to linen and wool. But it also boosted engineering and metal construction. James Watt patented his separate condenser steam engine in 1774. The increasingly sophisticated technology required by the steam engine enhanced both its further application to locomotives in 1804, to shipping in 1812 and the development of the machine tool industry, particularly associated with Henry Maudlay and his invention of the screw-cutting lathe. The creation of a transport infrastructure made for a golden age of Civil engineering: watercarriage, horse-power, and mind-power. The country's awful roads were repaired and regulated. "Dead-water cannels" using pound locks were being built in Ireland. The water link between Manchester with a local coalfield and Liverpool showed the importance of water transport for industrial growth. Companies of gentry, merchants, manufacturers and bankers managed to link all the major navigable rivers. The French Revolution was welcome in Britain. It was celebrated by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Robert Burns (Scots Wha'Hae'), Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution), Tom Paine "The Rights of Man". But the postwar Torry government after 1815 encountered a new set of literary radicals: Coleridge and Wordsworth gathered to the bosom of the forces of order, were succeeded by Byron and Shelley. The new literary reviews, the rich culture of popular protest, from the new paper of Henry Hetherington and Richard Carlyle to the bucolic radicalism of William Cobbet and the visuary millenarism of William Blake. The most of the war Britain avoided European involvement. It was the time when Britain gained some other geographical areas: India, where she achieved effective dominance, through Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and Ceylon and took over South Africa from the Dutch, and established a claim on Egypt. Informally, England secured a trading hegemony over the former Spanish colonies of Central and South America. Before 1789 Britain had been part of a continental community. After 1815 Britain remained at a distance from European life. A diffuse blend and anarchism to religions millenarism marked the working-class movement up to Chartism. Economic and social theory moved towards the ides of "Incorporation". The intellectuals accepted the notion of political and social evolution. Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1859. Although no friend to liberalism, Thomas Carlyle's commendation of self-reliance and the work ethic gave individuals an almost religious quality. The middle class read "industrial novels", such as Disraeli's "Sybil", anxious about and intrigued by conditions in the great towns, trying to personalize their problems and reconcile them with individualist morality. In 1832 an appalling cholera epidemic, sweeping through Europe from the Middle East probably killed over 30.000 in Britain. It dramatized the problem of rapid urban growth. The new industrial towns became smaller, densely packed. A tolerable house might take a quarter a quarter of a skilled man's weekly income and few families were ever in a position to afford this. If housing was bad, sanitation was worse. The new industrial society brought into question the organization of education. British industry was still dominated by textiles, and the market for them was both finite and subject to increasing competition from America and Europe. The industry was overcapitalized and the adoption of each new invention meant that the return on capital decreased. Real wages increased only slowly but not sufficiently to counter the decline of the hand work trades and the high marginal costs of urban life. In the 1840s events in Ireland seemed to bring the revolution perceptibly nearer. The potato blight of 1845 destroyed the basis of the country's population growth: between 1845 and 1850 up to 42

a million died of the consequences of malnutrition and emigrated between 1845 and 55. The Irish had been wounded too deeply. They became more aggressive by the famine, and would in the future count on the embittered emigrants' brethren in America. The new railway transport system made more money from passengers than freight. The old long-service army of about 42 per cent Irish, and 14 percent Scots in 1830 poorly paid and wretchedly accommodated, kept the peace in Ireland and the colonies. In many small campaigns Britain's spheres of influence and trade advanced in India and in the "Opium Wars" of 18390-42 in China, although now on behalf of free trading merchants rather than the fading Chartered Companies. Early in 1848, Marx and Engels drafted the Communist Manifesto" in London, prophesizing on behalf of a small group of German socialists, a European revolution, to be led by the workers of those countries most advanced towards capitalism. Paris rose up against Louis Philippe on February, then Berlin, Vienna and the Italian States erupted. But Britain did not follow. There was no repetition of 1793. The republican government in Paris, who wanted to maintain co-operation with Britain, acted firmly against its own radicals, and did not try to export revolution. The great Exhibition of 1851 celebrated the ascendancy of the United Kingdom in the marketplace of the world, although some of the Continental exhibits, especially those from the German proved to be of higher quality. The success of the Exhibition astonished contemporaries. Statistical analysis made on these occasions, revealed some important factors: for the fist time more people in the mainland lived in towns than in the countryside, so the growth of the population was due to the movement of the laborers that left the land for the towns leaving the lands deserted, although agriculture remained the largest simple industry. The situation led to the "Revolt in the Field in 1870's that was a motley affair as out-of-work laborers brought in the troops to harvest to crops. Another fact revealed by the statistics of the Exhibition Year revealed that England and Wales were only partly churchgoing. So England in the 1850s moved to be increasingly urban, perhaps increasingly secular and increasingly non-Anglican. Nevertheless, a great religious revival in 186t0 added a number of religious activists: Roman Catholic, nonconformists and even scientists found voices within this broadly based movement for progress. Economically, "free trade" became a philosophy of political, social and economic organization. John Stuart Mill's "Principles of Political Economy", first published in 1848, the handbook of Mid Victorian liberalism, put the point in a nutshell: the state should stay aside. The individualist concept of the time gained also from the writings of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species" (1859). Evolution was equal to progress whether on the individual, national or global level. The laws of science considered as belonging to the positive concept were supposed to be obeyed by man. Consequently, Walter Bagehot, Herbert Spencer were strongly laissez-faire supporters. Individuals must acquire knowledge so that moral choices to be based on information, on self awareness and self-development, a s a result of the liberalism of free spirit in the mid Victorian society. The 1850-s saw a spectacular expansion of daily and Sunday newspapers, especially in the provinces: there were over 1000 newspapers in Victorian Britain: Daily Telegraph, The Times, etc. Free trade became also the central orthodoxy of the British politics in the absence of protective tariffs. The Free trade coincided with an economic boom, closely connected to entrepreneurial enthusiasm which all classes seem tom have shared. Even the distress caused when the cotton mills were cut off by the American Civil War was little. The British economy in Victorian period was extraordinary complex in its range of products and activities. It was strong in basic raw materials of an early coal and iron; an energetic manufacturing sector that 43

pressed forward with a huge range to the enormous variety of small manufactured goods which adorned Victorian houses, and, by their export, Victorianized the whole trading world. The intense industrial activity rested on a sound currency and on a banking system which gained an increasingly important role in the c\economy. The growth of towns intensified. By 1901 only one fifth of the population of England and Wales lived in what may be called "rural areas",. At the end of the century London and Leeds also absorbed large Jewish communities. Some towns were still planned by civically- minded local councils with parks, libraries, concert-halls and baths. The growing towns were dominated by the railways which created a nationally integrated economy. They transformed the centre of towns and made possible for better0off people to live away from the town centre by providing transport from the suburbs. Filth from the trains, chimneys of the factories and houses, noise from the carts and carriages and horses on the cobblestones were specific for the Victorian Age. Their dynamism was partly determined by the machinery exhibited at the Great Exhibition. High farming-capital spending on fertilizers, drainage, buildings, farm machinery, roads linking with the new country side led to considerable modernization. Although in 1868m 80% of food consumed in the United Kingdom was still home-produced, the significance of agriculture in the economy declined as towns grew. All this left rural society demoralized and neglected; Thomas Hardy's novels covered almost exactly the years of agricultural depression, captured majestically the uncontrollable and distant forces which seemed to determine the fate of the country inhabitants. The urbanization of the mass of the population and the decline of the rural areas not surprisingly had profound social consequences for all classes of the population. The standards of living of some members of the laboring population increased quite fast. Some money was available for more than the essentials of food, housing and clothing. Rows of neat houses, terraced or semi-detached, with small gardens, often both at front and rear of the house, testified to the successful propertied aspirations of this new societies. This surplus coincided not with a fall in the birth rate. This falsified the predictions of the classical political economists from Malthus to Marx. The control of family size opened the way to growing prosperity of the British working class. The growing prosperity of the "regular standard earners" led them to join trade unions as a means of safeguarding their gains of better wages and conditions of work. They guarded their privileges and hard-won ascendancy among their fellow employees given them by their qualifications through apprenticeship or their responsibility for skilled machine working. The steady demand for skilled labour reinforced the influence and status of the craft unions which existed and not only for the purpose of wage negotiations, but also for a variety of self-help benefits and the trade unions were closely linked to: funeral, sickness and unemployment benefits, etc If the trade unions was the institutional expression of a growing working class, self-awareness, shared leisure activities especially for the male wage-earner, further encouraged the sense of solidarity. Football games, founded by public schools and university clubs, but essentially professional by the mid 1880s became the regular relaxation of males in industrial towns. The teams encouraged a local patriotism, enthusiasm and self identification on the part of the followers. But the growing popularity of the socially integrative game of cricket represents the survival of individuality despite industrialization and division of labour. The trip to the seaside, organized individually or by the firm became for many an annual excursion. It became traditional, and extended to rambling and cycling trips into the country side. The development of a popular press and the rapid nation-wide communication made possible by the telegraph encouraged the other great working class recreation: betting especially on horses. Diets improved a little, with meat, milk, vegetables in addition to bread, 44

potatoes and beer. The quality of housing became better: houses and people became cleaner, as soap became cheaper and generally available. Books, photographs, the odd item of decorative furniture began to adorn the regularly employed workman's home. Respectability, in the sense of having the use of money to demonstrate some degree of control of living style, some sense of settled existence, some rising of the horizon beyond the weekly wage packet, became a goal encouraged by the spread of hire-purchase companies. By the end of the century a far more complex social pattern had emerged: the professions, businessmen, bankers, large shopkeepers represented the lower middle class. The service sector had become also much greater and more complex: a vast army of white collar workers managed and several in the retailing, banking, accounting, advertising and trading sectors. Women began to expect more from life than breeding children and running the household. They played an important role in charities, churches, local politics, arts, especially music. Some attended universities lectures and take examinations, but not degrees, but from the late 1879 women's colleges were founded at Oxford and Cambridge. The professions remained barred to women, but a few succeeded in practicing as doctors. The British government sought successfully to devolve authority passing the Dominion of Canada Act in 1867, and the Commonwealth of Australia Act in 1900. Yet, the best 40 years of the century saw the annexation of the Pacific. Britain was the world's trader, with an overwhelming dominance of world shipping. In some areas, British attempts to trade were supported by arms a notable example being the Opium wars. But "the chief jewel in the imperial crown was India. To safeguard it, and the route to that subcontinent, various annexations were made: Burma, Malaya, Egypt and Sudan came under British control; South Africa became literally Britain's chief imperial jewel after the War against the Boers and the Zulus, when gold was discovered in Transvaal. Towards the mid 19th century the overwhelming superiority of the British economy was much diminished. The USA, Germany, France and Russia were all substantial industrial powers. Britain became one among several, no longer the unaccompanied trail-blazer. In the 1880 and 1920 the influence of social Darwinism began to change options: the struggle for the survival of the fittest began to be seen less in terms of individuals and more in terms of competition between nations. "National efficiency" became the slogan intended to suggest willingness to use government power to organize and legislate for an "imperial race" fit to meet the challenges of the world. 1.8. Contemporary and Modern Times History On the eve of the First World War Britain represented a classical picture of a civilised liberal democracy on the verge of dissolution, racked by tensions and strains with which its sanctions and institutions were unable to cope. The miners, railwaymen and transport workers claimed for their union recognition and a 48 hour week. In Ireland a state of civil war developed between the Protestant Ulster and the Catholic south. India and Egypt were troubled by nationalist movements. An underlying mood united purpose gripped the British nation. After the declaration of War, on the 4th August, a time of panic settled. Only dramatic measures by the Treasury and the Bank of England preserved the national currency and credit. Manufacturing and commerce tried desperately to adjust to the challenges of war against the background of war. The broad consensus about the rightness of the war was not eroded over the terrible years. Eventually, by 1917, sheer war weariness was taking its toll, quite apart from other factors such as the growing militancy from organized labour and the Messianic appeal of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The broad mass of the population retained its faith that war was just and necessary, and that it must be the fought until the total surrender of the German enemy, whatever the cost. 45

Voluntary recruitment proved more successful than the compulsory method of conscription thereafter. The psychological and moral impact of those appealing years sank deep into the memory and the outlook of the British people. They profoundly influenced the literary sensibilities of a whole generation. A major factor in the wide spread popularity of the war and also in its subsequent bitter unpopularity was the involvement of the whole population and the entire social and economic fabric in total war. It brought about a massive industrial and social transformation, a collectivist control. The original model was conceived by the Ministry of Munitions that became the engine of a massive central machine which invigorated the industrial structure through its "men of push and go". It achieved a huge impact as well on much different areas as social welfare, housing policy and the status of women. The state undertook the control over railways, merchant and shipping and the traditional system of industrial relations was wrenched into totally new patterns. The war ensured a continuing corporate status for the unions and also for employers, combined in the Federation of British Industry. The appearance of powerful businessmen in key departments of central government represented the transformation in the relationship of industrial and political leadership. Edward VII's Liberal England was being turned into a corporate state, almost what a later generation would term "Great Britain Limited" Leftist opponents of the war noticed that the imperatives of the war were achieved far more for social reform than had all the campaigns of the trade unions and of progressive humanitarians in half a century past. Fresh layers were being added to the technocratic professional, and civil service elite that governed Britain in years of peace. The administrative and managerial class expanded massively. Social reformers such as William Beveridge or Seebohm Rowntree, even the socialist Beatrice Webb became influential: wages went up; working conditions improved. Education policy changed and elementary education was made free and opportunities were sought from the elementary to the secondary and higher levels of education. Governmental inquiries opened up new vistas for state housing schemes, an area almost neglected before 1914. Hundreds of thousands of working class dwellings were subsidized by local authorities. Public health became a public concern too as medical arrangements, better conditions for children and old people and nursing mothers and the national insurance system were improved. The war was also a time of women emancipation. Nurse Edith Cavell, one of the thousands of women that served at the front, often in medical field hospitals, that was martyred by the Germans for assisting in the escape of British and French prisoners of war in Belgium, contributed to the public esteem of women in general. Women found vast new opportunities in clerical, administrative work, in many other unfamiliar tasks previously reserved for men only. The very dissolution wrought by total war exerted powerful pressures in eroding the sex barriers which had restricted women over the decades. Externally, the war years encouraged further changes. It was, in all senses, a profoundly imperial war, fought for the empire as well as for king and country. Much was owed to the military and other assistance from Australia New Zeeland, Canada, South Africa and India. Anzac Day (with memories of Suvla Bay, Gallipoli) became a tragic, symbolic event in the Australian calendar. A Imperial Cabinet of Prime Ministers was convened in 1917 to assist the Cabinet of the mother country. In commerce, imperial preference was becoming a reality. The Imperial mystique was a powerful one at this time. The main architect of the day, Edwin Leytens, inspired by William Morris and Herbert Baker turned their talents to pomp and circumstance by rebuilding the city of Delhi in order 46

to symbolise the classical authority. The imperial idea was taken further than ever before by the secret treaties that ensured Britain being left with an imperial domain larger than ever after the war, with vast new territories in the Middle East and up to the Persian Gulf. Yet, in reality it was all becoming increasingly impractical to maintain. Long before 1914, the financial and military constraints upon an effective imperial policy were becoming clear, especially in India with its growing Congress movement. New and increasingly effective nationalist upraised against the British rule. By mid 1918, in Ireland Sinn Fein partisans and their republican creed had won over almost all the twenty-six southern Irish counties. By the end of the war, southern Ireland was virtually under martial law, resistant to conscription, in a state of near rebellion against the Crown and the Protestant ascendancy. Indians and Egyptians were likely to pay careful heed. The war left a legacy of a more isolated Britain, whose imperial role was already being swamped by wider transformations in the post-war world. The continuity between war and peace was confirmed by Lloyd George's overwhelming electoral triumph at the elections of December 1918; he was acclaimed, almost universally, as "the man who won the war", as the most dominant political leader since Cromwell. In Ireland, Sinn Fein captured 73 seats out of 81 in the south: is representatives withdrew from Westminster and set up their own unofficial parliament or Dail in Dublin. Socio-economic normality was being rapidly restored. Many of the war time controls and the state collectivism disappeared, major industries were returned to private hands. A financial policy to entail a deflationary approach was adopted, to ensure the return to the gold standard and to contract the note issue expanded so rapidly during the war. The Prime Minister, Lloyd George was seen as a social reformer anxious to build "a land fit for heroes". It was conceived a programme to extend health and spread universal unemployment insurance, and a programme for subsidized houses. But soon it became clear that life was not to be restored to the same patterns. The loss of the foreign markets and the sale of overseas investments determined disruptive economic problems. From January 1922 an Irish Free State, consisting of the twenty-six Catholic counties of southern Ireland was created with just the six Protestant counties of Ulster in the north-east left within the United Kingdom. The government used tough methods, including emergency powers and the use of troops as strike breakers in dealing with national strikes by miners, railway men and many other workers (including police) in 1919-21. Thereafter the government failed to prevent massive unemployment from growing up and casting blight over the older industrial areas. The peace settlement was increasingly unpopular. The economist J.M. Keyness, in his book Economic Consequences of Peace became rapidly a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic as it showed conclusively that the reparations imposed on Germany would lead to its financial ruin and thereby to the weakening of European economy. Britain refused any longer to act as the "police man of the world". The empire might be larger than ever, but it must be accompanied by a withdrawal from commitments in Europe. There was a constant flux and upheaval in other spheres of public life as well. In Wales and Scotland there were small movements of intellectuals, which suggested that the very unity of the kingdom could itself be threatened. The two nationalist parties were formed on the Irish model, Plaid Cymru in Wales in 1925 and the National Party of Scotland in 1928. In the later twenties, the land settled down into a pattern that endured until 1940s. The population continued to grow, if more slowly, but within it there were deep and growing contrasts, as younger writers, such George Orwell were later to emphasize. There were many housing developments in the form of suburban middle class estates. A larger proportion of the population emerged from the war with middle-class aspirations home ownership; a quit 47

family environment; more leisure pursuits (that were over a million cars in private hands by 1930 of which the most celebrated was the "Baby Austin"); domestic comforts and mechanical aids such a Hoovers. For junior managers, civil servants, schoolteachers, skilled workers and others, members of white collar administrative and professional groups that had expanded so dramatically between 1880 and 1918, the twenties were not such a bad time, with prices starting to fall, hoses more freely available on easy terms, and more leisure interests to pursue. Newer technologically-advanced industries were mushrooming, notably the modern car plants of Herbert Austin at Longbridge and William Morris at Cowley, both in Midlands. Yet, for many other areas, it was a time of growing despair and disillusion. The countryside, for instance, was sunk in depression after the brief heady revival of the war years. The rural population steadily declined, especially in the more mechanised agricultural sector of the wheat growing areas of southern England. Prices of farm products fell; the level of rural incomes declined, "the green revolution" vastly enlarged the number of landowners in the 1918-26 periods, the greatest transformation in landholding since the Norman Conquest. Along with damp, unsanitary housing and poor schools and public services went appalling figures of child illness and mortality, tuberculosis for the middle-aged, lung disease for miners, physical deformity for the old. There was a markedly lower life expectancy in the older industrial regions of the north, Wales and Scotland, contrasted with the country towns and spas of English south-east and the west Midlands. Yet this growing social division occasioned surprisingly little revolt or protest at that time. It was because the warm solidarity of the working class world which generated its own values, culture and entertainment, even during the depression years. The relics of that period the workingmen's clubs, and libraries; the vibrant world of miner's lodge, the choir and brass bands; the credit base provided by the "co-op' in working class communities testify to the strength and optimism of working class life even in these gloomy years. 1.9. The Twentieth Century The crash in the American Stock Exchange in October1929 followed by a downward spiral of trade, and unemployment, was beyond the reach of any government to correct. Beyond the worldwide forces of over- production and a slump in demand, there were factors peculiar to Britain alone. There was here an industrial structure unduly geared to a declining range of traditional industries, coal, steel, textiles, and shipbuilding. There was a history of low investment, over mining and inefficient work practices intensified by a culture that, for decades had elevated humane disciplines and gentlemanly virtues in place of business education or entrepreneurial skills. The entire industrial and manufacturing base contracted with extreme violence. There was no sign of recovery until 1935. The rigours of a "life on the dole" with all the hopelessness and helplessness that were implied had become one to which the Great British people had become resigned or immune. A variety of political nostrums were suggested, from the collectivism of the Socialist League and later the Left Book Club, to the pure sectarianism of the tiny Communist Party who claimed to see the future working in Soviet Union. On the radical rights, Sir Oswald Mosley tried to create a British variant of Fascism with a mixture of corporate planning and anti-Semitism. Meanwhile the veteran socialist writers, Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in their different ways promoted the cause of a planned antiseptic scientific Utopia. After a long political turmoil, Chamberlain was the Prime Minister that led the recovery of the economy on the earlier part of the decade with much investment in housing and in consumer durables, and new affluence for advanced industrial zones. Emigration from older regions such as South Wales, Durham Cumberland and Scotland was balanced by new growth in the suburbs and centres of light industries. There were benefits for farmers in the form of milk and other 48

marketing schemes and production quotas, and advantages for urban and suburban residents such as improved transportation (the London Tube), extended gas and electricity services and cheap housing. In 1932 a Trade Conference held in Ottawa settled the new principles of a commercial system of tariffs and imperial preferences due to last until the 1970s. The thirties were a time of very low inflation, cheap private housing and a lot of growing choice for consumers. The motor car industries, electrical, chemical and textile concerns continued to thrive. An expansion of the service and professional sectors of the white-collar population was noticed; in the growing suburban communities there appeared smart shopping precincts, many new cinemas and football grounds. The semi-detached middle class housing stretched along the arterial roads and bit deep in the surrounding countryside, unhampered by environmental control designed to preserve the "green belts" Britain displayed in the thirties a surprising degree of stability in a European continent which saw totalitarianism engulf Germany, Italy and Austria and the French and Spanish republics cast into disarray. The social and cultural hierarchy changed very little. The monarchy retained its esteem by responding subtly to marginal changes in the outlook of the mass democracy Britain, in the thirties, showed being a land at peace with itself. But the mood began to change abruptly in 1937 through an external impact of foreign affairs. The public mood in the early thirties remained a passive one, even after the advent of Hitler in Germany in January 1933. Hiller marched into the Rhineland in early 1936, in direct contravention of the Versailles settlement. But only a few voices, like the isolated and unpopular Winston Churchill called for a military response. Earlier, the British public had generally endorsed the appeasement policy of the Foreign Office following the Italian invasion of Abyssiniaelected Republican government was subjected to invasion by a right wing Nationalist force led by General Franco, with later armed assistance from Italy and Germany, the British government adhered rapidly to "non-intervention", even if this meant the eventual downfall of democracy in Spain. At various levels, however, the public mood suddenly changes. Even the government began to turn its mind to the need to overhaul the national defenses, especially in the air. A new fighter-based air force was in the making, backed up by the latest technology invested in "radar' and other anti-craft and defense systems. Through men like Tizard and Lindemann, the voice of scientific innovation was heard in the corridors of power. By 1937 the rearmament programme was visibly under way. Jewish refugees from Germany brought the reality of Hitler's regime and of anti-Semitism home to British opinion. Even on the Labour left, trade union leaders turned vigorously against neo-pacifist Labour politicians who denied armed assistance to trade union and labour groups crushed in Fascist Germany and Austria. The German advance in 1938, the seizure of Austria and the subsequent threat to Czechoslovakia, ostensibly on the Sudeten Germans in the Western fringe of Bohemia, produced a national crisis of conscience. Chamberlain responded with managerial decisiveness. Rearmament was stepped up and new negotiations began with the engineering trade unions to try to build up munitions and aircraft. When Hitler took the fateful step of invading Poland in September, 1939, Chamberlain announced in a broadcast the next day that Britain had declared war to Germany. When war broke out in 1939 there was a unanimity that pervaded all regions and classes. As in 1914 the war was represented publicly as a crusade on behalf of oppressed nationalities and persecuted races. The broad imperatives survived to create a new consensus. As twenty years earlier, Britain regained its sense of unity and national purpose amidst the challenge and turmoil of total war. During the so called "phony war" period down 49

to April 1940, the fighting seemed remote, almost academic. Then, in April the cold war hotted up. The German invaded Norway, scattering before them the British naval and military forces at Norwich. Soon afterwards, the Netherlands and Belgium were overrun and the French army broke up in disorderly retreat. The security of the British Isles themselves was now under clear and pressing threat. Winston Churchill emerged as a wartime Prime Minister, with Labour and Liberals both joining the government. The extent to which Britain was prepared to defend itself in military reserves, the "home guard" of civilians was later to be effectively parodied as a "dad's army'" of amateurs muddling through with good humour. But the real battle lay in the air, where the reserves of Spitfire and Hurricane fighter aircraft were rapidly built up. From mid August onwards the German Luftwaffe launched wave after wave of blitz attacks, first on British airfields and aircraft factories, later on London and other ports and major cities. Almost miraculously civilian morale and national defenses stood firm against terrifying bombardments. The later course of the war on land, and more especially on sea and in air, had a major long-term effect on the international and imperial status of Great Britain. It had begun to being a traditional European conflict to preserve nation al security and the balance of power in the West. This aspect of the war reached a successful outcome by the summer of 1941, with the frustration of German threats to invade Britain. However, the war demonstrated wider, imperial themes. From being initially a conflict to preserve Western and Central Europe from the aggressive menace of German Fascism, the war rapidly turned into a broader effort to sustain the Commonwealth and empire as they had endured over the decades. The white dominions Australia, New Zeeland, Canada and far more hesitantly South Africa lent immediate support in term of raw materials and armed naval and other assistance. The entry of the Soviet Union into the war in June 1941 and even more that of the United States in December 1941, following the Japanese assault on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, ensured that the war remained a worldwide one, fought in every continent and every ocean, and that the cosmic structure of the British Empire would come under acute threat. In the Far East, also, the war involved desperate efforts to shore up the empire at its base. The invasion of the Japanese through China into Indo China and the Dutch East Indies, including the capture of all the American bases in the Philippines, led Churchill to place the Far East, with the approach to the Indian subcontinent, even higher than the Middle East in the military priorities. The rapid Japanese advance through Malaya and the surrender of the British army in February 1942, represented the landmark in the fall of the empire. Henceforth, Australia and New Zeeland were to look to the USA form protection in the Pacific rather than to the imperial mother country. By late 1944 the British position in eastern Asia and the Pacific, even with the loss of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong was still a powerful one, even if dependent on American land and naval assistance. At last in June 1944, with the naval invasion of France from the Normandy beach-head by Allied forces under the command of Eisenhower & Montgomery, the war again assumed a European aspect. In the end it was a rapid and triumphant campaign. It was the general Montgomery who formally received the unconditional surrender of the German forces at Lunenburg Heath on May 9, 1945. Hitler himself had committed suicide a few days earlier. Japan also surrendered on August 15 after two atomic bombs had wrought huge devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 10,000 people.

50

The most satisfying fact of all was that casualties were so much lighter in the years of the Second World War, than in the four years of slogging trench warfare in 1914-1918. This time a total of 270,000 servicemen were lost in six years as well as over 60,000 civilians killed on German air raids. The campaign had been more peripheral, more episodic and in the end, far more effectively conducted on a technical basis. The Americans were concerned at wartime conferences and at the Potsdam peace conference of July August 1945, to speed up the process of decolonization. Churchill was led to observe anxiously that he had not become the King's minister, or fought a bloody war for six years, in order to achieve the dissolution of the British Empire. But already his outlook was being overtaken by events. This war clearly expressed a profound spirit of egalitarianism of a type previously unknown in British history at any period. George Orwell felt that a social revolution was taking place. The ration books, gas masks, identity cards and other wartime afflicted the people equally & implied a mood of "fair shares". So did the communal sufferings during the blitz. A notable impact was achieved by the evacuees, the school children removed from London, Birmingham, Liverpool and other cities to take refuge in rural communities in England and Wales. Large sections of the nation got to know each other. The medical and food supplies for the evacuated children of the urban slums meant a great improvement in their physical and mental well-being. For their patients, war miraculously meant that full employment was restored, after the terrible decay of the thirties. Mood of equality of sacrifice, novel questions began to be asked about public policy. A scheme of comprehensive social security financed from central taxation, including maternity benefits and child allowances, universal health and unemployment insurance, old age pension and death benefits. It was the time of the provision from the "cradle to the grave". In 1945, it began a long overdue process of reversing the economic decline by diversifying and modernizing the economic infrastructure. It was also outlined a non dynamic approach to town planning with "green belt" provisions around major conurbations, new controls over land use and "new towns" to cater for the oversight of older cities. The domestic budgetary policies and the external financial arrangements, including the attempt to revitalize international trade and currency was made through the Breton Woods agreement, the nationalization of major industries and the Bank of England, the levy on inherited capital; the salaried state directed medical profession was now proposed by both conservative and liberal circles. A chimed feeling, with a noticeable mood of political radicalism, made Britain move more rapidly to the left than in any other period of history. Beyond the confines of Westminster and Whitehall, it was clear that the public was becoming more radical. There was a widespread public enthusiasm for the Red Army, very popular after Stalingrad and the advance against Berlin. Even in the armed forces, so it was murmured, left wing or novel ideas were being bandied about in current affairs groups and discussion circles. Reconstruction then was a far more coherent and deep rooted concept as the war came to its close. The Labour Government of 1945-51, launched a new kind of consensus, a social democracy, based in a mixed economy, and had a welfare state which took Britain well enough through the difficult post war transition and endured in its essence for another generation or more. Major industries and institutions were brought into public ownership coal, railway, road transport, civil aviation, gas, electricity, cable and wireless, the Bank of England. Over 20

51

percent of the nation's industry was taken into the "public sector". Corporate private capitalists were replaced by boards of corporate public bureaucrats. The health service was implemented as a salaried system by which the doctors were made state employees and the sale of the private practices was abolished. Notable measures included the national insurance system introduced in 1946 that meant the new drive for late subsidized "council" houses, old age pensions, the raising of the school leaving age and child allowances. The underlying principles of publicly-supported, comprehensive welfare state survived largely unscathed. Britain faced a huge postwar debt, which led to severe imbalance of trade, devaluation of the sterling against the dollar, difficulties in the balance of payments, rationing of food, clothing, petrol and many domestic commodities. The trade unions were generally permitted to develop their freedoms and collective bargaining powers. The stability of the domestic scene was much assisted by the general quietude of external policy. In 1945, Britain was still a great power, one of the "Big Three" at the international peace conferences. This aspect was preserved up to Moscow Test Ban Treaty of 1963. However, international position was qualified by the gradual but necessary retreat from empire that the post war period witnessed. The granting of self-government to India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) by the Attlee government was the transfer of power. The process of decolonization was concluded in the fifties, when the territories in West and East Africa, Kenya & Cyprus received their independence. In Southern Africa, the eventual breakup of the Central African Federation in 1963, gave independence for Northern Rhodesia, (Zambia), and Nyasaland (Malawi) also. A scattered handful of territories British Honduras, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, and Aden, Fiji were still under British control in the '60s, but the Empire day disappeared from the calendar and the king ceased to be an European of India. An American politician, Daniel Moynihan could write about the new prestige of Britain for having liberated so large a proportion of the world's population without bitterness. From 1949 the United States of America and Britain were strategically and geopolitically in NATO. Another organization SEATO, followed, for South-East Asia followed on shortly. The British prided themselves that this meant an equal "special relationship" between the English speaking peoples. Nearer homes there were attempts from 1947 onwards to form a political and economic union of Western Europe. The British governments were suspicious, if not openly hostile; as they felt that few natural ties link the nations across the Channel. The first attempt to join the Common Market in 1963 was rebuffed by the President of France. Charles de Gaulle. The Euro enthusiasm was oriented clearly against the tide of public opinions. In spite of the fact that the self-contained British society was worked by a slow rate of growth and falling productivity and the class division and inequalities prevented the modernizing of a "stagnant society", it was to be noticed that homes became better furnished, an increasing number of families had their own cars and could also afford a decent holiday on the sunny Mediterranean coast. The young working class changed their lifestyle and the pop culture was expansive. Other social changes were assisted by liberal-oriented politicians. Sexual offences, homosexual and otherwise, were less liable to the rigours of the law, and abortion along with the pills and other easy obtainable contraception offered scope for endless sexual indulgence; there were far more divorces and one-part families. As from the education point of view, many new universities sprang up, while older universities were much expanded, that diluted the quality of the educational process, as some 52

voices complained. Student rebellions and protests, familiar in France or in America, against nuclear disarmament and the American war in Vietnam, briefly fared up in British campuses. The young were finding the values of consumerism and conformism unappealing in a world whose ecology was being disturbed or whose very existence was threatened by terrible weapons. Young people in Wales or Scotland generated a tide of nationalist protests as they did not enjoy fully the economic growth of the 50s. The Scottish nationalists complained that the very title of Elizabeth II was a misnomer in their country, and in Wales there was the added theme of an ancient language and culture threatened with extinction in the unequal battle against "anglicized" mass culture. The artificial State kept in being by the control of the Protestant majority, Northern Ireland, was in disarray, led to powerful civil rights movement on behalf of the Roman Catholic minority. By the 1970's, it was clear that the economic problems of Britain was having were having far more general consequences, as its economic decline continued in comparison with almost all other Western European countries. Unions became more and more assertive in their "rightto-work" demonstrations, in protests against cuts in public spending or the high rate of unemployment. The religious animosities between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland were aggravated by the most acute rate of unemployment. The endemic violence stretched across the sea in the form of terrifying bomb attacks on English cities, and even assassinations of politicians. The troubles afflicting the black communities living in poor ghettos of large cities were more allarming. Although after much diplomatic infighting, Britain entered the European Common Market in 1973. Unique referendum in 1975 saw a large majority recording its support for British membership, the British attitude. Towards the Common Market continued to be governed by hostility. A colourful indication of at least a partial retreat from isolationism was the building of a high-speed rail tunnel under the English Channel to link Britain and France, a tunnel that became operational in 1993. The Commonwealth ties were becoming more and more intangible too. The agreement with China by which the British would withdraw from the Hong-Kong within 8 years, confirmed the irreversible retreat from the Empire. Suddenly, in the 80s an important change in the economic landscape occurred. The balance of payments suddenly moved into a large and continuing surplus. The technological wonders of oil, electronics, aerospace of Concorde, the high-speed train and the computerized microchip age, suggested that the native reserves of innovation and scientific ingenuity had not run dry. The British economy began to expand & reached a rate of 4 percent growth in early 1987. A notable event was the so called "Big Bang" in the City of London (27 October 1986) which replaced the age old spectacle of jobbers milling on the Stock Exchange floor with an almost invisible, highly sophisticated computer-based network for dealers. This was the sign of the new internationalism of the capital market. Life suddenly appeared easier after the crisis of the seventies and early eighties: home ownership contributed to the welfare of the population. Conversely, the trade unions appeared to be declining in public esteem and even more in membership. The experimentalism of the "permissive" years of the sixties was being followed by a new passion for traditional standards and values, commitment to work, to more conventional forms of sexual experience, to family life, to patriotism. In the 1990s, it remained a relatively neighborly society. Brits expressed constantly a deep sense of their history. Even in the turbulence of the later twentieth century, an awareness of the past came. 53

1.10. Political System The origins of the political institutions of kingship and an advisory council of prominent men in Great Britain trace back in the Saxon period, i.e. the fifth century AD until the Norman Conquest in 1066. The royal control was strengthened in the period of the Norman ruling, but eventually it experienced difficulties in the time of King John (1199-1216) when he had to agree to a series of concessions by Magna Charta. It provided for the rights of feudal proprietors against the abuse of royal power, and it became the expression of the rights of the community against the Crown. Parliament was first used officially in 1236 as a gathering of feudal barons and representatives of countries and towns, which the king summoned if extraordinary taxation was required. By the fifteenth century Parliament had acquired the right to make laws. The conflicting political interests between the monarchy that insisted on its divine right to rule, and the Parliament that claimed its legislative authority, led to the Civil War in 1642 that ended with the defeat of the Royalist armies and the execution of King Charles I in 1649. The country was proclaimed a republic and the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. After the death of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, in 1660, the republican experience of Britain came to an end. King Charles II, the son of Charles I, was restored to the throne. But his successor, king James II, attempted to rule without the consent of the Parliament that made William of Orange (a grand son of Charles I and the husband of Mary, James II eldest daughter) to secure the infringed liberties. While James II fled into exile, the Parliament in 1689 passed the Bill of Rights that made it impracticable for the Sovereign to ignore the Parliament. How ever, the monarch continued to be at the centre of executive power. To enable the Sovereign and Parliament to work together to carry on the government of the country, a group of ministers, or cabinet became the link between the executive and the legislature. Although the Sovereign appointed the members, they needed the support of the House of Commons to enable them to persuade Parliament to pass legislation and vote for taxation. In 1714, under the Hanoverian dynasty, the monarch ceased to attend the Cabinet meetings and to exercise executive power directly. The Cabinet was presided over by the Lord Treasurer, who came to be known as the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, who was appointed in 1841 to 1846. He was probably the first holder of his office to perform the role of a Prime Minister. Since the mid nineteenth century he has normally been the leader of the party with a majority in the House of Commons. The Reform Act in 1832 changed the system of parliamentary representation, which dated from medieval times. The government reform system was completed in the early part of twentieth century by standardizing the qualifications for the adult right to vote, the House of Commons becoming a subject of direct popular control. 1.10.1. The British Constitution The British Constitution, unlike the constitutions of most other countries, is not a single document, being the result of the historical development of political events. It is made up of Statute law, common law and conventions. The last ones represent rules and practices which are not legally enforceable but they are considered indispensable to the working of government. The constitution is adaptable to the changing political environment, as it can be altered by Act of Parliament or by general agreement. The Parliament is the legislative and the supreme authority, while the executive consists of:

54

The Government the Cabinet and other ministers responsible for national policies; Government departments, responsible for national administration; Local authorities, responsible for many local services; Public corporations, responsible for operating particular nationalized industries or other bodies, subject to ministerial control. The judiciary determines common law and interprets statutes and is independent of both legislature and executive.

55

1.10.2. The Monarchy United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. Its system of government (often known as the Westminster system) has been adopted by other countries, such as Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Jamaica. The constitution is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions, statutes and other elements. The monarchy is the oldest institution to govern the country, going back to at least the ninth century four centuries before the parliament. The present queen, Elisabeth II is herself descendant directly from King Egbert, who united England under his rule in 1829. In the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man a Lieutenant Governor, represents the Queen. Today, the British Monarch is not only head of the state, but also an important symbol of national unity. The full royal title in Britain is Elisabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and ob Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. The title to the throne is derived partly from statute and partly from common law rules of descent. The hereditary principle upon which it was founded has always been preserved. Sons of the Sovereign have precedence over daughters in succeeding to the throne. When a daughter succeeds, she becomes Queen Regnant and has the same powers as a king. The consort of a king takes her husbands rank and style, becoming Queen. The constitution does not give any special rank or privileges to the husband of a Queen Regnant, although in practice he fills an important role in the life of the nation, as does the Duke of Edinburgh. Under the Act of Settlement of 1700, which formed part of the Revolution Settlement, following the events of 1688, only Protestant descendants of a grand daughter of James I of England and XI of Scotland (Princess Sophia, the Electress of Hanover) are eligible to succeed. The order of succession can be altered only by common consent of the countries of the Commonwealth. The Sovereign succeeds to the throne as soon as his or her predecessor dies: there is no interregnum. He or she is proclaimed at Accession Council, to which all members of the Priory Council are summoned. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the Lord Major and Alderman and other leading citizens of the City of London are also invited. The Coronation ceremony takes place after a convenient interval at West minister Abbey in London. Representatives of the House of Parliament and of all the great public organizations in Britain are invited. The Prime Minister, representatives of the Commonwealth nations and other countries are also invited. The Sovereign is, according to the law, the head of the executive, an integral part of legislature, head of the judiciary, the commander - inchief of all the armed forces of the Crown and the supreme governor of the established Church of England. The Sovereign acts on the advice of her ministers. The Majestys Government in the name of the Queen governs Britain. In spite of the trend of giving powers directly to ministers, the present Queen still takes part in the government acts. These include summoning, proroguing (discontinuing until the next session without dissolution) and dissolving Parliament, giving the Royal Assent to Bills passed by Parliament (promulgate). The Sovereign also formally appoints many important office holders, including government ministers, judges, and officials in armed forces, governors, diplomats, bishops and some other senior clergy, of the Church of England. She is also involved in pardoning people convicted of crimes and in conferring peerages, knighthoods and other honours, such as: The Order of Garter The Order of Thistle The Order of Merit The Royal Victorian Order.

56

As a head of the State, the Sovereign has also power to declare war and make peace, to recognize foreign states and governments to conclude treaties and to annex or cede territories. She still plays an important role in the working of government as she holds meetings of the Priory Council, gives audiences to her ministers and officials in Britain and overseas, receives account of Cabinet decisions, reads dispatches and signs state papers. She is also consulted on every aspect of national life and she must show complete impartiality. The royal functions can be performed by a regent if the Queen is totally or partially incapacitated. The regent would be the Queens eldest son, the Prince of Wales, and then those, in order of succession to the throne, who are of age. The Queen may also delegate certain royal functions to the Counselor of State but he may not, for instance, dissolve Parliament (except on the Queens instructions), nor create peers. Until 1760 the Sovereign had to provide for payment of all government expenses, including the salaries of officials and the expenses of the royal palaces and households. These were met from hereditary revenues, mainly income from Crown lands and some other sources granted to the monarch by Parliament. When the income from these sources eventually proved inadequate, King George III turned over to the Government most of the hereditary revenue in 1760. In return he received an annual grant from which he continued to pay the royal expenditure of a personal character and also the salaries of government officials and certain pensions. Today the Sovereign has an essentially ceremonial role restricted in exercise of power by convention and public opinion. 1.10.3. Royal Pomp Changing of the Guard London is a royal city and tourists from all over the world come here to attend the royal ceremonies Every day a New Guard of 30 guardsmen marches down The Mall to Whitehall where it replaces the Old Guard with due ceremony in the Front Yard. The responsibility of guarding the Sovereign by the Household Troops (as they were known at that time) dates back to the time of Henry VII (1485-1509). The Buckingham Palace became the official Royal residence when Queen Victoria acceded to the throne in 1837. The soldiers of the Buckingham Palace Guard are some of the best soldiers in the British Army, and they have fought in virtually every major area of conflict with great distinction since the 17th century. They also take an active role in protecting their Sovereign and at night, they patrol the guards of both Buckingham Palace and St. James's Palace. The State Opening of the Parliament Each year, usually in October or November, The Queen accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and travelling in the State Coach formally opens the new session of the Parliament. Before the Royal procession leaves, the yeoman of the Guard (the oldest of the royal bodyguards) would search the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. The State Opening of Parliament is the main event of the parliamentary year and occurs when Parliament reassembles after a general election. It marks the start of the parliamentary session and large crowds are expected to watch and hear the Queen's Speech given in the presence of the members of Houses, the House of Commons and the Hose of Lords. Trooping of the Color The Royal celebration of the queen or the king of the United Kingdom is officially celebrated on the 2nd Saturday in June, irrespective of his of her birthday date. This traditional ceremony is called the Trooping of the Colour and dates back to the early 18th century.

57

It is a big parade with brass bands and hundred of soldiers from the Horse Guards regiment marching in front of the Queen. The parade is open by the regiment's flag or colour and the Guards are trooping the colour. The route from Buckingham Palace to the Whitehall is watched by thousands of spectators eagerly waiting to see the Queen heading the procession and dressed in uniform. The Queen is greeted by a royal salute and carries out an inspection of the troops. After the bands have performed a musical "troop", the escorted regimental colour is carried down the ranks. The Queen rides back to Buckingham Palace at the head of her Guards and the troops then return to barracks. There are five separate regiments comprising the Guards Division, all wearing tunics and bearskins: the Grenadiers, the Coldstream, the Scots Guards, the Irish Guard and the Youngest regiment of the Welsh Guards. The Guards also perform guard duties at Buckingham Palace, St. James's Palace and Clarence House. Other Royal Occasions The present-day Maundy Ceremony bears little relationship to the original rites from which it originates. The original Maundy service was the washing of the feet of the poor, and its origins are to be found in Jesus' washing of the feet of his Disciples at the Last Supper. This ceremony is known as the Eucharist dating back to the 5th century and referred to as "pedilavium" (the feet washing". It followed the Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday. The night of Maundy Thursday is the Night on which Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane betrayed Jesus. The word Maundy is derived from the Latin word: "mandatum" meaning the "command" which Christ gave to his disciples to love one another. The opening words of the Maundy ceremony are part of the anthem "mandatum novum do vobis" sung in the Roman Catholic Churches. The Queen gives the Maundy money in Canterbury Cathedral every year, on the Maundy Thursday. For 700 years, the Chief Yeoman Warder has secured the Tower of London each night. Accompanied by the Escort he performs the traditional ceremony of her Majesty's Keys. The ceremony consists of locking the gates of the Tower of London when the clock strikes 10. Then the Chief Yeoman Warder hands the keys to the care of the Resident Governor at The Queen's House. The Beefeaters are the soldiers whose real name is Yeoman Warders of the Tower. Their clothes are those of the royal guards of the year 1500. Their duty is to guard the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels, and to help the visitors, as well. The Order of the Garter Ceremony has a long history. King Edward III started the Order in the 14th century. At that time the order included 24 knights, but nowadays the knights of the Order are no longer soldiers. The Queen is the Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, but she is not the only one royal person. There are also other members of the family. The new appointments to the Order of the Garter are usually announced on St. George's Day, April 23rd, but the ceremony takes place in June, on the Monday of Royal Ascot week. The knights of the Garter gather in the Throne Room at Windsor Castle, where the new knights, after taking the oath, are invested with the Order insignia. They wear the blue velvet robes of the Order (with the badge of the Order)- St. George Cross) and black velvet hats with white feathers that are an important part of Britain's oldest traditions. The Constable and the Governor of Windsor Castle (considered the home place of the Order) and the military Knights of Windsor lead the procession. The Lord Major's Show is an old ceremony also. As every year the Londoners choose a Lord Major, they come to see him in his coach, which takes him to the Mansion House during a long colourful procession. It is also London biggest parade attended by many people wearing costumes and acting stories from London's history.

58

9.3. Parliament In medieval times the King was expected to cover the royal private or public expenses from his own revenue. But in case of war, the king needed extra resources that could be covered from an aid. The members of the Great Council, meeting several times a year, had to find extra sources to grant the necessary aid. But these extra sources being not sufficient, several kings summoned to their Great Council, not only the great feudal magnates, but also representatives of counties, cities and towns in order to get their assent to extraordinary taxation. The Great Council came to include those who were summoned by name (those who, broadly speaking, were to form the House of Lords, and those who were representatives of communities - the commons. Together with the Sovereign, the gathering became shown as Parliament- the term originally meant a meeting for parley or discussion). By the middle of the fourteenth century, as they realised the strength of their position, the House of Commons pledged that all money granted were approved by the House of Commons. Later, in the fifteenth century, they gained the right to participate in giving their request - their Bills the form of law. The subsequent development led to Parliament securing its position as the supreme legislative authority. The three powers that represent the British Parliament are the Queen, the House of Lords, and the elected House of Commons. All of them are normally required for legislation but they usually meet together only for symbolic occasions. The Parliament can legislate for Britain as a whole or for only one part of the country, or even for territories that are Crown dependency only such as the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. It can pass or change any law or overturn established conventions or turn them into law. In carrying out these functions the Parliament brings relevant facts and issues before the electorate. Although the international treaties and agreements are a royal prerogative, exercised on the advice of the Government, and they are not a subject to parliamentary approval, by custom, Parliament is informed about them. The activity of the Parliament is divided into sessions that last for one year. There are adjournments at night, at weekends, at Christmas, Easter and the late Spring Bank Holiday and a summer break starting in late July or Early August. At the start of each session the Queen delivers her speech and outlines the Governments policy and proposes programme. The Parliamentary sessions end by prorogation that brings to an end nearly all-parliamentary business: public Bills that have not been passed by the end of the session are lost. The Parliament consists of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The participants in the House of Lords are: the Lords Spiritual (the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester and the 21 next most senior diocesan bishops of the Church of England) and the Lords Temporal (all hereditary peers and peeresses of England, Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, life peers created to assist the House in its judicial duties - Lords of Appeal or law lords and other life peers). Hereditary peerages carry a right to sit in the House, provided that holders establish their claim and are aged 21 years or over. However, anyone succeeding to a peerage may, within 12 month of succession, disclaim that peerage for his or her lifetime. Disclaimants lose their right to sit in the House, but gain the right to vote and stand as candidates at parliamentary elections. The Sovereign creates peerages on the advice of the Prime Minister. They are usually granted in recognition of service in politics or other walks of life because one of the political parties wishes to have the recipient in the House of Lords. The House also provides a place in Parliament for people who offer useful advice, but do not wish to be involved in party politics. 59

Peers attending the House have no salary for their parliamentary work, but can claim for travelling expenses for attending the House. Lord Chancellor is the one who chairs the House his place being on a woolsack (a large cushion stuffed with wool from several Commonwealth countries, as a tradition originating in the medieval times, when the wealth source of the country was mainly the wool). The Chairman and the Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees are Lords, but receive salaries as officers of the House. The Clerk of the Parliaments is a permanent officer responsible for the records of proceedings and for making known to the public the Acts of Parliament. The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who is also Serjeant at Arms in attendance upon the Lord Chancellor, is responsible for security, accommodation and services in the House of Lords, part of the Palace of Westminster. The Yeoman Usher is Deputy Serjeant at Arms and assists Black Rod in his duties. The House of Commons is elected by universal adult suffrage and consists of 651 members of Parliament. The chief officer of the House of Commons is the Speaker, elected by MPs to preside over the House. Other officers include the Chairman of Ways and Means and two deputy chairmen, who act as Deputy Speakers. They are elected by the House on the nomination of the Government but are drawn from the opposition as well as from the government party. People that are over 18, citizens of Commonwealth countries, and Irish Republic resident in Britain are entitled to vote. They can be subject of disqualification when they are mentally disordered or sentenced to prison convicted within the previous five years of corrupt or illegal election practices. The main responsibilities of the Parliament and the Government are the changes needed of the normal legislative process. Draft laws take the form of Parliamentary Bills. The public ones were related to the public policy and people or organizations outside Parliament usually promote the Private ones and they are undergone certain procedures. Before any government Bill is drafted, there is considerable consultation with professional bodies, voluntary organizations and other agencies interested in the subject. Both Houses, through a similar process, normally pass bills. Thus, it is given a first reading and a second reading committee is settled. The Bill is then referred to a standing committee for detailed examination. A bill starting in the Lords is then sent to the Commons for all its stages there, then it follows the guillotine, that is the Government is the one to pass it as a timetable motion. The Bill is then sent to the Queen for loyal Assent, after which it is part of the law of the land and known as an Act of Parliament. Her Majestys Government is the body of Ministers responsible for the administration of national affairs. The Queen appoints the Prime Minister, and the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister appoints all other ministers. They represent both Houses, but the Lord Chancellor is always a member of the House of Lord. He holds a special position, as both a minister with departmental function and the head of judiciary. The composition of governments can vary both in member and in titles of some affairs. New ministerial offices may be created, others can be abolished, and functions can be transferred from one minister to another. The position of the Prime Minister became known during the eighteenth century and it derives from the power of the House of Commons to appoint and dismiss ministers. He presides over the Cabinet, is responsible for the allocation of functions among ministers and informs the Queen at regular meetings of the general business of the Government. The official residence of the Prime Minister is on 10, Downing Street, central London.

60

The members of the Cabinet exercise its functions as a group of party representatives, depending upon majority support in the House of Commons. Its members meet in private and its proceedings are confidential. They are bound by their oath as Privy Counselors not to disease information about its proceedings, although after 30 years Cabinet papers may be made available for inspection in the Public Record Office, at Kew, Surrey. A great deal of work is carried on through the committee system. The local authority system can be traced back to Saxon times, but the first comprehensive system of local councils was established in the late nineteenth century. Local authorities powers and duties are conferred on them by Parliament, or by measures taken under its authority. England and Wales (outside Greater London) are divided into 53 counties, subdivided into 36 districts. County councils provide large-scale services, while district councils are responsible for the more local ones. Greater London is divided into 32 boroughs, each of which has a council responsible for local government in its area; in addition, there is the Corporation of the City of London. Some services require a statutory authority over areas wider than the individual boroughs and districts: waste regulation and disposal, police and fire services, including civil defense and public transport. Joint authorities composed of elected councillors nominated by the borough or district councils run all of them. In addition to the two tier local authority system in England, there are over 8,000 parish councils or meetings. The may provide and manage local facilities such as allotments and village halls and may act as agents for other district council functions. The also provide a forum for discussion of local issues. 1.12. Institutions and political life in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland England is predominantly a lowland country but the Pennine Chain, the Cambrian Mountains and the Yorkshire moor lands. Cornwall, Devon and Somerset in the South-west are considered uplands. The central southern England is characterised by the downs-low chalk hill ranges. The domestic affairs of England are not centrally administrated by any government minister or department in contrast to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But a number of government departments in England cover some aspects of affairs in Wales and Scotland. England has 524 members of Parliament in the House of Commons belonging to Conservative Labour and Liberal parties. The Conservatives supported by the suburban and rural areas have a large majority of the parliamentary seats in the southern half of England and in East Anglia. The industrialized areas usually support the Labour Party. Local government is administered through a two-tier system of counties subdivided into districts. There are 32 single-tier borough authorities in London and six metropolitan counties in other regions of England. The legal system comprises a historic body of conventions known as common low since the Norman Conquest that places a great reliance on precedent, and the equity lows that derives from the practice of petitioning the Kings Chancellor in cases not covered by common low. England is also governed by European Community legislation. The main link between local authorities and central government in England is the Department of the Environment, although other department such as the Department for Education and the Home Office are concerned with various local government functions. Most of the 38 members of the Parliament, representing Wales are supported by the Labour, Conservative and Plaid Cymru Party. The Secretary of State for Wales, who is a member of the Cabinet, has wide-ranging responsibilities relating to the economy, education, welfare services 61

and the provision of amenities. The headquarters of the administration is the Welsh Office in Cardiff, represented also in London. Local government is exercised through a system of elected authorities similar to that in England, and the legal system is identical with the English one. As for the government of Scotland, separate Acts of Parliament are passed when necessary. The House of Commons has 72 seats for the elected Scottish Members that belong to the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties. The Secretary of State for Scotland is also a member of the cabinet and he works through the Scottish Office placed in Edinburgh and another office in London. The local government operates similarly with the ones of England and Wales, although it presents some differences that are based on some other European legal systems having their origins in the Roman Law. 1.13. Education in Great Britain In England education aims to develop and raise fully the abilities of individuals, both young and old for their own benefit and that of the society. The Government aim to make further and higher education more widely accessible and more responsive to the needs of the economy and to achieve the best possible return from the resources invested in education service, by raising the standards at all levels of ability. The increase of the parental choice of schools and the improvement of partnership between parents and school is meant to meet the needs of the society from education and training point of view. Compulsory schooling takes place between the age of 4 or 5 and 16. Some provision is made for children under school age, and many pupils remain at school beyond the minimum leaving age. The improvement of the curriculum in the late years made possible the development of the skills required for adult life and work in a technological age. Important steps have been taken for the improvement of teaching and for a better management of schools, by a better teacher training and appraisal. British education is also meant to be responsive to the needs of a multi-ethnic society, so it recruits pupils and students from the minorities and other under-represented groups. Further education and training is available for young pupils of the 16-17 years old to acquire high level of skills and expertise in different professional domains. The system of higher education is meant to maintain the high quality of the needs of the students and of the society, to keep the pace of development of the society, and to secure suitably qualified graduates of university courses for the employers. Over 20 per cent of the pupils are educated freely in schools financed from public funds and only a part of them go to independent schools that are financed by fees paid by their parents. Both public schools and independent ones are mostly mixed schools. The type of school is chosen freely by the attendants and parents or tutors as they publish yearly not only their admission criteria, National Curriculum assessment results and the destination of the school graduates, but also their truancy rates. They are also obliged to supply the parents or the tutors the findings of school inspection reports, a written annual report on their childs progress and information about the results of other pupils of the same age in school and about the possibilities to discuss the report with the teachers. There are three main types of publicly supported schools: county schools that are maintained by local education authorities, voluntary schools, mostly established by religious denominations, and grant-maintained schools which have chosen to opt out of local education authority control after an affirmative ballot by parents. The schools are run by a governors appointed by the local education authority and a balance of teacher and parent representatives. They take decision regarding the allocation of the school budget, the interviewing and appointment of the staff, etc.

62

Nursery education has expanded in the late decades too. Many children attend preschool playgroup that are organized in Associations. At the age of around 11 pupils pass from the primary to the secondary school. Most of them need no reference to their abilities or aptitudes, but, there are also children that go to grammar or secondary modern schools after some selection procedures: technology colleges that emphasize science, technology and business understanding, secondary schools specialized in science, music or modern languages. Secondary schools can establish partnerships between the Government and private sponsors and employers. Graduates are supported by their school or college to reach the agreed target skills and abilities and employers undertake to provide jobs to those attaining the targets. All the schools are opened to inspection. If they fail in giving pupils an acceptable standard of education, new governors are appointed to manage the school, or even to bring the school under a new management until its performance reach a satisfactory level. Many of schools and training providers offer bursaries to help pupils from less well-off families. Special educational needs comprise learning difficulties of all kinds, including mental and physical disabilities which hinder or prevent learning. Teachers are appointed by local educational authorities or school governing bodies and the pupil-teacher ratio is 17 to 1. The National Curriculum is meant to meet the needs of the pupils and the new era of technology. It consists of the core subjects of English, mathematics and science, as well as history, geography, technology, music, art, physical education, and a foreign language. Schools must also provide religious education and a daily act of collective worship. Its syllabus is according to the Christian traditions, but it also covers the teaching of the other main religions represented in the country. But children can be withdrawn from religious education classes and from collective worship. The technical and vocational education is financed and administered by the Department of Employment so that the school curriculum relates also to the working environment. The graduates of the secondary education are provided with the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) after five years leading to more advanced education and training. According to the grade and the number of subjects attended, the graduates are rewarded by different categories of certificates aiming to secure a reasonably wide choice of qualifications. 1.13.1. Higher Education In the United Kingdom there are 79 universities, including the Open University. They enjoy a complete academic autonomy: they appoint their own staff, decide which students to admit, provide their own courses and award their own degrees. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Scottish universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Oxford is older than Cambridge, more worldly, more philosophical, classical and theological. Cambridge is more isolated, more theatrical, and more scientific. Cambridge has a more selfcontained intellectual class, fortified by tradition of Darwin, Keynes, Wedgwood and more cut off from London; it is also much more radical and critical (with Kings College now a left-wing strong-hold). But compared with the others, Oxbridge, these two stone cities, with their quadrangles, cloisters, damp staircases and punts, look very alike. Much of their attraction depends on the individual tutors; the peculiar rank of lecturers, the sense of being international centers, exposed to some of the best minds in the world but also the unchanging calendar of boat races, college balls and summer frolics. Most of the Tory politicians have traditionally been educated at Christ Church, Oxford, founded in 1546 by King Henry XIII. Candidates to Oxford and Cambridge are largely selfselected, influenced by family and social background. The narrowness of the choice does not apparently lower the standards that are still much higher than elsewhere.

63

The ancient universities are strongly linked with the national politics by debating societies of the Oxford and Cambridge Union that can be regarded as an anteroom to parliament. The elected union officials and the members train their politician traits as they go into public professions: - the bar, journalism or television and especially politics. When Oxford and Cambridge universities were exclusively Anglican, all the other universities that were founded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provided a liberal education and technical training for poorer students and dissenters of the provinces. Admission to universities is by selection. First degree courses are mainly full-time and usually last three years, excepting the medical and veterinary ones that last four years. Degrees titles vary according to the practice of each university. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the most common titles for a first degree are Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) and for a second degree Master of Arts (MA), Master of Science (MSc) and doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Universities have also programmes for professionals in education and health and social welfare services and for up-dating managers, scientists and technologists. Some of them are presented as multimedia courses or in the form of self-contained study packs. Most of the university staff combines research with their teaching duties and about half of the post graduate students are engaged on research projects for industry that are encouraged by the Government. The University of London has usually three times as many undergraduates as any other university, five hundred professors in its four independent colleges: University College in Gower Street, Kings College in the Strand, the London School of Economics and the Imperial College of Science and Technology. The poorer but the more ambitions people in Scotland, considered education as being necessary, so they founded their first universities in the fifteen century. The British universities are much more diverse in their origin and characters and even in architecture than these of France or Germany. The University of Birmingham or Leeds originally civic universities were founded by mayors and corporations as symbols of local pride. The most scattered university is Wales, with components at Cardiff, Swansea, and Bangor. The contrast between the well endowed Oxford and Cambridge lowered in the sixties when many Victorian Universities were founded: they have more individual tutors, more halls of residence, better libraries. The University of Birmingham, for example, has moved from its blackened building of the Victorian Chamberlain tower to a central campus with shops, restaurants a skyscraper and halls of residence. In the fifties, the Government became worried about the standards of higher education in Britain. A first break through was the new university of Keel in 1949 that provided a quite new kind of four years course, with its own degrees. Some other new universities began to be built, having real autonomy. But the first and most famous was Sussex that became the most evident rival for the prestige of Oxbridge. It was set up with the elitist emphasis of with an avant-garde intellectual character, with only 4.000 students and no intention of getting bigger. Its seriousness was encouraged by a group of professors from Oxbridge who worked in a team. The maps of learning were re-drawn through interdisciplinary studies. One of the novelties introduced by this university in learning systems is the change from examination to mailing by assessment which came into force in 1971. There are also some new universities that followed fast. The York University, opened in 1963 is more similar to Oxbridge ones by its conventionalism and degrees. The University Of Essex At Colchester, opened in 1964 represents the heaviest concentration on social sciences; the University of Lancaster is economic studies, while the one of Kent at Canterbury is the most conservative and paternalistic. By 1970 the seven new universities - the Shakespearian Seven as they were called from their ducal-sounding names made possible a number of around 122.000 students, that transformed the university perspectives: they had considerable

64

social effects by mixing up upper middle class girls with working class men, interdisciplinary classes were promoted and became respectable. The sudden industrial and technical revolution had little to do with universities in the 19th century. The gap between science and the humanities was widened by the dichotomy between Anglican and non-conformists. The British felt the need of developing their higher education in techniques only after France and Germany set up their own politechniques and hochschulen for techno managers. The new British universities were designed to bring the new world of technology into the old world of liberal education. Gradually, laboratories and workshops have crept up on the libraries and lecture halls not only of the new universities, but also in the old ones. Glasgow, Manchester and London gradually became the pride of high studies in technology. The Imperial College in London was founded in 1907 by the merger of three London colleges and became a university of its own, with its world wide reputation. Although from the early nineteenth century onwards, a lot of modest colleges kept on developing to provide practical training for local students paid for by local councils and local industrialists, becoming accountable for the local needs, many of them grew up into important establishments of techs, polys or mechanics providing the expertise for the industrial growing expansion as the governments became more and more conscious of the social dependence on technology, so that they felt the need to help. In the meantime a new kind of university has appeared: the Open University that was called the University of the Air and considered as a part of the forthcoming white-hot technological revolution. By its correspondence course it provides degrees much more cheaply than the conventional universities, even allowing for a huge rate of drop-outs. This main teaching instrument developed numerous study centers set up all over Britain summer schools at other universities. Similar distance learning programmes are set throughout Commonwealth. As for the teachers, almost entrants complete a recognized course of initial teacher training. They are delivered by universities departments of education as well as higher education establishments. They qualify by taking four year degree of Bachelor of Education (BEd) honor degree. There is also two years course specialized in teaching for suitable qualified people. A Postgraduate Certificate of Education course can be taken by graduates. All entrants to the teaching profession should be graduates. They hold a degree containing two passes in the subjects they teach. Education and library boards have the statutory duty to ensure that teachers are equipped with the necessary skills to implement education reforms of the National Curriculum. Science parks have been set up by higher education institutions in conjunction with industrial scientists and technologists to promote the development and commercial application of advanced technology. A network of regional technology centre links colleges and universities with local firms. They are encouraged to work jointly with higher education institutions on government-funded research relevant to industrial needs. 1.14.Economy In the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain was the most developed industrialized country in Europe; its wealth was based on coalmining, on iron and steel industry, heavy machinery and textiles, on shipbuilding and on trade. The broad pattern of development was changed at the beginning of the twentieth century when industry weakened owing to fluctuation in the world trade, and due to the competition of other industrialized countries. Newer industries, such as pharmaceutical, artificial fibres, electrical equipment, car manufacture and a wide range of consumer goods developed in the South East and the West Midlands. The second half of the century, service industries have grown tremendously more than two thirds of the work force is employed in services industry.

65

There has also been an increase in high technology industry throughout the region, which is mainly placed in Cambridge Science Park that contains a minister of science based companies and research organizations closely linked to the University. Retailing activity has largely increased through large shopping centres built in the outskirts of the towns. In financial and business services, London is one of the worlds leading centres of banking, insurance and other financial services. The capital is also significant from media point of view: the national press is published here and the national radio and TV networks broadcast from here. Agriculture is mainly represented by diary industry in west of England; sheep and cattle are reared in the hilly and moor land areas of the North and South West. Arable farming, pig and poultry farming and horticulture are concentrated in the east, south and in west midlands. The fishing ports are situated on the east coast and South West. Plenty of energy resources are represented by coalfields and the offshore oil and gas reserves. The mineral deposits include sand, gravel and crushed rock used in construction; clay, sand, china clay in Cornwall, gypsum in a Midlands, North and South East. Transportation is considerably supported by four long distance motorways linking London and the cities of the whole country, the London orbital routes and over 30 shorter motorways. Railway transportation is also developed in inter-city services and provides new rolling stock for local services. The Cross Channel railway links Britain with the European rail system and also provides a vehicle shuttle service. The busiest international airport, Heathrow and Gatwick serve London but Manchester, Birmingham, Luton have their own local airports. The following data will provide information concerning the employment of working people in different areas of activity: - Services 70.7 - Manufacturing 21.7 - Construction 4.3 - Energy and water supply 9.0 - Agriculture, forestry and fishing 1.3 The unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted is around 9.6 per cent. 1.15. Religion Most of the religions of the world are present in Britain of today, since immigrants of different nationalities take advantage of the tolerance of the native population and of their beliefs and traditions. Large communities of Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or Sikh live all over the country. People are free to teach, worship and observe religions service without any interference. Legal religions entities may own property, run schools, hold public office. Religions freedom and the rights of non-conformism are granted by the Ecclesiastical jurisdiction Act (1677) and the Toleration Act (1688), believers of any religion have the same political rights. The predominant religion, founded in 559 by St. Augustine is the Christian one. It became the established Church of England in 1549, in the Reformation period, when the form of worship was set out in the Book of Common Prayer. The State and the Sovereign uphold the Church, and it has to balance its privileges by filling certain obligations. The heads of the Church: the archbishops, bishops and deans are appointed by the Sovereign

66

who is a member of the Church, at the advice of the Prime Minister, and all the clergy swear their allegiance to the Crown. The Church of England has two provinces: the Canterbury and the one of York that is divided into dioceses, and they are also divided into parishes. It has ordained stipendiary priests and stipendiary women deacons. They render the religions service of baptising, confirmation, and solemnised marriages. The ruling body is the Church of the General Synod that deals with missionary work inter-church relations, social questions, recommitment and training for the ministry in England and overseas, the care of church buildings, church schools supported by the state, and centres for training women in pastoral work. The Anglican Communion is an autonomous one, comprising the Church of England (established), the Church of Wales, the Scottish Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Church of Ireland. The Anglican Bishop meets every ten years out Lambeth Conference for consultation. It is always presided by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although the Conference has no executive authority, it enjoys considerable influence. The Anglican Consultative Council, an assembly of lay people, clergy and bishops meet every two or three year. The Church of Scotland is a national, autonomous church, following the Scottish Reformation and legislations of the Scottish Parliament consolidated in the Treaty of Union in 1707 and the Church of Scotland Act 1921, the latter confirming its complete freedom in all spiritual matters. Its affairs are not subject to any civil authority. Its form of government is Presbyterian, that is, by ministers and elders, all of whom are ordained to office. Both men and women may join the ministry elected for the Kirk Session, and above it are the Presbytery and the Synod and finally the General Assembly. This meets annually under the presidency of an elected moderator, who serves for one year. The Lord High Commissioner represents the Sovereign at the General Assembly. There are also some Free Churches broke away from the established Church of England and have developed their own traditions as Protestants. The largest of them is the Methodist Church originating in the eighteenth century following the evangelical revival under John Wesley (1703-1791). There are also Baptist Union of Great Britain (formed in 1912), of Scotland, Wales and Ireland that comprise organized groups of churches of Baptist religion. In 1972, the Congregational Church in England and Wales (the oldest Protestant minority in Britain) and the Presbyterian Church of England merged into the United Reformed Church. In 1981 there was a further merger with the reformed association of the Churches of Christ. There is also the church of Salvation Army founded in Britain by William Booth in 1865. It has social service centres, which range from hostels for homeless and prison chaplaincy that covers 96 prisons. The Roman Catholic Church is also represented, although it disappeared after the Reform in the sixteenth century, as it was restored in 1850 in England and the Scottish Church in 1878. About one British citizen in ten claims to be a Roman Catholic. It attaches a great importance to the education of children. There are over 2,500 Catholic schools maintained out of public fund that also undertake social work. There are also some Christian Churches in England or religions societies that are subject of faith of the British people. Other Protestant Churches: Unitarians Free Christians Pentecostalists:

67

- Assemblies of God - Pentecostal Church The Religions Society of Friends The Christian Brethren: Open Brethren Close or Exclusive Brethren The house church movement Christian communities of foreign origin Orthodox Lutheran Reformed Armenian Church Religious organisations originating in the United States in the last century: The Jehovahs Witnesses The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter - Day Saints (the Mormon Church) The Christian Scientists The Spiritualists The Jewish community numbers nowadays about 300,000 being the scored the largest in Europe. The first Jews settled in the British Isles in the time of the Norman Conquest, but the present community dates from 1656 when they came from Spain and Portugal in a second wave. They are called Sephardim. The third wave came later from Germany and Eastern Europe, known as Ashkenazim. Most of the community acknowledge the authority of the Chief Rabbi and they are orthodox. The Sephardic Orthodox group follow their own spiritual leader the Haham. There is also the Masorti movement, founded in 1840, and the Liberal and Progressive movement that started in 1901. About one in three Jewish children attend Jewish schools, some of which are supported by public funds. Some agencies care for elderly and handicapped people: Sephardim (Chief Rabbi) 1656 Ashkenazim (Haham) Masorti movement 1840 Liberal and Progressive movement 1901. As for the Muslim community, it originates from immigrant coming from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Cyprus, the Arab world, Malaysia and parts of Africa. There are around 600 mosques and Muslim prayer centres throughout Britain that offer instruction and facilities for educational and welfare activities. The Central Mosque in London and its associated Islamic Cultural Centre has the largest congregation in Britain, and during festivals it may number 5,000. Many other important towns in England Liverpool, Manchester, Leicester, Bradford, Edinburgh and Glasgow have developed their own Muslim communities of Sunni, Shiva or Sufi traditions. The Sikh religion is also represented by a large community of over 300,000 people that originate largely from India. They have their own temples or guardwaras cater for the religions, educational, social welfare and cultural needs. Another large religions community having the same origins in India is the Hindu one. It has also around 300,000 members that have their own temples or nadir. Several other small religions communities can also be mentioned: the Buddhist community that promote its principles: the Jains, another ancient Indian origin religion; the 68

Zoroastrian or the Mazdais, coming from Iran represented in Britain by the Parsi community that came from the South Asian sub-continent; another religion of Iranian origin, the Bahai movement that consider major religions as divine in origin. The Church of Scotland is Protestant, but Presbyterian in form, governed by a hierarchy of church courts including lay people too. Great Britain proves to be a country of tolerance so we can also find there some religions organisations that strive to develop good relations between different religions in Britain, such as the Interfaith Network for the United Kingdom, the Council of Christians and Jews. Christians, Muslims, Sikhs Hindus, Jews and Buddhists have taken part together in the annual religions observance to make Commonwealth Day.

1.16. United Kingdom a Country of Multiculturalism Britain, just as the same as most of the countries in the world, is, nowadays, a multicultural country. Among the majority of indigenous white British people, there are many other people from all over the world from many kinds of ethnic background, such as Irish, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Japanese, Carribean, African, etc. The people of other ethnics immigrate to Britain, and live there among British society. Immigration to Britain has happened from a long time ago, that was since the 18th Century, when there were about 20,000 Black people sent to Britain to be slaves. In the 19th Century a great number of Irish people moved to Britain because of Potato Famine in 1840s. As the world changed, since the World War II, there are a lot of immigrants from New Commonwealth nations (the Carribean and the Indian sub-continent) and Arabian countries. Until now, immigrants hope to get better life, better job, and better education in Britain. However, there have been various Immigration Acts to inhibit or restrict immigrations from keep going on and on, as many people in Britain assume that immigration is the cause of overcrowding Britain. Inequalities exists in British society because of the differences in social class, gender, and ethnic differences: in employment, education, housing, relation with workmates, and treatment given by the police. Sometimes the white people and men get better treatment than people with coloured skin and women and indirect forms of racist humours or jokes often done in workplaces, and verbal expressions of racial hatred in daily life. The sense of threatening comes from the the whites worry that their culture will soon disappear and be replaced by the culture of the immigrants. Moreover, the immigrants have their own religion. Parents of the children from the immigrant family send their children to their own school as they do not want to lose their identity, their culture and religion. Multiculturalism is a source of social problems, but also a source of variety in life.

69

1.17.1. British Customs and Traditions The British origin people have developed specific customs, traditions and festivals as life falls naturally into the calendar since the Celtic times, passing through Christianity to the Modern Age. The basic holidays originated in the medieval times and they started being religious after the influence of Christianity. Customs and feasts have been created by people who wanted to express their feelings in a direct manner, and they turned into a specific British way of life, which became famous all over the world. The importance of tradition, its role in establishing and reinforcing the identity of a nation has always played a great part in developing a growing interest in various aspects of heritage. The British are said to be reserved in manners, dress and speech. Their insularity, conservaticism and sticking to traditions are often pointed. Although they are famous for their politeness, self - discipline and their specific sense of humour, there are big differences in manners. More than that, many traditional British customs have changed as the way of life has changed. Very popular always was Valentine's day on l4th February. It is a great day for all lovers. Originaly this day commemorated the Roman priest who gave aid and comfort to the persecuted Christians before he was put to death. On this day young people send Valentine's cards to a person of opposite sex, usually anymiously, and exchange gifts. Cards can have serious and loving text. Valentine's Day is not only a public Holiday, but also one of the saint's day that are celebrated in Britain. Christianity brought the story of St Valentine a Christian who lived in the third century, during the time of the Roman Emperor Claudius II, who was not a Christian. The Emperor decided that his soldiers must not marry because this way they do not make good fighters. One day, as Valentine was working for the church, he helped a soldier to get married and was imprisoned and sentenced to death. In prison, he fell in love with the daughter of a man who worked in the prison. On the day of his death, he sent a note to his beloved and in the end he signed "Your Valentine". He was executed on February 14th, so the day of the festival changed from February 15th to 14th and the same name changed to St. Valentine's Day. In the early 19th century when the post office started in Britain, people began to send Valentine's cards to the person they loved on February 14th. Often people do not sign the cards with their names, but just write "Be my Valentine" or "From Your Valentine" like in a game. People go out to restaurants for the evening and have dinner for two with candles and soft music. In March there are two different celebrations specific for Wales - St. David's day and St. Patrick's day (the patron of Ireland when people are often dressed in shamrocks). In April St.George, the patron of England is celebrated in April, and All Fool's day which is called after the simple shouting "Fool"you deceive someone funny joke or trick. But the greatest celebration of speing is Easter that is the feast of Christian church. The celebration of Easter has its origin in an old pagan festival. Its name comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre. In pagan times it was the Easter tradition for people to offer eggs to one another as a symbol of the new life regeneration. Today the Easter starts with Good Friday, which is the day when the Romans killed Jesus Christ, in Jerusalem about 2000 years ago. Two days later, on Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate his resurrection. British origin peoples celebrate Easter by parades running in many areas where peoples wear clothes decorated with spring flowers and children usually have one or two week holiday from school. They also use to decorate eggs with different colours, and then take them to the top of a hill and roll them down in a traditional competition called Easter egg-rolling. Pace-egg shells must be crushed for they are popular with witches to use as boats.

70

Pancake Racing is also a traditional lively and energetic game played by women wearing aprons and headscarves and running with frying pans and pancakes in a 400- meter race to the parish church, tossing their pancakes three times on their way. After declaring the winner, all the frying pans are laid around the church for a blessing service. Although it is a relic of a 5oo-year-old ceremony, and more dangerous than rolling eggs, the custom of rolling cheese is associated with grazing rights and it is maintained nowadays too. Parents tell their children that the Easter Rabbit (Bunny) brings eggs and hides them in the garden and the children have to go outside looking for them. The transformation of the hares that was considered a sacred animal by the Anglo-Saxons, into the Easter Bunny may have resulted from a natural confusion between the two animals and the wish to disguise its pagan origins. People use also to eat hot cross buns at Easter small loaves of bread made with fruit and spices, with a cross on the top. Good friday commemorates Jesus' crucufixion while Easter Sunday commemorates the Resurrection of Jesus. Dyed and decorated easter eggs - symbol of a new life, are given as presents. Than comes May Day when political parties of the left hold processions and public meetings. But for British May Day also means the traditional spring festival. In the old days people went out into the woods before dawn to cellect flowers and green branches.It is generally assumed that the May Day celebration originated in the spring fertility festivals when the Roman festival of Flora, goddess of flowers, marked the beginning of summer. The Roman and then the Celtic tradition of May Day continued to be celebrated throughout the Middle Ages especially by the rural and village people. It is a time of fun a Queen of May is chosen from the young women of the village to rule the crops until harvest Priests and Lords are the target of many jokes committed by the Queen, the Green Man, and their supporters. The custom only survives in a few places where it is connected with Morris dancing. It is also performed on religious holidays and weddings. It has the real roots in Africa and Asia and in the l7th century the main performance was a kind of pageant or play. E.g. Elizabethan pegeant performed by Morris dancers was based on the Robin Hood legend. This involved a Lord of Misrule choosen specialy for this occasion - being crowned and then choosing his own personal bodyguard. Other performers included drummers, pipers, dragons and hobby-horses. Teams of Morris dancers usually have a specially dressed Squire or Bagman in charge. Ordinary dancers normally wear white shirts and black trousers. Short round hats or taller topper are decorated with flowers and coloured ribbons. These all have special significance. Red poppies are sign of health, white poppies of plenty, blue cornflowers represent blessedness or holiness, white hankerchiefs waved from the hand symbolise the gathering and scattering of magical energy over earth and crops. Morris dancers usually perform the very old ritualistic ceremonies associated with fertility and the re-awaking of the earth after winter. There is also Mother's day in May that honours all mothers. Fathers are also no forgotten - the day dedicated to them is the 3rd Sunday in June. And only a few days before it is celebrating of Qeen's Official Birthday in the middle of June. There are various ceremonies associated with it as ceremony of the Trooping the colour and the Horse Guards Parade. The Queen, her husband, and the Prince of Wales, all on horseback, are present. Trooping the Colour is a military pageant that dates back to times before the Regular British Army came into existence. In these days soldiers were billeted in private houses, not in barracks. Every day the officers and men that were to be on the guard would assemble around the regimental colours or flag. The next step was to parade the flag and slowly the elaborate military display which makes up the modern Trooping of the Colour came into being. At the end of this ceremony, the pageant returns from Horse Guards' Parade back to Buckingham Palace. The route is line with many thousands of tourists, who usually enjoy this fine display of British pageantry.

71

Halloween is the next well known day. Among the old Celts it was the last day of the year and the beggining of winter when witches and ghosts were supposed to celebrate their rites. A favourite custom is to make a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin that is scraped out and in which eyes, a nose and a mounth are cut and then a candle is light inside. Children celebrate it by dressing up in Halloween customs with masks over their faces. Carrying baskets or bags they go to their friends'and neighbours' houses and they knock at the door or ring the bell. When people come to the door, children say " Trick or treat" which means "Give us a treat or we will play a trick on you." Then people treat the children with sweets, fruit or money. It has its origin in Sumhain, the celebration that marked the end of the Celtic year when the Druidic priests believed that the dead could come back to earth and cause trouble for the living. To counter this, they built large, sacred bonfires to chase away the spirits of the dead. The Romans had also their own "All Souls Day" celebrated by bonfires, parades, costumes and feasts. It was known as Hallowmas that slowly changed into Hallowe'en, turning the celebration of October 31 to November 2nd into a custom for driving the bad spirits away. People use to make jack o'lanterns by cutting a hole in a large pumpkin and put a candle inside so the light can be easily seen. The turnip that is scooped out is usually cooked and mashed up with potatoes to make a 'clap shot'. Lucky charms and money are mixed into it for bringing good luck and for telling divinations. Another thing people use to do for driving away bad spirits was to dress themselves like witches and ghosts. Children still do this when going on Hallowe'en parties where games like the one called "bobbing the apple" are played. Water and apples are put in a large bowl and the children try to catch them keeping his or her hands behind and take the apples out of water with his or her teeth. The game is difficult and the children get completely wet. In Scotland, people use to throw coins in the water, which, of course, sink to the bottom. Brave plungers can get the coins only if they are prepared to put their heads right under the water. Rememberance day commemorates the coutry's war death, on that day in l9l8 World War I came to an end and Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November is a fireworks celebration. On that day, in l605, the British parliament was saved from destruction when a plot to blow up the building was discovered in time. Christmas is well-known for its significance. In England the main emphasis is on Christmas Eve, and the festive meal is served in the evening while in Britain the festive meal is the dinner and a roast turkey and aChristmas pudding is served. Children hang up their stocking and in the morning of the next day they enjoy unwrapping their presents. New Year's Eve is a big festival in Scotland, where it is called Hogmanay. It begins with the arrival of the guests who have been invated to join the family to see in the New Year. They sit down to dinner which begins with haggins - Scotland's national food that consists of minced hearth, lungs and liver of a sheep, boiled in a sheep's stomach with oatmeal. Before midnight many townsfolk gather in the square, they sing and dance in the Scottish style. At midnight there is a great cheer, people cross arms, links hands for a traditional song "Auld Lang Syne" Scottish people also considere lucky if a dark-haired man is the first to set foot in the house after midnight, bringing a coin,a piece of bread, and a coal as a symbol of plenty in the comming year. Christmas is the most widely celebrated festival in Britain, although New Year is considered more important in Scotland. Most businesses close down from around December 24th until the New Year begins. People spend their holidays with their families. However, it became a tradition to go form a swim either in the sea or in a lake, even though sometimes the swimmers have to break the ice to get in the water. The event is entertaining for the on-lookers and the swimmers confess that they enjoy it too. Before Christmas, the tradition is to decorate homes with fresh mistletoe and holly to protect the house from the evil and to have eternal life. In Wales there is a church service known as "Plygain" (daybreak) attended between 3 am and 6 am by men to sing carols. After the service, a day of feasting and drinking would 72

begin. The New Year's Day is a public holiday. At midnight, people join hands and sing an old song called "Auld Lang Syne" whose lines were written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns two hundred years ago. After midnight, people use to drink a glass of champagne, light fireworks and firecrackers and dance until sunrise. In Edinburgh, there are house parties, street parades, and Scottish music. The Scots have the custom of First Footing where at midnight, armed with a bottle of whisky and gifts, people visit their neighbours going from house to house, toasting for the New Year , often not returning home until day break. It is said that if the first footing person is a dark-haired men, it brings good luck. The man leaves the house by the back door just before midnight on New Years Eve, walks around and on the strikes of midnight, and knocks on the front door. The house keeper opens the door and receives the following gifts: salt for seasoning, silver for wealth, coal for warmth, a match for kindling and bread for sustenance. In Wales the custom of letting in the New Year is slightly different in that if the visitor is a woman and the male householder opens the door that is bad luck. If the first man to cross the threshold is a red haired man, that is also bad luck. All existing debts are to be paid; never lend anything to anyone on New Year's Day else you would have bad luck, and the behaviour of an individual on this day is a n indication of how he would behave all year. The most popular New Year's custom is the Calennig (small gift). On January the first, from dawn until noon, groups of young boys would visit all the houses in the village carrying evergreen twigs and a cup of cold water drawn from a local well. The boys would then use the twigs to splash people with water. In return, they would receive the Calennig, usually in the form of copper coins. The custom survived in some areas well after the Wold War II, at least in the form of the chanting of a small verse or two in exchange for small coins.

1.17.1. British Festivals The Notting Hill Carnival is the largest street festival in Europe, and it takes place every August Bank Holiday weekend, traditionally around the London streets surrounding Ladbroke Grove. It began in the early 1960s among the West Indian Community in London as a celebration of the end of slavery in the West Indies. It became a traditional tourist attraction as million of people attend it for fun and entertainment. The festival includes a carnival costumes parade, which take many months to plan and prepare. The Midsummer's Day the longest day of the year, June the 24th, makes the opportunity of Midsummer Festivals, as a very old custom of the Druids. Strange ceremonies are performed at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, to mark the beginning of months and seasons of the Druid calendar. Young girls adorn their heads with flowers wreaths and they will marry the man whom they will see in their dreams walking along the straw placed across the bowl of water under their beds, or who will dry their face on the towel placed beside her bed. They also consider that the dew and the herbs gathered on Midsummer Night have healing properties. Either is the custom of the Midsummer's Day for the farmers to weed the rye and burn other weeds. The fishermen of the east coast of Scotland transferred the bonfire rites to their own festival on 29th June (St. Peter's Day). Families light small bonfires in his honour outside their front doors. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is an annual paradise. For five joyful weeks, the elegant seaside city resigns itself to a grand theatrical show. From all corners of the globe dramatic and musical troops descend on Scotland's capital to attempt and dazzle the spectators into 73

parting with their pounds: in exchange for laughter, tears, and amusement. The cheerful culture-type goers rush from place to place, morning to night, eight shows per day. In the early days during the late 40s and early 50s, the various Fringe groups, now attracting an increasing number of student theatre companies, from Oxford, Cambridge, London and Durham, put on their shows independently, in small, intimate performance spaces, church halls, local community centres, and University buildings. As the word spread about the opportunity to perform and equally the freedom of expression afforded to writers and performers, the range and professional quality of productions increased. 1.17.2. Superstitions and Sayings Weddings have a host of superstitions.. These are well known and carried out today too. No modern bride will allow her bridegroom to see her on the wedding day before she gets to the church and she will not have put on her whole 'ensemble' before wedding day without leaving off some part of it. Usually she leaves her veil off or takes off one shoe. To be kissed by a passing chimney sweep is very good luck.. The tradition of tying old shoes to the back of the Couple's car, for example, stems from Tudor's time when guests would throw shoes at the Bride and Groom with great luck being bestowed on them if they or their carriage was hit. In Anglo Saxon times, the Bride was symbolically struck with a shoe by her Groom to establish his authority. Brides would then throw shoes at their bridesmaids to see who would marry next. "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue and a Silver Sixpence in her Shoe". This rhyme originated in Victorian times. "Something Old" signifies that the couple's friends will stay with them. In one version of the tradition the Something Old was an old garter which was given to the bride by a happily married woman so that the new bride would also enjoy a happy marriage. "Something New" look to the future for health, happiness and success. "Something Borrowed" is an opportunity for the bride's family to give her something as a token of their love (and it must be returned to ensure Good Luck), and "Something Blue" is thought lucky because the colour of blue represents fidelity and constancy. The custom began in ancient Israel where brides wore a blue ribbon in their hair to symbolise their fidelity. A sixpence was placed in the shoe to bring the couple health in their married life. Flowers have always been a big feature at weddings. The Groom is supposed to wear a flower that appears in the Bridal Bouquet in his buttonhole. This stems from the medieval times when a knight wore his lady's colours, as a declaration of his love. Each flower has its meaning and can display a special message. The Wedding Cake was originally was broken over the Bride's head to bestow good luck and fertility. Today's the three tier Cake should be cut by the newly-weds as a significance of sharing their life. Every guest then eats a crumb to ensure good luck. And sleeping with a piece under her pillow is said to make a single woman dream of her future husband. Walking is the best way of getting to the church., as there is more chance of spotting lucky omens: seeing a rainbow, having the sun shine on the Bride and meeting a black cat or a chimney sweep are all lucky. Bad omens include seeing a pig, hare or lizard running across the road, or spotting on an open grave. Coming home from church can be equally hazardous. Tradition dictates that the new wife must enter he r home by the main door, and to avoid bad luck, must never trip or fall hence the custom that a bride should be carried over the threshold.

74

Until the 19th century, brides hardly ever bought a special wedding dress, opting for their best outfit instead. Green was always avoided, as it was thought to be unlucky. To say a girl "had a green gown" also implied that she was of loose morals, because her dress would be grass-stained due to rolling around in the fields. Queen Victoria, who broke the tradition of Royals marrying in silver, made white dresses popular. Symbolising purity and virginity, white was also thought to ward off evil spirits. Different parts of the country have their own particular superstitions designed to bring good fortune, health and wealth to their house and family. In days gone for, food preparation was surrounded by many taboos. House wives believed that food would be spoilt if it were stirred "widdershins" - that is, in the opposite direction to that of the sun., or that bread would not rise if there was a corpse in the vicinity, or to cut off both ends of the loaf would make the Devil fly over the house. Once at the table, there are other numerous other things to watch out for. The best known of course is not to have 13 people at the table, and should someone spilt the salt, a pinch had to be thrown over the left shoulder into the eyes of the devil. Crossed knives at the table signify a quarrel, while white tablecloth left on the table overnight means the household will need a shroud in the near future. The women must not pour from the same teapot, if they do, a quarrel will ensue. In Somerset a double-yoked egg is viewed with concern as it foretell of a hurried wedding due to a pregnancy. Magical rites and charms have always surrounded pregnancy and childbirth, and the new mother makes sure some are still respected. Choosing the baby carriage before the baby is born, is quite safe, but is must not be delivered to the home until after the baby is born. In Britain, there are many superstitions about plants and flowers. Putting a pumpkin in the window is to scare away the evil spirits; blackthorn (sloe) is often referred to as a witch's tree. As late as the 1940s, anyone seen to carry a blackthorn walking stick was suspected of being a witch. May or hawthorn, brought into the house before Mayday is widely associated with bad luck; in most places, rowan is well known for its protective qualities against witches and fairies, and is believed to be the primary tree of power by ancient Celts. It was called the moon tree in northern myths, when the frosts at the winter solstice, would leave stars clustered among the upper branches in what may well have been the forerunner of our Christmas tree tradition. In some British origin parts, it is still common for member of the family to sit with a corpse the night before the funeral, the corpse being surrounded by candles to keep the evil spirits away. The custom of burying people with their feet and face towards the east is a relic of the pagan sun-worship practice, and adopted by the Christian Church, which considers that the summons of the Last Judgement will come from that direction. Superstitions also says that a corpse which does not become still is waiting for another death, and that if the sun shines brightly on the face of the one of the mourners at the graveside, then he will be the next to die. Many superstitions are associated with numbers. Odd numbers are generally considered to be lucky, even numbers-unlucky. A person born on the first day of the month is particularly fortunate whereas someone born on the second is very unlucky. Three is a lucky number and three times three even luckier. However, it is widely believed that when two people die, a third will follow. Seven being a mystical or sacred number, is extremely good. A seventh child is very lucky and the seventh child of the seventh is considered to have abilities of curing due to paranormal abilities. A birth date, which is divisible by seven, can 75

ensure good fortune all life long. Thirteen is considered unlucky as the number is associated both with the Last Supper where Christ and his 12 disciples made up 13, and also with the Norse god Loki the spirit of Evil and strife, who was a troublesome thirteen guest at a banquet in Valhalla. The Scots call any Friday that comes on the 13th of month "Black Friday". 1.17.3. Other traditions The Pearly Royals started in the Victorian age; they were costermonger's street vendors of fruit and vegetables, and their distinctive costumes are said to have sprung from the arrival of a big cargo of pearl-buttons from Japan in the 1860's. It seems that one of the costers sewed some of the buttons round the edge of his wide-bottomed trousers, and the fashion caught on. Traditionally costers elect Kings, called "the Pearlies", to lead them against bullies seeking to drive them from their pitches. Each individual area in London has its own king and his "donah" (as the wives are called), and both are elaborately turned down. The magnificent suit, hats and dresses, handed down together with hereditary titles are sewn with majestic symbols, stars, moons, suns, flowers, diamonds, Trees of Life, Eyes of God and fertility designs. Each outfit can have as many as 30,000 buttons on it at charity events, christenings, weddings, and funerals. Where there is a special drive the kings and queens ride in splendour on their decorated donkey-carts and they are called Cockneys. The Tichborne Dole is an old British tradition still alive today. It was born in the village of Tichborne near Aylesford in Hampshire every year on March 25th the Feast of Annunciation. It is said that suffering from a wasting disease which had left her crippled, on her deathbed Lady Mabella Tichborne asked her husband to donate food to the people in need, regularly, every year. He was reluctant but made an agreement with her, as to how much he would give. Sir Roger agreed to give the corn from all the land which his dying wife could crawl around whilst holding a blazing torch in her hand, before the torch went out. Lady Mabella succeeded in crawling around a twenty a-three acre field, which is still called "The Crawls". Being aware of her husband miserly character, Mabella added a curse: that should the dole ever be stopped then seven sons would be born to the house, followed immediately by a generation of daughters, after which the Tichborne name would die out and the ancient house fall into ruin. The custom of giving the Dole, in the form of bread, on March 25th, Lady's Day has continued. Lady's Day is celebrated in honour of the Virgin Mary as this day, nine months before Christmas: it is the day of the Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel that she would bear Christ. In the 12th century, Lady's Day was considered the first day of the year and persisted until the official calendar change of 1752.

76

Scottish Kilt and Bagpipe In Scotland, both men and women wear kilts, but men also wear a small bag called "sporran". In the 17th century, the highlanders did not wear trousers. Their kilt was made of tartan a kind of a cloth with coloured squares dyed in natural colours. They also wore tartan cloth over their trousers instead of a coat, that was a blanket or "plaid" which was pinned over the chest with a piece of bone or wood, and tied round the middle with as leather belt. The kilt was very practical as when the wearers had to spend the night in the open, they could just unfold the plaid and use it as a cover. In the 19th century, the tartan became a very popular fashion that was reinforced by Queen Victoria who had a castle built in Scotland. The highlanders belong always to a big family or clan (McDonald, Mackenzie, Steward) and they wear the same tartan and play music on a bagpipe which seems to have its origin in the Roman times. The MacCrimmons the legendary pipers of Skye were said to have received the art of piping by some natural means. Some of the tunes are famous and they can be heard at the Tattoo at the Edinburgh Festival. During the festival, soldiers coming from all over the world march inside the castle and the Scottish pipers play the bagpipes. At the end of the evening, one piper plays his pipe on the walls of the Edinburgh castle. Michaelmas The Festival of Michaelmas is celebrated on the 29th of September as a dedication of St. Michael the Archangel, the Leader of the Heavenly Host. As he was the patron of the fishermen and the horsemen, it is celebrated with horse racing and giving of gifts including carrots, which were harvested and blessed at this time. The harvest festival is also celebrated by the baking of a "Struan Micheil", cake a special cake made of the year's cereals. Harvest Home as a festival in Scotland is the most celebrated in Gaelic-speaking Scotland and the Northeast. 1.17.4. Food Tradition in Britain The history of Britain has played an important part in its tradition and culture and food. The Romans brought here the cherries, stinging nettles for salad vegetables, cabbage and peas; they also improved the cultivation of crops such as corn, and the wine. The Saxons were excellent farmers and cultivated a wide range of herbs. The Vikings and Danes brought the techniques for smoking and drying fish. Even today, the North East coasts of England and Scotland are the places to find the best kippers (salted and smoked fish). Collops is an old Scandinavian word for pieces or slices of meat and a dish of Collops is traditionally served on Burns Night (January 25) in Scotland. The York Ham is a great favourite with the British housewife. The Normans invaded not only Britain but also the British eating habits. The importation of foods and spices from abroad has greatly influenced the British diet in the Middle Ages: spice from the Far East, sugar from the Caribbean, coffee and cocoa from South America and tea from India, and potatoes from America. The growth of the Empire brought new tastes and flavors Kedgeree, has become a traditional dish at the British breakfast since the 18th century as a version of the Indian dish consisted of rice, cooked flaked fish and hard-boiled eggs. As there is a long way back to home, from the place of work or school, the British people tend to have a big breakfast before their go to work and the meal at the midday is spent with the workmates or schoolmates. They also have their evening g meal or dinner between 6.30 PM and 8 PM. The British breakfast is much bigger than in most other countries. It can consist of fried bacon and eggs with fried bread and possibly fried tomatoes or black pudding. Cereals are also very popular, especially cornflakes. In Scotland, many people eat "porridge" or boiled oats.

77

British people can also have a packed lunch consisting of some sandwiches, a packet of crisps, an apple and a can of soft drink. The mostly typical thing to eat for dinner is "meat and two veg"; this consists of a piece of meat accompanied by two different boiled vegetables. This is covered with "gravy" which is a juice obtained when the meat is cooked. One of the vegetables is usually potatoes. The Ploughman's Lunch is a very popular thing to eat in a pub at midday. It consists of a bread roll with a piece of cheese and pickled onion. Haggis is a delicacy of Scotland and considered the national dish. It is a mixture of sheep's heart, liver, windpipe and blood, salt and a lot of pepper boiled in a stomach of the same animal. It is served with boiled potatoes and turnip mashed together, especially on the evening of January the 25th, when Scots get together to spend "Burns Supper" The Scots all over the world celebrate on this day, their famous national poet, Robert Burns. A meal is served during which Burns' poems are recited and speeches are made. "Tam o'Shanter", "Address to the Unco Guide", "To a Haggis" .The haggis is "piped" (preceded by a man playing the bagpipe a rising tune) and ceremoniously cut with a "sgian-dubh" a small knife that the Scotsmen wear on the top of their hose stockings. Whisky is drunk and toasts are made for women "lassies" that reply by toasting to the men. After meal dancing starts. As many other gatherings the Burns supper ends with "Auld Lang Syne". The typical British pie can be either sweet or savoury; it is made of pastry, filled with steak, kidney or apple and cooked in the oven. They are variations of the pie such as Cornish pasties, which were originally invented for the miners, as it was too much trouble for them to come to the surface to have lunch. The British eat their bread almost always covered with butter or margarine. The most popular type of bread is the sliced white bread. Scotland is also famous for its whisky "uisgebeatha, that is "water of life" Many visitors come and see their distilleries built mostly near the River Spey, Iverness, but the most famous is The Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre near the castle in Edinburgh. Anna, the seventh duchess of Bedford in 1840, introduced afternoon tea in England. She would become hungry around four o'clock in the afternoon, long before the household dinnertime. The Duchess asked that a tray of tea, bread, butter, and cake to be brought to her room during the late afternoon. This became a habit of hers and she began inviting friends to join her. It was before the Earl of Sandwich had the idea of putting a filling between two slices of bread. It became fashionable for the upper class women that used to serve tea with their friends between four and five. Traditionally it consists of a selection of sandwiches, including cucumber sandwiches, scones, served with clotted cream and preserves. Cakes and pastries are also served. The Devonshire Cream Tea is famous worldwide and consists of scones, strawberry jam and the vital ingredient, Devon clotted cream as well as cups of hot sweet tea served in china teacups. The most popular British dish is considered "fish and chips": freshly cooked, piped hot fish and chips, smothered in salt and soused in vinegar. There around 8,500 fish and chips shops across the UK that is eight for every one McDonald's outlet, making British Fish and Chips the nation's favourite take-away. The naming of the British pubs became popular by the 12th century, when they had not only names but also signs (the majority of the population could not read and write) reflecting the British life at that time. Before King Henry VIII and the Reformation, many had a religious name "The Crossed Keys" the emblem of St. Peter. When Henry split with the Catholic Church, names were changed: "The King' Head", or "The Rose & Crown". "The Red Lion" is probably the most popular name for a pub and originates from the time of James I and the VI of

78

Scotland who ordered that the heraldic red lion of Scotland be displayed on all buildings of importance including pubs. 1.18. British Music The origins of music in Britain lie in the songs sung and dance music played by ordinary people. Passed from village to village and handed down in the unwritten form from generation to generation. John Dunstable was one of the greatest English composers of the first half of the 15th centyury, whose work includes masses, mottets and secular songs. It is believed that he spent a great deal of his life in France and Italy where he became mostly influential due to his style based on consonant harmonies on thirds which became the norm of the time. He was in the service of Duke Bedford, Henry's regent in France, the man who was responsible for ordering the burning to death of Joan of Arc. He died in London and he is burried in St.'Stphan's Cemetery, Walbrook. Georg Friederich Hndel, son of a barber-surgeon in Halle. When he was 17 he was appointed organist of the Calvinist Cathedral, but the next year he accepted an invitation to Italy, where he spent more than three years, in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice where he wrote many Italian cantatas,and perfected his technique in setting Italian words for the human voice. In Rome he also composed some Latin church music. Early in 1710 and went to Hanover, where he was appointed Kapellmeister to the elector. But he at once took leave to take up an invitation to London, where his opera Rinaldo was produced early in 1711. In 1718-19 Handel was appointed musical director of the Opera In London and under George II he had taken British naturalization. Handel moved between Italian opera and the English forms, oratorio, ode and the like, unsure of his future commercially and artistically. After a joumey to Dublin in 1741-2, where Messiah had its premiere (in aid of charities), he put opera behind him and for most of the remainder of his life gave oratorio performances, mostly at the new Covent Garden theatre, usually at or close to the Lent season. Handel was very economical in the re-use of his ideas; at many times in his life he also drew heavily on the music of others. Handel died in 1759 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, recognized in England and by many in Germany as the greatest composer of his day. The wide range of expression at his command is shown not only in the operas, with their rich and varied arias, but also in the form he created, the English oratorio, where it is applied to the fates of nations as well as individuals. He had a vivid sense of drama. But above all he had a resource and originality of invention, to be seen in the extraordinary variety of music in which melodic beauty, boldness and humour all play a part, that place him and J.S. Bach as the supreme masters of the Baroque era in music.

79

1.18.1. Modern Times Music Over the last thirty or so years British pop music has led the world in its range and quality, starting several new trends. In the 1920s the young people listened to ragtime and jazz, while in the 1930s - Swing became popular. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra were the 'King of the Swing', as were Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. The music was fast and frantically paced and led to dances being banned from dance halls, as the young women being flung into the air by their partners showed their stocking tops and underwear. The Second World War brought fast, frantic American dance music - boogie-woogie or jitterbug. Dances were held in church halls, village halls, clubs, but slower, romantic songs were also popular as loved ones went away to fight. After the war 'skiffle' bands became popular: they used household washboards and tea chests, as part of their set of instruments! In 1950s - Rock and Roll became very popular and then the Beatles began their career when many young people enjoyed 'hippie' music but also the music of the 'Mods' - ska music and The Who. The first big new sound of the 1970s was Glam Rock, with its main figures of David Bowie, Elton John and of course Gary Glitter. They brought a welcome relief with their platform boots, sequins, nail varnish and colourful hair. The punk movement of the late 1970s began in England. Great British bands of this scene were The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The Punk style was Mohicans, bondage clothes, safety pins, piercings and bovver boots. The 1980s saw the rise of hip hop and rap music, with American influences powerful once again in the form of such groups as Run DMC and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It also saw the rise and fall of the 'New Romantics', typified by groups like Adam and the Ants, who dressed as pirates and highway men and wore huge amounts of makeup. Britpop was the general name given in the 1990s to a new wave of successful British bands who made a big impact in the United States and Europe, as well as in England. The most successful have been Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Massive Attack and The Spice Girls. 2. England The largest and most populous home nation of the United Kingdom accounts for more than 83% of the total UK population, occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the westand also, it is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Atlantic Ocean and English Channel. England is named after the Angles, a number of Germanic tribes believed to have originated in Angeln in northern Germany, who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries. This is also the origin of its Latin name Anglia. It has not had a distinct political identity since 1707, when the United Kingdom of Great Britain was established as a unified political entity; however, it has a legal identity separate from those of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as part of the entity "England and Wales".The largest city, London, is also the capital of the United Kingdom. 2.1. English Nation Symbols The logo of the England national football team combines the Three Lions with the Tudor rose. The two traditional symbols of England are the St. George's cross (the English flag) and the Three Lions coat of arms, both derived from the great Norman powers that formed the monarchy the Cross of Aquitaine and the Lions of Anjou. The three lions were first definitely used by Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) in the late 12th century (although it is also possible that Henry I may have bestowed it on his son Henry before then). Historian Simon Schama has

80

argued that the Three Lions are the true symbol of England because the English throne descended down the Angevin line. A red cross acted as a symbol for many Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. It became associated with St George and England, along with other countries and cities (such as Georgia, Milan and the Republic of Genoa), which claimed him as their patron saint and used his cross as a banner. It remained in national use until 1707, when the Union Jack (more properly known as the Union Flag, except when used at sea) which English and Scottish ships had used at sea since 1606, was adopted for all purposes to unite the whole of Great Britain under a common flag. The flag of England no longer has much of an official role, but it is widely flown by Church of England properties and at sporting events. (Paradoxically, the latter is a fairly recent development; until the late 20th century, it was commonplace for fans of English teams to wave the Union Flag, rather than the St George's Cross). The rose is widely recognised as the national flower of England and is used in a variety of contexts. Predominantly, this is a red rose (which also symbolises Lancashire), such as the badge of the English Rugby Union team. However, a white rose (which also symbolises Yorkshire) or a "Tudor rose" (symbolising the end of the War of the Roses) may also be used on different occasions. The Three Lions badge performs a similar role for the English national football team and English national cricket team. Inhabitants of England refer to themselves as "British" rather than "English"; centuries of English dominance within the United Kingdom has created a situation where to be English is, from linguistic point of view, an "unmarked" state (i.e. a British person, institution, custom, city, etc. is often assumed English unless specified otherwise). The English frequently include their neighbours in the general term "British" while the Scots and Welsh tend to be more forward about referring to themselves by one of those more specific terms. St George's Day, the country's national holiday, is barely celebrated marks an apathy to the nation outside of the sporting arena. Although a part of England, a small, but noticeable, minority of those living in Cornwall feel similarly, considering themselves ethnically Cornish first. English national identity is often taken to have been appropriated by far right organizations such as the British National Party and the English Democrats Party . This radicalizing of identity is often seen to be a problem. Thus, English identity is - for better or worse - closely associated with English nationalism and often with British Nationalism. Some English nationalists claim that the 'original culture' of England is comprised of legacies of Brythonic tribes of Celts and Anglo-Saxons appearing in waves of gradual migration. It also seen as being influenced by the Scandinavian legends such as Beowulf and the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a common early location for English identity. Attempts have been made to de-radicalize English identity. These toe a fine line between trying to find an English-ness, and trying to avoid the racist conotations of its many current expressions. Modern English identity is often built around its sports, one field in which the British Home Nations often compete individually. In particular the English Association football team, Rugby Union team and Cricket team often cause increases in the popularity of 'Englishness' 2.2. Historical Background Farmers and permanent settlements, with an advanced megalithic civilisation arose in western England some 4,000 years ago. It was replaced around 1,500 years later by Celtic tribes migrating from continental western Europe, mainly from France. These tribes were known

81

collectively as "Britons", a name bestowed by Phoenician that indicated the main occupation of the inhabitants as the island was part of a Europe-wide trading network. The Britons were significant players in continental affairs and supported their allies, the Romans in the Gallic Wars that prompted the Romans to invade and subdue the island, first with Julius Caesar's raid in 55 BC, and then the Emperor Claudius' conquest in the following century. The whole southern part of the island roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales became a prosperous part of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned early in the 5th century when the weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent. Roman Britannia could not longer resist the invading Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries, enveloping the majority of modern-day England in a new culture and language. Some of the population began emigrating across the channel to modern-day Brittany, thus giving it its name and Breton language. But many of the Romano-British remained in and were assimilated into the newly English areas. The invaders fell into three main groups: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. They became more civilised, recognisable states formed that began to merge with one another.. From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the "Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the Kingdom of England was unified. But the effective and real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of England in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often considered as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted two generations later by Alfred the Great (ruled 871899). The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the languages of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place names in England and, to a lesser extent, Scotland are derived from Celtic British names: London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover, and Colchester. Several place name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, and coomb for a small deep valley. From this age, where the majority culture and language came to be that of a Germanic origin Old English we can piece together how England came to be created and have the Welsh legacy of their name for England Lloegr translated as "lost lands". West Midlands was only lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements. In 1066, William the Conqueror and the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings and conquered the Kingdom of England. They ruled as custodians and implemented an Anglo-Norman administration and made the proto-French language for the next three hundred years. Although the language and racial distinctions faded rapidly during the Middle Ages, the class system born in the Norman/Saxon has lasted to the modern day. Although Old English continued to be spoken by common folk, Norman feudal lords significantly influenced the language with French words and customs being adopted over the succeeding centuries evolving to a Germano-Romance creole now known as Middle English widely spoken in Chaucer's time. England came repeatedly into conflict with Wales and Scotland, as its rulers sought to expand Norman power across the entire island of Great Britain. The conquest of Wales was 82

achieved in the 13th century; it was annexed to England and gradually become a part of that kingdom for most legal purposes, although in the modern era it is still considered a separate nation. Norman influence in Scotland waxed and waned over the years, with the Scots managing to maintain a varying degree of independence despite repeated wars with the English, in particular the Wars of Scottish Independence, and serious attempts at conquest were abandoned after the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. Although it was on the whole only a moderately successful power in military terms, England became one of the wealthiest states in medieval Europe, due chiefly to its dominance in the lucrative wool market. England also found itself in conflict with France, in particular during the Hundred Years' War. This failure of English territorial ambitions in continental Europe prompted the kingdom's rulers to look further afield, creating the foundations of the mercantile and colonial network that was to become the British Empire. The turmoil of the Reformation embroiled England in religious wars with Europe's Catholic powers, notably Spain, but the kingdom preserved its independence as much through luck as through the skill of charismatic rulers such as Elizabeth I. Elizabeth's successor, James I was already king of Scotland (as James VI); and this personal union of the two crowns was followed a century later by the Act of Union 1707, which formally unified England, Scotland, and Wales into the Kingdom of Great Britain. This later became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801 to 1927) and then the modern state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1927 to present). 2.3. Languages Spoken The authentic Old English language is identifiable, for the first time, in the oldest surviving epic poems of Beowulf.As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it is still the principal tongue today. However, the English language does vary slightly in different places. An Indo-European language in Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family, it is closely related to Scots and Frisian. As the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged into England, "Old English" emerged; some of its literature and poetry has survived. Used by aristocracy and commoners alike before the Norman Conquest (1066), English was displaced in cultured contexts under the new regime by the Norman French language of the new Anglo-French aristocracy. Its use was confined primarily to the lower social classes while official business was conducted in a mixture of Latin and French. Over the following centuries, however, English gradually came back into fashion among all classes and for all official business except certain traditional ceremonies. (Some survive to this day.) But Middle English, as it had by now become, showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins; and more recent years, Modern English has extended this custom, being always remarkable for its far-flung willingness to incorporate foreign-influenced words. The law does not recognise any language as being official, but English is the only language used in England for general official business. The other national languages of the UK (Welsh, Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic) are confined to their respective nations, and only Welsh is treated by law as an equal to English (and then only for organisations which do business in Wales). The only non-Anglic native spoken language in England is the Cornish language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became extinct in the 19th century but has been revived and is spoken in various degrees of fluency by around 3,500 people. This has no official status (unlike Welsh) and is not required for official use, but is nonetheless supported by national and local government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority 83

Languages. Cornwall County Council has produced a draft strategy to develop these plans. There is, however, no programme as yet for public bodies to actively promote the language. Scots is spoken by some adjacent to the Anglo-Scottish Border. Most deaf people within England speak British sign language (BSL), a sign language native to Britain. The British Deaf Association estimates that 70,000 people throughout the UK speak BSL as their first or preferred language, but does not give statistics specific to England. Unlike Cornish, BSL is an official language of the UK although most British government departments and hospitals still do not cater for deaf people. The BBC broadcasts several of its programmes with BSL interpreters. Different languages from around the world, especially from the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations, have been brought to England by immigrants. Many of these are widely spoken within ethnic minority communities, with Bengali, Punjabi, Greek, Turkish and Cantonese being the most common languages that people living in Britain consider their first language. These are often used by official bodies to communicate with the relevant sections of the community, particularly in big cities, but this occurs on an "as needed" basis rather than as the result of specific legislative ordinances. Other languages have also traditionally been spoken by minority populations in England, including Romany. Despite the relatively small size of the nation, there are a large number of distinct English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood elsewhere in the country. Use of foreign non-standard varieties of English (such as Caribbean English) is also widespread. 2.4. Culture It is sometimes difficult to separate clearly he culture of the England from that of the United Kingdom, so influential has English culture been on the cultures of the British Isles and, on the other hand, given the extent to which other cultures have influenced life in England. It has also been spread over large parts of the globe due to the British Empire. England has produced many famous authors including William Shakespeare, the most famous in the history of the English language. This tradition has continued with authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien, who are all often considered the greatest writers of their time. Composers from England did not achieve the same reconition in comparison to their literary counterparts often overshowdowed by European composers. However, in popular music English bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones have achived success only rivaled by U.S. music. England is also credited for being the birth place of many pop culture movements, notably punk. 3. Wales/Cymru From geographical point of view Wales (or Cymru, the welsh name of the country) is a highland country with hills and mountains. The highest one is Snowdonia placed in the northwest. Most of the population settlements lie in the southern valleys and the lower lying coastal areas. The important urban centres are Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Wrexham. Prince Charles, the heir of the throne, was invested by the Queen with the title of Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in 1969, when he was 20, and, from then on welsh is called to be a principality.

84

The language spoken is of Celtic origin, called Welsh and it is equally treated by law as it is used in law courts and in school and in any official purposes and in broadcasting. There is also a Welsh language Board that advises on matters related to the Welsh language. At the beginning of the XX century the Anglican Church has been disestablished by the adherents of Methodism and Baptist church that spread rapidly in Wales in the eighteen century, being strongly supported by the industrial communities. The late decades are characterized by the expansion of service industry and the development of a wide range of manufacturing industries of the forefront technology. Electronics, information, technology, automotive components, chemicals and materials and business of new high technology have emerged recently. The most remarkable growth has been registered in financial and business services and leisure services. The traditional industries of coal and steel have gradually contracted, although they continued to be equipped to improve efficiency and productivity. Agriculture represents 80 percent of land area, the main activities being sheep and cattle rearing in the hill regions and diary farming in the lowlands. The biggest pumped - storage power station in Europe is at Dimwit in Gwynedd. Modern motorways link Severn Bridge to Southern England and Midlands, and high speed rail services to different destination in Europe. Tourism has expanded substantially by the development of coastal resorts and three National Parks (Snowdonia, Breton Beacons and the Pembrokeshire Coast). Garden Festival Wales is a major tourism and leisure event held every summer in Ebbw Vale.

3.1. Country's Name Etymology The name of Wales is a German originates from the Germanic word Walha, meaning stranger or foreigner. As the Celts of Gaul were romanized, the word changed its meaning to "Romanic people", as it is still kept in the name of the Walloons of Belgium, Wallachia in Romania, as well as the "wall" of Cornwall. The Welsh themselves name their country Cymru, which is thought to have meant 'countrymen' in Old Welsh. Part of the word "Cymru" (pronounced cumree) is evident in the "Cum-" of Cumberland and Cumbria. 3.2. National Symbols The flag of Wales is represented by the red Dragon of Prince of Cadwalader along with the Tudor colours - green and white. First used by Henry VII at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and then it was carried to St. Paul's Cathedral. The Red Dragon is also considered as a symbol of Wales as it is considered the standard of King Arthur. The leek is considered also to reprezent a form of protection and recognition as it was worn by the Welsh soldiers on their helmets to be reconised by their commanders. Its wearing was ordered by Saint David when the battle asgainst the Saxons was held in a leek field. On St. David's Day the Welsh people weare a daffodil, as a symbol of the saint on the first if March. 3.3. Language The official languages in Wales are English and Welsh. English is spoken by almost all people in Wales and is the de facto main language, with the local dialect being Welsh English. However, Wales is officially bilingual, with 20.5% of the population able to speak Welsh and a

85

larger proportion having some knowledge of the Welsh language, although few residents of Wales are monolingual in Welsh. The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages should be treated on a basis of equality. Public bodies are required to prepare and implement a Welsh Language Scheme. Thus the Welsh Assembly, local councils, police forces, fire services and the health sector use Welsh as an official language, issuing official literature and publicity in Welsh versions (e.g. letters to parents from schools, library information, and council information). All road signs in Wales should be in English and Welsh, including both versions of place names where names or versions exist in both languages e.g. Cardiff and Caerdydd

3.4. Historical Background Humans first inhabited what is now Wales at the end of the last Ice Age. The first documented history was during the Roman occupation of Britain. At that time the area of modern Wales was divided into many tribes, of which the Silures in the south-east and the Ordovices in the central and north-west areas were the largest and most powerful. The Romans established a string of forts across what is now southern Wales, as far west as Carmarthen (Maridunum), and mined gold at Dolaucothi in Carmarthenshire. There is evidence that they progressed even further west. They also built the legionary fortress at Caerleon (Isca), whose magnificent amphitheatre is the best preserved in Britain. The Romans were also busy in northern Wales, and an old legend claims that Magnus Maximus, one of the last emperors, married Elen or Helen, the daughter of a Welsh chieftain from Segontium, near present-day Caernarfon. It was in the 4th century during the Roman occupation that Christianity was introduced to Wales. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in Britain during 410, Wales became divided into several kingdoms. Attempts by the Anglo-Saxon tribes to invade these kingdoms failed due to the fierce resistance of its people and its mountainous terrain. An Anglo-Saxon king, Offa of Mercia, is credited with having constructed a great earth wall, or dyke, along the border with his kingdom, to mark off a large part of Powys which he had conquered. Parts of Offa's Dyke can still be seen today. The eastern lands lost to English settlement became known in Welsh as Lloegyr, the 'lost lands', and eventually became the modern Welsh name for England. The Anglo-Saxons, in turn, labelled the Romano-British as Walha, meaning 'foreigner' or 'stranger'. The Welsh countinued to call themselves Brythoniaid (Britons) until as late as the 12th century, though the first use of Cymru and y Cymry were recorded as early as 633 by Aneirin. In the Armes Prydain written in about 930, the use of Cymry and Cymro was used as often as 15 times. It wasn't until the 12th century however, that Cymry overtook Brythoniaid in their writtings. Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the independence of Wales was gradually eroded. In 1282, Edward I of England defeated Llywelyn the Last, Wales's last independent Prince, in battle. Edward constructed a series of great stone castles in order to keep the Welsh under control. The best known are at Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy, and Harlech. Wales was legally annexed by the Laws in Wales Act 1535, in the reign of Henry VIII of England, who was actually Welsh. The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 provided that all laws that applied to England would automatically apply to Wales unless the law explicitly stated otherwise.

86

3.5. Food About 80% of the land surface of Wales is given over to agricultural use. Very little of this is arable land though as the vast majority consists of permanent grass or rough grazing for herd animals. Although both beef and dairy cattle are raised widely, especially in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, Wales is more well-known for its sheep farming, and thus lamb is the meat traditionally associated with Welsh cooking. Some traditional dishes include laverbread (made from seaweed), bara brith (fruit bread), cawl cennin (leek stew), Welsh cakes, Welsh rarebit (cheese on toast), and Welsh lamb. Cockies are sometimes served with breakfast. 3.5. Music Wales is known as the home of many musicians and musical styles. Wales is particularly famous for harpists, male voice choirs, and solo artists including Tom Jones, Charlotte Church, Bryn Terfel, Katherine Jenkins, Shirley Bassey, and Aled Jones. Indie bands like Catatonia, Stereophonics, The Manic Street Preachers, Feeder, Super Furry Animals, and Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, in the 1990s, and later Goldie Lookin' Chain, McLusky, Lostprophets, Funeral for a Friend and Bullet for my Valentine. Also from Wales are Aphex Twin and his record label, Rephlex Records, who are resposible for some of the electronic music made today. The Welsh folk music scene, long overshadowed by its Irish and Scottish cousins, is in resurgence. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales performs in Wales and internationally. The world-renowned Welsh National Opera now has a permanent home at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. 4. Scotland Scotland comprises the northern third of the island of Great Britain, off the coast of north west Europe. Scotland's only land border is with England, and runs between the River Tweed on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west. Scotland lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea and it extends is established by the 1237 Treaty of York between Scotland and England and by the 1266 Treaty of Perth between Scotland and Norway. Exceptions include the Isle of Man, which is now a crown dependency outside the United Kingdom, Orkney and Shetland, which are Scottish rather than Norwegian, and Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was defined as subject to the laws of England by the 1746 Wales and Berwick Act. Rockall was annexed by the United Kingdom in 1972 and administratively made part of the Isle of Harris in Scotland, although this is disputed by the Republic of Ireland, Iceland and Denmark. The country consists of a mainland area plus several island groups. The mainland can be divided into three areas: the Highlands in the north; the Central Belt and the Southern Uplands in the south. The Highlands are generally mountainous and are bisected by the Great Glen. The highest mountains in the British Isles are found here, including Ben Nevis of 1,344 metres (4,409ft). All mountains over 3,000 feet are known as Munros. The Central Belt of Scotland is generally flat and is where most of the population reside. The Central Belt contains the areas West Coas around Glasgow and the East Coast which includes the areas around the capital, Edinburgh. The Southern Uplands are a range of hills and mountains almost 200 km (125 miles) long, stretching from Stranraer by the Irish Sea to East Lothian and the North Sea. Scotland has over 790 islands, divided into four main groups: Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides. Firth of Forth also contain many islandsof which St. Kilda is the most remote of all the inhabitable Scottish islands, over 160 km (100 miles) from the mainland.

87

4.1. Country's Name's Etymology The word Scot was borrowed from Latin and its use to refer to Scotland dates from at least the first half of the 10th century, when it first appeared in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a reference to the Land of the Gaels, analogous to the Latin Scotia. Scottish kings adopted the title Basileus Scottorum or Rex Scottorum (meaning High King of the Gaels), and Rex Scotiae (King of Gael-land) some time in the 11th century, likely influenced by the style Imperator Scottorum known to have been employed by Brian Boru in Ireland in 1005. In modern times the word Scot is applied equally to all inhabitants regardless of their ancestral ethnicity or sexuality (in the case of Baird), since the nation has had a civic, rather than a monoculturally ethnic or linguistic, orientation for most of the last millennium. 4.2. Languages Since the United Kingdom lacks a codified constitution, there is no official language. However, Scotland has three officially-recognised languages: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots. De facto English is the main language, and almost all Scots speak Scottish Standard English. Scots and Gaelic were recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by the UK in 2001. Over the past century the number of native speakers of Gaelic, the Celtic language similar to Irish, has declined from around 5% to just 1% of the population. Gaelic is spoken mostly in the Western Isles, where the local council uses the Gaelic name- Comhairle nan Eilean Siar ("Council of the Western Isles"). Under the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 passed by the Scottish Parliament English and Gaelic receive "equal respect" but do not have equal legal status. It is estimated that 30% of the population are fluent in Scots, a West Germanic sister language to English. State support for Scots is slowly growing, after nearly three centuries of suppression. The Scottish Executive provides some funding to various Scots language projects and bodies. 4.3. Historical Background It is believed that the first settlers of this part of land arrived around 11,000 years ago, as the ice sheet retreated after the last ice age. They began building their first permanent houses around 9,500 years ago, and the first significant villages around 6,000 years ago. But the written history of Scotland largely began with the arrival of the Roman Empire in southern and central Great Britain, when the Romans occupied what is now England and Wales, administering it as a Roman province called Britannia. The Southern Scotland fell briefly, and indirectly under the control of Rome. To the north was territory not conquered by the Romans: Caledonia peopled by the Picts that became dominant under the sub-kingdom of Kenneth I of Scotland who became King of the Picts and Scots in 873. In the centuries to come of the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of the Scots expanded and established relatively good relations with the Wessex rulers of England. During the reign of King Indulf (954-62), the Scots captured the fortress later called Edinburgh, their first foothold in Lothian. The reign of Malcolm II saw fuller incorporation of these territories. The critical year was perhaps 1018, when Malcolm II defeated the Northumbrians at the Battle of Carham. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 initiated a chain of events which made the Kingdom of Scotland move away from its originally Gaelic cultural orientation. Malcolm III 88

married Margaret the sister of Edgar theling the deposed Anglo-Saxon claimant to the throne of England, who subsequently received some Scottish support. Margaret played a major role in reducing the influence of Celtic Christianity. When her youngest son David I later succeeded, Scotland gained something of its own gradual "Norman Conquest". Having previously become an important Anglo-Norman lord through marriage, David I had an important role in introducing feudalism into Scotland and in encouraging an influx of settlers from the Low Countries to the newly-founded burghs, to enhance trading links with mainland Europe and Scandinavia. By the late 13th century, scores of Norman and Anglo-Norman families had been granted Scottish lands. The first meetings of the Parliament of Scotland were convened during this period. After the death of the Maid of Norway, last direct heir of Alexander III of Scotland, Scotland's nobility asked the King of England to adjudicate between rival claimants to the vacant Scottish throne, but Edward I of England, instead, attempted to install a puppet monarchy in the country and control it. The Scots resisted, however, under the leadership of Sir William Wallace and Andrew de Moray in support of John Balliol, and later under that of Robert the Bruce. He was crowned as King Robert I on March 25, 1306, won a decisive victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314. Warfare flared up again in Scotland after his death in the Wars of Scottish Independence from 1332 to 1357 in which Edward Balliol attempted unsuccessfully to win back the throne from Bruce's heirs, with the support of the English king. Eventually, with the emergence of the Stewart dynasty in the 1370s, the political atmosphere began a leveling process. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Scots-speaking Lowlands, and the Gaelic-speaking Highlands divided the Scottish culture into two trends. However, Galwegian Gaelic persisted in use in remote parts of the southwest, which had formed part of the Lordship of Galloway. Historically, the Lowlanders were closer to mainstream European culture. The dominant clan system of the Highlands remained one of the region's more distinctive features until after the Acts of Union 1707. In 1603, the Scottish King James VI of Scotland became also James I of England by inheriting the throne of the Kingdom of England.With the exception of a short period under The Protectorate, Scotland remained a separate state, but there was considerable conflict between the crown and the church government. After the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of the Roman Catholic James VII by William and Mary, Scotland briefly threatened to select a different Protestant monarch from England. In 1707, the English threatened to end trade and free movement across the border, so the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England enacted the twin Acts of Union, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Jacobite risings in the west of Scotland in 1715 and 1745 failed to remove the House of Hanover from the British throne. The deposed Jacobite Stuart claimants had remained popular in the Highlands and north-east, particularly amongst non-Presbyterians. Following the Scottish Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial forces of Europe. Its industrial decline following World War II was particularly acute, but in recent decades the country has enjoyed significant cultural and economic renaissance supported by active and efficient financial services and electronics sector, the proceeds of North Sea oil and gas, and latterly the devolved Scottish Parliament, established by the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998. 4.4. Economy

89

Most of the Scotland population live in the industrial towns in the central lowlands: Edinburgh (the capital), Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, but there is also a sparsely population in highlands and the islands in the North. From economic point of view, it must be mentioned that the discovery of oil and gas under the northern North Sea, in the early 1970, had significant impact on the economic development of the area, as it assured an important amount of jobs directly or indirectly arisen from this activity. Since then the traditional industries, such as coal, steel and shipbuilding have declined, but the newly appeared ones (chemical, electronic engineering, food, drink and tobacco) provide more than half of Britains output and 10 percent of Western Europe industry. High quality tweed and textiles, food and drink products are still important. The export figure of Scotch whisky industry is around 2 million. 70 per cent of the work force is now engaged in services that have developed in the late decades: banking, finance, insurance and tourism. One third of Britains agricultural land is placed in Scotland and 70 per cent of it is used for rough grazing for cattle and sheep, the rest of it is used for barley crop used for making whisky and beer. Scotland also accounts for nearly half of Britains forest area and for over one third of timber production. 75 per cent of the total landings of fish in Britain are made at Scotland ports. Nuclear and hydroelectric generation supply an important quantity of energy for the whole country.

4.5. Culture Many Scotish are shared with Europe and the wider Western world. However, distinct cultural differences are identifiable in many areas. There exists a strong, distinct Scottish national identity, firmly founded in a shared commitment to Scottish civil society. 4.5.1. Literature Scottish literature is mainly represented by Robert Burns (1759 1796), widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland. He wrote poems and songs.especially in Scots language. At various times in his career, he wrote in English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt. He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement and after his death became an important source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. He is still a cultural icon in Scotland and among Scots who have relocated to other parts of the world (the Scottish diaspora), his celebration became almost a national charismatic cult during periods of the 19th and 20th centuries, as his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His works are celebrated annually on Burns' Night (January 25). Other famous Scottish writers include Walter Scott, James Hogg, JM Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson; and more recently, Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin, Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh. J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, The Philosopher's Stone, in a coffee shop in Edinburgh. 4.5.2. Music The Scottish music gives the Scottish culture a specific feature with both traditional and modern influences. The bagpipe, a wind instrument consisting of one or more musical pipes which are fed continuously by a reservoir of air in a bag ios well known in the world as being Typical Scottish The fiddle and accordion are also traditional nstruments, heavily featured in 90

Scottish country dance bands. Traditional musicians of recent times include Andy Stewart, The Corries and the contemporary Dougie MacLean. Traditional Scottish music was taken by Scottish emigrants to North America, who made it became a major American style music, for example country music. Modern Scottish pop music has produced many international bands including the Bay City Rollers, Primal Scream, Simple Minds, The Proclaimers, Deacon Blue, Texas, Franz Ferdinand, Belle and Sebastian,and Travis, as well as individual artists such as Gerry Rafferty, Lulu, Annie Lenox and Lloyd Cole, and world-famous Gaelic groups such as Runrig and Capercaillie. These have been joined by Gaelic punk bands such as Oi Polloi who give an ancient culture a new voice. 4.5.3. Sport Scotland has its own sporting competitions and governing bodies, such as the Scottish Football League and the Scottish Rugby Union. This gives the country independent representation at many international sporting events, for example the football World Cup and the Commonwealth Games; although notably not the Olympic Games. Association football is the most popular sport in the country, both played and watched, and The Scottish Cup is the world's oldest national trophy. Scottish professional rugby union clubs compete in the Celtic League. Shinty is run by the Camanachd Association and is played primarily in its Highland heartland, but also in most universities and cities. Scotland is the "Home of Golf", and of curling and is well-known for its many links courses, including the Old Course at St Andrews. 5. Northern Ireland the Emerald Island 5.1 Irish Symbols The tricolor flag of Ireland was introduced by Thomas Francis Meagher in 1848. The color of the green represents the Irish people, the orange represents the English supporters of "William of Orange" and the white color represents peace. In ancient Ireland the Shamrock was thought to have magical powers and the number 3 was considered a powerful number. Legends say the leaves will stand upright when a storm approaches and that no snake will be found among them. When St. Patrick came to Ireland he used the Shamrock to symbolize the meaning of the church's teaching on the Trinity. The word Shamrock comes from the old Irish word "seamrog" which means "summer plant." The harp has long been a symbol of Ireland. Perhaps the legends of it's magical powers comes from the time when the bards would sing and tell stories of famous events to the Irish kings and chiefs. During the early 1500s, under the rule of Henry VIII, the harp was first depicted on Irish coins. That tradition is carried on today and the harp is also used for other official duties such as the Irish state seal, official documents and uniforms. The Celtic Cross is told in legend of Ireland's St. Patrick. He was shown a sacred standing stone that was marked with a circle. St. Patrick took this opportunity to show the union of old and new ways. He marked a cross through the circle and blessed the stone. 5.2. Language

91

Irish (Gaeilge), a Goidelic language spoken in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, is constitutionally recognised as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. On 13 June 2005, EU foreign ministers unanimously decided to make Irish an official language of the European Union. The new arrangements will come into effect on 1 January 2007. According to statistics there are approximately 1.6 million speakers of Irish in the Republic, 165,000 can speak Irish in Northern Ireland and 25,000 people use the language at home in the United States. 5.3. Historical Background The first humans inhabited Ireland from around 7500 BC and were later responsible for major Neolithic sites such as Newgrange. What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia. Ptolemy in AD 100 records Ireland's geography and tribes. Ireland was never formally a part of the Roman Empire but Roman influence was often projected well beyond formal borders. Tacitus writes that an Irish tribal chieftain was with Agricola in Britain and would return to seize power in Ireland. Juvenal tells us that Roman "arms had been taken beyond the shores of Ireland". If Rome, or an ally, did invade, they didn't leave very much behind. The exact relationship between Rome and the tribes of Hibernia is unclear. When agriculture was introduced from the continent, a high Neolithic culture developed, characterized by the appearance of huge stone monuments, many of them astronomically aligned (most notably, Newgrange). This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. The Bronze Age, which began around 2500 BC, saw the production of elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons. The Iron Age in Ireland began about 600 BC. By the historic period (AD 431 onwards) the main over-kingdoms of In Tuisceart, Airgialla, Ulaid, Mide, Laigin, Mumhain, Ciced Ol nEchmacht began to emerge (see Kingdoms of ancient Ireland). Within these kingdoms, despite constant strife, a rich culture flourished. The society of these kingdoms was dominated by druids: priests who served as educators, physicians, poets, diviners, and keepers of the laws and histories. In the early Christian Ireland (400-800) the former emphasis on tribal affiliation had been replaced by patrilinial and dynastic background. Many formerly powerful kingdoms and peoples disappeared. Irish pirates struck all over the coast of western Britain and some of them founded entirely new kingdoms in Pictland, Wales and Cornwall. Perhaps it was some of the latter returning home as rich mercenaries, merchants, or slaves stolen from Britain or Gaul, that first brought the Christian faith to Ireland. Some early sources claim that there were missionaries active in southern Ireland long before St. Patrick. Whatever the route, and there were probably many, this new faith was to have the most profound effect on the Irish. Tradition maintains that in AD 432, St. Patrick arrived on the island and, in the years that followed, worked to convert the Irish to Christianity. On the other hand, Palladius was sent to Ireland by the Pope in 431 as "first Bishop to the Irish believing in Christ", which demonstrates that, by whatever means, there were already Christians living in Ireland. Patrick is credited, possibly too much so, with preserving the tribal and social patterns of the Irish,

92

codifying their laws and changing only those that conflicted with Christian practices. He is credited with introducing the Roman alphabet, which enabled Irish monks to preserve parts of the extensive Celtic oral literature. The druid tradition collapsed, first in the face of the spread of the new faith, and ultimately in the aftermath of famine and plagues due to the climate changes of 535536. Irish scholars excelled in the study of Latin learning and Christian theology in the monasteries that flourished shortly thereafter. Missionaries from Ireland to England and Continental Europe spread news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations came to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Early Middle Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewelry, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island. Sites dating to this period include clochans, ringforts and promontory forts. From around 800, more than a century of Viking invasions wreaked havoc upon the monastic culture and on the island's various regional dynasties, yet both of these institutions proved strong enough to survive and assimilate the invaders. These early raids interrupted the golden age of Christian Irish culture starting the beginning of two hundred years of intermittent warfare, with waves of Viking raiders plundering monasteries and towns throughout Ireland. Most of the early raiders came from the fjords of western Norway. By the early 840's, the Vikings began to establish settlements along the Irish coasts and to spend the winter months there. Vikings founded settlements in Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, and most famously, Dublin. In 852, the Vikings Ivar Beinlaus and Olaf the White landed in Dublin Bay and established a fortress, on which the city of Dublin (from the Irish Gaelic An Dubh Linn meaning "the black pool") now stands. Olaf was the son of a Norwegian king and made himself the king of Dublin. After several generations a group of mixed Irish and Norse ethnic background arose (the so-called Gall-Gaels, Gall then being the Irish word for "foreigners" the Norse). Ireland was divided into many small kingdoms called tuaths. The language spoken by the people inhabiting the isle could belong to the Goidelic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages, and this was explained as a result of invasions of Celts. Very little archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants in Ireland. The hypothesis that the native Late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed influences to create Celtic culture has since been supported by some recent genetic research. 5.3.1. The Rise and the Decline of Norman Times By the 12th century, Ireland was divided politically into a shifting hierarchy of petty kingdoms and over-kingdoms. Power was concentrated into the hands of a few regional dynasties contending against each other for control of the whole island. One of them, the King of Leinster Diarmait Mac Murchada (anglicised as Diarmuid MacMorrough) was forcibly exiled from his kingdom, but Henry II advised him to use the Norman forces to regain his kingdom. Within a short time Waterford and Dublin were under Diarmait's control again that caused consternation to King Henry II of England, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland. With the authority of a papal bull from Adrian IV, Henry became the first King of England to set foot on Irish soil in 1171. He awarded his Irish territories to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae ("Lord of Ireland"), and when John unexpectedly became King John, the "Lordship of Ireland" fell directly under the English Crown. In 1315, Edward Bruce of Scotland invaded Ireland, gaining the support of many Gaelic 93

lords against the English so that the local Irish lords won back their and held it. But in 1348 the Black Death hit the English and the Norman inhabitants of Ireland that lived in towns harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in dispersed rural settlements. After it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again. The English-controlled area shrunk back to the Pale, a fortified area around Dublin. But outside the Pale, the British-N orman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in the words of a contemporary English commentator, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation. The authorities in the Pale grew so worried about the "Gaelicisation" of Ireland that they passed special legislation in a parliament in Kilkenny (known as the Statutes of Kilkenny) banning those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes or intermarrying with the Irish. Since the government in Dublin had little real authority, however, the Statutes did not have much effect. By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in Ireland had all but disappeared. England's attentions were diverted by its Wars of the Roses (civil war). The Lordship of Ireland lay in the hands of the powerful Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, who dominated the country by means of military force and alliances with lords and clans around Ireland. 5.3.2. Consequences of Religious Reformation While Henry VIII broke English Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI of England moved further, breaking with Papal doctrine completely. While the English, the Welsh and, later, the Scots accepted Protestantism, the Irish remained Catholic, that determined their relationship with the British state for the next four hundred years.The Reformation coincided also with Henry VIII decision to re-conquer Ireland, so the island would not ever be a base for future rebellions or foreign invasions of England. In 1541, Henry upgraded Ireland from a lordship to a full Kingdom. With the institutions of government in place, the next step was to extend the control of the English Kingdom of Ireland over all of its claimed territory. The reconquest was completed during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, after several bloody conflicts. The English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the native lordships. However, the English were not successful in converting the Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion and the brutal methods used by crown authority to pacify the country heightened resentment of English rule. From the mid-16th and into the early seventeenth century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the provinces of Munster, Ulster and the counties of Laois and Offaly. These settlers, who had a British and Protestant identity, would form the ruling class of future British adminstrations in Ireland and a series of Penal Laws discriminated against all faiths other than the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland. The victims of these laws were Catholics and later Presbyterians.

94

5.3.3. Civil Wars The seventeenth century was perhaps the bloodiest in Ireland's history. Two periods of civil war (1641-53 and 1689-91) caused huge loss of life and resulted in the final dispossesion of the Irish Catholic landowning class and their subordination under the Penal Laws. In the mid-seventeenth century, Ireland was convulsed by eleven years of warfare, beginning with the Rebellion of 1641, when Irish Catholics rebelled against English and Protestant domination, in the process massacring thousands of Protestant settlers. The Catholic majority briefly ruled the country as Confederate Ireland (1642-1649) until Oliver Cromwell re-conquest on behalf of the English Commonwealth. Cromwell's conquest was the most brutal phase of a brutal war. By its close, up to a third of Ireland's pre-war population was dead or in exile. As punishment for the rebellion of 1641, almost all lands owned by Irish Catholics were confiscated and given to British settlers. Forty years later, Ireland became the main battleground in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Catholic James II was deposed by the English Parliament and replaced by William of Orange. Irish Catholics backed James to try to reverse the Penal Laws and land confiscations, whereas Protestants supported William to preserve their dominance in the country. James and William fought for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in the Williamite War, most famously at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, where James's forces were defeated. Jacobite resistance was finally ended after the Battle of Aughrim in July 1691. The Penal laws (which had been allowed to lapse somewhat after the English Restoration) were re-applied with great harshness after this war, as the Protestant elite wanted to ensure that the Irish Catholic landed classes would not be in a position to repeat their rebellions of the 17th century. 5.3.4. Colonial Ireland Most of the eighteenth century was relatively peaceful in comparison with the preceding two hundred years, but subsequent Irish antagonism towards England was aggravated by the economic situation of Ireland in the eighteenth century. Food tended to be produced for export rather than for domestic consumption. In the 1740s, the economic inequalities, along with two very cold winters, led to the Great Irish Famine (1740-1741), which killed about 400,000 people. In addition, the Navigation Acts, placed tarrifs on Irish produce entering England, but exempted English goods from tariffs on entering Ireland, endangering the Irish trade. By the late eighteenth century a Parliamentary faction led by Henry Grattan agitated for a more favourable trading relationship with England and for legislative independence for the Parliament of Ireland. However, some were attracted to the example of the French revolution of 1789 and they formed the Society of the United Irishmen to overthrow British rule and found a non-sectarian republic. Their activity culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was bloodily suppressed. Partly in response to this rebellion, Irish self-government was abolished altogether by the Act of Union on January 1, 1801. 5.3.5. Union with Great Britain

95

The Act of Union, which merged Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain (itself a union of England and Scotland, created almost 100 years earlier), created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Part of the deal for the union was that Catholic Emancipation would be conceded to remove discrimination against Catholics, Presbyterians and others. However King George III controversially blocked any change. In 1823, an enterprising Catholic lawyer, Daniel O'Connell, known as "the Great Liberator" began a successful campaign to achieve emancipation, which was finally conceded in 1829. He later led an unsuccessful campaign for "Repeal of the Act of Union". But the second "Great Famines", An Gorta Mr struck the country severely in the period 1845-1849, with potato blight leading to mass starvation and emigration. The impact of emigration in Ireland was severe; the population dropped from over 8 million before the Famine to 4.4 million in 1911. From 1870 various British governments introduced a series of Land Acts that broke up large estates and gradually gave rural landholders and tenants what became known as the 3 Fs; Fair rent, free sale, fixity of tenure." The Irish language, once the spoken language of the entire island, declined in use sharply in the nineteenth century as a result of the Famine and the creation of the National School education system, as well as hostility to the language from leading Irish politicians of the time; it was largely replaced by English. In the 1870s the issue of Irish self-government and Home Rule again became a major focus of debate. Most of the island was predominantly nationalist, Catholic and agrarian. The northeast, however, was predominantly unionist, Protestant and industrialised. Unionists feared a loss of political power and economic wealth in a predominantly rural, nationalist, Catholic home rule state. Nationalists believed that they would remain economically and politically second class citizens without self-government. 5.3.6. Independence War In September 1914, just as the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament finally passed the Third Home Rule Act to establish self-government for Ireland and made efforts to implement the Act, before the end of the war. A failed attempt was made to gain separate independence for Ireland with the 1916 Easter Rising, an insurrection in Dublin. In December 1918 Sinn Fin, the party of the rebels was elected by vote and won three-quarters of all the seats in Ireland. The MPs assembled in Dublin on 21 January 1919, to form a thirty-two county Irish Republic parliament, Dil ireann unilaterally, asserting sovereignty over the entire island. The Irish Republican Army the army of the newly declared Irish Republic waged a guerrilla war (the Anglo-Irish War) from 1919 to 1921. The Fourth Government of Ireland Act 1920 separated the island into "Northern Ireland" and "Southern Ireland". In December 1921, representatives of both governments signed an Anglo-Irish Treaty. This created a selfgoverning Independent Irish State, a Dominion of the British Empire in the manner of Canada and Australia, which went on to become became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

96

6. The Republic of Ireland The treaty to sever the Union divided the republican movement into anti-Treaty (who wanted to fight on until an Irish Republic was achieved) and pro-Treaty supporters (who accepted the Free State as a first step towards full independence and unity). Between 1922 and 1923 both sides fought the bloody Irish Civil War. The new Irish Free State government defeated the anti-Treaty remnant of the Irish Republican Army. This division among nationalists still colours Irish politics today, specifically between the two leading Irish political parties, Fianna Fil and Fine Gael. The new Irish Free State (192237) existed against the backdrop of the growth of dictatorships in Europe and a major world economic downturn in 1929. Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fil was able to take power peacefully by winning the 1932 general election and in contrast to many other states in the period, it remained financially solvent. However, unemployment and emigration were high. The Catholic Church had a powerful influence over the state for much of its history. In 1937, a new Constitution of Ireland proclaimed the state of ire (or Ireland). The state remained neutral throughout World War II. Ireland was also hit badly by rationing of food, and coal in particular (peat production became a priority during this time). In 1949 the state was formally declared the Republic of Ireland and it left the British Commonwealth. In the 1960s, Ireland underwent a major economic reforms; free second-level education was introduced in early 1960s, and in 1973 was admitted to the European Economic Community together with United Kingdom. The considerable investment and economic reforms imposed by European Community led to the emergence of one of the world's highest economic growth rates. This period came to be known as the Celtic Tiger and was focused on as a model for economic development in the former Eastern Bloc states. Irish society also adopted relatively liberal social policies during this period. Divorce was legalised, homosexuality decriminalised, while a right to abortion in limited cases was granted by the Irish Supreme Court in the X Case legal judgement. Major scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, both sexual and financial, coincided with a widespread decline in religious practice, with weekly attendance at Roman Catholic Mass halving in twenty years. 7. Northern Ireland From 1921 to 1971, Northern Ireland was governed by the Ulster Unionist Party government, based at Stormont in East Belfast. Discrimination against the minority nationalist community in jobs and housing, and their total exclusion from political power due to the majoritarian electoral system, led to the emergence of a civil rights campaign in the late 1960s, inspired by Martin Luther King's civil rights movement in the United States of America. A violent counter-reaction from right-wing unionists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) led to civil disorder. To restore order, British troops were deployed to the streets of Northern Ireland at this time. They had its own devolved Parliament in which the Protestant Unionists 97

consistently formed the majority and constituted the Government. The Nationalists felt dominated and excluded from the political office. Sectarian disturbances developed although human rights reforms were introduces in late 60s, and Army troops were sent to support the police in keeping order. Subsequently, terrorist actions from both sides started, but mostly from the Provisional Irish Republican Army who claims to protect the Roman Catholic minority. Despite the reform programme, the violence continued, leading to the decision that the British Government take over responsibility for law and order in 1972. The Northern Ireland Government protested by resigning and directs rule began. Nowadays, Northern Ireland is still a subject of direct ruling under the legislation passed in 1974, by the Parliament in Westminster. The government departments are under the direction and control of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who is a Cabinet minister. In January 1974 an agreement between Northern Ireland political parties to form a power-sharing executive collapsed because of the protest strike by loyalists. The Agreement committed both governments under the auspices of the international law to the principle that Northern Ireland would remain part of Britain as long as that would be the wish of a majority. After lengthy consultations in 1991 with the four main constitutional parties - the Ulster Unionists, Democratic Unionists, Alliance Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party another agreement was reached by which the two governments made clear that they were prepared to consider a new and more broadly based Anglo Irish Agreement of one could be arrived at through direct discussions and negotiations in the talks. Tensions came to a head with the events of Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday, and the worst years (early 1970s) of what became known as The Troubles resulted. The Stormont government was prorogued in 1971 and abolished totally in 1972. Paramilitary private armies such as the Provisional IRA, the Official IRA, the INLA, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force fought each other and the British army. For the next 27 years, Northern Ireland was under "direct rule" with a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the British Cabinet responsible for the departments of the Northern Ireland executive/government. Principal acts were passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in the same way as for much of the rest of the UK. During the 1970s British policy concentrated on defeating the IRA by military means. In the 1980s the IRA attempted to secure a military victory based on massive arms shipments from Libya. When this failed, senior republicans began to look to broaden the struggle from purely military means. In 1986 the British and Irish governments signed the Anglo Irish Agreement signaling a formal partnership in seeking a political solution. Socially and economically Northern Ireland suffered the worst levels of unemployment in the UK and although high levels of public spending ensured a slow modernisation of public services and moves towards equality, progress was slow in the 70s and 80s, only in the 1990s when progress towards peace became tangible, did the economic situation improve. Recently, the Belfast Agreement ("Good Friday Agreement") of April 10, 1998 brought a degree of power sharing to Northern Ireland, giving both unionists and nationalists control of limited areas of government. However, both the power-sharing Executive and the elected Assembly have been suspended since October 2002 following a breakdown in trust between the political parties. Efforts to resolve outstanding issues, including "decommissioning" of paramilitary weapons, policing reform and the removal of British army bases are continuing. On July 28, 2005, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) announced the end of its armed campaign and on 98

September 25, 2005 international weapons inspectors supervised the full disarmament of the PIRA. 8. Ireland Culture 8.1. Literature: Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 is considered the Greatest English writer ofg his time and one of the largest satirist ever existed. His family was of English extraction, setteld in Ireland, but he went back to England to complete his studies where he meets Stella to which he will be forever connected. He becomes a parish priest, but hew also participates to political activity. He supports Tory party with his pamphlets and articles. When political favourites fell, he went back to Ireland and he becomes the dean of the chutch St. Patrick in Dublin. In this period he exposes the oppressions to which the Irish people (even he despise them ) are subject by English and local government. After the death of his beloved he becomes mentally disordered that worsened until his death. Gulliver's Travel, 1724 is his masterpiece. It is a satire of human race, civilisation and AngloIrish (his fellow countrymen are the wild Yahoo) Lemuel Gulliver, doctor on a merchant ship, is shipwrecked on the island of Liliput, where everything, beginning by the inhabitants, is large a fifteenth of person and objects we know. In the second part instead, Gulliver visit Brobdignmag, where the ratio is turned upsidedown and where the doctor becomes the preferred of the king's daughter, who keeps him between her toys. In the third part Gulliver visits Laputa and the continent that has Lagada as capital. In the island Glubdrubdrib then, Gulliver evokes the shadows of great men. Of antiquity and from their answers he discovers their bad habits and meanness, while among the immortal Struldbrug he notices that the largest sadness for theman wou;d be the perspective of not goimg en end to tedium vitae. In the fourth part, then, the virtuous easiness of the Houyhnhnm horses contrasts with the brutality of the Yahoo beasts with a human aspect. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) Born in Dublin, in a family of a famous ophtalmologist and a mother that was a supportive of the Irish independence cause. He travelles to France, Italy Greece and North Africa. In 1895 he is sentenced for homosexuality to 2 years of hard labour (the Ballad of reading Goal). Fallen into poverty and deserted by everyone, he flees away to Paris where he dies of abuse of alcohol. Although he has never had good relationship with Ireland, he commended the "clever Celtic genius "to embelish the English language. The Picture Of Dorian Grey The mostly well known work is "The Portrait of Dorian Grey"- a manifesto of decandentism and aestheticism. The painter Hallvard portrays a young man of exceptional beauty, Dorian Grey. Dorian, the real model, eager of pleasures and influenced by the cynical Henry Wotton, abandons himself to depravity, as more as he knows that the worse escapades woun't leave any trace on his face: by magic, only his portrait will get old, so he lives by his foolishness. His degradation doesn't have limits: he will even kill Hallward who reproaches him such shame. But the horrible face of his portrait becomes gradually the most cruel accusation act for Dorian, who, in desperate impulse slashes it with a stab. But it is him who falls dead: the 99

portrait features return to those of young and pure Dorian portrait, while on background lies an old man repugnant and obscene. Salom Famous play written in French that gained large success in a musical arrangement by Richard Strauss in 1905. Laurence Sterne (1713-1760) Son of an English officer and an Irish woman. He goes to the Grammar School and then he enters at the Jesus College in Cambridge. His preference for classics he becomes fond of philosophy of John Locke. His ecclesiastical career in the Anglican Church is doubled by his participation in the local political life. He writes polemical political articles and letters. As a Vicar of Yorkshire he preaches eccentric sermons. In 1760 he publishes Tristam Shandy that produces sensation for the originality of its literary style. When he comes back from his travels in Italy, France and Greece he also publishes Letters from Yorick to Elisa. The Life and Opinion of Tristam Shandy The unusual and bizzare modern novel with experimental narrative structures and topics of absurdities and contradictions, it levels social conventions of his time. Reality proceeds according to associations of ideas, digressions and overturnings of chronological consistency and the cause and effect relationship. At the end of the novel the thematic changes radically. The reader finds out very little about very subject itself because the work is unfinished. Tristam is born at the half of it and it reaches only his youth. The real plot laks, as the work digresses about anything and it is full of white pages , erasures, and a whole chapter of interjections and other bizzare things. Bram Stocker (1847-1912) Although he is a graduate of Mathematics he works in public administration. He is impressed by the actor Henry Irving, famous for his role of Frankenstein and he follows him to London as a friend. He begins to write some tales and in 1897 he publishes Dracula that it becomes a great success. Dracula The most important gothic novel. Influenced by Carmilla by Le Fanu and mathematically documented from books, maps from the British Museum and searches on the superstitions about vampire'folklore and on a Romanian Middle Ages runner - Vlad Tepes, the novel is written as a diary and places the story in Transylvania, as a nest of strange traditions. The people's writings are enriched by letters, notes, press cuttings. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) He graduates Trinity College in Jurisprudence. He gains reputation especially for tales inspired from local rural tradition that stir ancient pagan reminiscence with Christian veneration. He narrates about restless phantoms in solitary castles, about fairies, gnoms and leprechauns who live in forests and kidnap children, about bewitches animals and fantastic creatures who lay traps in the forest. He publishes some tales of this sort on the "Dublin University Magazine" and then several historical novel inspired byWalter Scott. Shortly before his death he publishes the tales collection "Chronicles of Golden Friers", and "In a Glass Darkly". 100

Camilla Inspired from rural tradition about ghosts and vampires. The writer studied Central European legends to make depth to his characters of dead-live blood drinker that will inspire the writers to come.

101

William Butler Yeats (1862-1939) He was born in a family of an English origin painter close to pre-Raphaelitism (John Butler Yeats). His mother was coming from a family of a protestant unionist shipowner and traders. He graduates the Metropoliutan Schoole of Art in Dublin where he meets George Russel with which he has a common interest for ocultism from which he will continue. He published his first poetry collection "The Wonderings of Oisin" in 1889 and he founds the Irish Literary Society in 1892. After the encounter with the brilliant comedian J.M. Synge, Yeats dedicates himself to the Irish popular theatre. In 1899 he founds the irish Theatre Compny and then he opens the Abbey Theatre. Here are some of the main poetry works that made William Butler Yeats a representative Irish poet: Green Helmet Responsiblities 1914 The Wild Swans at Coole 1919 Michael Robartes and the Dancer 1921 - it makes the separation between the crepuscular poetry and the concretness of language, a lesson taught by Ezra Pound and William Blake

George Augustus More (1852-1933) Born in a well-off family he receives education in Oscot, Birmingham and London. From 1872 he goes to Paris where he studies painting and gets closer to aestheticism and naturalism and writes "A Modern Lover", 1883 a scandalous but realistic portrait of amusements and leisures of a man of his time, A Mummer's Wife, Esther Waters a story of a nun who has a son and finds herself in having to finght against difficulties due to her maternity. In 1901 he returns to Dublin where he keeps publishing and involving in the development of Irish Renainssance (Rebirth of the Gaelic Literature) and also in politics. James Augustine Joyce (1882-1941) He studied at the famous Jesuit College Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College. In 1898 he goes to University College of Dublin where he begins to manifest a nonconformist and rebel behaviour. He writes articles and delivers lectures in defending the theatre of Ibsen, considered, at that time, immoral and subversive. He publishes the Day of Herd, a pamphlet where he rails at provincialism of Irish culture. After having taken his degree in arts he continues his studies in medicine , moving to Paris. He publishes "A Portrait of the Artist", an autobiographic essy that is to become later A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. He also composes many poems later collected in the volume "Chamber of Music", and some sotires in the Newspaper Irish Homestead" that will be later comprised in "Dubliners". He meets Nora Bernacle, a maid who works in Dublin and she will be his companion for the rest of his life. They leave the country to live in foreign places :Zurich, Pola, and finally Trieste where he earns his living as an English teacher. At Trieste he becomes involved in the local cultural environment collaborating with newspapers (Il piccolo della Sera), and delivers lectures on Irish topics. Then he decides to come back to Dublin where he opens a cinema hall business. Disaponted and disconsolate for his bankruptcy but also for the rejection of his works to be published, he leaves Ireland for ever. In 1913 he meets Ezra Pound who encourages him to write and publish. He finally publishes "Dubliners" in London and also a serial issue of

102

"Dedalus" and begins the work to "Ulysses". During the war he moves to Zurich where he obtains a subsidy from the British Royal Literary Fund. He is marked by a serious eye disease makes him nearly blind and by his daughter mental disturbancyand he is forced to leave her in a clinic after violet manifest. In 1939, at the beginning of the war, he moves back to Zurich and after having published Finnegans Wake he he dies in a surgery.

103

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) He belongs to an Irish-British family. He completes his studies at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and then at Trinity College. As a student he starts working at his books and poems in English and he publishes his first collection in 1935: "Murphy". He is a frienf of James Joyce and in 1938 he moves to Paris where he starts to write in French. It will become his literary language as he chose it for most of his works. Between 1951-1953 he publishes the trlogy of inner monologue - Maloy, Malone meurt, L'innomable which embody the idea of loniless of contemporary man who cannot know himself, who is divided into a conscience that observes and is observed. Together with Eugen Ionesco he opens new literary ways in theatre of absurdity silence and pure mimic representations: Fin de Partie, Actes sans paroles, Oh, les beaux jours. He is awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1969.

8.2. Music The music of a people always reflects their history to one degree or another. Nowhere is this more true than in Ireland, where layers of the past literally crumble on top of one another. Even the most cutting-edge bands often harbor the plaintive modal tuning favored by the bards of old, or the soulful timbre of tin flutes and fiddles, or a hint of wheezing bagpipes. The first thing to realize about authentic Irish instrumental music is that much of it is meant for dancing. The tunes range from four-to-the bar reels to various types of jigs, which can be either sprightly or stately. Most jigs are in 6/8, but there is an older style known as a "slip jig" that trips along in a 9/8 time signature. Dances from abroad, such as waltzes and polkas, have been gradually transformed into recognizably Irish versions. Scandinavian tunes turn up, although whether these date from the early Viking invasions of Ireland or from later encounters is hard to prove. Most dance tunes, wherever they originated, favor modal tuning and a circular construction that allows for endless repetitions and smooth transitions between selections. There is also a sizable repertoire of instrumental "slow airs", which are strictly for reflective listening. Aside from giving the dancers a chance to catch their breath, they are wistful, tender microcosms of race memory. The instruments vary relatively little from ensemble to ensemble, and may be either electric or acoustic, but an astonishing array of sounds are drawn from them. Fiddles, wood flutes, tin whistles, and squeezeboxes are commonly used, augmented by guitars and by the bouzouki, a plangent-toned Greek lute that has become very popular with Irish musicians. The bodhrn, a hand-held goatskin wooden frame drum, marks the time. The whole is sometimes embellished by the plaintively reedy sound of the uilleann pipes, a small bagpipe peculiar to Ireland. The pipes are an important solo instrument, especially for "slow airs", which are among the oldest surviving types of Irish music. The clarseach (Irish harp), in a modern nylon or gut stringed incarnation, or in the more antique metal-stringed version, has made a strong comeback from nearly total obscurity. It is once again a living symbol of Ireland and its music. The present fascination with traditional music and songs sung in the Irish language actually dates from the mid-1960's, when the composer-arranger-musicologist Sean 'Raida began a grass-roots Celtic revival. Until he took action, most popular songs in Ireland were sung in English, and the lyrics generally spoke about the forthright pleasures of the jug and romantic vicissitudes or else keened over deceased Republican heroes and incited insurrection. The fragile Bardic strain turned up now and again, but most Gaelic music languished outside of the popular imagination, in Irish-speaking enclaves (gaeltachts) in the West and South. O'Riada 104

also rescued the Irish harp from oblivion, although in a gut-stringed version that the Bards would hardly have recognized, and introduced the Bodhrn (hand-held goatskin frame drum) into general use. His own ensemble was called Ceoltoiri Chualann, and out of it came the core membership of Ireland's best-known traditional music group, The Chieftains. By the end of his short life, Sean 'Raida had reclaimed Ireland's soul and his death was marked by national mourning. His recordings, many of which are on the Gael-Linn label, are now considered national treasures. Mise Eire (Shanachie), is an atmospheric example of his work. IV. Dependent Territories and Commonwealth Countries

Almost all the countries that were once a part of the British Empire belong to the "Commonwealth". Britain is just one of the Commonwealth's members, with no extra privileges or responsibilities. The process of transformation of the empire into the modern political organization is remarkable. Its 14 dependent territories are mostly self-governed, having their own legislature and civil service. The motherland of Britain is responsible for their defense, security, external affairs, and judiciary. They are: Anguilla Bermuda British Antarctic Territory British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Falkland Island Gibraltar Hong Kong Montesano Pitcairn, Ducie, Henderson, Oeno St. Helena and St. Helena Dependencies (Ascension and Tristan de Cunha) South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Turks and Caicos Island These countries and Britain were described as: ' ... autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations'. In 1931 the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster which allowed the Dominions to become independent nations. Most of them do not have natural resources and some of them are not even inhabited permanently such as British Antarctic, British Indian Ocean, South Georgia and South Sandwich Island. Some of them are still claimed by the governments of other countries such as the Falkland Island, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands by Argentina and Gibraltar by Spain. According to the agreement concluded in 1984 between Britain and the Peoples Republic of China, Britain was responsible for the administration of Hong Kong until 1997. Since then Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China but it has maintained the social system of capitalism for 50 years and it enjoys the autonomous status. There are also some territories belonging to the voluntary association of Commonwealth that also recognize the British Queen as their head. The association has 50 countries with over 1,500 million people of all races and faiths. Most of the territories associated in Commonwealth belonged also to the British Empire previously, but they were granted their

105

independence. Some of them are republics but there are also national monarchies. After having abolished its policy of apartheid, South Africa rejoined the Organisation. Commonwealth is supported by the member states, promotes co-operations among professional national association, and encourages professional training, information and technical exchange. The London Declaration of 1949 said that the British monarch would be a symbol of the free association of independent countries, and the Head of the Commonwealth meaning that republics could also be members, if they accept the monarch as Head of the Commonwealth not as their own Head of State. Today, most member countries are republics. Thus when Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952 she became Head of the Commonwealth. She is a symbol of the association - she has no powers to decide what the Commonwealth should do or how it should conduct its affairs. However, the Queen has had a very important role in shaping the modern Commonwealth. When she became Queen, she was a young woman. She sympathized with the young African politicians who were campaigning for independence from British rule. Throughout the last 50 years the Queen has shown a great commitment to the Commonwealth, visiting many of its member-countries and attending most Heads of Government Meetings. When the Queen dies or if she abdicates, her heir will not automatically become Head of the Commonwealth. It will be up to the Commonwealth heads of government to decide what they want to do about this symbolic role. Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings After the Commonwealth Games, the Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGMs) are the most well known events of the Commonwealth. In the spotlight of the world's media, the Commonwealth leaders gather to discuss matters of common interest. The journalists are quick to emphasize disagreements, but the real work of the meetings goes on behind the scenes and away from the press. 1. Aims of Commonwealth: 1.2. Human Rights The Harare Declaration of 1991 confirmed the association's commitment to the protection of fundamental human rights. To prevent exploitation of children and to promote their rights, the Commonwealth encourages all its members to implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has also drawn up a curriculum on human rights and a teacher's guide, which can be adapted for use in member countries. 1.3. Freedoms People must be free to express their opinions and to criticise government actions. One way they do this is through the media. Newspapers, radio and television have a vital role to play in any democracy they help to make the government accountable to its citizens. Throughout the Commonwealth there is a vigorous tradition of journalism and broadcasting and the common use of English means there is ample opportunity for co-operation. 1.4. Peace and Order Promotion The Commonwealth tries to resolve disputes and conflicts within and between its members as soon as possible. Commonwealth is seen as a friendly, non-threatening organisation. It has credibility and can call on very experienced people to help solve problems. If there is trouble in a country, the Secretary-General often visits himself, or sends an envoy from another Commonwealth country. The aim is to persuade the two sides in the dispute to talk to each other and solve their problems, before open conflict breaks out. When violent conflict breaks out, then the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) meets. This group is made up of eight Commonwealth foreign ministers. They decide what should be done 106

1.5. Civil Society Democracy isn't just about having elections. It is also about having an open, just and honest government, about respect for the law and for the human rights of all people, including women, young people, people with disabilities and ethnic minorities. To achieve this kind of society, ordinary people have to play an active part and governments have to listen to them. People cannot sit passively waiting for government to solve all their problems. When people take action, whether individually or in a group, they are building a civil society. A strong civil society is essential for embedding democracy into the very fabric of a country. 1.6. International co-operation International co-operation is fundamental to the Commonwealth. By sharing problems and experiences member countries help each other - and this helps to improve people's lives. The Commonwealth works in an informal way through forming partnerships - not telling governments what to do, but working with them. These methods of working are among the strengths of the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC). 1.7. Assistance of Small States Of the 53 member countries of the Commonwealth, 32 are classified as small states. Most of these have a population of less than 1.5 million. Many are islands - in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Because of the high number of such states in the Commonwealth, the association has developed a unique understanding of their problems. Small states need particular assistance because: 2. Commonwealth Culture: 2.1. Literature The shared history of British rule has also produced a substantial body of writing in many languages - Commonwealth literature. There is an Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) with nine chapters worldwide. ACLALS holds an international conference every three years. In 1987, the Commonwealth Foundation established the Commonwealth Writers Prize "to encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin." Caryl Phillips won the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2004 for A Distant Shore. Mark Haddon won the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2004 Best First Book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Although not affiliated with the Commonwealth in an official manner, the prestigious Booker Prize is awarded annually to an author from a Commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland. This honour is one of the highest in literature. The Best Book Award 2005 has been won by Andrea Levy for Small Island (Review, UK). Andrea Levy was born in England to Jamaican parents. She is the author of Every Light in the House Burnin', Never Far from Nowhere and Fruit of the Lemon. Small Island won the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Book of the Year 2004. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Nigeria, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2005 First Best Book prize for Purple Hibiscus (Fourth Estate,UK). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka, where she attended primary and secondary schools. Purple Hibiscus, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and

107

was winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy award for debut fiction. She is a Hodder fellow at Princeton University for the 2005-2006 academic year. 3. Australia 3.1. Geographical and Historical Hints Before the arrival of European settlers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples inhabited most areas of the Australian continent. Each people spoke one or more of hundreds of separate languages, with lifestyles and cultural traditions that differed according to the region in which they lived. Their complex social systems and highly developed traditions reflect a deep connection with the land and environment. Asian and Oceanic mariners and traders were in contact with Indigenous Australians for many centuries before the European expansion into the Eastern Hemisphere. Some formed substantial relationships with communities in northern Australia. In 1768-79 Captain James Cook led three voyages to the South Pacific. These voyages brought the British into contact with the huge land of Australia. Taking troublesome people to the other side of the world appealed to the British, especially since criminals could not be taken to America any more. In 1788 the first convict colony was established at Botany Bay in Australia 737 men, women and children. In total, 162,000 convicts were sent to Australia before the practice ended in 1868. Most settled in Australia once they were free. The British viewed Australia as an empty land, disregarding the rights of the aboriginal peoples. They hunted these people down. Many aborigines were killed or died of the new diseases brought by the white men. It is only now that the ancient land rights of the aboriginal peoples are being recognised. Australia is an island continent situated in the southern hemisphere. It is bounded on the west by the Indian Ocean and on the east by the Coral Sea and the Tasmanian Sea of the South Pacific Ocean. Almost 40% of its territory is north of the Tropic Capricorn. The land extremities are Steep Point (Western Australia), Cape Byron (New South Wales) in the east, Cape York (Queensland) in the North and South East, Cape Tasmania in the South. Australias totals area is 2,967,741 square miles. This is almost the size of the United States excluding Alaska and Hawaii, and half as large again as Europe excluding Russia and the former Soviet countries. Australia is the fattest of the continents. Almost three quarters of the land mass is a vast ancient plateau, averaging about 1000 ft. above sea level. Another large part is lowland of less than 500 ft. The third structural division is a highland belt, featuring a chain of elevated plateaus known as the Great Dividing Lange. The dominating structural division, the Great Western Plateau emerges from Western Australias coastal plains to cover almost the whole of the State. It is mostly formed of very old and hard rocks, with a few higher table lands and ridges such as the Kimberleys region and Hamersley, MacDonnell and Musgrave Ranges. The few other outcrops interrupting the flat monotony of the plateau are significant more for geological phenomena than for their topographical importance. Such structures include Ayers Rock, a high monolith six miles in circumference rising from the central Australian Desert to a height of 1100 ft. It is sometimes referred to as largest pebble in the world A good deal of the Great Western Plateau is practically desert sand ridges, gibber plains of pebbles or barren land with grass and spiky bushes. The Eastern Highlands provide the highest points in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania. They are Mount Bartle Frere (5287 ft); Mount Bogong (6516 ft); Mount Ossa (5305 ft) in Tasmania wet and wild central west. Because of its global sitting and physical features, 108

Australia has a well-varied climate, generally without severe extremes. Over inland areas the extremes range of temperature is 70 to 90 F. On the north coast and the Queensland coast the Extreme range is about 60F. The traditional white Christmas of European and northern hemisphere countries is unknown in Australia, which celebrates Christmas and the New Year in summer. December to February is the summer season; March to May, autumn, June to August winter, and September to November, spring. In Northern Australia the year is divided into the usual tropical divisions of dry and wet seasons with January, February and March as the wettest months. On the coast the rainfall is often abundant, but the temperatures are prevented from becoming low by the moist atmosphere and from becoming very high by rain and cloud. Inland, however, conditions are drier and the range of temperature from early morning to afternoon increases with distance from the coast. Australias long isolation as a land mass has resulted in a vegetation predominantly different from that of the rest of the world. The relatively arid conditions which came to prevail intensified the struggle for existence. It is these plants which form the main part of the countrys flora, with the gums (Eucalyptus) and wattles (Acacias) predominating as general. Australias fauna, are an example of how evolution and isolation favors the development of many different forms from few ancestral types, is remarkable for the presence of many unique animals and the absence of many others known in other countries. The kangaroo has become a symbolic of Australia. Even its name is a derivation of the Aboriginal word Kanguru and shares a place in the nations coat-of-arms with the emus, a large flightless bird also exclusive to Australia. As well known as the kangaroo and perhaps even more popular in appeal is the koala, often called the native bear. The name Koala is derived from an Aboriginal word implying that the animal does not normally drink; apparently it gets enough liquid from eucalyptus leaves. The European discovery that Terra Incognita actually existed was a by-product of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch mercantile expansion into Asia. Portuguese and Dutch vessels sailed around the southern tip of Africa and the Spanish pushed across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines from their colonies in South America. The first Englishman to visit the continent was the buccaneer William Dampier in 1688. After adventures in the Caribbean and along the South American coast, Dampier landed at Buccaneer Archipelago near King Sound on the north/west coast. Had these early explorers discovered the more futile and attractive east coast, Australias history as a European occupied country would have started much earlier. Instead, it was not until 1770 more than 70 years after the previous explorers had visited Australia, that captain James Cook of the Royal Navy first sighted the east coast of the continent. He hoisted the British flag and formally took possession of the eastern parts of the continent. The first settlers arrived at Botany Bay 18 years after Cooks visit and make their first camp at Sydney Cove on the shoes of Port Jackson. The British Crown Colony of New South Wales started with the establishment of a settlement and penal colony at Port Jackson by Captain Arthur Phillip on 26 January 1788. This date was later to become Australia's national day, Australia Day. Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, was settled in 1803 and became a separate colony in 1825. The transportation of convicts to Australia was phased out between 1840 and 1868. This was the beginning of Australia, which in 184 years has grown into a modern thriving nation. With a rapid growth of a free population and a more rapid increase of stock settlements spread quickly and the opening of a way through the Blue Mountains in 1813 led to a spontaneous overflow on to the Western plains. Ownership of this land was established by occupation or squatting. The term squatter meaning a pastoralist, remains in the Australian vocabulary, along with its derivative squattocracy .Meanwhile, immigration and natural increase had brought the population to an important amount. From the days of the first

109

settlement, immigration has been a feature of the countrys development. The discovery of gold by Edward Hardgrave at Bathurst on the Western plains of the New South Wales in 1851, followed by incredibly rich finds at Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria, brought a great influx of men from all over the world, of varying occupations and experience who introduced vigour of thought and initiative. Before 1800, Captain John Macarthur and others began experiments in breeding fine wool merinos, and he laid the foundations of the future economic development of the country. The first fine wool was exported in 1807 in England. By 1880, sheep numbered 25,000. Between 1855 and 1890, the six colonies individually gained responsible government, managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs, defence and international shipping. 3.2. Government The self government became an early objective because of the increasing administrative problems. The first constitutional charter was granted in 1823 when the British Government passed an Act which authorized the creation of a council possessing a limited legislative responsibility. The state chose to become a penal colony in 1850, and it was not until 1886 that convictism ended officially. The first draft of a Federal constitution was drawn up. The Commonwealth of Australia was declared to come into being on and after January 1 1901. The Commonwealth Constitution provided that Federal Parliament shown sit in Melbourne. Before then, the six colonies were self governing under the British Crown. These colonies had gradually adopted the system known as cabinet or responsible government, which had grown up in Britain over the previous 300 years. The Federal Parliament consists of the Crown, represented by the Governor General; the Senate, elected on a universal adult franchise with states having equality of representation; and the House of Representatives, also elected on a universal adult franchise, with the state representation in proportion to population. The Federal Parliament was located in Melbourne from 1901 until 1927 when it was transferred to Canberra, the national capital. The Governor Generals powers under the Constitution include summoning, proroguing and dissolving Parliament; assessing to Bills; appointing Ministers; setting up Departments of State; commanding the armed forces and appointing judges. The Senate is a House of review, a function universally accepted as the role of a second chamber. The House of Representatives is designed to be the legislative body representing national interest as a whole. Its members are directly chosen by the people. Australia has a decimal system of currency of which the unit is the dollar. A dollar consists of 100 cents. The design of banknotes features the antiquity, history and culture of Australia and their legal tender for any amount. 3.3. Economy in Australia Australia is an important producer and exporter of primary products. It leads the world in wool production and it is a significant supplier of cereals, minerals, diary products, meat, sugar, fruits. The manufacturing industry has grown spectacularly after the removal of interstate trade barriers and the adoption of a uniform protective tariff. Iron and steel and many related and subsidiary industries were established, machinery production extended, and a wide range of high grade products textiles, metal manufactures, electrical goods: optical instruments and chemicals. There are also shipbuilding yards situated at Why Alta, Adelaide, Brisbane, Maryborough, Newcastle, Sydney, and Melbourne. The value of the output of the industrial and heavy chemicals industry has risen dramatically in recent years. From primary

110

raw materials such as petroleum, coal, molasses, salt, sulphur and limestone, the industry produces many basic chemicals. These include ammonia, chlorine, caustic soda, soda ash. All sectors of the textile and clothing industries are well developed from the processing of natural and man-made fibers to the making up of a wide variety of apparel, household and industrial goods. Australia is one of the worlds leading surplus food producing countries, and it also has considerable potential for future expansion. It produces and exports substantial amounts of bulk raw or fresh foodstuffs, including meats (lamb, beef, pork, poultry, offal), diary produce, fruit ranging from tropical pineapple, bananas and mangoes, to deciduous fruits, citrus and berry fruits; grains, sugar, abalone and scallops. A particular importance in the food industry has been a growing emphasis on such processed foods as frozen, canned, pre-cooked and packed convenience food. Australia has a thriving metropolitan and country press, free from government control and censorship. Capital city newspaper circulation, in proportion to population, is among the highest in the world, the ratio being more than 500 copies a thousand people. Sydney and Melbourne newspapers have more than two thirds of the total circulation of capital city dailies. Australian newspapers editions are free to print anything they choose, within the bounds of laws of libel designed to prevent unrestrained plying into personal affairs and defamation of character, and subject to certain requirements. Most city newspapers are owned by public companies, but some privately owned papers have played an important part in Australian history and have acquired family traditions. 3.4. Education Tuition in government school is free at primary and secondary level School attendance is compulsory between the ages of six and 15 at least. Besides government schools there are also many non-government schools, the majority being conducted by religions denomination. Each state education department prescribes its own syllabus, concentrating on reading, writing, arithmetic and social studies. Progression from primary to secondary school is usually automatic. Allocation to particular schools or particular courses is based on the recommendation of the schoolmaster, ability, achievement tests, and parents wishes. Secondary students take up new studies, such as foreign languages, technical and commercial subjects, and more on to more specialized studies in natural and social science and mathematics. Most common type of secondary is the comprehensive or multipurpose high school, which offers a wide range of subjects. The curriculum consists of general educational subjects and practical training. The educational system, mostly the secondary level, benefit from limited financial help through scholarship or bursaries. As tuition in Government schools is free, this help is usually in the form of maintenance allowances that are paid in lump sums or installments throughout the year. Awards are usually made on the results of a competitive examination, and sometimes a means test is applied. Many non-government schools also award scholarships on a competitive basis, to allow students to attend school without paying fees. The matriculation examination or the Leaving Certificate, Senior Public, Matriculation and Higher School Certificate, qualifies students for entry to universities colleges of higher education, teachers colleges, etc. However, there is a tendency of no longer using examinations as sole criterion for entrance to tertiary courses. For the secondary education two main examinations are held: the first (Leaving, Junior or School Certificate examination) is held at the end of the third, fourth or fifth year to quality pupils for entry to trade courses, at technical colleges and to some agriculture colleges, to commercial occupation such as junior positions in insurance, and banking, to nursing and secretarial courses, and to some positions in the public service and industry. Under the 111

Achievement Certificate, the second type of examination, students work is continuously assessed. They are awarded certificate whether or not they complete third-year high school. On the fringes of metropolitan areas and near big countries school busses carry children to and from school each day. Correspondence schools meet the needs of the children whose daily attendance at school is prevented by distance, illness or physical disability. Specially written lessons are studied under family supervision and papers are posted back for correction. Some children living too far from a secondary school to allow daily-travel live in hostels or are given money for privately owned residential. The Government also pays boarding allowances to the holders of bursaries or scholarships. The government also administers school medical and dental services, and school childrens accident insurance schemes operate through Government or private insurance companies. The academic education is provided by the 15 universities, the college courses have the vocational aim to produce graduates who can apply themselves readily to the problems and demands of industry, commerce and professions. There are also conservatoire of music and specialized schools of arts having courses in painting, sculpture and design, while several of the larger technical institutes offer courses in plastic and industrial arts. 3.5. Cultural Heritage In Australia the arts are given support by the Federal and State Government and private sources, through the Commonwealth Literary Fund, the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, Commonwealth Assistance to Australian Composers and the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). The establishment of the Australian Council for the Arts in 1967 sprang from the Government wish to be more directly involved in helping the arts. The Council task was to recommend policies designed to develop and promote the quality, understanding and enjoyment of the arts, and tom act as the Governments agent in distributing financial support. Two national touring companies supported by the Council are the Australian Opera and the Australian Ballet Music is supplied by the two Elizabethan Trust orchestras. Another touring company subsidized through the Council is the Marionette Theatre which has toured overseas. State drama companies are supported by the Council in most towns. In the Melbourne Theatre Company in Melbourne, the South Australian Theatre Company in Adelaide and the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane. The Council attaches great importance to professional training in the arts. It supports the National Institute of Dramatic Art and the Australian Ballet School. Festivals of arts are playing an increasing role in the nations cultural live. The two biggest are Adelaides biennial and Perths annual festivals, both of which last several weeks and present overseas artists as well leading Australian companies. Other festivals of more popular nature are introducing arts programmes, and many small countries attract performers and artist all over the country. Australian playwrights have signal successes. A completion by the Playwrights Advisory Board produced Ray Lawlers Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1954 that is still the best known play abroad. Since then Lawlers Piccadilly Bushman, Richard Beynons Shifting Heart, Alen Seymour's The One Day of the Year, Patrick Whites The Ham Funeral, The Season at Sarsaparilla, A Cherry Soul and Night on Bald Mountain, and Alexander Buzos Norm and Ahmed have brought new life and style to the Australian theatre. So were Morris Wests the Devils Advocate, which was produced in Australia and New York and his Daughters of Silence. Among the Australian actors with international reputation are Peter Finch, Judith Anderson, Zo Caldwell, Rod Taylor, Diane Cilento and Leo McKern. In the last few years Australia has been the location for several feature films and American, British and Japanese enterprises have combined with local interests to produce films with unique settings. Official government film production and distribution 112

organization is the Australian Commonwealth Film Unit, part of the News and Information Bureau of the Department of the Interior. The Unit makes 60 films a year in the documentary, information and educational fields. Films fall into two broad types, those produced for distribution overseas to promote knowledge and understanding of the country, and those for domestic distribution, dealing with matters of national interest and welfare.

113

3.5.1. Music The first white men to settle Australia were London pickpockets, Irish Rick-burners, and poachers from the Midlands, already the inheritors of a long tradition of folk music. The Irish seem to have taken the lead. United by more than their chains, they sang in a whisper the old songs of Ireland. At the risk of flogging or hanging they sang the rebel songs too. The authorities called any criticism of the system 'treason', and punished it as such. But this never quite stopped the Irish from singing, and it never stopped them from making up new, local verses to old tunes. From mouth to ear and from ear to mouth, not always of the same nationality, both kinds of song spread through the convict settlements; and no amount of floggings could stop them. Emancipists, bolters and the pick of the free settlers pushed out into the bush where no laws ran, and took the 'treason' songs with them to sing there. But the face of the country had been drastically changed by the gold rush. Many of the gold-rush songs are anonymous; most of them that survive are the work of professional entertainers, Thatcher, Colon and others- witty, topical verses set to current overseas hit tunes for use in the theatres and cabarets of the mushroom gold towns. They are seldom heard from bush singers today. Then the alluvial gold petered out. Many towns shrank back into idleness. Unemployment grew serious. Many squatters were bankrupted by the Land Acts, and went off droving or shearing in the new outback. Owing to the fact the cadets (alias jackaroos or narangies) were literate we know a fair bit about their singing habits. Living an isolated sort of life between the homestead and the men's hut, jackaroos sometimes amused themselves by composing and singing new verses to familiar tunes. The men of the nomad trades, the drovers, shearers, bullockies and the rest, were great diffusers of songs; and in addition they composed their own. It was in the late 1880's that the first printing of bush songs occurred, but the first systematic collection was begun by AB Paterson in 1898. He published a first thin edition of The Old Bush Songs in 1905 and successive enlarged ones until 1932. Many contributors helped him, including ex-bushranger Jack Bradshaw. But folksongs belong in the home, in the pub, or on a friendly veranda; not in a list of set pieces. The new generations cast aside their didgeridoos and lagerphones (bottle top instruments) and embraced the guitars and drums of Great Britain. But even though the medium changed, strong Australian fingerprints still defined the music's substance. Specifically, a strong larrikin streak had millions of people throughout the world shaking their heads in bemusement at the peculiar musical style of Australians. The unique musical charge was headed by the likes of Rolf Harris whose "tie me Kangaroo down, sport" raised suspicions that kangaroos are to Australians what sheep are to New Zealanders. Joe Dolce took the piss out of his Italian ancestry with "Shaddap You Face"; a novelty ditty that toped the charts world wide and has since been voted the worst No. 1 song in British pop history. The music of AC/DC had the strongest Convict themes since the early days of the colony. They reignited a sense of defiance with songs such as "TNT." They continued the Australian tradition of taking the piss out of the pompous with "Big Balls"; a song that equates the elite's quest for social esteem with a proud declaration of testicle size. They sang of debauchery with "Touch to Much" , female empowerment with "She's Got Balls" and explored the criminal element with "Dirty Deeds", "Sin City" and "Jailbreak."

114

The melancholy that defined the early Convict music also remerged with Australian artists singing about the Vietnam War. Cold Chisel's "Khe Sahn" and Red Gums,"I was only 19" became immortal tunes that triggered empathy for Australian servicemen's sense of anguish. The 80s was a particularly dynamic era in the creation of unofficial national anthems. In 1984, Men at Work revived the nomadic spirit of wandering with the travelling song "Down Under"; a song containing lyrics such as "I come from a land down under where beer does flow and men chunder." One artist, Kevin Bloody Wilson, even created his own genre. A hybrid mix of historical musings, humour and swear words, Wilson songs appealed to those who wanted to make fun of wowser moralising. In the 90s, Australia has also produced its fair share generic acts which have gained huge international sales, but have not achieved immortality across the generations. As such generic acts try hard not to offend, they were chosen for the musical scores representing Australia at the Sydney Olympics. Curiously, they failed to capture the prevailing larrikin vibe of the games and sales were disappointing. As well as failing at the time, it seems history has provided no redemption for nowadays the songs are never heard. Pop, heavy metal, rock, country and western, techno, rap and reggae remains firmly entrenched in the Australian music scene. However folk music which had been on the verge of extinction has undergone somewhat of a revival. Australia wide, capital cities host folk festivals that give bush musicians the chance to come together and play before an audience once more. Australia has now fully professional symphony orchestras in every large town. The Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras have toured abroad with acclaim. Chamber music is organized on a national touring level by the Musica Viva Society which imports international groups each year such as the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and Londons Aeolian Quartet. Many composers, singers and instrumentalists of the past and present have achieved international fame: they include Dame Nellie Melba, Peter Dawson, Percy Grainger, Harold Williams, Malcolm McEachern, Joan Hammond, Kenneth Neate, June Bronhill, Marie Collier, Malcolm Williamson and Geoffrey Parsins. An outstandingly successful composer established overseas is Ron Grainer who wrote the music for Robert and Elisabeth and the haunting themes for BBC television series like Maigret. All state capitals have big art galleries. Canberra has a National Gallery built in 1967 by the Federal Government to house the national collection and new acquisitions in contemporary works, with special reference to Australian painters and paintings from the South East Asian and Pacific regions. International exhibitions of art are touring overseas and are being received enthusiastically. Commercial galleries are opening each year to meet the increasing demand of private collector and practice of decorating new buildings with commissioned works is increasing. Several contemporary artists including the late Sir William Dobell, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, and John Perceval have attracted international recognition, as have sculptors Tom Bass, Norma Redpath, Clifford Last and others

115

3.5.2. Literature The first known writers living in Australia were the officers of the First Fleet whose diaries and journals express their lively interest in the country to which they have been sent. Many of the explorers from Europe were not only close and accurate observers, but men of letters with a gift of humor and sense of style. One of the earliest of the Australian-born writers was Charles Harpur, the son of convict parents; he was intensely nationalistic at a time when nationalism was just beginning to creep into the Australian vocabulary. Harpur tried mighty to lay a foundation for an Australian poetry under conditions that would have discouraged most writers. Through his influence, the country found its first poet in Henry Kendall who sang of the more gentle aspects of the Australian landscape. The English-born Adam Lindsay Gordon is considered the first poet of any substance to attract a popular audience. He was the forerunner of Paterson, Barcroft Boake, and the school of bush balladist that developed from the earlier folk songs deep-rooted in native soil. The tradition of the worker facing desolation of the countryside with a sardonic grin and a sentimental heart blossomed with the work of Henry Lawson. His ballads of poems also had a wide popular appeal, but the love-hate relationship between Australian man and his environment. Lawsons identification with the Australian worker has followed by many social realist writers. Notable exponents in this field were Joseph Farphy and Vance Palmer and also Katherine Susannah Prichard, Xavier Hubert Dymphna Cusack and Kylie Tennant who have also brought imagination and creative talent to their writing. The stream of lyric poetry continued from Kendall to Hugh McCrae to John Shaw Neilson and others. In the decade after the 1920s with a more sophisticated voice Kenneth Slessor at this time introduced into local poetry to English modernism of T.S. Eliot. He was followed by R.D. Fitzgerald, Judith Wright, Douglas Steward, David Campbell, James McAuley and others who all look to their native roots for their inspiration, although a few poets like A.D. Hope and Michael Thwaites are cosmopolitan. Since the end of the World War II the writers, particularly the young poets are now concerned with social problems and universal themes. Fiction writing developed slowly. There were from the beginning novels written in an Australian setting something exotic for the people at home to wonder at as in the novels of Rosa Praed and Ada Cambridge. Then there appeared the novels of Marcus Clarke and Rolf Boldrewood who wrote of convicts and bushrangers. In fiction writing, the influence of European naturalism was seen in the novels of Henry Handel Richardson. In these days creative writers like Patrick White and Randolph Stow have moved away from social realism and are concerned more with character than setting. Morris West has become a best selling novelist and Jon Cleary has had several of his novels made into films. Other names can be mentioned about Australian literature: Thomas Kenneally, Alan Morehead, George Johnston, Geoffrey Dutton, DArcy Niland, Ruth Park, Eleanor Dark, and Ernestine Hill. There has been an important increase in local book publication in recent years and overseas have come in strength to take advantage of the increase market. Universities are active in the publishing field, with a variety of academic and other publications of special domestic interest. Australia seeks to offer a preserved cultural integrity. Its intangible cultural heritage or living cultural heritage is manifested inter alia in oral traditions, expressions and language, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices about nature and the universe, traditional craftsmanship.

116

3.5.3. Painting Australian aboriginal paintings are the world's oldest form of painting. They are complex, weaving history, mythology and geography of the land into a whole, giving directions to a billabong accounts of a historical encounter with another tribe or a mythical man turning into a kookaburra during dreamtime. Such paintings offer value to hunters, people on walkabout as well as the storytellers entrusted to communicate the essence of the tribe's identity and the individual's place within it. When European artists arrived in the 18th century, they brought with them the relatively juvenile traditions of the "old" world. The likes of Eugne von Gurard and Nicholas Chevalier tended to paint what they saw and the value of the work was principally in its aesthetics qualities. Like most artists, they strove for a sense of uniqueness and tried to find it by painting the Australian land. But despite being technically skilled, most of their early paintings neither captured the look nor the feeling of the landscape. The Australian land is messy and random. The trees are twisted with the chaotic look of an old lady's broken fingers. The bark hangs like a poor child wearing the well-used hand-me-downs of an older sibling. The earth is littered with leaves and old branches. As the topsoil is thin, it reveals the immense history of the earth; its faults, its fossils, its bones and its sediment. The colours are dull and contrast is slight but with this dullness, comes great complexity of colour. Yet despite these distinguishing characteristics, the European's paintings looked and felt more like the French Alps or the rolling hills of Ireland. They used deep colours of monotone green that made Australia seem new and fertile. They used deep blues in conjunction with white to create feelings of contrast. Some artists even tried to further emphasise the uniqueness with a few token Aborigines. Unfortunately, they made Aborigines look more like black Romans who forgot to put on their tunics. .One artist who did manage to attain a sense of regional definition was Convict artist W.B Gould. However Gould found his uniqueness not from the land, but from the people. His painting "The landlord" offers an insight into the origins of Australia's larrikin personality. It depicts a suited man with a toothless grin. Strict convention amongst noble man of the time was a deadpan expression; especially if one's teeth were missing. Without doubt, Gould had painted an ex-convict whose desire to conform to social prestige had been surpassed by a self-effacing personality. Towards the beginnings of the 20th century, a cultural tradition was developing and led to the creation of the Heidleburg School. Together, a group of painters dealt with a common subject matter, learnt from each other, yet produced completely individualistic results. The likes of Tom Roberts, and Arthur Streeton captured the chaos and complexity of the land and wove into it the prevailing themes of nationalism and independence. Their paintings convey optimism with hill top gazes filled with vibrant blues and subtle yellows. Their subject matter included the pioneers whom were pushing the bush frontiers and who at the time were Australia's quintessential heroes. Also painting the pioneers was Frederick McCubbin; however unlike Roberts and Streeton, McCubbin's themes tended to be melancholic. McCubbin painted thick bushland where light was dim and the environment seemed somewhat lonely and dark. Into the scene he would introduce a pioneer but rather than optimistically showing the pioneer conquering nature, McCubbin showed them being conquered themselves or using the bush as their refuge. In the 1950's, Russell Drysdale went searching in the farthest frontier of them all; the outback. Drysdale's work is interesting to contrast to the optimism of previous pioneering artists. His paintings depict towns that had been the pioneering dream but were now laying desolate as the frontier shrink back into nothingness. They depict dilapidated iron structures that seem so fleeting in comparison to the eternity of the landscape and the native animals that have 117

inhabited it since time immemorial. If appreciated in a historical context, Drysdale's works are not mere depictions of the outback, they record Australians changing their attitude towards their identity. Rather than depicting the bush as the place of opportunity, Drysdale's works are a record of a time when Australians began seeing the bush as a place of broken dreams and hence, began to look elsewhere for their heroes. Although Dysdale's paintings showed admiration for the survivors of the Bush, there was no longer any sense of envy or opportunity. Another movement that explored the broken dreams was the Angry Penguins society. It included the likes of Albert Tucker who painted decaying carcasses of animals killed in a drought. Yet even in death the animals do not find peace, they loom large at the beholder as if they are the mutant remains of the apocalyse. The Angry Penguins also included Arthur Boyd who explored the difficult marriage of Aboriginal and non-aboriginal ideas. The marriage was perhaps finally consumated with the work of Sidney Nolan. More than any of his predecessors, Nolan's style was Aboriginal, not in terms of method, but in terms of substance. Nolan described his works as "a confused mix of landscape, animals, and aboriginal culture, with a kind of Bible overtone." Like traditional aboriginal art, Nolan married the land, the people, history and most importantly, mythology. Nolan became obsessed with the icons of Australia with the most notable being the legendary bushranger Ned Kelly. Nolan painted Ned as a comic book character, a magician, a leader and a martyr. He blended into Ned images of the landscape and even titled the paintings with newspaper commentary. Nolan's work is a reflection of the evolution of the Australian style that seems to be somewhat of an assimilation to the mentality the Aborigines developed over tens of thousands of years. By blending myth, land, history and people into one, the value of Nolan's work is not in its aesthetics but rather in the thoughts they provoke. As Australia ceased to be a bush-dreaming nation, an urban landscape style emerged to take its place. Despite having a different subject matter, the new style still retains much of the cognitive approach of the bush artists. Jeffrey Smart is the most renowned of the new urban landscape artists. Smart renders the sterile features of modernity concrete streetscapes, industrial wastelands, freeways, street signs, trucks, containers and oil drums - into formal pictures which are beautiful and peaceful but also strangely unsettling. Again, they are not beautiful, but in their disturbing feelings they provoke a kind of need to explore further. 3.5.4. Craft In the pioneering Australian age, craft ceased to be an expression of the heart and instead became a pragmatic solution to necessity. In times of hardship, the bushmen had no choice but to adapt, improvise and make do. With an optimistic outlook, they developed a cando culture based on finding lateral solutions to novel problems. Crafts were fashioned from whatever material was available. A beer mug made from a hollow tree trunk. Coolers made by dripping water over canvas. Hats with corks to swat away the flies. Wheels from sliced tree logs. Ant hills puddled into water and spread across the floor to make a cement like surface. Strips of possum fur wound around the base of table legs to prevent ants invading food. Such craft served a purely functional purpose and aside from appreciation for ingenuity, they provoked few feelings. But to sympathetic and informed eyes, they now vividly state the material and spiritual aspirations of vanished generations. The most famous craft of the pioneering era came from the Kelly Gang who fashioned plough shares into body armour. In their thoughts, the Kelly gang imagined iron protecting their bodies as they led the downcast into a revolution. But through history, the armour has become so much more. It has become a muse for creativity; a mask that concealed the face of Kelly, 118

hiding his humanity, leaving nothing but an emotionless warrior. Yet at his trial, the unmasked Kelly revealed the voice of a poetic. A man loyal to his family, his friends and his convictions. Even when all hope was lost, a man of passion, courage and defiance. Such contradictions have inspired artists to paint, to write and to sing his story with his armour representing the essence of his life. Towards the end of the 19th Century, some craftsmen evolved into artisans and set about introducing aesthetics into their home. Scrimshaws from bone, bullock horns and emus eggs. Picture frames decorated with gumnuts. Pillow cases sewn from an assortment of animal hides and hessian. Cigar boxes decorated with shards of pottery. A sign on the door of a modest bush hut saying "home." In the 20th century, farmers and roaming swagman who lacked access to shops, continued to fashion their own solutions to their necessity. Letterboxes made from old milk tins. Automated fishing reels from window blind rollers mounted on a stick. Barbeques from old steel drums. Sticks and vines lashed into beds, gantries, animal traps and shelters. Recreation was also important and sharing a song with a new friend was a favoured pastime. Needing to travel light, Aboriginal droving hands, swagman and bullockers fashioned musical instruments out of whatever was available. A 'lagerphone' invented by nailing bottle tops onto branches. The 'bones' made from two sawn ribs of a bullock. A didgeridoo made from hollow tree log. A violin from an empty cigar box, wallaby sinews for strings and horse hair for the bow. Australians at war also showed them themselves more than capable of finding lateral solutions to novel problems. At Gallipoli, the Diggers fastened mirrors onto their guns to act as a telescope that could safely see over the top of the trenches. For the evacuation, to fool the Turks that Diggers were still fighting, guns were left with a makeshift timer set by dripping water into a can suspended from the trigger. Towards the end of the 20th century, craft making began to flower in the cities. The most notable style was the recycling of fence pailings into tables, picture frames and book covers. Other common crafts included clocks fitted to polished tree burls, timber carved into candle holders and cigar boxes making use of gum nuts embedded in native timbers. In a world flooded with plastic and chipboard, such craft provided character, history, and naturalness. With time, the city craftsmen evolved their work so they were not merely producing innovative household goods, they were producing works of art. Some created wood mosaics of the landscape. Others shaped natural timber into sculptures that acted as a catalyst for thought or a reservoir of emotions. A feature of many of the wooden sculptures are their feminine elements. Perhaps this reflects men sublimating their appreciation for females or women seeking a homo-erotic exploration. More likely though, it stems from the randomness of the Australian timber that compels the craftsmen to reveal mother nature's female form. Unlike the straight grained timber of the northern hemisphere, the grain of Australian timber ebbs and flows like a river. Branches are born only to die, and are then concealed by new layers of bark ala an oyster growing a pearl. In its lifetime, almost every wild tree will be burnt by fire but rather than die, the tree will recover, flowing new growth into and over its scare. Australia's craft culture is the strongest in the industrialised world. To Australia's good fortune, space for pottery kilns, wielders, band-saws, wood-working lathes or drill presses can

119

still be found in backyard sheds or garages. More importantly, many Australians still have that mental frame of mind to recycle, to adapt, to innovate and most importantly, to use their hands. V. United States of America 1. An Outline of American History 1.1. Search for North-West Passage - Irish and Vikings In the fifth century, St. Patrick started the christening of the Irish. The Irish quickly accepted the new religion, and soon started to make voyages of their own. In 563, St. Columba established a monastery on the island of Iona, on the Scottish coast, and from Iona and other places, the Irish not only preached among the Picts, but also travelled onto the Atlantic Ocean. A famous story is the one of the voyages of St. Brendan, who travelled to the Atlantic to find the Promised Land of the Saints. According to the story, he found several islands and had a number of adventures before finding this promised land. Although St. Brendan was a historical person, the story was probably not that of his voyage, but a combination of stories from several Irish monks.Persia.They were conquerors as well as traders, and various of the main prinicipalities of medieval Russia, such as Novgorod and Kiev, were established by them. One viking trader that we know by name is Ottar. His is the oldest known voyage around North Cape. In the west, the Vikings colonized a number of lands - the Hebrides, the Orkneys, Faeroer, Iceland. first viking to colonize Greenland was Eric the Red. He decided to explore the country discovered by Gunnbjorn. After three years he returned, talking enthousiastically about the land, which he called Greenland, and in 986, he returned with several shiploads of colonists. Two colonies were started, the eastern and the western settlement, both on the west coast. Bjarni Herjulfsson reached America. He explored a large part of the American coast, but he did not land there. Around the year 1000, Eric's son Leif tried to establish a colony somewhere in America, in a land he called Vinland. A few more attempts were made in the following years, but all were abandoned after only one or two years. We do not know where exactly Vinland was. On Newfoundland, a viking settlement has been found in a place called L'Anse aux Meadows. Many historians believe that this was the settlement of Leif, but others think that Vinland was further south, perhaps in New England. Undoubtedly, America has been visited by vikings after this, but there is no evidence that they made any more attempts at actually colonizing the country. The colonies in Greenland prospered for some time, but in the fourteenth century it began to deteriorate, and in the fifteenth century it was abandoned, for as yet unknown reasons. Christopher Columbus After five centuries, Columbus remains a mysterious and controversial figure who has been variously described as one of the greatest mariners in history, a visionary genius, a mystic, a national hero, a failed administrator, a naive entrepreneur, and a ruthless and greedy imperialist. Columbus's enterprise to find a westward route to Asia grew out of the practical experience of a long and varied maritime career, as well as out of his considerable reading in geographical and theological literature. He settled for a time in Portugal, where he tried unsuccessfully to enlist support for his project, before moving to Spain. After many difficulties,

120

through a combination of good luck and persuasiveness, he gained the support of the Catholic monarchs, Isabel and Fernando. The widely published report of his voyage of 1492 made Columbus famous throughout Europe and secured for him the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and further royal patronage. Columbus, who never abandoned the belief that he had reached Asia, led three more expeditions to the Caribbean. But intrigue and his own administrative failings brought disappointment and political obscurity to his final years. Much concerned with social status, Columbus was granted a coat of arms in 1493. By 1502, he had added several new elements, such as an emerging continent next to islands and five golden anchors to represent the office of the Admiral of the Sea. John Cabot Giovanni Caboto (Cabots Italian name, other spellings are used as well) was born in Genova, probably around 1451. However, already when he was a child, or maybe a young man, he moved to Venice. It was probably on hearing of Columbus's discovery of 'the Indies' that he decided to find a route to the west for himself. King Henry VII gave him a grant "full and free authoritie, leave, and power, to sayle to all partes, countreys, and seas, of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensignes, with five ships ... and as many mariners or men as they will have in saide ships, upon their own proper costes and charges, to seeke out, discover, and finde, whatsoever iles, countreyes, regions or provinces of the heathen and infidelles, whatsoever they bee, and in what part of the world soever they be, whiche before this time have beene unknowen to all Christians." Cabot left with only one vessel from Bristol Port.Back in England Cabot got well rewarded (a pension of 20 pounds a year), and a patent was written for his voyage. From 1504, if not before, Breton, Basque, Portuguese and English fishermen crossed the ocean to catch fish on the Newfoundland banks. Amerigo Vespucci will long be remembered as the man America was named after but who was this inconsequential explorer and how did he get his name on two continents. Vespucci was born in 1454 to a prominent family in Florence, Italy. As a young man he read widely, collected books and maps, and even studied under Michaelangelo. He began working for local bankers and was sent to Spain in 1492 to look after his employer's business interests. While on this voyage, Vespucci wrote two letters to a friend in Europe. He described his travels and was the first to identify the New World of North and South America as separate from Asia. (Until he died, Columbus thought he had reached Asia.) Amerigo Vespucci also described the culture of the indigenous people, and focused on their diet, religion, and what made these letters very popular - their sexual, marriage, and childbirth practices. The letters were published in many languages and were distributed across Europe (they were a much better seller than Columbus' own diaries). Amerigo Vespucci was named Pilot Major of Spain in 1508. Vespucci was proud of this accomplishments, "I was more skillful than all the shipmates of the whole world." Vespucci's third voyage to the New World was his last for he contracted malaria and died in Spain in 1512 at the age of 58. 1.2. European Colonial New World

121

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a tide of emigration - one of the great folk wanderings of history - swept from Europe to America. This movement, impelled by powerful and diverse motivations, built a nation out of a wilderness and, by its nature, shaped the character and destiny of an uncharted continent. Today, the United States is the product of two principal forces - the immigration of European peoples with their varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics and the impact of a new country which modified these distinctly European cultural traits. Successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others came from Europe and attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world. But, inevitably, the force of geographic conditions peculiar to America, the interplay of the varied national groups upon one another, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining old-world ways in a raw, new continent caused significant changes. These changes were gradual and at first scarcely visible. But the result was a new social pattern which, although it resembled European society in many ways, had a character that was distinctly American. Many of the ships were lost in storms, many passengers died of disease, and infants rarely survived the journey. Sometimes tempests blew the vessels far off their course, and often calm brought interminable delay. The colonists' first glimpse of the new land was a "vista" of dense woods. The virgin forest with its profusion and variety of trees was a veritable treasure-house which extended over 1,300 miles from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. Here was abundant fuel and lumber. Here was the raw material of houses and furniture, ships and potash, dyes and naval stores. As inviting as the climate were the native foods. The sea abounded in oysters and crabs, cod and lobster; and in the woods, there were turkeys and quail, squirrels, pheasants, elk, geese, and so many deer. Fruits, nuts, and berries grew wild everywhere, and it was soon discovered that more substantial fare like peas and beans and corn and pumpkins could be easily cultivated. Soon the newcomers found that grain would grow and that transplanted fruit trees flourished. And sheep, goats, swine, and cows throve in the new land. The whole length of shore provided innumerable inlets and harbors, and only two areas -North Carolina and southern New Jersey -lacked harbors for ocean-going vessels. Majestic rivers - like the Kennebec in Maine, the Connecticut, New York's Hudson, Pennsylvania's Susquehanna, the Potomac in Virginia, and numerous others - formed links between the coastal plain and the ports, and thence with Europe. Of the many large North American east coast rivers, however, only Canada's St. Lawrence, held by the French, offered a water passage to the real interior of the continent. This lack of a waterway, together with the formidable barrier of the Appalachian Mountains, long discouraged movement beyond the coastal plains region. For a hundred years, in fact, the colonists built their settlements compactly along the eastern shore. The several colonies were independent communities with their own outlets to the sea. Their separateness, together with the distances between the settlements, prevented development of a centralized and unified government. Each colony instead became a separate entity, marked by a strong individuality which in the later history of the United States became the basis of the concept of "states rights." But despite this trend to individualism, even from the earliest days the problems of commerce, navigation, manufacturing, and currency cut across colonial boundaries and necessitated common regulations which, after independence from England was won, led inevitably to federation. In contrast to the colonization policies of other countries the emigration from England was not fostered by the government. Well to-do emigrants themselves financed the transport 122

and equipment of their families and servants. For the earliest colonists, the expenses of transport and maintenance were provided by colonizing agencies such as the Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company. In return, the settlers agreed to work for the agency as contract laborers. Land and other natural resources were practically unlimited, and progress was entirely dependent on the size of the population available to develop them. Technically, some proprietors and chartered companies were the King's tenants, but they made only symbolic payments for their lands. Lord Baltimore, for instance, gave the King two Indian arrowheads each year, and William Penn contributed two beaver skins annually. Still another, Georgia, was established largely to release imprisoned debtors from English jails and send them to America to establish a colony which would serve as a bulwark against the Spaniards to the south. Founded in 1624 by the Dutch, the colony of New Netherlands came under British rule forty years later and was renamed New York. Of the settlers who came to America in the first three quarters of the seventeenth century, the overwhelming majority was English. There was a sprinkling of Dutch, Swedes, and Germans in the middle region, a few French Huguenots in South Carolina and elsewhere, and here and there a scattering of Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese. But these represented hardly ten per cent of the total population. The most impelling single motive which induced emigrants to leave their European homelands was the desire for greater economic opportunity. This urge was frequently reinforced by other significant considerations such as a yearning for religious freedom, a determination to escape political oppression, or the lure of adventure. Between 1620 and 1635, economic difficulties swept England, and overflowing multitudes could not find work. Even the best artisans could earn little more than a bare living. Bad crops added to the distress. In addition, England's expanding woolen industry demanded an ever increasing supply of wool to keep the looms clacking, and sheep-raisers began to encroach on soil hitherto given over to tillage. Concurrently, during the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a body of men and women called Puritans sought to reform the Established Church of England from within. Their reformist ideas threatened to divide the people and to undermine royal authority by destroying the unity of the state church. During the reign of James I, a small group of these - humble country folk - left for Leyden, Holland, where they were allowed to practice their religion as they wished. Some years later, a part of this Leyden congregation decided to emigrate to the new world where, in 1620, they founded the "Pilgrim" colony of New Plymouth. Soon after Charles I ascended the throne in 1625, Puritan leaders in England were subjected to what they viewed as increasing persecution. Several ministers, who were no longer allowed to preach, gathered their flocks about them and followed the Pilgrims to America. This second group, which established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, included many persons of substantial wealth and position. Within the next decade, a Puritan stamp had been placed upon a half dozen English colonies. Similar concern for English Catholics was a factor in Cecil Calvert's founding of Maryland. And many colonists in Pennsylvania and North Carolina were dissidents from Germany and Ireland who sought greater religious freedom as well as economic opportunity. Political considerations, together with religious, influenced many to move to America. The attempted personal and arbitrary rule of England's Charles I gave impetus to the migration to the new world in the 1630's. The subsequent revolt and triumph of Charles' opponents under Oliver Cromwell in the following decade led many cavaliers - "king's men" - to cast their lot in Virginia. In Germany, the oppressive policies of various petty princes, particularly with regard 123

to religion, and devastation from a long series of wars helped swell the movement to America in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After 1680, England ceased to be the chief source of immigration, as great numbers came from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and France for varied reasons. In 1690, the population amounted to about a quarter of a million. It doubled every twenty-five years until in 1775 it numbered more than two and a half million. For the most part, non-English colonists adapted themselves to the culture of the original settlers. They adopted the English language, law, customs, and habits of thought, but only as these had been modified by conditions in America. And in the process of the amalgamation of these later immigrants with the original English colonists, further cultural modifications were effected. The final result was a unique culture -a blend of English and - -ropean continental characteristics conditioned by the environment of the new world. The several settlements fell into three fairly well-defined sections: One of those was New England which became chiefly commercial and industrial, while in the south, a predominantly agrarian society was developing. Geography was the determining factor. A glaciated area, the New England region was strewn with boulders. Generally, the soil, except in rare spots in river valleys, was thin and poor, and the small area of level land, the short summers, and long winters made it inferior farming country. But the New Englanders soon found other profitable pursuits. They harnessed waterpower and established mills where they ground wheat and corn or sawed lumber for export. The coastal indentations made excellent harbors which promoted trade. Good stands of timber encouraged shipbuilding, and the sea was a source of great potential wealth. The cod fishery alone rapidly formed a basis for prosperity in Massachusetts. Settling in villages and towns around the harbors, New Englanders quickly adopted an urban existence. Common pasture land and common woodlots served to satisfy the needs of townspeople who acquired small farms nearby. Many of these farmed in addition to carrying on some trade or business. Compactness made possible the village school, the village church, the town meeting, and frequent communication, and all of these together had a tremendous influence on the nature of the developing civilization. Sharing similar hardships, cultivating the same kind of rocky soil, following simple trades and crafts, these New Englanders rapidly acquired characteristics which marked them as a people apart. Some of the colonists set themselves to the stem business of making a living and constructing a society suitable to the strong-minded individuals they were. The development of a theocracy in Massachusetts took place, all institutions being subordinated to religion. At town meetings, however, there was opportunity for discussion of public problems, and settlers thereby received a certain amount of experience in selfgovernment. And though the towns developed around the church organization, the whole population, by the very exigencies of frontier life, shared in civic obligations and in consultative meetings. Boston became one of America's greatest ports. Oak timbers for ships' hulls, tall pines for spars and masts, and pitch for the seams came from the northeastern forests. Building their own ships, sailing them to ports all over the world carrying freight as they went, the shipmasters laid a foundation for a traffic which was to grow constantly in importance. By the end of the colonial period, one-third of all vessels under the British flag were American-built. Surplus food products, ship stores, and wooden ware swelled the exports. New England shippers soon discovered, too, that rum and slaves were profitable commodities.

124

Society in the middle colonies, the second great division, was far more varied, cosmopolitan, and tolerant than that in New England. The colony set an example of fair and honest dealings with the Indians: they entered into agreements with them which, scrupulously observed, maintained peace in the wilderness. The colony functioned smoothly and grew rapidly. Heart of the colony was Philadelphia, a city soon to be known for its broad, tree-shaded streets, its substantial brick and stone houses, and its busy docks. By the end of the colonial period, 30,000 people, representing many languages, creeds, and trades, lived there. The Germans came from a war-ravaged land in large numbers, asking for the chance to earn their bread. They soon became the province's most skillful farmers. Important also in the colony's development was their knowledge of cottage industries - weaving, shoe-making, cabinetmaking, and other crafts. Pennsylvania was also the principal gateway into the new world for a great migration of Scotch-Irish. They were vigorous frontiersmen, taking land where they wanted it and defending their rights with rifles and texts from the Bible. Believing in representative government, religion, and learning, they were the spearhead of civilization as they pushed ever farther into the wilderness. By 1646, over a dozen languages could be heard along the Hudson and the population included Dutch, Flemings, Walloons, French, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Portuguese, and Italians - the forerunners of millions of their compatriots in centuries to come. Most of them earned their living through trade and established a commercial civilization which anticipated the characteristics of succeeding generations. The Dutch possessed New Netherland, later to be called New York, for forty years. In 1664 the Dutch settlement was taken over through conquest. Long after this, however, the Dutch continued to exercise an important social and economic influence. Their sharp-stepped gabled roofs became a permanent part of the landscape, and their merchants gave the city its characteristic commercial atmosphere. The habits bequeathed by the Dutch also gave New York a hospitality to the pleasures of everyday life quite different from the austere atmosphere of Puritan Boston. In New York, holidays were marked by feasting and merrymaking. And many Dutch customs -like the habit of calling on one's neighbors and sharing a drink with them on New Year's Day and the visit of jovial Saint Nicholas at Christmas time - became countrywide customs which have survived to the present day. Town governments had the autonomy characteristics of New England towns and in a few years there was a reasonably workable fusion between residual Dutch law and customs and English procedures and practice. By 1696, nearly 30,000 people lived in the province of New York. In the rich valleys of the Hudson, Mohawk, and other rivers, great estates flourished, and tenant farmers and small freehold farmers contributed to the agricultural development of the region. For most of the year, the grasslands and woods supplied feed for cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs; tobacco and flax grew with ease, and fruits, especially apples, were abundant. But great as was the value of farm products, the fur trade also contributed to the growth of New York and Albany as cities of consequence. For from Albany, the Hudson River was a convenient waterway for shipping furs and northern farm products to the busy port of New York. In direct contrast to New England and the middle colonies was the predominantly rural character of the southern settlements of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Jamestown, in Virginia, was the first colony to survive in the new world. The colonists concentrated on producing for export naval stores, lumber, roots, and other products for sale in the London market. Then, in 1612, a development occurred which ultimately revolutionized the economy, not only of Virginia, but of the whole contiguous region. This was the discovery of a

125

method of curing Virginia tobacco which would make it palatable to European tastes. The first shipment of this tobacco reached London in 1614, and within a decade the plant gave every promise of becoming a steady and profitable source of revenue. But no towns dotted the region, and even Jamestown, the capital, had only a few houses. Planters quickly adapted themselves to a system of trade at long range, and London, Bristol, and other English ports were their market towns. Maryland developed a civilization very similar to that of Virginia. Protestants as well as Catholics were encouraged to settle. In social structure and in government Maryland became an aristocratic land in the ancient tradition. But the authorities could not circumvent the stubborn belief of the settlers in the guarantees of personal liberty established by English common law and the natural rights of subjects to participate in government through representative assemblies. Both colonies were devoted to agriculture with a dominant tidewater class of great planters; both had a back country into which yeomen farmers steadily filtered; both suffered the handicaps of a one-crop system; and before the mid-eighteenth century, the culture of both was profoundly affected by Negro slavery. In both colonies, the wealthy planters took their social responsibilities seriously, serving as justices of the peace, colonels of the militia, and members of the legislative assemblies. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the social structure in Maryland and Virginia had taken on the qualities it would retain-until the Civil War. The planters, supported by slave labor, held most of the political power and the best land. They built great houses, adopted an aristocratic manner of life, and maintained contact with the cultured world overseas. Least prosperous were the small farmers who struggled for existence in competition. It was the Carolinas, with Charleston as the leading port, which developed as the trading center of the south. Here the settlers quickly learned to combine agriculture and commerce, and the colony owed much of its prosperity to the marketplace. Dense forests also provided revenue, and tar and rosin from the long-leaf pine were among the best ship stores in the world. Not bound to a single crop as was Virginia, the Carolinas produced and exported rice, indigo, and naval stores. By 1750, 100,000 or more people lived in the two colonies of North and South Carolina. Men seeking greater freedom of conscience than could be found in the original tidewater settlements had early pushed beyond their borders. Those who could not secure fertile land along the coast or who had exhausted the lands which they held found the hills farther west a fruitful place of refuge. Soon the interior was dotted with successful farms, worked by men economically as well as spiritually independent of the older regions. Humble farmers were not the only ones who found the hinterland attractive. Although there was a sprinkling of large landowners among those who found their way into the foothills, most of those who left the settled colonies in the east were small, independent pioneers. Living on the edge of the Indian country, their cabins were their fortresses, and they relied for protection on their own sharp eyes and trusty muskets. By necessity, they became a sturdy and self-reliant people. They cleared tracts in the wilderness, burned the brush, and cultivated com and wheat among the stumps. The men dressed in hunting shirts and deerskin leggings, the women in homespun petticoats. Their food was "hog and hominy" and roast venison, wild turkey, or partridge and fish from a neighboring stream. They had their own boisterous amusements - great barbecues where oxen were roasted whole, house-warmings for newly married couples, dancing, drinking, shooting matches, quilting bees. As pioneers moved westward, they carried forward something of the older civilization and established in fresh soil traditions which were a part of their common heritage. Men from the western country made their voices heard in political debate, combating the inertia of custom and convention. Dominant tidewater figures were forced, time after time, 126

to liberalize political policies, land-grant requirements, and religious practices, on popular demand, which was always supported by a direct or implied threat of a mass exodus to the frontier. Of equal significance for the future were the foundations of American education and culture established in the colonial period. Harvard College was founded in 1636 in Massachusetts. Near the end of the century, the College of William and Mary was established in Virginia, and a few years later, Connecticut legislation provided for the establishment of Yale University. But the most noteworthy feature of America's educational history was the growth of a public school system. To New England goes much of the credit for this contribution: in 1647, Massachusetts Bay legislation - followed shortly by all the New England colonies -provided for compulsory elementary education. In the south, the farms and plantations were so widely separated that community schools impossible. Planters sometimes joined with their nearest neighbors and hired tutors to teach all the children within reach. Often, children were sent to England for schooling. In poorer families, the parents themselves undertook to give their children the rudiments of learning. In the middle colonies, the educational situation was varied. Too busy with material progress to pay much attention to cultural matters, New York lagged far behind both New England and the other middle colonies. and not until the mideighteenth century were the College of New Jersey at Princeton, King's College (now Columbia University), and Queen's College (Rutgers) established. One of the most enterprising of the colonies in the educational sphere was Pennsylvania. The first school, begun in 1683, taught reading, writing, and the keeping of accounts. More advanced training - in classical languages, history, literature - was offered at the Friends Public School, which still exists in Philadelphia.,free to the poor, but parents who could were required to pay tuition for their children. In Philadelphia, numerous private schools with no religious affiliation taught languages, mathematics, and natural science, and there were night schools for adults. Nor was the education of women entirely overlooked, for private teachers instructed the daughters of prosperous Philadelphians in French, music, dancing, painting, singing, grammar, and sometimes even bookkeeping. The advanced intellectual and cultural development of Pennsylvania reflected the vigorous personalities of James Logan, secretary of the colony and Benjamin Franklin who found at his fine librariy the latest scientific works. In 1745, Logan erected a building for his collection and bequeathed it and his books to the city. There is no doubt, however, that Franklin himself contributed more than any other single citizen to the stimulation of intellectual activity in Philadelphia. He was instrumental in creating institutions which made a permanent cultural contribution, not only to Philadelphia, but to all the colonies. He formed, for example, a club known as the Junto, which was the embryo of the American Philosophical Society. As a result of his endeavors, a public academy was founded which developed later into the University of Pennsylvania. His efforts in behalf of learning resulted also in an effective subscription library which he called "the mother of all the North American subscription libraries." The desire for learning did not stop at the borders of established communities. The hardy Scotch-Irish, though living in primitive cabins, refused to fall into the slough of ignorance. Convinced devotees of scholarship, they made great efforts to attract learned ministers to their settlements and believed implicitly that laymen likewise should cultivate all their mental talents. In the south, planters depended very largely on books for their contact with the world of cultivation. Books from England on all subjects - history, Greek and Latin classics, science, 127

and law - were exchanged from plantation to plantation. In Charlestown, a provincial library was established in 1700. Music, painting, and the theater, too, found favor there. In New England, the first immigrants brought along their little libraries and continued to import books from London. By the 1680's, Boston booksellers were doing a thriving business in works of classical literature, history, politics, philosophy, science, sermons, theology, and belles-lettres. Cambridge, Massachusetts early boasted a printing press: in 1704, Boston's first successful newspaper was launched. Several others soon entered the field, not only in New England but in other regions. In New York, for instance, there occurred one of the most important events in the development of the American press: Peter Zenger, whose New York Weekly Journal, begun in 1733, became the mouthpiece of opposition to the government. When, after two years of publication, the colonial governor could tolerate Zenger's satirical barbs no longer, he had him thrown into prison on a charge of libel. Zenger edited his paper from jail during the nine-month trial which excited intense interest throughout the colonies. Andrew Hamilton, a great lawyer, defended him, arguing that the charges printed by Zenger were true and hence not libelous in the real sense of the term. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Zenger went free. The consequences were far-reaching, not only for colonial America, but for the America of the future. The decision was a landmark in the establishment of the principle of freedom of the press. A striking feature of the colonial development was the lack of controlling influence on the part of the English government. The English government, as such, had taken no direct part in founding any of the several colonies, and only gradually did it assume any part in their political direction. The fact that the King had transferred his immediate sovereignty over the new-world settlements to stock companies and proprietors did not, of course, mean that the colonists in America would necessarily be free or partially free of outside control. Governmental authority was vested in the chartered companies involved. In one way or another, however, exclusive rule from the outside was broken down. The first step in this direction was a decision on the part of the London (Virginia) Company to permit Virginia colonists representation in the government. Instructions issued by the Company to its appointed governor in 1619 provided that free inhabitants of the plantations should elect representatives to join with the governor and an appointive "Council" in passing ordinances for the welfare of the colony. This event proved one of the most far reaching in its effects of any occurring in the colonial period. From that time onward, it was generally accepted that the colonists had a right to participate in their own government. In most instances, the King, in making future grants, provided in the charter that freemen of the colony involved should have a voice in legislation affecting them. At first the right of colonists to representation in the legislative branch of the government was of limited importance. Ultimately, however, it served as a stepping-stone to the establishment of almost complete domination by the settlers. In one colony after another, the principle was established that taxes could not be levied, or collected revenue spent -even to pay the salary of the governor or other appointive officers -without the consent of the elected representatives. But the large measure of political independence enjoyed by the colonies naturally resulted in their growing away from Britain, in their becoming increasingly "American" rather than "English." And this tendency was strongly reinforced by the blending of other national groups and cultures which was simultaneously taking place. Beginning in 1651, the English government from time to time passed laws regulating certain aspects of the commercial and general economic life of the colonies. Some of these were beneficial to America, but most favored England at America's expense. 1.3. The Declaration of Independence: July, 4, 1776

128

The history of the American Revolution began as far back as 1620, even before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. The principles and feelings which led the Americans to rebel are traced back for two hundred years and sought in the history of the country from the first plantation in America. Down to 1763, Great Britain had formulated no consistent policy of empire for her colonial possessions. The guiding principle was the confirmed mercantilist view that colonies should supply the mother country with raw materials and not compete in manufacturing. But this was poorly enforced and the colonies had never thought of themselves' as integral parts of a unified whole. Rather they considered themselves chiefly as commonwealths or states, much like England herself, having only a loose association with authorities in London. The majority of the colonists were opposed to subordination. Everything in the new environment tended to make the settlers forget the power, or even the need, of the British government. The fundamentals of political organization remained much as they had been in England, but a thousand laws, needed to keep order in the highly complex English society, became irrelevant and useless in the sparsely settled forest, and new ones of the colonists' own making took the place of those discarded. From the first year after they set foot upon the new continent, the colonists functioned according to the English law and constitution - with legislative assemblies, a representative system of government, and a recognition of the common-law guarantees of personal liberty. But, increasingly, legislation became American in point of view and ever less attention was paid to English practices and precedents. Colonial freedom from effective English control was not, however, achieved without conflict, and colonial history abounds in struggles between the assemblies elected by the people and the governors, in most cases the appointed agents of the King, who represented to the colonies the dangerous spirit of prerogative, an ever present menace to their liberties. The recurring clash between the provincial governor, symbol of the monarchical principle and external control in government, and the assembly, symbol of local autonomy and the democratic principle, worked increasingly to awaken the colonial sense to the divergence between American and English interests. As time went on, the assemblies took over the functions of the governors and of their councils which were made up of colonists selected for their docile support of royal power. Gradually the whole center of gravity of colonial administration shifted from London to the capitals of the American provinces. Early in the 1770's, an attempt was made to bring about a drastic change in this relationship between the colonies and the mother country. Britain was compelled to face a problem which she had hitherto neglected - the problem of empire. It was essential that she now organize her vast Possessions to facilitate defense, reconcile the divergent interests of different areas and peoples, and distribute more evenly the cost of imperial administration. British overseas territories had been more than doubled in North America alone. To the narrow strip along the Atlantic Coast had been added the vast expanses of Canada and the territory between the Mississippi River and the Alleghenies, an empire in itself. Where before the population had been predominantly Protestant English, or Anglicized continentals, it now included Catholic French and large numbers of partially Christianized Indians. Defense and administration of the new territories would require huge sums of money and increased personnel. The "old colonial system," became obviously inadequate for the requirements of the situation. The situation in America was anything but favorable to a change. Long accustomed to a large degree of independence, the colonies were at a stage in their development where they demanded more, not less, freedom. Many Americans cared not a whit for the British Empire as

129

such. All but a small minority were aggressively determined to go their own ways and live their own lives in the America they had converted from a wilderness to a home. The new financial policy of the British had important repercussions. To support the increased empire required money, the colonies would have to contribute. But revenue could be extracted from the colonies only through a stronger central administration, and this could be achieved only at the expense of colonial self-government. The first step in inaugurating the new system was the passage of the Sugar Act of 1764. This act also levied duties on wines, silks, coffee, and a number of other luxury items. To enforce it, customs officials were ordered to show more energy and strictness. British warships in American waters were instructed to seize smugglers, and "writs of assistance" were authorized to enable the King's officers to search suspected premises. The New Englanders had been accustomed to importing the larger part of their molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies without paying a duty. They contended that payment of even the small duty imposed would be ruinous. As it happened, the Sugar Act's preamble gave the colonists an opportunity to rationalize their discontent on constitutional grounds. Merchants, legislatures, and town meetings protested against the expediency of the law, and colonial lawyers like Samuel Adams found in the preamble the first intimation of "taxation without representation," the catchword which was to draw so many to the cause of the patriots against the mother country. Later in the same year, Parliament enacted a Currency Act "to prevent paper bills of credit hereafter issued in any of His Majesty's colonies from being made legal tender," Since the colonies were a deficit trade area and were constantly short of "hard money," this added a serious burden to the colonial economy. Strong as was the opposition to these acts, it was the last of the measures inaugurating the new colonial system which set off organized resistance. This was the famous Stamp Act. It provided that revenue stamps be affixed to all newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, licenses, leases, or other legal documents, the revenue so secured to be expended for the sole purpose of "defending, protecting, and securing" the colonies. Only Americans were to be appointed as agents to collect the tax, and the burden seemed so evenly and lightly distributed that the measure passed Parliament with little debate or attention. It was the act's peculiar misfortune that it aroused the hostility of the most powerful and the most articulate groups in the colonies: journalists, lawyers, clergymen, merchants, and businessmen, and that it bore equally on all sections of the country - north, south, and west. Soon leading merchants whose every bill of lading would be taxed organized for resistance and formed non importation associations. Business came to a temporary standstill, and trade with the mother country fell off enormously. Prominent men organized as "Sons of Liberty," and political opposition was soon expressed in violence. Inflamed crowds paraded the crooked streets of Boston and from Massachusetts to South Carolina, the act was nullified, and mobs forced luckless agents to resign their offices and destroyed the hated stamps. Twenty-seven bold and able men from nine colonies seized this opportunity to mobilize colonial opinion against parliamentary interference in American affairs. And after considerable debate, the Congress adopted a set of resolutions asserting that "no taxes ever have been or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures" and that the Stamp Act had a "manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists." The constitutional issue thus drawn centered on the question of representation. From the colonial point of view, it was impossible for the colonies to consider themselves represented in Parliament unless they actually elected members to the House of Commons. American leaders 130

argued that no "Imperial" Parliament existed and that their only legal relations were with the Crown. It was the King who had agreed to establish colonies beyond the sea and the King who provided them with governments. That the King was equally a King of England and a King of Massachusetts they agreed, but that the English Parliament had no more right to pass laws for the American colonies. But in 1767 came another series of measures which stirred anew all the elements of discord. At that time, Charles Townshend, British Chancellor of the Exchequer tightened up customs administration, at the same time sponsoring duties on paper, glass, lead, and tea exported from Britain to the colonies. This was designed to raise revenue to be used in part to support colonial governors, judges, customs officers, and the British army in America. Another act suggested by Townshend authorized the superior courts of the colonies to issue writs of assistance, thus giving specific legal authority to the general search warrants so hateful to the colonists. When customs officials sought to collect duties, they were set upon by the populace and roughly handled. For this, two regiments were dispatched to protect the customs, commissioners. The presence of British troops in the old Puritan Boston town was a standing invitation for disorder, and the antagonism between citizens and soldiery flared up on March 5, 1770, after eighteen months of resentmentit degenerated in the "Boston Massacre", dramatically pictured as proof of British heartlessness and tyranny. Faced with such opposition, Parliament in 1770 decided to beat a strategic retreat and repealed all of the Townshend duties except that on tea. The "tea tax" was retained because, as George III said, there must always be one tax to keep up the right. To a majority of the colonists, the action of Parliament constituted, in effect, a "redress of grievances," and the campaign against England was largely dropped. Prosperity was increasing and most colonial leaders were willing to let the future take care of itself. But Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, toiled tirelessly for a single end: independence. From the time he graduated from Harvard College, he was a public servant in some capacity inspector of chimneys, tax-collector, moderator of town meetings. In newspapers he published articles; in town meeting and provincial assembly be instigated resolutions and speeches appealing to democratic impulses. In, 1772, Adams induced the Boston town meeting to select a "committee of correspondence" to state the rights and grievances of the colonists, to communicate with other towns on these matters, and to request them to draft replies. Quickly, the idea spread. Committees were founded in virtually all the colonies, and out of them soon grew the base of effective revolutionary organizations. In 1773, Britain furnished Adams and his co-workers with a desired issue. The powerful East India Company, finding itself in critical financial straits, appealed to the British government and was granted a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies. Due to the Townshend tea tax, the colonists had boycotted the company's tea and, after 1770, such a flourishing illegal trade existed that perhaps nine-tenths of the tea consumed in America was of foreign origin and imported duty-free. The Company decided to sell its tea at a price well under the customary one through its own agents, thus simultaneously making smuggling unprofitable and eliminating the independent colonial merchants. This ill considered step aroused colonial traders.. It was not only the loss of the tea trade but the principle of monopoly that stung them to action. In virtually all the colonies, steps were taken to prevent the East India Company from executing its designs. In ports other than Boston, agents of the company were "persuaded" to resign, and new shipments of tea were either returned to England or warehoused. But in Boston, the agents refused to resign and with the support of the royal governor, preparations were made 131

to land incoming cargoes regardless of opposition. The answer of the patriots, led by Samuel Adams, was violence. On the night of December 16, 1773, a band of men disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the three tea ships and dumped the offending leaves into the water. Official opinion in Britain almost unanimously condemned the Boston "Tea Party" as an act of vandalism and gave wholehearted support to the measures proposed to bring the insurgent colonists into line. These took the shape of a series of laws which were called by the colonists "Coercive Acts." These, instead of subduing the colonies, as they had been planned to do, brought them colonies rallying into the matter. At the suggestion of the Virginia Burgesses, colonial representatives were summoned to meet in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, "to consult upon the present unhappy state of the Colonies." This meeting was the first Continental Congress, an extralegal body chosen by provincial congresses, or popular conventions, and instructed by them. This meant that the patriot party, which favored extralegal action, was in control of the situation, and that extreme conservatives who would have nothing to do with resistance to British laws were not represented. Otherwise the membership of the Congress was a fair cross-section of American opinion - both extreme and moderate. Every colony sent at least one delegate, and the total number of fifty-five was large enough for diversity of opinion, but small enough for genuine debate and effective action. A cautious keynote speech was followed by a "resolve" declaring that no obedience was due the Coercive Acts. Then, there was addressed to the people of Great Britain and the colonies a Declaration of Rights and Grievances and, in addition, a petition to the King, which summed up anew the traditional arguments of American protest while conceding parliamentary regulation of external commerce and strictly imperial affairs. The most important work of the Congress, however, was the formation of the "The Association," which provided for a revival of trade-boycott and for a system of inspection committees in every town or county to supervise nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption. Committees were charged to inspect customs entries, to publish the names of merchants who violated the agreements, to confiscate their importations, and even to encourage frugality, economy, and industry." The "Association" introduced an organized revolutionary element into the controversy. Building upon foundations laid by the "Committees of Correspondence," the new local organizations everywhere assumed leadership of affairs. They spearheaded drives to end what remained of royal authority. They intimidated the hesitant into joining the popular movement and ruthlessly punished the hostile. They began the collection of military supplies and the mobilization of troops. They fanned public opinion. George III had no intention of making concessions. In September 1774, he wrote, "The die is now cast, the Colonies must either submit or triumph." The "Tories," the royalists as they were coming to be calle, had nothing to offer their fellows but complete and abject surrender to the most extreme parliamentary claims. Moderates, therefore, had no choice but to support the patriots, now called the Whigs. The news of the first clashes of Lexington and Concord struck the other colonies like an electric shock. It was plain that war was at hand. Within twenty days, the news, in many garbled forms, was evoking a common spirit of patriotism from Maine to Georgia. Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. Thomas Jefferson was there and the venerable Benjamin Franklin, who had returned from London where, as "agent" for several of the colonies, he had vainly sought conciliation. The Congress was called upon to face the issue of open warfare. Although some opposition existed, the real temper of the Congress was revealed by a stirring declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms.

132

George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the American forces. His stalwartness and his composed and dignified manner marked him a masterful man. Passion and patience were balanced in him and he was an example of perfect moral and physical courage. His directive faculties were notable, and the soundness of his judgment and solidity of his information made him great. No compromise came from England and, on August 23, 1775, King George issued a proclamation declaring the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. There was common agreement that the Continental Congress should take no such definitive step as independence without first receiving explicit instructions from the colonies to do so. The predominance of radicals in the Congress. Then finally, on May 10, 1776, a resolution to "cut the Gordian knot" was adopted. Now only a formal declaration was needed and a committee of five, headed by Thomas Jefferson, was entrusted with drafting the document. Though born in the outer circle of Virginia aristocracy, his early life in the democratic back-country had made him the enemy of patrician rights. In respect to all the great principles formulated in the Declaration, Jefferson felt as did the people for whom he was to write it. He used their language and their ideas and, as a contemporary said, "Into the monumental act of Independence," he "poured the soul of the continent." The Declaration of Independence adopted July 4, 1776 - not only announced the birth of a new nation. It set forth a philosophy of human freedom which was thenceforth to be a dynamic force in the entire western world. It rested, not upon particular grievances, but upon a broad basis of individual liberty which could command general support throughout America, and its political philosophy is clear: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." The source of the spirit of the document was the awakening consciousness of men that government should exist for the people, not the people for the government. To Jefferson, it was the function and purpose of government to help men - to protect them in their life, their liberty, and their pursuit of happiness - not to oppress them or misuse them. The Revolutionary War dragged on for over six years, with fighting in every colony and a dozen pitched battles of importance. Even before the Declaration of Independence, there were military operations which had an important influence on the outcome of the war. In the months following Independence, the Americans suffered a series of severe setbacks. The first of these was in New York. Washington rightly foretold that New York, which was important in keeping New England supplied with material and reinforcements, would be an early British military objective. Although the defense of New York appeared clearly hopeless, Washington felt that he could not honorably abandon the city without a struggle: he executed a masterly retreat in small boats from Brooklyn to the Manhattan shore. Providentially the wind held north, and the British warships could not come up the East River. Howe apparently never knew what was going on, and he lost his greatest chance to deal the American cause a crushing blow, perhaps even to end the war. For if Washington's army had been captured then, it would have been very difficult for the Congress to have raised another. France had been watching and waiting for revenge since her defeat in 1763, and her enthusiasm for the American cause was high. The French intellectual world, though far as yet 133

from republicanism, was in revolt against feudalism and privilege and, after the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin had been warmly received at the French court. From the first, the French government had not been neutral, giving the United States aid in the shape of munitions and supplies. But it was reluctant to risk the expense of direct intervention and open war with England. After the news of Burgoyne's surrender, however, Franklin was able to secure treaties of commerce and of alliance, each nation promising to make common cause with the other until American independence was recognized. Even before this, many French volunteers had sailed for America. The most prominent among these was the Marquis de Lafayette, a young army officer who longed to further American liberty, exalt France, abase England, and demonstrate his own military talents. He joined Washington's army as a general, serving without pay and giving such good account of himself that he won the respect of the great American whom he regarded with a measure of hero-worship. French fleets greatly aggravated the difficulties of the British in supplying and reinforcing their armies, and British commerce suffered heavily from French and American blockade runners, known as privateers, and from the operations of the dashing sea captain, John Paul Jones. Britain also suffered from the entry of Spain and the Netherlands into the war. Although the British forces did not give up the contest without a stubborn struggle, with the surrender of October 19, 1781, the military effort to halt the Revolution was over. When the news of the American victory at Yorktown reached Europe, the House of Commons voted to end the war. Soon after, the Prime Minister, Lord North, resigned, and the King organized a new government to conclude peace on the basis of American independence. Peace negotiations began and in 1783, they were signed as final and definitive. The peace settlement acknowledged the independence, freedom, and sovereignty of the thirteen states, to whom it granted the much coveted territory west to the Mississippi, with the northern boundary nearly as it runs now. The Congress was to recommend to the states that they restore the confiscated property of the loyalists, and the people of the United States received the privilege of fishing off Newfoundland and of drying their fish in unsettled parts of Nova Scotia and Labrador. Independence left the Americans not only free of domination from abroad but also free to develop a society shaped by the political concepts born of their new environment. Despite the fact that the colonies in their revolt placed most emphasis on the recognition of their rights under the English constitution, they had in actuality been struggling to realize a new political idea of their own - self-government by the people themselves, the basic principle of American democracy. Another political doctrine they held also -the democratic doctrine of local selfgovernment - not to be ruled by laws made thousands of miles away. The American spirit fostered the abolition of legal distinctions between man and man. The suffrage, limited though it was at the close of the Revolution, progressed every decade thereafter to universal suffrage. The "rights of man" concept was published worldwide, and within forty years all the colonies of Spain in continental America had followed the example of England's colonies. Where revolution failed in Europe, emigration secured for individuals the longed-for political freedom in the new world. For to America, from all sections of the old world, came lovers of liberty as soon as the Revolution was ended. Franklin, in France during the war, foretold the migration to America: "Tyranny is so generally established in the rest of the world, that the prospect of an asylum in America for those who love liberty gives general joy." 1.4. Successful Revolution The successful Revolution against England gave the American people an independent place in the family of nations. It gave them a changed social order in which heredity and privilege counted for little and human equality 'or much. It gave them a thousand memories of

134

mutual hope and struggle. But most of all, it gave them the challenge to prove they possessed a genuine ability to hold their new place, to prove their capacity for self-government. The success of the Revolution had furnished Americans with the opportunity to give legal form and expression to their political ideals as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and to remedy some of their grievances through state constitutions. Today, Americans are so accustomed to living under written constitutions that they take them for granted. It was actually in the drafting of state constitutions that the revolution was accomplished. Naturally, the first object of the framers was to secure those "unalienable rights," the violation of 'which had caused them to repudiate their connection with England. Consequently, each constitution began with a declaration or bill of rights, and a declaration of principles such as popular sovereignty, rotation in office, freedom of elections, and an enumeration of the fundamental liberties -moderate bail and humane punishments, a militia instead of a standing army, speedy trials by the law of the land, trial by jury, freedom of the press, of conscience, of the right of a majority to reform or, alter the government, and prohibition of general warrants. Other states considerably enlarged this list to include freedom of speech, of assemblage, of petition, of bearing arms, the right to a writ of habeas corpus, inviolability of domicile, and equal operation of the laws. In addition, all the state constitutions paid allegiance to the theory of executive, legislative, and judiciary branches, each one to be checked and balanced by the others. While the thirteen original colonies were being transformed into states and adjusting themselves to the conditions of independence, new commonwealths were developing in the vast expanse of land stretching west from the seaboard settlements. Settlers from all the tidewater states pressed through into the fertile river valleys, the hardwood forests, and over the rolling prairies. By 1790, the population of the trans-Appalachian region numbered well over 120,000. The prospect of some states acquiring the western rich territories seemed quite unfair to those without claims in the west. Maryland introduced a resolution that the western lands be considered common property to be parceled out by Congress into free and independent governments. This idea was not received enthusiastically. Nonetheless, in 1780, New York led the way by ceding her claims to the United States. She was soon followed by the other colonies and, by the end of the war, it was apparent that Congress would come into possession of all the lands north of the Ohio River and probably of all west of the Allegheny Mountains. This common possession of millions of acres was the most tangible evidence of nationality and unity that existed during these troubled years and gave a certain substance to the idea of national sovereignty. Yet it was at the same time a problem which pressed for solution. This solution was achieved under the Articles of Confederation, a formal agreement which had loosely unified the colonies since 1781. Under the Articles, a system of limited selfgovernment was applied to the new western lands and satisfactorily bridged the gap between wilderness and statehood. No more than five nor less than three states were to be formed out of this territory, and whenever any one of them had sixty thousand free inhabitants, it was to be admitted to the Union" on an equal footing with the original states in all respects." Six "articles of compact between the original states and the people and states in the said territory" guaranteed civil rights and liberties, encouraged education, and guaranteed that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory." Thus a new colonial policy based upon the principle of equality was inaugurated: the colonies were but the extension of the nation and were entitled, not as a privilege but as a right, to all the benefits of equality. The enlightened provisions of the Ordinance laid the permanent foundations for the American territorial system and colonial policy, and enabled the United 135

States to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean and to develop from thirteen to forty-eight states, with relatively little difficulty. Unfortunately, however, in the solution of other problems the Articles of Confederation proved disappointing. Their notable shortcoming was their failure to provide a real national government for the thirteen states which had been tending strongly towards unification since their delegates first met in 1774 to protect their liberties against encroaching British power. Pressures arising from the struggle with England had done much to change their attitude of twenty years before when colonial assemblies had rejected the Albany Plan of Union. The Articles went into effect in 1781. Though they constituted an advance over the loose arrangement provided by the Continental Congress system, the governmental framework they established had many weaknesses. There was quarreling over boundary lines. The courts handed down decisions which conflicted with one another. The legislatures of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania passed tariff laws which injured their smaller neighbors. Restrictions upon commerce between states created bitter feeling. New Jersey men, for example, could not cross the Hudson River to sell vegetables in New York markets without paying heavy entrance and clearance fees. The national government should have had the power to lay whatever tariffs were necessary and to regulate commerce - but it did not. Nine states had organized their own armies, and several had little navies of their own. There was a curious hodepodge of coins minted by a dozen foreign nations and a bewildering variety of state and national paper bills, all fast depreciating in value. Economic difficulties subsequent to the war also caused discontent, especially among the farmers. Farm produce tended to be a glut on the market, and general unrest centered chiefly among farmerdebtors who wanted strong remedies to insure against the foreclosure of mortgages on their property and to avoid imprisonment for debt. Many yeomen, facing debtor's prison and loss of ancestral farms, resorted to violence in 1786. At this time, Washington wrote that the states were united only by a "rope of sand," and the prestige of the Congress had fallen to a low point. Disputes between Maryland and Virginia over navigation in the Potomac River led to a conference of representatives of five states, so calls upon all the states to appoint representatives of the United States and to "devise such further provisions appeared necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union. Virginia elected George Washington as delegate, and during the next fall and winter, elections were held in all the states but Rhode Island. It was a gathering of notables that assembled as the Federal Convention in the Philadelphia State House in May 1787. The state legislatures sent leaders with experience in colonial and state governments, in Congress, on the bench, and in the field. George Washington, regarded as the outstanding citizen in the entire country because of his military leadership during the Revolution and because of his integrity and reputation, was chosen as presiding officer. The sage Benjamin Franklin, now eighty-one and mellow with years, let the younger men do most of the talking, but his kindly humor and wide experience in diplomacy helped ease some of the difficulties among the other delegates. Prominent among the more active members were James Wilson who labored indefatigably for the national idea, James Madison, a practical young statesman, a thorough student of politics and history and,. according to a colleague, "from a spirit of industry and application ... the best informed man on any point in debate", Rufus King and Elbridge Gerry, young men of ability and experience. Roger Sherman, shoemaker turned judge, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson who was in France on a mission of state. Among the fifty-five delegates, youth predominated, for the average age was forty-two.

136

The Convention had been authorized merely to draft amendments to the Articles of Confederation but, as Madison later wrote, the delegates "with a manly confidence in their country" simply threw the Articles aside and went ahead with the consideration of a wholly new form of government. In their work, the delegates recognized that the predominant need was to reconcile two different powers - the power of local control which was already being exercised by the thirteen semiindependent states and the power of a central government. They adopted the principle that the functions and powers of the national government, being new, general, and inclusive, had to be carefully defined and stated, while all other functions and powers were to be understood as belonging to the states. They recognized, however, the necessity of giving the national government real power and thus generally accepted the fact that the national government be empowered - among other things -to coin money, to regulate commerce, to declare war, and make peace. These functions, of necessity, called for the machinery of a national government. The statesmen who met in Philadelphia were adherents of Montesquieu's concept of the balance of power in politics. This principle was naturally supported by colonial experience and strengthened by the writings of John Locke with which most of the delegates were familiar. These influences led to the understanding that three distinct branches of government be established, each equal and coordinate with the others. The legislative, executive, and judicial powers were to be so adjusted and interlocked as to permit harmonious operation. At the same time they were to be so well balanced that no one interest could ever gain control. It was natural also for the delegates to assume that the legislative branch, like the colonial legislatures and the British Parliament, should consist of two houses. There was no serious difference of opinion on such national economic questions as paper money, tender laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts. But there was a need for balancing the distinct sectional economic interests; for settling heated arguments as to the powers, term, and selection of the executive; and for solving the problems concerning the tenure of judges and the kind of courts to be established. Conscientiously and with determination, through a hot Philadelphia summer, the Convention labored to iron out problems. It finally achieved a satisfactory draft which incorporated in a brief document the organization of the most complex government yet devised by man. In subsequent years, the scope of federal power has been widely extended by amendment, implication, judicial interpretation, and the necessities of national crises. The states belong, not by virtue on the federal constitution but on their own sovereign power: the control of municipal and local government, the police power, factory and labor legislation, the chartering of corporations, the statutory development and judicial administration of civil and criminal law, the control of education, and the general supervision of the people's health, safety, and welfare. In conferring powers, the Convention freely and fully gave the federal government the power to lay taxes, to borrow money, to lay uniform duties, imposts, and excises. It was given authority to coin money, fix weights and measures, grant patents and copyrights, and establish post offices and post roads. It was empowered to raise and maintain an army and navy and could regulate interstate commerce. It was given the whole management of Indian relations, of international relations, and of war. It could pass laws for naturalizing foreigners and, controlling the public lands, it could admit new states on a basis of absolute equality with the old. The power to pass all necessary and proper laws for executing these defined powers rendered the federal government sufficiently elastic to meet the needs of later generations and of a greatly expanded body politic.

137

Foreseeing the possible future necessity for changing or adding to the new document, the Convention included an article which delineated specifically methods for its amendment. However, to protect the Constitution from indiscriminate alteration, Article Five-used successfully only twenty-one times -was designed. It states that either two-thirds of both houses of Congress or two-thirds of the states, meeting in convention, may propose amendments to the Constitution. The proposals become law by one of two methods - either by ratification by the legislatures of threefourths of the states, or by convention in three-fourths of these states. The Congress proposes which method shall be used. At the end of sixteen weeks of deliberation - on September 17, 1787 - the finished Constitution was signed "by unanimous consent of the states present." The Convention was over; the members "adjourned to the City Tavern, dined together, and took a cordial leave of each other." Thus the laws of the United States became enforceable in its own national courts, through its own judges and marshals. They were also enforceable in the state courts, through the state judges and state law officers. Yet a crucial part of the struggle for a more perfect union was still to be faced. For the consent of popularly elected state conventions was still required before the document could become effective. The situation brought into existence two parties, the Federalists and the Antifederalists - those favoring a strong government and those who preferred a loose association of separate states. The controversy raged in the press, the legislature, and the state conventions. Impassioned arguments were poured forth on both sides. The ablest of these were the Federalist Papers, now a classic political work, written on behalf of the new Constitution by Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay. A Bill of Rights was appended to the Constitution in the form of amendments forming the first ten amendments of the original constitutional document. These amendments have guaranteed to citizens of the United States - among other rights - freedom of religion, speech, the press, and assembly; a militia instead of a standing army; the right to trial by jury; speedy trials by the law of the land, and prohibition of general warrants. As a result of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the wavering states soon came to the support of the Constitution, which was finally adopted June 21, 1788. The Congress of the Confederation arranged for the first presidential election, declared the new government would begin on March 4, 1789, and quietly expired. George Washington was unanimously chosen President. On April 30, 1789, he took the oath pledging faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and to the best of his ability to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." It was a lusty republic that set out upon its career. The economic problems caused by the war were on their way to solution and the country was growing steadily. Immigration from Europe came in volume; good farms were to be had for small sums; labor was in strong demand. The rich valley stretches of upper New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia soon became great wheat-growing areas. Although many items were still home-made, manufactures too were growing. Massachusetts and Rhode Island were laying the foundations of important textile industries; Connecticut was beginning to turn out tinware and clocks; New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were producing paper, glass, and iron. Shipping had grown to such an extent that on the seas the United States was second only ' to England. Before 1790, American ships were traveling to China to sell furs and bring back teas, spices, and silks. The main impulse of American energy, however, was westward. New Englanders and Pennsylvanians were moving into Ohio; Virginians and Carolinians were heading for Kentucky and Tennessee.

138

The new Constitution, at the time merely a blueprint of things to come, possessed neither tradition nor the backing of organized public opinion. The two parties, formed during the period of ratification, continued antagonistic. The Federalists were the party of strong central government, of rising business, and commercial interests. The Antifederalists were champions of state rights and agrarianism. The new government had to create its own machinery. There were no taxes coming in. Until a judiciary could be established, there was no means of law enforcement. The army was small. The navy had ceased to exist. The wise leadership of Washington was essential to the nation at this time. The qualities that had made him the first soldier in the Revolution also made him the first statesman in the newly organized country. He had the power of planning for a distant end and a capacity for taking infinite pains. He inspired respect and trust; he had directness rather than adroitness; fortitude rather than flexibility -, and great dignity and reserve as well as shyness, humility, and stoical self-control. The organization of the government was no small task. Congress quickly created Departments of State and of the Treasury. Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State and Alexander Hamilton, his aids during the Revolution, as Secretary of the Treasury. Simultaneously the Congress established the federal judiciary, setting up not only a Supreme Court, with one Chief Justice and five associate justices, but also three circuit courts and thirteen district courts. In the first administration, both a Secretary of War and an AttorneyGeneral were also appointed. Since Washington generally preferred to make decisions only after consulting those men whose judgment he trusted, the American cabinet (consisting of the heads of all the departments that Congress might create) came into existence, although it was not officially recognized by law until 1907. Just as revolutionary America had produced two commanding figures of worldwide renown - Washington and Franklin - so did the youthful republic raise to fame two brilliantly able men, Hamilton and Jefferson, whose reputations were to spread beyond the seas. The keynote of Hamilton's public career was his love of efficiency, order, and organization. Hamilton laid down and supported principles not only of public economy as such, but of effective government. America must have credit for industrial development, commercial activity, and the operations of government. It also must have the complete faith and support of the people. He devised a Bank of the United States, with the right to establish branches in different parts of the country. He sponsored a national mint. He argued in favor of tariffs based upon the protection principle in order to foster the development of national industries. These measures had an instant effect - placing the credit of the federal government on a firm foundation and giving it all the revenues it needed. They encouraged commerce and industry, thus creating a solid phalanx of businessmen who stood fast behind the national government and were ready to resist any attempt to weaken it. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was a man of thought rather than action. As Hamilton's talents were executive, Jefferson's were meditative and philosophical, and among contemporary political thinkers and writers, he was without a peer. Politically, he was frequently at odds with Hamilton. When he went abroad as Minister to France, he realized the value of a strong central government in foreign relations, but he did not want it strong in many other respects, fearing it would fetter men. Born an aristocrat, but by inclination and conviction an equalitarian democrat, he fought always for freedom -from the British Crown, from church control, from a landed aristocracy, from inequalities of wealth. Hamilton's great aim was to give the country a more efficient organization, Jefferson's to give individual men a wider liberty, believing that "every man and every body of men on 139

earth possess the right of self-government." Hamilton feared anarchy and thought in terms of order; Jefferson feared tyranny and thought in terms of liberty. The United States needed both influences. It required both a stronger national government and also the unfettering of men. It was the country's good fortune that it had both men and could in time fuse and, to a great extent, reconcile their special contributions. Though its first tasks were to strengthen the domestic economy and make the union secure, the young country could not ignore political occurrences abroad. The cornerstone of Washington's foreign policy was the preservation of peace to give the country time to recover from the wounds it had received during the war and to permit the slow work of national integration to continue. But events in Europe threatened the achievement of this goal. Many Americans were watching the French Revolution with the keenest interest and sympathy. And in April 1793, news came that made this conflict an issue in American politics. France had declared war on Great Britain and Spain. Citizen Gent was coming to the United States as Minister of the French Republic. America was still formally an ally of France, and war would enable Americans to discharge both their debt of gratitude to her and their feeling of resentment against Britain. But though most of the executive department of the United States wished the French well, it was more anxious to keep America out of war. And so Washington now proclaimed to the belligerents of Europe the neutrality of the United States. In this period - from 1793 to 1795 came the crystallization of the two poles of American public opinion. For the French Revolution seemed to some a clean-cut contest between monarchy and republicanism, oppression and liberty, autocracy and democracy; to others, a new eruption of strife between anarchy and order, atheism and religion, poverty and property. The former joined the Republican Party, ancestor of today's Democratic Party, the latter joined the Federalists, from whom the present-day Republican Party is descended. The manner in which Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801 emphasized the fact that democracy had come into power. Jefferson, carelessly garbed as usual, walked from his simple boardinghouse up the hill to the Capitol together with a few friends. Entering the Senate chamber, he shook hands with Vice President, his rival in the recent election, and took the oath of office administered by John Marshall, recently appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His promised "a wise and frugal government" which should preserve order among the inhabitants but "shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement." Jefferson's mere presence in the White House encouraged democratic procedures. To him the plainest citizen was as worthy of respect as the highest officer. He taught his subordinates to regard themselves merely as trustees for the people. He encouraged agriculture and westward expansion. He encouraged a liberal naturalization law, believing in America as a haven for the oppressed. One of Jefferson's steps doubled the area of the nation. Spain had long held the country west of the Mississippi, with the port of New Orleans near its mouth. But soon after Jefferson came into office, Napoleon forced a weak Spanish government to cede the great tract called Louisiana back to France. The moment he did so Americans trembled with apprehension and indignation, for New Orleans was a port indispensable for the shipment of American products grown in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Napoleon's plans for a huge colonial empire just west of the United States menaced the trading rights and the safety of all the interior settlements. Jefferson asserted that if France took possession of Louisiana, "from that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation" and that the first cannon shot fired in a 140

European war would be the signal for the march of an Anglo-American army against New Orleans. Napoleon knew that another war with Great Britain was impending after the brief Peace of Amiens and that, when it began, he would surely lose Louisiana. He therefore resolved to fill his treasury, to put Louisiana beyond the reach of the British, and to bid for American friendship by selling the region to the United States. For $15,000,000 this vast area passed into the possession of the republic. Jefferson "stretched the Constitution till it cracked" in buying it, for no clause authorized the purchase of foreign territory, and he acted without Congressional consent. As a result, the United States, in 1803, obtained more than a million square miles and with it the port of New Orleans, a picturesque city built on a crescent of the Mississippi, with a dark cypress forest as background. As the end of his first term approached, Jefferson continued to enjoy widespread popularity. Louisiana was manifestly a great prize, the country was prosperous, and the President had tried hard to please all sections. His re-election was certain, and in his next term, which began in 1805, Jefferson made his second extraordinary use of federal authority in attempting to maintain American neutrality during the colossal struggle between Great Britain and France. Both forces had set up blockades and thereby struck heavy blows at American commerce.To bring Great Britain and France to a fairer attitude without war, Jefferson finally persuaded Congress to pass the Embargo Act, a law altogether forbidding foreign commerce. But its effects were disastrous. As the grumbling at home increased, Jefferson turned to a milder measure which conciliated the domestic shipping interests. Substituted for the embargo was a nonintercourse law which permitted commerce with all countries except Britain or France and their dependencies, and paved the way for negotiations by authorizing the President to suspend the operation of the law against either of these upon the withdrawal of its restrictions upon American trade. In 1810, Napoleon officially announced that he had abandoned his measures. Jefferson finished his second presidential term and James Madison took office in 1809. Relations with Great Britain grew worse, and the two countries drifted rapidly toward war. The President laid before Congress a detailed report, showing 6,057 instances in which the British had impressed American citizens within three years. In addition, northwestern settlers had suffered from attacks by Indians which they believed had been encouraged by British agents in Canada. In 1812, war was declared on Britain. But the declaration of war had been made with army preparations still far from complete. Hostilities began with a triple movement for the invasion of Canada which, if properly timed and executed, would have brought united action against Montreal. But the entire campaign utterly miscarried and ended with the British occupation of Detroit. While action had gone ill on land, however, the navy had, in a measure, restored American confidence. The frigate, Constitution, Captain Isaac Hull in charge, met the British Guerrire and captured her after a fight of thirty minutes, Hull reducing the enemy ship to complete wreckage. In addition American privateers swarming the Atlantic captured five hundred British vessels during the fall and winter of 1812-13. The war was brought to a close by the Treaty of Ghent which was approved by the United States in February 1815 by which both England and the United States gave up more and more of their demands, with the curious result that in the final treaty neither side gained nor lost. It merely provided for the cessation of hostilities, the restoration of conquests, and a commission to settle boundary disputes. As in every war, losses were devastating. However, historians agree that the War of 1812 had one important positive result - the strengthening of national unity and patriotism. The fact that men of different states again fought side by side and that a Virginian, Winfield Scott, was the ablest commander of northern troops, added to the

141

sense of national unity. Western troops fought alongside their compatriots from the eastern seaboard, and from this time onward, the west, always national in sentiment, grew in importance in American life. Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, said that "The war has renewed and reinstated the national feeling and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people have now more general objects of attachment, with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby better secured." 1.5. Western Expansion After the treaty ending the war of 1812, the United States was never again refused the treatment due an independent nation. Most of the serious difficulties under which the young republic had labored since the Revolution now dropped out of sight. With national union achieved, a balance between liberty and order secured, a trifling national debt, and a virgin continent awaiting the plow, there opened a serene prospect of peace, prosperity, and social progress. A spirit of unity pervaded the reconstruction measures which followed the peace. Commerce was cementing the American people into a national entity. Economic independence, was urged, essential politicall. The raise of the customs tariffs was necessary. A national system of roads and canals was also being warmly advocated by those who pointed out that better transportation would bind the east and west more closely together. The position of the federal government at this time was greatly strengthened by the Supreme Court. The Federalist, John Marshall of Virginia, was made Chief Justice in 1801 and he transformed the court into a powerful tribunal, occupying a position as important as that of Congress or the President. In a succession of historic decisions, Marshall never deviated from one cardinal principle - the sovereignty of the federal government. Another force which did much to shape American lifewas the migration to the newer regions. Soon a steady stream of men and women left their coastal farms and villages to take advantage of the rich lands in the interior. In the south, also, conditions induced also migration. People in the back settlements of the Carolinas and Virginia were handicapped by the lack of roads and canals giving access to coastal markets, and they suffered also from the political dominance of the tidewater planters. And so, they too moved across-slowly but steadily-from the Atlantic to the Rockies. This movement profoundly affected the American character that encouraged individual initiative; it made for political and economic democracy; it roughened manners; it broke down conservatism; it bred a spirit of local self-determination coupled with respect for national authority. By 1800, the Mississippi and Ohio valleys were becoming a great frontier region, "Hi-o, away we go, floating down the river on the O-hi-o," became the song of thousands of emigrants. The tremendous shift of population in the early nineteenth century led to the division of old territories and the drawing of new boundaries with bewildering rapidity. Then, as new states were admitted, the political map was stabilized cast of the Mississippi. Within a half-dozen years, six states were created - Indiana in 1816, Mississippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, and Missouri in 1821. Naturally the frontier settlers were a varied body of men. In the van of emigration marched the hunter and trapper, described by an English traveler named Fordham as "a daring, hardy race of men, who live in miserable cabins.... They are unpolished but hospitable, kind to strangers, honest and trustworthy. They raise a little 142

Indian corn, pumpkins, hogs, and sometimes have a cow or two.... But the rifle is their principal means of support." These men were dexterous with the ax, snare, and fishing line- they blazed the trails, built the first log cabins, and held back the Indians. As he penetrated the wilderness, the settler became a farmer as well as a hunter. Instead of a cabin, he built a comfortable log house which had glass windows, a good chimney, and partitioned rooms. Instead of using a spring, he dug a well. An industrious man would rapidly clear his land of timber, burning the wood for potash and letting the stumps decay. He grew his own grain, vegetables, and fruit; ranged the woods for venison, wild turkeys, and honey; fished the nearest streams; looked after his cattle and hogs. The more restless bought large tracts of the cheap land and, as land values rose, sold their acres and moved westward, making way for others. Soon there came doctors, lawyers, storekeepers, editors, preachers, mechanics, and politicians - all those who form the fabric of a vigorous society. The farmers were the most important. They intended to stay all their lives where they settled and hoped their children would stay after them. They built larger barns than their predecessors and sound brick or frame houses. They brought in improved livestock, plowed the land more skillfully, and sowed more productive seed. Some of them erected flour mills, sawmills, distilleries. They laid out good highways, built churches and schools. So rapidly did the west grow that almost incredible transformations were accomplished in but a few years. In 1830, for instance, Chicago was merely an unpromising trading village with a fort. Long before some of its original settlers died, it was one of the largest and richest cities in the world. Many different peoples mingled their blood in the new west. Farmers of the upland south were prominent, and from this stock sprang Abraham Lincoln, born in a Kentucky log cabin. ScotchIrish, Pennsylvania Germans, New Englanders, and men of other origins played their part. By 1830, more than half the people living in America. had been brought up in an environment in which the old world traditions and conventions were absent or very weak. And men in the west were valued not for their family background, for inherited money, or for their years of schooling, but for what they were and could do. Farms could be had for a price well within the reach of any thrifty person, government land after 1820 could be obtained for $1.25 an acre and, after 1862, for merely settling on it. And tools for working the land were easily available too. It was a time when, as the journalist, Horace Greeley said, young men could "go west and grow up with the country." The equality of economic opportunity bred a sense of social and political equality and gave natural leaders a chance to come quickly to the fore. Initiative, courage, individual vigor, and hard sense were indispensable to the good pioneer. The problem of slavery, which bad thus far received little public attention, suddenly assumed enormous importance "like a fire bell in the night," wrote Jefferson. In the early years of the republic, when the northern states were providing for immediate or gradual emancipation of the slaves, many leaders had supposed that slavery would presently die out everywhere. But during the next generation, the south was converted into a section which for the most part was united behind the institution of slavery due to a great cotton-growing industry and to the sugar growing in the south. This required slaves who were brought from the eastern seaboard. Finally, tobacco culture also spread westward taking slavery with it. Therefore the slaves of the upper south were largely drained off to the lower south and west. In 1818, when Illinois was admitted to the Union, ten states permitted slavery and eleven free states prohibited it. When Alabama was admitted as a slave state the balance was restored. Many northerners at once rallied to oppose the entry of Missouri except as a free state, and a storm of protest swept the country. For a time, Congress was at a deadlock. Under the 143

pacific leadership of Henry Clay however, a compromise was arranged. Missouri was admitted as a slave state, but at the same time Maine came in as a free state, and Congress decreed that slavery should be forever excluded from the territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri's southern boundary. This proved a temporary solution. A geographic line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passion of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." United States in 1819, in return for assuming the claims of American citizens to the amount of $5,000,000, obtained from Spain both Florida and Spain's rights to the Oregon country in the far west. In 1817, President James Madison had been succeeded by James Monroe who crowned a distinguished public career. His two exceptional qualities were his shrewd common sense and strong will. The event of his administration which has given his name immortality was his enunciation of the so-called Monroe Doctrine. Ever since the English colonies had gained their freedom, the hope of a like liberty had stirred the people of Latin America. Before 1821, Argentina and Chile had established their independence, and in 1822, under the leadership of Jos de San Martin and Simon Bolivar, several other South American states won independence. By 1824, only small colonies remained to several European nations in the West Indies and on the northern coast of South America. These, together with one or two other British possessions, were the only European colonies remaining in America. The people of the United States felt a natural and deep interest in what seemed a repetition of their own experience of breaking away from a mastering European government. In 1822, President Monroe, under powerful popular pressure, received authority to recognize the new countries like Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Brazil-and soon exchanged ministers with them. This step committed the United States to the principle that these countries were self-sustaining, self-governing, genuinely independent, and entirely separated from their former European connections. They were confidently accepted as equal sister states -part of a free America. The confidence of the United States in the permanence of the new governments in South America received a severe shock when the alliance turned its attention to Spain and her colonies in the New World. Its purport was that the United States had no share in European political combinations, was not a party to European wars, and would pursue the policy of developing itself as an American state. From this policy it was an easy transition to the complementary doctrine that European powers ought not interfere in American affairs. The time seemed to have come in 1823 for action that would head off the threatened invasion of Latin America by third parties in behalf of Spain. On December, Monroe delivered to Congress his annual message, several passages of which constitute the original Monroe Doctrine. The principal points in this declaration were: 1) "The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers," 2) We should consider any attempt of extention to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." 3) "With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered 'and shall not interfere." 4) "In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so." The struggle of the second Bank of the United States for recharter became a stirring event. When the Bank's charter expired in 1811, it was not renewed by Congress. For the next few years, the banking business was in the hands of state chartered banks which issued currency in amounts beyond their ability to redeem it, thus creating great confusion. It seemed clear that 144

state banks were powerless to provide the country with a uniform currency and in 1816, a second Bank of the United States, similar to the first, was chartered for twenty years. On the whole, it was well conducted and rendered valuable service to the nation but president Jackson although he showed through his veto little knowledge of the principles of banking and finance, he made it unmistakably clear to the "farmers, mechanics, and laborers" that he was unalterably opposed to legislation that would make "the potent more powerful." In the campaign that followed, the bank question became a fundamental division of opinion between the merchant, manufacturing, and financial classes on the one hand, and the laboring and agrarian elements on the other between those who feared the new democratic upheaval and those who desired to give Jackson their wholehearted approval. The outcome was an enthusiastic endorsement of "Jacksonism." Accompanying the liberal political movement was the beginning of labor organization. By 1836, union membership in the cities of the northern seaboard, mounting to some three hundred thousand, secured the betterment of conditions of employment in many places. In 1835, labor forces in Philadelphia succeeded in establishing their most cherished reform, a tenhour work day in place of the old "dark to dark" day. This was merely the beginning of similar reforms in other places -New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Ohio, and California, which was admitted to the Union in 1850. The activity of labor and its zeal for humanitarian reform were indispensable factors in the progressive movements of the time. Its struggle for democracy of education was especially significant. The spread of manhood suffrage led to a new conception of education, for clear-sighted statesmen perceived the danger of universal suffrage if coupled with universal ignorance. Gradually in one state after another, free instruction was provided by legislative enactment, the public-school system became common throughout the northern part of the country by the 1840's, and the battle for it in other areas continued until won. The idealism which freed men from most of their ancient fetters awakened women to a realization of their unequal position in society. From colonial times, the unmarried woman in most respects enjoyed the same legal rights as men. But custom required her to marry early, and with matrimony she virtually lost her separate identity in the eyes of the law. Feminine education was limited to a large degree to reading, writing, music, dancing, needlework. Of course, women were not permitted to vote. The awakening of women began with the visit to America of Frances Wright, a Scotswoman of advanced views. Her appearance before audiences to deliver lectures on theology and women's rights shocked the public. Her example, however, soon aroused to action such great figures in the American feminist movement as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who braved the contempt of men as well as that of most women while they devoted their energies to antislavery, feminism, and labor welfare. Prominent men like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lincoln, and Horace Greeley worked and lectured in their behalf. Although the period was one of agitation rather than accomplishment, definite improvement was achieved. In 1839, Mississippi granted married women the control of their own property, and similar laws were enacted by seven other states within the next decade. In day to day living, the welfare of the people was improving visibly in the period between 1825 and 1850. After 1825, the threshing machine began to supplant the flail and the roller, and shortly after, the mower and the reaper were invented. The difficulty of maintaining a united nation in the face of rapid geographical expansion was somewhat eased by the mechanical ingenuity of the people. Railway mileage steadily progressed from the first horsedrawn public carrier of 1830. By 1850, one could travel over the iron highways from Maine to North Carolina, from the Atlantic seaboard to Buffalo on Lake Erie and from the western end of

145

Lake Erie to Chicago or Cincinnati. The electric telegraph, invented in 1835, by S. F. B. Morse was first used in 1844. In 1847, the rotary printing press, devised by Richard Hoe, was put to use. It revolutionized publishing processes and played a major part in giving newspapers their commanding position in American life. The durability of the nation and the vitality of its economy and institutions were established. Still unresolved, however, were the basic conflicts rooted in sectional differences, which within the next decade were destined to flame into Civil War. 1.6. Sectional Conflict As the years passed, the conflicting interests of the north and south became increasingly manifest. Resenting the large profits amassed by northern businessmen from marketing the cotton crop, southerners explained away the backwardness of their own section in terms of northern aggrandizement. Northerners, on the other hand, declared that slavery - the "peculiar institution" declared by the south to be essential to its economic system - was wholly responsible for the region's comparative backwardness. As far back as 1830, sectional lines were steadily hardening on the slavery question. Abolitionist feeling grew ever more powerful in the northern states.To southerners of 1850, slavery was a heritage for which they were no more responsible than for their other immemorial heritages. In some seaboard areas, slavery by 1850 was well over two hundred years old, an integral part, indeed, of the very civilization of the region. Some Negroes, having back of them a lineage of five or six generations on American soil, had acquired not only the speech but the skills, preconceptions, and religious and social ideas of the white folk. In fifteen southern and border states, the Negro population was approximately half as great as the white, while in the north it was but an insignificant fraction. Political leaders of the south, the professional classes, and most of the clergy, as they fought the weight of northern opinion, insisted that the relations of capital and labor were more humane under the slavery system than under the wage system of the north. After 1830, the introduction of large-scale methods of cotton production in the lower south, made the master often cease to have close personal supervision over his slaves. Employed professional overseers became depended upon their ability to exact from slaves a maximum amount of work. Antislavery agitation in the north became militant in the 1830's. One phase of the antislavery movement involved helping, under cover of night, to spirit away escaping slaves to safe refuges in the north or over the border into Canada. Known as the "Underground Railroad," an elaborate network of secret routes for the fugitives was firmly established in the thirties in all parts of the north. Despite the single objective of the active abolitionists to make slavery a question of conscience with every man and woman, the people of the north as a whole held aloof from participation in the antislavery movement. However, in 1845, the acquisition of Texas - and, soon after, the territorial gains in the southwest resulting from the Mexican War -converted the moral question of slavery into a burning political issue. Many northerners believed that, if kept within close bounds, the institution would ultimately decay and die. For justification of their opposition to adding new slave states, they pointed to the statements of Washington and Jefferson and to the Ordinance of 1787 which forbade the extension of slavery into the Northwest, as binding precedents. As Texas already had slavery, she- naturally entered the Union as a slave state. But California, New Mexico, and Utah did not have slavery. Abraham Lincoln showed marvelous logic in discussing the new issues. The flow of southern slaveholders and northern antislavery men produced grim antagonism. As the years

146

passed, events brought the nation, closer to the inevitable upheaval. He had long regarded slavery as an evil, and in a speech at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854 be asserted that all national legislation should be framed on the principle adopted by the fathers of the republic that slavery was an institution to be restricted and ultimately abolished. With the presidential election of 1860 came the political manifestation of these differences between north and south. The Republican Party entered the campaign with perfect unity. In an enthusiastic convention in Chicago, they nominated Abraham Lincoln, the party's most popular midwestern figure. Party spirit climbed to high pitch, and a stern determination animated the millions of voters who proclaimed that they would allow slavery to spread no further. The party also promised a tariff for the protection of industry and appealed to landhungry northerners with a pledge that it would enact a law granting free homesteads to settlers. The opposition, on the other hand, was disunited and, on Election Day, Lincoln and the Republicans were borne to triumph. It was a foregone conclusion that South Carolina would secede from the Union if Lincoln were elected, for the state had long been awaiting an occasion that would unite the south in a new confederacy. As soon as the election results were certain, a specially summoned South Carolina convention declared "that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states under the name of 'The United States of America' is hereby dissolved." The lower southern states immediately followed, and on February 8, 1861, they formed the Confederate States of America. Less than a month later, on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated into the presidency of the United States. In his inaugural address, he refused to recognize the secession, considering it "legally void." His speech closed with an eloquent and touching plea for a restoration of the ancient bonds of affection. But the south did not hear his plea, and on April 12, guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. All hesitation was now swept from the minds of the northerners. Drums beat in every town and village, and everywhere young men rushed to arms. Meanwhile, with equal fervor, the people of the seven seceded states responded to the appeal of their president, Jefferson Davis. Few Both sections anxiously awaited the action of those slave states which had thus far continued loyal. Virginia took the fateful step on April 17, and Arkansas and North Carolina followed quickly. With Virginia went Colonel Robert E. Lee who declined the command of the Union army out of loyalty to his state. Between the enlarged Confederacy and the free-soil north lay the border states which, proving unexpectedly nationalist in sentiment, kept their bonds with the Union. The people of each section entered the war with high hopes for an early victory. In the war, there were three main theaters of action - the sea, the Mississippi Valley, and the eastern seaboard states. At the beginning of the conflict, practically the whole navy was in Union hands, but it was scattered and weak. An able Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, quickly reorganized and strengthened it, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the southern coast. Although its effect was at first negligible, by 1863 it was almost completely preventing shipments of cotton to Europe and the importation of munitions, clothing, and the medical supplies the south sorely needed. Meanwhile, a brilliant naval commander, David Farragut, had emerged and conducted two remarkable operations. In the Mississippi Valley, the Union forces won an almost uninterrupted series of victories. In Virginia, on the other hand, the Union troops had, in the meantime, met one defeat after another. Moreover, the Confederates had two generals, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, who both far surpassed the early Union commanders in brilliant leadership. The Union general, McClellan, made a desperate attempt to seize Richmond. At one time his troops could hear the clocks striking in the steeples of the

147

Confederate capital. But in the Seven Days' Battles of June 25 to July 1, 1862, the Union troops were driven steadily backward, both sides suffering terrible losses. The 1863 campaign began badly for the north. But a significant event occurred on January I of that year. On that day President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves and invited them to join the armed forces of the nation. Up to this point, the ostensible reason for the war had been to keep the nation unified. To this was now added the permanent banishment of slavery from its borders. April 2, Lee found himself at Appornatox, in Virginia, hemmed in by the enemy and with no alternative but surrender. The hero of that "Lost Cause" was indisputably Robert E. Lee. By virtue of his power of organization, his conscientious attention to details, his tender care for his men, his daring, and his fine presence, he inspired confidence and won the devotion of his troops. The brilliance of his leadership, his humanity throughout the conflict, and his grandeur in defeat aroused admiration. Like George Washington, he was great in peace as in war. In the five years he survived the conflict, he devoted himself to the restoration of the south in economic, cultural, and political fields, and urged the people to become the loyal partners of their late enemies. To the north, the war produced a still greater hero in Abraham Lincoln. In its early months, few perceived the true stature of this awkward western lawyer. Little by little, however, the nation came to comprehend his deep sagacity, founded upon careful study and hard thinking; his intense love of truth; his inexhaustible patience; and his boundless generosity of spirit. If he seemed at moments to hesitate and vacillate, time always proved that he had known how to wait for the national advantage, how to combine strength with tact. He was anxious, above all, to weld the country together as a union, not of force and repression, but of warmth and generosity of feeling. His foreign policy showed dignity, integrity, and firmness, and though he had to use unprecedented powers, he believed fervently in democratic selfgovernment and commanded the complete faith of the people, who elected him for a second term in 1864. Congress also formalized the fact of Negro freedom by proposing the thirteenth constitutional amendment which abolished slavery and was ratified in December 1865. Two days after Lee's surrender, Lincoln delivered his last public address in which he unfolded his reconstruction policy - the most generous terms toward a helpless opponent ever offered by a victor. For Lincoln did not consider himself a conqueror. He was and had been, since 1861, President of the United States. The rebellion must be forgotten and every Southern state readmitted to her full privilege in the Union. On Thursday night, April 13,Washington was illuminated to celebrate Lee's surrender, and joyous crowds paraded the streets. On the 14th, the President held his last cabinet meeting. It was decided to lift the blockade. He urged his secretaries to turn their thoughts to peace - to turn away from bloodshed, from persecution. That night he was assassinated by a crazed fanatic as he sat in his box in the theater. As James Russell Lowell, the poet, wrote: "Never before that startled April morning did such multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken from their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which strangers exchanged when they met that day. Their common manhood had lost a kinsman." Under a new, untried, and unevenly equipped leader, Andrew Johnson, the nation had to face the trying problems of readjustment and reconstruction. For the war had left the country a mixed heritage of good and evil results. It had saved the Union and given it an indestructible character.

148

It was claimed that the Negro needed protection. As time passed, the idea gained currency that the Negro be given the right to vote and hold office and that he be given complete social and political equality with white citizens. Others favored a more gradual enfranchisement with full citizenship rights being first extended to educated Negroes and those who had served in the Union army. Finally Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment which stated that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The immediate intention of its framers, of course, was to insure the conferring of citizenship upon the Negroes. In July 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified and the next year, to fasten Negro suffrage upon the south beyond the power of repeal by a future Congress, the Fifteenth Amendment was passed by Congress and ratified in 1870 by state legislatures. It provided that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." After twelve years-the years of "false" reconstruction from 1865 to 1877 - real efforts to rebuild the south began. To repair the havoc of war and the chaotic events that followed was to prove a task of heartbreaking difficulty. For the Civil War and the bitterness it engendered was one of the great tragedies of American history It is only through an understanding of the war, its causes and aftermath, that real insight can be gained into some of the continuing problems of a major American region, the southern United States. 1.7. Expansion and Reform Between two great wars - the Civil War and the first World War - the United States of America came of age. In a period of less than fifty years, it was transformed from a rural republic to an urban state. The frontier had vanished. Great factories and steel mills, transcontinental railroad lines, flourishing cities, vast agricultural holdings marked the land. And with them came accompanying evils: monopolies tended to develop, factory working conditions were poor, cities developed so quickly that they could not properly house or govern their teeming populations, factory production sometimes outran practical consumption. Reaction against these abuses came from America's people and from her political leaders Cleveland, Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson. Their powerfully articulated reforms, idealistic in philosophy but realistic in execution, accepted the dictum that "legislation may begin where an evil begins." Indeed, the accomplishments of the period of reform served effectively to check the wrongs engendered in the period of expansion. The 36,000 patents granted before 1860 were but a pale forerunner of the flood of inventions to follow. From 1860 to 1890, 440,000 patents were issued, and in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the number reached nearly a million. The principle of the dynamo, which was developed as early as 1831, revolutionized American life after 1880, when Thomas Edison and others made its use practical. After Samuel F. B. Morse perfected electrical telegraphy in 1844, distant parts of the continent were soon linked by a network of poles and wires. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell exhibited a telephone instrument and, within half a century, 16,000,000 telephones were accelerating the social and economic life of the nation. The tempo of business was quickened too by the invention of the typewriter in 1867, the adding machine in 1888, and the cash register in 1897. The linotype composing machine, invented in 1886, the rotary press, and paper-folding machinery made it possible to print 240,000 eight-page newspapers in an hour. After 1880, Edison's incandescent lamp brought to millions of homes better, safer, cheaper light than had ever been known before. The talking machine was also perfected by Edison who, in conjunction with George Eastman, developed the motion picture. These, and the

149

many other applications of science and ingenuity, resulted in a new level of productivity in virtually all fields. Concurrently, the basic industry of the nation-iron and steel-was forging ahead, protected by a high tariff. Previously concentrated near deposits in the eastern states, the iron industry moved westward as geologists discovered new ore deposits. Advances in steel production were, to a great extent, achieved by Andrew Carnegie, a major figure in the history of the industry. Coming to America from Scotland as a boy of twelve, he progressed from work as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory to a job in a telegraph office, and then to one on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Before be was thirty, he had made shrewd and farsighted investments, which by 1865 were concentrated in iron. Within a few years, he had organized or had stock in companies making iron bridges, rails, and locomotives. Ten years later, the steel mill be built on the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania was the greatest in the country. Year by year, Carnegie's business grew. He acquired commanding control not only, over new mills, but also over coke and coal properties, iron ore from Lake Superior, a fleet of steamers on the Great Lakes, a port town on Lake Erie, and a connecting railroad. His business was allied with a dozen others; it could command favorable terms from railroads and shipping lines; it had capital enough for expansion and a plentiful supply of labor. Nothing comparable in the way of industrial expansion had ever been seen before in America. In many respects, the history of Carnegie is the story of big business in the United States. Although he long dominated the industry, he never succeeded in achieving a complete monopoly over the natural resources, transportation, and industrial plans involved in the making of steel. In the 1890's, companies rose to challenge his pre-eminence. Stung by competition, Carnegie at first threatened to acquire new mines and build an even more powerful business; but, as an old and tired man, he was finally willing to listen to the suggestion that he merge his holdings with the new organization which would embrace most of the important iron and steel properties in the nation. The United States Steel Corporation which resulted from this merger in 1901, illustrated a process that had been under way for thirty years. This was the combination of independent industrial enterprises into federated or centralized companies. Begun during the Civil War, the trend gathered momentum after the seventies. Businessmen realized that if they could bring competing firms into a single organization, they could control both production and markets. Developed to achieve these ends were the "corporation" and the "trust" which were in many respects logical forms of organization for large-scale undertakings. For in a corporation a wide reservoir of capital could be tapped. Potential investors were attracted by the fact that they could expect profits from their purchase of stocks and bonds but were liable, in case of business failure, only to the extent of their investments. In addition,. incorporation gave business enterprises permanent life and continuity of control. The trust was, in effect, a combination of corporations whereby the stockholders of each placed their stocks in the hands of trustees who managed the business of all. Trusts made possible large-scale combinations, centralized control and administration, and the pooling of patents. By virtue of their capital resources, they had greater power to expand, to compete with foreign business companies, and to drive hard bargain,; with labor, which was at this time beginning to organize effectively. They could also exact favorable terms from railroads and to exercise influence in politics. The Standard Oil Company, one of the earliest and strongest corporations, was followed rapidly by other trusts and combinations - in cottonseed oil, lead, sugar, tobacco, and rubber. Aggressive businessmen began to mark out industrial domains for themselves. Four great meat packers, chief among them Philip Armour and GustaVLIS Swift, established a beef trust. The MeCormicks established pre-eminence in the reaper business. The trend was clearly reflected in

150

a survey made in 1904 which showed that more than five thousand previously independent concerns had been consolidated into same three hundred industrial trusts. In still other fields - in transportation and communication particularly - the trend toward amalgamation was spectacular. Western Union, earliest of the large combinations, was followed by the Bell Telephone System and eventually by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Cornelius' Vanderbilt had early seen that efficient railroading required the unification of lines. In the sixties be had knit some thirteen separate railroads into a single line connecting New York City and Buffalo, nearly 300 miles away. During the next decade he acquired lines to Chicago and Detroit, and the New York Central System came into being. Other consolidations were already under way, and soon the major railroads of the nation were organized into trunk lines and "systems" directed by half a dozen men. In this new industrial order, the city was the nerve center. Within its borders were focused all the dynamic economic forces: vast accumulations of capital, business and financial institutions, spreading railroad yards, gaunt smoky factories, and armies of inanual and clerical workers. With populations recruited from the countryside and from lands across the sea, villages grew into towns and towns sprang into cities almost overnight. In 1830, only one of every fifteen persons lived in communities of 8,000 or over, in 1860 nearly one out of every six, in 1890 three out of ten. No single city had as many as a million inhabitants in 1860, but thirty years later New York had a million and a half, and Chicago and Philadelphia each had over a million, In these three decades, Philadelphia and Baltimore doubled in population; Kansas City and Detroit grew fourfold, Cleveland sixfold, Chicago tenfold. Minneapolis and Omaha and many communities like them which were mere hamlets when the Civil War began, increased fifty times or more in population. Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was elected to the presidency in 1884. He alone of the Presidents following the war had some understanding of the significance and direction of the changes that were transforming the country and made some effort to grapple with the problems resulting from them. In the question of railroads, for instance, many abuses demanded readjustment. By one of these devices - pooling- rival companies divided the freight business according to a prearranged scheme placing the total earnings in a common fund for distribution. Popular resentment at these practices deepened as time passed, and some efforts at regulation were made by the states. Although these had some salutary effect, the problem was, by its very nature, national in character and therefore demanded Congressional action. The result was the Interstate Commerce Act, which President Cleveland signed in 1887. This statute forbade excessive charges, pools, rebates, and rate discrimination, and created an Interstate Commerce Commission to guard against violations of the act. Cleveland was also an energetic champion of tariff reform. Adopted originally as an emergency war measure, the high tariff had come to be accepted as permanent national policy. Cleveland regarded this as unsound and responsible, in large measure, for a burdensome increase in the cost of living and for the rapid development of trusts. For years, the tariff had not even been a political issue. In 1880, however, the Democrats had demanded a "tariff for revenue only," and soon the clamor for reform became insistent. In his annual message in 1887, Cleveland, despite warnings to avoid the explosive subject, startled the nation by denouncing the fantastic extremes to which the principle of protecting American industry from foreign competition had been pushed. This question became the issue of the next presidential election campaign, and the Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison, defending the concept of protectionism, won. His administration set about fulfilling its campaign promises by new legislation, and the McKinley 151

tariff bill was passed in 1890. This measure sought not only to protect established industries, but also to foster infant industries and, by prohibitory duties, to create new ones. The generally high rates prescribed by the new tariff were shortly reflected in high retail prices, and before long there was widespread dissatisfaction, During this period, public concern was increasingly directed at the trusts. Subjected to bitter attack through the eighties by such reformers as Henry George and Edward Bellamy, the gigantic corporations became not only an object of antagonism but also a political issue. In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. Its primary intention was to break the monopolies; it forbade all combinations in restraint of interstate trade and provided several methods of enforcement with severe penalties. The law itself accomplished little immediately after its passage, for it was couched in general and indefinite terms. A decade later, however, in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, its effective application earned the President the nickname of "trust-buster." A quarter of a century later, virtually all the country had been carved into states and territories. Settlement was spurred by the Homestead Act of 1862 which granted free farms of 160 acres to citizens who would occupy and improve the land. By 1880, nearly 56,000,000 acres had thus found their way into private hands. The wars with the Indians had come to an end. Miners had ranged over the whole of the mountain country, tunneling into the earth, establishing little communities in Nevada, Montana, and Colorado. Cattlemen, taking advantage of the enormous grasslands, had laid claim to the vast region stretching from Texas to the upper Missouri River. Sheepmen, too, had found their way to the valleys and mountain slopes. Then the farmers swarmed into the plains and valleys and closed the gap between the east and west. By 1890, the frontier had disappeared. Five or six million men and women now farmed where buffalo had roamed only two decades before. Speeding the process of colonization were the railroads. In 1862, Congress voted a charter to the Union Pacific Railroad which pushed its track westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa. At the same time, the Central Pacific began to build eastward from Sacramento, California, toward an undetermined junction point. The whole country was stirred as the two lines steadily approached each other, finally meeting on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point in Utah. The month of laborious travel hitherto separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was now cut to a fraction of that time. The continental rail network grew steadily, and by 1884 four great lines joined the central Mississippi Valley area with the Pacific. The first great rush of population to the far west was drawn to the mountainous regions. Gold was found in California in 1848, in Colorado and Nevada ten years later, in Montana and Wyoming in the sixties, and in the Black Hills of the Dakota country in the seventies. Throughout these areas, miners opened up the country, established communities, and laid the foundations for more permanent settlements. Yet even while they were digging in the hills, some settlers perceived the farming and stock-raising possibilities of the region. Some few communities continued to be devoted almost exclusively to mining but the real wealth of Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho as of California was ultimately proved to be in the grass and in the soil. Cattle raising had long been an important industry in Texas. After the war, enterprising men began to drive their Texas longhorns north across the unfenced public domain. Feeding as they went, the cattle arrived at railway shipping points in Kansas larger and fatter than when they started. Soon this "Long Drive" became a regular event and, for hundreds of miles, trails were dotted with herds of cattle moving northward. Cattle raising spread rapidly into the transMissouri region, and immense ranches appeared in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and 152

the Dakota territory. Western cities flourished as centers for the slaughter and dressing of meat. Ranching introduced a colorful mode of existence with the picturesque cowboy as its central figure. The cattle boom, in fact, reached its peak in about 1885. By then, the range had become too heavily pastured to support the long drive and it was beginning to be criss-crossed by railroads. Not far behind the rancher creaked the prairie schooner of the farmers bringing their womenfolk and children, their draft horses, cows, and pigs. Under the Homestead Act they staked off their claims and fenced them in with barbed wire, ousting the ranchmen from lands they had possessed without legal title. During the two terrible winters of 1886 and 1887, herds were annihilated in the open ranges by the freezing weather. The romantic "wild west" gave way to settled communities, to fields of wheat, corn, and oats. In the west as throughout the country, agriculture remained the country's basic industry, at which the largest number of people worked, despite the giant strides of industry. And as manufacturing had developed in the decades following the war, so was agriculture now undergoing a revolution. This involved a shift from husbandry to machine farming and from subsistence to commercial farming. More land was brought under cultivation in the thirty years after 1860 than in all the previous history of the United States. In the same period, the population of the nation more than doubled. Most of the increase was in the cities, but the American farmer grew enough grain and cotton, raised enough beef and pork, and clipped enough wool not only to supply American workers but to export ever increasing surpluses. The expansion into the west largely explains this extraordinary achievement. Another factor was the application of machinery and science to the processes of farming. In rapid succession, other farm machines were developed - the automatic wire binder and the threshing machine, the reaper-thresher or combine. lndeed, in every sphere, machinery came to the aid of the farmer. Mechanical corn planters, corn cutters, huskers, and shellers; the cream separator, the manure spreader, the potato planter, the hay drier, the poultry incubator, and a hundred other inventions lightened the farmer's labor and increased his efficiency. The west absorbed most of the new harvesters and threshers and tractors. Eastern farms were too small, agriculture too diversified to justify investment in expensive machinery; southern cotton and tobacco were not readily adaptable to mechanized cultivation. Scarcely less important than machinery in the agricultural revolution was science. In 1862, with the passage of the Morrill Land-grant College Act, Congress appropriated public land to each state for the establishment of agricultural and industrial colleges. These were to serve both as educational institutions and as centers of research in scientific farming. Subsequently Congress appropriated funds for the creation of agricultural experiment stations throughout the country and also granted funds directly to the Department of Agriculture for research. By the beginning of the new century, scientists throughout the land were at work on agricultural research projects. One of these scientists, Mark Carleton, traveled for the Department of Agriculture to Russia. There he found and imported the rust - and drought-resistant winter wheat which now makes up more than half of the United States wheat crop. Other agricultural scientists made scarcely less important contributions over the years. Marion Dorset conquered the dread hog cholera, George Mohler, the menacing hoofand-mouth disease. From North Africa, one researcher brought back Kaffir corn; from Turkestan, another imported the yellow-flowering alfalfa. Luther Burbank in California produced scores of new fruits and vegetables in Wisconsin, Stephen Babcock invented a milk test for determining the butter-fat content of milk; at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the great Negro scientist, George Washington Carver, found hundreds of new uses for the peanut, the sweet potato, and the soybean.

153

Yet despite these advances, the American farmer in the nineteenth century was subject to recurring periods of critical hardship. Indeed, at the close of the century of greatest agricultural expansion, the dilemma of the farmer had become a major problem. Several basic factors were involved - soil exhaustion, the vagaries of nature, overproduction of staple crops, decline in self-sufficiency, and lack of adequate legislative protection and aid. Southern soil had long been exhausted by tobacco and cotton culture, but in the west, and on the plains too, soil erosion, wind storms, and insect pests ravaged the land. The swift mechanization of agriculture west of the Mississippi had not proved an unmixed blessing. It encouraged many farmers to expand their holdings unwisely; it stimulated concentration on staple crops, it gave large farmers a distinct advantage over small ones and hastened, at once, the development of tenancy and of farming on an extremely large scale. These problems were to remain largely unsolved until the widespread acceptance of modern soil conservation techniques many years later. There had never before in American politics been anything like the Populist fever which swept the prairies and cotton lands. After a hard day in the fields, farmers hitched up their buggies and, with their wives and children, jogged off to the meeting house and applauded the impassioned oratory of their leaders. The elections of 1890 swept the new party into power in a dozen southern and western states and sent a score of Senators and Representatives to Congress. Encouraged by this success, the Populists drew up a progressive platform demanding extensive reforms, including an income tax, a national system of loans for farmers, government ownership of railroads, an eight-hour day for labor, and an increase in the supply of currency by the free and unlimited coinage of silver. In the election of 1892, the Populists showed impressive strength in the west and south. Their presidential candidate polled more than a million votes. However, the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, was elected. Four years later, the dynamic Populists were fused nearly everywhere with the Democratic Party. Influenced by the Populists, the new Democratic leaders prepared to make a major political issue of the money question. The United States, from the country's founding, had been on a bimetallic standard, that is, the government stood ready to coin into dollars all the gold and silver that might be brought to the mint. In 1873, Congress reorganized the monetary system and, among other things, omitted the standard silver dollar from the list of authorized domestic coins. The national unity was made clearly manifest in the conflict with Spain that burst upon the country in 1898. The Spanish government had learned nothing from the revolt of her major colonies in the western hemisphere earlier in the century. Unchanged, she continued her despotic rule of the little island of Cuba, where trade with the United States was now flourishing. In 1895, the Cubans' kindling wrath burst forth into a war for independence. The course of the uprising was watched in the United States with growing concern, for America had traditional interest in Latin-American struggles for independence. Resolved not to be stampeded into war, President Cleveland put forth every effort to preserve neutrality. However, three years later, during the McKinley administration, the United States warship Maine was destroyed while lying peacefully at anchor in Havana harbor and 260 men were killed. An outburst of patriotic fervor resulted. For a time McKinley sought to preserve the peace, but within a few months, believing further delay futile, he recommended armed intervention. The actual hostilities proved swift and decisive, lasting four months in all. Not a single American reverse of any importance occurred. A week after the declaration of war, Commodore George Dewey, then at Hong Kong, proceeded with his squadron of six vessels to the Philippines. His orders were to prevent the Spanish fleet based there from operating in American waters. Before dawn, he ran the batteries of Manila Bay and, by high noon, he had destroyed the entire Spanish fleet without losing an American life. Meanwhile in Cuba, troops equivalent to a single army corps 154

were landed near Santiago; they won a rapid series of engagements and fired on the port. Four armored Spanish cruisers plunged out of Santiago Bay and a few hours later were reduced to smashed hulks. Before long, Spain sued for peace, and a treaty was signed on December 10, 1898. By its terms, Spain transferred Cuba to the United States for temporary occupation preliminary to insular independence. It ceded Porto Rico and Guam in lieu of war indemnity, and the Philippines on payment of $20,000,000. Newly established in the Philippines, the United States now had high hopes of a vigorous trade with China. Since China's defeat by Japan in 1894-95, however, various European nations had acquired naval bases, leased territories, and established spheres of influence there. They had secured not only monopolistic trade rights, but usually also exclusive concessions for the investment of capital in railway construction and mining development in adjoining regions. In its own earlier diplomatic relations with the Orient, the American government had always insisted upon equality of commercial privileges for all nations. If this principle were now to be preserved, a bold course was necessary. In September 1899, Secretary of State John Hay addressed a circular note to the powers concerned. They agreed to the doctrine of the "open door" for all nations in China - that is, equality of trading opportunities (including equal tariffs, harbor duties, and railway rates) in the areas they controlled. In 1900, however, the Chinese struck out against the foreigners. In June, insurgents seized Peiping and besieged the foreign legations there. Hay promptly announced to the powers that the United States would oppose any disturbance of Chinese territorial or administrative rights of the "open door." Once the rebellion was quelled, however, it required all of his skill to carry through the American program and to protect China from crushing indemnities. In October, however, Great Britain and Germany once more signified their adherence to the open-door policy and the preservation of Chinese independence, and the other nations presently followed. Meanwhile, the presidential election of 1900 gave the American people a chance to pass judgment on the McKinley administration, especially its foreign policy. Meeting at Philadelphia, the Republicans expressed jubilation over the successful outcome of the war with Spain, the restoration of prosperity, and the effort to obtain new markets through the "policy of the open door." McKinley's election, with Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate, was a foregone conclusion. The President, however, did not live long enough to enjoy his victory. In September 1901, while attending an exposition in Buffalo, New York, he was shot down by an assassin. McKinley's death brought Theodore Roosevelt to the presidential chair. In domestic as well as international affairs, Roosevelt's accession coincided with a new epoch in American political life. At the turn of the century, America could look back over three generations of progress. The continent was peopled, the frontier was gone. From a small, struggling republic menaced on all sides, the nation had advanced to the rank of a world power. Its political foundations had endured the vicissitudes of civil and foreign war, the tides of prosperity and depression. In agriculture and industry, immense strides had been made. The ideal of free public education had been realized. The ideal of a free press had been maintained. The ideal of religious freedom had been cherished. Yet thoughtful Americans did not look with complacency upon their social, economic, and political situation. For big business was now more firmly entrenched than ever. Often, local and municipal government was in the hands of corrupt politicians. A spirit of materialism was infecting every branch of society. Against these evils arose the full-throated protest which gave American politics and thought its peculiar character from approximately 1890 to the first World War. Since the early 155

days of the industrial revolution, the farmers had been fighting a battle against the cities and against the rising industrial magnates. As far back as the 1850's, reformers had leveled heavy criticism at the prevailing system of patronage whereby successful political figures distributed government positions to their supporters. After a thirty-year struggle, the reformers achieved the passage in 1883 of the Pendleton Civil Service Bill. This law establishing a merit system in government service marked the beginning of political reform. Industrial workers had also spoken up against injustices. They had first organized to protect themselves through the Knights of Labor. This organization declined, but it was soon effectively replaced by the American Federation of Labor, a powerful combination of craft and industrial unions. By 1900, labor was a force in America that no statesman could ignore. Almost every notable figure in this period, whether in politics, philosophy, scholarship, or literature, derives his fame, in part, from his connection with the reform movement. The heroes of the day were all reformers, voicing the needs of the times. For the practices and principles inherited from an eighteenth-century rural republic had proved inadequate for a twentieth century urban state. The confusions which beset America in the industrial age resulted chiefly from the growing complexity and interdependence of society and the diffusion of personal responsibility through the growth of huge corporations. The period of greatest reformist activity extended from 1902 to 1908. Several states began to enact laws designed to ameliorate the conditions under which people lived and worked. Indeed, more social legislation was passed in the first fifteen years of the century than in all previous American history. Child labor laws were strengthened and new ones adopted, raising age limits, shortening hours, restricting night work, requiring school attendance. By this time also, most of the larger cities and more than half the states had established an eight-hour day on public works. In hazardous employment, the workday was likewise subjected to legislative regulation. Hardly less important were the workmen's compensation laws which made employers legally responsible for injuries sustained by employees in the course of their work. New revenue laws were also enacted which, by taxing inheritances, incomes, and the property or earnings of corporations, sought to place the burden of government on those best able to pay. Admirable as were these moves, it was clear that most of the problems to which the reformers addressed themselves could not be solved unless they were projected on a national scale. This was clearly seen by President Theodore Roosevelt who was himself passionately interested in reform. Roosevelt was, at the same time, a political realist, an ardent nationalist, and a faithful Republican. After Thomas Jefferson, he was the most versatile of Presidents. He had been a rancher and a state governor. He had hunted big game, written books, served in the New York state legislature, administered the New York city police, directed the navy, and fought in Cuba. He read omnivorously and had opinions on everything. Like Andrew Jackson, he had a genius for winning the confidence of the people and for dramatizing all his battles. Within a year he had shown that he understood the great changes sweeping over America; he was determined to give the people a "square deal." In his enforcement of the antitrust laws, Roosevelt initiated his policy of increased government supervision. The extension of such supervision over the railroads was one of the notable achievements of his administration. The Elkins Act of 1903 made published rates the lawful standard and made shippers equally liable with railroads for rebates. Under its provisions the government successfully prosecuted erring companies. Subsequently Congress created a new Department of Commerce and Labor with membership in the cabinet. One of its bureaus was empowered to investigate the affairs of large business aggregations. The resulting legal actions led to the recovery of over $4,000,000 and the conviction of several of the company's officials. 156

Already in 1904, Theodore Roosevelt had become the Republican idol. His striking personality and his "trust-busting" activities captured the imagination of the man in the street. Progressive Democrats were also drawn more to him than to their own party candidate. The abounding prosperity of the country was another influence which made for Republican victory in the 1904 election. Emboldened by his sweeping triumph, the President returned to office with fresh determination to advance the cause of reform. In his first annual message, he called for more drastic regulation of the railroads, and in June 1906, the Hepburn Act was passed. This gave the Interstate Commerce Commission real authority in rate regulation, extended the jurisdiction of the Commission, and forced the railroads to surrender their interlocking interests in steamship lines and coal companies. By the end of the Roosevelt administration, rebates had practically disappeared and public regulation of railroads was an accepted principle. Other Congressional measures carried still further the principle of federal control. In response to the reformist crusade, the pure-food law of 1906 prohibited the use of any "deleterious drug, chemical, or preservative" in prepared medicines or foods. This was presently reinforced by an act requiring federal inspection of all concerns selling meats in interstate commerce. Unquestionably, one of the most important achievements of the Roosevelt administrations was in the conservation of the natural resources of the nation. Exploitation and waste of raw materials had to be stopped, and wide stretches of land regarded as worthless needed only proper attention to become fit for use. In 1901, in his first message to Congress, Roosevelt called the forest and water problems. He called for a far-reaching and integrated program of conservation, reclamation, and irrigation. Roosevelt increased the area of timberland by 148,000,000 acres and began systematic efforts to prevent forest fires and to retimber denuded tracts. In 1907, he appointed an Inland Waterways Commission to canvass the whole question of the relation of rivers and soil and forest, of water-power development, and of water transportation. Out of the recommendations of this Commission grew the plan for a national conservation conference and, in the same year, Roosevelt invited all state governors, cabinet members, and notables from the fields of politics, science, and education to such a conference. This conference focused the attention of the nation upon the problem of conservation. It issued a declaration of principles stressing not only the conservation of forests, but of water and minerals and the problems of soil erosion and irrigation as well. Its recommendations included the regulation of timber-cutting on private lands, the improvement of navigable streams, and the conservation of watersheds. As a result, many states established conservation commissions, and in 1909 a National Conservation Association was formed to engage in wide public education on the subject. In 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed authorizing large dams and reservoirs. Soon great arid tracts were rendered green and arable. As the campaign of 1908 drew near, Roosevelt was at the peak of his popularity. He hesitated, however, to challenge the tradition by which no President 'had ever held office for more than two terms. Instead, he supported William Howard Taft, who became the next President. Anxious to continue the Rooseveltian program, Taft made some forward steps. He continued the prosecution of trusts, further strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, established a postal-savings bank and a parcel-post system, expanded the civil service, and sponsored the enactment of two amendments to the federal Constitution. The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, replaced the constitutional requirement for election of Senators by state legislatures by providing for their direct election by the people; the Sixteenth Amendment authorized a federal income tax. Yet balancing the scales against these achievements was his acceptance of a tariff with protective schedules which outraged liberal opinion, his opposition to

157

the entry of the state of Arizona into the Union because of her liberal Constitution, and his growing reliance on the ultraconservative wing of his party. By 1910, Taft's party was divided and an overwhelming vote swept the Democrats back into control of Congress. Two years later, in the presidential election, Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey, campaigned against Taft, the Republican candidate. Roosevelt, who was rejected for the candidacy by the Republican convention, organized a third party, the Progressives, and ran for the presidency on their ticket. Wilson defeated both his rivals in a spirited campaign. His election was a victory for liberalism, for he felt a solemn mission to commit the Democrats unalterably to reform. Under his leadership, the new Congress proceeded to carry through a legislative program which, in scope and importance, was one of the most notable in American history, Its first task was tariff revision. "The tariff duties must be altered," Wilson said. "We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege." The Underwood tariff, signed on October 3, 1913, provided substantial reductions in the rates on important raw materials and foodstuffs, cotton and woolen goods, iron and steel, and other commodities, and removed the duties from more than a hundred other items. Although the act retained many protective features, it was a real attempt to lower the cost of living. The second item on the Democratic program was a reorganization of the banking an currency system. The nation had long suffered from inflexibility of credit and currency. Stopgap legislation had permitted the national banks to issue emergency currency, but a thorough overhauling of the banking system was long overdue. The Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913, filled these requirements. Upon the existing banks it imposed a new system of organization. The country was divided into twelve districts with a federal reserve bank in each. These were to serve as depositories for the cash reserves of those banks which joined the system. Their primary function was to act as a bank for banks. It was made possible, therefore, for the funds thus accumulated to be used to assist individual local banks in moments of temporary embarrassment. To accomplish the second object - greater flexibility of the money supply - provision was made for the issuance of federal reserve notes to meet business demands. Finally, the plan was to be supervised by a Federal Reserve Board. The next important task was trust regulation. Experience suggested a system of control similar to that of the Interstate Commerce Commission over the railways. Thus, the power of investigating corporate abuses was given to a Federal Trade Commission authorized to issue orders prohibiting "unfair methods of competition" by business concerns in interstate trade. A second law, the Clayton Antitrust Act, forbade many corporate practices that had thus far escaped specific condemnation - interlocking directorates, price discrimination among purchasers, and the ownership by one corporation of the stock in similar enterprises. Labor and the farmers were not forgotten. A Federal Farm Loan Act made credit available to farmers at low rates of interest. One provision of the Clayton Act specifically prohibited the use of the injunction in labor disputes. The Seamen's Act of 1915 provided for the improvement of living and working conditions of employees on ocean-going vessels and on lake and river craft. The Federal Workingman's Compensation Act in 1916 authorized allowances to civil service employees for disabilities incurred in the course of their work. The Adamson Act of the same year established an eight-hour day for railroad labor. This record of reform reflected the temper of the people which found its voice through the leadership of President Wilson. Wilson's place in history, however, has been measured not by his scholarship nor his devotion to social reform, but by the strange destiny which catapulted him into the role of wartime president and architect of the uneasy peace which followed World War 1. The great forces unleashed during Wilson's second term of office were likewise destined 158

to effect fundamental changes on the American nation, confronted for the first time with the full responsibilities and hazards of a major world power 1.8. American Modern Times To the American public of 1914, the outbreak of the war came as a rude shock. At first the conflict itself seemed remote, but before it had been raging very long American leaders and the public at large felt its effects increasingly in both economic and political life. By 1915 American industry, which had been mildly depressed, was prospering again with munitions orders from the Western Allies. Public passions were aroused by the propaganda of both sides, and both British and German acts against American shipping on the high seas brought sharp protests from the Wilson administration. But as the months passed, disputes between American and German leaders moved more and more into the foreground. In February 1915, German military leaders announced that they would destroy all merchantmen in the waters around the British Isles. President Wilson warned that the United States would not forsake its traditional right of trade on the high seas and declared that the nation would hold Germany to "strict accountability" for the loss of American vessels or lives. American opinion was aroused to a high pitch of indignation in the spring of 1915 when the British liner Lusitania was sunk with nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans, aboard. Under the stress of wartime emotion, President Wilson was unable to follow a consistent policy. From the time of Jefferson, no American President had been more sincerely devoted to the cause of peace. Wilson was able to win his campaign for reelection in good part on the strength of his party's slogan, "He kept us out of war." In January 1917, in a speech before the Senate, he called for a "Peace without victory" which, he declared, was the only kind of peace that would last. But on April 2, 1917, after five American vessels had been sunk, Wilson appeared before Congress to ask for a declaration of war. Immediately the American government set about the task of mobilizing its military resources, its industry, labor and agriculture. The first of the American forces to make itself felt was the navy, which performed a crucial task in helping the British break the submarine blockade; then in the summer of 1918, during a longawaited German offensive, fresh American troops played a decisive part on land. In November, an American army of over a million took an important part in the vast Meuse-Argonne offensive which cracked the vaunted Hindenburg line. As a wartime, leader Wilson himself was immensely effective. From the beginning he insisted that the struggle was not being waged against the German people but against their autocratic government. In January 1918, he submitted to the Senate his famous Fourteen Points as the basis for a just peace. He called for the abandonment of secret international understandings, a guarantee of freedom of the seas, the removal of economic barriers between nations, reduction of national armaments, and an adjustment of colonial claims with due regard to the interests of the inhabitants affected. Other points, more specific in character, were designed to assure European nationalities self-rule and unhampered economic development. In his fourteenth point, Wilson formulated the keystone of his arch of peace - the formation of an association of nations to afford "mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." By the summer of 1918, when Germany's armies were being beaten back, the German government appealed to Wilson to negotiate on the basis of the Fourteen Points. After assuring himself that the request came from representatives of the people rather than of the military 159

clique, the President conferred with the Allies who acceded to the German proposal. On this basis, an armistice was concluded on November 11. It was Wilson's hope that the final treaty would have the character of a negotiated peace, but he feared that the passions aroused by the war would cause his allies to make severe demands. In this he was right. Persuaded that his greatest hope for the peace of the world, the League of Nations, would never be realized unless he made concessions to the demands of the Allies, he traded away point after point in the peace negotiations at Paris. On September 25, 1919, physically ravaged by the rigors of peacemaking and the pressure of the wartime presidency, he suffered a crippling stroke from which he never recovered. In the presidential election of 1920 it was the first in which women throughout the nation voted for a presidential candidate. During the war, Wilson had also championed a federal amendment to permit women to vote, and the great contributions of American women to the war effort dramatized both their civic capacities and their right to the ballot. Congress submitted the Nineteenth Amendment to the states in June 1919, and it was ratified in time to permit women to vote the following year. Fostered by the general prosperity which prevailed at least in the urban areas of the country, the tone of American governmental policy during the twenties was eminently conservative. It was based upon the belief that if government did what it could to foster the welfare of private business, prosperity would trickle down to all ranks of the population. Private business was given substantial encouragement throughout the twenties. The Transportation Acts of 1920 had already restored to private management the nation's railroad system which had been under strict governmental control during the war. The Merchant Marine, which had been owned and in a considerable measure operated by the government from 1917 to 1920, was sold to private operators. Construction loans, profitable mail-carrying contracts, and other indirect subsidies were also provided. Perhaps the most outstanding support of private business came in the field of electric power. Two great nitrate plants had been built by the government during the war at the foot of Muscle Shoals, a 37-mile stretch of rapids in the Tennessee River, and a series of dams had also been built along the river to generate power. A measure providing for public generation and sale of power passed both houses of Congress in 1928, but President Hoover returned it with a stinging veto. Later, during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, the model TVA experiment was built out of the Muscle Shoals project. Meanwhile, policies of the Republican administrations met with mounting criticism in the field of agriculture, for it was the farmers who shared least in the wellbeing of the twenties. The period 1900 to 1920 had been one of general farm prosperity and rising farm prices. The unprecedented wartime demand for American farm products had provided a great stimulus to production. Farmers had opened up poor lands never before cultivated or long allowed to remain idle. As the money value of American farms doubled and in some areas trebled, farmers began to buy goods and machinery they bad never been able to afford. But at the end of 1920, with the abrupt cessation of wartime demand, the commercial agriculture of staple crops fell into a state of poverty. When the general depression came in the 1930's, it merely aggravated a condition already serious. Many things accounted for the depression in American agriculture, but preeminent was the loss of foreign markets. American farmers could not easily sell in areas where the United States was not buying goods because of its own import tariffs. The products of Argentinian and Australian cattle raisers; Canadian and Polish bacon manufacturers; Argentinian, Australian, Canadian, Russian, and Manchurian grain farmers; and Indian, Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian 160

cotton producers were replacing American exports. The doors of the world market were slowly swinging shut. Another development of the twenties, the restriction of immigration, marked a significant change in American policy. During the first fifteen years of the twentieth century, over 13,000,000 people came to the United States. For some time, public sentiment against unrestricted immigration bad been growing. The United States no longer thought of itself as having a great internal empire to settle, and it was not so willing to accept new immigration. Through a series of measures culminating in the Immigration Quota Law of 1924, the annual number of immigrants was limited to 150,000, to be distributed among peoples of various nationalities in proportion to the number of their countrymen already in the United States in 1920. This measure made immigration selective; since the stream now largely came from southern and eastern Europe instead of from the north and west, and by drastically limiting numbers, it put a stop to one of the great population movements of world history, a process three centuries old. From 1820 to 1929, over 32,000,000 persons from Europe had come to the United States, where they had found new homes and built new lives and contributed richly to its culture. As the stream of immigration slowed to a mere trickle, a small but significant movement of Americans to Europe was taking place. The emigrs were writers and intellectuals; their quest was not part of a great migratory movement but a criticism of national failings. Dissatisfied with the United States as a home for art and thought, they emigrated chiefly to Paris. The very prosperity of the age seemed to give substance to the charge that the United States had an excessively materialistic culture. Perhaps even more urgent than this charge was the charge of Puritanism. The symbol of this Puritanical character was the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquor, which, after almost a century of agitation, had finally been imposed in 1919 by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Prohibition had been intended by its advocates to eliminate the saloon and drunkenness from America, but it created thousands of illicit drinking places and opened a profitable career in criminal business to bootleggers. Moreover, the existence of a law so widely violated was morally hypocritical. To many Americans, prohibition was comparable in its significance to the widespread political corruption of the Harding era. Relentless criticism became the dominant note in American literature. H. L. Mencken, a journalist and critic, unsparing in denunciations of American life and character, became immensely popular; and perhaps no serious novelist had a wider audience than Sinclair Lewis, whose satires on American middle-class life in such novels as Main Street and Babbitt became landmarks in the national consciousness. It is ironic that these criticisms of America by Americans should have been made during the nation's period of greatest prosperity; the depression, and after it the menace of militarism and Fascism from abroad, brought American intellectuals back to their country with renewed affection and respect for both its humane and democratic traditions and its great inheritance of material resources. During the twenties, it seemed as if prosperity would go on forever; even after the stock market crash in the fall of 1929, optimistic predictions continued to come from high places. But the depression deepened rapidly and steadily; the economic life of the country spiraled dizzily downward, millions of investors lost their life savings, business houses closed their doors, factories shut down, banks crashed, and millions of unemployed walked the streets bitterly in a hopeless search for work. In American national experience, there had been nothing except the long-forgotten depression of the 1870's to compare with this.

161

As the people rallied from the initial shock and sought to examine the sources of their difficulties, they began to recognize unhealthy trends that had been unobserved beneath the prosperous facade of the 1920's. The core of the trouble had been the immense disparity between the productive powers of American industry and the ability of the American people to consume. Great innovations in productive techniques had been made during and after the war, with the result that the output of American industry had soared far beyond the purchasing capacity of American workers and farmers. The savings of the wealthy and middle classes, increasing far beyond the possibilities of sound investment, had been drawn into frantic speculation on the stock market or in real estate. The stock market collapse, therefore, had been merely the first of several detonations in which a flimsy structure of speculation had been leveled to the ground. The presidential campaign of 1932 took the form of a debate over the causes and possible remedies of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, whose misfortune it had been to enter the White House only eight months before the stock market crash, had struggled tirelessly to set the wheels of industry in motion again, but he had done so within the limits of a traditional conception of the proper role of the federal government which prevented him from taking drastic action. His Democratic opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, already popular as governor of New York state during the developing crisis, argued that the depression had grown out of underlying flaws in the American economy which had been aggravated by Republican policies during the twenties. President Hoover replied that the American economy was fundamentally sound but that it had been disturbed by the repercussions of a worldwide depression, the causes of which could be traced back to the World War. Behind this argument lay a clear implication: Hoover would prefer largely to depend on the natural processes of recovery to take place, while Roosevelt was prepared to use the authority of the federal government for bold experimental remedies. The new President brought an air of cheerful confidence which quickly rallied the people to his banner. Before he had been long in office, that bewildering complex of reforms which is known as the New Deal was well on its way. Actually this was a sharp acceleration of certain types of reform that bad been growing for fifty years. In a certain sense, it can be said that the New Deal merely introduced into the United States types of reform legislation that had already been familiar to Englishmen, Germans, and Scandinavians for more than a generation. Moreover, it represented a culmination of a longrange trend towards the abandonment of laisser-faire, which could be traced back to the regulation of the railroads in the 1880's and the flood of state and national reform legislation of the WilsonTheodore Roosevelt era. What was most novel about it was the speed with which it accomplished what elsewhere had taken whole generations. Many of the New Deal reforms were hastily drawn and weakly administered; some of them actually contradicted each other. But some confusion was natural when a situation so difficult was being remedied in such haste. During the entire New Deal period, despite all its speed in decision and execution, the democratic process of public criticism and discussion was never interrupted or suspended; indeed, the New Deal brought a sharp revival of interest in his government on the part of the individual citizen. When Roosevelt took the presidential oath, the banking and credit system of the nation was in a state of paralysis. With astonishing rapidity the sound banks were reopened for business. A policy of moderate currency inflation was launched in order to start an upward movement in commodity prices and also to afford some relief to debtors. More generous credit facilities were made available, both to industry and agriculture, through new governmental agencies. Savings bank deposits up to $S,000 were insured. Severe regulations were imposed upon the manner in which securities could be sold in the stock exchange. 162

In agriculture, far-reaching reforms were instituted. After the Agricultural Adjustment Act (passed by Congress in 1933) was nullified three years later by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, Congress passed a more effective farm-relief act, providing that the government make money payments to farmers who would devote part of their land to soilconserving crops or otherwise cooperate in the long-range agricultural goals of the program. By 1940, nearly six million farmers had joined in this program and were receiving federal subsidies. The new act likewise provided loans on surplus crops, insurance for wheat, and a system of planned storage to ensure an "ever normal granary" for the nation and the farmers. As a result of these measures, the prices of agricultural commodities rose, and economic stability for the farmer began to seem possible. Attempts were also made to bring independence to farm tenants. The federal government subsidized the purchase of farms for tenants on easy terms. It refinanced farm loans and so brought relief to the holders of farm mortgages. Money was lent directly to farmers by the newly created Commodity Credit Corporation. Simultaneously an effort was made, under Secretary of State Cordell Hull, to restore some foreign markets by reciprocity agreements designed to break down the economic autarchy toward which the United States had been tending under the high-tariff regime. Under the terms of the Trade Agreements Act of June 1934, Secretary Hull negotiated unconditional most-favored-nation reciprocity treaties with Canada, Cuba, France, Russia, and some twenty other countries. Within a year, American trade had improved materially, and by 1939 farm income was more than double what it had been seven years before. The New Deal program for industry went through an experimental phase in the opening years of the Roosevelt administration. In 1933 a National Recovery Administration was set up, based essentially upon the idea that the crisis could be resolved by limiting production and fixing higher prices; but even before the NRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in May 1935, it was widely considered to be unsuccessful. By this time a movement toward recovery had already begun under the spur of other administration policies, and the administration soon reversed itself and began to act on the assumption that administered prices in certain lines of business were a severe drain on the national economy and a barrier to recovery. The threat of old-age unemployment and dependency, long a subject of public discussion, was dealt with in the Social Security Act of 1935, which assured modest retirement allowances at the age of sixty-five to many kinds of workers. The insurance fund for this purpose was built up by contributions from workers and employers. Unemployment compensation for active workers of all ages was to be administered by the states with funds provided by a compulsory federal payroll tax. By 1938 every state had some form of unemployment insurance. Almost all the work of the New Deal was carried on under the stress of urgent criticism not only from the Republican Party, but often from within the Democratic Party itself. In the election of 1936, when the New Deal was attacked by President Roosevelt's opponent, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, Roosevelt won an even more decisive victory than that of 1932. As time went on, it was obvious that the American conception of government was changing, that greater governmental responsibility for the welfare of the people was winning increasing acceptance. Some New Deal critics argued that the extension of governmental functions on such a scale must end in undermining all the liberties of the people. President Roosevelt, and with him a host of followers, stoutly insisted that measures which fostered economic well-being would strengthen liberty and democracy.

163

Impressive as was Franklin Roosevelt's domestic program, like Wilson's more than a decade before, it was overshadowed by the clamor of foreign affairs before his second term was well under way. Across the seas, little noticed by the average American, there had risen a new threat to peace, to law, and ultimately to American security the totalitarianism of Japan, Italy, and Germany. Early in the thirties, the first of these nations struck. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, crushed Chinese resistance; a year later she set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. Italy, having succumbed to Fascism, enlarged her boundaries in Libya and in 1935-36 reduced Ethiopia to subjection. Germany, where Adolf Hitler had organized his National Socialist party and seized the reins of government, reoccupied the Rhineland and undertook largescale rearmament. As the real nature of totalitarianism became clear, and as Germany, Italy, and Japan continued their aggressions, attacking one small nation after another, American apprehension turned to indignation. In 1938, after Hitler had incorporated Austria into the Reich, his demands for the Sudeten land of Czechoslovakia made war seem possible at any moment. The American people, disillusioned by the failure of the crusade for democracy of the first World War, announced that under no circumstances could any belligerent look to them for aid. Neutrality legislation, enacted piecemeal from 1935 to 1937, prohibited trade with or credit to any belligerent. The objective was to prevent, at almost any cost, the involvement of the United States in a non-American war. Both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull from the first opposed this legislation. The President now undertook the task of bringing the American people to a realization of the destruction these forces were working and of arming America morally and materially, He had done much to strengthen the American navy; he had refused to recognize the puppet state of Manchukuo. Together with Hull he had made significant progress in establishing solidarity among the nations of the western hemisphere through the good-neighbor policy. When the Hull reciprocal trade treaties were reaffirmed in 1935, the United States concluded treaties with six Latin-American nations, pledging the signatories to recognize no territorial changes effected by force. As totalitarian policy became more aggressive and Hitler thundered against Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France, the American spirit hardened. The first impulse of Americans was to stay out of the European conflict; but after a time they were convinced that a combination of powers which threatened everyone's security also threatened their own. T his conviction quickened, as the fall of France demonstrated the might of the Nazi military machine. When the air attack upon Britain began in the summer of 1940, few Americans were any longer neutral in thought. The 1940 presidential election campaign demonstrated an overwhelming unity of American sentiment. Roosevelt's opponent, Wendell Willkie, supported the President's foreign policy, and since he also agreed with a large part of Roosevelt's domestic program, he lacked a compelling issue, and the November election yielded another impressive majority for Roosevelt. For the first time in American history, a President was elected to a third term in the White House. While most Americans anxiously watched the course of the European war, tension mounted in the Far East. Eager to take advantage of an opportunity to improve her strategic position, Japan boldly announced a "New Order" in which she would exercise hegemony over the whole of the Far East and the Pacific. Helpless to resist, Britain receded, withdrawing from Shanghai and temporarily closing the Burma Road. In the summer of 1940 Japan won from the weak Vichy government permission to use airfields in French Indo-China. After the Japanese 164

joined the Rome-Berlin Axis in September, the United States imposed an embargo on the export of scrap-iron to Japan. By 1940, it seemed that the Japanese might turn southward toward the oil, tin and rubber of British Malaya and the Netherlands Indies. In July 1941, when the Vichy government permitted the Japanese to occupy the remainder of Indo-China, the United States froze Japanese assets. On November 19, after General Tojo's government had taken office in Japan, a special envoy, Saburo Kurusu, arrived in the United States. Kurusu announced that the purpose of his mission was to arrive at a peaceful understanding, and on December 6, President Roosevelt sent a personal appeal for peace to the Japanese Emperor. On the morning of December 7 came the Japanese answer - a shower of bombs on the American base at Pearl Harbor. As the details of the Japanese raids upon Hawaii, Midway, Wake and Guam came blaring from American radios, incredulity turned to anger at what President Roosevelt called the "unprovoked and dastardly" attack. On December 8, Congress declared a state of war with Japan; three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The onset of war came to the American people as a great philosophical defeat. They had never liked or accepted militarism. No American could think of the war as having any goal other than lasting peace. On December 9, when President Roosevelt delivered his war message to the American people, he reminded them: "The true goal we seek is far above and beyond the ugly field of battle. When we resort to force, as now we must, we are determined that this force should be directed towards ultimate good as well as against immediate evil. We Americans are not destroyers - we are builders." The nation rapidly geared itself for an effort that called for the mobilization of its manpower and its entire industrial capacity. Soon after the United States was drawn into the war, it was decided that the essential military effort of the Western Allies was to be concentrated in Europe where the core of enemy power lay. In the meantime, the Pacific theater of war was to be secondary. Nevertheless, during the dark year, 1942, some of the first important American successes came out of actions in the Pacific. These were primarily accomplishments of the navy and its carrier-borne aircraft. In May 1942, heavy Japanese losses in the battle of the Coral Sea forced the Japanese navy to give up the idea of striking at Australia; in June, carrier planes inflicted severe damage on a Japanese flotilla off Midway Island; in August came a unified army-navy action which resulted in an American landing on Guadalcanal and another naval victory, the battle of the Bismarck Sea. The hope of further victories was increased as the navy began to swell with incredible rapidity as a result of intensified shipyard production. In the meantime, military supplies had begun to flow to the European theater. In the spring and summer of 1942, strengthened by American materiel, British forces broke the German drive aimed at Egypt and pushed Rommel back into Tripoli, ending the threat to Suez. On November 7, 1942, an American army landed in French North Africa. After bitter battles, severe defeats were inflicted on Italian and German armies, 349,000 prisoners were taken, and by midsummer of 1943 the south shore of the Mediterranean was cleared of Fascist forces. In September, the new Italian government under Marshal Badoglio, signed an armistice, and in October, Italy declared war on Germany. While hard-fought battles were still raging in Italy, Allied forces made devastating air raids on German railroads, factories, and weapon emplacements. Deep in the continent, German oil supplies were hit at Ploesti in Romania. Late in 1943, after much Allied debate over strategy, it was decided to open a Western Front which would force the Germans to divert far larger forces from the Russian front than 165

could be engaged in Italy. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander, and the immense preparations were hastened. On June 6, while a Soviet counteroffensive was under way, the first contingents of an American and British invasion army landed on the beaches of Normandy under the protection of a greatly superior air force. The beachhead was held; more troops were poured in; many contingents of German defenders were caught in pockets by pincers movements; and at last the Allied armies began to move across France and into Germany, making their way always against the most tenacious defense. Paris was retaken on August 25. At the gates of Germany the Allies were delayed by stubborn counteraction, but in February and March, 1945, troops were pouring into Germany from the west and German armies were reeling back in the east. On May 8 all that remained of the Third Reich surrendered its land, sea, and air forces. In the meantime, great progress had been made by American forces in the Pacific. As American and Australian troops fought their way northward along the island ladder through the Solomons, New Britain, New Guinea and Bougainville, the growing naval forces gnawed away at Japanese supply lines. In October 1944 came the naval victory in the Philippine Sea. Further action on Iwo Jima and Okinawa suggested that Japanese resistance might long continue despite the ultimate hopelessness of the Japanese position; but the war was brought to an abrupt end in August when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan formally surrendered on September 2, 1945. Allied military efforts were accompanied by a series of important international meetings that dealt with the political aspects of the war. The first of these took place in August 1941 between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at a time when the United States was not yet actively engaged in the struggle, and the military situation of Britain and Russia seemed very bleak. Meeting aboard cruisers near Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill issued a statement of purposes - the Atlantic Charter - in which they endorsed these objectives: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes that do not accord with the wishes of the people concerned; the right of all people to choose their own form of government; the restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; economic collaboration between all nations; freedom from war, from fear, and from want for all peoples; freedom of the seas; the abandonment of the use of force as an instrument of international relations. The next great Anglo-American conference took place at Casablanca in January 1943. Here it was decided that no peace would be concluded with the Axis and its Balkan satellites except on the terms of "unconditional surrender." The purpose of this term, which originated with Roosevelt, was to assure all the people of the fighting nations that no peace negotiations would be carried on with representatives of Fascism and Nazism; that no bargain of any kind could be made by such representatives to save any remnant of their power; that before final peace terms could be laid down to the peoples of Germany, Italy, and Japan, their military overlords must concede before the entire world their own complete and utter defeat. At Quebec in August 1943, an Anglo-American conference discussed plans for action against Japan and other aspects of military and diplomatic strategy; and two months later, the foreign ministers of Britain, the United States, and Russia met at Moscow; they reaffirmed the unconditional surrender policy, called for the end of Italian Fascism and the restoration of Austria's independence, and endorsed future postwar collaboration among the powers in the interest of peace. At Cairo, where Roosevelt and Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek, terms for Japan were agreed upon which involved the relinquishment of gains from past aggression. At Teheran on November 28, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin reaffirmed the terms of the Moscow conference and called for a lasting peace through the agency of the United Nations. Almost two

166

years later, in February 1945, they met at Yalta with victory seemingly secure and made further agreements: Russia secretly agreed to enter the war against Japan not long after the surrender of Germany; the eastern boundary of Poland was set roughly at the Curzon line of 1919; after some discussion of heavy reparations in kind to be collected from Germany, demanded by Stalin and opposed by Roosevelt and Churchill, the decision was deferred; specific arrangements were made concerning Allied occupation in Germany and governing the trial and punishment of war criminals; the principles of the Atlantic Charter were reaffirmed in relation to the people of liberated areas. It was readily agreed that the powers in the Security Council of the United Nations should have the right of veto in matters affecting their security. After much difference of opinion in which Roosevelt was ranged on one side and Stalin and Churchill on the other, it was agreed that all the powers would support the Soviet Union's demand for two additional votes in the United Nations Assembly, based on the great populations of the Ukraine and Byelorussia. Only two months after his return from Yalta, Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while vacationing at his "little White House" in Georgia. Few figures in American history have been so deeply mourned both at home and abroad; and for a time the American people suffered from a sense of great and irreparable loss. Democratic leadership, however, rests upon no man's indispensability; it was not long before Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, was offering effective leadership based upon the essential objectives of New Deal domestic and foreign policy. By July 1945, when Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union met in conference again at Potsdam, Germany had surrendered. The general election in Britain took place midway in the conference, with the result that while both Churchill and Clement Attlee attended the first half, Attlee alone remained to conclude the negotiations. Although some aspects of the war in the Pacific were discussed, the essential purpose of the meeting was to formulate an occupation policy and a program for the future of Germany. It was agreed that sufficient industrial capacity should be left to Germany for an ample peacetime economy but that there should be no margin of surplus available to rebuild a war machine. Known Nazis were to be tried, and where trials established that they had taken part in the senseless slaughter that had been called for in the Nazi plan, they were to suffer the death penalty. The necessity of assisting in the re-education of a German generation reared under Nazism was agreed upon, as well as the broad principles governing the restoration of democratic political life to Germany. Much time was spent discussing the reparations claims against Germany. The removal of industrial plant and property by the Soviet Union from the Russian-occupied zone was provided for, as well as some additional property from the western zones; but the Russian claim, already raised at Yalta, for reparations totaling $10,000,000,000 remained a subject of controversy. In November 1945, at Nuremberg, the criminal trials that were provided for at Potsdam took place. Before a group of distinguished jurists from Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States, the German leaders were accused not only of plotting and waging aggressive war but also of violating the laws of war and humanity. The trial lasted more than ten months and resulted in the conviction of all but three of the defendants. While the Potsdam talks were proceeding, representatives of 51 nations were in session at San Francisco, drawing up the framework of the United Nations. After eight weeks of work, the United Nations Charter was completed, an outline for world organization providing an agency for the peaceful discussion of international differences and a hope for a peaceful world. At home the American government faced pressing problems, many of which are too recent for adequate historical evaluation. Demobilization of soldiers, reconversion of industry,

167

industrial disputes and labor policy, price and rent controls, the formulation of an over-all federal policy to realize full employment of the American labor force -such were the matters with which the Truman administration had to cope. As the immediate difficulties of postwar adjustment passed, however, it became clear that the American economy was emerging from the war stronger than at any time in its history. National income, which had been 72.5 billion dollars in 1939 had risen to 182.8 billion dollars in 1945. Moreover, the distribution of this increased income showed an improvement in the situation of low-income families. Among the most vital and far-reaching problems confronting the nation and the world was the development and control of atomic energy. In July 1946, Congress created a five-man United States Atomic Energy Commission to control the domestic aspects of nuclear energy. It was specified that civilians, rather than military men, be entrusted with this power. At the opening sessions of the UN Atomic Energy Commission in June, Bernard Baruch presented on behalf of the United States a proposal that an international authority be created to exercise control of all atomic-energy activities potentially dangerous to world security and to control, inspect, and license all other atomic activities. It was suggested that the atomic bomb be outlawed and that the international authority should have power to punish violations of the agreement. The United States promised to stop manufacturing bombs, dispose of its stock of bombs' and make available to the world its scientific information-but not until the international authority was in effective operation. Gromyko, the Soviet spokesman, opposed the broad international control advocated by the American government, objecting particularly to a stipulation in the Baruch plan that no veto of the acts of the new atomic authority be permitted. He proposed instead that all the powers simply renounce the atomic weapon without providing for international controls or inspection. The plan put forward by the United States was approved by a majority group of the UN Atomic Energy Commission, by a 10-0 vote, the USSR and Poland abstaining. The minority, which had originally rejected the American proposals, continued to attack these proposals rather than the later decisions of the majority of the Commission. As the work of the committees progressed throughout 1947, the American findings were incorporated as part of a wider survey, and the United States delegation became, not the proponent of a preconceived system, but merely a cooperating member of the majority group. It soon became clear, as discussions continued on atomic control and other aspects of disarmament, that the path of peace could not be made smooth until these and other differences could be worked out. Much concern was felt in the United States as more and more of Europe fell under the control of pro-Soviet governments under circumstances in which the freedom of the people to choose had been impaired. By the spring of 1947, these included Finland, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as the Russian-occupied zones in Germany and Austria. In the spring of 1947, when a crisis in Greece promised further penetration, President Truman appeared before Congress to ask for approval of a $400,000,000 program for economic and military aid for Greece and Turkey. "I believe," he declared, "that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." This statement of policy, known as the Truman Doctrine, became the subject of wide debate in the United States, but the appropriations were voted by Congress on May 15. Greece and Turkey were not the only European nations needing economic assistance. The disparity between the strong economic condition of the United States and the difficulties of the European nations that were attempting to repair the devastation of the war underlined the responsibilities of the United States and the need for statesmanlike action. On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a new approach in a commencement address at Harvard University. "It is logical," he said, "that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be 168

no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist." It was Marshall's conception that all Europe should benefit by the economic aid called for in his plan, including the Soviet Union and the nations under her influence. Although Britain and France responded promptly and enthusiastically to his invitation and called upon the Soviet Union to join them, Molotov attacked the Marshall plan as an "imperialist plot." The Plan likewise fell under criticism in the United States, as many Senators questioned the immense outlay of American funds that it required. The debate was resolved when Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, a Republican leader and former isolationist, came to the support of Marshall and enlisted many of his colleagues in a firm endorsement of the principle of a bipartisan foreign policy. In April 1948, Congress passed an act creating the European Recovery Program, under which the United States was committed to a four-year plan of economic aid to sixteen European countries. Five billion dollars were allotted for the first year. By April 1949, there were tangible signs of increasing recovery in western Europe. The total output of factories and mines, for example, was fourteen percent higher than the 1947 figures and nearly equal to those of 1938, the most nearly normal prewar year. The flow of ERPfinanced products to western Europe from the farms, forests, mines, and factories of the western hemisphere rose steadily. As the world moved into the second half of the twentieth century, it was clear to the great majority of Americans that the political, economic, and moral isolation of the United States had completely come to an end. At home, the nation was concerned with strengthening reforms which had begun during the New Deal era. Abroad, it was committed above all to an economically healthy and politically free western Europe as the core of a better future for the world. In a memorable message to Congress in January 1949, President Truman called for a continuation of aid to free peoples and reaffirmed American faith in democratic principles. "Democracy alone," he said, "can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies - hunger, misery, and despair. Events have brought our American democracy to new influence and responsibilities."

2. Fundamentals of American Government American self-government is founded on a set of basic principles. Some grow out of the organic characteristics of the nation, and others have evolved from the practical application of the fundamental theses expressed in the preamble to the Constitution. The judicial system is premised on a belief in the equality of all individuals, in the inviolability of human rights and in the supremacy of the law. No individual or group, regardless of wealth, power or position, may defy these principles. No person, for any reason, may be denied the protection of the law. The incorporation of these and other fundamentals into an efficient and practicable pattern of self-government required the formulation of certain working principles. The nation's physical size and its large population made literal self-government an impossibility. In its place, the Founding Fathers elaborated the principle of representative government. At regular

169

intervals, the voters choose public officials to represent them in government. The voters delegate their authority to these officials, and two administrators appointed by them. Public officials exercise the power given them by the people only so long as the people are satisfied with their conduct and management of public affairs. The people have a number of ways of expressing their will and of reminding officials that they are really public servants as well as leaders of the nation. The essential control mechanism is the periodic election of the principal officers of the legislative and executive branches. Candidates for public office submit their platforms, or programs, to the voters for their scrutiny and approval. Elected officials can never forget they must face a day of reckoning at regular intervals. The dialogue between the voters and their elected representatives is a continuing one. It includes the daily flow of mail, telegrams, telephone calls and face-to-face contact to which every elected official must respond. American voters are vocal about their views on public issues and bring their opinions to the attention of their representatives. One study found that the average member of the U.S. House of Representatives received 521 pieces of mail per week, most of it from constituents. Some U.S. senators have reported receiving up to 10,000 separate communications in a one-week period. It is also common for voters to visit their congressmen individually or in delegations to press for action on specific issues. When the legislature is not in session, it is a rare representative who does not return to his home district to sound out voters on upcoming legislative issues. In these ways the voters maintain their control of the governmental process. In addition, the government is structured to prevent abuse of power by any single branch or public official. As has been noted previously, the three branches of the federal government - legislative, executive and judicial - are semiautonomous. Yet each has certain authority over the others. The pattern of checks and balances, implicit in the division of authority, guards against undue concentration of power in any one sector of the government at any level. There is a price to be paid for maintaining these safeguards. A democratic government inevitably moves more slowly - and sometimes less efficiently - than a government where power is concentrated in the hands of one individual or a small group. But the American experience throughout history has been that hasty government action is often ill-considered and harmful. If the price of full public debate on all major issues is a relative loss of efficiency, it is a fair price and one the American people willingly pay. Moreover, in times of national emergency the government has proved it can move swiftly and effectively to defend the national interest. 2.1. Electoral Process The Republican and Democratic parties contest public office at every level of political life including town councils, mayoralties, state governorships, Congress and the presidency. The selection of these officials is a two-part process, first, to win the party nomination, and second, to defeat the opposing party's candidate in the general election. Methods of nominating candidates have evolved throughout U.S. history. The earliest, which dates from colonial times, is the caucus, an informal meeting of party leaders who decide which candidates they will support. As the nation developed and political organization became more complex, various local caucuses began to delegate representatives to meet with representatives from other local caucuses to form county and then state groups, which finally selected candidates. These enlarged bodies, known as conventions, were the prototypes of the great presidential nominating conventions of today. The third nominating method is the primary

170

election. Primaries are statewide intraparty elections; which are designed to give voters the opportunity to select their party's candidates directly for various offices. The electoral process culminates in the quadrennial election of the president of the United States. Party candidates are selected in nominating conventions held several months before the general election. Delegates to these conventions, chosen within each state, are generally pledged to vote for a particular candidate, at least on the first ballot. General elections pit the candidates of the political parties against each other. In most cases, the party candidates for all offices - federal, state and local - run as a block or slate, although voters cast their ballots for each office individually. In addition, each party draws up a statement of its position on various issues, called a platform. Voters thus make their decisions on the basis of the individuals running for office, and the political, economic and social philosophies of the parties they represent. It is possible for a candidate to run for office in a general election without the backing of a political party. To run as an independent, a person must present a petition, signed by a specified number of voters who support his or her candidacy. Still another device is the write-in vote: A candidate's name that does not appear on the ballot can be written in by voters in a space provided for that purpose. Persons elected to office exercise the power to make and execute laws as representatives of the people. In certain circumstances, the people can exercise this power directly. The example of the New England town meeting is one such instance. In addition, in some states, a substantial number of voters may petition for the adoption of a law, bypassing the normal legislative process. The proposal, called an initiative, is submitted for approval of the voters at a general or special election. If approved, it becomes law without legislative action. In other cases, the people may be asked to express their opinions by voting on specific issues in a referendum. The referendum may be only an expression of the popular will to guide the legislature, or it may be made binding on the legislators. In the latter case, an act of the legislature may be overturned by the voters. 2.2. Information and Opinion Voters cannot make sound decisions on the issues before them without a free flow of information and opinion. Freedom of information is a fundamental aspect of American democracy and is vital to its proper working. The American voter has a virtually limitless supply of information. Sources include newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, pamphlets and mailed communications. The press of the United States provides daily coverage of all important local, state, national and international developments. Speeches and statements of government officials are published and broadcast, Senate and House debates are widely disseminated and the press conferences of major officials are covered in detail. The mass media are committed - at least as an ideal - to impartial, unbiased reporting of the facts. To enable voters to make intelligent decisions, however, the media also analyze the meaning of developments and, in clearly identified columns or broadcasts, express editorial opinions supporting or opposing the decisions of public officials. The broad freedom of the American press has, at times, been criticized as weakening the power of the government to act for the public good.

171

Several of the largest American weekly magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report, are devoted exclusively to reporting and interpreting the news, and a number of radio stations similarly broadcast only news. Other publications and electronic media devote a substantial portion of their output to the news. Both the print and electronic media offer debates in public issues and interviews with persons who support or oppose specific actions. There are also special-interest publications devoted solely to the presentation of one or another side of various questions. During elections, the political parties make ample use of all the media to present their positions to the American people. Given the resources available to the electorate for informing themselves on all sides of every question, it has become an axiom that, in a democracy, the people get the kind of government they deserve. If the people are not well served by their government, it is their own fault. If government functions well, the people deserve the credit. The true measure of a government lies in how well it has served its people in all kinds of circumstances, both favorable and adverse, in times of peace and stability and in times of national crisis. By this standard, the U.S. system of self-government has been reasonably successful. It has guided and nurtured the nation from weak and chaotic beginnings, through phenomenal expansion in territory and population, through drought, war and scandal. It weathered a bitter civil war that threatened to destroy the unity of the nation. It has on many occasions defended the principles of freedom and self-determination from attack by hostile forces from within and without. Few Americans, however, would defend their country's record as perfect. American democracy is in a constant state of evolution. As Americans review their history, they recognize errors of performance and failures to act, which have delayed the nation's progress. They know that more mistakes will be made in the future. Yet the U.S. government still represents the people, and is dedicated to the preservation of liberty. The right to criticize the government guarantees the right to change it when it strays from the essential principles of the Constitution a.As in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "government of the people, by the people and for the people shall perish from the earth". 3. An Outline of American Culture 3.1. Early American and Colonial Time Had history taken a different turn, the United States easily could have been a part of the great Spanish or French overseas empires. Its present inhabitants might speak Spanish and form one nation with Mexico, or speak French and be joined with Canadian Francophone Quebec and Montreal. Yet the earliest explorers of America were not English, Spanish, or French. The first European record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian language. The Old Norse Vinland Saga recounts how the adventurous Leif Eriksson and a band of wandering Norsemen settled briefly somewhere on the northeast coast of America -- probably Nova Scotia, in Canada -- in the first decade of the 11th century, almost 400 years before the next recorded European discovery of the New World. The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however, began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus's journal in his "Epistola," printed in 1493, recounts the trip's drama -- the terror of the men, who feared monsters and thought they

172

might fall off the edge of the world; the near-mutiny; how Columbus faked the ships' logs so the men would not know how much farther they had travelled than anyone had gone before; and the first sighting of land as they neared America. Bartolom de las Casas is the richest source of information about the early contact between American Indians and Europeans. As a young priest he helped conquer Cuba. He transcribed Columbus's journal, and late in life wrote a long, vivid History of the Indians criticizing their enslavement by the Spanish. Initial English attempts at colonization were disasters. The first colony was set up in 1585 at Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina; all its colonists disappeared, and to this day legends are told about blue-eyed Croatan Indians of the area. The second colony was more permanent: Jamestown, established in 1607. It endured starvation, brutality, and misrule. However, the literature of the period paints America in glowing colors as the land of riches and opportunity. Accounts of the colonizations became world-renowned. The exploration of Roanoke was carefully recorded by Thomas Hariot in A Brief and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virgiania (1588). Hariot's book was quickly translated into Latin, French, and German; the text and pictures were made into engravings and widely republished for over 200 years. The Jamestown colony's main record, the writings of Captain John Smith, one of its leaders, is the exact opposite of Hariot's accurate, scientific account. Smith was an incurable romantic, and he seems to have embroidered his adventures. To him we owe the famous story of the Indian maiden, Pocahontas. Whether fact or fiction, the tale is ingrained in the American historical imagination. The story recounts how Pocahontas, favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan, saved Captain Smith's life when he was a prisoner of the chief. Later, when the English persuaded Powhatan to give Pocahontas to them as a hostage, her gentleness, intelligence, and beauty impressed the English, and, in 1614, she married John Rolfe, an English gentleman. The marriage initiated an eight-year peace between the colonists and the Indians, ensuring the survival of the struggling new colony. In the 17th century, pirates, adventurers, and explorers opened the way to a second wave of permanent colonists, bringing their wives, children, farm implements, and craftsmen's tools. The early literature of exploration, made up of diaries, letters, travel journals, ships' logs, and reports to the explorers' financial backers -- European rulers or, in mercantile England and Holland, joint stock companies -- gradually was supplanted by records of the settled colonies. Because England eventually took possession of the North American colonies, the best-known and most-anthologized colonial literature is English. As American minority literature continues to flower in the 20th century and American life becomes increasingly multicultural, scholars are rediscovering the importance of the continent's mixed ethnic heritage. Although the story of literature now turns to the English accounts, it is important to recognize its richly cosmopolitan beginnings. It is likely that no other colonists in the history of the world were as intellectual as the Puritans. Between 1630 and 1690, there were as many university graduates in the northeastern section of the United States, known as New England, as in the mother country -- an astounding fact when one considers that most educated people of the time were aristocrats who were unwilling to risk their lives in wilderness conditions. The self-made and often self-educated Puritans were notable exceptions. They wanted education to understand and execute God's will as they established their colonies throughout New England. The Puritan definition of good writing was that which brought home a full awareness of the importance of worshipping God and of the spiritual dangers that the soul faced on Earth. 173

Puritan style varied enormously - from complex metaphysical poetry to homely journals and crushingly pedantic religious history. Whatever the style or genre, certain themes remained constant. Life was seen as a test; failure led to eternal damnation and hellfire, and success to heavenly bliss. This world was an arena of constant battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan, a formidable enemy with many disguises. Many Puritans excitedly awaited the "millennium," when Jesus would return to Earth, end human misery, and inaugurate 1,000 years of peace and prosperity. Scholars have long pointed out the link between Puritanism and capitalism: Both rest on ambition, hard work, and an intense striving for success. Although individual Puritans could not know, in strict theological terms, whether they were "saved" and among the elect who would go to heaven, Puritans tended to feel that earthly success was a sign of election. Wealth and status were sought not only for themselves, but as welcome reassurances of spiritual health and promises of eternal life. Moreover, the concept of stewardship encouraged success. The Puritans interpreted all things and events as symbols with deeper spiritual meanings, and felt that in advancing their own profit and their community's well-being, they were also furthering God's plans. They did not draw lines of distinction between the secular and religious spheres: All of life was an expression of the divine will - a belief that later resurfaces in Transcendentalism. In recording ordinary events to reveal their spiritual meaning, Puritan authors commonly cited the Bible, chapter and verse. History was a symbolic religious panorama leading to the Puritan triumph over the New World and to God's kingdom on Earth. The first Puritan colonists who settled New England exemplified the seriousness of Reformation Christianity. Known as the "Pilgrims," they were a small group of believers who had migrated from England to Holland - even then known for its religious tolerance - in 1608, during a time of persecutions. Like most Puritans, they interpreted the Bible literally. They read and acted on the text of the Second Book of Corinthians - "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord." Despairing of purifying the Church of England from within, "Separatists" formed underground "covenanted" churches that swore loyalty to the group instead of the king. Seen as traitors to the king as well as heretics damned to hell, they were often persecuted. Their separation took them ultimately to the New World. Unfortunately, "literary" writing was not as simple and direct as political writing. When trying to write poetry, most educated authors stumbled into the pitfall of elegant neoclassicism. The epic, in particular, exercised a fatal attraction. American literary patriots felt sure that the great American Revolution naturally would find expression in the epic - a long, dramatic narrative poem in elevated language, celebrating the feats of a legendary hero. Many writers tried but none succeeded. Timothy Dwight (1752- 1817), one of the group of writers known as the Hartford Wits, is an example. Dwight, who eventually became the president of Yale University, based his epic, "The Conquest of Canaan" (1785), on the Biblical story of Joshua's struggle to enter the Promised Land. Dwight cast General Washington, commander of the American army and later the first president of the United States, as Joshua in his allegory and borrowed the couplet form that Alexander Pope used to translate Homer. Dwight's epic was as boring as it was ambitious. English critics demolished it; even Dwight's friends, such as John Trumbull (1750-1831), remained unenthusiastic. So much thunder and

174

lightning raged in the melodramatic battle scenes that Trumbull proposed that the epic be provided with lightning rods. Not surprisingly, satirical poetry fared much better than serious verse. The mock epic genre encouraged American poets to use their natural voices and did not lure them into a bog of pretentious and predictable patriotic sentiments and faceless conventional poetic epithets out of the Greek poet Homer and the Roman poet Virgil by way of the English poets. In mock epics like John Trumbull's good-humored "M'Finegal" (1776-82), stylized emotions and conventional turns of phrase are ammunition for good satire, and the bombastic oratory of the revolution is itself ridiculed. Modeled on the British poet Samuel Butler's Hudibras, the mock epic derides a Tory, M'Fingal. It is often pithy, as when noting of condemned criminals facing hanging: No man e'er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law. It went into over 30 editions, was reprinted for a half- century, and was appreciated in England as well as America. Satire appealed to Revolutionary audiences partly because it contained social comment and criticism, and political topics and social problems were the main subjects of the day. The first American comedy to be performed, "The Contrast"(produced 1787) by Royall Tyler (1757-1826), humorously contrasts "Colonel Manly", an American officer, with Dimple, who imitates English fashions. Naturally, Dimple is made to look ridiculous. The play introduces the first Yankee character, Jonathan. Another satirical work, the novel "Modern Chivalry", published by Hugh Henry Brackenridge in installments from 1792 to 1815, memorably lampoons the excesses of the age. Brackenridge (1748- 1816), a Scottish immigrant raised on the American frontier, based his huge, picaresque novel on Don Quixote; it describes the misadventures of Captain Farrago and his stupid, brutal, yet appealingly human, servant Teague O'Regan. 3.2. American Enlightenment The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man. Benjamin Franklin The Scottish philosopher David Hume called him America's "first great man of letters," embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and enormously successful, Franklin recorded his early life in his famous Autobiography. Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. He was the first great self-made man in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine example helped to liberalize. Franklin was a second-generation immigrant. His Puritan father, a chandler (candlemaker), came to Boston, Massachusetts, from England in 1683. In many ways Franklin's life illustrates the impact of the Enlightenment on a gifted individual. Self- educated but well-read in John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, and other Enlightenment writers, Franklin learned from them to apply reason to his own life and to break with tradition - in particular the old-fashioned Puritan tradition - when it threatened to smother his ideals.

175

While a youth, Franklin taught himself languages, read widely, and practiced writing for the public. When he moved from Boston to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Franklin already had the kind of education associated with the upper classes. He also had the Puritan capacity for hard, careful work, constant self-scrutiny, and the desire to better himself. These qualities steadily propelled him to wealth, respectability, and honor. Never selfish, Franklin tried to help other ordinary people become successful by sharing his insights and initiating a characteristically American genre - the self-help book. Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" begun in 1732 and published for many years, made Franklin prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. In this annual book of useful encouragement, advice, and factual information, amusing characters such as old Father Abraham and Poor Richard exhort the reader in pithy, memorable sayings. In "The Way to Wealth,""a plain clean old Man, with white Locks," quotes Poor Richard at length. "A Word to the Wise is enough," he says. "God helps them that help themselves." "Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Poor Richard is a psychologist ("Industry pays Debts, while Despair encreaseth them"), and he always counsels hard work ("Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck"). Do not be lazy, he advises, for "One To-day is worth two tomorrow." Sometimes he creates anecdotes to illustrate his points: "A little Neglect may breed great Mischief....For want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the Enemy, all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail." Franklin was a genius at compressing a moral point: "What maintains one Vice, would bring up two Children." "A small leak will sink a great Ship." "Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them." Franklin's Autobiography is, in part, another self-help book. Written to advise his son, it covers only the early years. The most famous section describes his scientific scheme of selfimprovement. Franklin lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. He elaborates on each with a maxim; for example, the temperance maxim is "Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation." A pragmatic scientist, Franklin put the idea of perfectibility to the test, using himself as the experimental subject. To establish good habits, Franklin invented a reusable calendrical record book in which he worked on one virtue each week, recording each lapse with a black spot. His theory prefigures psychological behaviorism, while his systematic method of notation anticipates modern behavior modification. The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny. Franklin saw early that writing could best advance his ideas, and he therefore deliberately perfected his supple prose style, not as an end in itself but as a tool. "Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar," he advised. A scientist, he followed the Royal (scientific) Society's 1667 advice to use "a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can." Despite his prosperity and fame, Franklin never lost his democratic sensibility, and he was an important figure at the 1787 convention at which the U.S. Constitution was drafted. In his later years, he was president of an antislavery association. One of his last efforts was to promote universal public education. James Fenimore Cooper

176

Cooper has a basic tragic vision of the ironic destruction of the wilderness, the new Eden that had attracted the colonists in the first place. Personal experience enabled Cooper to write vividly of the transformation of the wilderness and of other subjects such as the sea and the clash of peoples from different cultures. The son of a Quaker family, he grew up on his father's remote estate at Otsego Lake (now Cooperstown) in central New York State. Although this area was relatively peaceful during Cooper's boyhood, it had once been the scene of an Indian massacre. Young Fenimore Cooper grew up in an almost feudal environment. His father, Judge Cooper, was a landowner and leader. Cooper saw frontiersmen and Indians at Otsego Lake as a boy; in later life, bold white settlers intruded on his land. Natty Bumppo, Cooper's renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian "natural aristocrat." Early in 1823, in The Pioneers, Cooper had begun to discover Bumppo. Natty is the first famous frontiersman in American literature and the literary forerunner of countless cowboy and backwoods heroes. He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects. Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values and prefigures Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Mark Twain's Huck Finn. Based in part on the real life of American pioneer Daniel Boone Natty Bumppo, an outstanding woodsman like Boone, was a peaceful man adopted by an Indian tribe. Both Boone and the fictional Bumppo loved nature and freedom. They constantly kept moving west to escape the oncoming settlers they had guided into the wilderness, and they became legends in their own lifetimes. Natty is also chaste, high-minded, and deeply spiritual: He is the Christian knight of medieval romances transposed to the virgin forest and rocky soil of America. The unifying thread of the five novels collectively known as the "Leather-Stocking Tales" is the life of Natty Bumppo. Cooper's finest achievement, they constitute a vast prose epic with the North American continent as setting, Indian tribes as characters, and great wars and westward migration as social background. The novels bring to life frontier America from 1740 to 1804. Cooper's novels portray the successive waves of the frontier settlement: the original wilderness inhabited by Indians; the arrival of the first whites as scouts, soldiers, traders, and frontiersmen; the coming of the poor, rough settler families; and the final arrival of the middle class, bringing the first professionals - the judge, the physician, and the banker. Each incoming wave displaced the earlier: Whites displaced the Indians, who retreated westward; the "civilized" middle classes who erected schools, churches, and jails displaced the lower- class individualistic frontier folk, who moved further west, in turn displacing the Indians who had preceded them. Cooper evokes the endless, inevitable wave of settlers, seeing not only the gains but the losses. Cooper's novels reveal a deep tension between the lone individual and society, nature and culture, spirituality and organized religion. In Cooper, the natural world and the Indian are fundamentally good -- as is the highly civilized realm associated with his most cultured characters. Intermediate characters are often suspect, especially greedy, poor white settlers who are too uneducated or unrefined to appreciate nature or culture. Like Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, Herman Melville, and other sensitive observers of widely varied cultures interacting with each other, Cooper was a cultural relativist. He understood that no culture had a monopoly on virtue or refinement. Washington Irvin (1789- 1859)

177

The youngest of 11 children born to a well-to-do New York merchant family, Washington Irving became a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Despite his talent, he probably would not have become a full-time professional writer, given the lack of financial rewards, if a series of fortuitous incidents had not thrust writing as a profession upon him. Through friends, he was able to publish his "Sketch Book" (1819-1820) simultaneously in England and America, obtaining copyrights and payment in both countries. The "Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon" (Irving's pseudonym) contains his two best remembered stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." "Sketch" aptly describes Irving's delicate, elegant, yet seemingly casual style, and "crayon" suggests his ability as a colorist or creator of rich, nuanced tones and emotional effects. In the Sketch Book Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region. American readers gratefully accepted Irving's imagined "history" of the Catskills, despite the fact that he had adapted his stories from a German source. Irving gave America something it badly needed in the brash, materialistic early years: an imaginative way of relating to the new land. No writer was as successful as Irving at humanizing the land, endowing it with a name and a face and a set of legends. The story of "Rip Van Winkle," who slept for 20 years, waking to find the colonies had become independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went into the oral tradition, and was gradually accepted as authentic American legend by generations of Americans. Irving discovered and helped satisfy the raw new nation's sense of history. His numerous works may be seen as his devoted attempts to build the new nation's soul by recreating history and giving it living, breathing, imaginative life. For subjects, he chose the most dramatic aspects of American history: the discovery of the New World, the first president and national hero, and the westward exploration. His earliest work was a sparkling, satirical "History of New York"(1809) under the Dutch, ostensibly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker (hence the name of Irving's friends and New York writers of the day, the "Knickerbocker School"). The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing "Lyrical Ballads" In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of "the American Renaissance." 3.3. The Romantic Period (1820-1860); Poets and Esseysts New England sparkled with intellectual energy in the years before the Civil War. Some of the stars that shine more brightly today than the famous constellation of Brahmins were dimmed by poverty or accidents of gender or race in their own time. Modern readers increasingly value the work of abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier and feminist and social reformer Margaret Fuller.

178

Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth. The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the individual and society. In his essay "The Poet" (1844), Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic era, asserts: The development of the self became a major theme; self- awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one's self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of "self" - which suggested selfishness to earlier generations -- was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: "self-realization," "selfexpression," "self- reliance." As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The "sublime" - an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop) - produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension. Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. America's vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values. Certainly the New England Transcendentalists -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their associates -- were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement. In New England, Romanticism fell upon fertile soil. The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th century thought. The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world - a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine of self-reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God. Transcendentalism was intimately connected with Concord, a small New England village 32 kilometers west of Boston. Concord was the first inland settlement of the original Massachusetts Bay Colony. Surrounded by forest, it was and remains a peaceful town close enough to Boston's lectures, bookstores, and colleges to be intensely cultivated, but far enough away to be serene. Concord was the first rural artist's colony, and the first place to offer a spiritual and cultural alternative to American materialism. It was a place of high-minded conversation and simple living Emerson, who moved to Concord in 1834. The Transcendental Club was loosely organized in 1836 and included, at various times, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Channing, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, and others. Unlike many European groups, the Transcendentalists never issued a manifesto. They insisted on individual differences - on the unique viewpoint of the individual. American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme. American writers often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention. The American hero -- like Herman Melville's Captain Ahab, or Mark Twain's Huck Finn, or Edgar Allan Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym -- typically faced risk, or even certain destruction, in the pursuit of metaphysical self-discovery. For the Romantic American writer, nothing was a given. Literary and social conventions, far from being helpful, were dangerous. In their time, the Boston Brahmins (as the 179

patrician, Harvard-educated class came to be called) supplied the most respected and genuinely cultivated literary arbiters of the United States. Their lives fitted a pleasant pattern of wealth and leisure directed by the strong New England work ethic and respect for learning. The writings of the Brahmin poets fused American and European traditions and sought to create a continuity of shared Atlantic experience. These scholar-poets attempted to educate and elevate the general populace by introducing a European dimension to American literature. Most of them travelled or were educated in Europe: They were familiar with the ideas and books of Britain, Germany, and France, and often Italy and Spain. Upper class in background but democratic in sympathy, the Brahmin poets carried their genteel, European-oriented views to every section of the United States, through public lectures Ironically, their overall effect was conservative. By insisting on European things and forms, they retarded the growth of a distinctive American consciousness. Well-meaning men, their conservative backgrounds blinded them to the daring innovativeness of Thoreau, Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. They were pillars of what was called the "genteel tradition" that three generations of American realists had to battle. Partly because of their benign but bland influence, it was almost 100 years before the distinctive American genius of Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, and Poe was generally recognized in the United States. Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Most of his ancestors were clergymen as was his father. He was educated in Boston and Harvard, like his father, and graduated in 1821. In 1825 he began to study at the Harvard Divinity School and next year he was licensed to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. In 1829 Emerson married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died in 1831 from consumption. Emerson became sole pastor at the Second Unitarian Church of Boston in 1830. Three years later he had a crisis of faith, finding that he "was not interested" in the rite of Communion. Emerson's controversial views caused his resignation. In 1835 Emerson married Lydia Jackson and settled with her at the east end of the village of Concord, where he then spent the rest of his life. Emerson's first book, Nature, a collection of essays, appeared when he was 33. Emerson emphasized individualism and rejected traditional authority. He also believed that people should try to live a simple life in harmony with nature and with others. His lectures 'The American Scholar' (1837) and 'Address at Divinity College' (1838) challenged the Harvard intelligentsia and warned about a lifeless Christian tradition. Harvard ostracized him for many years, but his message attracted young disciples, who joined the informal Transcendental Club (established in 1836). In 1840 Emerson helped Margaret Fuller to launch The Dial (1840-44), an open forum for new ideas on the reformation of society. In 1841 Emerson published a selection of his earlier lectures and writings under the title Essays. It was followed by Essays: Second Series (1844), a collection of lectures annexed to a reprint of Nature (1849), and Representative Men (1850). In the 1850s he started to gain success as a lecturer. His English Traits, a summary of English character and history, appeared in 1856.Other later works include Conduct Of Life (1860), Society And Solitude (1870), a selection of poems called Parnassus (1874), and Letters And Social Aims, (1876). As an essayist Emerson was a master of style. He encouraged American scholars to break free of European influences and create a new American culture. 3.4. Romantic Fiction Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and the Transcendentalists represent the first great literary generation produced in the United States. In the case of the novelists, the Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form Hawthorne called the "Romance," a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the 180

novel. Romances were not love stories, but serious novels that used special techniques to communicate complex and subtle meanings. Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as most English or continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe shaped heroic figures larger than life, burning with mythic significance. The typical protagonists of the American Romance are haunted, alienated individuals. Hawthorne's Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Ahab in Moby Dick and the many isolated and obsessed characters of Poe's tales are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that, in some mysterious way, grow out of their deepest unconscious selves. The symbolic plots reveal hidden actions of the anguished spirit. American novelists were faced with a history of strife and revolution, a geography of vast wilderness, and a fluid and relatively classless democratic society. American novels frequently reveal a revolutionary absence of tradition. Many English novels show a poor main character rising on the economic and social ladder, perhaps because of a good marriage or the discovery of a hidden aristocratic past. But this buried plot does not challenge the aristocratic social structure of England. On the contrary, it confirms it. The rise of the main character satisfies the wish fulfillment of the mainly middle-class readers. In contrast, the American novelist had to depend on his or her own devices. America was, in part, an undefined, constantly moving frontier populated by immigrants speaking foreign languages and following strange and crude ways of life. Thus the main character in American literature might find himself alone among cannibal tribes, as in Melville's Typee, or exploring a wilderness like James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking, or witnessing lonely visions from the grave, like Poe's solitary individuals, or meeting the devil walking in the forest, like Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown. Virtually all the great American protagonists have been "loners." The democratic American individual had, as it were, to invent himself. The serious American novelist had to invent new forms as well hence the sprawling, idiosyncratic shape of Melville's novel Moby Dick and Poe's dreamlike, wandering Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Few American novels achieve formal perfection, even today. Instead of borrowing tested literary methods, Americans tend to invent new creative techniques. In America, it is not enough to be a traditional and definable social unit, for the old and traditional gets left behind; the new, innovative force is the center of attention. Walt Whitman Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was the second son of Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820s and 1830s. At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the printer's trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the oneroom school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced at first hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city.

181

On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a "free soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and "cleansed" life. He wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded at New York-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war. Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals. Whitman stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet. Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk's salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers both in the states and in England sent him "purses" of money so that he could get by. In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to visit his dying mother at his brother's house. However, after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible to return to Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery. Nathaniel Howthorne (1804 1864) Novelist and short story writer, a central figure in the American Renaissance. Nathaniel Hawthorne's best-known works include The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Like Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne took a dark view of human nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His father, also Nathaniel, was a sea captain and descendent of John Hathorne, one of the judges in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. He died when the young Nathaniel was four year old. Hawthorne grew up in seclusion with his widowed mother Elizabeth - and for the rest of her life they relied on each other for emotional solace. Later he wrote to his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "I have locked myself in a dungeon and I can't find the key to get out." Hawthorne was educated at the Bowdoin College in Maine (1821-24). In the school among his friends were Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, who became the 14th president of the U.S. Between the years 1825 and 1836 Hawthorne worked as a writer and contributor to periodicals. Among Hawthorne's friends was John L. O'Sullivan, whose magazine the Democratic Review published two dozen stories by him. According to a story, Hawthorne burned his first short-story collection, Seven Tales of My Native Land, after publishers rejected

182

it. Hawthorne's first novel, Fanshawe, appeared anonymously at his own expense in 1828. The work was based on his college life. It did not receive much attention and the author burned the unsold copies. However, the book initiated a friendship between Hawthorne and the publisher Samuel Goodrich. He edited in 1836 the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in Boston, and compiled in 1837 Peter Parley's Universal History for children. In was followed by a series of books for children Grandfather's Chair (1841), Famous Old People (1841), Liberty Tree (1841), and Biographical Stories for Children (1842). The second, expanded edition of Twice Told Tales (1837), was praised by Edgar Allan Poe in Graham's Magazine. In 1842 Hawthorne became friends with the Transcendentalists in Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who also drew on the Puritan legacy. However, generally he did not have much confidence in intellectuals and artists, and eventually he had to admit, that "the treasure of intellectual gold" did not provide food for his family. In 1842 Hawthorne married Peabody, an active participant in the Transcendentalist movement, and settled with her in Concord. A growing family and mounting debts compelled their return to Salem. Hawthorne was unable to earn a living as a writer and in 1846 he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem. He worked there for three years until he was fired. "I detest this town so much," Hawthorne said, "that I hate to go out into the streets, or to have people see me." The Scarlet Letter was a critical and popular success. The illicit love affair of Hester Prynne with the Reverend Arhur Dimmesdale and the birth of their child Pearl, takes place before the book opens. In Puritan New England, Hester, the mother of an illegitimate child, wears the scarlet A (for adulteress, named in the book by this initial) for years rather than reveal that her lover was the saintly young village minister. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, proceeds to torment the guiltstricken man, who confesses his adultery before dying in Hester's arms. Hester plans to take her daughter Pearl to Europe to begin a new life. Toward the end of the dark romance Hawthorne wrote: "Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" - Hester Prynne has been seen as a pioneer feminist in the line from Anne Hutchinson to Margaret Fuller, a classic nurturer, a sexually autonomous woman, and an American equivalent of Anna Karenina. The influence of the novel is apparent in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930). Hawthorne's daughter Una served as the model for Pearl. Hawthorne was one of the first American writers to explore the hidden motivations of his characters. Among his allegorical stories is 'The Artist of the Beautiful' (1844) in which his protagonist creates an insect, perhaps a steam-driven butterfly. A girl he admires asks whether he made it, and he answers: "Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" Eventually the insect is killed by an unfeeling child. Hawthorne once wrote of his workroom: "This deserves to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands and thousands of visions have appeared to me in it." "The Custom-House" sketch, prefatory to The Scarlet Letter, was based partly on his experiences in Salem. The novel appeared in 1850 and told a story of the earliest victims of Puritan obsession and spiritual intolerance. The central theme is the effect of guilt, anxiety and sorrow. Hawthorne's picture of the sin-obsessed Puritans has subsequently been criticized - they were less extreme than presented in the works of Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, Steven King, and many others. The House of the Seven Gables was published the following year. The story is based on the legend of a curse pronounced on Hawthorne's own family by a woman, who was condemned to death during the Salem witchcraft trials. The curse is mirrored in the decay of the

183

Pyncheons' seven-gabled mansion. Finally the descendant of the killed woman marries a young niece of the family, and the hereditary sin ends. The Biblical Romance (1852), set in a utopian New England community, examines the flaws inherent in practical utopianism. Hawthorne had earlier invested and lived in the Brook Farm Commune, West Roxbury. This led to speculations that the doomed heroine was a portrait of the transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. During his productive period Hawthorne also established a warm friendship with Herman Melville, who dedicated Moby-Dick to him. In 1853 Franklin Pierce became President. Hawthorne, who had written a campaign biography for him, was appointed as consul in Liverpool, England. He lived there for four years, and then spent a year and half in Italy writing The Marble Faun (1860), a story about the conflict between innocence and guilt. It was his last completed novel. In his Concord home, The Wayside, he wrote the essays contained in Our Old Home (1863). Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, N.H. on a trip to the mountains with his friend Franklin Pierce. After his death his wife edited and published his notebooks. Modern editions of these works include many of the sections which she cut out or altered. The authors' son Julian was convicted in 1912 of defrauding the public. Herman Melville (1819-1891) American author, best known for his novels of the sea and especially for his masterpiece Moby Dick (1851), a whaling adventure dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The work was only recognized as a masterpiece years after Melville's death. The fictionalized travel narrative Typee (1846) was Melville's most popular book during his lifetime. Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819 in New York City into an established merchant family. His father became bankrupt and insane, dying when Melville was 12. A bout of scarlet fever in 1826 left Melville with permanently weakened eyesight. He attended Albany (N.Y.) Classical School in 1835. From the age of 12, he worked as a clerk, teacher, and farmhand. In search of adventures, he shipped out in 1839 as a cabin boy on the whaler Achushnet. He later joined the US Navy, and started his years long voyages on ships, sailing both the Atlantic and the South Seas. Typee, an account of his stay with cannibals, was first published in Britain, like most of his works. Its sequel, Omoo (1847), was based on his experiences in the Polynesian Islands, and gained as huge a success as the first one. Throughout his career Melville enjoyed a rather higher estimation in Britain than in America. His third book, Mardi and A Voyage Thither was published in 1849. In 1847 Melville married Elisabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. After three yeas in New York, he bought a farm, "Arrowhead", near Nathaniel Hawthorne's home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and became friends with him for some time. Inspired by the suggestions of Hawthorne, Melville wrote his masterpiece, Moby Dick. When the novel was published, it did not bring him the fame he had acquired in the 1840s. Only some critics and very few readers noted its brilliance. Through the narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, the author meditated questions about faith and the workings of God's intelligence. He returned to these meditations in his last great work, Billy Budd, a story left unfinished at his death and posthumously published in 1924. Melville died of heart failure on September 28, 1891.

184

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849), American poet, a master of the horror tale, credited with practically inventing the detective story. Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who were itinerant actors. His father David Poe Jr. died probably in 1810 and his mother Elizabeth Hopkins Poe in 1811. Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant John Allan and brought up partly in England (1815-20), where he attended Manor School at Stoke Newington. Never legally adopted, Poe took Allan's name for his middle name. Poe attended the University of Virginia (1826), but was expelled for not paying his gambling debts. This led to a quarrel with Allan, who later disowned him. In 1827 Poe joined the U.S. Army as a common soldier under assumed name and age. In 1830 Poe entered West Point and was dishonorably discharged next year, for intentional neglect of his duties. Little is known about his life in this time, but in 1833 he lived in Baltimore with his father's sister. After winning a prize of $50 for the short story "MS Found in a Bottle," he started a career as a staff member of various magazines, among others the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond (1835-37), Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia (1839-40), and Graham's Magazine (1842-43). During these years he wrote some of his best-known stories. In 1836 Poe married his 13-yearold cousin Virginia Clemm. She burst a blood vessel in 1842, and remained a virtual invalid until her death from tuberculosis five years later. After the death of his wife, Poe began to lose his struggle with drinking and drugs. He addressed the famous poem "Annabel Lee" (1849) to her. Poe's first collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, appeared in 1840. It contained one of his most famous works, "The Fall of the House of Usher." During the early 1840s Poe's best-selling work was The Conchologist's First Book (1839). The dark poem of lost love, "The Raven," brought Poe national fame, when it appeared in 1845. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and The Purloined Letter are among Poe's most famous detective stories. Poe was also one of the most prolific literary journalists in American history. Poe suffered from bouts of depression and madness, and he attempted suicide in 1848. In September the following year he disappeared for three days after a drink at a birthday party and on his way to visit his new fiance in Richmond. He turned up in a delirious condition in Baltimore gutter and died on October 7, 1849. Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) Emily Dickinson is, in a sense, a link between her era and the literary sensitivities of the turn of the century. A radical individualist, she was born and spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, a small Calvinist village. She never married, and she led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful but was full of inner intensity. She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants, and changing seasons of the New England countryside. Dickinson spent the latter part of her life as a recluse, due to an extremely sensitive psyche and possibly to make time for writing (for stretches of time she wrote about one poem a day). Her day also included homemaking for her attorney father, a prominent figure in Amherst who became a member of Congress. Dickinson was not widely read, but knew the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, and works of classical mythology in great depth. These were her true teachers, for Dickinson was certainly the most solitary literary figure of her time. That this shy, withdrawn, village woman, almost unpublished and unknown, created some of the greatest American poetry of the 19th century has fascinated the public since the 1950s, when her poetry was rediscovered. Dickinson's terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitman's. She never uses two words when one will do, and combines concrete things with 185

abstract ideas in an almost proverbial, compressed style. Her best poems have no fat; many mock current sentimentality, and some are even heretical. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Like Poe, she explores the dark and hidden part of the mind, dramatizing death and the grave. Yet she also celebrated simple objects -- a flower, a bee. Her poetry exhibits great intelligence and often evokes the agonizing paradox of the limits of the human consciousness trapped in time. She had an excellent sense of humor, and her range of subjects and treatment is amazingly wide. Her poems are generally known by the numbers assigned them in Thomas H. Johnson's standard edition of 1955. They bristle with odd capitalizations and dashes. Dickinson's 1,775 poems continue to intrigue critics, who often disagree about them. Some stress her mystical side, some her sensitivity to nature; many note her odd, exotic appeal. One modern critic, R.P. Blackmur, comments that Dickinson's poetry sometimes feels as if "a cat came at us speaking English." Her clean, clear, chiseled poems are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature. 3.5. Women Writers and Reformers American women endured many inequalities in the 19th century: They were denied the vote, barred from professional schools and most higher education, forbidden to speak in public and even attend public conventions, and unable to own property. Despite these obstacles, a strong women's network sprang up. Through letters, personal friendships, formal meetings, women's newspapers, and books, women furthered social change. Intellectual women drew parallels between themselves and slaves. They courageously demanded fundamental reforms, such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage, despite social ostracism and sometimes financial ruin. Their works were the vanguard of intellectual expression of a larger women's literary tradition that included the sentimental novel. Women's sentimental novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle's Tom's Cabin, were enormously popular. They appealed to the emotions and often dramatized contentious social issues, particularly those touching the family and women's roles and responsibilities. Margaret Fuller (1810 1850) Margaret Fuller, an outstanding essayist, was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From a modest financial background, she was educated at home by her father (women were not allowed to attend Harvard) and became a child prodigy in the classics and modern literatures. Her special passion was German Romantic literature, especially Goethe, whom she translated. The first professional woman journalist of note in America, Fuller wrote influential book reviews and reports on social issues such as the treatment of women prisoners and the insane. Some of these essays were published in her book "Papers on Literature and Art" (1846). A year earlier, she had her most significant book, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century". It originally had appeared in the Transcendentalist magazine, "The Dial", which she edited from 1840 to 1842. Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenthe Century is the earliest and most American exploration of women's role in society. Often applying democratic and Transcendental principles, Fuller thoughtfully analyzes the numerous subtle causes and evil consequences of sexual discrimination and suggests positive steps to be taken. Many of her ideas are strikingly modern. She stresses the importance of "self-dependence," which women lack because they are taught to learn their rule from without, not to unfold it from within."

186

Fuller is finally not a feminist so much as an activist and reformer dedicated to the cause of creative human freedom and dignity for all: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 1896) Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of Congregational minister Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote Beecher. Her best known writing Uncle Tom's Cabin is an expression of her moral outrage at the institution of slavery and its destructive effects on both whites and blacks. She portrays the evils of slavery as especially damaging to maternal bonds, as mothers dread the sale of their children. Written and published in installments between 1851 and 1852, publication in book form brought financial success. Publishing nearly a book a year between 1862 and 1884, Harriet Beecher Stowe Stowe moved from her early focus on slavery in such works as Uncle Tom's Cabin and another novel, Dred, to deal with religious faith, domesticity, and family life. When Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" 3.5.1. Essayists and Poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) The most important Boston Brahmin poets were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. Longfellow, professor of modern languages at Harvard, was the best-known American poet of his day. He was responsible for the misty, ahistorical, legendary sense of the past that merged American and European traditions. He wrote three long narrative poems popularizing native legends in European meters "Evangeline" (1847), "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858). Longfellow also wrote textbooks on modern languages and a travel book entitled OutreMer, retelling foreign legends and patterned after Washington Irving's Sketch Book. Although conventionality, sentimentality, and facile handling mar the long poems, haunting short lyrics like "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" (1854), "My Lost Youth" (1855), and "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" (1880) continue to give pleasure. James Russel Lowell (1819 1891) James Russell Lowell, who became professor of modern languages at Harvard after Longfellow retired, is the Matthew Arnold of American literature. He began as a poet but gradually lost his poetic ability, ending as a respected critic and educator. As editor of the Atlantic and co-editor of the North American Review, Lowell exercised enormous influence. Lowell's A Fable for Critics (1848) is a funny and apt appraisal of American writers, as in his comment: "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge." Under his wife's influence, Lowell became a liberal reformer, abolitionist, and supporter of women's suffrage and laws ending child labor. His Biglow Papers, First Series (1847- 48) creates Hosea Biglow, a shrewd but uneducated village poet who argues for reform in dialect poetry. Benjamin Franklin and Philip Freneau had used intelligent villagers as mouthpieces for social commentary. Lowell writes in the same vein, linking the colonial "character" tradition with the new realism and regionalism based on dialect that flowered in the 1850s and came to fruition in Mark Twain. 3.6. The Rise of Realism (1860-1914) 187

The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South was a watershed in American history. The innocent optimism of the young democratic nation gave way, after the war, to a period of exhaustion. American idealism remained but was rechanneled. Before the war, idealists championed human rights, especially the abolition of slavery; after the war, Americans increasingly idealized progress and the selfmade man. This was the era of the millionaire manufacturer and the speculator, when Darwinian evolution and the "survival of the fittest" seemed to sanction the sometimes unethical methods of the successful business tycoon. Business boomed after the war. War production had boosted industry in the North and given it prestige and political clout. It also gave industrial leaders valuable experience in the management of men and machines. The enormous natural resources -- iron, coal, oil, gold, and silver -- of the American land benefitted business. The new intercontinental rail system, inaugurated in 1869, and the transcontinental telegraph, which began operating in 1861, gave industry access to materials, markets, and communications. The constant influx of immigrants provided a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive labor as well. Over 23 million foreigners German, Scandinavian, and Irish in the early years, and increasingly Central and Southern Europeans thereafter -- flowed into the United States between 1860 and 1910. Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino contract laborers were imported by Hawaiian plantation owners, railroad companies, and other American business interests on the West Coast. In 1860, most Americans lived on farms or in small villages, but by 1919 half of the population was concentrated in about 12 cities. Problems of urbanization and industrialization appeared: poor and overcrowded housing, unsanitary conditions, low pay (called "wage slavery"), difficult working conditions, and inadequate restraints on business. Labor unions grew, and strikes brought the plight of working people to national awareness. Farmers, too, saw themselves struggling against the "money interests" of the East, the so-called robber barons like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. Their eastern banks tightly controlled mortgages and credit so vital to western development and agriculture, while railroad companies charged high prices to transport farm products to the cities. The farmer gradually became an object of ridicule, lampooned as an unsophisticated "hick" or "rube." The ideal American of the postCivil War period became the millionaire. In 1860, there were fewer than 100 millionaires; by 1875, there were more than 1,000. From 1860 to 1914, the United States was transformed from a small, young, agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern, industrial nation. A debtor nation in 1860, by 1914 it had become the world's wealthiest state, with a population that had more than doubled, rising from 31 million in 1860 to 76 million in 1900. By World War I, the United States had become a major world power. As industrialization grew, so did alienation. Characteristic American novels of the period Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of These Streets, Jack London's Martin Eden, and later Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual. Survivors, like Twain's Huck Finn, Humphrey Vanderveyden in London's The Sea Wolf, and Dreiser's opportunistic Sister Carrie, endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality. Two major literary currents in 19th-century America merged in Mark Twain: popular frontier humor and local color, or "regionalism." These related literary approaches began in the 1830s - and had even earlier roots in local oral traditions. In ragged frontier villages, on riverboats, in mining camps, and around cowboy campfires far from city amusements, storytelling flourished. Exaggeration, tall tales, incredible boasts, and comic workingmen 188

heroes enlivened frontier literature. These humorous forms were found in many frontier regions - in the "old Southwest" (the present-day inland South and the lower Midwest), the mining frontier, and the Pacific Coast. Each region had its colorful characters around whom stories collected: Mike Fink, the Mississippi riverboat brawler; Casey Jones, the brave railroad engineer; John Henry, the steel-driving African-American; Paul Bunyan, the giant logger whose fame was helped along by advertising; westerners Kit Carson, the Indian fighter, and Davy Crockett, the scout. Their exploits were exaggerated and enhanced in ballads, newspapers, and magazines. Sometimes, as with Kit Carson and Davy Crockett, these stories were strung together into book form. Twain, Faulkner, and many other writers, particularly southerners, are indebted to frontier pre-Civil War humorists such as Johnson Hooper, George Washington Harris, Augustus Longstreet, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and Joseph Baldwin. From them and the American frontier folk came the wild proliferation of comical new American words: "absquatulate" (leave), "flabbergasted" (amazed), "rampagious" (unruly, rampaging). Local boasters, or "ring-tailed roarers," who asserted they were half horse, half alligator, also underscored the boundless energy of the frontier. They drew strength from natural hazards that would terrify lesser men. "I'm a regular tornado," one swelled, "tough as hickory and longwinded as a nor'wester. I can strike a blow like a falling tree, and every lick makes a gap in the crowd that lets in an acre of sunshine." Like frontier humor, local color writing has old roots but produced its best works long after the Civil War. Obviously, many pre-war writers, from Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne to John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell, paint striking portraits of specific American regions. What sets the colorists like Bret Harte apart is their selfconscious and exclusive interest in rendering a given location, and their scrupulously factual, realistic technique. Several women writers are remembered for their fine depictions of New England: Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), and especially Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909). Jewett's originality, exact observation of her Maine characters and setting, and sensitive style are best seen in her fine story "The White Heron" in Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). Harriet Beecher Stowe's local color works, especially The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), depicting humble Maine fishing communities, greatly influenced Jewett. Nineteenthcentury women writers formed their own networks of moral support and influence, as their letters show. Women made up the major audience for fiction, and many women wrote popular novels, poems, and humorous pieces. All regions of the country celebrated themselves in writing influenced by local color. Some of it included social protest, especially toward the end of the century, when social inequality and economic hardship were particularly pressing issues. Racial injustice and inequality between the sexes appear in the works of southern writers such as George Washington Cable (1844-1925) and Kate Chopin (1851-1904), whose powerful novels set in Cajun/French Louisiana transcend the local color label. Cable's The Grandissimes (1880) treats racial injustice with great artistry; like Kate Chopin's daring novel The Awakening (1899), about a woman's doomed attempt to find her own identity through passion, it was ahead of its time. In The Awakening, a young married woman with attractive children and an indulgent and successful husband gives up family, money, respectability, and eventually her life in search of self-realization. Poetic evocations of ocean, birds (caged and freed), and music endow this short novel with unusual intensity and complexity.

189

Often paired with The Awakening is the fine story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). Both works were forgotten for a time, but rediscovered by feminist literary critics late in the 20th century. In Gilman's story, a condescending doctor drives his wife mad by confining her in a room to "cure" her of nervous exhaustion. The imprisoned wife projects her entrapment onto the wallpaper, in the design of which she sees imprisoned women creeping behind bars. Mark Twain (1835-1910) Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Ernest Hemingway's famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, indicates this author's towering place in the tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious - partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm. For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Thus it was profoundly liberating and potentially at odds with society. The most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law. Twain's masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg. The son of an alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable family when his father, in a drunken stupor, threatens to kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck escapes, feigning his own death. He is joined in his escape by another outcast, the slave Jim, whose owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him down the river to the harsher slavery of the deep South. Huck and Jim float on a raft down the majestic Mississippi, but are sunk by a steamboat, separated, and later reunited. They go through many comical and dangerous shore adventures that show the variety, generosity, and sometimes cruel irrationality of society. In the end, it is discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a respectable family is taking care of the wild boy Huck. But Huck grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape to "the territories" - Indian lands. The ending gives the reader the counter-version of the classic American success myth: the open road leading to the pristine wilderness, away from the morally corrupting influences of "civilization." Huckleberry Finn has inspired countless literary interpretations. Clearly, the novel is a story of death, rebirth, and initiation. The escaped slave, Jim, becomes a father figure for Huck; in deciding to save Jim, Huck grows morally beyond the bounds of his slave-owning society. It is Jim's adventures that initiate Huck into the complexities of human nature and give him moral courage. The novel also dramatizes Twain's ideal of the harmonious community: "What you want, above all things, on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind toward the others." Like Melville's ship the Pequod, the raft sinks, and with it that special community. The pure, simple world of the raft is ultimately overwhelmed by progress - the steamboat - but the mythic image of the river remains, as vast and changing as life itself. The unstable relationship between reality and illusion is Twain's characteristic theme, the basis of much of his humor. The magnificent yet deceptive, constantly changing river is also 190

the main feature of his imaginative landscape. In "Life on the MIssissippi", Twain recalls his training as a young steamboat pilot when he writes: "I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the chief." Twain's moral sense as a writer echoes his pilot's responsibility to steer the ship to safety. Samuel Clemens's pen name, "Mark Twain," is the phrase Mississippi boatmen used to signify two fathoms (3.6 meters) of water, the depth needed for a boat's safe passage. Twain's serious purpose, combined with a rare genius for humor and style, keep his writing fresh and appealing. Stephen Crane (1871-1900) Stephen Crane, born in New Jersey, had roots going back to Revolutionary War soldiers, clergymen, sheriffs, judges, and farmers who had lived a century earlier. Primarily a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays, Crane saw life at its rawest, in slums and on battlefields. His short stories -- in particular, "The Open Boat," "The Blue Hotel," and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" -- exemplified that literary form. His haunting Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was published to great acclaim in 1895, but he barely had time to bask in the attention before he died, at 29, having neglected his health. He was virtually forgotten during the first two decades of the 20th century, but was resurrected through a laudatory biography by Thomas Beer in 1923. He has enjoyed continued success ever since -as a champion of the common man, a realist, and a symbolist. Crane's "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" (1893) is one of the best, if not the earliest, naturalistic American novels. It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive young girl whose uneducated, alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love and eager to escape her violent home life, she allows herself to be seduced into living with a young man, who soon deserts her. When her self-righteous mother rejects her, Maggie becomes a prostitute to survive, but soon commits suicide out of despair. Crane's earthy subject matter and his objective, scientific style, devoid of moralizing, earmark Maggie as a naturalist work. 3.6.1. Midwestern Realism For many years, the editor of the important Atlantic Monthly magazine, William Dean Howells (1837-1920), published realistic local color writing by Bret Harte, Mark Twain, George Washington Cable, and others. He was the champion of realism, and his novels, such as A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), carefully interweave social circumstances with the emotions of ordinary middle-class Americans. Love, ambition, idealism, and temptation motivate his characters; Howells was acutely aware of the moral corruption of business tycoons during the Gilded Age of the 1870s. Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham uses an ironic title to make this point. Silas Lapham became rich by cheating an old business partner; and his immoral act deeply disturbed his family, though for years Lapham could not see that he had acted improperly. In the end, Lapham is morally redeemed, choosing bankruptcy rather than unethical success. Silas Lapham is, like Huckleberry Finn, an unsuccess story: Lapham's business fall is his moral rise. Toward the end of his life, Howells, like Twain, became increasingly active in political causes, defending the rights of labor union organizers and deploring American colonialism in the Philippines. 3.7. Cosmopolitan Novelists 191

Wharton's and James's dissections of hidden sexual and financial motivations at work in society link them with writers who seem superficially quite different: Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair. Like the cosmopolitan novelists, but much more explicitly, these naturalists used realism to relate the individual to society. Often they exposed social problems and were influenced by Darwinian thought and the related philosophical doctrine of determinism, which views individuals as the helpless pawns of economic and social forces beyond their control. Naturalism is essentially a literary expression of determinism. Associated with bleak, realistic depictions of lower-class life, determinism denies religion as a motivating force in the world and instead perceives the universe as a machine. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers had also imagined the world as a machine, but as a perfect one, invented by God and tending toward progress and human betterment. Naturalists imagined society, instead, as a blind machine, godless and out of control. The 19th-century American historian Henry Adams constructed an elaborate theory of history involving the idea of the dynamo, or machine force, and entropy, or decay of force. Instead of progress, Adams sees inevitable decline in human society. Stephen Crane, the son of a clergyman, put the loss of God most succinctly: A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." Like Romanticism, naturalism first appeared in Europe. It is usually traced to the works of Honor de Balzac in the 1840s and seen as a French literary movement associated with Gustave Flaubert, Edmond and Jules Goncourt, mile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant. It daringly opened up the seamy underside of society and such topics as divorce, sex, adultery, poverty, and crime. Naturalism flourished as Americans became urbanized and aware of the importance of large economic and social forces. By 1890, the frontier was declared officially closed. Most Americans resided in towns, and business dominated even remote farmsteads. The great tradition of American investigative journalism had its beginning in this period, during which national magazines such as McLures and Collier's published Ida M. Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), Lincoln Steffens's The Shame of the Cities (1904), and other hard-hitting exposs. Muckraking novels used eye-catching journalistic techniques to depict harsh working conditions and oppression. Populist Frank Norris's "The Octopus" (1901) exposed big railroad companies, while socialist Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (1906) painted the squalor of the Chicago meat-packing houses. Jack London's dystopia "The Iron Hill" (1908) anticipates George Orwell's 1984 in predicting a class war and the takeover of the government. Another more artistic response was the realistic portrait, or group of portraits, of ordinary characters and their frustrated inner lives. The collection of stories Main-Travelled Roads (1891), by William Dean Howells's protg, Hamlin Garland (1860-1940), is a portrait gallery of ordinary people. It shockingly depicted the poverty of midwestern farmers who were demanding agricultural reforms. The title suggests the many trails westward that the hardy pioneers followed and the dusty main streets of the villages they settled.

192

Close to Garland's "Main-Travelled Roads" is "Winesburg, Ohio", by Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), begun in 1916. This is a loose collection of stories about residents of the fictitious town of Winesburg seen through the eyes of a nave young newspaper reporter, George Willard, who eventually leaves to seek his fortune in the city. Like "Main-Travelled Roads" and other naturalistic works of the period, "Winesburg, Ohio" emphasizes the quiet poverty, loneliness, and despair in small-town America. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) The nineth child of German immigrants, he experienced considerable poverty while a child, and at the age of fifteen he was forced to leave home in search for work. The 1925 work "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser, like London's Martin Eden, explores the dangers of the American dream. The novel relates, in great detail, the life of Clyde Griffiths, a boy of weak will and little self-awareness. He grows up in great poverty in a family of wandering evangelists, but dreams of wealth and the love of beautiful women. A rich uncle employs him in his factory. When his girlfriend Roberta becomes pregnant, she demands that he marry her. Meanwhile, Clyde has fallen in love with a wealthy society girl who represents success, money, and social acceptance. Clyde carefully plans to drown Roberta on a boat trip, but at the last minute he begins to change his mind; however, she accidentally falls out of the boat. Clyde, a good swimmer, does not save her, and she drowns. As Clyde is brought to justice, Dreiser replays his story in reverse, masterfully using the vantage points of prosecuting and defense attorneys to analyze each step and motive that led the mild-mannered Clyde, with a highly religious background and good family connections, to commit murder. Despite his awkward style, Dreiser displays a crushing authority. Its precise details build up an overwhelming sense of tragic inevitability. The novel is a scathing portrait of the American success myth gone sour, but it is also a universal story about the stresses of urbanization, modernization, and alienation. Within it roam the romantic and dangerous fantasies of the dispossessed. An American Tragedy is a reflection of the dissatisfaction, envy, and despair that afflicted many poor and working people in America's competitive, success-driven society. As American industrial power soared, the glittering lives of the wealthy in newspapers and photographs sharply contrasted with the drab lives of ordinary farmers and city workers. The media fanned rising expectations and unreasonable desires. Such problems, common to modernizing nations, gave rise to muckraking journalism - penetrating investigative reporting that documented social problems and provided an important impetus to social reform. He joined the American Communist Party in 1945, before he died. Henry James (1843-1916) Henry James once wrote that art, especially literary art, "makes life, makes interest, makes importance." James's fiction and criticism is the most highly conscious, sophisticated, and difficult of its era. With Twain, James is generally ranked as the greatest American novelist of the second half of the 19th century. James is noted for his "international theme" -- that is, the complex relationships between nave Americans and cosmopolitan Europeans. What his biographer Leon Edel calls James's first, or "international," phase encompassed such works as "Transatlantic Sketches" (travel pieces, 1875), "The American" (1877), "Daisy Miller" (1879), and a masterpiece, "The Portrait of a Lady" (1881). In "The American", for example, Christopher Newman, a naive but intelligent and idealistic self-made millionaire industrialist, goes to Europe seeking a bride. When her

193

family rejects him because he lacks an aristocratic background, he has a chance to revenge himself; in deciding not to, he demonstrates his moral superiority. James's second period was experimental. He exploited new subject matters -- feminism and social reform in "The Bostonians" (1886) and political intrigue in "The Princess Casamassima" (1885). He also attempted to write for the theater, but failed embarrassingly when his play "Guy Domville" (1895) was booed on the first night. In his third, or "major," phase James returned to international subjects, but treated them with increasing sophistication and psychological penetration. The complex and almost mythical "The Wings of the Dove" (1902), "The Ambassadors" (1903) (which James felt was his best novel), and "The Golden Bowl" (1904) date from this major period. If the main theme of Twain's work is appearance and reality, James's constant concern is perception. In James, only self-awareness and clear perception of others yields wisdom and self-sacrificing love. As James develops, his novels become more psychological and less concerned with external events. In James's later works, the most important events are all psychological -- usually moments of intense illumination that show characters their previous blindness. For example, in "The Ambassadors", the idealistic, aging Lambert Strether uncovers a secret love affair and, in doing so, discovers a new complexity to his inner life. His rigid, upright, morality is humanized and enlarged as he discovers a capacity to accept those who have sinned. Jack London (1876-1916) A poor, self-taught worker from California, the naturalist Jack London was catapulted from poverty to fame by his first collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf (1900), set largely in the Klondike region of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Other of his best-sellers, including "The Call of the Wild" (1903) and "The Sea Wolf" (1904) made him the highest paid writer in the United States of his time. The autobiographical novel "Martin Eden" (1909) depicts the inner stresses of the American dream as London experienced them during his meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth and fame. Eden, an impoverished but intelligent and hardworking sailor and laborer, is determined to become a writer. Eventually, his writing makes him rich and well-known, but Eden realizes that the woman he loves cares only for his money and fame. His despair over her inability to love causes him to lose faith in human nature. He also suffers from class alienation, for he no longer belongs to the working class, while he rejects the materialistic values of the wealthy whom he worked so hard to join. He sails for the South Pacific and commits suicide by jumping into the sea. Like many of the best novels of its time, Martin Eden is an unsuccess story. It looks ahead to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in its revelation of despair amid great wealth. Edith Wharton (1862-1937) Edith Wharton grew up partly in Europe and eventually made her home there. She was descended from a wealthy, established family in New York society and saw firsthand the decline of this cultivated group and, in her view, the rise of boorish, nouveau-riche business families. This social transformation is the background of many of her novels. Like James, Wharton contrasts Americans and Europeans. The core of her concern is the gulf separating social reality and the inner self. Often a sensitive character feels trapped by unfeeling characters or social forces. Edith Wharton had personally experienced such entrapment as a

194

young writer suffering a long nervous breakdown partly due to the conflict in roles between writer and wife. Wharton's best novels include "The House of Mirth" (1905), "The Custom of the Country" (1913), "Summer" (1917), "The Age of Innicence" (1920), and the beautifully crafted novella "Ethan Frome" (1911). Benjamin Franklin Norris (1870-1902) He is the United States' first important naturalist writer. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A California Story, and The Pit . Although he did not support as a political system, his work nevertheless evinces a socialist mentality and influenced socialist/progressive writers such as Upton Sinclair. Like many of his contemporaries, he was profoundly influenced by the event of Darwinism, and Thomas Henry Huxley's philiosophical defense of it. Through many of his novels, notably McTeague, runs a preoccupation with the notion of the civilised man overcoming the inner "brute", his animalistic tendencies. His peculiar, and often confused, brand of Social Darwinism also bears the influence of the early criminologist Cesare Lombroso. Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870, and moved to San Francisco at the age of fourteen. He later became a member of San Francisco's artistic Bohemian Club, which included such literary notables as Jack London and Ambrose Bierce. He studied painting in Paris for two years, where he was exposed to the naturalist novels of Emile Zola. He attended the University of California, Berkeley between 1890 and 1894 and then spent a (reputedly dissolute) year at Harvard University. While attending U of C was a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta. He worked as a news correspondent in South Africa in 189596, and then an editorial assistant on the San Francisco Wave (189697). He worked for McClure's Magazine as a war correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American war in 1898. He joined the New York City publishing firm of Doubleday & Page in 1899. In 1900 Frank Norris married Jeanette Black. They had a child in 1901. Norris died in 1902 of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, leaving his young wife and baby and leaving The Epic of Wheat trilogy unfinished. He was only 32. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. Norris' McTeague was made into a 1924 film called Greed by director Erich von Stroheim, which is today considered a classic of silent cinema. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) American novelist, essayist, playwright, and short story writer, whose most famous book is The Jungle (1906). Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland. His family came from the ruined Southern aristocracy. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed Sinclair's childhood. When Sinclair was ten, the family moved to New York. He started to write dime novels at the age of 15 and produced ethnic jokes and hack fiction for pulp magazines to finance his studies at New York City College. In 1897 he enrolled Columbia University, determined to succeed while producing one poorly paid novelette per week. During these years he wrote stories for various boys' weeklies. In 1900 Sinclair married his first wife (they divorced in 1911). The unhappy marriage led to the writing of Springtime and Harvest (1901). By 1904 Sinclair was moving toward realistic fiction. As a writer Sinclair gained fame in 1906 with the novel The Jungle, a report on the dirty conditions in the Chicago meatpacking industry. The book won Sinclair fame and fortune, and led to the implementation

195

of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Its proceeds enabled Sinclair to establish and support the socialist commune Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, N.J. However, this commune for left-wing writers burnt down after a year. The Jungle set the tone for Sinclair's later works. It was followed by studies of a group, an industry, or a region, among others The Metropolis (1908), an exploration of fashionable New York society, King Coal (1917), a story about Colorado miner's strike of 1914, Oil! (1927), and Boston (1928), depictions of the SaccoVanzetti case, that caused widespread outrage in the 1920s. In Jimmie Higgins (1919) Sinclair portrayed the dilemma of American leftists who felt temporarily obliged to support the ruling classes of England and France during the World War I. From 1915 Sinclair lived in Pasadena, California and later in Buckeye, Arizona. He had joined the Socialist Party at the age of 24. In 1934 he ran for the governor of California, but failed to be elected. He spent the decade largely in other activities than writing novels: he experimented with telepathy and ran for political office. Sinclair regained his reading audience in the 1940s with his 'Lanny Budd' series, consisting of 11 contemporary historical novels. The first novel in the series, World's End (1940) narrates the events of Budd's life between 1913 and 1919. Dragon's Teeth (1942), which dealt with Germany's descent into Nazism during 1930s to 1934, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1943. The final novel, The Return of Lanny Budd (1953) deals with hostile sentiment in the USA toward post-war Soviet Russia. From Pasadena Sinclair suddenly moved in 1953 to a remote Arizona village of Buckeye. His second wife, whom he married in 1913, predeceased him in 1961, as did his third wife, in 1967. Sinclair died on November 25, 1968. 3.8. Chicago School of Poetry Three Midwestern poets who grew up in Illinois and shared the midwestern concern with ordinary people are Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters. Their poetry often concerns obscure individuals; they developed techniques -- realism, dramatic renderings - that reached out to a larger readership. They are part of the Midwestern, or Chicago, School that arose before World War I to challenge the East Coast literary establishment. The "Chicago Renaissance" was a watershed in American culture: It demonstrated that America's interior had matured. Edgar Lee Masters By the turn of the century, Chicago had become a great city, home of innovative architecture and cosmopolitan art collections. Chicago was also the home of Harriet Monroe's Poetry, the most important literary magazine of the day. Among the intriguing contemporary poets the journal printed was Edgar Lee Masters, author of the daring "Spoon River Anthology" (1915), with its new "unpoetic" colloquial style, frank presentation of sex, critical view of village life, and intensely imagined inner lives of ordinary people. "Spoon River Anthology" is a collection of portraits presented as colloquial epitaphs (words found inscribed on gravestones) summing up the lives of individual villagers as if in their own words. It presents a panorama of a country village through its cemetery: 250 people buried there speak, revealing their deepest secrets. Many of the people are related; members of about 20 families speak of their failures and dreams in free-verse monologues that are surprisingly modern. Edwin Arlington Robinson is the best U.S. poet of the late 19th century. He is known for short, ironic character studies of ordinary individuals. Unlike Masters, Robinson uses traditional

196

metrics. Robinson's imaginary Tilbury Town, like Masters's Spoon River, contains lives of quiet desperation. Some of the best known of Robinson's dramatic monologues are "Luke Havergal" (1896), about a forsaken lover; "Miniver Cheevy" (1910), a portrait of a romantic dreamer; and (1896), a somber portrait of a wealthy man who commits suicide: "Richard Cory" takes its place alongside "Martin Eden", "An American Tragedy", and "The Great Gatsby" as a powerful warning against the overblown success myth that had come to plague Americans in the era of the millionaire. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) A friend once said, "Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black-and-white snapshot." Poet, historian, biographer, novelist, musician, essayist - Sandburg, son of a railroad blacksmith, was all of these and more. A journalist by profession, he wrote a massive biography of Abraham Lincoln that is one of the classic works of the 20th century. To many, Sandburg was a latter-day Walt Whitman, writing expansive, evocative urban and patriotic poems and simple, childlike rhymes and ballads. He traveled about reciting and recording his poetry, in a lilting, mellifluously toned voice that was a kind of singing. At heart he was totally unassuming, notwithstanding his national fame. What he wanted from life, he once said, was "to be out of jail...to eat regular...to get what I write printed,...a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon over the American landscape,...(and) to sing every day." A fine example of his themes and his Whitmanesque style is the poem "Chicago" (1914): Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders... 3.9. Regional Novelists Novelists Ellen Glasgow and Willa Cather explored women's lives, placed in brilliantly evoked regional settings. Neither novelist set out to address specifically female issues; their early works usually treat male protagonists, and only as they gained artistic confidence and maturity did they turn to depictions of women's lives. Glasgow and Cather can only be regarded as "women writers" in a descriptive sense, for their works resist categorization. 3.10. Black American Literature The literary achievement of African-Americans was one of the most striking literary developments of the post-Civil War era. In the writings of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and others, the roots of black American writing took hold, notably in the forms of autobiography, protest literature, sermons, poetry, and song. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Booker T. Washington, educator and the most prominent black leader of his day, grew up as a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, born to a white slave-holding father and a slave 197

mother. His fine, simple autobiography, Up From Slavery (1901), recounts his successful struggle to better himself. He became renowned for his efforts to improve the lives of AfricanAmericans; his policy of accommodation with whites - an attempt to involve the recently freed black American in the mainstream of American society - was outlined in his famous Atlanta Exposition Address (1895). 3.11. Modernism and Experiment Many historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States' traumatic "coming of age," despite the fact that U.S. direct involvement was relatively brief (1917-1918) and its casualties many fewer than those of its European allies and foes. John Dos Passos expressed America's postwar disillusionment in the novel Three Soldiers (1921), when he noted that civilization was a "vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest and most ultimate expression." Shocked and permanently changed, Americans returned to their homeland but could never regain their innocence. Nor could soldiers from rural America easily return to their roots. After experiencing the world, many now yearned for a modern, urban life. New farm machines such as planters, harvesters, and binders had drastically reduced the demand for farm jobs; yet despite their increased productivity, farmers were poor. Crop prices, like urban workers' wages, depended on unrestrained market forces heavily influenced by business interests: Government subsidies for farmers and effective workers' unions had not yet become established. "The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed in 1925, and most agreed. In the postwar "Big Boom," business flourished, and the successful prospered beyond their wildest dreams. For the first time, many Americans enrolled in higher education - in the 1920s college enrollment doubled. The middle-class prospered; Americans began to enjoy the world's highest national average income in this era, and many people purchased the ultimate status symbol - an automobile. The typical urban American home glowed with electric lights and boasted a radio that connected the house with the outside world, and perhaps a telephone, a camera, a typewriter, or a sewing machine. Like the businessman protagonist of Sinclair Lewis's novel "Bobbit" (1922), the average American approved of these machines because they were modern and because most were American inventions and American-made. Americans of the "Roaring Twenties" fell in love with other modern entertainments. Most people went to the movies once a week. Although Prohibition - a nationwide ban on the production, transport, and sale of alcohol instituted through the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - began in 1919, underground "speakeasies" and nightclubs proliferated, featuring jazz music, cocktails, and daring modes of dress and dance. Dancing, moviegoing, automobile touring, and radio were national crazes. American women, in particular, felt liberated. Many had left farms and villages for homefront duty in American cities during World War I, and had become resolutely modern. They cut their hair short ("bobbed"), wore short "flapper" dresses, and gloried in the right to vote assured by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1920. They boldly spoke their mind and took public roles in society. Western youths were rebelling, angry and disillusioned with the savage war, the older generation they held responsible, and difficult postwar economic conditions that, ironically, allowed Americans with dollars - like writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound - to live abroad handsomely on very little money. Intellectual currents, particularly Freudian psychology and to a lesser extent Marxism (like the earlier Darwinian theory of evolution), implied a "godless" world view and contributed to the breakdown of 198

traditional values. Americans abroad absorbed these views and brought them back to the United States where they took root, firing the imagination of young writers and artists. William Faulkner, for example, a 20th-century American novelist, employed Freudian elements in all his works, as did virtually all serious American fiction writers after World War I. Despite outward gaiety, modernity, and unparalleled material prosperity, young Americans of the 1920s were "the lost generation" - so named by literary portraitist Gertrude Stein. Without a stable, traditional structure of values, the individual lost a sense of identity. The secure, supportive family life; the familiar, settled community; the natural and eternal rhythms of nature that guide the planting and harvesting on a farm; the sustaining sense of patriotism; moral values inculcated by religious beliefs and observations - all seemed undermined by World War I and its aftermath. Numerous novels, notably Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" (1926) and Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" (1920), evoke the extravagance and disillusionment of the lost generation. In T.S. Eliot's influential long poem "The Waste Land" (1922), Western civilization is symbolized by a bleak desert in desperate need of rain (spiritual renewal). The world depression of the 1930s affected most of the population of the United States. Workers lost their jobs, and factories shut down; businesses and banks failed; farmers, unable to harvest, transport, or sell their crops, could not pay their debts and lost their farms. Midwestern droughts turned the "breadbasket" of America into a dust bowl. Many farmers left the Midwest for California in search of jobs, as vividly described in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939). At the peak of the Depression, one-third of all Americans were out of work. Soup kitchens, shanty towns, and armies of hobos - unemployed men illegally riding freight trains -became part of national life. Many saw the Depression as a punishment for sins of excessive materialism and loose living. The dust storms that blackened the midwestern sky, they believed, constituted an Old Testament judgment: the "whirlwind by day and the darkness at noon." The Depression turned the world upside down. The United States had preached a gospel of business in the 1920s; now, many Americans supported a more active role for government in the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Federal money created jobs in public works, conservation, and rural electrification. Artists and intellectuals were paid to create murals and state handbooks. These remedies helped, but only the industrial build-up of World War II renewed prosperity. After Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, disused shipyards and factories came to bustling life mass-producing ships, airplanes, jeeps, and supplies. War production and experimentation led to new technologies, including the nuclear bomb. Witnessing the first experimental nuclear blast, Robert Oppenheimer, leader of an international team of nuclear scientists, prophetically quoted a Hindu poem: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) Born into a fairly well-to-do family in St Paul, Minnesota in 1896 Fitzgerald attended, but never graduated from Princeton University. Here he mingled with the monied classes from the Eastern Seaboard who so obsessed him for the rest of his life. In 1917 he was drafted into the army, but he never saw active service abroad. Instead, he spent much of his time writing and re-writing his first novel This Side of Paradise, which on its publication in 1920 became an instant success. In the same year he married the beautiful Zelda Sayre and together they embarked on a rich life of endless parties. Dividing their time between America and fashionable resorts in Europe, the Fitzgeralds became as famous for their lifestyle as for the novels he wrote. Fitzgerald once said 'Sometimes I don't know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels'. He followed his first success with The Beautiful and the 199

Damned (1922), and The Great Gatsby (1925) which Fitzgerald considered his masterpiece. It was also at this time that Fitzgerald wrote many of his short stories which helped to pay for his extravagant lifestyle. The bubble burst in the 1930s when Zelda became increasingly troubled by mental illness. Tender is the Night (1934), the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole, goes some way to show the pain that Fitzgerald felt. The book was not well received in America and he turned to script-writing in Hollywood for the final three years of his life. It was at this time he wrote the autobiographical essays collected posthumously in The Crack-Up and his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. He died in 1940. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Few writers have lived as colorfully as Ernest Hemingway, whose career could have come out of one his adventurous novels. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he volunteered for an ambulance unit in France during, but was wounded and hospitalized for six months. After the war, as a war correspondent based in Paris, he met expatriate American writers Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. Stein, in particular, influenced his spare style the, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution. During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). He covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the fighting in China in the 1940s. Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat (Pulitzer Prize in 1953). Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Discouraged by a troubled family background, illness, and the belief that he was losing his gift for writing, Hemingway shot himself to death in 1961. Hemingway is arguably the most popular American novelist of this century. His sympathies are basically apolitical and humanistic, and in this sense he is universal. His simple style makes his novels easy to comprehend, and they are often set in exotic surroundings. A believer in the "cult of experience," Hemingway often involved his characters in dangerous situations in order to reveal their inner natures; in his later works, the danger sometimes becomes an occasion for masculine assertion. Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway became a spokesperson for his generation. But instead of painting its fatal glamour as did Fitzgerald, who never fought in World War I, Hemingway wrote of war, death, and the "lost generation" of cynical survivors. His characters are not dreamers but tough bullfighters, soldiers, and athletes. If intellectual, they are deeply scarred and disillusioned.

200

His hallmark is a clean style devoid of unnecessary words. Often he uses understatement: In "A Farewell to Arms" (1929) the heroine dies in childbirth saying "I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick." He once compared his writing to icebergs: "There is seveneighths of it under water for every part that shows." Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972) Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho. He was brought up in Wyncote, Philadelphia, where his father was assistant assayer for the US Mint. He studied languages at the University of Pennsylvania, and befriended there the young William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), who gained later fame as a poet in New York's avant-garde circles. From 1903 to 1906 Pound studied Anglo-Saxon and Romance languages at Hamilton College. In 1907 his teaching career was cut short at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, when he had entertained an actress in his room. In 1908 he travelled widely in Europe, working as a journalist. His first book of poems, "A Lume Spento" appeared in 1908. After its publication Pound settled in London, where he founded with Richard Aldington (1892-1962) and others the literary 'Imagism', and edited its first anthology, Des Imagistes (1914). The movement was influenced by thoughts of Rmy de Gourmont whose book, The Natural Philosophy of Love (1904), Pound translated later, and T.E. Hulme (1883-1917), who stressed the importance of fresh language and true perception on nature. Pound soon lost interest in Imagism, and after disputing with the poet Amy Lowell, Pound called the movement "Amygism." With Wyndham Lewis and the sculptor Henri GaudierBrzeska he founded 'Vorticism', which produced a magazine, Blast. He helped Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to publish their works in the magazines Egoist and Poetry. When he worked as W.B. Yeats's secretary, he started a correspondece with Joyce. Pound wrote on Joyce on various magazines, collected money for him, and even sent spare clothes for him. Pound also played crucial role in the cutting of Eliot's The Waste Land. Eliot dedicated to work to him, as il miglior fabbro (the better maker). In 1914 Pound married the artist Dorothy Shakespear. After a vacation in Egypt, Dorothy conceived in 1926 a child, Omar. In 1922 Pound started his relationship with the violinist Olga Rudge, with whom he had a daughter, born five months before Omar. From this period date one of Pound's most widely read poems, "Homage to Sextus Propertius" (1919). Pound has been called the 'inventor' of Chinese poetry for our time. Beginning in 1913 with the notebooks of the Orientalist Ernest Fenollosa, he pursued a lifelong study of ancient Chinese texts, and translated among others the writings of Confucius. Pound's translations based on Fenollosa's notes, collected in Cathay (1915), are considered among the most beautiful of Pound's writings. Dante and Homer became other sources for inspiration, and especially Dante's journey through the realms have parallels with his examination of individual experiences in the Cantos. In 1920 Pound moved to Paris. Four years later he settled in Italy, where he lived over 20 years. He met Mussolini in 1933 and saw in him the long-needed economic and social reformer. In his anti-Semitic statements Pound agreed with those who believed that the economic system was being exploited by Jewish financiers. During World War II he made in Rome a series of radio broadcasts, that were openly fascist. In 1945 he was arrested by the U.S. forces - he was still and American citizen - and pronounced insane in a trial. Pound spent 12 years in Washington, D.C., in a hospital for the criminally insane. During this period he received the 1949 Bollingen Prize for his Pisan Cantos, which concerned his imprisonment at the camp near Pisa. After he was released, he returned to Italy, where he spent his remaining years. Pound died on November 1, 1972 in Venice. According to Katherine Anne Porter, 201

"Pound was one of the most opinionated and unselfish men who ever lived, and he made friends and enemies everywhere by the simple exercise of the classic American constitutional right of free speech." (The Letters of E.P., 1907-1941, review in New York Times Book Review, 29 Oct. 1950) Pound published over 70 books and translated Japanese plays and Chinese poetry. The Cantos, a series of poems which he wrote from 1920s throughout his life, are considered among his best works. In the Cantos Pound recorded the poet's spiritual quest for transcendence, and intellectual search for worldly wisdom. However, he did not try to imitate classical epic, but had several heroes insted of one, and projected his own self into his characters. His models were Dante's La divina commedia (c. 1320) and Robert Browning's confessional poem Sordello (1840). Pound also presents mythical, historical, and contemporary figures, mirroring the poetry and ideas of the past and present. As an essayist Pound wrote mostly about poetry. From the mid-1920s he examined in several writings the ways economic systems promote or debase culture. Pound hoped, that fascism could establish the sort of society in which the arts could flourish. He argued that poetry is not 'entertainment', and as an elitist he did not appreciate the common reader. Pound considered American culture isolated from the traditions that make the arts possible, and depicted Walt Whitman as 'exceedingly nauseating pill'. 3.12. Post-Modernism The large cultural wave of Modernism, which gradually emerged in Europe and the United States in the early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of modern life through art as a sharp break from the past, as well as from Western civilization's classical traditions. Modern life seemed radically different from traditional life - more scientific, faster, more technological, and more mechanized. Modernism embraced these changes. In literature, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) developed an analogue to modern art. A resident of Paris and an art collector (she and her brother Leo purchased works of the artists Paul Czanne, Paul Gauguin, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, and many others), Stein once explained that she and Picasso were doing the same thing, he in art and she in writing. Using simple, concrete words as counters, she developed an abstract, experimental prose poetry. The childlike quality of Stein's simple vocabulary recalls the bright, primary colors of modern art, while her repetitions echo the repeated shapes of abstract visual compositions. By dislocating grammar and punctuation, she achieved new "abstract" meanings as in her influential collection "Tender Buttons" (1914), which views objects from different angles, as in a cubist painting: Meaning, in Stein's work, was often subordinated to technique, just as subject was less important than shape in abstract visual art. Subject and technique became inseparable in both the visual and literary art of the period. The idea of form as the equivalent of content, a cornerstone of post-World War II art and literature, crystallized in this period. Technological innovation in the world of factories and machines inspired new attentiveness to technique in the arts. To take one example: Light, particularly electrical light, fascinated modern artists and writers. Posters and advertisements of the period are full of images of floodlit skyscrapers and light rays shooting out from automobile headlights, moviehouses, and watchtowers to illumine a forbidding outer darkness suggesting ignorance and old-fashioned tradition.

202

Photography began to assume the status of a fine art allied with the latest scientific developments. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz opened a salon in New York City, and by 1908 he was showing the latest European works, including pieces by Picasso and other European friends of Gertrude Stein. Stieglitz's salon influenced numerous writers and artists, including William Carlos Williams, who was one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. Williams cultivated a photographic clarity of image; his aesthetic dictum was "no ideas but in things." Vision and viewpoint became an essential aspect of the modernist novel as well. No longer was it sufficient to write a straightforward third-person narrative or (worse yet) use a pointlessly intrusive narrator. The way the story was told became as important as the story itself. Gertrude Stein (1874-1968) One of the most innovative modern writers, Stein was the youngest child of Daniel and Amelia Keyser Stein, German Jews whose parents had emigrated to Baltimore. Leaving their clothing business in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the Daniel Steins moved to Austria soon after Gertrude's birth and lived there and in Paris until returning to Oakland, California, in 1879. When Gertrude was eleven, her mother became ill with the cancerso she traveled back to Baltimore to live with her aunt's family. Her irregular schooling had been balanced by extensive reading, and she was accepted at Radcliffe University as a special student even though she had not graduated from secondary school. Studying philosophy and psychology with William James, Hugo Mnsterberg, and others, she graduated magna cum laude in philosophy. From Radcliffe she went to Johns Hopkins Medical School, where her controversial stance on women's medicine caused problems with the male faculty. She chose not to graduate, and then worked on studies in the development of the brain with Llewelys Barker. Her published essays from her college years concern attention and the way fatigue affects it. Gertrude moved in 1903 to Paris.. While Leo, his brother became a patron of the arts, purchasing Renoirs, Manets, and Czannes, Gertrude became a writer. Her earliest writing was the first version of The Making of Americans, her story of the 'progress' of an American family; Q.E.D., an account of her heartbreaking lesbian liaison in Baltimore; and Fernhurst, another treatment of power within a love triangle. In 1905 she began the collection of three 'realistic' stories of common women--the German Anna and Lena, and the mulatto Melanctha--that would be privately published in 1909 as Three Lives. Distancing herself from the autobiographical, Stein relied on her knowledge of brain anatomy as she wrote with what she called 'insistence.' Her repetitions of syntax and language gave Three Lives a distinctively modern flavor. It was followed in 1912 by her word portraits of Matisse and Picasso, published in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work. The dissension between the Steins brothers stemmed from Leo's dislike of Cubism. Gertrude saw analogies between the Cubism of Picasso and Braque and her portraits and the poems of the 1914 Tender Buttons. Reminiscent of poetry by Apollinaire and Kandinsky, Stein's work seemed unique to American readers. She published little. After she and Alice, her friend had lived in Spain for the first year of World War I, and then returned to France to work for the American Friends of the French Wounded, concentrated on finding publishers for Stein's accumulating work, which now included plays and novels. Her fame as an avant-gardist brought her many visitors--Sherwood

203

Anderson, Mabel Dodge, Virgil Thomson, Carl Van Vechten--and she became a part of the Paris circle of expatriate Americans, including Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney, Paul Bowles, Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, and others. In 1922 she published Geography and Plays, a collection of portraits and plays, and in 1925 Robert McAlmon published The Making of Americans. The arrangement for Stein to lecture in Oxford and Cambridge in 1926, the Hogarth Press published her lectures, Composition as Explanation, and she began to feel as if the gloire' she had longed for might be possible. She was experimenting with longer poems (Patriarchal Poetry' and 'Stanzas in Meditation') and with essays about her aesthetic beliefs. Toklas began a publishing house called Plain Edition, publishing Lucy Church Amiably and other of Stein's books in the early 1930s. After spending six weeks writing the memoir she slyly called The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Stein found the recognition she hungered for. Serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, the Autobiography made Gertrude her first money (each of the Steins had lived on between $100 and $150 a month from a family trust fund). To capitalize on this fame, she toured the States lecturing, returning to the country of her birth for the first time since 1904. Between September 1934 and May 1935, Gertrude and Alice were fted from New York to Richmond, San Francisco to Chicago. Their visit also coincided with performances of Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. When World War II became unavoidable, she left Paris to escape the persecution that might have befallen them as Jews. Though life was hard, Stein continued writing. Paris France and What Are Masterpieces were published in 1940 and Ida, A Novel in 1941. The last book of her memoirs, Wars I Have Seen, appeared in 1945. One of her last books, Brewsie and Willie (l946), attempts to capture the soldiers' American idiom. She also finished The Mother of Us All, before dying in July 1946 of the intestinal cancer that had plagued her family. She left her estate to Toklas for as long as she lived. Most of Stein's manuscripts were published during the next fifteen years in a series of volumes by Yale University Press. Diligent in her efforts to create a meaningful language, one that would reach the reader's consciousness in ways that most writing did not, Stein plumbed areas of communication that are as often non-verbal as linguistic. Her incorporation of humor, sound, sex, and bawdiness, and unpredictable locutions and structures--always executed with the heightened consciousness of the observed performer--made her a pioneer of postmodernism as well as a central figure of modernism. Representative of the work being done by twentieth-century women artists, writers, and readers, Stein's writing gave readers an intimate sense of a woman's life and concerns. In a period when writers prided themselves on being able to shape language to new kinds of expressions, Gertrude Stein moved back into the most traditional relationship between writer and word: letting language find its own patterns, to express whatever meaning the reader might favor, viewing written art as a system of true and mutable communication. Robert Frost (1874-1963) Robert Lee Frost was born in California but raised on a farm in the northeastern United States until the age of 10. He went to England, attracted by new movements in poetry there. A charismatic public reader, he was renowned not only for his tours, but also for his easiness for depicting traditional farm life, appealing to a nostalgia for the old ways. His subjects are universal -- apple picking, stone walls, fences, country roads. Frost's approach was lucid and

204

accessible: He rarely employed pedantic allusions or ellipses. His frequent use of rhyme also appealed to the general audience. Frost's work is often deceptively simple. Many poems suggest a deeper meaning. For example, a quiet snowy evening by an almost hypnotic rhyme scheme may suggest the not entirely unwelcome approach of death. From: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923): Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. William Faulkner (1897-1962) He was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons born to Murry and Maud Butler Falkner. He was named after his great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, the Old Colonel. William demonstrated artistic talent at a young age, drawing and writing poetry, but around the sixth grade he began to grow increasingly bored with his studies. His earliest literary efforts were romantic, conscientiously modeled on English poets such as Burns, Thomson, Housman, and Swinburne. Though he had seen no combat in his WW1 military service, upon returning he allowed others to believe he had. He told many stories of his adventures in the RAF, most of which were highly exaggerated or patently untrue, including injuries that had left him in constant pain and with a silver plate in his head. His brief service in the RAF would also serve him in his written fiction, particularly in his first published novel, Soldiers Pay, in 1926. In 1919, he enrolled at the University of Mississippi in Oxford under a special provision for war veterans, even though he had never graduated from high school. In August, his first published poem, LApres-Midi dun Faune , appeared in The New Republic. While a student at Ole Miss, he published poems and short stories in the campus newspaper, the Mississippian, and submitted artwork for the university yearbook. In the fall of 1920, Faulkner helped found a 205

dramatic club on campus called The Marionettes, for which he wrote a one-act play titled The Marionettes but which was never staged. After three semesters of study at Ole Miss, he dropped out in November 1920. Over the next few years, Faulkner wrote reviews, poems, and prose pieces for The Mississippian and worked several odd jobs. In 1924, his friend Phil Stone secured the publication of a volume of Faulkners poetry, The Marble Faun, by the Four Seas Company. It was published in December 1924 in an edition of 1,000 copies, dedicated to his mother and with a preface by Stone. Some other of the best of Faulkner's novels include As I Lay Dying (1930), a modernist work experimenting with viewpoint and voice to probe southern families under the stress of losing a family member; Light in August (1932), about complex and violent relations between a white woman and a black man; and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), perhaps his finest, about the rise of a self-made plantation owner and his tragic fall through racial prejudice and a failure to love. Most of these novels use different characters to tell parts of the story and demonstrate how meaning resides in the manner of telling, as much as in the subject at hand. The use of various viewpoints makes Faulkner more self-referential, or "reflexive," than Hemingway or Fitzgerald; each novel reflects upon itself, while it simultaneously unfolds a story of universal interest. Faulkner's themes are southern tradition, family, community, the land, history and the past, race, and the passions of ambition and love. He also created three novels focusing on the rise of a degenerate family, the Snopes clan: The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959). John Dos Passos (1896-1970) John Dos Passos began as a left-wing radical but moved to the right as he aged. Dos Passos wrote realistically, in line with the doctrine of socialist realism. His best work achieves a scientific objectivism and almost documentary effect. Dos Passos developed an experimental collage technique for his masterwork U.S.A., consisting of The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). This sprawling collection covers the social history of the United States from 1900 to 1930 and exposes the moral corruption of materialistic American society through the lives of its characters. Dos Passos's new techniques included "newsreel" sections taken from contemporary headlines, popular songs, and advertisements, as well as "biographies" briefly setting forth the lives of important Americans of the period, such as inventor Thomas Edison, labor organizer Eugene Debs, film star Rudolph Valentino, financier J.P. Morgan, and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Both the newsreels and biographies lend Dos Passos's novels a documentary value; a third technique, the "camera eye," consists of stream of consciousness prose poems that offer a subjective response to the events described in the books.

206

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) Raymond Chandler, master of hard-boiled detective fiction, followed in Dashell Hammetts footsteps when he created Philip Marlowe, the quick-witted hero of seven novels published between 1942 and 1958. Chandler has published poetry, short stories and non-fiction, but his popularity is based on novels and film scripts. Chandler, born in Chicago, educated in England, France and Germany, published his first poems and worked as a writer and translator in England until he returned to USA and settled in California in 1912. His business career ended abruptly in 1932. From then on he was writing for a living and his first crime story was published in 1933. It is said that Chandler had a lot in common with his main character Philip Marlowe, the heavy drinking loner. In 1942 Philip Marlowe made it to the movies in "The Falcon Takes Over" and "Time to Kill". Chandler became a Hollywood scriptwriter working with producers like Billy Wilder ("Double Indemnity" 1944) and Alfred Hitchcock ("Strangers on a Train", 1951). Other films based on Chandler's scripts and novels are "Murder, My Sweet" (1945), "The Blue Dahlia"(1946) and "The Big Sleep"(1946 and 1978). Being film noir classics the Chandler movies are forever tying his name to the genre. Making the hard-boiled detective part of the real world, constructing realistic plots and setting high literary standards for his work, Chandler moved crime fiction into realism. He developed an intense and effective narrative and used the crime story to explore the dark sides of society, commenting on moral standards and ways of living in Los Angeles in the 1930s and the following two decades, always with a critical eye on the rich and the famous. His portraits of the city itself gave dimension to his books, superb background for his characters and perfect scenes for murder. He described the troubled city of the thirties and forties with detailed knowledge and great affection. Raymond Chandler still has a stronghold on readers of crime fiction. As pioneer of the hard-boiled detective genre, he has influenced generations of crime writers. Younger relatives of Private Eye Philip Marlowe are roaming dark streets in many cities in many countries. They are sharing Marlowe's drinking habits, honesty, poverty and wit, and often the detectives as well as their urban arenas are described in characteristic Chandler style. Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) Harry Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University. He took time off from school to work at a socialist community, Helicon Home Colony, financed by muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair. Lewis's Main Street (1920) satirized monotonous, hypocritical small-town life in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. His incisive presentation of American life and his criticism of American materialism, narrowness, and hypocrisy brought him national and international recognition. In 1926, he was offered and declined a Pulitzer Prize for "Arrowsmith" (1925), a novel tracing a doctor's efforts to maintain his medical ethics amid greed and corruption. In 1930, he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Lewis's other major novels include "Babbit" (1922). George Babbitt is an ordinary businessman living and working in Zenith, an ordinary American town. Babbitt is moral and enterprising, and a believer in business as the new scientific approach to modern life. Becoming restless, he seeks fulfillment but is disillusioned by an affair with a bohemian woman, returns to his wife, and accepts his lot. The novel added a new word to the American language 207

"babbittry," meaning narrow-minded, complacent, bourgeois ways. "Elmer Gantry" (1927) exposes revivalist religion in the United States, while "Cass Timberlaine" (1945) studies the stresses that develop within the marriage of an older judge and his young wife. Eugene O'Neill (1888- 1953) Eugene O'Neill is the great figure of American theater. His numerous plays combine enormous technical originality with freshness of vision and emotional depth. O'Neill's earliest dramas concern the working class and poor; later works explore subjective realms, such as obsessions and sex, and underscore his reading in Freud and his anguished attempt to come to terms with his dead mother, father, and brother. His play "Desire unde the Elms" (1924) recreates the passions hidden within one family; "The Great God Brown" (1926) uncovers the unconsciousness of a wealthy businessman; and "Strange Interlude" (1928), a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, traces the tangled loves of one woman. These powerful plays reveal different personalities reverting to primitive emotions or confusion under intense stress. O'Neill continued to explore the Freudian pressures of love and dominance within families in a trilogy of plays collectively entitled "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1931), based on the classical "Oedipus" trilogy by Sophocles. His later plays include the acknowledged masterpieces "The Iceman Cometh" (1946), a stark work on the theme of death, and "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (1956) - a powerful, extended autobiography in dramatic form focusing on his own family and their physical and psychological deterioration, as witnessed in the course of one night. This work was part of a cycle of plays O'Neill was working on at the time of his death. O'Neill redefined the theater by abandoning traditional divisions into acts and scenes ('Strange Interlude" has nine acts, and "Mourning Becomes Electra" takes nine hours to perform); using masks such as those found in Asian and ancient Greek theater; introducing Shakespearean monologues and Greek choruses; and producing special effects through lighting and sound. He is generally acknowledged to have been America's foremost dramatist. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature - the first American playwright to be so honored. Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) Thornton Wilder is known for his plays "Our Town" (1938) and "The Skin of Our Teeth" (1942), and for his novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" (1927). "Our Town" conveys positive American values. It has all the elements of sentimentality and nostalgia -- the archetypal traditional small country town, the kindly parents and mischievous children, the young lovers. Still, the innovative elements such as ghosts, voices from the audience, and daring time shifts keep the play engaging. It is, in effect, a play about life and death in which the dead are reborn, at least for the moment. Richard Wright (19o8-1960) Richard Wright was born into a poor Mississippi sharecropping family that his father deserted when the boy was five. Wright was the first African-American novelist to reach a general audience, even though he had barely a ninth grade education. His harsh childhood is depicted in one of his best books, his autobiography, "Black Boy" (1945). He later said that his sense of deprivation, due to racism, was so great that only reading kept him alive. The social criticism and realism of Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis especially inspired Wright. During the 1930s, he joined the Communist party; in the 1940s, he 208

moved to France, where he knew Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre and became an antiCommunist. His outspoken writing blazed a path for subsequent African-American novelists. His work includes "UncleTom's Children" (1938), a book of short stories, and the powerful and relentless novel Native Son (1940), in which Bigger Thomas, an uneducated black youth, mistakenly kills his white employer's daughter, gruesomely burns the body, and murders his black girlfriend -- fearing she will betray him. Although some African-Americans have criticized Wright for portraying a black character as a murderer, Wright's novel was a necessary and overdue expression of the racial inequality that has been the subject of so much debate in the United States. 3.13. Realism Although American prose between the wars experimented with viewpoint and form, Americans wrote more realistically, on the whole, than did Europeans. Novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote of war, hunting, and other masculine pursuits in a stripped, plain style; William Faulkner set his powerful southern novels spanning generations and cultures firmly in Mississippi heat and dust; and Sinclair Lewis delineated bourgeois lives with ironic clarity. The importance of facing reality became a dominant theme in the 1920s and 1930s: Writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and the playwright Eugene O'Neill repeatedly portrayed the tragedy awaiting those who live in flimsy dreams. 3.13.1. Harlem Myth During the exuberant 1920s, Harlem, the black community situated uptown in New York City, sparkled with passion and creativity. The sounds of its black American jazz swept the United States by storm, and jazz musicians and composers like Duke Ellington became stars beloved across the United States and overseas. Bessie Smith and other blues singers presented frank, sensual, wry lyrics raw with emotion. Black spirituals became widely appreciated as uniquely beautiful religious music. Ethel Waters, the black actress, triumphed on the stage, and black American dance and art flourished with music and drama. Among the rich variety of talent in Harlem, many visions coexisted. Carl Van Vechten's sympathetic 19267 novel of Harlem gives some idea of the complex and bittersweet life of black America in the face of economic and social inequality. The poet Countee Cullen (19031946), a native of Harlem who was briefly married to W.E.B. Du Bois's daughter, wrote accomplished rhymed poetry, in accepted forms, which was much admired by whites. He believed that a poet should not allow race to dictate the subject matter and style of a poem. On the other end of the spectrum were African-Americans who rejected the United States in favor of Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement. Somewhere in between lies the work of Jean Toomer. 3.14. Fugitives From the Civil War into the 20th century, the southern United States had remained a political and economic backwater ridden with racism and superstition, but, at the same time, blessed with rich folkways and a strong sense of pride and tradition. It had a somewhat unfair reputation for being a cultural desert of provincialism and ignorance. Ironically, the most significant 20th-century regional literary movement was that of the Fugitives - led by poet-critic- theoretician John Crowe Ransom, poet Allen Tate, and novelistpoet-essayist Robert Penn Warren. This southern literary school rejected "northern" urban, 209

commercial values, which they felt had taken over America. The Fugitives called for a return to the land and to American traditions that could be found in the South. The movement took its name from a literary magazine, The Fugitive, published from 1922 to 1925 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and with which Ransom, Tate, and Warren were all associated. These three major Fugitive writers were also associated with New Criticism, an approach to understanding literature through close readings and attentiveness to formal patterns (of imagery, metaphors, metrics, sounds, and symbols) and their suggested meanings. Ransom, leading theorist of the southern renaissance between the wars, published a book, The New Criticism (1941), on this method, which offered an alternative to previous extra- literary methods of criticism based on history and biography. New Criticism became the dominant American critical approach in the 1940s and 1950s because it proved to be well-suited to modernist writers such as Eliot and could absorb Freudian theory (especially its structural categories such as id, ego, and superego) and approaches drawing on mythic patterns. 3.15. The XXth CenturyDrama American drama imitated English and European theater until well into the 20th century. Often, plays from England or translated from European languages dominated theater seasons. An inadequate copyright law that failed to protect and promote American dramatists worked against genuinely original drama. So did the "star system," in which actors and actresses, rather than the actual plays, were given most acclaim. Americans flocked to see European actors who toured theaters in the United States. In addition, imported drama, like imported wine, enjoyed higher status than indigenous productions. During the 19th century, melodramas with exemplary democratic figures and clear contrasts between good and evil had been popular. Plays about social problems such as slavery also drew large audiences; sometimes these plays were adaptations of novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin . Not until the 20th century would serious plays attempt aesthetic innovation. Popular culture showed vital developments, however, especially in vaudeville (popular variety theater involving skits, clowning, music, and the like). Minstrel shows, based on African-American music and folkways - performed by white characters using "blackface" makeup -- also developed original forms and expressions. VI. Canada 1. General Presentation Canada is the world's second largest country and occupies most of the northern portion of North America. Originally inhabited exclusively by aboriginal peoples, Canada was founded as a union of British colonies, some of which had earlier been French colonies. Now a federal dominion of ten provinces with three territories, Canada peacefully obtained sovereignty from its last colonial possessor, Britain, in a process beginning in 1867 with its formation, and ending in 1982, when Canada gained the authority to amend its own constitution. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. Its head of state is its monarch, who is represented in Canada by the Governor General. The head of government is the Prime Minister. Canada defines itself as a bilingual and multicultural nation. Both English and French are official languages. In the early 1970s, Canada began to adopt policies based on cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Many Canadians now view this as one of the country's key attributes, but there are critics of the multiculturalism policy as well. The name Canada is 210

believed to come from the Huron-Iroquois word kanata, which means "village" or "settlement". In 1535, locals used the word to tell Jacques Cartier the way to the village of Stadacona, site of present-day Quebec City. Cartier used Canada to refer not only to Stadacona, but also to the entire area subject to Donnacona; by 1547, maps began referring to this and the surrounding area as Canada. 2. Language Canada's two official languages, English and French, are the mother tongues of 59.7% and 23.2% of the population, respectively, defining Canada as a "bilingual" nation. English and French have equal status in federal courts, Parliament, and in all federal institutions. While multiculturalism is official policy, to become a citizen one must be able to speak either English or French. French is mostly spoken in Quebec, plus parts of New Brunswick, eastern and northern Ontario, Saskatchewan, the south shore of Nova Scotia and southern Manitoba. French is the provincially designated official language in Quebec, and the use of English in this province is not promoted. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in the country. English is the provincially-designated official language in all other provinces. Several aboriginal languages have official status in Northwest Territories. Inuktitut is the majority language in Nunavut and has official status there. Non-official languages are also important in Canada, with 5,202,245 people listing a non-official language as a first language. Among the most important non-official first language groups are Chinese, Italian , German , and Punjabi 3. Culture Due to its colonial past, Canadian culture has historically been heavily influenced by the English, French, Irish, and Scottish, in addition to the previously extant First Nations cultures and traditions. Over time Canadian culture has been greatly influenced by American culture, due its proximity and the interchange of human capital. Many forms of American media and entertainment are popular if not dominant in Canada; conversely, many Canadian cultural products and entertainers are successful in the US and worldwide. Many cultural products are now marketed toward a unified "North American" market, or a global market generally. The creation and preservation of more distinctly Canadian culture has been partly influenced by federal government programs, laws and institutions such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the National Film Board of Canada, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Canadian culture has also been greatly influenced by more recent immigration of people from all over the world. Many Canadians value multiculturalism, indeed some see Canadian culture as being inherently multicultural. Multicultural heritage is enshrined in Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. National symbology is influenced by natural, historical, and First Nations sources. Particularly, the use of the maple leaf as a Canadian symbol dates back to the early 18th century and is depicted on its current and previous flags, the penny, and on the coat of arms. Other prominent symbols include the beaver, Canada goose, common loon, the Crown, and the RCMP.

211

Canada's official national sports are ice hockey (winter) and lacrosse (summer), however, hockey is a national pastime, and is by far the most popular spectator sport in the country. Canada's six largest metropolitan areas have franchises in the National Hockey League (NHL), and there are more Canadian players in the league than from all other countries combined. Other popular Canadian sports include Curling and Canadian football (especially the Canadian Football League). Soccer, basketball and baseball are widely played at youth and amateur levels, but professional leagues and franchises are not as widespread. 4. Holidays A statutory holiday, also known as "general" or "public" holiday, in Canada is legislated either through the federal, provincial, or territorial governments. Most workers, public or private, are entitled to take the day off with regular pay. In most provinces, when a statutory holiday falls on a normal day off (generally a weekend), the following work day is considered a statutory holiday. Statutory and major holidays in Canada include New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day, Christmas, and Boxing Day. Each province of Canada also has its own provincial holiday or holidays. They include St. Jean Baptiste Day in Quebec, Natal Day in PEI and Nova Scotia and Discovery Day in Newfoundland and Labrador and Yukon. The other provinces have a civic holiday on the first Monday in August. The observance of individuals' religious holidays is widely accepted. Some people take days off for Jewish holidays, or Eastern Orthodox observances according to the Julian calendar. 5. History Outlook The complete history of neither Canada nor the United States can be studied without reference to the history of the other. The earliest discovery of the New World was made by Norse seafarers, the Vikings. The accounts of their travels are drawn from their sagas - epic stories in prose or verse handed down by word of mouth through many generations. In AD 985 Norse seamen sailing from Iceland to Greenland were blown far westward off their course and sighted the coast of what must have been Labrador. In AD 1000 Leif Ericson became the first European to land in North America. According to the sagas, this was the first of many Norse voyages to the eastern shores of the continent. He settled the first colony in what the Vikings described as Vinland, identified in 1963 as being on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. But the Greenland colony died out during the 14th and 15th centuries, and the Norse adventures in Canada came to an end well before that time. In 1497 the Italian John Cabot sailed west from Bristol, England, intent on finding a new trade route to the Orient for his patron, King Henry VII of England and he rediscovered the eastern shores of Canada. Cabot was as confident as Columbus that he had found a new seaway to Asia. His voyages gave England a claim by right of discovery to an indefinite area of eastern North America. Of more immediate significance were the explorer's reports of immensely rich fishing waters. After 1497 the fishing vessels cruised into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and encountered Indians along the shores who were willing to part with valuable furs in exchange for articles of little worth such as beads and other trinkets. In 1524 King Francis I of France sent a Florentine navigator, Giovanni da Verrazano, on a voyage of reconnaissance overseas. Verrazano gave France too some claim to the continent 212

by right of discovery. Ten years later Francis I dispatched another expedition under Jacques Cartier who sailed a route that was for the most part already already well known. Its immediate result was a thorough report for the French king about the lands he had visited and the new names he gave to the coasts on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He also observed near Anticosti Island the mouth of a great river. Pressing upstream in three small vessels, next year, he reached an Indian village of Stadacona, near the present site of the city of Quebec and another one on the site of the present city of Montreal. In 1541 Cartier established a new headquarters at CapRouge,and he was followed by Jean Francois de la Rocque, sieur de Roberva. In 1598 Troilus de Mesgouez, marquis de la Roche, set out for Canada and established a royal monopoly of exclusive right of furs trade. Strong peronalities like Pierre Chauvin, Pierre du Guast, sieur de Monts, Samuel de Champlain extended the French settlements on the new Found Land: Quebec. The New France continued to grow slowly. The fur trade served both to keep alive an interest in the territory and at the same time to discourage the development of agriculture. The most distant outpost for many years became Montreal, founded by Paul de Chomedy, sieur de Maisonneuve, on May 18, 1642 that was a part of a large Canadian missionary movement which was based by France. The work and self-sacrifice of the Christian missionaries in the young colony and in the wilds that lay beyond it is one of the most stirring chapters in the history of New France. During the 40 years following the founding of Quebec, a dozen mission posts were built in the Huron country south of Georgian Bay. But the Iroquois tribes became a great obstacle: many accounts of heroism on the part of soldiers, settlers, and missionaries during this long guerrilla warfare on the outskirts of the colony are known. The feudal system of landholding, which had long been established in France, was also adopted in the colony. The seigneurs, were granted lands and titles by the king in return for their oath of loyalty and promise to support him in time of war. The seigneur in turn granted rights to work farm plots on his land to his vassals, or habitants. In exchange, the habitants were required to pay certain feudal dues each year, to work for the seigneur for a given number of days annually, and to have their grain ground in the seigneurial mill. The senior official was the governor, appointed by the king, who felt more responsible to the king in France than to the people he governed. In 1672 Count Louis de Frontenac arrived in the colony as governor He built a fort at Cataraqui, near present-day Kingston, and Francois Xavier de Laval-Montmorency was raised to the rank of bishop. La Salle's exploration of the Mississippi to its mouth in 1682 gave France a claim to a vast area bordering the American Colonies from the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley southward to the Gulf of Mexico. England came to realize that the easiest riches of the New World were to be found in furs rather than in gold. Thus it was quick to follow up its claim to the back-door route to the fur country by founding the Hudson's Bay Company in 167. But for many years England's domination of Hudson Bay was threatened by the French. In 1686 Pierre Troyes and Pierre le Moyne, sieur d'Ibervilleed succeeded in capturing a number of the company forts by surprise. A fresh struggle between France and England, known as Queen Anne's War broke out in 1702 and led to the capture of Port Royal by the English in 1710. The Treaty of Utrecht, which reestablished peace in 1713, required France to surrender the Hudson Bay Territory, Newfoundland, and Acadia. France was permitted to keep Cape Breton Island as well as her inland colonies. In 1749 the British began the construction of the city of Halifax. Canadian and European histories usually treat the final contest for the continent as beginning in 1756, with the opening of the Seven Years' War between the two motherlands in conflict. When the Treaty of Paris at last brought it to a close in 1763, the British flag waved over almost the

213

whole of eastern North America. But led by a clever and treacherous Ottawa chieftain named Pontiac, the Indians suddenly rose against their new English masters and overthrew these forts one by one. But the only British soldiers left west of Lake Erie in Fort Detroit could finally subdue the Indian uprising, so the English Parliament passed the Quebec Act that became the first important milestone in the constitutional history of British Canada. Under its terms the boundaries of Quebec were extended as far as the Ohio River valley. The Roman Catholic church was recognized by the Quebec Act, and its right to collect tithes was confirmed. Also of enduring importance was the establishment of the French civil law to govern the relations of Canadian subjects in their business and other day-to-day relations with each other. The huge influx of settlers, who were known in Canada and England as the United Empire Loyalists, marked the first major wave of immigration by English-speaking settlers since the days of New France. The settlement of the more inaccessible lands north and west of Lake Ontario and along the north shore of the upper St. Lawrence proceeded somewhat more slowly. In 1791 the British Parliament enacted the Constitutional Act, whereby Quebec was split into the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Each of these was to be governed by a legislative council appointed for life and a legislative assembly elected by the people. The right to be represented in a lawmaking assembly was something new for the French-speaking inhabitants of the lower province. As early as the 1730s a family of explorers headed by Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Verendrye, began a series of overland explorations far to the west of Lake Superior. Their travels carried them into what is now the western United States, perhaps as far as the foothills of the Rockies. They visited Lake Winnipeg, the Red River, the Assiniboine River, and the Saskatchewan River as far upstream as the fork formed by the North and the South Saskatchewan. Similarly, expeditions under Henry Kelsey, Anthony Henday, Samuel Hearne explored the territories between York Factory and northern Saskatchewan, the foothills of the Rockies, discovered Great Slave Lake and reached the Arctic Ocean by land. In 1783 a group of Montreal merchants founded the powerful North West Company. In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie followed the river which now bears his name from its source to the Arctic Ocean and Capt. George Vancouver explored the the Pacific coast by sea. 5.1. The Struggle for Self Government The British colonies far to the east found themselves involved with the United States in a new war that threatened to end their existence under the English flag. But this battle provided an opportunity for French Canadians to fight side by side with their English-speaking countrymen to defend their newly aquired territories. The victorious outcome contributed a great deal to the growing national pride of Canadian and made them believe that they had sufficient powers to govern themselves through their elected assemblies. The period following the War of 1812 was one of expansion of population, business, and settlement. This was especially true in Upper Canada, where large numbers of newcomers were attracted by low-cost land grants. The very growth of the colony offered many opportunities for profit by those who could control the land grants. One of the loudest accusers of the government's administration of the land grants was William Lyon Mackenzie. The leader of the radical reforms in Lower Canada was Louis Joseph Papineau. Both had finally come to the conclusion that no lasting reform could be achieved unless the bonds with Britain were severed. Rioting occurred in Montreal in 1837 and, when the government decided to arrest Papineau, he immediately fled across the border to the United States, an open rebellion 214

followed in several centers. Similar troubles broke out in Upper Canada almost immediately. Mackenzie prematurely called for an advance toward Toronto from his headquarters. The attack was driven back; and the city, rapidly filling with Loyalist supporters, was fully alerted. A few days later these forces marched northward against Mackenzie and, after a short skirmish, dispersed his troops. Like Papineau, Mackenzie fled across the United States border and tried to organize his planned republic under what he said of as a "provisional government of Upper Canada." The struggle for reform was more peaceful in the Maritimes. Here the leading reformers included Joseph Howe, in Nova Scotia, and Lemuel Allan Wilmot, in New Brunswick had a much clearer understanding of the principles and advantages of responsible government and they rallied widespread support. At the request of Queen Victoria, who came to the throne in 1837, John George Lambton, earl of Durham, arrived in Quebec in the spring of 1838. His Report on the Affairs of British North America is one of the most important documents in the history of the British Empire. Durham recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united under a single parliament. He said that if the colonies were given as much freedom to govern themselves as the people of Great Britain, they would become more loyal instead of less so. He even forecast the possibility of a union some day of all the British colonies in North America. His only serious error of judgment occurred when he said that the French-speaking Canadians might be expected to be absorbed by a growing English-speaking majority. In 1840 the Act of Union was passed. It became effective the next year and joined Upper and Lower Canada under a central government. There was to be an appointed upper chamber, or legislative council, in the new government as well as an assembly composed of the same number of elected members from each of the two old colonies. The seat of government was established at Kingston; but after 1844 it was moved to Montreal, then back and forth between Toronto and Quebec, and finally to Ottawa in 1865. In the first several years of this period, the principle of complete self-government and the subordination of the governor's authority to that of Parliament was developed and finally accepted. It was a critical time in the constitutional history of Canada, and the ability of the two chief Canadian nationality groups to get along with each other was tested for many years. Each side produced great public men. Prominent were Robert Baldwin, Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine Both men joinedtheir forces and formed a strong coalition during the early years of the new government, and the result was that much legislation was carried through. Included were laws for establishing municipal governments, for founding the University of Toronto as a nonsectarian institution, and for changing the system of law courts. In the meantime Canada was swelling with settlers, and the foundations of a British province on the west coast were being laid. A flood of newcomers began to arrive mostly from the British Isles inspite of the hardships they had to face. The trials often began in the crowded, cholera-ridden, and poorly provisioned sailing ships that brought the newcomers in vast numbers across the Atlantic. The largest tracts of land available for settlement were in Upper Canada. Until the coming of the railway, the principal method of moving heavy freight over long distances was by water. Canals in the colonies were therefore improved, and new ones were dug. Roads were cut through the bush to connect the far-flung centers of settlement with lake and river ports. On the backwoods farms great branding fires burned steadily for weeks at a time as the pioneers slowly cleared their lands. In most respects pioneer life was very similar in Canada and the United States.

215

The dominating importance of the fur trade was challenged in 1858 by the electrifying news that gold had been discovered on the Fraser River. There was a great need to bring law and order to the mining camps arising everywhere in the new territory. This need was met by Matthew Begbie. Many of the miners departed when the gold rush subsided. The people who stayed formed the nucleus of the later province of British Columbia. 5.2. Confederation When the government of the Canadas under the Act of Union went running into difficulties because Canada West by this time, had increased in population faster than Canada East (the act had provided for equal representation of both parts of the colony at a time when French-speaking Canada East was numerically much larger than Canada West) the leader of the Conservatives, John A. Macdonald, and and Liberal leader George Brown made a coalition government in the best interests of the country, even though Brown had long considered Macdonald and Cartier his deadly political enemies. By fortunate coincidence, the possibility of a local union of colonies was under discussion at this very time in the Maritimes too. Macdonald, accompanied by Brown and Cartier, headed a delegation from Canada to the meeting of their Maritime cousins and set forth the possible advantages of a union wide enough to include the Canadas as well. The result was the Quebec Conference, which was held later the same year. Agreements in principle on the conditions that might permit so ambitious a union were finally reached. These agreements were summed up in the Seventy-two Resolutions. In 1866 representatives of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Canadas came together in London for final discussions with the Colonial Office. The London Conference led directly to the most important statute in Canadian constitutional history, the British North America Act of 1867 which the written constitution of Canada for more than a century. It was proclaimed on July 1, now celebrated as Canada Day. The British North America Act provided that there should be four provinces in the new Dominion at the outset--Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia--and that others could join later. Each province was to have its own seat of government, its own lawmaking body, and its own lieutenant governor to represent the Crown. In addition, the act established a federal government at Ottawa, composed of a House of Commons (elected), a Senate (appointed for life), and a governor-general as the Crown's representative. It set forth the matters on which the provinces could make laws and listed those that were the special concern of the government at Ottawa. Any powers not listed were to belong to the federal government. (The act remained in force until the Constitution Act of 1982.). The first Parliament of the new. The first Dominion census, which was taken in 1871 in accordance with the British North America Act, showed a population of 3,689,257. When the United States was accorded fishing rights in Canadian Atlantic waters for a limited period, among the five commissioners who represented Great Britain in these negotiations was Macdonald. His presence was a recognition of Canada's new status in the British Empire. During the same summer of 1871, British Columbia joined the new Canada Confederation. Progress on the Intercolonial Railway, which was to link the Maritimes with Quebec, encouraged Prince Edward Island in 1873 to become the seventh province in the Dominion. During Mackenzie's term as Prime minister, voting by ballot was introduced in 1874; the Supreme Court of Canada held its first sitting in 1876; and the Intercolonial Railway ran its first train from Halifax to Quebec, also in 1876. Wilfrid Laurier's regime lasted 15 years. It was one of renewed growth and prosperity. The Manitoba School Question was promptly hushed up by new legislation enacted by the province in accordance with a compromise worked out with Ottawa. To his Cabinet Laurier drew some of the most capable leaders from every part of Canada. 216

Business throughout the world was on an upswing, and the Laurier government rode the crest. The demand for Canadian wheat abroad encouraged immigration, and immigration in turn increased farm production and the value of national exports. "The 20th century belongs to Canada," cried Laurier; and the whole nation took confidence from his assurance. Two new transcontinental railways were begun. By 1905 the west had expanded in both population and economic strength to such an extent that two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, were carved out of the Northwest Territories. In 1896 gold nuggets were found on the Klondike River in the far western Yukon Territory. When the news spread, the gold rush of 1897 began; it was to become the most publicized gold rush in history, eventually to be celebrated in the works of such writers as Jack London and Robert Service. Very soon after the gold rush, settlers began pouring into the western prairies of Canada by the thousands, from Europe as well as the United States. It was not long before demands arose for the creation of at least one province between Manitoba and British Columbia. Thus, in 1905, the government in Ottawa formed two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Another benefit resulting, at least in part, from the gold rush was the discovery of other minerals in the Canadian wilds: nickel and large deposits of base-metal ores that made Canada a mineral-rich nation with great untapped potential. A controversial foreign policy issue arose as naval competition increased between Germany and Britain in the years before World War I. Great Britain naturally desired to receive military help from the colonies: the Canadian Navy was founded in 1910 with the provision that in time of war it be placed under British command. 5.3. Canada and World War I Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium in 1914 forged a unity of Canadian sentiment and a demand for participation in the conflict. The first Canadian contingent, numbering 33,000, reached England soon after the outbreak of war in 1914. By 1916 the Canadians had four divisions of the Canada Corps that earned an outstanding reputation as a fighting force. More significant, however, was the fact that Canada was playing a respectable role on the world stage, a role that would soon help undo its colonial status. On the battlefronts in France and Belgium, Canadians of both nationality backgrounds made magnificent contributions to the final victory. From economic point of view, before the war ended in 1918 the gross national debt soared from 544 million dollars in 1914 to almost 2 1/2 billion dollars in 1919, most of the money being raised in Canada itself through public war loans. The 1920s were marked everywhere by a spiraling expansion of business. Technical and industrial advances paced the rising standard of living. But in the summer of 1929 industrial production began to slow significantly. In October of that year the stock market crash heralded unemployment and financial ruin across Canada, as it did elsewhere in the world. 5.4. The British Commonwealth of Nations The period between the wars brought the culmination of Canada's growth to independent nationhood within the British Commonwealth. Prime Minister Borden had been included in the Imperial War Cabinet in London. He piloted through the Imperial Conference of 1917 a resolution that the dominions "should be recognized as autonomous nations of an imperial commonwealth." To both the 1919 Peace Conference and the League of Nations 217

Canada sent its own delegates. The Imperial Conference of 1926 confirmed in its Declaration of Equality that the United Kingdom as well as the dominions had become "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another." They were, however, "united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations." These resolutions were confirmed by the British Parliament in 1931 in the Statute of Westminster. The statute provided that "no law passed in the future by the United Kingdom should extend to any dominion "except at the request and with the consent of that Dominion." Canadian sovereignty thus had been achieved by a long process of peaceful constitutional evolution. This was vividly demonstrated by the independent decision of its Parliament that Canada enter World War II at the side of Britain, which it did within a week of the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. 5.5. Canada and World War II The first engagement of the enemy by Canadian forces based in England occurred in 1942 in a courageous, but terribly costly, commando-type raid against Dieppe. In the summer of 1943 Canadian troops were sent into action with the British in the successful assault against Sicily, whence they carried the campaign to the Italian mainland. But the climax of the war had come with the Normandy landings in June 1944, in which the Canadian Army played an important part which opened the final attack across the Rhine, which was a prelude to the unconditional surrender by Germany on May 9, 1945. The losses in the war overseas were complemented by economic gains on the homefront. War productivity effectively ended the Great Depression and greatly increased the labor force. Canadian workers produced raw materials, farm products, and manufactured goods needed to fight the war; and this was all done in a volume unprecedented in Canadian history. Industrialization was thus rapidly advanced, through both investment of capital and striking advances in technology. 5.6. Postwar Developments Canada played an active role in the United Nations from the time of the organization's inception after the war. In 1949 Newfoundland joined the Confederation as the tenth province. In the same year Canada became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The St. Lawrence Seaway was opened in 1959. It was formally dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States. On Feb. 15, 1965, Canada raised a red and white maple-leaf flag. It was adopted by Parliament in December 1964 and was Canada's first official national flag. The year 1967 marked the 100th anniversary of the British North America Act, which had been proclaimed on July 1, 1867, and established the basis for the modern state of Canada. A giant birthday party on Parliament Hill in Ottawa was attended by Queen Elizabeth II. A highlight of the year was the Universal and International Exhibition, known as Expo '67, held in Montreal. In 1982 the British North America Act was replaced by a new constitution for the government of Canada. Queen Elizabeth visited Parliament Hill to proclaim the document. This completed the transfer of constitutional powers from Great Britain to Canada. 5.7. Quebec Separatism Beginning in the 1960s Quebec was the center of militant agitation to separate it from Canada and establish a French-speaking nation. In 1969 French and English were both declared the official languages of Canada. In 1970 terrorist acts by alleged separatists were climaxed by

218

the kidnapping and murder of Quebec's minister of labor and immigration, Pierre Laporte. The federal government sent in troops and temporarily suspended civil liberties. In 1974 French became the official language of the province. Under a controversial law adopted in 1977, education in English-language schools was greatly restricted. The charter also changed English place-names and imposed French as the language of business, court judgments, laws, government regulations, and public institutions. Although the separatist party retained power, a referendum to make the province an independent country was rejected by the Quebec voters in 1980. The Quebec government opposed the 1982 constitution, which included a provision for freedom of language in education, and unsuccessfully sought a veto over constitutional change. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled against Quebec's schooling restrictions. In 1987 the Meech Lake constitutional accord recognized Quebec as a "distinct society" and transferred extensive new powers to all the provinces. In a referendum held in October 1992 Quebec voters narrowly rejected secession from Canada in a 1995. In October 1987 Canada and the United States reached agreement on a trade pact to eliminate all bilateral tariffs over a ten-year period beginning Jan. 1, 1989. The two countries signed a Great Lakes water-quality agreement in November. Both countries agreed to track and clean up sources of pollution. In January 1988 abortion was legalized in Canada. The socialist New Democratic party chose Audrey McLaughlin - the first woman to head a major Canadian political party, and Kim Campbell became the first female prime minister in Canadian history. 6. Economy Canada is one of the world's wealthiest nations, a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Group of Eight (G8). As with other first world nations, the Canadian economy is dominated by the service industry, which employs about three quarters of Canadians. Canada is unusual among developed countries in the importance of the primary sector, with the logging and oil industries being two of Canada's most important. Canada also has a sizeable manufacturing sector, centred in Southern Ontario, with the automobile industry especially important. Canada is a free market economy with slightly more government intervention than the United States, but much less than most European nations. Canada has traditionally had a lower per capita gross domestic product (GDP) than its southern neighbour (whereas wealth has been more equally divided), but higher than the large western European economies. For the last decade, after a period of turbulence, the Canadian economy has been growing rapidly with low unemployment and large government surpluses on the federal level. As such, the Canadian dollar has risen in value against most major currencies during the past five years.

219

VII. Dictionary of English Culture A Albion: ancient word for England in Celtic and Alb in Gaelic; it is mentioned in the Latin of Pliny and in the Greek of Ptolemy meaning "the white land" relating to the whiteness of the cliffs greeting travellers and suggesting pristine purity or blankness. But the cliffs are also guardians, and Albion was the name of the primaeval giant, elemental and emblematic giant, who made his home upon the island of Britain. Abstract expressionism: style of painting that was developed the '40ies by U.S. artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Colors express their feelings not objects. Acid jazz: a mixture of soul jazz and hip hop style in dance music, popular in the 90ties; Accent: the way a language is spoken by 1) native speakers showing the region that person comes from, what class he or she belongs to; most of the counties and big towns have a different accent Liverpool "Scouse" accent Birmingham "Brummie" New-Castle-on-Tyne "Geordie" South-East of England RP accent (Received Pronunciation or BBC English) associated with power and high social class since the fourteenth century when Oxbridge Universities provided higher education for the Royal court and the government; people who wanted to be part of the powerful world had to use it. In the nineteenth century, it was often impossible to get any kind of high position without speaking the right way. Nowadays regional accents are more acceptable. 2) non-native speakers; it includes pronunciation and intonation ; Variety : is spoken by a certain category of people: black English; dialect: is spoken in certain regions having particularities of grammar and vocabulary Act of Parliament: any law that is passed through Parliament and debated in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and then approved by the King or the Queen. All of them form together statute law. The Parliament has the right to repeal a statute if it is no longer appropriate. Before being debated in the Parliament, any proposal for a new law comes to the public under the name of a private bill if it is about local councils or rights or obligations of the individuals, and public bills if they attempt to change a general law. Changes recommended by the members of the Parliament to any bill are known under the name of amendments. Adams, Gerry: president of Sinn Fein, a political organization campaigning for the independence of Northern Ireland and the creation of a united Irish Republic.

220

Adult education: (continuing education): vocational courses of general interest for all levels , usually held in the evening. They can focus also on entertainment subjects, as yoga, or gardening or they can be training courses in a skill that provide the attendants the ability to get a job.70% of the attendees are women. They can include correspondence, television, CD-ROM, Internet, or self access courses. In America continuing education is considered an important social issue so ore than 40% of the adult population take evening courses organized by local authorities or by colleges. Advertising: companies and social organizations promote and market their products by ads in America and adverts in UK. Published in magazines or newspapers. There are called commercials when broadcasted on radio or TV. Their slogans are promoted on infomercial programmes. Promotion can also be made by displaying hoardings or billboards by the side of the roads or by flyers given to the passers-by in the street. Age of consent: age at which young people can legally agree to have sex. The age of consent is 16 in Britain and 18 in US. Age of discretion: age at which young people can deal with their own affairs from legal point of view. AIDS: (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) Alcatraz: a former prison used for the most dangerous prisoners between 1933-1963 Now is a museum. Aldermaston: small village in Southern England used as a site for Atomic Weapon Research. All-American: a 1. Good player in any sport who is called for a national team; 2. physical appearance of a man (adj.) Almshouse: houses built usually in a row, provided by church or charity to old and poor people American breakfast: the morning meal including items at choice such as: juice, cereals, eggs with ham or bacon, pancakes, toast, hash browns or grits American eagle: the national symbol of US also called the bold eagle; it holds in his mouth e pluribus Unum (one's out of many), an arrow in it right foot, as the symbol of war and olive branch in it left foot as a symbol of peace. Amnesty International: international organization settled in Britain in 1961 that has as a target helping people that were imprisoned for their beliefs, color, race, religion. It is also against any form of violence, torture or capital punishment. Now it has members in more than 70 countries. Andy Capp: a humorous character in the British The Mirror magazine.. Anthony dollar: US dollar with the image of Susan Brownell Anthony, a teacher that was a leader of the campaign for women's right to vote. 221

Apache: native American group that were defended by the US Cavalry and now live in reservations (protected areas by the government) in the states of Arizona, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Apollo Program: governmental program for sending astronauts to the moon. This was achieved in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to put foot on moon. Applejack: a strong alcoholic drink made of apple Apple pie: cake popular with American and British people expression: as American as apple pie; nothing is compared to mom and apple pie. Aran jumper/Aran sweater: piece of clothing for women especially, knitted in thick wool in the traditional pattern of the Aran Islands Archers, The the longest running radio soap opera. The first episode was broadcast on January 1st 1951 and went out in May 1989 Art deco: art style popular in the 20's. It uses bright colors and modern materials, such as plastic. Art Nouveau: art style that appeared towards the end of the 19th century using the curving lines of flowers and leaves in nature. Representatives: Aubrey Beardley and Charles Ronnie Mackintosh. Ashmolean Museum: The oldest public museum placed in Oxford opened by Elias Ashmole in 1683. It displays paintings and archeological objects. Auld Reekie: name given to Edinburgh meaning "old smoky" referring to the chimneys of the town Aunt Sally: 1. popular character that people throw balls at to win prizes usually at fairs or other outdoors events. 2. Person that people laugh at. Au pair girl: a girl coming from a foreign country, staying with wealthy families, doing some housework for meals, accommodation and a small amount of money as a wage and usually study English B Babbitt: a character in a novel of Sinclair Lewis who is thinks mainly to money Bachelor's degree; first degree when graduating a university Bacon and eggs: fried slices of bacon and fried eggs eaten for the traditional English breakfast Bangers and mash: sausages and mashed potatoes, a typical meal for the British

222

B&Q: a chain of large shops very popular in Britain where people can buy what they need to decorate and repair their homes at low cost Barber's shop: a quartet usually made of four men singing together in close harmony; popular in U.S. where many towns have this kind of vocal quartet singing usually sentimental songs. baked beans: beans cooked in a tomato sauce. They come in cans and are normally eaten on toast. The Britsh are very fond of baked beans. Barbie doll: a doll for little girls having a wide choice of fashionable clothes. the Bar: profession of barrister The Head of the Bar of England and Wales and the Bar of the Northern Ireland is the Attorney General, while the head of the Scottish Bar is called the Dean of Faculty Barrister: appear before judges in High Courts and defend or prosecute cases. This makes them different from solicitors who cannot appear in front of judges and bring the cases to the barrister. They belong to one of the Inns of Court established in the late thirteenth. Graduates in law must also pass Inn examinations and attend twenty-four dinners there before they are "called to the bar" Barley wine: strong bear Barmaid: a woman serving drinks in a pub Barnardo's (formerly Doctor's Barnardo's) a charity that runs homes for orphans Baron: the fifth rank in the British peerage. Member of the House of Lords and named Lord Baroness: wife of a baron, having the title of Lady or Baroness Baronet: a rank between a baron and a knight. His title is Sir and his wife is a Lady Baroque: art style developed in Europe in the late 17th an early 18th century Bass: British company that produces beer Bath: city famous even in the Roman Empire time for its healthy mineral waters; nowadays also famous for the festival of classical music held every year Battery Park: a park at the southern end of Manhattan Island in New York where tourists are taken from to Ellis and Staten Island by boat The Bayeux Tapestry: a famous wall cloth made in the 11th century. It shows a battle scene from Hastings (1066) between William the Conqueror and King Harold II BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation: an independent radio broadcasting paid by the British government since 1927 Beacon Hill: a fashionable district in Boston, Massachusetts, US, where many rich families have their homes

223

Beale Street: famous street in Tennessee well known for its blue music sung by African American people Bean Town: name given to Boston for its famous baked beans sold there Beans on Toast: popular snack. Heinz the most popular brand of baked beans Bear market: a market on which companies shares prices drop; people selling them and waiting them to rise are called bears Beat generation: a 1950' group of artists rejecting the values of their contemporary society., trying to find their own way. The movement began in U.S. and included writers as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg the Beatles: famous British pop music popular in the 60s Beaulieu: a well known village in Hampshire, England, famous for its National Motor Museum Beauty and the Beast: traditional British story by which a young and beautiful lady saved a monster from a magic spell by her love. He turns into a handsome young prince and they get married. Beaver Scout: six or eight years old boy member of the most junior branch of the Scouts Bebop: jazz music style popular in the 40s Bede: (the Venerable Bede): English monk and a historian (673-735). He wrote Ecclesiastical History of the English People. (Latin Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum) in which "the English were God's new "chosen" nation elected to replace the sin-stained Briton in the promised land of Britain Bedlam: a popular name for St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital in London Bed-sit: (in Britain) a flat consisting of one room rented usually by students Beefeater: name given to a Yeoman Warder of the Tower of London Beef olives: British dish made of thin slices of beef wrapped in herb stuffing and baked Bee Gees: British pop group very popular in the 70s. Beer garden: a pub garden where people can have a sit , eat and drink a beer. Beer tent: a tent opened at one side where drinks and food are served outdoors on entertainment events Berni: a leading restaurant chain in Britain Beetle: the name given by the British to the small Volkswagen car. In US it is called a bug Mrs. Beeton: a writer that wrote a famous book on cooking and running a household in the 19th century

224

Bentley: a fashionable and expensive car made by Rolls Royce Company Beowulf: an old English poem written in the 6th century. It begins with the description of the funerals of Scyld Scefing "beaga bryttan" or the Lord of the Rings whose body is carried down to a great ship and dispatched upon the whale road and wave-domain of the sea; The grandson of Scyld Scefing, the warrior Hrothgar, builds a "heal-aern", or hall building in order to memorialize his own triumphant career. This is a place of warmth and light, of food and drink, wide gabbled and lofty. It is a wine-mansion and gold hall men. In a world of darkness, it represents human felicity. There is an Anglo-Saxon term, "seledreoing", meaning "sad for hall" (perhaps a longing for home); it is a harbinger of English melancholy. And so good fortune reined over Hrothgar's kingdom until a "feond on helle", a moor-dweller and border-wanderer, the monster Grendel, fell upon the bright hall and devoured thirty of Hrothgar's retinue. He was descended from Cain, just as Alfred the Great's line was traced to Adam himself. The seed of Cain was a "death-scua", or "mistige moras", or misty moors. The monster pursued a campaign of extirpation and carnage against Hrothgar. After twelve winters Beowulf came over the sea to assist Hrothgar. He takes up arms against Grendel, and in one desperate fight, the monster is fatally wounded. B then serves the head of Grendel's monstrous mother. At a later time he himself is delivered a fatal would by a guardian dragon. The pattern completes as it begins, with a funeral ceremony. Leonard Bernstein: (1918-1990) an American famous musician, composer, piano player, and conductor. The most famous composition was the West Side Story. Best: a weekly British magazine for women first published in 1987 Betty Boop: a cartoon character created by Max Fletcher in 1915 BhS: a group of shops well known in Britain selling clothes and goods for the home Big Bang: introduction of important changes in the rules of the London Stock Exchanges in 1986 Big Ben: the clock in the tower of the British Houses of Parliament Big Brother: a character in the novel "Nineteen Eighty Four of George Orwell that is the ruler of the state that watches people and controls everything all the time. Big Mac: type of a hamburger made by McDonalds Big Smoke: name given to London for its smog and cloudy sky Bingo: a game of chance Birdseye: frozen food sold in American shops. The name comes from Clarence Birdseye who developed the method of freezing the food in 1920. 225

Bitter: a kind of bitter beer Black bottom: a popular dance in America in the 20s black-eyed pea (AmE), cowpea, black-eyed bean (Br. E) white bean with a black spot on it eaten in America in the Southern part, on the New Year's Day because it is thought to bring good luck as a dish called hoping John Blackpool: the most famous seaside resort in Britain Black Pudding: A thick sausage made with blood and fat. Blind man's buff: a children's game in which a player's eyes are covered and he tries to catch the others Bloody Mary: 1. a drink made of vodka, tomato juice and Worcester sauce; 2. nickname for Queen Mary who killed a lot of people for religious reasons Bloomsbury: central place in the city of London where most of the museums and universities are placed; here is the place where the intellectuals used to meet in the early 20th century who rejected the Victorian social values: Virginia Wolf, E.M. Forester, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey Blue book: (Britain): report published by the Parliament; (in US) a book that gives details about people with important positions in society Blue Boy: a famous painting by Thomas Gainsborough (1779) Blue law: a law that forbids certain activities on Sunday in US. It was originally printed on blue paper; nowadays it forbids selling alcoholic drinks on Sunday Blue Riband: the fastest ship that crosses the Atlantic Ocean. It is used for whatever it is best in a field Blue rinse: blue dye used by old ladies; used for typical old-fashion conservative habits Boadicea/Boudicca: the queen of a British tribe under the Roman ruling. She rose against the Roman soldiers and she killed herself when she was defeated. Boarding school: a school where pupils study and live, either during the week with home visits at the weekend, or for the complete term, with holidays spent at home Boogie /boogie-woogie: blues music played on the piano popular in the 30s Borough: district, part of the town that has power of the local government Boxing Day: the day after Christmas when small gifts are given to employees or servants. The name is supposed to come from the box in which charity money were collected for the poor and opened on Christmas Bradshaw: informal name given to a book published of all the railway service in Britain 226

Brat pack: group of successful artists, usually behaving badly Bread-and-butter pudding: traditional British sweet dish made of bread and butter with raisins and sugar, baked in milk and eggs Bread and Butter: when the British eat bread they almost always cover it with butter or margarine. It can be soaked up in the gravy or juices left on your plate. Bread sauce: British sauce made of milk, onion, breadcrumbs and spices served with chicken or turkey British Bread: different types of bread but most commonly is sliced white bread. This is sold in plastic packets and is not half as good as the bread which you must cut yourself. The author of this text is English although he doesn't spend much time in Britain. If you disagree with what is written please add your own opinion or tell us about the food in your country. Breton Woods: the place, in U.S. where the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in 1944 i The Brit Awards: ceremony that takes place every year in London at which pop groups are awarded prizes British Museum: the museum of Britain, established in 1753. It has on of the most famous art galleries Briton (ancient): Celtic population living the British Isles before the Roman conquest Britpop: style of pop music played in the 1990s by British groups Broadway: famous street in New York closely associated with the theatre and often used to mean US theatre in general Brooklyn Bridge: famous bridge that links Manhattan with Brooklyn in New York over the East River Brownie: a member of the junior branch of the Guides for girls between 7 and 11. Joining the group, led by a woman called Brown Owl, the little girls meet together, play and learn how to do useful things. Bubblegum: type of pop music made for children. The name comes from the bubbles made of chewing gum popular with the children Bubbles: a famous painting of Millais made in 1886 representing a young man blowing soup bubbles. It became well known because it was used in advertisements by Pears, a soap company Buckingham Palace: the official home of the royal British family

227

Buck's Fizz: (Br E) a traditional drink made of champagne and orange juice usually drunk at important events the bulldog breed: used when referring especially to the British soldiers Bull market: expression used when the prices of shares raise and the their owners - the bulls wait for a better moment to make a profit by selling them at a higher price. Bungalow: typical British house usually lived by old retired people because they are built only at ground level not to have stairs Burberry: a waterproof raincoat of high quality and expensive (BrE) Burger King: well known chain of restaurants for fast food (AmE) Burlesque/burlesque (AmE): stage variety show once popular in US. It started as family entertainment in 1860s and ended with striptease shows in 1920s.

C the Cabinet: a committee responsible for deciding and coordinating the government policy. The Prime Minister selects 20 persons representing the government departments. They have to decide on different issues when they meet at their place - Downing Street and they are collectively responsible for their decisions. The Prime Minister can reshuffle the Cabinet when some members can be dropped and others brought in and the rest can be given other responsibilities. The leader of the opposition party forms a shadow cabinet ready to take over immediately the responsibilities of the new government if the party in power should be defeated. In US the Cabinet consists of 14 heads of departments that make the executive branch of the federal government. The president appoints the department heads, called secretaries who give him advice on policies. State governments are organized similarly and most have a cabinet. Cadillac: a large and expensive car considered to be a sign of wealth and success in America Caedmon: the first English poet who was mentioned by Bede. Caesar salad: a typical American salad made of lettuce, cheese and eggs Cadbury: has been selling chocolate since 1824 and the name means "chocolate" for people in Britain Christmas: the most important public holidays: Christmas Eve (24 December), Christmas Day (25 December) and Boxing Day (26 December). The celebration was brought by Queen Victoria's husband, who was German

228

City, the: the financial centre of London where the Bank of England, the Stock Exchange and insurance, banking and finance companies are placed. It is traced back from the twelfth century when money-lenders from Lombardy settled in London. It is also the original city of Londinium founded by the Romans in AD 50. The city is still independent from the age of William the Conqueror that gave it a special Charter. It has its own council, Mayor and its own police force. Commonwealth, the: Informal association of fifty countries, having no common written constitution Comprehensive school: it puts pupils in different classes according to their ability, but there are no entry qualifications. Conductive Education: a system for teaching children with cerebral palsy, mental handicaps, to use their limbs and minds to full capacity Cornflakes: cereals eaten for breakfast with cold milk and sugar County: an area of the country with its own local government and identity. The United Kingdom is divided into 71 such areas. Covent Garden 1. A former large fruit, vegetable and flower market. 2. The Royal Opera House (ROH) that has presented opera and ballet since 1847 Cricket: one of the three English national sports for men, (football and rugby) but nowadays women play them too Crisps: potato sliced very thin and fried and salted with different flavours. Custard: sweet sauce made of eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla. It is served hot with fruit pies for pudding Designer: the term came into English in 70's when famous fashion designers put their namelabel on the outside of cloths that became fashionable and expensive. Dinner: evening meal. When having it earlier, it is more informal and is often the time people eat after a day at work. A formal dinner is usually served later. Dinner is also used for midday meal instead of lunch by working class families especially in the North of England, where the evening meal is called "tea" or "supper" Disc Jockey (DJ): The term came from America, "disc" means record and "jockey" is the name of a person who rides a horse at race meetings. A DJ has to be skilled at choosing the right records and talking in between playing them. Double-decker bus: it has two levels of seating. At the beginning the top level had no roof till 1925. Fares are collected by the driver on entering the bus.

229

E Englishness: the "Englishness" of the Anglo-Saxons, as opposed to the "Britishness" of the Celts circulated widely in the Anglo-Saxon world. A religious notion from the moment Pope Gregory sent Augustine to England with the mission of establishing a Church of the English, in the light of his celebrated if apocryphal remark "non Angli sed angeli" ("Not Angles but angels"). A late seventh-century biography then declared that Gregory would lead "gentem Anglorum" into the sight of god at the time of the Last Judgement. One of the reason for the success of the Reformation and the formation of the Church of England, lies in this national zeal. E-numbers colouring or preservatives allowed by the European Community are food additives and are represented, on the food labels, with a e number in front, such as E101, or E102 Eton a famous Britain private school founded in 1440 by King Edward VI for poor scholars that became soon the school of the noblemen sons Fahrenheit: a scale for measuring temperature invented by the German scientist, Gabriel Fahrenheit. The freezing point is 32 Fleet Street: a London street where most of the national newspapers used to be written and printed. In the mid-1980s they started to move to the Docklands area. Fish and chips: a popular food originating in the 6o's when the railways brought regular supplies of fresh fish to the cities Fish fingers: made of white fish, in a finger form covered in breadcrumbs and usually fried, served with chips and vegetables Foot (Feet): length measurement equal to 0.30 metre. Its name comes probably from the average length of a man's foot. Divided into 12 inches. Three feet make a yard. Football: the most popular sport in England. The game has been played for centuries but it was only in 1863 that the Football League settled its rules. Football hooligans: British football fans that have become well known for their violence Football pools: the: gambling on the results of Saturday football matches. People fill in a form to predict which teams will "draw" (both have the same number of goals) Fox-hunting: popular sport since the Middle Ages. A group of people on horses, named "the Hunt", together with hunting dogs, named "pack of hounds" chase foxes across the place until it is caught and killed by the dogs. There is a strong opposition nowadays against this sport, which is considered "blood sport".

230

Foyle's: one of the largest bookshops opened by William Alfred Foyle Freemasonry: a semi-secret society based on ancient religious, magic and philosophy. Many political leaders of the society, in the police, business, finance and the Royal Family belong to the Freemasons G Gaelic: the native language of Ireland. It was taken to Scotland by Irish settlers thousands of years ago, but the two languages differ form one another, being under threat from English Gallon: measurement for liquids. Its metric equivalent is 4.5 litres. One gallon is divided into 8 pints. Gatwick: London's second airport GCSE (General certificate of secondary Education) final examination for the pupils at the end of their fifth year of secondary education, at the age of sixteen Gibraltar: a British island that was taken from Spain in 1704. In 1967 the inhabitants voted to remain British. It is known under the name of the "Rock". Gin and tonic: a popular alcoholic drink that was first made in Holland in the middle of the sixteenth century and was called the "Dutch courage", because it was used before the battle by the soldiers to feel more comfortable. In the nineteenth century it became fashionable for cocktail that came from America. The tonic water is a sparkling water, with a bitter taste of the quinine and it was used as a medicine by the British in India. Girobank: a popular bank settled by the Post Office in 1968. As it is used for payments by the Department of Social Security, the cheques used for the benefit are often called "giro" GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) Standard time in England The 00 meridian passes through Greenwich in South east London and is considered as a base for other time zones in the world. Gravy: dark, rich sauce used for roast meat which is poured over the meat when it is eaten with vegetables and potatoes Green: is now used as a descriptive word for many ecological issues. Used as an adjective can be added to any word, like: e.g. green advertising, green cars, green packaging, green books Greyhound: popular English sport. Greenhound are tall, thin dogs that are raced on a circular track. Guinness: a dark, almost black beer with a white head of foam. The taste is strong and bitter. The Guinness brewers' family makes the kind of beer called porter because it was popular with the porter of Covent Garden

231

Guy Fawkes: Roman Catholic involved in a plot to kill the Protestant King James I in 16o5 by blowing up the house of Parliament. He was caught and executed. Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night, on 5 November became one of Britain's most popular festivals. People have firework party and a large pile of wood, with a Guy model is burned. H Haggis: normally eaten in Scotland. It is sheep's intestine stuffed with meat and vegetables. Hardbacks: books with hard covers. They are thought to be of higher quality than the paperbacks Harley Street: situated in West End of London where famous doctors and surgeon s are placed. The term is often used to designate the philosophy of private medicine. Some medical education institutions are also to be found there. Harrods: a large department store that became a tourist attraction to, as it became an independent state of London. It has now around 230 departments, among them 16 food halls and 34 for fashion. The store runs a library, has a bank, arranges funerals, has a kennel for customers' dogs and its own water supply and electricity generators Heathrow: The London' major international airport opened in 1929 and it became international in 1946. There is a direct underground rail link to London. As many robberies from the passengers' luggage, the airport is also known as Thiefrow Heritage industry: name given to modern ways of presenting the past in museums and historic sites. Old factories, mines and houses have turned into mechanical recreation of historical places. In the Jovrik Museum in York visitors pass in small cars through this kind of recreation of models of people, recorded sounds and real smells. Honours System, the: a series of medals, awards and titles given by the monarch twice a year, at the New Year and on the monarch's official birthday in June. Hooray Henry: insulting name given to a man of the upper class who acts in an arrogant, loud or silly manner Horseracing: very popular British sport which was first recorded officially in 1540. The races are also social occasions. They are televised and one of them, Ascot, is also famous for the hats worn by women. H.P. Sauce: made of vinegar, tomatoes, fruit, onions and spices. It is dark brown and has a sharp salty taste. It is usually used with fried foods, meat pies and sausages. The small shopowner sold it first heard that it was use in the House of Parliament, so it named it H.P. sauce 232

I Independent Television (ITV): founded in 1955 under the control of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA): founded in 1947 by the surrealist painter Roland Penrose. It has an art gallery, cinema and a theatre which all present the latest, most experimental type of art. It is placed in one of the most traditional parts in London, Nash House, near Buckingham Palace and where all the governmental offices, foreign embassies and clubs for aristocratic gentlemen are. Irish Republican Army (IRA): An extreme military organization as a wing of the Sinn Fein It fights on the Catholic side and it wants Northern Ireland to join the Republic of Ireland in the south and for the whole country to become separate from Britain. Jockey Club, the: was awarded the Royal Charter in 197o as a governing body of the horse Racing in Britain.. It is responsible for the administration of the race meeting, horse training and price money. John Bull: the symbol of a typical Englishman, often drawn on the cartoons or pictures about England. It was invented by John Artbuhnot, a political writer, as a big man, with a large stomach and a plain, round face. He wears boots, an open jacket and has a Union Jack waistcoat and he often has a bulldog with him. John O'Groats: the most northern village of Britain. The place is named after a Dutchman, Jan Groot that built a house with eight sides, and eight doors so that everyone could enter at the same time, to avoid arguments of the eight parts of his family about who was the most important. The phrase "from Land's end to John O'Groats" means form one end of the country to the other. K Kilt: a traditional skirt worn by Scotsmen. It comes from a long piece of cloth, called a plaid that was wrapped around the body. By the eighteen century it was separated into two pieces. . The kilt is made of tartan that has a complicated pattern of squares in different colours according to the clan, family or wearer. The kilt was declared illegal between 1746 and 1782 after the Scots had fought England to restore the Stuart monarchs and lost. Kippers: smoked herrings. They are eaten usually for breakfast, boiled and served with melted butter L

233

Lake District, the: one of the most beautiful areas in north-western Britain in Cumbrian Mountains. The romantic poet William Wordsworth, who lived there, made it famous by his poetry. Land's End: the most southern point of Britain in Cornwall. The land is owned by a property developer and it is visited by tourists. Launderette: a common sight in a British town of village. It contains self-service washing machines and spin-driers. The washings can be left with an attendant and collected later, but many people stay and read magazines, smoke, gossip, Loch Ness Monster, the: a large animal supposed to live in loch (Gaelic lake) Ness in Scotland. "L" plates: standing for learner attached to a car at the front and at the back when someone is learning to drive. It can be said I've still got my "L" plates on when you are learning to do anything. Lunch: midday meal. For many people it is a snack, but it is also used by many people for entertaining clients. M Mac/Mc: Scottish prefix for names meaning son of. Marks and Spencer: a chain of department stores which sell women's and men's clothing. The company started in 1884 by a Russian refugee, Michael Marks who used to sell pins, cotton, and cloth from a box as he walked from village to village. Tom Spencer, an accountant, joined him in 1894 and they started'34 penny bazaar' market stalls where everything was sold for a penny. Nowadays it sells 5% of Britain's Food and 16% of its clothing. Sometimes it is called 'Marks and Sparks' or M&S Mile: the longest unit of measurement. It is equal to 1.69km. Milkman, the: delivers milk to people's houses in the morning. He collects empty bottles and leaves bottles or cartoons of milk on the doorsteps. He can also carry eggs, butter, cheese, and fruit juice. He drives around in a milk-float, a small, slow, electric vehicle with open sides and back. Money: Britain has changed to the metric system in 1971. There are 100 pence (p) in a pound.1p.2p, - coppers because of their colour. The notes are 5, 10, 20 and 5o. The first banknotes in Britain were goldsmiths' receipts. They were used as payment because the goldsmiths could always be trusted to give gold to whoever had the receipt. N

234

Nanny: woman employed in private families to looks after young children. National Gallery, the, of England: gallery placed in a building in Trafalgar Square in London. It was founded in 1824 when the Government bought some paintings owned by John Julius Angerstein. Now it shelters over 2000 paintings of European important paintings. The Gallery is opened seven days a week and the entry is free. New Age: a way of life that is a reaction to the lifestyle of the 198os that has interests in money, power and possessions. The New Agers shifted their interest to spiritualism, religion, ecology, natural values and children. Next: a chain of popular fashion clothes shops for men and women very successful in the 8o's. It was founded by the family bearing this name. It provided a cheap education in style and fashion that had not been available to the majority of people before. 999 (nine nine nine): the emergency telephone number for ambulance, police or fire brigade available 24 hours a day. Notting Hill: Carnival, the: is the Europe's largest street festival. It was started in 1965 by London's West Indian community living in this area of London. The Carnival takes place on the last Sunday and Monday of August. Number ten: is the abbreviation of 10 Downing Street, the official house of the Prime Minister. It is often used to mean the Prime Minister or sometimes, the "centre of power" Nursery schools: schools for children under 5 O O': specific for Irish family names, such as O'Malley, O'Grady, etc. It means "son of" Odeon: company that owns cinemas. It was founded in 1937 and nowadays it has 255 screens in 74 towns. The largest is in Leicester Square, London. The main auditorium seats 2,000 people with other five cinemas attached called The Mezzanine. The company also opened Multiplexes that have also bars, restaurants and amusement arcades. Off-Licence: a kind of shop that sells alcohol, but the customer must take it away to drink "off" the premise. It also sells cigarettes, chocolate and crisps. The Pubs (Public Houses) have a licence to sell alcohol to be drunk on the premises. Open University: often attended by people to have a formal education degree obtained by the system of "distance leaning" The TV and Radio broadcast teaching programmes for the students. They can also attend summer schools where the students meet their tutors. Courses take six years usually and the students get a number of credits for each year's work. The open University was founded in 1069 in Milton Keynes.

235

Ounce: the smallest unit of weight that equals 28 grams. There are 16 ounces in a pound. The abbreviation for ounce is "oz" Oxbridge: a name mixed from OXford and CamBRIDGE use to describe the influential type of people having attended the courses of one of these universities. P Paperbacks: books with soft covers made of thick paper. They are much cheaper than "hardbacks" Pie: A pie is some food surrounded by pastry (pastry is a mixture of flour and butter). It is normally baked in the oven. The content of the pie can be sweet or savoury. Typical examples of pies are "steak and kidney pie" or "apple pie". There are variations of the pie such as cornish pasties. Pasties were originally invented so that working men could take their food to work with them. Someone told me that miners in the Cornish tin mines invented the cornish pastie. Picnic: meal taken outdoors Pier: type of road raised on wooden pillars in the sea found at seaside resorts in England and Wales. Originally they were landing places for sailors. In the nineteenth century holidays besides the sea became popular and piers became places for walking and entertainment providing theatre shows, fortune tellers, restaurants and cafes. Pillar Box: (post box) used by the post office to collect letters. They were introduced in 1850. They are bright red and have the initials of the king or queen on them to see how old they are. Pint: measurement for liquids equal to 0, 57 litres. Milk and bear are still sold in pint bottles or cartons. You ask for a "pint" or "half" and a pint means "bear". Plonk: name for popular cheap wines. The slang word comes from the sound of something heavy being dropped into liquid. Ploughman's lunch: served in pubs. It consists of bread, cheese, pickles and sometimes a salad and a meat pie. A bear is usually served with it. It is a very popular thing to eat to eat in a "pub" at midday. It normally consists of a bread roll with a piece of cheese and a pickled onion. p.m.: (post meridian) used with the 12w-hour clock for the time between midday and midnight, so four o'clock in the afternoon is 4 p.m. Police, the : the modern police force was established in London in 1829 There are 43 police forces each of them being headed by a Chief Constable Porridge: Scottish food made of oats, a type of cereal, boiled in water with salt. It is eaten usually for breakfast. It also served in prisons and boarding schools. It is also a prison slang word used for the time spent in prison. Postcode: post code introduced by the Post Office to ease sorting the letters

236

Pound: unit of weight: equal to 0,45 kg. There are 14 pounds in a stone. The abbreviation for pound is "lb" Proms, the: (Henry Wood Promenade Concerts) were founded by the conductor Henry Wood in 1895. There are around 6 concertos of classical and new music from mid-July to midSeptember held in Albert Hall. The open area of the building is left for people to stand. Proms are traditionally noisy and undisciplined with everyone clapping along to the orchestra and joining in with the singers. Public schools: an exclusive private type of school. Eton and Harrow are attended by boys and Roedean and Benenden by girls. They emphasize on sports, religion and honour, still making the social rules for the British society. Pudding: 1. a kind of a sweat pie made of fruit; 2. meat pudding that has also vegetables and gravy. The ingredients are put in a heavy pastry made with suet and animal fat. Pudding is also the name used by some people for the sweet course of the meal. Q Quakers: religious movement settled in 1650 by George Fox. Its real name is the Society of Friends. The nickname comes from "Quake" which means to "shake", "tremble" during religious ecstasy. Many Quaker have been social reformers. William Penn left England for America and founded Pennsylvania, a community based on Quakers' values. Elisabeth Fry, another reformer, appealed pacifism in order to reform the terrible conditions of the prisoners in the early nineteenth century. Their religious meetings have no order and no priest. Anyone can speak, and say a prayer or talk about his or her beliefs. Queen's Birthday: official birthday of the monarch celebrated usually on the first days of June. The Trooping of the Colour's parade in London salutes the King or Queen and by the "Honours List" published on this occasion, awards, medals and titles are given to citizens for services to the country. R Rugby: a form of football that started in 1823 when a pupil from Rugby School, picked up the ball and ran with it during a football game. New and different rules were settled in 1845 and up to 1893 over 400 rugby clubs were settled in Britain Each team has 15 players and the Ball is oval shaped. S

237

Saatchi, Charles and Maurice: are the owners of the advertising agency, Saatchi &Saatchi. They became famous when they were hired by the Conservative party in the 70's to produce a political campaign. Sainsbury's: supermarkets chain with Tesco the leading position in food and drink selling in Britain Sales: are held twice a year by shops and department stores to get rid of the old stock of the merchandise. The prices are cut of up to 70%. There are January Sales and Summer Sales. Samaritans, the: voluntary service of counseling and advice over the telephone to people who are unhappy or thinking of killing themselves Sandwich: Name given to the two pieces of bread , spread with butter or margarine and filled with meat, fish, salad, jam or even sugar. It was named by the Earl of Sandwich who lived in the town with the same name in the 18th century. He used to eat like this because he didn't have time to go to dinner because he was busy with gambling. Sausages: the typical sausages in Britain are made of meat (pig), fat and bread put in a very thin intestine. They are fried or grilled and are sometimes eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner with chips. "Sausages and mash" is also a popular meal Scotch: name given to the Scotch whisky. It should not be used to describe anything coming from Scotland. "Scottish" is always used for that. Scotland Yard: the headquarters of the Metropolitan police in London opened in 1829. Sliced Bread: bread sold sliced. As it is a very convenient, there is saying: "It's the best thing since sliced bread" which means something in a new or clever idea Snack: small meal. Such a sandwich, toast, fruit or soup eaten between meals Soap Operas: popular serial broadcast on TV or radio several times a day. It was a time when in the 1950s soap companies sponsored these serials in exchange for advertisements Solicitor: a job performed by someone who makes connection between the public and the legal system. They do the legal work on buying and selling property (conveyancing) He can take cases of traffic offences or divorce disputes to the Magistrate's Court, but never to the High Court, where the case must be carried out by a barrister. Spare Rib: a feminist magazine fist published in 197y2. They publish articles about a wide range of subjects including law, politics, arts and even man. The title makes reference to the creation story in which God created the fist woman, Eve, out of one of Adam's ribs. Spitting image: a comedy of political satire, shown on Independent Television. The characters are portrayed as puppets that are ugly and the satire is cruel.

238

Stamps: produced by Post Office: The fist stamp in the world was "Penny Black" that appeared in 1840. It showed a profile of Queen Victoria on a black background. Stansted: the third London's airport Stately Homes: name given to great houses and palaces built by aristocrats in the countryside. Stew: meal made of meat and vegetables, usually onion, carrots and potatoes, in gravy. It is cooked in the oven in a pot called casserole, usually eaten in winter. It is traditionally served with "dumplings", small balls made from a four and suet (hard fat) mixture which is cooked in the gravy. Stone: unit of weight, equal to 6.53 kg. People measure their weight in stones. Sunday Lunch: traditional meal of roast beef, potatoes and boiled vegetables, like carrots, peas, or cabbage served with gravy, a thin sauce. Lamb or chicken or pork can also be eaten as mea.. It can be followed by a pudding such an apple or blackberry pie with custard. Changes in diet and a smaller or single-parent family mean that Sunday lunch is not quiet so popular as it used to be. Supper: a light meal eaten late at night, perhaps after a visit to the cinema or theatre. It is sometimes used to mean "dinner". T Takeaway: ready-cooked meal to be taken away to eat in the street or at home. Tate Gallery: named after Henry Tate who donated his collection of 65 paintings to the nation and he also paid for the building sheltering the Gallery which was opened in 1897. It became the Gallery of modern art and it comprises a large collection of British art from 1550 to the present day and a collection of European twentieth century paintings. Tatler: an old magazine founded in 1750 written for rich and aristocratic and people that want to find out about them. It was very popular in the 80's when money and power were fashionable. Tea: British national drink. It was brought to England in the seventeenth century from the Middle East as a luxury article. "Teatime" is the afternoon lunch of sandwiches, cakes, and tea introduced by the Duchess of Bedford around 1800. "Tea-break" the time working people take off in the morning about 11 o'clock for a snack, sometimes called "eleveses". The British drink mostly Indian tea coming from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and East Africa. Tesco: the first self service supermarket chain in England founded by Jack Cohen in 1880. He used to buy job-lots of dented canned goods or unlabelled tins and chests of food. One day he needed to label some chest of tea, so he took TES from the importer's name and CO from his

239

own and sold the tea which was successful. Tesco started cutting its prices (slashing) and the owner became well known as Jack the Slasher. That is why Tesco often means something cheap and unsophisticated. Tips: small amount of money given to someone for a service. Town Hall: the building where the local government or council is placed. Local laws, called bylaws are issued from here. Trade Unions: associations of working men settled in 1824 for the first time. They usually bargain for better hours or conditions. Traffic Wardens: people that have power to direct the traffic although they are not members of the police. Women traffic wardens are sometimes called "meter-maids" from the words of a Beatles song. U UB40: a form given to the unemployed for the unemployment benefit. It is used in shops, cinemas, etc for discounts. UB40 means "without work". A successful reggae group baring the same name was founded in 1980's when 10% of the population was unemployed. Union Jack: the name given to the British flag. It was created in 1606 following the union of England and Scotland. The flag then showed the Cross of St George, for England and the Cross of St. Andrew for Scotland. In 1801, following the union with Ireland, the Cross of St Patrick was added. The "Jack" is the name of the flag is hung from the back of the ship, but the name is used for the flag at all times and in all places. Victorian Values: are hard work, saving money, a traditional morality based on family and patriotism. These values have a special meaning in GB because the Victorian Age was the time of the British Empire. V-sign: the rudest gesture in Britain. It is made with the first two fingers of the hand held up with the nails forward in a V shape. Winston Churchill's famous victory sign in the Second World War is the same gesture, but with the inside of the fingers and the palm of the hand showing. Wally: a term of abuse meaning "fool" or "idiot". It is not very insulting but makes someone seem less important than you. Wimp: an insult to someone that is a weak, easily frightened and unadventurous person. The adjective is "wimpish". It can be used in a friendly way. Woolworth: an American chain of stores selling a wide range of goods including food, furniture, records, toys, , clothes, etc

240

X X as a letter has many uses in English language. Mr. X is used for a anonymous person, or it can mean anyone, a symbol of all people. Also used for an unknown amount of things: "X" thousand of pounds. "X" is also used to mean 'cross' so the London railway station Charing Cross can be written "Charing X". There is also the famous game "poughts and crosses" where the symbols "O" and "X" are used to fill small boxes drawn on paper. "X" also means 'kiss' and people often put several "X"s at the bottom of a letter for someone beloved. The sign X is used by illiterate people for signing. Xmas: abbreviation for Christmas X-rated: means that something is pornographic or violent and therefore is not suitable for children. An "X" film id for adults only. Y Yard: a unit of measurement equal to o.9144 metre. A yard is 3 feet and there are 1.760 yards to a mile Y-fronts: underpants worn by men. They have an upside-down Y-shape slit in front. Yorkshire pudding: A batter made with flour, eggs and milk and cooked in the oven. This is most often eaten with roast beef for Sunday lunch. (Batter is the same mixture that is used to make pancakes)

Z Zebra crossing: black and white stripped area on roads where people can cross safely. If these crossings have traffic lights they are called "Pelican" crossing.

241

Bibliography 1. Armitage, David; Braddick J. Michael; The British Atlantic World. 1500-1800. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 2. Barfield, O - History in English Words (London, 1956) 3. Barry Tomalin, Hinton Michael Hancock Matthew British Festivals, Connect Elt, 1997 4. Bradley, H The making of English (London, 1955) 5. Carpentier, Jean; Lebrun, Francois: Istoria Europei Bucuresti, Humanitas, 1997 6. Green Martin "Courteous Customs: A Guide to Local Customs and Festivals throughout the British Isles. Impact Books, London , 1993 7. Iarovici, Edith A history of the English Language (Bucureti, EDP, 1973) 8. Jespersen, O Language, Its Nature, Development and Origin (London, 1964) 9. King, Edmund: MedievaL Englands: Tempus in association with the British Library, 1988 10. Britain, An Official Handbook: 1993 11. The Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions, Oxford University Press, 1976 12. Sardiner, Juliet; Wenborn, Neil: Companion to British History, Collins, & Brown, 1995 13. Nation, Michael A Dictionary of Modern Britain, 1991, Pinguin English 14. Bromhead, Peter: Life in Modern Britain, Longman 1992 15. Room, Adrian: Dictionary of Britain, 1987, Oxford University Press 16. Room, Adrian: An A to Z of British Life, Oxford University Press, 1990 17. Oakland, John: An Introduction to British Civilization, Kontledge, London, 1995 18. Wilton, Andrew: Five centuries of British Painting. Thames & Hudson, World of Art, 2001 Ltd, London 19. Oxford Guide of British and American Culture for learners of English: Oxford University Press 20. Grove Concise Dictionary of Muse, Macmillan Press, Ltd, London 21. Survey of British Civilization History of England WWW.nvc.edu/home/jebraden/History 22. Lamont Brown Raymond, "Scottish Traditions and Festivals 23. Martin, Linda Wagner The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing I the United States. 1995, Oxford University Press, 24. The Economist, November, 2001

242

25. AArcher, William, America and the English Language", New York, 1960 26. wwwhistoryplace.com 27. wwwhistorymatters.gmu.edu 28. www witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTALinks.html 29. wwwpbs.org/history 30. brtleby.com/cambridge 31. wwwhistory.uk.com/sitemap/index.php 32. wwwbritish.history.ac.uk

243

244