Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic.

Hernán Piperno

Past to Present - Social, Political, Religious, Linguistic and

Geographical development of the British Isles

(Summarized from Britain by O’Driscoll, Aspects of Britain and the USA by Gardwood, Gardani & Peris,
Dossier; Britain in Close-up by Fielder & Norman-Risch, 1990, information from the Museum of London and the
Internet for academic purposes only)

The British Isles is the geographical term for a group of about 5,000 islands off
the north-west coast of mainland Europe.
The first inhabitants in the British Isles were the Iberians. These people knew
how to work metal and were the first to establish the first real civilization. At the
beginning, people’s lives were shaped by kinship, ancestry and shared values. The dead,
the great river and the heavens were powerful spiritual forces. Distant times and places
also held a particular fascination.
People learned to transform the land in new ways. Plants were cultivated and
animals tamed. Stones from far and near were skillfully shaped and polished. Fire
magically fused clay into pots and turned rock into molten metal. It was a time of
plenty.
Great gatherings were held in ditched enclosures in established woodland
clearings. People journeyed far to exchange news, forge and re-forge alliances, settle
blood feuds and do honour to their ancestors. In this way, scattered communities
routinely acknowledged their ties to the land, to the past and to each other.
In about 5000 b.c. a tribe called the Indo-Europeans lived in central Europe.
They were farmers and had their own language. After discovering the wheel, they
migrated and travelled east and west. Those peoples who travelled west to what is now
Britain, were the Celts. The Iberians were overrun by the various Celtic invasions and
therefore the Celts were the only people in Britain for a long time.
Then, in AD 43, the Romans arrived. Julius Caesar and his army brought a new
language with them – Latin. After the destruction of the first London during Queen
Boudica’s revolt in AD 60, the Roman Emperor, Nero, sent Julius Classicianus, a
civilian administrator (prosecutor) to work along the military governor to re-establish
peace in Britannia. London was re-built as a planned Roman town, boasting major
public buildings and administrative centres north and south of the river. The new town
rapidly expanded and by AD 100 it replaced Colchester as capital of the province of
Britannia (Britannia was the Empire most northern province).

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Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic. Hernán Piperno

By AD 122 when the emperor, Hadrian (his reign was between AD 119-138), visited
Britain, and probably London, both the Roman Empire and Londinium, were at their
height. The forum and the basilica were the focal point of the city. Around the forum’s
courtyard were permanent shops and offices. Residential houses surrounded the city
centre. Stone started to replace clay and timber as the preferred building material. In the
streets, workmen lay waterpipes. But the 3 rd Century AD political instability and
economic recession were to cause London to decline. Whole areas of the city were
dismantled and not re-developed.
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in AD 312. A
bishop of London named Restitutus attended the Council of Arles in AD 314. So there
must have been a Christian community by that date, although the evidence is elusive.
The Romans ruled Britain for many years and when they left in approximately
410 A.D, the Latin way of life vanished. However, they left behind three things of
importance: their roads, the sites of important cities and the seeds of Christianity.
About forty years later, a new group of invaders arrived. These were the Angles
and the Saxons, who came from northern Europe – Holland, Denmark and Germany.
In London native Britons had lived alongside immigrants from all corners of the Roman
Empire for about 400 years. Now new settlers, the Saxons, came across the North Sea to
colonise Britain, bringing with them different customs and beliefs. The language they
spoke was later known as Old English and many of their words still remain in the
English vocabulary today. How did the English language get started? After Roman
troops withdrew from Britain in the early 5th century, three Germanic peoples — the
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — moved in and established their kingdoms. They brought
with them the Anglo-Saxon language, which combined with some Celtic and Latin
words to create Old English. Old English was first spoken in the 5th century, and it
looks incomprehensible to today's English-speakers. To give you an idea of just how
different it was, the language the Angles brought with them had three genders
(masculine, feminine, and neutral). Still, though the gender of nouns has fallen away in
English, 4,500 Anglo-Saxon words survive today. They make up only about 1 percent
of the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, but nearly all of the most commonly
used words that are the backbone of English. They include nouns like "day" and "year,"
body parts such as "chest," arm," and "heart," and some of the most basic verbs: "eat,"
"kiss," "love," "think," "become." Franklin Roosevelt's sentence "The only thing we
have to fear is fear itself" uses only words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

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Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic. Hernán Piperno

When in 597 A.D. Latin reappeared with St. Augustine, these Anglo-Saxon
people were easily converted to Christianity. This time hundreds of Latin (and Greek)
words re-entered Old English. The Christian church was central to the lives of
Londoners. The church provided schools, hospitals and shelter for the homeless.
The next important step in British history came between the years 750 and 1050.
That’s when the Vikings began to attack Britain. They came from Scandinavia and their
language, Norse, sounded a lot like modern Swedish. Londoners resisted Danish attacks
in the 800’s and 900’s. King Alfred, the Great, defeated the Viking invaders and made
peace with them. For some time, the Vikings controlled the north and east of England;
this area was called the Danelaw. Alfred re-established the city of London inside the
Roman city walls. However, by 1016 many Scandinavian settlers had re-established in
London. The next source of English was, therefore, Old Norse. Vikings from present-
day Denmark, some led by the wonderfully named Ivar the Boneless, raided the eastern
coastline of the British Isles in the 9th century. They eventually gained control of about
half of the island. Their language was probably understandable by speakers of English.
But Old Norse words were absorbed into English: legal terms such as "law" and
"murder" and the pronouns "they," "them," and "their" are of Norse origin. "Arm" is
Anglo-Saxon, but "leg" is Old Norse; "wife" is Anglo-Saxon," but "husband" is Old
Norse.
In 1042, after some rulers of Danish descent, Edward, the confessor, regained
the throne. After his death in 1066, his son, Harold II, became king of England.
One of the most important dates in British history is 1066 when Britain was
successfully attacked for the last time. That is when the French duke, William, defeated
the British King, Harold, at the battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans with
William, the conqueror, in 1066 opened London to merchants and settlers from France.
London grew in wealth and importance. It was the largest city in Norman England, a
great centre of trade and industry. Monasteries were established. Parliament began to
meet regularly in Westminster. There was sometimes conflict between the king and the
people of London. It is said that the real transformation of English — which started the
process of turning it into the language we speak today — came with the arrival of
William the Conqueror from Normandy, in today's France. The French that William and
his nobles spoke eventually developed into a separate dialect, Anglo-Norman. Anglo-
Norman became the language of the medieval elite. It contributed around 10,000 words,
many still used today. In some cases, Norman words ousted the Old English words. But

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Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic. Hernán Piperno

in others, they lived side by side as synonyms. Norman words can often sound more
refined: "sweat" is Anglo-Saxon, but "perspire" is Norman. Military terms (battle, navy,
march, enemy), governmental terms (parliament, noble), legal terms (judge, justice,
plaintiff, jury), and church terms (miracle, sermon, virgin, saint) were almost all
Norman in origin. The combination of Anglo-Norman and Old English led to Middle
English, the language of Chaucer. If you think English spelling is confusing — why
"head" sounds nothing like "heat," or why "steak" doesn't rhyme with "streak," and
"some" doesn't rhyme with "home" — you can blame the Great Vowel Shift. Between
roughly 1400 and 1700, the pronunciation of long vowels changed. "Mice" stopped
being pronounced "meese." "House" stopped being prounounced like "hoose." Some
words, particularly words with "ea," kept their old pronunciation. (And Northern
English dialects were less affected, one reason they still have a distinctive accent.) This
shift is how Middle English became modern English. No one is sure why this dramatic
shift occurred. But it's a lot less dramatic when you consider it took 300 years.
Shakespeare was as distant from Chaucer as we are from Thomas Jefferson.
Socially, William of Normandy introduced a strict Feudal System. The peasants
were the English-speaking Saxons, the lords and the barons were the French-speaking
Normans. This was the beginning of the English class system. French, then, remained
the language of the upper classes, government, administration and the aristocracy. Latin
was still spoken by the church, and Anglo-Saxon was the language of the lower classes,
the gentry and the peasantry.
During this Medieval Period, Scotland managed to remain politically
independent, but was obliged to fight occasional wars to do so. Despite English rule,
northern and central Wales was never settled in great numbers by Anglo-Saxons and
Normans. As a result the (Celtic) Welsh language remained strong. By 1200, however,
another type of English had established as the language spoken on the islands – Middle
English. The development of the printing press in 1476 helped to establish the standards
of spelling and grammar, turning Middle English into Modern English.
The cultural history of the period is somewhat different. Two hundred and fifty
years after the Norman Conquest, it was a Germanic language (Middle English) and not
the Norman (French) language which had become the dominant one in all classes of
society in England. Furthermore, it was the Anglo-Saxon concept of common law, and
not Roman law, which formed the basis of the legal system.

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Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic. Hernán Piperno

Politically, the power of the Norman barons gradually increased and they
eventually challenged the king’s absolute power, which resulted in King John being
forced to sign Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215. This document contained a long
list of limitations to the king’s power, and these rights obtained by the barons were
eventually extended to the entire population. It was in this period that Parliament began
its gradual evolution into the democratic body which it is today. The origins of
Parliament are to be found in the reign of John’s successor, Henry III. It was a meeting
of the king and his barons and servants at which various administrative and financial
problems were discussed (the word Parliament comes from the French “parler”). In
order to make it easier to put into practice the decisions taken, each shire had to elect a
number of knights to attend these meetings and later report the decisions to their shires.
Edward I, Henry’s successor, continued this experiment and in 1295 he called a
parliament that became known as the Model Parliament.
The House of Commons as a separate chamber would result from the unofficial
meetings of these knights and burgesses. The person chosen to “speak” for the
“commoners” (people from the shires) in Parliament became known as “the speaker”.

The reformation of the church in England was part of a European revolution

concerning belief, worship and authority. It was a process lasting many years that
gradually transformed English society, law, government and religion. The real impetus
for reform was political rather than religious. When in 1534 the Pope refused to grant
Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the king made himself “Supreme Head
of the Church” in England. The break with Rome weakened the clergy’s authority and
opened the way for religious reform as well as greater independence for England. (read
more about this in Religion)

After a long period of social, political, religious and economic changes today the
British Isles look quite different from the isles which occupied the same territory at the
beginning.
The Isles are now divided into two states: one of them governs most of the island
of Ireland. This state is usually called The Republic of Ireland. It is also called “Eire”
(its Irish name). Informally it is referred to as just “Ireland” or “the Republic”. The
other state has authority over the rest of the British Isles (the whole of Great Britain, the
north-eastern area of Ireland and most of the smaller islands). Its official name is The

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Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic. Hernán Piperno

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, although it is usually known by
a shorter name, the United Kingdom. In other contexts it is referred to as Great Britain
or Britain. There are two small parts of the British Isles which have special political
arrangements. These “Crown dependencies” are the Channel Islands and the Isle of
Man. Each has complete internal self-government, including its own Parliament and its
own tax system. Both are ruled by a Lieutenant Governor appointed by the British
government.
People often refer to Britain by another name. They call it England. But this is
not strictly correct. England is only one of the four nations of the British Isles (England,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Their political unification was a gradual process
that took several hundred years. It was completed in 1800 when the Irish Parliament
joined the Parliament for England, Scotland and Wales in Westminster, so that the
whole of the British Isles became a single state –the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland. However, in 1922, (for reasons we will discuss later) most of Ireland
became a separate state (now The Republic).
Although there is only one government for the whole of Britain and people have
the same passport regardless of where in Britain they live, some aspects of government
are organized separately (and sometimes differently) in the four parts of the United
Kingdom.
It cannot be denied that the dominant culture of Britain today is specifically
English. The system of politics that is used in all four nations today is of English origin,
and English is the main language of all four nations. Many aspects of everyday life are
organized according to English custom and practice. But the political unification of
Britain was not achieved by mutual agreement. On the contrary, it happened because
England was able to exert her economic and military power over the other three nations.
Today English domination can be detected in various aspects of British public life.
Money is controlled by the Bank of England. The present queen of the country is
universally known as “Elizabeth, the Second”, even though Scotland and Northern
Ireland have never had an “Elizabeth, the First”. The term “Anglo” is also commonly
used (the Angles were a Germanic tribe who settled in England in the fifth century. The
word “England” is derived from their name). For example, newspapers and television
news talk about “Anglo-American relations” to refer to relations between the
governments of Britain and the US and not just between the government of England and
that of the US.

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Language and Culture I Lic. Adriana M. Fernández; Prof. Maricel Pierella; Lic. Hernán Piperno

The flag of the UK is commonly known as the Union Jack. Jack is a sailing term
for a flag. It has been used as the British flag since 1603, when Scotland and England
were united under Elizabeth. The original design combined the red cross of England,
representing St. George, patron of England; with the white diagonal cross on a blue
background of Scotland, representing St. Andrew. The red diagonal cross of Ireland,
representing St. Patrick, was added in 1801, when Ireland became part of the United
Kingdom. Wales is not represented on the Union Jack because it is a principality of
England. The red dragon of Cadwallader, which is now often used as the national flag
of Wales, dates from the 1950’s.

For more information about Ireland visit:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/archive/events/the-troubles-gallery-40-years-of-
conflict-in-northern-ireland-from-the-belfast-telegraph-archives-29947576.html

For more information about Scotland visit:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2014/sep/17/scottish-referendum-explained-
for-non-brits-video

For more information about Wales visit:

http://www.europeandme.eu/10brain/529-dear-neighbour-england-and-wales