Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University

Faculty of Arts Saïss-Fes

BRITISH AND US
CULTURE AND SOCIETY

(Semester 3)

A Reading Package Compiled and Annotated by :

Dr. Yahya YECHOUTI

With Practice Questions and Pictures

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Module and Course Description

PART ONE: UNITED KINGDOM AND NORTHERN IRELAND

 UK Map
 The Founding of Britain and the Invading Groups
 The Magna Carta and Parliament
 14th and 15th Century England
 The Tudors, English Renaissance, and the Reformation of the Church
 Civil War, Restoration, and Queen Victoria
 The Political System in Britain

PART TWO: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Overview of US history:
a) Exploration,
b) Native American Life,
c) Colonization,
d) Revolution,
e) Civil War

 The Civil Right Movement

 The Political System in the US
 Cultural Pluralism in the US

ANNEX
Pictures Library
Practice Questions for the Final Exam

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 MODULE DESCRIPTION

Technical Administrative Aspects (In French)

N° d’ordre du module M19

British Culture and Society / Culture andSociety

Intitulé du module
in the US

Nature du module Majeur

(Majeur / Complémentaire)

Semestre d’appartenance du module Semestre 3

Département d’attache ENLGLISH STUDIES

Etablissement dont relève le module FLSH, SAISS -FES

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is intended to acquaint students with elements of

British and American culture and society. It is, on one side, a
survey of historical, political, educational, and cultural life in
Great Britain and, on the other side, a cultural perspective on the
USA, with a focus on the building of the American nation and its
relation with the world at large.

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Part One
BRITISH CULTURE AND
CIVILIZATION

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Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University Faculty of Arts Saïss-Fes
Department of English Mr. Y. YECHOUTI

The Founding of Britain and the Invading Groups

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Prehistory
England was settled by humans for at least 500,000 years. The first modern humans
(homo sapiens) arrived during the Ice Age (about 35,000 to 10,000 years ago), when the sea
levels were lower and Britain was connected to the European mainland. It is these people
who built the ancient megalithic monuments of Stonehenge, which dates from before 2000
BC and is one of the most mysterious and complex archeological sites in the world. It took
several centuries for Stonehenge to be completed and it remained a ritual centre for 2000
years.
Between 1,500 and 500 BCE, Celtic tribes migrated from Central Europe and France
to Britain and mixed with the indigenous inhabitants, resulting in the emergence of secular
aristocracy along with a priestly class, The Druids…

THE ROMANS
The Romans landed in 55 B.C. led by the famous General/Emperor Julius Caesar. He had an
easy victory over the Britons. The real settlement, however, happened with the invasion of the
emperor Claudius in 44 A.D.
Where possible, the Romans ruled through the existing upper-class which was encouraged to
adopt Roman dress, a luxurious life style and Latin language.
Nonetheless there was resistance from the Britons to the Roman conquest. The most serious
one was from the Celts of the South when Queen Boudicca led her people in revolt. Her
revenge was terrible. three Roman centres were destroyed among them London and 70,000
people were killed.
But the Queen was captured and imprisoned. She committed suicide.
The Picts and the Caledonians who lived in the North manifested also a very harsh resistance.
This is the reason why Rome did not settle in these areas, especially that it saw no economic
profits in this area. Rome built the famous wall called Hadrian’s Wall in a defense against
invasion from the North.
The Romans established a flourishing province in Britain. They founded the first cities like
Londonium (London). It became a major trading centre in Northern Europe.
They built roads and until the 18th Century, there was no real road building in Britain. They
built villas. At Bath they built baths which can be found up till now.
For a few centuries the Roman army stopped the westward flow of Europe’s population. They
brought Christianity to England and their development of the country helped this religion to
spread.
The Romans came to govern and trade but not to settle. They were too few to change the
language and the custom of the people as they did in France and Spain. When they went they
left behind a leaderless and defenseless people, and these were no match for the fierce
northern tribes that now poured into the Island (the 4th century). The Christian Celts, in spite
of brave leaders like King Arthur, were wholly defeated. Those who escaped the sword were
pushed into the mountains and Wales and Scotland and across Ireland, where their separate
languages, Welsh, Gaelic- may still be heard.

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The Saxons, a loose term used to describe a number of people living in present-day Denmark,
North-west Germany and the Netherlands, along with the Picts and the Scots attacked Britain
and defeated the Roman army in 367. In 410 the Roman army withdrew completely.

THE SAXONS
The Picts and Scots, who might have been expected to take full advantage of the
Roman army withdrawal, chose instead to war with each other until the ninth century. There
were, however, no such quarrels to hold back the Saxons, who came across the North Sea and
attacked the east and South-east coasts of Britain. The invaders (the Saxons) experienced a
temporary check in the west, where the British rallied under the legendary King Arthur. The
west remained British, though intermarriage with Saxons and later, conversion to Christianity
lessened the differences between the two peoples.
The rest of England, now so called after one of the invading groups, the Angles, fell to
the invaders. By the end of the 7th century, Saxon England was divided into small kingdoms,
which were no match for the next northern invaders, the Vikings.
Saxon England was marked by the abandonment of the Roman Villas and the Roman
way of life. The Saxons were excellent farmers and they cleared forests. They used a heavy
plough which was not changed until the eighteenth century with the Agricultural Revolution.
They lived in strong family and tribal units. There are other features of the Saxon civilization
among which some are positive and some are negative. An example of the negative is the
burial of living people, probably a wife or servants, at the funeral of a great person.
How did the Saxons became Christian? Certainly they learnt nothing from the Celts,
who refused to share their faith with such uncivilized people. The question is answered by
Bede, whose History of the English Church, was written in Latin (the Roman language). Bede
was a Saxon but he used Latin because this was the international language of the Church.
Pope Gregory, he says, was attracted by some fair-haired young slaves on sale in Rome. The
Pope, who was head of the Roman Church, heard that these slaves came from England, and he
decided to send a party of his priests to help the English people. They made their base at
Canterbury, and within a hundred years all England was united under one well-organized
Church. Each district had its church leader, the Bishop and its central church building, the
cathedral. The head of them all was the Archbishop at Canterbury.
The centres of religious learning were the abbeys where young men were trained to be
priests. The priests took their orders only from the bishops, who were treated as royal officials
and sat in court beside the chiefs. But King Alfred did not want to depend on the Church for
all his officials. He opened a school for the sons of chiefs, to teach them the arts of orderly
government. He also brought learned monks from abroad to work in the abbey libraries. King
Alfred had a great respect for education. He himself wrote a translation of Bede’s History; and
he began the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which the history of the land was recorded by monks
for the next three hundred years.

THE VIKINGS
The Vikings, known also as the Norsemen or the Danes, came from present-day
Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They were highly skilled in sailing and fighting. They

7
attacked every coast of Britain which offered plunder.1 Unlike the Romans they did not spare
any region of the British Isles and settled in Scotland and Ireland. At the last moment the
Saxons were saved by the courage of King Alfred of Wessex, who defeated the Danes and
forced their army to accept the Christian faith. Then he allowed them to settle in eastern and
central England.

Origins of the early settlers

Under the weak Saxon King Ethelred there was trouble once more. Fresh waves of
fierce Danish fighters attacked the south. Instead of fighting them, Ethelred collected a tax and
paid them to go away, but each year they wanted more. The poor were ruined by this tax and
even the rich suffered. No wonder that, when he died, the council invited the Danish leader
Canute to become their King.
Canute (990-1035) went on collecting the tax in order to pay for foreign wars that soon
made him King of Denmark and Norway too; but he worked hard to unite his Danish and
Saxon peoples. He became a Christian and used the Church to draw all men together. He kept
Winchester as his capital, where English and Danish were the joint languages of his court. He
also married Ethelred’s widow, daughter of the Duke of Normandy, a descendent of whom
will claim later the throne of England as duke William.
A duke is the highest rank of noble below a king. The Norman ruling class were in fact
Vikings who had settled down and adopted the French language and religion. Normandy was
the most highly organized state in Europe, and the life of all classes was controlled by strict
rules. There were a number of powerful lords, but the most important class were the knights.
These knights were landowners who were experienced professional soldiers, for they held
their land on condition that they fought for the duke. Their country was small and they still
had the Viking taste for adventure. A day’s sail could carry them to England. It was a
temptation.

1
Another group of Danes managed to take Paris, and obtain a grant of land from the King of France in 911. This
area became Normandy, and its inhabitants were the Normans (from 'North Men' or 'Norsemen', another term for 'Viking').

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 Canute died and left two sons; but they were evil men, and soon Ethelred’s son
Edward was called from Normandy to be King. Edward had been brought up in an abbey and
was more like a monk than a king, so that people called him Edward the Confessor. He
spoke French. His tastes, his friends and his culture were Norman, which did not please the
Saxon-Danish council he presided. When it was reported that Edward had promised to leave
the kingdom to his Norman cousin, William, they decided to take action and forced him, on
his death-bed, to choose a Saxon lord, Harold, to be King in his place.
The council knew well that others would claim the crown. Duke William of Normandy
would claim it because of Edward’s secret promise; the Kings of Denmark and Norway would
claim it because of their family ties with Canute. If Harold had had the full support of his
lords, he could probably have saved his kingdom; but many were jealous of his position and
some clearly favoured his foreign rivals. When the attack came it found England disunited.
When Norway’s King landed and seized York, Harold rushed north and destroyed
him and his army. Three days later Duke William landed on the Sussex coast, and Harold
rushed south again. Without waiting to collect support from doubtful lords, he met the
Norman army near Hastings. His tired men fought bravely but they had no experience of
fighting against cavalry, and the Norman cavalry were the finest fighting horsemen in Europe.
When night came King Harold and the best of his men lay dead on the hill-top. And on
Christmas Day 1066 William the Norman was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

THE NORMANS
After the victory of Williams the Conqueror (nicknamed the “Bastard”) over the
English in the Battle of Hastings, he tried to establish a firm and strong government in
England on the model that has been so successful in France, the Feudal system. It is based on
the ownership of land. The King took the land from its English owners and divided it among
his Norman Vassals: lords, bishops and abbeys priests. Many of the country's medieval castles
were built under William's reign including the Tower of London.
The Norman conquest was the last one and England was never again invaded.

The Feudal system

The Feudal system was organized as follows: the supreme power was in the hand of
the king. Then there were the lords who swear loyalty to the king and divided their lands
among the knights. The knights had to swear loyalty to the lord too and had to serve him forty
days per year. A knight’s land was called his manor and the common people, called also the
serfs, belonged to the knight on whose manor they lived. They had to serve him as farm-
workers and not as soldiers. There was also a small class of freemen called also yeomen who
did not have to work on the knight’s farm.
Three times a year the king organized a ceremonial council for Christian feasts and
wore his crown. Every lord had to attend including the bishops who held the rank of lord.
French became the official language of England, and remained so until the beginning of the
Hundred Years' War with France in 1337. English nevertheless remained the language of
the populace, and the fusion of English (a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norse languages) with
French and Latin (used by the clergy) slowly evolved into modern English.

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 Winshester was still the capital of the government. The King established the
Exchequer to collect taxes and to keep account of all expenses. The clerks in charge of the
Exchequer wrote a book, the Domesday Book, which gives us a complete description of the
country. It also records the rights and duties of every landowner and every Court. The King
also established the Common law which, with the Exchequer, are still in use today.2

The Plantagenet Dynasty:

After the death of William, there were a lot of troubles of succession, civil war,
assassinations, etc. until the arrival of Henry II in 1154. His emblem was a plant called
Planta genesta; hence his dynasty was to be called the Plantagenet dynasty. It is under him
that the University of Oxford was built.
The first serious incident between the Church and King Henry II was due to the
appointment of Thomas Bechett as Archbishop of Canterbury. The King thought that in this
way he would have a good and peaceful relationship with the Church. But Bechett rebelled
against the King because he did not agree with the judicial system of the government and
privileged that of the Roman Church. The King was furious and was behind his assassination.
This adventure was to be later related in the famous Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.
By the end of the twelfth century all the royal offices were moved from Winchester to
London which became England’s Capital.

2
Such records were grouped by counties and manors, as these were the usual groups for tax collection. The King
fixed an amount for each county, his sheriff divided this amount between the manors; and the owner of each manor collected
the money from his people. The Sheriff was the King’s representative in each county and he held the rank of a lord. He ruled
over the land without the Church’s interference for William had given the bishops their own courts. This allowed the English
law to develop freely from the law of the Church which was established in Rome. But it also led to some trouble since a
church servant could claim the right to be tried by his bishop and not by a public court.

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 The Normans built the University of Oxford in the 12th Century and a lot of the
popular legends we know today date back to their era:

Robin Hood, who robbed the rich to give to the poor…

Richard I "Lionheart", who was hardly ever in England, too busy defending his
French possessions or fighting the famous “Crusades” in Palestine, the Holy Land. His
adventures are related in a famous novel by Sir Walter Scott in the 18th Century: Ivanhoe

William Wallace, the Scot, whose proud resistance against the English was
immortalised in the Hollywood movie Braveheart (starring Mel Gibson)

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Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University Faculty of Letters
Saiss-Fes
Department of English Professor Y.
Yechouti

Magna-Carta and Parliament

Richard (Lion Heart) was succeeded by his brother, John.When the archbishop died,
John invited the Pope to choose between two men who seemed suitable for the post. But the
Pope chose a third man, without even asking the king’s opinion. John refused to accept. At
last the Pope convinced the King of France to attack England. John yielded to this threat and
accepted the archbishop chosen by the Pope and promised to pay to Rome a large annual tax.
People were angry and for the first time in the English history, took the side of the
lords against their King. The lords too had become tired of the demands King John made on
them. In1215 the richest and most powerful sections of the English society - the aristocracy,
the Church, and the merchants - formed a coalition against the king. At Runnymede, a small
island in the Thames, John’s opponents obliged him to agree to the terms of the MAGNA
CARTA, or the « The English Charter ». 1215 is one of the most important dates in English
History: it rivals 1066 in fame.
Magna Carta was a document which set the rules that a feudal king had to follow. It
listed the abuses the king had committed and the remedies to rectify the ills. (It was in the
name of the Charter the American colonies declared their independence). Though the Charter
worked mainly for the benefit of the aristocracy (the barons) it indirectly touched all the
classes of the English society. Its most notable changes were these: no tax should be made
without the approval of the council, no freeman should be arrested or imprisoned except by
the law of the land. The serfs had not yet become freemen, but the matter of tax touched all
men, whether free of not.
When John died in 1216, England was deep in war.
His son, Henry III, followed on the steps of his father. He attempted to defeat the
barons and their charter. There was once again a need for something to protect the country
from any abuse or misrule of the King. That was the role of the council which already existed.
But what about if he refuses to listen?then clearly the council should be made stronger. But a
strong council needs popular support. The solution was then to have representatives of the
people in the council.
This widened council was called PARLIAMENT, which was a Norman French word
which meant a « talking-place ».
Later on Parliament developed quickly taking the opportunity that the King was busy
with his wars against the French. The representatives of the common people began to meet
outside before coming into parliament. This gave the birth to three houses: the House of
Commons, the House of Lords and a permanent council.
Parliament did not care about foreign policy, that was the job of the King. It rather
passed acts (a law which has been discussed and approved by both the House of Commons
and the House of Lords) and cared about taxes, etc. People willingly lent money to the King
for his wars as far as he protected and developed their trade of wool with abroad. To remind
him of this, they put four bags of wool (called woolsacks) beside his seat in Parliament. The
chairman of the House of Lords, who is also called the Lord Chancellor, has sat on a
woolsack instead of a chair ever since.
The thirteen century saw not only the emergence of Parliament but also the establishment of
universities at Oxford and Cambridge which were independent institutions. It witnessed also
the expulsion of the Jews from England. They used to work as money-lenders in general and

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had been unpopular since the Crusades for religious reasons. They were only let in again by
Cromwell 350 years later.

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SidiMohammedBenAbdellahUniversity Faculty of Letters Saiss-Fes
Department of English Professor Y. Yechouti

Fourteenth and15th centuryEngland: Royal

intrigues, troubled successions, the Hundred Years' War
and Chaucer’s England
The Norman rulers kept their possessions in France, and even extended them to most
of Western France (Brittany, Aquitaine...). French became the official language of England,
and remained so until 1362, a bit after the beginning of the Hundred Years' War with France.
English nevertheless remained the language of the populace, and the fusion of English (a
mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norse languages) with French and Latin (used by the clergy)
slowly evolved into modern English.
There were more wars of succession after the death of Henry II. With one of his
descendants, Edward III (he ruled from 1330-1377) the country was in the hands of a firm
king and government. In 1337 he refused any longer to pay homage to Philip August, the King
of France especially that this latter’s country threatened the commercial interests of England.
King Edward even claimed the throne of France through his mother. This began THE
HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.
Edward went on to take Calais, the nearest part of England but the fate stopped him
and stopped the war. A terrible disease/Plague (sometimes called the Black Death) swept
across Europe between 1348-50) with more murderous effect than any army. A third of the
English population died and three archbishops died the same year. For seven years there was
peace.
The repercussions of this plague were tremendous on the English society. The
landowners were now in need of labour since thousands of serfs were dead. Those serfs who
escaped the disease now shared between them the lands of those who died. Some even
employed other serfs to work for them. They objected to the feudal service on their master’s
farm. Some landowners, so as to avoid troubles, rented their lands to the yeomen. Others let
the serfs pay a small rent instead of their feudal service. Later on, the serfs went on strike
against fixed wages and the whole idea of feudal service.
Their spirit spread to towns where workmen were demanding higher wages from
merchants and manufacturers. They formed unions or what is called guilds. A guild was a
society of men who practiced the same trade. They controlled the standards of products,
especially cloth, prices, wages, the training of workers. They also made rules for sick pay and
against night work. Gradually the land was becoming organized on a commercial instead
of a feudal basis. Beside this, new ideas of human rights were spreading from the university
of Oxford and men were asking why they should have to buy their freedom at all.
Geoffrey Chaucer is known as ‘the father of the English literature’ whose critical
and amusing verse has given us a clear view of fourteenth century life in England. In 1386 he
travelled to Canterbury to pray at the cathedral where Thomas Bechet had been murdered.
In his Canterbury Tales, he describes the twenty-eight people who gathered one April
evening at an inn near London bridge to travel with him. Though a religious man, Chaucer
describes in his book the officials of the Church as rich, lazy, dishonest and immoral. Among

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the other characters, we find a knight and his son, a lawyer, a doctor, a farmer, a sailor, a
merchant, a weaver, a miller, and an Oxford student. All are described in detail: their looks
and manners, their dress and speech, their character and behaviour.
The characters also show their interest in gardens of bright colours, which was
reflected in their poetry. In the month of May, says Chaucer, a poet puts away his books
‘And seeth the fressche flours, how they springe.’
This is Middle English which had replaced the Old English of King Alfred but had
not yet settled its spelling, for it had rarely been written down. For the next years the
language of the upper classes was Norman French, and educated men wrote only in
Latin.
Most Normans learnt some English, but they were too proud to speak it openly until
the wars of Edward III made French unpopular. Then the King ordered that only English
should be spoken in the courts and schools and other public places, and the nobles began to
use it among themselves.
Late in the Hundred Years’ War, there was that young girl, an illiterate shepherdess,
known as SaintJoan of Arc, who at the age of 16, had a ‘divine’ vision: she thought God
ordered her to drive the English from France, so she went to see the French monarch and
submitted her “vision” to him and managed eventually to chase the English. She was captured
however by the English and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of 19.That put an end to the
Hundred Years’ War.

Another long and troubled period followed, especially with the rivalry between two
brothers , one belonging to the House of Lancaster and one to the house of York, which were
both descended from Edward III. The flag of Lancaster showed a red rose, and the flag of
York showed a white one. So the struggle between the two became known as « the Wars of
The Roses » and lasted thirty years.
The country was looking for a king and found one in Henry Tudor, a powerful Welsh
lord who married the sister of the two murdered brothers and thus united the Houses of
Lancaster and York. He became Henry VII in 1485 and founded the Tudor Dynasty.

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 4. THE TUDORS, ENGLISH RENAISSANCE,
AND THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH
The English Renaissance
Feudal England had to wait until the end of the fifteenth century before it knew the
complete disintegration of this system. That also marked the end of the powerful and very rich
Church. The common man was free now and England was looking beyond Europe for new
fields of trade and settlement. It is the period of the great explorations. In fact the King was
not in need of an army because he ruled with popular support. He made no claims to land in
Europe for he realised that peace is essential to good trade. But this situation would not have
been possible without the educational development of the 15th century.
The Church had become extremely unpopular since it supported a French Pope during
the French-English wars. As a result, many rich men gave their money to build schools instead
of giving it to the Church. New grammar and public schools were opened in all big towns. (be
careful, public school is misleading. It actually means private school). Often they were built
by guilds or by private merchants.
Reformation of the Church
There was also the Church internal revolution which was brought by one of its own
priests: the German Martin Luther who criticised harshly in the beginning of the 16th century
what has become now known as the Roman Catholic Church for its abuse of the common
people. This resulted in his excommunication by the Pope in Rome. His teachings insisted on
the abolishment of intermediaries between God and the believer with no need of a
priest/intermediary to seek forgiveness from God. “He strongly disputed the claim that
freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money.”
When Chaucer wrote « The pardoner’s Tale », he was expressing the intellectuals’
attitude toward the Church. The Pardoner had official permission to sell God’s pardon for
men’s sins. In his bag he had bits of cloth, which were said to have belonged to the mother of
Christ, or bones of famous holy men and which he sold. The public courts could not touch
such men.
Martin Luther was greatly helped in his reform by an earlier revolutionary invention:
the printing machine invented by another German: Johannes Gutenberg in 1439. His
printing of the bible, among many other books, made this holy book available for the
European masses. Now there was a great demand for books so that the new learning could be
passed on to all the new schools. In the past the only supply of books had come from the
abbeys where they were copied by hand.
In fact the publication of the Bible in many parts of Europe (and in local languages
instead of Latin) could only serve to encourage Protestantism, for the Protestant faith was
based on the authority of the Scriptures, on the belief that the truth about the Christian religion
was to be found in the Bible, and that any man could discover the truths of religion for
himself. According to Protestant doctrine, salvation was personal and could not be achieved
through the Sacraments, as the Roman Church taught.
European Renaissance is now in full swing (it began in Italy around 1400). The arts
and sciences of ancient Greece besides those of Arabs were being taught now in the European
universities. That was helped by the fleeing of scholars from Constantinople (Istanbul) and
their settlement in Italy when the Ottomans seized the city in 1453.
In 1476 the English William Caxton set up the first English printing-press in
Westminster. Among his first published books was The Canterbury Tales and a translation of

16
the Bible. He was also a serious student of the English language. There were no dictionaries to
guide him but he set a standard of spelling and grammar for others to follow.
Now in Britain the lords were no longer allowed to have their own armies and their
families began to mix with the commercial and professional classes. The King also increased
the powers of the Justices of the Peace. They were made responsible not only for public
order but for matters that concerned trade: the control of guilds and of workers’ affairs, and
the care of roads and bridges. Their courts gave honest justice, and the poor could bring their
cases without payment. In such an atmosphere of peace and justice, England made huge steps
in education and economic progress. There was still, however, the problem of the Church to
be solved. That was the job of Henry VII’s son, Henry VIII.
*******
Henry VIII is remembered in history as one of the most powerful kings of England. He
was extremely popular and ruled through the House of Commons and the support of his
people. Although he is also remembered in history for some “strange” events like getting
married six times, desperate for a male heir, and beheading some of his wives, Henry is also
remembered for radically reforming the Church of England and changing the face of the
country and becoming the first King of Wales and of Ireland.
The personal life of Henry VIII influenced in the independence of the English church
for when he became king, he married Catharine, the daughter of the King of Spain and widow
of his older brother. The Pope had given special permission for him to marry his brother’ s
widow, as this was against the laws of the Church. She gave Henry a daughter, Mary, but all
her sons died at birth and Henry badly needed a son to follow him. He began to feel that God
had not approved of his marriage and that the Pope had been wrong to allow it.
In 1533, Henry divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (Queen Mary's mother) to
remarry Anne Boleyn (Queen Elizabeth I's mother), the Pope excommunicated Henry, and in
return, Henry proclaimed himself head of the Church of England, known also as the
Anglican Church, a careful and balanced mixture of Catholic and Protestant beliefs.3 To
assure the control over the clergy, Henry dissolved all the monasteries in the country (1536-
1540) and nationalised them, becoming immensely rich in the process.
Now Church services went on as usual, except that they were in English instead of
Latin.
Another notable contribution of Henry VIII to the English history, one which had
influenced the next three hundred years and the building of the English Empire, was his
building of a very strong, modern, and well organised naval army: instead of grouping the
guns at each end, as the Spaniards did, Henry’s arch enemies, he put them in a long row down
each side. They fired through special holes in the ship’s side, and the gunners were protected
by the boards above them. This was the secret of the English sea-power.
When Henry died, his son, who was still very young, died soon after him. He was
replaced by his catholic sister, Mary. she had grown up with a fierce hatred of those who had
upset her mother’s marriage. In four years she burnt three hundred Protestants (« bloody

3
Henry’s family troubles did not end with his second marriage. He was bitterly disappointed at the birth
of the long-awaited child, the Princess Elizabeth. Besides, his second wife was unfaithful to him. After three
years, Henry cut off her head. His next wife died in giving birth to his son Edward. His secretary Thomas
Cromwell, one of the most famous political theorists and founders of modern government, then brought him a
foreign wife but she was neither beautiful nor well-educated. Henry sent her home and cut Cromwell’s head.
Henry married another beautiful girl but she too was unfaithful to him. So her head followed that of Cromwell.
His sixth and last wife was a wise and gentle girl but she had no children.

17
Mary »). She was determined to destroy all her father’s work. First she put the Church back
under the power of Rome. Then she married England’s great enemy, King Philip of Spain,
against the wishes of Parliament.
When she died in 1558, her cruelty and her complete disregard for national pride and
feelings had destroyed any chance that the English people would ever again let the Roman
Church control their affairs. She was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister, Queen Elizabeth
I (nicknamed the Virgin and after whom Virginia (US) was named).
Elizabeth I saw the first golden age of England. It was an age of great navigators, an
age of enlightenment with the philosopher Francis Bacon and playwrights such as Christopher
Marlowe and William Shakespeare.
Her reign was also marked by conflicts with France and Scotland, then Spain and
Ireland. She never married, and when Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland tried and failed to take
over the throne of England, Elizabeth kept her imprisoned for 19 years before finally signing
her act of execution.
Elizabeth died in 1603, and ironically, Mary Stuart's son, James of Scotland,
succeeded Elizabeth as King James I of England - thus creating the United Kingdom and
establishing the Stuarts Dynasty.
Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University Department of English
Faculty of Letters Saïss-Fez Mr. YECHOUTI
Civil War, Restoration, and Queen Victoria
After the golden age of Queen Elisabeth I, came a very tumultuous period in the
history of Britain which culminated in a civil war. The major conflict was between the king
and Parliament—that is, between James's idea, passed on to his son, Charles I (ruled 1625-
1649), of monarchy by divine right, and Parliament's insistence on its own independent rights.
This confrontation resulted in the Petition of Rights in 1628. The petition, like the Magna
Carta had with an earlier monarch, King John in 1215, forced Charles I to admit limitations to
his authority, something he did not intend to do without a fight.
Civil War
The conflict between the king and the Puritan section of parliament, led by Oliver
Cromwell, resulted in a civil war. The division was further exacerbated by Charles's attempt
to arrest some members of Parliament, whom he accused of conspiracy. Civil war was
inevitable; its first battle was fought in 1642. The Puritans eventually won the English Civil
War. Oliver brought Charles I to trial and executed him in 1649. He abolished the monarchy
and the House of Lords and declared England a Republic and a Commonwealth.
However, the too rigorous regime of Oliver Cromwell, the killing of the Charles I,
and the ensuing confusion after Oliver’s death, made people recall Charles II, the killed
king's eldest son, from exile.
The Restoration
England welcomed Charles II home in May 1660 and attempted to restore things to
what they had been before. Only a dozen men were executed for their role in the execution of
Charles I. Both the people and Charles had learned the value of moderation, but the issue of
sovereignty remained to be resolved.
The Restoration was a reaction against Puritanism. England was to know another
major plague in 1665 and London a huge fire 1666, which destroyed one third of the city.
18TH CENTURY BRITAIN

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 18th century Europe knew major events, among which we find the Enlightenment
period, which led to the the French revolution in 1789 and the American revolution in 1776.
Philosophy and science increased in prominence. The Ottoman Empire experienced an
unprecedented period of peace and economic expansion.
The Industrial Revolution started in Britain in the 1770s with the invention of the
steam engine, which was to make of Britain a superpower in the 19th Century.
QUEEN VICTORIA (ruled from 1837 to 1901)
Queen Victoria became Queen at the age of 18 and is associated with Britain's great
age of industrial expansion, economic progress and, especially, empire. At her death, it was
said, Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.
She was very close and in love with her husband whose death in 1861, when she was
just 42, sank her into depression. For the rest of her reign she wore black.
During Victoria's long reign, direct political power moved away from the sovereign. A
series of Acts broadened the social and economic base of the electorate. Despite this decline in
the Sovereign's power, Victoria showed that a monarch who had a high level of prestige and
who was prepared to master the details of political life could exert an important influence.
It was during Victoria's reign that the modern idea of the constitutional monarch,
whose role was to remain above political parties, began to evolve. Victoria and her family
travelled and were seen on an unprecedented scale, thanks to transport improvements and
other technical changes such as the spread of newspapers and the invention of photography.
Victoria was the first reigning monarch to use trains - she made her first train journey in 1842.
Despite her advanced age, Victoria continued her duties to the end. Victoria died at in
1901 after a reign which lasted almost 64 years, a record until it was broken recently by the
current Queen Elisabeth II (started ruling from 1952 until now).

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Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University Faculty of Letters Saiss-Fes
Department of English Professor Y. Yechouti

The POLITICAL SYSTEM in the United Kingdom

Great Britain is a constitutional monarchy. This means that the official head of the
State is the monarch (a king or a queen) but his or her powers are limited by the constitution.
For years it has been Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and she has broken recently the record of
the longest reigning monarch in the history of Britain.

THE QUEEN
(Her full title is Her Most Excellent Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of
God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms
and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith)
Her surname (if she had any) would be Windsor.

The Queen is only a formal and symbolic head of State. Among her duties: she holds
receptions and State banquets, she visits various parts of Britain every year, she gives
audiences to the Prime Minister and other important persons, she pays state visits and
undertakes tours in other countries of the Commonwealth, she formally summons and
dissolves Parliament.( “The Queen´s speech“, with which the Queen opens each session of
Parliament is prepared by the government and read by the Queen). Besides she is commander-
in-chief of all armed forces and the head of the Church of England. She also awards various
titles and orders, etc.

But in reality, the Queen acts only on the advice of her ministers. The
monarch´s power of veto, which is not clearly defined, has not been used for over two
hundred years, and so it has become a tradition that the royal power of veto doe not really
exist at all.

Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926. She ascended the throne in 1952, after her
father´s death (King George VI). The Queen´s husband is His Royal Highness Prince Philip,
the Duke of Edinburgh. She has four children, three sons (Charles,Andrew, Edward) and a
daughter (Anne). The eldest son, H.R.H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, is the heir to the
throne. In Britain a daughter succeeds only if there are no sons in the royal family. (Therefore

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of the 40 monarchs since the Norman Conquest only six have been queens: Mary I, Elizabeth
I, Mary II, Anne, Victoria, Elizabeth II.)

The Queen´s residence in London is Buckingham Palace.

Despite the scandals in recent years, the Royal Family is still loved by many
people. The most popular member of the family is now Prince Williams (son of Prince
Charles and Lady Diana) husband of princess Kate Middleton.

The Constitution

It is unwritten. It is based on custom, tradition and common law.

The Parliament
It is the supreme legislative body and the highest authority in the UK. It consists of the
House of Commons and the House of Lords. British parliamentary system is one of the
oldest in the world, it developed slowly during the 13th century after King John´s signature of
Magna Carta in 1215. The two Houses of Parliament share the same building, the Palace of
Westminster on the left bank of the Thames. The Queen formally summons and dissolves
Parliament and opens each new session with a “speech from the throne“.

The House of Lords is made up of hereditary and life peers and peeresses, two
archbishops and 24 bishops of the Church of England. Its main function is law-making.
The House of Commons consists of 650 paid members (MPs) who are elected at a General
Election, which must be held every five years. Voting is not compulsory and is from the age
of 18.

Another important parliamentary task is answering the questions. From Monday to Thursday
all ministers must answer MPs´questions for one hour (questioning time). Two days a week
the Prime Minister must answer MPs´questions.

All speeches in the House of Commons are addressed to the Speaker who is elected at
the beginning of each new Parliament to preside over the House. In the House of the Lords it
is the Lord Chancellor.

Scottish Parliament. A new Scottish Parliament was elected in 1999 and sits in
Edinburgh. This is the first time Scotland has had its own parliament in 300 years.

THE GOVERNMENT

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 It is formed by the party which has the majority in Parliament and the Queen appoints
its leader as the Prime Minister. The Cabinet is the executive organ of government. It´s made
up by the leading ministers and heads of government departments (about 20 people). So the
Government is a larger body (about 80 people)

The second largest party forms the official Opposition with its own leader and
“shadow cabinet“.The present Prime Minister is Boris Johnson, the head of the Conservative
Party. The Prime Minister´s official residence is 10 Downing Street. The leader of the Labor
opposition is Jeremy Corbyn

Political Parties

In present-day Britain there are two big political parites, the Labour Party and the
Conservative Party (also called Tories). There are also other smaller parties like the Liberal
Democrats and a new anti-European party called UKIP (UK Independance Party) that helped
in creating a strong anti European sentiment which in turn and quite substantially led a lot of
Britons to vote against remaining in Europe, a process known as the Brexit. Ukip has changed
its name recently and its leader Nigel Farage gave it a new name in January 2019: Brexit
Party.

The Brexit process started when the former British PM David Cameron won the
elections of 2015. He had promised during his campaign to hold a referendum if elected,
which he did, expecting a majority of British people to vote to stay within the EU. He resigned
after a majority chose otherwise, forcing the Conservative party to designate Theresa May as
Prime Minister, the second woman to hold this position after Margaret Thatcher in 1978.

After a marathon of negotiations with the EU, Teresa May resigned and was replaced
by Boris Johnson, who held general elections with the slogan : “Get Brexit done” in 1919
and won a comfortable majority. This led to the resignation of the Labour Party leader :
Jeremy Corbyn. His party has indeed realized the worst national election performance since
1935.4

Though the British people have voted to leave the EU, negotiations with the latter are
still underway and do not seem to offer any easy separation to the British part, mainly because

4
Among the major recent figures of the Labor Party, there is Tony Blair who won a three successive
general elections starting in 1997 before he had to resign in 2007, after mainly the scandal of the Weapons of
Mass Desctruction in Irak, in which he blindly followed the line of the US.

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of what has come to be known as the Backstop. This has to do with the flow of goods and
people crossing the shared border between Northern Ireland which is part of UK on the one
hand, and Southern Ireland which is a Republic and part of the EU, on the other. The
following quote might help clarify to some extent why this “backstop” is such a thorny
problem:

“The two main spheres of sensitivity around the Irish border can be broken into
two main themes: political and economic…The basic building block of peace
in Northern Ireland - the 1998 Good Friday Agreement - removed security
checkpoints from the Irish border and made it practically invisible. Before this
agreement, a long period of conflict, had run since the 1920s, known …as The
Troubles.

The Troubles was a period of violence between two groups - Republicans (who
wanted Northern Ireland to re-join the Republic) and Loyalists (who wanted to
remain part of the UK). Many people were killed in the fighting.

[Economically] The economies of Northern Ireland and the Republic [of

Ireland] are completely interconnected. Huge amounts of goods and services
cross the border every day without checks of any kind. At least 30,000 people
are estimated to travel across the border each day for work.”5

5
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1054675/Brexit-backstop-explained-simple-guide-northern-
ireland-border (checked on Dec. 1, 2020)

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