The British History-Lecture Notes - ke zkoušce

The king rules but doesn't govern ← he's a symbol

ministers are ruling first among them → PRIME MINISTER

• the shift from authoritarian to democratic system

  • today the K/Q has no power

• members of the Parliament were elected (only men could vote)

The Queen Ann - another daughter of Charles II

1701 The Act of Settlement → only a protestant can sit on the throne of England ← to limit Vatican; the king couldn't marry a catholic woman

1707 the Parliament of Scotland voted for unification with E (??? ← bribes, E great colonial influence → they wanted to be rich as well and Scotland had no fleet)

profit → "they had to go with London"

• Ann no male child → German relatives ↓↓↓

Gregorian Period

George I - couldn't speak English;

• but he had a good prime minister Robert Walpole

  • he actually ruled the country, reinforced the power of parliament and his own power

George II - loved parties

George III - mental problems

• again, very good prime minister William Pitt

  • believed that Britain can dominate the world

    • active trade

• 1763 a sign with France → the end of war between F and E

• America = 13 British colonies - revolted, no taxation without representation, had to pay taxes, did not have anybody in the parliament (Jamestown was the first colony)

  • they lost American colonies (1776)

1800 Ireland united with England → Great Britain

British domination ↓↓ The Victorian Age ↓↓

The Victoria Age 1837 - 1901

• connection with enlightenment (reason)

• relative peace, prosperity, stability and economic development

• colonial expansion (India, Australia, NZ, Canada, Africa) → reaches its widest expansion

• triumph of reason, rationalism and empiricism → reason is the most important, direct approach to nature, based on experience

• reason had to dominate feelings → instinctual behaviour is not appreciated

  • “we must control ourselves”

• sexual restraints, people didn't even talk about it (e.g. the word breast was unacceptable)

  • they also married late

  • obsessed with “sexual context” ↑↑

  • → the wides number of brothels, prostitutes, underground literature

  • pregnancy before marriage

Pax Britannica "British Peace"

• the period of relative peace in Europe (1815–1914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemonic power

Crimean War – 1854

• to support the Ottoman Empire against Russia

William Gladstone

• Liberal

• Boer War – 1899-1902

  • South Africa, war x Netherland colonists

  • First colonizers in Africa lived there

  • Dutch Boer ← Dutch origin, “white Afrikaans”

Benjamin Disraeli

• conservative

• also a writer

• Jewish origin → converted to Christianity (but his father didn’t)

• Population rose – Malthus Theory

• human populations grow exponentially (i.e., doubling with each cycle) while food production grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. by the repeated addition of a uniform increment in each uniform interval of time). Thus, while food output was likely to increase in a series of twenty-five year intervals in the arithmetic progression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and so on, population was capable of increasing in the geometric progression 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and so forth. This scenario of arithmetic food growth with simultaneous geometric human population growth predicted a future when humans would have no resources to survive on.

• Sewage systems

  • To get wastage out of cities

  • Cleaner streets