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ENS103G British History and Culture. Gregory Phipps. Introducing Methodology. Historiography Narratives Dialectics G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) Karl Marx (1818-1883). Britain is. An island Janus-faced Conflicted about its identity Four nations
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ENS103GBritish History and Culture Gregory Phipps
Introducing Methodology • Historiography • Narratives • Dialectics G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Britain is . . . • An island • Janus-faced • Conflicted about its identity • Four nations • Full of characters and symbols
Continuity • Last successful invasion: The Norman Conquest in 1066 • Last major social revolution: The Glorious Revolution in 1688 • Contrast Germany: German Empire (1871-1918), Weimar Republic (1919-1933), Third Reich (1933-1945), West and East Germany (1945-1990), Federal Republic of Germany (1990-present)
Contrasting Views of Continuity • Pragmatic, commonsensical, and a distrust of ideologies and theories George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four • Traditions, inequalities, and entrenched power structures
A Landscape in Wales A Village in the Cotswolds
William Blake “The Chimney Sweeper” From Songs of Experience (1794)
“The City” Quantitative Easing 1 British pound = 1.3 U.S. dollars
Identity Crisis “Once upon a time the English knew who they were. They were polite, unexcitable, reserved, prone to melancholy and had hot-water bottles instead of a sex life: how they reproduced was one of the mysteries of the western world. They were doers rather than thinkers, writers rather than painters, gardeners rather than cooks. They were class-bound, hidebound, and incapable of expressing their emotions. They did their duty. Fortitude bordering on the incomprehensible was a byword.” Jeremy Paxman, The English (1998)
Identity Crisis • Twentieth-century history The Casuals (1980s) • Key institutions (BBC, National Health Service, the universities, Royal Mail, British Rail, etc.) • Public perception In one 2010 poll, 70% of respondents feel that British society is broken • Individualism
The Four Nations • Act of Union: 1707 (Great Britain) • Acts of Union: 1800 (The United Kingdom) • Partition of Ireland: 1922 (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) • Since the 1940s: Increasing ethnic and cultural diversity • Scottish referendum (2014) and Brexit (2016)
Rough map of Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain: Early 400s to mid 600s
Characters and Symbols • Tudor Period (1485-1603) • Personae and Character Types • Symbols
The Strong Woman Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) The Falklands War (1982) Privatization Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
The “Bulldog Breed” Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
The Sportsman Bobby Charlton (1937-)
Literary Works • William Shakespeare, Richard II • Martin Amis, The Information • Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting