SECOND YEAR CIVILIZATION PROF.

ABDULGAWAD

Know Britain
Identification:
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the formal
name of the sovereign state governed by Parliament in London. The term
"United Kingdom" normally is understood to include Northern Ireland; the
term "Great Britain" refers to the island of Britain and its constituent nations
of England, Wales, and Scotland but does not include Northern Ireland. Any
citizen of Great Britain may be referred to as a Briton.

Location and Geography:

The land area of Great Britain is 89,000 square miles (230,500 square
kilometers), with an additional 5,400 square miles (13,986 square kilometers)
in Northern Ireland, giving it one of the highest population densities in the
Western world. Although the country lies mostly at the latitude of
Labrador ‫ خط عرض البرادور‬in the western Atlantic, the climate is tempered
by the Gulf Stream and does not have extremes of summer heat or winter
cold.
Most of the land is suitable for agriculture and has been grazed or cultivated
since the Bronze Age. The natural vegetation ‫ الغطاء النباتي الطبيعي‬is mixed oak
woodland ‫غابات البلوط‬, but most of the terrain ‫ تضاريس‬has been cleared for
agriculture or for shipbuilding and charcoal for smelting ‫صهر المعادن‬.

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 SECOND YEAR CIVILIZATION PROF. ABDULGAWAD

Demography:
The population is approximately 55 million: 46 million in England, 5 million
in Scotland, 2.5 million in Wales, and 1.5 million in Northern Ireland.
The nation's cultural diversity has been increased by migration within the
British Isles and by immigration from Europe and overseas. Until 1920,
Ireland was incorporated within the United Kingdom. Movement across the
Irish Sea had existed since the eighteenth century, even among Ireland's
poorest people. In the nineteenth century, there was a regular pattern of
seasonal migration of farm workers from Ireland to Britain. A wide variety
of other Irish people spent periods in Britain, which had a more highly
developed economy than Ireland. From 1841 onward, the censuses ‫تعداد السكان‬
of Scotland, England, and Wales have enumerated Irish-born people in every
part of the country. Similarly, Scottish and Welsh people have settled in
England. Most British people have ancestries that are mixtures of the four
nationalities of the British Isles.
Before and after World War II, political and religious refugees and displaced
persons from the Baltic countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary
were offered shelter in Britain and remained, along with some prisoners of
war. Other immigrants of European ancestry who were born in Canada, New
Zealand, Australia, and South and East Africa, along with Greek and Turkish
Cypriots, also settled in Britain.
After the late 1940s, many of non-European overseas immigrants arrived,
predominantly from the colonies, including people of Indian and African
ancestry from the West Indies and Guyana; people from India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh; and Chinese from Hong Kong and Singapore. The 1991 census,
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 SECOND YEAR CIVILIZATION PROF. ABDULGAWAD

the first to include ethnic background, enumerated three million Britons of

non-European birth or ancestry.

Linguistic Affiliation:
Regional and cultural relationships are expressed in marked linguistic
differences. Although the language has been modified by a gradual
convergence ‫ تقارب‬toward "estuary English ‫ " اللهجة السائدة‬a less formal variety
of southeastern speech, and educational and socioeconomic factors, it is
possible to determine people's geographical origins by the way they speak.
In some areas, there are significant differences in speech patterns from one
city or county to its neighbor.
These differences are associated with loyalties to one's place of birth or
residence and for many people are important aspects of self-identity; non-
English native languages are little spoken but in recent years have gained
significance as cultural and political symbols. These languages include Scots
Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish (commonly referred to as the Celtic
languages); there is also the Old Norse language of the Northern Isles and
the Norman French of the Channel Islands.
In Wales, 80 percent of the people speak English as their first or only
language and those who speak Welsh as their first language are bilingual. In
Scotland, Gaelic is not a national symbol because it was never spoken in some
parts of that country.

Emergence of the Nation:

The United Kingdom was formed by Acts of Union between England and
Wales (1536) and England, Wales, and Scotland (1707), uniting the three
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nations under a single monarchy and legislative council (Parliament in

London). After 1169, the island of Ireland came under British influence, and
it became a colonial dependency in 1690.
The British and Irish parliaments were united in 1801. A separatist
movement led to the dissolution of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland in
1920; twenty-six of Ireland's thirty-two counties became the independent
Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland), with six of the nine counties
of Ulster remaining within the United Kingdom.
The present-day nation also includes the Channel Islands off the coast of
France and the Isle of Man between Britain and Ireland, which are
substantially self-governing. Northern Ireland and Scotland have separate
legal and educational systems and issue their own currency; Wales is fully
incorporated within the English legal, educational, and banking systems.
Recent referendums in Scotland and Wales have resulted in the
establishment of a Scottish Parliament which is still under the general
jurisdiction of London but has limited local tax-raising powers, and the
Welsh Assembly, which does not have tax-raising powers.
The native tribes in the central and eastern parts of England were conquered
by the Romans in 55 B.C., and permanent Roman settlements were
established in 43 B.C.E. and continued for four hundred years. The numbers
of Romans were never great, but the upper classes became Romanized and
spoke Latin.
With the departure of the Romans, the British Isles were invaded by a
succession of warlike peoples from the European mainland, including the
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; there were also persistent Danish raids. All
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 SECOND YEAR CIVILIZATION PROF. ABDULGAWAD

migrations influenced the native Britons, as can be seen in the English

language, which is an amalgam of the languages spoken by the waves of
colonists.
This turbulence ended with the Norman Conquest in 1066. A new line of
kings attempted to extend control into the farthest reaches of Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland, and struggles for supremacy between rival chieftains
and princes culminated in the Magna Carta of 1215, which eventually led to
the establishment of Parliament and representative democracy.
A period of consensus ‫ االتفاق‬and stability followed the accession to the throne
of the Tudor king Henry VII in 1495. His successor, Henry VIII, broke with
the Catholic church in Rome and declared himself the head of the Church of
England. The dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the
property of the Roman Catholic church occurred during the Reformation,
leading to challenges to the monarchy by rivals who supported Catholicism.
Instability, civil unrest, and competition with other European powers over
claims to overseas territory continued for much of the seventeenth century.
Commerce and manufacturing developed rapidly, and the authority of
Parliament over the monarchy was consolidated by the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Capitalism existed before the Industrial Revolution, but
its development was hampered by technologies limited to water power and a
lack of surplus labor.
The impetus for the Industrial Revolution came from trade with the
expanding colonies by a growing middle class of investors whose wealth was
not derived from land but from commerce; those entrepreneurs ‫رجال االعمال‬

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reinvested their wealth in new forms of manufacturing and trade rather than
in ways that imitated the consumption patterns of the landed gentry.
The Industrial Revolution began at the end of the seventeenth century,
specifically in the machine-driven manufacturing processes made possible by
the steam engine, which was first used in 1698 to draw water from an
underground mine, and then was adapted to drive power looms )‫النول (آلة للنسيج‬
in textile mills.
By 1815, Britain had the world's largest and most powerful navy, and within
twenty years steam railways and steam-powered ships designed by British
engineers were carrying passengers and cargo for profit, allowing British
shipping companies to dominate world trade. By midcentury, the country
was the world's leading power in business and finance, engineering, science,
and medicine.
The Industrial Revolution created a new social order as entrepreneurship
and factory production resulted in new forms of wealth and work that were
added to the agrarian social order dominated by aristocratic landowners. The
1832 Reform Act ended the political privileges of landed wealth by extending
the vote to middle-class male heads of household. The country would be
governed by the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the middle class rather
than by those of the landed aristocracy. One dimension of this new social
order was urbanization: as dispersed cottage industries such as weaving were
replaced by mills in central locations, nearby housing was needed for the
workers; that housing frequently was built by the mill owner and rented to
the workers. The populations of Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and
Birmingham doubled or tripled between 1801 and 1841, and many major

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towns and cities grew up around mines, mills, smelting works, ports and
railway junctions.
Work in the "dark, satanic mills" brought new levels of exploitation and
hardship. Rapid industrialization caused overcrowding and disease; cholera
epidemics between the 1830s and 1860s provoked public unrest and forced
the government to improve public health. Another consequence of Victorian
working conditions was the rise of trade unionism. A socially stratified and
politically divided society, that was preoccupied with distinctions of social
class and the rival ideologies of laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism
soon crystallized.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, the United Kingdom was one of
the world's wealthiest and most influential nations. British mining,
manufacturing, transportation technology; legal, banking and parliamentary
systems; and scientific discoveries and advances were exported worldwide.
The nation's wealth was further underwritten by its position as the chief
European colonial power, with captive markets and extensive sources of
cheap labor and raw materials in Australasia, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
The country's position as a world power was reduced in the second half of
the twentieth century by two world wars and the gradual decline of its
advantages in manufacturing and business, the loss of the empire, and
expensive experiments with state socialism. By the late 1970s, the nation was
in debt to the International Monetary Fund. The discovery of oil in the
North Sea in the 1970s saved the country from bankruptcy and stimulated
economic recovery.

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National Identity:
The United Kingdom is made up of four interdependent nations with many
common institutions. While differences in everyday modes of sociality and
consumer behavior are not great from one part of the nation to another, some
aspects of culture are symbolic of national or local difference on the level of
everyday practice or on special occasions. Support for the monarchy, political
parties, and soccer teams are the most obvious expressions of contemporary
localism; religious adherence and ethnic differentiation are also significant.
Support for the monarchy and the Conservative Party is highest in England,
especially in the south, while in Scotland and Wales it is substantially lower.
In Scotland and Wales, there are minority nationalist parties. The Scottish
National Party's political program is dominated by economic issues,
particularly tax revenues from North Sea oil. The political agenda of Plaid
Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, is mainly concerned with linguistic and
cultural matters. In both Scotland and Wales, the Labour Party is dominant,
drawing strength from its critique of the class privilege traditionally
associated with London and southeastern England. The dominance of the
Labour Party in much of Wales and Scotland provides conditions for
patronage-style politics.
Ethnic Relations:
A high degree of spatial integration is generally held to be indicative of social
integration, assimilation, and acculturation, while spatial segregation is
indicative of social pluralism. Non-European immigration in Britain has not
moved toward a pattern of sharply-defined urban ethnic ghettoes.
Nevertheless, many non-European immigrants continue to be subject to
discriminatory practices in employment and in other spheres, even if
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 SECOND YEAR CIVILIZATION PROF. ABDULGAWAD

systematic marginalization cannot be inferred from their spatial distribution

within the towns and cities of the nation.
Food and Economy
The United Kingdom has one of the largest economies in the world, with a
Gross National Product estimate in 1999 at $1.29 trillion (U.S.). Finance,
manufacturing, and trade form the base of the economy. The pound sterling
is the currency, and it is still being debated whether the nation will join with
its European Union partners and adopt the Euro.
Commercial Activities:
Banking and finance, including insurance, are mainstays of the economy.
Major Industries. The United Kingdom is one of the most industrialized
nations on earth and has a strong manufacturing base. Major products
include machine tools, aircraft and ships, motor vehicles, electronics,
chemicals, coal, petroleum, textiles, and food processing.
Leadership and Political Officials. The monarch reigns, but does not rule the
nation per se, acting only with the approval of Parliament. The prime
minister holds the executive power and is traditionally the leader of the
majority party in Parliament. The primary parties are the Labour Party, the
Conservative Party, and the Liberal Democrats.
Social Problems and Control. Each of the countries within the United
Kingdom has its own judicial system and courts.
Military Activity. The United Kingdom has a strong military, with an army,
the Royal Navy, and the Royal Air Force. The nation is an active participant
in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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Social Welfare and Change Programs

The National Insurance, in operation since 1948, provides medical,
unemployment, maternity, and retirement benefits, among others.
Employers and employees contribute to this fund. The National Assistance
Board provides financial assistance to the poor.
Gender Roles and Statuses
The Relative Status of Women and Men. In the 1970s, there were national
debates on the changing role of women in society and their women's
employment prospects. By the 1980s, the debate had shifted to the
implications of the increasing participation of women as the economy was
restructured and the balance changed from manufacturing to service
occupations. In the 1990s, national debates concentrated on the relationship
between work, family life, consumption levels, and the socialization and
education of the next generation. Approximately half of British women work;
of these, half are part-time workers. Nevertheless, a significant gender divide
persists in regard to suitable occupations for men and women, access to
occupations by women and men, pay levels for similar kinds of work, and the
allocation of domestic tasks. Although the ideal of gender equality is widely
shared, social behavior lags behind the ideal. For example, 75 percent of
couples say that the preparation of the evening meal should be shared
equally, but only one-third of these couples live up to that ideal.
Marriage, Family, and Kinship
Marriage. Premarital sex and unmarried cohabitation are widely accepted
even if they are not liked by defenders of traditional family values. Single
motherhood caused by unstable cohabiting relationships or marital
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breakdown is perceived as a major problem because of its impact on the

welfare budget rather than as a moral question. Nonetheless, family
relationships remain close. Roughly 70 percent of adults live within an hour's
journey of their parents or grown-up children, and nearly half see their
mothers, fathers, adult children, and best friends at least once a week. While
newspaper and television reports claim that the nuclear family is in decline
because of increased rates of unmarried cohabitation and divorce, personal
commitment to kinship ties has not changed much. Seventy percent of adults
think that people should keep in touch with close family members; 55 percent
think that they should keep in touch with relatives such as uncles, aunts, and
cousins; 60 percent say that they would rather spend time with relatives than
with friends; and nearly 80 percent think relatives are more important than
friends. These attitudes vary with age and gender—people over age forty-
five tend to be more family-centered than are younger people.
Kin Groups. Family life is changing, and there are tensions between kinship
ties and some contemporary social values. However, the great majority of
people perceive themselves to be part of multigenerational families and
regard these relationships as very important.

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