Early Britain

1. Britain has been many centuries in the making. The first inhabitants of the island were the Iberians. This race is supposed to have arrived from the Iberian Peninsular (the North of Spain). Soon after 700 B.C. Britain was invaded by the Celts. In the 1^st century B.C. when the Celts still lived under the primitive communal system, the Roman Empire became the strongest slave-owning state in the Mediterranean. The Romans riled the entire civilized world and in the 1^st century A.D. they conquered Britain. Britain was a province of the Roman Empire for about four centuries.

2. There are today many things in Britain to remind the people of the Romans: towns, roads, wells and the words.

3. After the departure of the Romans Britain was attacked by the Germanic tribes of the Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles. The conquerors are generally referred to as the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons made up the majority of the population in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon language, or English, has been the principal language of the country since then.

4. In 793 the Danes from Denmark and the Northmen from the Scandinavian peninsular (frequently called as the Vikings) carried out their first raids in Britain. At last all England was in their hands. The Kingdom of Wessex alone was left to resist them. King Alfred (ruled 871-901) gathered his men and defeated the Danes.

5. In the 11^th century England was invaded by the Normans. This was the fifth and the last invasion of England. The pretext for the invasion was the claims of Duke of Normandy, William, to the English throne. He gathered a numerous army and landed in the south of England. The battle between a numerous army and the Anglo-Saxons took place in 1066 at a little village near the town now called Hastings. The Anglo-Saxons were defeated. Thus the Norman Duke became king of England – William the Conqueror. He ruled England for 21 years (1066-1087). The Normans had to put down many rebellions in different parts of the country and the rebels were punished severely.

6. Gradually the Normans mixed with the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes and from this mixture the English nation finally emerged. For many centuries this country was simply known as England. To the west and north, Wales and Scotland fought for their independence so passionately that it took hundreds of years to bring them under English domination.

Questions:

1) Who were the first inhabitants of Britain?

2) When did the Celts invade Britain?

3) When did the Romans conquer Britain?

4) How long was Britain a province of the Roman Empire?

5) What tribes attacked Britain after the departure of the Romans?

6) When did the Anglo-Saxon language become the principal language of the country?

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The Founding of the United States

1. About 500 years ago North America was a vast territory inhabited by Indians who perhaps 20 000 years earlier traveled across a land bridge from Asia to America where the Bering Strait is today. Icelandic Viking Leif Ericson sailed to America around the year 1000. Then in 1492 Christopher Columbus, an Italian, sailing under the Spanish flag, set out for Asia and discovered a ‘New World’. For the next 100 years English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and French explorers sailed forth looking for the New World, for gold and riches, for honour and glory.

2. But North America brought them little glory and less gold, so most explorers did not stay there. The people who did settle the New World arrived later, and they came in search of different goals – economic opportunity, religious and political freedom.

3. In 1607 the English settles built the first village which they called Jamestown in commemoration of King James l of England. Bleak, hard and lonely immigrants soon founded colonies all along the Atlantic Coast. Over time settlers from many other nations joined the English in America. German farmers settled in Pansylvania, French settled in Canada and Spanish explorers established missions and settlements in Florida and American South West. Africans were first brought in Virginia as slaves in 1619. The settlers cleaned the land for farms, built villages and established local governing bodies. By 1733 European settlers occupied 13 colonies along the Atlantic Coast.

4. A series of conflicts between the British and the French culminated in French culminated in French and Indian War (1754-63) in which Britain with its American colonial allies won the victory. France ceded Canada and the Ohio territories east of Mississippi River to Britain in the Peace of Paris of 1763.

5. In the following years the British started imposing new taxes on sugar, coffee, textiles and other imported goods. The British required the colonists to house and feed British soldiers. These measures seemed quite fair to the British politicians who had spent large sums of money to defend their American colonies during the French and Indian War. But the Americans feared that the new taxes would make trading difficult and that British troops stationed in the colonies might be used to crush civil liberties which the colonists had enjoyed, that’s why they insisted that they could be taxed only by their own colonial assemblies. But the British Parliament heeded their protest and sent customs officers to Boston to collect the tariffs. When the colonists refused to obey, the British sent soldiers to Boston.

Questions:

1) Who had inhabited North America before the first Europeans came to the continent?

2) Why didn’t most of the first explorers stay on the American continent?

3) Why were the inhabitants of the continent called Indians?

4) Were there any conflicts between Indians and Europeans?

5) How many European colonies were there along the Atlantic Coast by 1733?

6) What was the result of imposing new taxes on imported goods by the British?

7) Why did the Americans decide not to obey the British Parliament demands?

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