 |
Critical Thinking. Listening 1. Listen to the debaters and fill in the table below. 3. Can any of the arguments made by the historians be challenged?
|
|
|
|
Critical Thinking
1. Compare Richard Gott’s and Niall Ferguson’s views on the legacy of the British Empire:
Are they similar on any points? Is either of the historian’s unbiased?
2. Which of them, in your opinion, makes a more compelling case?
3. Can any of the arguments made by the historians be challenged?
Listening 1
Nick Ferrari: ‘Rule Britannia! ’ (0-6: 40) https: //youtu. be/Y7n4AScchC8
PRE-VIEWING QUESTIONS
1. How did the colonies empower the British Empire?
2. What countries, to your knowledge, were affected by the British colonial rule more?
3. Which of the former colonies are more thriving now?
VIEWING TASK
Listen to the debaters and fill in the table below.
| The British Empire was ‘good’ | The British Empire was ‘bad’ | ||
| Arguments | Evidence | Arguments | Evidence |
Critical thinking
1. Which position do you find more convincing?
2. What does the weaker position lack and how would you reinforce it?
Speak up
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Do you believe ex-colonies would be more prosperous now if it had not been for the British Empire?
2. Do you think the aftermath of the British colonial rule is still pronounced in former colonies? If so, how does it manifest itself?
3. In your opinion, would reparations compensate for the wrongdoings of the Empire and reconcile the opposing positions?
Follow-up
State your opinion on the contribution of the British Empire to the world. Make sure your statement contains a claim supported by arguments. Use the above texts and video, texts from the Reader, or any other resources for evidence.
READING 1
PRE-READING QUESTIONS
1. What is the full official name of the country that is often called Great Britain?
2. Do you happen to know when and how this name came into use?
3. What, in your opinion, keeps the UK together? When was the last time the union was endangered?
Scan the essay to find out what events fostered the formation of Great Britain and, subsequently, the UK.
UK: Pasts and Futures
(1) In terms of its borders and organization, the UK, as it exists now, is substantially the result of luck, accident and, above all, multiple wars. Each of the acts of union linking England first with Wales, then with Scotland, and finally with Ireland, occurred in wartime or amidst anticipation of war.
(2) Anglo-Norman attempts to conquer Wales began in the eleventh century. But it was fear for the security of Henry VIII’s Reformation (1) and of potential foreign interventions against it that helped to drive through the so-called acts of union between England and Wales (2) in 1536 and 1543. During the seventeenth century, there were repeated attempts, on both sides of the border, to forge a closer union between Scotland, and England and Wales. None of these initiatives succeeded, and it required a massive war with Louis XIV of France, and fears for the security of the Protestant succession, to make Westminster embrace a parliamentary union with the Scots in 1707 (3). True to form, it was a still more extensive war with France, and the prospect of invasion by Napoleon’s armies, that gave rise to the deeply flawed Act of Union with Ireland in 1800–1801 (4).
|
|
|
(3) The world wars of the last century were no less critical in shaping the United Kingdom, and in different ways. At one level, Irish revolutionaries were able to take advantage of the distractions of the First World War to stage a rising in Dublin in 1916 (5), and proclaim an Irish republic. […] But, at many other levels, the two world wars increased the cohesion of the United Kingdom. In both cases, an unprecedented level and scale of conflict aided (some would say over-aided) the organising power and reach of London. In both cases, a majority of men and women in the UK experienced a sense of common purpose and common interests in the face of hostile, external enemies. And, in both cases, mass warfare resulted in victory, and in wider conceptions of citizenship. […]
(4) It is not wars, but rather periods of protracted peace that have repeatedly presented the most profound threats to union in the UK. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, for instance, no major European war threatened the United Kingdom’s existence for almost a hundred years. And it is striking that from the 1860s – after about forty years of substantial peace – demands began to grow for a looser Union, and for home rule in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and even in England. Agitation for separate parliaments for each of the four countries of the UK, and for other constitutional changes, continued until 1914. The outbreak of the First World War led to most of these demands being shelved, and the period of peace between the end of this conflict and the Second World War was too short and too uneasy for them seriously to revive. […]
(5) Calls for a ‘break-up of Britain’ surfaced once more in the 1970s, yet again after a marked period of peace. Initially, and understandably, the glow of emerging on the winning side in the Second World War nourished widespread national pride. […] But, as we all know, this last imperial hurrah was a gross illusion. The financial, industrial and strategic costs of British participation in the Second World War had been enormous and definitive. […]
(6) Given its relative decline since 1945, its pre-existing divisions, the end of empire, and incessant disputes over ‘Europe’, some have argued that the explosion of the United Kingdom into various fragments is a foregone conclusion. And perhaps disintegration will indeed occur. […]
(7) As a historian, I do not believe that major developments and events in the future can be preordained[9], or are somehow inevitable. The past matters. But, in regard to countries and peoples, the past contains the seeds of many possible futures. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, fragmentation on the one hand and the maintenance of the status quo on the other are not the only outcomes that may be available in prospect.
|
|
|
(8) Every state in the world contains fault-lines, bitter divisions of some kind. As globalisation and migration increase – way of managing fault-lines and diversity in states is by improving and revising the quality of governance. So how might this be attempted in the United Kingdom? Let me end by offering three suggestions, the purely private observations of a semi-detached if attentive observer.
(9) First, and as is now widely accepted, the devolution measures of the 1990s (6) were insufficiently thought out. Not only will demands for greater autonomy go on increasing in Wales, Northern Ireland and (obviously) in Scotland, but England also needs its own discrete level of government. The lack of such an organisation – as compared with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and the Northern Ireland Assembly – fuels resentment, and makes Westminster appear by default an English parliament. By contrast, creating a new, explicitly English parliament, located somewhere in northern England, say, could both provide a useful and popular forum, and help lessen the North–South divide (7).
(10) Second, if England does join Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in gaining its own parliament or assembly, then the United Kingdom will need to work out a more openly federal system. The Westminster Parliament could remain as an arena for determining major cross-border issues such as foreign policy, defence, macro-economic strategy, climate control etc., but a great deal of power, decision making and taxation would have to be devolved to the four national parliaments and to local and regional authorities.
(11) There are plenty of historical precedents for such ideas. Indeed, further devolving power away from Westminster and allowing regions and localities more initiative and control would be a return to Victorian governing practice. Between 1870 and 1914, local governments in the UK raised about half of all the money they spent through local taxation. By the start of the twenty-first century, however, London was often providing over 80 per cent of local government funds, and in the process dictating how this money was used. It is worth considering how much of the current disquiet and disaffection in different parts of the United Kingdom is caused by the over-mighty reach of London, which needed to centralise power in order to fight two world wars, and has not been all that willing since to surrender power back.
(12) Third and lastly, a more federal United Kingdom is likely to need a written constitution, and there may turn out to be limited choice in this regard. […] A written constitution is not a magic bullet. All depends on its content and implementation and on its regular revision. But, if the Union is to continue, creating one could prove invaluable, for different reasons and across the political spectrum. […] And as well as serving to entrench and communicate сitizen rights and the workings of a devolved political system, a new constitution might supply some fresh constitutive stories for a new kind of Union.
/From Acts of Union and Disunion by Linda Colley, Profile Books, 2014/
Linda Colley is a British historian of Britain, empire and nationalism. She is currently Professor of History at Princeton University in the United States.
|
|
|
