A SHORTER HISTORY OF ENGLAND AND GREATER BRITAIN CHAPTER I THE BRITISH ISLES: THEIR PHYSICAL FEATURES AND England and the British Empire. -England is the cradle and present center of the British Empire, an empire which covers a quarter of the land surface of the earth and includes a population of more than four hundred million souls. This little country of England, with an area of about 50,000 square miles, barely larger than the state of New York, forms, together with Scotland and Wales, the island known as Great Britain. Ireland, lying to the west, is the only other important division of the United Kingdom, although the British Isles which compose it number no less than five thousand, with a total area of 120,000 square miles and a population of about 45,000,000. It will be the purpose of this history to trace the course of events by which England and the adjacent countries became the United Kingdom, and by which the United Kingdom has become the greatest sea power ever known, and has fashioned an empire with an extent of territory nearly a hundred and a population fully ten times its own. Climate and Distribution of Rainfall. — In this remarkable development climate has been especially important. Extreme cold is a serious obstacle to the production of those things on which man is dependent for his existence; extreme heat, on the other hand, checks active exertion by which character is developed and by which man is able to make the most of his surroundings. With respect to climate Great Britain has been especially fortunate. The summers are long enough to ripen the crops, while the winters are not too long or too severe seriously to interfere with outdoor occupations, agricultural pursuits can be carried on in many parts of the country B 'At the last census before the Great War. throughout the year, and there is rarely snow or ice enough to interrupt communications. The moisture-laden winds from the southwest, which temper the climate, bring an abundance of rain which makes Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and western England little suited for agriculture, though, in the case of England, the mountains, grouped and ranged along the western coast, modify and distribute the rainfall so that the greater part of the soil is well adapted for farming.1 Northern and Western England. - England proper is separated from Scotland by the indentation of the sea known as the Solway Firth, by the Cheviot Hills, and the Tweed River. There are two distinct divisions within the country itself, which might be marked by a line from the mouth of the Humber to the mouth of the Severn and thence down to the shores of the English Channel. North and west the country consists of mountains and moorlands. For centuries, this western country, given over mostly to sheep pasture, lay remote and backward, compared to the more favored districts south and east. Yet, even in early times, the mountains were serving their country well: the Pennines, running south from the Scotch border to the heart of the Midland country, formed a protecting wedge which served to split the waves of barbarian invasion and to prevent them from inundating the English plain. Furthermore, aside from regulating the distribution of moisture, the western mountains have determined the course and the nature of the important rivers by giving them long, gentle slopes they have admirably adapted them for commerce and irrigation, in striking contrast to the short, precipitous torrents of Greece or of Wales and northern Scotland. Nor does the Pennine system isolate one part of the country from the other, for three canals run through it east and west. With the discovery of the use of steam in manufacturing, the Pennine range was found to contain vast stores of mineral wealth; in consequence the neighboring region has become the center of industrial England, and the once solitary mountain sides and vast stretches of moorland are now studded with smoking, busy cities and swarm with life. Little places, once mere villages, grew to be teeming centers of population. Manchester, for instance, which now has over a million inhabitants, and is the chief seat of the cotton manufacture, numbered, as late as 1776, only 27,000. Leeds is the headquarters for the production of wool, and Birmingham and Sheffield 1 Even the extremely wet regions of the western midlands are not without their advantages, since a dryer climate which makes the threads brittle would be a great obstacle to cotton manufacture. for iron and steel, while along the banks of the Clyde, the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees are shipyards which supply not only Great Britain, but many other parts of the world. The Cumbrian group of mountains, unlike the Pennine range, is of little industrial importance. The native population is scanty, and sheep raising is the chief occupation, though, owing to the beauty of the scenery, the district is a center for tourists as well as for summer homes, and the lakes furnish a water supply for many of the cities farther south. The mountains of Cornwall, on the other hand, contain rich deposits of lead and tin, especially the latter, which have been worked for centuries. Southeastern England. The structure of southeast England is markedly different from that of the north and the west. It is prevailingly a plain varied with hills or uplands of limestone and chalk. In earlier times this southeastern country was the most prosperous and progressive section of England - it was the district earliest settled, and its soil was the most fruitful in the land, enabling people to live closer together than in the more barren north. Thus they were better able to exchange ideas and had more means and leisure for education; more important still, they were in closest communication with the Continent whither the medieval Englishman looked for trade, knowledge, fashions, and ideas. The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century changed all this and, with the exception of London, the center of progress and ideas has shifted to the Midland country. Internal Communication. - Before the Romans introduced their excellent road system, a system to which many of the European highways of the present day owe their origin, Britain was largely a land of tangled forests and impassable marshes, with the ridgeways and the rivers forming almost the sole means of communication. But, even with the advent of roads and railways, the rivers are still of great importance; they furnish irrigation for the soil, they are utilized to provide power for mills and factories, and, together with the canals which they supply, they continue to serve as a cheap and convenient means of transportation. English River Systems. There are three great systems: the Eastern, flowing mainly into the North Sea; the Southern, emptying into the English Channel; and the Western, which finds its chief outlet in the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea. Taken as a whole the eastern system is the most important. Proceeding from north to south the first is the Tweed, famous for the cloth manufacture along its banks; the Tyne has for its chief port Newcastle, a great center for the distribution of mining products; while the Humber is fed by the Ouse and the Trent, which with their tributaries bring the products of a large and wealthy district to Hull, the leading port of northeastern England. The Thames is the largest river of England and the chief waterway across the south country; the harbor at its mouth is the finest in the whole kingdom; hence, in spite of the fact that the center of industry has shifted to the North, London is still the leader in imports and second only to Liverpool in exports. The rivers of the southern group are relatively short and unimportant. On the west two rivers call for special notice. The Severn, rising in the Welsh mountains, sweeps round to the east and south in the form of a bow widening at the end of its course into the Bristol Channel. Bristol, its chief port, rose to consequence as a result of the discovery of America. Yet, save for a small amount of wool manufacturing, the districts lying behind are mainly agricultural; therefore, Bristol had long ago to yield its preeminence as a port to Liverpool on the Mersey, situated in the center of a district rich in manufacturing, mining products, and pasture lands. - There was a time when the Importance of British Insularity. British Isles formed a part of the neighboring continent of Europe. The watery barrier, which has existed since England began to have a history, has been a significant element in shaping her destiny. It has kept her out of reach of her greedy and powerful neighbors, thus enabling her to maintain her independence, to preserve her energies free for commercial and colonial expansion, and to develop her ways of thinking, manners, customs, and system of government in her own way. In early times when the population was scanty and means of resistance unorganized, peoples from the Continent forced their way in ; but never since the eleventh century has there been any serious danger from this source. At the same time, the country has not been too remote to feel the influence of the great Continental movements such as the Crusades, the Revival of Learning, the Reformation, and the French Revolution, though most of them had spent their force when they reached her shores, and hence took a very individual form. World Position and World Trade. A glance at a map of the globe will show how centrally the British are situated with respect to the two great continents of Europe and America and will help to explain British leadership in commerce. Indeed, one fifth of their present exports consists of things produced by other countries and distributed by British ships; wool from Australia is carried to Germany, France, and the United States and, in the same way, French silks are con veyed to Australia. Likewise, the raw cotton from America, India, and Egypt passes through British ports on its way to the Continent of Europe, while most of the Oriental goods destined for the United States are handled in the same manner. With the further advantage of excellent harbors and a most accessible coast, her seaports naturally grew to be important commercial centers - Newcastle, Hull, and London on the east, Bristol, Liverpool, and, more recently, Glasgow on the west. England as a Producing Power. But England is not only a distributing power, she is a producing, a manufacturing power as well. Here, too, physical conditions have been most favorable. Her soil is well adapted for sheep raising, and sheep furnished not only food, but the material for clothes; then with the introduction of machinery her vast stores of iron and coal were extensively developed for manufacturing. The great productiveness of the country led to an overflow of population, this led to colonization, and the colonies in their turn created new markets. Wales. The rocky coast, the rugged mountainous surface, and the excessive moisture of the climate make Wales of little value for agriculture, while the barriers to communication and the prevailing wildness produced a people fierce, independent, and disunited, who fought not only against England, but among themselves. At the same time, the beauty of the scenery tended to foster a romantic imagination and a school of bards who sang with rare beauty and exaltation of sentiment. The country was transformed by the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and now derives its chief wealth from its mineral products, coal, iron, copper, lead, zinc, slate, limestone. Cardiff is a busy town noted. for its export of coal and iron and for its docks. The coal of the Black Mountains is famous for its smelting and Swansea is, perhaps, the chief center in the world for this industry, while the Cambrian range1 is rich in slate quarries. But the industrial area is limited and the stretches of mountain districts, though they charm the tourist, reduce the average of population and wealth. Scarcely more than half the country is under cultivation and its total population is less than 2,000,000, not greatly exceeding that of Manchester and its adjoining towns. Scotland. Taken as a whole, Scotland is still less adapted for agriculture than Wales, only a fourth of its soil being devoted to that purpose. In the olden time, when men depended largely upon that form of livelihood, the country was indeed badly off. The northern 1 Not to be confused with the Cumbrian. |