It has lived on the edge of the "civilized world" for a long time, and the process of civilization has been interrupted by foreign invasions many times. However, it is such a small island country that was the first to knock on the door of the modern world in the stormy waves of the North Sea. This is England.
Britain, an empire that once stood out from the crowd, was given a special title "The sun never sets". During the period from18th century to the beginning of 20th century, Britain performed on the world stage with strong comprehensive national strength and powerful skills, which opened the door to human modernization for the first time and opened the course of industrial power.
In medieval England, as descendants of the invaders, the princes and ministers of the Kingdom of England were imbued with the blood of aggressive nature, and expanding the territory as much as possible was an important feature of the historical development of historical Britain. It was not until June 1259 that Britain and France signed the Peace Treaty of Paris. In the peace treaty, the British and French kings made concessions, but the dispute between Britain and France was not completely resolved.
Britain continues to occupy mainland territory, enabling the British to continue to rebuild the dream of a great empire on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The provision that the French king provided financial subsidies to the British king in the second peace treaty was never fulfilled, which became the historical root of the "Hundred Years War" between Britain and France in the future. In the end, the Hundred Years' War ended with Britain's withdrawal from the mainland.
A century after the Hundred Years' War, British capitalist economy rose. Facing the sea, Britain realized the establishment of national character, but at this time Elizabeth I was in power. Unlike Queen Mary, she regards England as everything to her. After Elizabeth I, the two kings went their own way, which eventually led to the British revolution and laid the foundation of the British constitutional monarchy.
/kloc-in the second half of the 0/8th century, the industrial revolution became the prerequisite for the formation of British world hegemony. The anti-French war made Britain a tenacious resister of Napoleon's hegemony.
The shadow of prosperity began in Victorian times. We don't deny Queen Victoria's contribution to Britain, but it also led to the prevalence of bribery. At this time, there were many colonies in Britain, but because of the underdeveloped system, these colonies became a burden to Britain, their economic strength gradually lost, and they gradually withdrew from backwardness and became a second-rate country.
Historical choice
1. Glorious revolution. This is the most important historical moment to witness the development of Britain. It established the basic principles of British constitutional monarchy and ruled out the possibility of Catholics inheriting the British throne. It stipulates the rights of parliament and the authority of the king. Although the form of the king was retained, the power of the king was restricted by legislative means. The establishment of this political form has provided a good guarantee for Britain's economic development.
2. Industrial Revolution. It is capitalist production that has completed the transition from workshop handicraft industry to machine industry.
It is a revolution in production and technology, in which machines replace manpower and large-scale factory production replaces manual production of individual workshops. The industrial revolution is a great change that the general political revolution can't match. Its influence involves all aspects of human social life, bringing great changes to human society, playing an irreplaceable role in promoting the process of human modernization, pushing mankind to a brand-new age of steam and greatly improving human productivity.
Two different revolutions made this island country drift in the Atlantic Ocean, and finally made it an empire that never sets, ruling 25% of the world's land and population. Continue to explore the forces that cannot be ignored in the two revolutions. What is affecting the growth of this island country?
First of all, the national spirit is the most important factor in the rise of Britain. The British living in the island country of Great Britain keep their own personality and are relatively independent from the mainland. 13, 14 century, Britain respected the spirit emphasized by Puritanism, on the one hand, diligence, on the other hand, abstinence. Puritan ethics not only encourages people to pursue wealth, but also opposes people's disloyalty.
This kind of teaching advocating "reasonable profit" urges people, mainly the emerging urban middle class, to expand production, create wealth and create a new mechanism through their own efforts, which can arouse farmers' market interest and sell their surplus products to the market for profit. With the increasingly close economic ties between this autonomous city and the countryside, the domestic market has been formed, which has produced two consequences: First, it has promoted the specialized division of labor in the processing industry, and finally produced the British national industry.
The second is to breed a spiritual pursuit and value system completely different from pure agricultural society. It is precisely because of this pursuit and value system that the industrial national spirit has emerged.
In addition, the unremitting pursuit of freedom played an important role in both the glorious revolution and the industrial revolution. It was after the Glorious Revolution that Britain established an appropriate political system, which ensured a relaxed and peaceful society, allowed people to pursue their personal goals, gave full play to their creativity, and accelerated the process of the industrial revolution. In Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, free trade economy is also emphasized, which provides a relaxed environment for economic development.
Second, why did the industrial revolution happen in Britain? This is inseparable from various favorable factors. I saw a table on the Internet summarizing these advantages:
1. With abundant capital, the British bourgeoisie earned a lot of money and gained sufficient capital through the exploitation, colonial plunder and sale of black slaves of its own working people.
2. The labor force is sufficient, and the enclosure movement forces a large number of farmers who have lost their land to flood into cities, providing sufficient cheap labor.
3. Rich in resources and raw materials, Britain is rich in coal and iron resources, and the transportation is very convenient; There are many British overseas colonies with rich sources of raw materials.
4. Demand of overseas markets, British colonies are all over the world, the market is expanding, and the demand for goods is increasing.
If we go deeper, it is mainly because the country's social and political structure, people's mental outlook and value standards have developed to a level suitable for industrialization. In the eyes of casual observers, the industrial revolution is only an economic and technical problem, but it is actually a terrible and very complicated political, social and cultural change problem.
Looking closely at the British politics at that time, more than 0/00 years after the establishment of the constitutional monarchy, Britain already had a mature political structure, and parliament was the main power to establish the most critical development premise at that time, which made the environment more relaxed, free and open, thus providing favorable conditions for the rapid development of capitalism in Britain, while safeguarding the interests of businessmen and encouraging production.
On the other hand, the government has determined a series of science and technology incentive mechanisms, which provide a good platform for improving productivity. People constantly improve production technology and create and invent new production tools. This undoubtedly added great weight to the promotion of the industrial revolution. Compared with countries in continental Europe, Britain has a unique social structure.
/kloc-Since the 6th century, with the decline of the old aristocracy and the rise of the middle class, Britain has gradually formed a three-tier social structure, with three social classes-land aristocracy, middle class and hired workers as the main body. In this process, the "landlord-farmer" double-layer social structure in the traditional agricultural society was broken, and new social groups began to appear, gradually replacing the closed and rigid social structure with a certain degree of openness and mobility.
The establishment of empire
Driven by the industrial revolution, Britain constantly expanded its overseas power and pushed Spain and Holland out of the world stage, so a powerful empire appeared in front of people, with vast colonies, rich material conditions and powerful navy.
1588 The naval battle of Griffaud Lan, which defeated the Spanish Armada, marked the rise of Britain. 1763 After the end of the Seven-Year War, it seized the whole of Canada from France, marking that Britain became the undisputed maritime hegemon. 18 15 After defeating Napoleon's first French Empire, the British Empire became the world's largest power and dominated international affairs for a century.
This period was called "Britain ruled the world"-this position remained until 19 14. The emerging German Empire, dissatisfied with its status, challenged the British Empire and launched the First World War. 1922 after the end of World War I, according to the Paris Peace Conference, it reached its largest territory under the trusteeship of German colonies, covering a quarter of the earth's land and a quarter of its population, and became the largest country in world history.
Because the empire's territory and possessions are spread over seven continents and five oceans, including Antarctica, there is a saying that "the sun in Britain will never set", so it is described as the third "empire where the sun never sets" after the Dutch and Spanish empires.
British merchant ships and warships appear in every corner of the world. They acquired territory, opened ports, plundered raw materials and dumped products.
There is a saying that summarizes the status of the British trade center at that time: the plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields; Chicago and Odessa are our granaries; Canada and the Baltic Sea are our forest farms; Australia and West Asia have our sheep farms; There are our cows in Argentina and the grasslands of western North America; Peru transports silver.
Gold from South Africa and Australia flows to London; India and China grow tea for us; Our coffee, sugar cane and spice plantations are all over the Indies; Spain and France are our vineyards; The Mediterranean is our orchard; It has been planted in our cotton fields in the southern United States for a long time.
The British Empire also reached its peak in the era of Queen Victoria, with a territory of about 33.67 million square kilometers, which is a quarter of the total land area of the world. It is the largest country in human history and recognized by international historians and Guinness World Records.
The decline of the empire
As Canada (1867), Australia (190 1), New Zealand (1907) and the South African Union (19 10) successively gained dominion status, the British Empire began to The leaders of these new countries, together with British politicians, attended the colonial conference held regularly since 1887 (called the imperial conference after 1907).
The autonomous territories do enjoy a lot of freedom in foreign policy, as long as their policies are not obviously contrary to Britain's own interests: the Canadian Liberal Party government signed a bilateral free trade reciprocal agreement with the United States in 19 1 1, but it was not passed because of the opposition of the British Conservative Party.
In terms of national defense, the original practice of bringing the defense of Dominion into the military framework of a single empire proved difficult to maintain after 1900, because Britain began to assume greater responsibility for the defense of the European continent at this time, and at the same time faced the threat of the rise of the German navy. 1909, the British empire decided that every dominion should have its own navy, which violated the agreement of 1887, that is, Britain promised Australia to export manpower to the British navy in exchange for the British fleet stationed in the Pacific region.
At the beginning of the 20th century, nationalist sentiment rose, challenging the dominant position of the colonial sovereign state. At the same time, the suzerain country became more and more concerned about the affairs of its own country and neighboring countries, and Britain finally accepted this new situation and transformed the old British Empire into today's Commonwealth.
The economic crisis of 1947 forced Clement Attlee's Labor government to give up maintaining Britain's status as a world-class power and accept the rise of the United States. World War II finally destroyed Britain's weakened economic and financial leadership, and highlighted the need for Dominion and the United States to assist Britain militarily. 1942, Australian Prime Minister john curtin ordered the Australian soldiers stationed in British Burma to be repatriated to fight for Australia.
In the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the post-war decolonization movement was realized at an unprecedented speed, and Britain almost never tried to resist this wave. 1956 In the Suez Canal crisis, Britain and France were forced to end their interference in Egypt under the strong pressure of the United States and the support of the Soviet Union.
1957 Ghana finally became independent after the nationalist movement of 10, followed by Nigeria (1960), Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (196 1) and Uganda (196/kloc-).
After the short-lived failure of the West Indian Federation (1958- 1962), the New Territories lease of 1999 expired (although 1999 was permanent) and the Sino-British negotiations, Britain also handed over Hong Kong sovereignty to China in 1997.
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After all, the sun will set. With the rise of Germany and the United States, the empire began to decline, and Britain gradually launched on the world stage in the sunset. The success of the British people was attributed to the superiority of the system at that time. On the other hand, there are still many structural defects in its system.
With the change of production, Britain hesitated to change the system in time, holding a conservative attitude, which eventually led to the system development lagging behind the social and economic development, accumulating various problems, which was very unfavorable to its status as a powerful country, and was a new era of potential hidden dangers that caused Britain's future decline.
From this perspective, a country or nation should always examine its own shortcomings and make corresponding adjustments according to the needs of the times. Otherwise, the hidden dangers in its advantages will affect the overall situation, and the lessons of Britain are worth thinking about.
The British seized the opportunity given by history and rose successfully. The strong national spirit has promoted the rapid development of Britain and reached a peak.
Innovation is the key factor that occupied the whole industrial revolution and created world-class technology for Britain. However, it is these two words that have made this country, which has enjoyed a beautiful scenery for more than a century, go into recession. Conservative thinking made Britain fall behind in the second industrial revolution, and its innovation ability disappeared without a trace. Maybe they are still intoxicated with the achievements of the first industrial revolution, but they don't realize that the outside world has undergone earth-shaking changes.