专八必备人文知识.doc

1. The official name of the United Kingdom is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.2. There are three political divisions on the islands of Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales.3. About a hundred years ago, Britain ruled an empire that had one fourth of the worlds people and one fourth of the worlds land area.4. The Britain Empire was replaced by the Britain commonwealth in 1931,which is a free association of independent counties that were once colonies of Britain.5. Britain is separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel in the south and the North Sea in the east.6. Britain has, for centuries, been tilting with the northwest slowly rising, and the southeast slowly sinking. The north and west of Britain are mainly highlands. The southeast and east are mainly lowlands.7. The pennies, a range of hills running from north midlands to Scottish border, are the principal mountain chain.8. Ben Nevis in Scotland is the highest mountain in Britain, and the Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is the largest lake in Britain.9. There are three natural zones in Scotland: the highlands in the north, the central lowlands, and the southern uplands. The lowlands in the center comprise mostly the forth and Clyde valleys.10. Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are the capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.11. Scotland has about 800 islands, including the Orkney, Shetlands and Hebrides.12. Besides, the Tweed, the Tyne, the Tees and the Thames Rivers on the east coast all face the North Sea ports on the European continent.13. The longest river in Britain is the Severn River. The most important river is Thames River. River Clyde is the most important river in Scotland.14. Though the weather in Britain is so changeable and unpredictable, the climate is in fact a favorable one. Britain has a steady reliable rainfall throughout the whole year.15. Britain has a population of 57411000. it is a densely populated country with an average of 237 people per square kilometer, and it is very unevenly distributed. 90% of the population is urban, and only 10% is rural.16. the English are Anglo-Saxons, but the welsh, Scots and Irish are Celts.17. The Celts of Wales defended their freedom for 1000 years and were not conquered by the English until 1536. today about a quarter of the welsh population still speak welsh as their first language and about one percent speak only welsh.18. though the Gaelic language is still heard in the Highlands and western isles, the English language is spoken all over the Scotland.19. Since then, there has been bitter fighting between the Protestants who are the dominant group, and the Roman Catholics who are seeking more social and economic opportunities. 20. About three million have came to live and find work since world war second. They are mainly from the West Indies, India and Pakistan. 21. The first known setters of Britain were the Iberians. More dramatic monuments were the henges, the most important of which was Stonehenge in Wiltshire.22. The Celts may originally have come from eastern and central Europe, they came to Britain in three main waves: the first wave was the Gaels, the second was Britons and the third was Belgae.23. Julius Caesar, the great roman general, invaded Britain for the first time in 55BC. For nearly 400 years, Britain was under roman occupation.24. The roman built two great walls to keep the Picts. There were the Hadrians wall running from Carlisle to Newcastle, and the Antonine wall linking the estuaries of the Forth and the Clyde.25. The Romans made use of Britains natural resources, mining lead, iron and tin and manufacturing pottery.26. In the mid-5th century a new wave of invaders, Jutes, Saxons, and Angles came to Britain, they were three Teutonic tribes.27. These seven principal kingdoms of Kent, Essex, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria have given the name of Heptarch.28. At the beginning of ninth century, under their king Egbert the West Saxons of defeated the Mercies. In 829, Egbert became an overlord of all the England.29. In 597, pope Gregory I sent st.Augustine to England to convert the heathen English to Christianity. Augustine was remarkably successfully in converting the king and the nobility. 30. Alferd, king of Wessex, was strong enough to defeat the Danes. He is known as the father of Britain navy.31. When Ethebreds death left no strong Saxon successor, the Witan chose Canute the Danish leader, as king in 1016.32. King Edward seemed more concerned with building Westminster Abbey than with affairs of state. He was far more Norman than Saxon.33. Anglo-Saxon England perished with Harolds death. William was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of York.34. The Norman conquest of England is perhaps the best-known event in English history. Under William, the feudal system in England was completely established. 35. William replaced the witan , the council of the Anglo-Saxon kings, with the Grand Council of his new tenants-in-chief.36. The Doomsday Book, completed in 1086, was the result of general survey of England made in 1085, and stated the extent , value, the population, state of cultivation and ownership.37. Williams policy towards the church was to keep it completely under his control, but at the same time to uphold its power.38. Henry was the first king of the House of Plantagenet. He took measures to bring the disorders of king Stephen reign to an end.39. Henry greatly strengthened the Kings Court and extended with its judicial work. He insisted that all clerks charged with criminal offences should be tried in the Kings Courts instead of in the Bishops Court.40. It was these exceptional privileges enjoyed by the clergy that brought King Henry into collision with Tomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.41. Geoffrey Chaucers best known work is the Canterbury Tales which describes a group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury to visitTomas Beckets tomb.42. The barons charter, or Magna Carta, as it came to be known was presented by a delegation of their class to the king and his advisers in the summer of 1215.43. A committee of 24 barons plus the Mayor of London was chosen to help the king carry out the Charter, with the right of declaring war on him should he break its provisions.44. Magna Carta was a statement of feudal and legal relationship between the crown and the barons, a guarantee of the freedom of the church and a limitation of the power of the king.45. While the king Henry and Prince Edward were keep in prison, Simon de Montfort summoned in 1265 the great council to meet at Westminster which developed later into the Lords and the Commons known as a parliament.46. The statute of Wales in 1284 placed the country under English law and Edward presented his new-born-son to the Welsh people as the Prince of Wales, a title held by the heir to the throne ever since. 47. When Edward claimed the French Crown by the right of his mother Isabella, the French refused to recognize the claim because the Salic Law debarred females from the succession. In 1337 Edward declared a war that was to last a hundred years. 48. Black Death swept through England in the summer of 1348 without warning. It killed between one half and one third of the population of England.49. In 1351 the government issued a statute of Laborers which made it a crime for peasant to ask for more wage or for their employers to pay more than the rates laid down by the Justice of the Peace.50. Although the Peasant Uprising of 1381, was brutally suppressed, it had far-reaching significance in English history. It dealt a telling blow to villeinage and a new class of yeomen farmers emerged, paving the way for the development of capitalism.51. The name the Wars of Roses was referring to the battles between the great house of Lancaster, symbolized by the red rose, and that of York, symbolized by the white.52. In 1455, after Henry hand completely lost his reason, war broke out between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. In 1461, the Duke of Yorks son Edward, emerged the victor and was proclaimed as Edward .53. On August 22, 1458, the last battle of the Wars of Roses was fought between Richard and Henry Tudor.54. The reform began as a struggle for a divorce and end in freedom from the Papacy. Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon. But Pope Clement refused to annul his marriage to Catherine.55. Henrys reform was to get rid of the English Churchs connection with the Pope, and make an independent Church of England.56. The laws (e.g. the Act of Succession of 1534 and the Act of Supremacy of 1535) made his reform possible stressed the power of the monarch and certainly strengthened Henrys position.57. When Mary Tudor became Queen after Edward, she attempted to forcibly recovert England to Roman Catholicism. People call her Blood Mary.58. Elizabeths reign was a time of confident English national and of great achievements in literature and other acts, in exploration and in battle.59. Elizabeths religious reform was a compromise of views. She broke Marys ties with Rome and restored her fathers independent Church of England.60. For nearly 30 years Elizabeth successfully played against each other the two great Catholic powers, France and Spain. 61. The destruction of Spanish Armada showed Englands superiority as a naval power. It enabled England to become a great trading and colonizing country in the years to come.62. Renaissance was the transitional period between the Middle Ages and modern times, covering the years c1350-c1650. In England, the Renaissance was usually thought of as the beginning with the accession of the House of Tudor to the throne in 1485.63. English Renaissance achieved its first expression in the so-called Elizabethan drama. Its first exponents were Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare.64. English Renaissance literature is primarily artistic, rather than philosophical scholarly.65. William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, including the following tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Harmlet, king Lear, Othello, and Cymbeline.66. The most famous of the Catholic compiracies was the Gunpowder plot of 1605. on November 5, 1605, a few fanatical Catholics attempted to blow King James and his ministers up in the House of Parliament where Guy Fawkes had planted barrels of gunpowder in the cellars.67. James , a firm believer in the Divine Right of Kings, would have preferred on Parliament at all and actually did without one for seven years.68. It was at this Parliament that the king was forced to accept the Petition of Right regarded as the second Magna Carta.69. On August 22, 1642, the First Civil War began. The kings men were called Cavaliers, and the supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads.70. Charles was tried by a High Court of Justice, found guilty of have levied war against his kingdom and the Parliament, condemned to death, and executed on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall on January 30, 1649.71. The English Civil War not only overthrew feudal system in England but also shocked the foundation of the feudal rule in Europe.72. Meanwhile, Oliver Cromwell and the Rump declared England a commonwealth. In December 1653,by an Instrument of Government, he became Lord Protector of the commonwealth of England.73. The Parliament thus elected in 1660 resolved the crisis by asking the late kings son to return from his long exile in France as king Charles. The Restoration as it was called, was relatively smooth.74. Te Eglish politicians rejected James, and appealed to a protestant king, William of Orange to invade and take the English throne. This take-over became known as the Glorious Revolution.75. William and Mary jointly accepted the Bill of Rights which confirmed the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Thus the age of constitutioned monarchy of a monarchy. 76. It was during Annes reign that the name great Britain came into being when in 1707, the Act of Union united England and Scotland.77.The Whigs were those who opposed absolute monarchy and supported the right to religious freedom for nonconformists. The Tories were traditionalists who wanted to preserve the powers of the monarchy and the church of England.78. During the late 19th and early 19th centuries the open-field system ended when the Enclosure acts enabled weal their landowner to seize any land to which tenants could prove no legal title. 79.The industrial revolution refers to the mechanization of industry and the consequent change in social and economic organization in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.80.The limited monarchy which resulted from the powerful economic interests in the community could exert their influence on Government policy.81.The first steam engine was devised by Thomas newcomer at the end of 17th century, and the Scottish inventor james watt modified and improved the design in 1765.82.As a result of the industrial revolution, Britain was by 1830 the workshop of the world.83.In the 18th and 19th centuries, the lords had far more influence than it has today and the commons were also really gentry on the edge of aristocracy.84.The chartist movement was, however, the first nationwide working class movement and drew attention to serious problems.85.In 1900, representatives of the trade unions, the ILP, and a number of socialist societies set up the labour representation for the general which changed its name to the labour party in time for the general election for 1906.86.English colonial expansion began with the colonization of Newfoundland in 1583. By 1900 Britain had built up a big empire, on which the sun never set.87.During world war Britain lost over a million people, most of them under age of 25.88.Chamberlain was not the man to lead his country in such a crisis, Winston Churchill , his first lord of admiralty took over as Prime Minster in 1940.89.In January, 1973, Britain finally became a member of the Europe Economic Community, which was established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957.90.The election of 1979 returned the conservative party to power and Margaret Chatcher became the first woman prime minister in Britain. 91.Between 1950 and 1973, Britains GDP grew at an average annual rate of 3%. Growth was hampered by chronic balance of payment deficits. The term Britain disease is now used to characterize Britains economic decline.92.By the end of 1947, the British economy had returned to its pre-war levels. The British economy in the 50s and 60s is characterized by show but steady growth, low unemployment and great material prosperity with rising standard of consumption.93.John m Keynes suggested that the government should use fiscal and monetary policy to fine-tune aggregate demand to achieve full employment, while using prices and incomes policy to suppress inflation at source.94.The end of 1973 witnessed the first oil shock. As a result the rate of inflation rose to 16% in 1974. In the 1970s among the developed countries Britain maintained the lowest growth rate and the highest inflation rate.95.The new economic programmed adopted by Mrs. Thatcher was based on the new classical school of thought. Privatization deregulation and market liberalization replaced prices and incomes control and state interventionism.96.Mrs. Thatchers government took numerous measures to improve the efficiency of the economy during the past decade using both macroeconomic and microeconomic.97.Just as the 1940s decade is remembered in Britain as the era of nationalization. The 1980s will be remembered as the decade of privatization. During past decade almost 40% of the Britain state enterprises were privatized.98.Compared with many other countries, Britain has considerable reserves of coal. It was the development of Britains coalfields which led to the Industrial Revolution. Today British coal mining is called a sick industry.99.Later nature gas was discovered in 1965 and oil in 1970 under the North Sea. Today Britain is not only self-sufficient in oil but also has a surplus for export.100.The Midlands has deposits of coal and iron located near each other. Because of these resource the Midlands became the center of steal industry. But today local supplies have became exhausted ore must be imported from Spain?Sweden and elsewhere. The original advantages of the location of many steal works in Britain have gone.101.The main textile producing regions of Britain are the east Yorkshire and humberside, and northern Ireland. Britains textile industry has declined markedly especially in the cotton jute and linen production. But the production of high quality woolen goods has not been so seve