The Danish raids on England. The Struggle of Alfred the Great.
The geographical position.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is situated on the British Isles — a large group of islands lying off the north-western coast of Europe and separated from the continent by the English Channel and the Strait of Dover in the south and the North Sea in the east.
The British Isles consist of two large islands — Great Britain and Ireland — separated by the Irish Sea, and a lot of small islands, the main of which are the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, Anglesea and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, the Hebrides — a group of islands off the north-western coast of Scotland, and two groups of islands lying to the north of Scotland: the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands.
Historically the territory of the United Kingdom is divided into four parts: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The total area of the United Kingdom is 244 square kilometresNatureGreat Britain is situated in the temperate zone of Europe. The nature of Great Britain is greatly affected by the sea: there is no place situated more than 100-120 km from the seashore, in the northern parts only 40-60 km.The territory of Great Britain can be divided into three natural regions:1) Scotland with highland and upland relief and coniferous and mixed forests;2) Wales and mountainous England with upland considerably cut by ravines and valleys and covered with meadows, moorland and cultivated farmland, with patches of broadleaf forest;3) South-east England with plain landscape, fertile soils, the predominance of cultivated farmland, with patches of broadleaf forest.Coasts.The coastline of Great Britain is greatly indented, especially in the west and north-west where the mountains come close to the coast. The coasts of Scotland, as well as the coasts of the Hebrides, the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands, are cut by numerous fiords. In the south and east the land gradually slopes down towards the sea, and the coasts are sandy aid gentle, here and there interrupted by the ends of hiil-ranges, which form low cliffs.
2. The physical geography of the British Isles: the varied relief features; the main rivers and lakes; the climate and weather.The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe which comprise the island of Great Britain, the island of Ireland and a number of smaller islands The term British Isles is controversial in relation to Ireland where many people find the term objectionable; the Irish government also discourages its usage There is evidence that as a result of these problems, "Britain and Ireland" is becoming a preferred description. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ireland The group also includes the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man and, by tradition, the Channel Islands, although the latter are not physically a part of the archipelago. There are other common uncertainties surrounding the extent, names and geographical elements of the islands. Several different names are currently used to describe the islands. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases that use the term British Isles define it[11] as Great Britain, Ireland and adjacent islands, typically including the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, Shetland, Orkney. Some definitions include the Channel Islands. There are more than 6,000 islands in the group, the largest two being Great Britain and Ireland.
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Great Britain is to the east and covers 216,777 km2 (83,698 square miles), over half of the total landmass of the group Ireland is to the west and covers 84,406 km2 (32,589 square miles).The largest of the other islandsare to be found in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland to the north, Anglesey and the Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland, and the Channel Islands near the coast of France.The British Isles have a temperate marine climate, the North Atlantic Drift ("Gulf Stream") which flows from the Gulf of Mexico brings with it significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the islands' latitudes.[25] Winters are thus warm and wet, with summers mild and also wet. Most Atlantic depressions pass to the north of the islands, combined with the general westerly circulation and interactions with the landmass, this imposes an east-west variation in climate The geographical position of the British Isles within latitudes 50o to 60o N is a basic factor in determining the main characteristics of the climate. Temperature, the most important climatic element, depends not only on the angle at which the sun’s rays strike the earth’s surface, but also on the duration of daylight. The length of day at London ranges from 16 hours 35 minutes on June to 7 hours 50 minutes on 21 December. British latitudes form the temperate nature of the British climate, for the sun is never directly overhead as in the tropical areas.Britain’s climate is dominated by the influence of the sea. It is much milder than that in any other country in the same latitudes. This is due partly to the presence of the North Atlantic Drift, or the Gulf Stream, and partly to the fact that north-west Europe lies in a predominantly westerly wind-belt. This means that marine influences warm the land in winter and cool in summer. This moderating effect of the sea is in fact, the cause of the relatively small seasonal contrasts experienced in Britain.The moderating effect of the ocean on air temperature is also stronger in winter than in summer. When the surface water is cooler than the air above it – as frequently happens during the summer months – the air tends to lose its heat to the water. The lowest layers of air are chilled and become denser by contradiction, and the chilled air tends to remain at low levels. The surface water expands because it is warmed, and remains on the surface of the ocean. Unless the air is turbulent, little of it can be cooled, for little heat is exchanged.Opposite conditions apply in winter. The air in winter is likely to be cooler than the surface water, so that the heat passes from water to air. Air at low levels is warmed and expands and rises, carrying oceanic heat with it, while the chilled surface water contracts and sinks, to be replaced by unchilled water from below. This convectional overturning both of water and of air leads to a vigorous exchange of heat.The prevailing winds in the British Isles are westerlies. They are extremely moist, as a result of their long passage over warm waters of the North Atlantic. On their arrival to Britain, the winds are forced upwards, and as a result large-scale condensation takes place, clouds form and precipitation follows, especially over the mountainous areas.North and north-west winds often bring heavy falls of snow to north Britain during late October and November, but they are usually short-lived. Continental winds from the east sometimes reach the British Isles in summer as a warm, dry air-stream, but they are more frequently experienced in winter when they cross the north sea and bring cold, continental-type weather to eastern and inland districts of Great Britain. Ireland is in the rather a different category, for here the rain-bearing winds have not been deprived of their moisture, and much of the Irish plain receives up to 1,200 mm of rainfall per year, usually in the form of steady and prolonged drizzle. Snow, on the other hand, is rare, owing to the warming effects of the Gulf Stream. The combined influences of the sea and prevailing winds are equally evident in the general pattern of rainfall over the country.England has a number of important rivers including the Severn (the longest river and largest river basin in Great Britain), Tees, Thames, Trent, Humber, Tyne, Wear, Ribble, Ouse, Mersey, Dee, Aire, Avon and Medway.
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3.The main stages in the formation of the population of Great Britain (Ancient Britain, Celts, ftomans, Anglo-Saxons).
England is named after the Angles, the largest of the Germanic tribes who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries, and who are believed to have originated in the peninsula of Angeln, in what is now Denmark and northern Germany.[13] (The further etymology of this tribe's name remains uncertain, although a popular theory holds that it need be sought no further than the word angle itself, and refers to a fish-hook-shaped region of Holstein.) The Angles' name has had various spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania, written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in the Ocean"The early 8th century historian Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to the English people as Angelfolc (in English) or Angli (in Latin) Bones and flint tools found in Norfolk and Suffolk show that Homo erectus lived in what is now England about 700,000 years ago.[19] At this time, Great Britain was joined to mainland Europe by a large land bridge. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames and the Seine. This area was greatly depopulated during the period of the last major ice age, as were other regions of the British Isles. In the subsequent recolonisation, after the thawing of the ice, genetic research shows that present-day England was the last area of the British Isles to be repopulated,[20] about 13,000 years ago. The migrants arriving during this period contrast with the other of the inhabitants of the British Isles, coming across lands from the south east of Europe, whereas earlier arriving inhabitants came north along a coastal route from Iberia. These migrants would later adopt the Celtic culture that came to dominate much of western Europe. y AD 43, the time of the main Roman invasion, Britain had already been the target of frequent invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. It was first invaded by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 55 BC, but it was conquered more fully by the Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. Like other regions on the edge of the empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans, and their economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman Iron Age, especially in the south. With the fall of the Roman Empire 400 years later, the Romans left the Province of Brittania, much of which later came to be known as England.The History of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early mediæval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066.[21] Fragmentary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the 5th and 6th centuries comes from the British writer Gildas (6th century) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the English people begun in the 9th century), saints' lives, poetry, archaeological findings, and place-name studies. The dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity is thought to have come from three directions—from Rome to the south, and Scotland and Ireland to the north and west. From about 500 AD, it is believed[citation needed] England was divided into seven petty kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As early as the time of Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised as Bretwalda ("Lord of Britain"). Generally speaking, the title fell in the 7th century to the kings of Northumbria; in the 8th, to those of Mercia; and in the 9th, to Egbert of Wessex, who, in 825, defeated the Mercians at the Battle of Ellendun. In the next century, his family came to rule all England.
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The Danish raids on England. The Struggle of Alfred the Great.
Alfred the Great, also spelt Ælfred, was king of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred is noted for his defence of the kingdom against the Danish Vikings, becoming the only English King to be awarded the epithet "the Great".[1] Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the English". Details of his life are described in a work by the Welsh scholar Asser. Alfred was a learned man, and encouraged education and improved his kingdom's law system as well as its military structure.
In April 871, King Ethelred died, and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex and the burden of its defence, despite the fact that Ethelred left two young sons. Although contemporary turmoil meant the accession of Alfred—an adult with military experience and patronage resources—over his nephews went unchallenged, he remained obliged to secure their property rights. While he was busy with the burial ceremonies for his brother, the Danes defeated the English in his absence at an unnamed spot, and then again in his presence at Wilton in May. Following this, peace was made and, for the next five years, the Danes occupied other parts of England. However, in 876, under their new leader, Guthrum, the Danes slipped past the English army and attacked Wareham in Dorset. From there, early in 877, and under the pretext of talks, they moved westwards and took Exeter in Devon. There, Alfred blockaded them, and with a relief fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes were forced to submit. They withdrew to Mercia but, in January 878, made a sudden attack on Chippenham, a royal stronghold in which Alfred had been staying over Christmas
After the dispersal of the Danish invaders, Alfred turned his attention to the increase of the navy, partly to repress the ravages of the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes on the coasts of Wessex, and to prevent the landing of fresh invaders. This is not, as often asserted, the beginning of the English navy. There had been earlier naval operations under Alfred. One naval engagement was fought in the reign of Æthelwulf in 851 by Alfred's brother, Athelstan, and earlier ones, possibly in 833 and 840.
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