Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, James Cook

& everything that you find exciting concerning pirates in general.

2. The pleasures of stability & wealth (18^th – 19^th centuries)

In 1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations inside the Crystal Palace, in London. The Exhibition aimed to show the world the greatness of Britain’s industry. No other nation could produce as much at that time.

Britain had become powerful because it had enough coal, iron and steel for its own enormous industry: it could produce new heavy industrial goods like iron ships and steam engines, it could make machinery which produced woolen, cotton and the like. Britain’s cloth was cheap and being exported, it quickly destroyed the local cloth industry of other countries and colonies.

Britain made and owned more than half the world’s total shipping.

This great industrial empire was supported by a strong banking system developed during the 18th century.

Speak of the following main markers of the period; add whatever you consider worthy of mentioning:

The Railway, the growth of towns and cities, hygiene

Social changes: class division, child labour, working houses

PROJECT WORK: Queen Victoria & Victorian Morality

Victoria, the daughter of the duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, the granddaughter of King George the 3rd, was born in 1819. She inherited the throne of Great Britain at the age of eighteen upon the death of her uncle William IV in 1837, and reigned until her death in 1901.

Her rule was the longest of any British king or queen, and happened at the same time as Britain’s greatest period of world power and industrial development.

II. The influence of the Imperial Period

1. The end of the British Empire

The period after World War I saw the last major extension of British rule, with the United Kingdom gaining control in Palestine and Iraq, as well as in the former German colonies of South-West Africa (now Namibia) and New Guinea. Since the1920s the United Kingdom started losing its possessions.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1312