1111022 - Anglais Civilisation

Today the United Kingdom has special ties with Europe, the United-States, the Commonwealth, and the world at large; it holds a central position in a complicated web of international relations. To understand the country and its role on the world scene, it is necessary to study its evolution, its political, cultural and social specificities throughout the centuries.

The basic question that will be addressed here is the question of British civilisation, heritage, and identity in order to gain a good knowledge of the United Kingdom and of the British people. The objectives of a historical overview are to present and analyse the background to present-day Britain, to explain how the United-Kingdom developed and came to be what it is today, to understand the make-up of the United-Kingdom so as to acquire the background knowledge needed to deal with any British topic.

This set of lectures will focus on key periods in British history - these very episodes, which forged the British nation - and will assess the impact of the various events and people that shaped it. In order to achieve these aims, these lectures will focus on:
Prehistoric Britain and Roman Britain; Early and Late Medieval Britain; The Tudors ; Stuart Britain; The Georgian Era.

• J. Black, A History of the British Isles, Palgrave.
• M. Corbishley, The Oxford History of Britain and Ireland, OUP.
• H. Kearney, The British Isles, A History of Four Nations, CUP.
• Kenneth O. Morgan, The Oxford History of Britain, Oxford.