Session 1: Early and Medieval Britain: From Roman Britain to the Coming of the Tudors
Session 2: Britain in the Renaissance
Session 3: Britain in the Ages of the Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism
Session 4: Empire and After: Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Empire and After: Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
In the last two centuries Britain
became – temporarily – the largest ever imperial power in history, saw that
empire disappear, fought two ruinously expensive world wars, and continued
to debate its future as an independent nation facing the growing integration
of Europe. At the same time, the Great Reform Act of 1832 began a continuing
process of constitutional change as Britain embraced representative
democracy, including universal voting rights, and a more equitable society.
In political, social, and economic history, the period begins with Britain’s emergence as the foremost imperial power and as the first major industrial economy. Britain’s power and wealth grew as never before, but throughout the period other events and voices drew attention to alternative perspectives: the grim social conditions of industrialization, the pervasive shock of Darwinian science, and the hostility of colonized peoples, to mention but three.
Such profound developments are complemented in the evolution of the arts and intellectual life. The period includes sharp contrasts between the Victorian and modern visual arts, and the development of competing accounts of human consciousness, understanding, and imagination as they are expressed in literature and elsewhere, ranging from late Romanticism, through Ruskin, William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the impact of Freud and Marx, to Modernism and its aftermath.