www.travel-university.org

The Island Race

If the current social and economic outlook is giving many Britons that old beleaguered feeling again, it is a situation they have, as an insular people, long endured. In fact, about 7500 years ago Britain was finally cut off from the rest of Europe's landmass by the Strait of DOVER. This happened when the last cold phase of the Ice Age waned, and waters locked in the great ice sheets returned to the oceans. The North Sea submerged the forest-and marsh lowland, which had once joined Britain to the Continent. However, this did not stop migration. Neolithic settlers, who first arrived about 6000 years ago, are known from their burial mounds. They settled at places like AVEBURY and STONEHENGE, which were developed by later Bronze Age peoples into grand megalithic circles.

Late in the Bronze Age (2200-650 BC) and through the early Iron Age (650 BC-AD 43) came the Celts and other tribes who built the large earthen encampments that still crown many uplands. Their languages survive in the Welsh and Gaelic still used in western areas.

Then - following Julius Caesar's raids of 55 and 54 BC - came the Roman invasion of AD 43, and an occupation lasting over three centuries. The Romans established order, built a road network and laid out the first real towns - places such as CHESTER and CHICHESTER. As the Romans withdrew, their empire crumbling, Saxons, Danes and Vikings arrived between the 5th and 11th centuries, Saxon speech gave rise to the English language; Panes and Vikings added their elements, Many of their place names survive in recognizable form - including DERBY, previously known to Saxons as Northworthy. Finally, in 1066, came Duke William and his Normans, to conquer and then merge with the indigenous population, bringing new facets to the language- and even more new place names.

The Normans were the last conquerors or England, but it was more than 700 years before the United Kingdom came about. The Anglo-Norman conquest of Wales began in the 12th century, the last principality (Gwynedd) falling in 1282, and Wales was brought under English law by the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542. The Kingdom of Scotland, formed in the 9th century when the Picts joined the Scots, resisted successfully. But James VI of Scotland, a great great grandson of Henry VII of England, succeeded to the English throne in 1603, and ruled both kingdoms. The Scottish parliament voted to unite with England and Wales in 1707. The first Anglo-Normans reached IRELAND in about 1170. English control gradually spread over the whole island, and the Act of Union enforced in 1801 created the United Kingdom.

The green and fertile land inherited by the Normans was not only beautiful but contained rich mineral wealth, which was barely tapped until the Industrial Revolution. Iron ore was fairly widespread, and lead, tin, copper, silver and a little gold were mined in CORNWALL, northern England and Wales. But it was coal that largely provided the power for 'the workshop of the world'.

But the 20th century brought the discovery of new energy sources - oil, natural gas and nuclear reaction. In the 1950s coal still provided 95 per cent of the nation's energy needs. By 1979 that proportion was down to 36 per cent, and oil and gas were providing 59 per cent. Gas was discovered in the North Sea in 1965, and oil four years later, and by 1984, 25 oil fields were on stream. The tax revenues generated helped compensate for the slump in manufacturing, but the oil and gas reserves are expected to begin running down in the 1990s.

The decline of manufacturing industry has been particularly hard on Britain, one of the most urbanized countries in Europe, where over three-quarters of the population live in towns and cities. Skills generated by a century and more of hard-won, years-long apprenticeships have been made worthless as demands change and computer-controlled machines turn out finished products. As in farming, but on a far larger scale, skilled workers have become redundant in many manufacturing industries - especially major ones such as textiles, engineering and shipbuilding. The only remaining 'native' mass-production car manufacturer survived on massive Government subsidies and close links with a Japanese company. Now the Japanese are building their own cars in Britain.

Next: Young and old