A People's History of England

Description

Early maps show a world in which Britain is a remote outpost, a shapeless cluster of islands thrust out into the encircling ocean. But in some of these maps a significant tilt brings their South-western coast close to the North of Spain, reminding us that earlier still, centuries before the making of any maps that have survived, Britain lay not outside the world but on a regular and frequented trade route which linked Mediterranean civilisation with the amber-bearing North. It was by this long sea route and not across the Dover Straits or the Channel that civilisation first reached these shores. In Cornwall, in Ireland and along the coast of Wales and Scotland cluster the monuments left by Iberian or Megalithic men who reached and peopled Britain between 3000 and 2000 A final group of such monuments in Sutherland, the last point at which their ships touched land before pushing across the North Sea to Scandinavia, makes the route and its Objective abundantly clear. At this time the land subsidence which had begun a thousand or so years earlier was still going on, and the apparently shorter and safer route up Channel and along the European coast was closed, if not by a land bridge joining Britain to the continent, then by straits that were narrow, shifting, shoaling and swept by rapid tides. This is perhaps the first reason for the settlement of Iberian man in Britain. Arthur Leslie Morton was born in Suffolk in 1903. After studying at Cambridge University he taught at Summerhill, the progressive school run by A. S. Neil. A. L. Morton joined the Communist Party and published his Marxist work People's History of England in 1938. Other books by Morton include Socialism in Britain (1963), The English Utopia (1969), World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution (1970), The British Labour Movement, 1770-1920 (1973), Freedom in Arms: Levellers' Writings (1976), The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen (1978) and a study of William Blake, entitled, The Everlasting Gospel (1982). Cover Half Title Dedication Title Page Copyright Contents Foreword I TRIBES AND LEGIONS 1. The Iberians 2. The Celtic Tribes 3. Roman Britain 4. The Roman Twilight II THE GROWTH OF FEUDALISM 1. The English Conquest 2. The Township 3. Christianity 4. The Northmen 5. The End of Saxon England III FEUDAL ENGLAND 1. The Conquest 2. The Social Structure of Domesday England 3. State: Baron: Church 4. Foreign Relations 5. The Great Charter IV THE DECLINE OF FEUDALISM 1. Trade and Towns 2. Parliamentary Origins 3. Wales: Ireland: Scotland 4. The Hundred Years’ War and the Revolution in Military Technique 5. The Black Death 6. The Peasants’ Rising 7. The Political Significance of the Lollard Heresy V THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1. A Century of Paradox 2. Parliament and the House of Lancaster 3. The Hundred Years’ War – II 4. The Wars of the Roses VI THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE BOURGEOISIE 1. The Clothing Industry 2. The Discoveries 3. The Agrarian Revolution 4. The Tudor Monarchy 5. The Reformation in England 6. The Counter-Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement VII ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 1. The Struggle with Spain 2. The Chartered Companies 3. Crown and Parliament 4. The Puritans 5. Fundamental Issues in the English Revolution VIII THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 1. The Long Parliament: Classes and Parties 2. The Civil War 3. Regicide 4. The Levellers IX COMMONWEALTH AND COMPROMISE 1. Ireland: Scotland 2. The Commonwealth 3. The Compromise of 1660 4. The Compromise of 1688 X WHIG ENGLAND 1. War Finance 2. Party Politics 3. Colonial War 4. The American Revolution 5. War and Industry XI THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 1. Agriculture 2. Fuel, Iron and Transport 3. Textiles: the Speenhamland Experiment 4. The French Revolution 5. The Napoleonic Wars XII THE TRIUMPH OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM 1. England after Waterloo 2. The War in the Villages 3. Factory Legislation 4. The Roots of Liberalism 5. The Reform Bill XIII LIBERAL ASCENDANCY 1. The New Poor Law and the Railway Age 2. The Corn Laws 3. Foreign Politics: Palmerston to Disraeli 4. The Second Reform Bill XIV THE ORGANISATION OF THE WORKING CLASS 1. Revolutionary Trade Unionism 2. The Chartists 3. The New Model 4. Socialism and the Organisation of the Unskilled 5. The War for the Land and the National Struggle in Ireland XV COLONIAL EXPANSION 1. India 2. Canada and Australia 3. Egypt 4. Tropical and South Africa XVI ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR 1. Imperialism 2. Triple Alliance, Triple Entente 3. Internal Crisis,1906-1914 4. The Road to Sarajevo XVII WORLD WAR: WORLD CRISIS 1. The First World War 2. The Home Front A Note About Books Bibliography I General Works II Prehistory and Roman Britain (Ch.I) III Anglo-Saxon England and Early Midlle Ages IV Later Middle Ages (Chs.IV and V) V Tudor England (Chs.VI and VII) VI The English Revolution (Chs.VII to IX) VII The Eightenth Century (Ch.X) VIIII The Industrial Revolution IX The Nineteenth Century and Later (Ch.XII to end) Index Back Cover