Britain and Europe in a Troubled World

Britain and Europe in a Troubled World

Author: Vernon Bogdanor

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0300255683

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The history of Britain's complex relationship with Europe, untangled Is Britain a part of Europe? The British have been ambivalent on this question since the Second World War, when the Western European nations sought to prevent the return of fascism by creating strong international ties throughout the Continent. Britain reluctantly joined the Common Market, the European Community, and ultimately the European Union, but its decades of membership never quite led it to accept a European orientation. In the view of the distinguished political scientist Vernon Bogdanor, the question of Britain’s relationship to Europe is rooted in “the prime conflict of our time,” the dispute between the competing faiths of liberalism and nationalism. This concise, expertly guided tour provides the essential background to the struggle over Brexit.


Old World, New World

Old World, New World

Author: Kathleen Burk

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 844

ISBN-13: 9780802144294

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A history of the relationship between Great Britain and the United States ranges from the establishment of the first English colony in the New World to the present day, examining both nations in terms of what connected them and what drove them apart.


Britain at Bay

Britain at Bay

Author: Alan Allport

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 1101974699

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From statesmen and military commanders to ordinary Britons, a bold, sweeping history of Britain's entrance into World War II—and its efforts to survive it—illuminating the ways in which the war permanently transformed a nation and its people “Might be the single best examination of British politics, society and strategy in these four years that has ever been written.” —The Wall Street Journal Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict’s first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles pressing questions such as whether the war could have been avoided, how it could have been lost, how well the British lived up to their own values, and ultimately, what difference the war made to the fate of the nation. In answering these questions, he reexamines our assumptions and paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which the Second World War transformed British culture and society. This bracing account draws on a lively cast of characters—from the political and military leaders who made the decisions, to the ordinary citizens who lived through them—in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. A sweeping and groundbreaking epic, Britain at Bay gives us a fresh look at the opening years of the war, and illuminates the integral moments that, for better or for worse, made Britain what it is today.


Britain and World War One

Britain and World War One

Author: Alan G. V. Simmonds

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1136629971

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The First World War appears as a fault line in Britain’s twentieth-century history. Between August 1914 and November 1918 the titanic struggle against Imperial Germany and her allies consumed more people, more money and more resources than any other conflict Britain had hitherto experienced. For the first time, it opened up a Home Front that stretched into all parts of the British polity, society and culture, touching the lives of every citizen regardless of age, gender and class. Even vegetables were grown in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Britain and World War One throws attention on these civilians who fought the war on the Home Front. Harnessing recent scholarship, and drawing on original documents, oral testimony and historical texts, this book casts a fresh look over different aspects of British society during the four long years of war. It revisits the early war enthusiasm and the making of Kitchener’s new armies; the emotive debates over conscription; the relationships between politics, government and popular opinion; women working in wartime industries; the popular experience of war and the question of social change. The book also explores areas of wartime Britain overlooked by recent histories, including the impact of the war on rural society; the mobilization of industry, and the importance of technology, as well as exploring responses to air raids, food and housing shortages; the challenges to traditional social and sexual mores and wartime culture. Britain and World War One is an essential book for all students and interested lay readers of the First World War.


Battle of Britain

Battle of Britain

Author: Leonard Mosley

Publisher: Time Life Education

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780783557069

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An account of the aircraft, pilots, tactics, and results of the three-month Battle of Britain in 1940.


Britain in the Wider World

Britain in the Wider World

Author: Trevor Burnard

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-17

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9781138313590

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Britain in the Wider World traces the remarkable transformation of Britain between 1603 and 1800 as it developed into a world power. At the accession of James VI and I to the throne of England in 1603, the kingdoms of England/Wales, Scotland and Ireland were united only by having a monarch in common. They had little presence in the world and were fraught with violence. Two centuries later, the consolidated state of the United Kingdom, established in 1801, was an economic powerhouse and increasingly geopolitically important, with an empire that stretched from the Americas, to Asia and to the Pacific. The book offers a fresh approach to assessing Britain's evolution, situating Britain within both imperial and Atlantic history, and examining how Britain came together politically and socially throughout the eighteenth century. In particular, it offers a detailed exploration of Britain as a fiscal-military state, able to fight major wars without bankrupting itself. Through studying patterns of political authority and gender relationships, it also stresses the constancy of fundamental features of British society, economy, and politics despite considerable internal changes. Detailed, accessibly written, and enhanced by illustrations, Britain in the Wider World is ideal for students of early modern Britain.


Britain in the World Economy since 1880

Britain in the World Economy since 1880

Author: Bernard W.E. Alford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-06

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1317872800

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Bernard Alford reviews the changing role, and diminishing influence, of Britain within the international economy across the century that saw the apogee and loss of Britain's empire, and her transformation from globe-straddling superpower to off-shore and indecisive member of the European Community. He explores the relationship between empire and economy; looks at economic performance against economic policy; and compares Britain - through and beyond the Thatcher years - with her European partners, America and Japan. In assessing whether Britain's economic decline has been absolute or merely relative, he also illuminates the broader history of the world economy itself.


Britain and the Origins of the First World War

Britain and the Origins of the First World War

Author: Zara S. Steiner

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0230213014

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How and why did Britain become involved in the First World War? Taking into account the scholarship of the last twenty-five years, this second edition of Zara S. Steiner's classic study, thoroughly revised with Keith Neilson, explores a subject which is as highly contentious as ever. While retaining the basic argument that Britain went to war in 1914 not as a result of internal pressures but as a response to external events, Steiner and Neilson reject recent arguments that Britain became involved because of fears of an 'invented' German menace, or to defend her Empire. Instead, placing greater emphasis than before on the role of Russia, the authors convincingly argue that Britain entered the war in order to preserve the European balance of power and the nation's favourable position within it. Lucid and comprehensive, Britain and the Origins of the First World War brings together the bureaucratic, diplomatic, economic, strategical and ideological factors that led to Britain's entry into the Great War, and remains the most complete survey of the pre-war situation.


Unfinished Empire

Unfinished Empire

Author: John Darwin

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2012-09-06

Total Pages: 574

ISBN-13: 1846146712

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A both controversial and comprehensive historical analysis of how the British Empire worked, from Wolfson Prize-winning author and historian John Darwin The British Empire shaped the world in countless ways: repopulating continents, carving out nations, imposing its own language, technology and values. For perhaps two centuries its expansion and final collapse were the single largest determinant of historical events, and it remains surrounded by myth, misconception and controversy today. John Darwin's provocative and richly enjoyable book shows how diverse, contradictory and in many ways chaotic the British Empire really was, controlled by interests that were often at loggerheads, and as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength.