Читать книгу Anglo-American Cultural Studies - Jody Skinner - Страница 99

Great FamineGreat Famine and Home RuleHome RulePerhaps the one event that most people would associate with IrelandIreland and the 19^th century is the Great FamineGreat Famine, which resulted in the deaths of over a million people and mass emigration especially to the US ( 7). Many Irish lived on farms owned by British landlords. The Irish sold their grain and cattle to pay the rent, leaving potatoes as their only foodfood. When a disease destroyed the crop in the 1840s, people began to starve to death; but the British government was slow to react. Prime Minister William GladstoneGladstone, William attempted to resolve the Irish question by a Home RuleHome Rule Bill, which would give an Irish Parliament the right to appoint a leader.

Irish Free StateIrish Free StateThe Easter Rebellion in Dublin occurred after World War IWorld War I and eventually led to IrelandIreland’s independence, at least for most of the southern and western parts of the island. British Parliament then gave the part of Ireland that became known as the Irish Free StateIrish Free State the status of a dominiondominion, an independent country within the British CommonwealthCommonwealth (Cromwell)Commonwealth of Nations with the British monarch as official head of government. The countiescounties in UlsterUlster in Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland remained part of what then became the United KingdomUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Irish Free State later declared itself independent, was neutral during World War IIWorld War II, [73]officially left the Commonwealth in 1948, and became the Republic of Ireland.

Hanover becomes WindsorWindsorWhat happened to the GermanGerman-sounding monarchs in Britain? Queen VictoriaVictoria had died in 1901, just one year after the turn of the century, and was the last monarch of the House of Hanover. Before she died, she married off most of her many children and grandchildren to various other European royal houses and thus became known as the “grandmother of Europe.” Her son, Edward VIIEdward VII, began the very short-lived House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. This dynasty with its very German-sounding name – due to the fact that, as we learned earlier, German and British nobility had been intertwined for centuries – lasted only until World War IWorld War I. Because of anti-German feeling, the name was changed to WindsorWindsor, the name of the largest inhabited castle in the world and home to English and British kings and queens for almost one thousand years. In spite of the name change, the faces remained the same, including the face of Edward VIIIEdward VIII and his very romantic entanglements ( 8). But unfortunately we have no time for romance now but must proceed with the two wars that would define the 20^th century as the bloodiest in all of human history.