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    Understanding British Culture Through American Eyes
    Understanding British Culture Through American Eyes
    Understanding British Culture Through American Eyes
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    Understanding British Culture Through American Eyes

    By William Drake

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    About this ebook

    British and American people have many cultural characteristics that at first glance may seem similar and even the same, and there are also some rather extreme and interesting differences. Examining the contrasts and similarities between these two fascinating world cultures will give readers more practical and useful knowledge than can be achieved by studying either British or American culture by itself.


    Readers worldwide appreciate Professor Drake’s friendly, conversational English-language writing style. Never academic or boring, Professor Drake writes about cultural differences with a sense of humor and insight developed over a lifetime of international living and learning.


    The author is a retired American professor of international business management at the University of Texas, a world-traveler and experienced expatriate, a valued consultant to multi-national corporations, and a respected author of a 30-volume library on building and managing cross-cultural relationships.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Drake
    Release dateDec 26, 2018
    Understanding British Culture Through American Eyes

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    • 5/5
      It's a great introduction to British culture. The chapters are short, which makes it great for those with time limits. A deeper dive is recommended if you plant to spend any length of time there.

    Book preview

    Understanding British Culture Through American Eyes - William Drake

    Gatherings

    The Angles, Saxons & Celts

    Germanic tribes first ventured across the North Sea to set up trading settlements in England in the Third Century AD. These first continental people spoke the language of the Angles, the origin of modern English. As the Angles and then their brother Saxons spread across Britain they massacred the indigenous Celtic inhabitants, bursting into their villages at first light, burning everything and driving the survivors before them, until they stood masters of all the prime territory they called Angle-land.

    With these terrible scorched earth campaigns the Angles cleared away the Celts much as their descendants in North America cleared away the Native Americans. The Angles & Saxons thus set the present-day boundaries which separate and, in many ways isolate Wales and Scotland behind ancient rocky walls. The Celtic peoples who were driven to the edges of England, to Wales and Scotland and Ireland, have managed to keep their separate languages and identities, and to this day they remember the Germanic Anglo-Saxons and what they did, just as Native Americans and Black Americans remember what was done to them and who did it.

    It may seem slightly crazy that what happened between the early Angles & Saxons and the Celts could possibly affect a person from abroad studying, doing business or living in London or elsewhere in Britain in the 21st Century. Still, the issues raised by those early morning massacres of those early centuries even before the legendary Arthurian legends arose, have not yet been settled. To this day lives are being changed by this fact. In this and other ways you will experience the realities of living history in England.

    Following centuries of harsh Angle & Saxon rule. England then experienced centuries of predation by Vikings and Norsemen, vigorous warrior tribes who conquered and settled most of the European coastline, penetrating rivers far into the interior, and taking their boats far south and east. Finally a strong king, who rose in response to the threat from the Northmen, also decided to deal with the question of who controlled England. In 1066 the Norman king William invaded England, defeating the Anglo-Saxon forces at the Battle of Hastings and imposing Feudal European institutions upon the unruly Angle-ish people.

    The Meaning Of The Channel

    Shakespeare referred to the Channel as England's moat, and indeed it has served just that function. The English Channel has been the key to Britain’s insulation since 1066 and as a result, the Angle-Saxon-Norman culture has been able to develop uncorrupted by any further foreign military invasions. In this sense, the British draw a key aspect of their deep national character from the same well as the Japanese - the sense of being a special, culturally distinct entity.

    Also because of the channel England has never needed a large land army, so English kings have never had easy access to the numbers of centrally-controlled troops it takes to support a good old-fashioned tyranny. Without an army under their direct control to command obedience, England’s kings have had to resort to the ingenious device of cooperation and accommodation to achieve their goals.

    Of course, England's island location, which limited the need for a land army, created the need for a navy to protect trade routes, which in turn allowed those whose energy might otherwise have tyrannized the English people to go forth and create an empire instead.

    Feudalism & English Social Development

    The institutions of Feudalism can be traced to the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from the Continental and British frontiers during its decay. This created a power vacuum, and powerful individuals who controlled key lands and resources assumed political power using a simple strategy.

    Proclaiming themselves owners of large tracts of land these land-lords then bartered land for allegiance with the leaders of small bands of free-lance military forces. The Lords allowed these fighting men and their families to settle on choice parts of the domain, giving them whole villages of peasants to do the work, and making them Knights with all kinds of special privileges.

    These military strongmen become Knights then swore oaths of allegiance to their feudal lords, and between them they set up a system of rule by which the Lords held the land and the Knights protected the Lord’s lands and enforced his authority, and between them they exploited the labor and productivity of the people who came with the land.

    Under this system the English countryside soon filled with hundreds of locally powerful lords, each with his own knights and lesser fighting and administrative contingencies. These Lords grew pretty accustomed to running their own show, and by the time 1215 rolled around the powerful Lords & Knights forced King John to accept the Magna Carta at Runnymede. By this document the Crown of England accepted forever the freedom and independent status of the lords and knights in their own territories.

    Though not the intent of the Lords & Knights, this document in turn laid the foundation for future generations to claim the right to representative government, certain civil rights, and the installation of those checks on power and balancing of authority on which the very existence of democracy depends.

    This balance of power between king and the lords, combined with lack of

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