Csoma Roxana Maria, R-E grupa A.

British Life and Civilization : Livia Deac, Adrian Nicolescu.editura Didactica si Pedagogica,Bucuresti,1983. Bussiness Law: K.R.Abott, N.Pendlbury,editura EL-BS. The Tribes of Britain: David Miles, for National Geographic News,July 19, 2005 Our hidden lives: Ebury Press,2004 Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850: Richard Brown, Routledge, 1991

British life and Civilization: Miles, research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford, England, says recent genetic and archaeological evidence puts a new perspective on the history of the British people. "There's been a lot of arguing over the last ten years, but it's now more or less agreed that about 80 percent of Britons' genes come from hunter-gatherers who came in immediately after the Ice Age," Miles said. These nomadic tribes people followed herds of reindeer and wild horses northward to Britain as the climate warmed. "Numbers were probably quite smalljust a few thousand people," Miles added. "In the 18th and 19th centuries, as Ireland, Wales, and Scotland started to assert national identity, they began to talk about themselves as Celts," Miles acknowledged that the techniques used to explore genetic ancestry are still in their infancy and that many more samples are needed to fully understand the origins of the British people. The period from VE Day in May 1945 to the birth of the Welfare State in July 1948 was a time of great austerity and dramatic change, of major economy and social reforms, of Cold War terrors and the threat of biological warfare, and the worst winter in memory. "Civilization" can also refer to the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with the elite.

*Roman Britain. The Roman occupation intervened between the coming of the Celt, and the coming of the Saxon, and delayed the latter, for perhaps two hundred years. Celts, Saxon, and Dane came over to slaughter or expel the inhabitants and settle in their place, but the Romans came to exploit and govern by right of superior civilization. And therefore, once the Roman conquerors had glutted their first rage for plunder, their main effort was to induce their Western subjects to assimilate Latin life in all its aspects. Their success with the Gaules was permanent, and became the starting point of modern European history. But in Britain, after a great initial success, they had complete the ultimate failure. From the Romans who once ruled Britain, wrote Hoverfield, the great student of the archaeology of the occupation we Britains, have inherited practically nothing. In the end, Romans, left behind them, just three things of value. The first of these would have amused or shocked Caesa, Agricola and Hadrian, for it was Welsh Christianity, the second was the Roman roads, the third, a by-product of the second, was the traditional importance of certain new city sites , especially that of London. But the Latin life of cities, the villas, the arts, the language, and the political organization of Rome, vanished like a dream. From the Norman Conquest onward, three languages were used in England: Norman-French, by the court and nobility, Latin by the Church and in official documents, and English by the common folks of AngloSaxon stock. The first state document to be issued in English was the proclamation of Henry IIIs assent to the Provisions of Oxford (a constitutional document reforming the government of the country),in 1269.In

1362 Edward IIIs parliament enacted a statute terminating the use of French in the law courts, and in the same year, the king made the first royal speech to Parliament in English. By the end of Richard IIs reign (1399) English had become the everyday language of the court, though one presumes that the king and his family, noble men and bishops could all speak French as well. The author, David Miles,who is a former Chief Archaeologist of English Heritage, also gives a balanced view of the non arrival of the Celts, shows that the Roman soldiers on Hadrians Wall were actually Germans from Batavia and shows how most Icelandic Viking women were not Scandinavian, but descended from Scottish and Irish slaves. Black people were living in Roman Britain too, as were many others from all over the Roman Empire. There is a wonderful story about how an enslaved British woman was first bought by and then married a wealthy Syrian merchant. Just how many Anglo-Saxon immigrants came into the land that was to become England? What happened to the Britons? Were they really all exterminated or exiled to Wales, Cornwall and Brittany? No of course not and most of us can claim direct descent from them. *Education in the middle ages. In Norman and early medieval times formal education, was only for the favorite almost exclusively church men. There had been earlier attempts by enlightened people like Alfred the Great to bring the benefits of literacy to a wider section of the community. He encouraged scholars of European reputation to come to England,founded a court school for the education of nobility, and even translated certain great works from Latin into Anglo-Saxon himself, thus establishing the first native literature in England. There seem to have been schools attached to monasteries from an early date, but the main if not the only purpose of these was to train boys as choristers and for the priesthood. By the 14th century, however, it is clear that grammar school existed for the education of boys who were not destined for the Church. In the early years of the Industrial Revolution entrepreneurs began to resist the restrictions of the apprenticeship system, and a legal ruling established that the Statute of Apprentices did not apply to trades that were not in existence when it was passed in 1563, thus excluding many new 18th century industries. Robert Raikes initiated the Sunday School Movement, having inherited a publishing business from his father and become proprietor of the Gloucester Journal in 1757. The movement started with a school for boys in the slums. Raikes had been involved with those incarcerated at the county Poor Law (part of the jail at that time) and saw that vice would be better prevented than cured. He saw schooling as the best intervention. The best available time was Sunday as the boys were often working in the factories the other six days. The best available teachers, were lay people. The textbook was the Bible, and the originally intended curriculum started with learning to read and then moved on to the catechism. Raikes used the paper to publicize the schools and bore most of the cost in the early years. The movement began in July 1780 in the home of a Mrs. Meredith. Only boys attended, and she heard the lessons of the older boys who coached the younger. Later, girls also attended. Within two years, several schools opened in and around Gloucester. He published an account on November 3, 1783 of Sunday School in his paper, and later word of the work spread through the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1784, a letter to the Arminian Magazine. The original schedule for the schools, as written by Raikes was "The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve; they were then to go home and return at one; and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to Church. After Church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till after five, and then dismissed, with an injunction to go home without making a noise. There were disputes about the movement in the early years. The schools were derisively called "Raikes' Ragged School". Criticisms raised included that it would weaken home based religious education, that it might be a desecration of the Sabbath, and that Christians should not be employed on the Sabbath. "Sabbatarian disputes" in the 1790s led many Sunday schools to cease their teaching of writing. The Elementary Education Act 1880 insisted on compulsory attendance from 510 years. For poorer families, ensuring their children attended school proved difficult, as it was more tempting to send them working if the opportunity to earn an extra income was available. Attendance Officers often visited the homes of children who failed to attend school, which often proved to be ineffective. Children under the age of 13 who were employed were required to have a certificate to show they had reached the educational standard. Employers of these children who weren't able to show this were penalised. An act brought into force thirteen years later went under the name of the "Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act 1893", which stated a raised minimum leaving age to 11. Later the same year, the act was also extended for blind and deaf children, who previously had no means of an official education. This act was later amended in 1899 to raise the school leaving age up to 12 years of age.

*clothing and fashion Mens and women continually wore clothes which were intended to alter their figures, by the skilful use of padding and frameworks. Ladies gowns were full skirted and touched the ground, they were often braided, open from waist downwards to display an equally rich underskirt, they had vee or square necklines, sometimes very wide and very full sleeves. Medieval fashion during the Middle Ages was dominated and highly influenced by the Kings and Queens of the era. Only the wealthy could dress in fashionable clothes. Sumptuary Laws restricted ordinary people in their expenditure including money spent on clothes, which impacted Medieval fashion. Under the Sumptuary Laws passed by King Edward III only royalty were allowed to wear cloth of gold and purple silk. Expensive veils were banned for lower class women. Only the wives or daughters of nobles were allowed to wear velvet, satin sable or ermine. Medieval Fashion changed with each king and queen. Different events which occurred during the Medieval era of the Middle Ages also affected fashion. The Crusades was probably the greatest influence on Medieval Fashion when fine silks, satins, damasks, brocades, and velvets were imported from the Far East. The Medieval fashion worn in the royal courts in the Middle Ages were imitated across Europe. Fashions in France, Spain and Italy strongly influenced the fashions of Medieval England. *The great fire and rebuilding of the city 1666-1710 By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain, estimated at half a million inhabitants, which was more than the next fifty towns in England combined. Comparing London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris, John Evelyn called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses," and expressed alarm about the fire hazard posed by the wood and about the congestion. By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. A Roman settlement for four centuries, London had become progressively more overcrowded inside its defensive City wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into squalid extramural slums such as Shoreditch, Holborn, and Southwark and had reached far enough to include the independent City of Westminster. The relationship between the City and the Crown was very tense. During the Civil War, 16421651, the City of London had been a stronghold of Republicanism, and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had the potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several Republican uprisings in London in the early 1660s. The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how Charles I's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma. They were determined to thwart any similar tendencies of his son, and when the Great Fire threatened the City, they refused the offers Charles made of soldiers and other resources. Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the unpopular Royal troops ordered into the City was political dynamite. By the time Charles took over command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was already out of control. The fire which began in a bakers house in Pudding Lane, near London Bridge, in the early hours of Sunday,1 september 1666,seemed nothing remarkable at first, but soon the fire was out of control. By Monday night the whole Thomas street from Fresh Wharf to Puddle Dock had been destroyed,and the fire had spread as far north as Cornhill, burning down the Royal Exchange, and roaring west towards Cheapside. The next day St. Pauls and the Guildhall were both burning fiercely and the flames were leaping on post Newgate to the Temple. Nothing that the King and his Council or the Lord Mayor and hid advisers could suggest or do,seemed capable of halting them, until the sea-men brought up from the dockyards, insisted that the only way to save what remained of the City,now was ruthlessly to blow up with gun-powder. Whole rows and streets of buildings, and thus create an open gap so wide that no burning embers could be thrown across it, by even the strongest wind. On Tuesday, the fire was brought under control. By then, three hundred and ninety-five acres of the city had been completely devastated. Forty-four of the City Companies had lost their halls, over thirteen thousand houses had disappeared, ton upon ton of smouldering debris, ash and tumbled masonry lay beneath the pall of smoke, and almost a quarter of a million people were homeless. A generation after the fire, although there was much rebuilding still to be finished, the visitors to London in search of pleasure, excitement and surprise was sure to be satisfied. The streets were as noisy and full of life as they had ever been, and quite as crowded, for the population of London and its suburbs had rapidly increased since the beginning of the century from a figure of about 350.000 at the time of the Fire to some 650.000 towards the end of century.

*the arts of transition. The change of mind and outlook was bound to manifest itself in all forms of creative art. The Restoration is a time essentially of transition. Merry England and Puritan England had had their day, and their spirit had sunk deep into the national consciousness. In the other arts, with the one exception of music, the value of the achievement is in direct proportion to the scope given to reason and the critical faculty. *pottery The Potteries, that is the six North Staffordshire towns which have been united in recent times to form the city of Stoke-on-Trent, owe the rise of their speciality very largely to the coming of the canals to that party of the country. For it was the clay industry of Cornwall which supplied the material for the potters. Like spinning and weaving, pottery was at first a cottage industry. At Bow and Chelsea there were potteries which tried to imitate the porcelain wich came from China. English potters at first used a mixture of pipe clay, sand from the Isle of Wight, and glass. *Language 1660-1784 The development of English language in the period from Dryden to Johnson inevitably harmonized very closely with that of the literature and ideas of the age. When men desired stability in politics and society, they advocate stability in language. Since correctness and elegance became the ideals in literature,word and their usage had to be submitted to the same criteria. Order and harmony in life and thought must be reflected in the clear and graceful structure and cadence of sentences. The good breeding of a gentleman was impossible without well-bred speech free from affectation, pedantry, rusticity, and crudeness. As both the upper and professional classes and the growing mercantile middle class became increasingly conscious that material prosperity was a prime ideal to be pursued, language was required to be primarily useful, a clear, easy, precise means of communication. *the Victorian age. Queen Victoria had been on throne for rather more than a year when the first of the main railways existing today was opened from London to Birmingham in September 1838. in the course of her reign, and chiefly in the first half of it, the network spread throughout Britain, so that the railway became the standard form of transport for passagers and goods alike. By the time of the great Queens death in 1901,railways had spread to most civilized countries, but the British railway system was so complete, so well built.The population of England almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901 Scotland's population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901. Ireland's population decreased rapidly, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to the Great Famine. At the same time, around 15 million emigrants left the United Kingdom in the Victorian era and settled mostly in the United States, Canada, and Australia. During the early part of the era, the House of Commons was headed by the two parties, the Whigs and the Tories. From the late 1850s onwards, the Whigs became the Liberals; the Tories became the Conservatives. These parties were led by many prominent statesmen including Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, William Ewart Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, and Lord Salisbury. The unsolved problems relating to Irish Home Rule played a great part in politics in the later Victorian era, particularly in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political settlement. Indeed, these issues would eventually lead to theEaster Rising of 1916 and the subsequent domino effect that would play a large part in the fall of the empire. Victoria's reign lasted for 63 years and 216 days, the longest in British history up to the present day. However, the present monarch,Elizabeth II, will surpass this if she remains on the throne until 9 September 2015. *the landscape Though England is a land without high mountains, it has a great variety of hills. If you ask the average Englishman to imagine a typically English scene, he is almost certain to include in it either the view from some familiar hilltop or a row of blue-shadowed hills in the background. The wrinkles in the landscape run

broadly speaking diagonally across the map of the British Isles, from south-west to north-east, following the geological ridges. As a result of the underlying structure of Britain, the biggest folds, the highest peaks, are not in England, but in Wales to the west and in Scotland to the north. Both these countries have real mountains. In England itself, continuing the pattern of the ridges, the highest hills are in the north and in the south-west. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, critical writings on British lm and television have often related notions of landscape to heritage culture. The British landscape or, more usually in heritage drama, the English pastoral landscape and the architecture located within it is gured in this context as a valuable resource that certain lms and television programmes deploy in their attempts to be distinctive and successful within international entertainment markets. An additional economic effect sometimes resulting from this success is the encouragement of a tourism based around locations associated with heritage drama. This applies not just to what might be termed the classic heritage products of the 1980s including Chariots of Fire (1981), Room with a View (1986) and Brideshead Revisited (1981) but also for later work that seeks to extend or transform some of the parameters of heritage. Elizabeth (1998), for example, offers a darker and considerably more violent rendition of English history than that found in 1980s heritage dramas but is as reliant as they are on locations and buildings (including Alnwick Castle, Durham Cathedral and York Minster) that, regardless of their function within the lm, have a clear touristic signicance and value. pportunity for understanding ecological systems. Many natural processes occur over timescales that confound our attempts to understand them, so the vast temporal perspective provided by palaeoecological studies can provide important guidance for nature conservation (Willis & Birks 2006). However, accurate vegetation mapping is difficult enough in modern landscapes (Cherrill & McLean 1999), so the challenge of describing prehistoric environments is immeasurably greater.Also, in large parts of Britain, the absence of some shade-tolerant species such as Hornbeam Carpinus betulus and Beech during the midHolocene (Huntley & Birks 1983) may have provided a wider potential niche for oaks than would have been found on the Continent. Lastly, the presence of Hazel pollen in the fossil record does not necessarily indicate large canopy gaps. Although very open conditions are generally necessary for full flowering of Hazel, substantial flowering, and so pollen production, can be frequent in very small gaps. *the economy: The economy became reliant on American loans and the balance of payments crisis, and the need to feed a starving Europe ensured that the domestic rationing pinched as hard as it during the war. Britain was increasingly unsure of its place in the world. The Empire was shrinking, and India and Palestine posed intractable dilemmas. Undoubtedly one of the most important reasons for the commercial success of canals was the high price of horse feed. Only when competition for land had forced the price of horse feed sufficiently high was it worth expending labour on the construction of canals which allowed larger loads to be drown by fewer horses. Finally the growth of the cotton industry meant that, the manufacture of clothing could be expanded without threatening the production of food. To understand fully the development of Britain between 1700 and 1850 it is important that the mutual interaction between the main themes in established. All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation. Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labor and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labor predates plant and animal domestication .Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes simply defined as "'living in cities'". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade. *the hierarchy of the courts

The doctrine of precedent depends for its operation on the fact that each court stands in a definite position in relation to very other court. a. The European Court: Its decision bind all British courts, but not its own future decisions. b. The House of Lords: Its decisions are binding on all English courts, however since 1966, the House need not to follow its own previous decisions. c. The Court of Appeal (Civil Devision) : in Young v Bristol Aeroplane CO,1944 it was held that the court is bound by its own previous decision unless: there are two previous conflicting Court of Appeal decisions, in which case it may choose which to follow. The previous decisions conflicting with a letter House of Lords judgement, or. The previous decisions was given per incuriam. Per incuriam means trough lack of care because some relevant statue or precedent was not brought before the Court. d. The Court of Appeal (Criminal Devision): the rules are the same as the Civil Devision, except that the Court need not follow its own previous decisions where this would cause injustice of the appellant. e. The High Court (Division Courts): the High Court is bound by its own previous decisions subject to the rule in Youngs case and, in criminal cases, R v Gould. f. The High Court ( Judges at First Instance): their decisions are not biding on the High Court Judges, but are of persuasive authority. g. Inferior Courts: Magistrates Courts, County Courts, and other inferior tribunals are not bound by their own previous decision since they are less authoritative and are rarely reported. *Legislation a. The most inportant source of law at the present day is legislation. Statutes are passed by Parliament which is the Supreme Law making body in the U.K. In theory, at least, there is nothing which Parliament cannot do by statutes. In practice statutes often amend, and sometimes abolish, establishment rules of common law or equity, over rule the effects of decision of the Courts, or make entirely new law on matters which previously have not been the subject of legislation. b. There are two types of Legislation, Parliamentary and Delegated Legislation. The functions of acts of Parliament are as it follows: Law reform. Relatively few statutes are concerned with changing substantive rules of Law. Where such a change does take place it often follows from an unpopular decision of the House of Lords, or is based on a recommendation of the Law Commission. Consolidation. Where existing legislation is gathered into one Act, this is known as Consolidation. Codification. This takes place when all the Law on a topic. (Both case Law and Statutes Law), is included in one Act. Revenue Collection. The annual finance acts which implement the budget proposal are the main Revenue Collection Statutes. Special Legislation. These Acts are concerned with the day today running of Society, for example the Rent Act 1974. c. An Act will come into force on the day on which it receives the Royal Assent, unless some date is specified in the Act itself. It will cease to have effect only when it is repealed by another Act. Whilst in force an Act is presumed to be operative throught the U.K. and nowhere else, unless the Act states otherwise. Courts in the criminal division, however, are not bound to follow their own previous decisions which they subsequently consider to have been based on either a misunderstanding or a misapplication of the law. The Divisional Courts of the High Court are bound by the doctrine of stare decisis in the normal way and must follow decisions of the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal. They are also normally bound by their own previous decisions, although in civil cases it may make use of the exceptions open to the Court of Appeal in YOUNG v BRISTOL AEROPLANE CO LTD, and in criminal appeal cases the Queens Bench Divisional Court may refuse to follow its own earlier decisions where it feels the earlier decision to have been wrongly made. The High Court is bound by the decisions of superior courts. Decisions by

individual High Court judges are binding on courts inferior in the hierarchy, but such decisions are not binding on other High Court judges although they are of strong persuasive authority and tend to be followed in practice. Crown Courts cannot create precedent and their decisions can never amount to more than persuasive authority. County courts and Magistrates courts do not create precedents. It is important to establish that it is not the actual decision in a case that sets the precedent; that is set by the rule of law on which the decision is founded. This rule, which is an abstraction from the facts of the case, is known as the ratio decidendi of the case. Any statement of law that is not an essential part of the ratio decidendi is, strictly speaking, superfluous; and any such statement is referred to as obiter dictum, ie said by the way. Although obiter dicta statements do not form part of the binding precedent they are persuasive authority and can be taken into consideration in later cases * Conclusion: Britain has a wonderful history and is full of events. Even if you live in Britain, you always find something new to discover, to learn new facts about the life, history, economy. With gorgeous landscapes, and museums you always have something to visit. You will never get bored. The U.K. offers more than we can see.