Origins Of English History

National origins remain as important as they have ever been to our sense of identity. Accounts of the early history of the peoples of Europe, including the English, are key tools in our construction of that identity. National identity has been studied through a range of different types of evidence - historical, archaeological, linguistic and most recently genetic. This has caused problems of interdisciplinary communication. In this book Catherine Hills carefully and succinctly unravels these different perceptions and types of evidence to assess how far it is really possible to understand when and how the people living in south and east Britain became 'English'.

Provides a history of the English language.

Routledge English Language Introductions cover core areas of language study and are one-stop resources for students. Assuming no prior knowledge, books in the series offer an accessible overview of the subject, with activities, study questions, sample analyses, commentaries and key readings – all in the same volume. The innovative and flexible ‘two-dimensional’ structure is built around four sections – introduction, development, exploration and extension – which offer self-contained stages for study. Each topic can also be read across these sections, enabling the reader to build gradually on the knowledge gained. This revised second edition of History of English includes: ❑ a comprehensive introduction to the history of English covering the origins of English, the change from Old to Middle English, and the influence of other languages on English; ❑ increased coverage of key issues, such as the standardisation of English; ❑ a wider range of activities, plus answers to exercises; ❑ new readings of well-known authors such as Manfred Krug, Colette Moore, Merja Stenroos and David Crystal; ❑ a timeline of important external events in the history of English. Structured to reflect the chronological development of the English language, History of English describes and explains the changes in the language over a span of 1,500 years, covering all aspects from phonology and grammar, to register and discourse. In doing so, it incorporates examples from a wide variety of texts and provides an interactive and structured textbook that will be essential reading for all students of English language and linguistics.

A distillation of the thought and research to which Herbert Butterfield devoted the last twenty years of his life to, this book, originally published in 1981, traces how differently people understood the relevance of their past and its connection with their religion. It examines ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia; the political perceptiveness of the Hittites; the Jewish sense of God in history, of promise and fulfilment; the classical achievement of scientific history; and the unique Chinese tradition of historical writing. The author explains the problems of the early Christians in relating their traditions of Jesus to their life and faith and the emergence, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, of a new historical understanding. The book then charts the gradual growth of a sceptical approach to recorded authority in Islam and Western Europe, the reconstruction of the past by deductive analysis of the surviving evidence and the secularisation of the eighteenth century.

The Origins of the English Parliament is a magisterial account of the evolution of parliament, from its earliest beginnings in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Starting with the national assemblies which began to meet in the reign of King Æthelstan, it carries the story through to the fully fledged parliament of lords and commons of the early fourteenth century, which came to be seen as representative of the whole nation and which eventually sanctioned the deposition of the king himself in 1327. Throughout, J. R. Maddicott emphasizes parliament's evolution as a continuous process, underpinned by some important common themes. Over the four hundred years covered by the book the chief business of the assembly was always the discussion of national affairs, together with other matters central to the running of the state, such as legislation and justice. It was always a resolutely political body. But its development was also shaped by a series of unforeseen events and episodes. Chief among these were the Norman Conquest, the wars of Richard I and John, and the minority of Henry III. A major turning-point was reached in 1215, when Magna Carta established the need for general consent to taxation - a vital step towards the establishment of parliament itself in the next generation. Covering an exceptionally long time span, The Origins of the English Parliament takes readers to the roots of the English state's central institution, showing how the more familiar parliament of late medieval and early modern England came into being and illuminating the close relationship between particular political episodes and the course of institutional change. Above all, it shows how the origins of parliament lie not in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as has usually been argued, but in a much more distant past.

The Ideological Origins of the British Empire presents a comprehensive history of British conceptions of empire for more than half a century. David Armitage traces the emergence of British imperial identity from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, using a full range of manuscript and printed sources. By linking the histories of England, Scotland and Ireland with the history of the British Empire, he demonstrates the importance of ideology as an essential linking between the processes of state-formation and empire-building. This book sheds light on major British political thinkers, from Sir Thomas Smith to David Hume, by providing fascinating accounts of the 'British problem' in the early modern period, of the relationship between Protestantism and empire, of theories of property, liberty and political economy in imperial perspective, and of the imperial contribution to the emergence of British 'identities' in the Atlantic world.

From Simon & Schuster, Origins of the English Language is Joseph M. Williams' exploration of social and linguistic history. In this book, author Joseph Williams presents a unique social and linguistic history as he explains the ways in which culture, education, class, and race affect language use and what changes in grammar reveal about the changes in our social lives.