The British Empire - Where the sun never sets
What was the British Empire?
"At its peak, the British Empire was the largest formal empire that the world had ever known. As such, its power and influence stretched all over the grobe; shaping it in all manner of ways" (http://britishempire.co.uk/). - good material for extra reading.
Homework:
- Read in the book: "A Short History of Literature in English" the section Important historical events p. 42-44.
- Read the attached document "The British Empire" - The Rise and Fall of the British Empire.
Lesson Outline:
- Introduction to the topic "India - Colonial and Post-colonial Insight"
- Presentation of blog for this topic. http://coloandpoco.blogspot.dk/
- Clarification of concepts: Group work. - In their different groups, the students are to formulate a definition to the given term.
- Colonialism/imperialism?
- Post-colonialism?
- Discussion of the concepts in plenum
- Pair-work: Go through the central points in the text for today that you have made from home.
- Class discussion of the homework for the lesson:
- Method: the students will be placed in a large half-circle. I will ask a student to join me in a talk about what we know about the British Empire and India based on the read material. In this way we will try to gather as much information from the text as the student remembers from the top of the head - exam practice. To prepare for the exercise the student has to highligt or find the texts most important part and try to describe them in the student's own words.
- Recap of the lesson by youtube
What is an Empire?
SvarSlet• Large state which spreads itself to the rest of the world
• The British empire was unique because it had territories on every cotenant of the world
• The power of an empire can be compared to the power of a superpower (like America) today
The text for today
• The Rise of the Empire: Started with private companies for example the East Indian Company. Afterwards Britain took over due to its superior military power, large navy, its trading points and its technological development. The concurred the exact countries that they did due to the countries resources for instance their spices, their minerals ect. The European were superior to the Asian and African people.
• Christianity: Africans were easy to convince in comparison to the Indians who already were dedicated to Hinduism.
• The fall of the empire: difficult to say when exactly the empire fell because it was an on going process. But officially it began when their different colonies began to declare independence. The latest in 1980 in Sumbawa. The two World Wars also had a large influence on the fall of the Empire because Britain had to spend lots of money in both wars coursing depth and economic difficulties.