Golden Age.. When she ascended the throne in 1558, England was an impoverished country torn apart by religious squabbles. When she died in 1603, England was one of the most powerful and prosperous countries in the world. although in Ireland she is remembered as a viscous murdering dried up old whore...
But towards the end of her reign the economy began having problems, along with the military. Also many occurences during her reign were a matter of luck, and sometimes are shown to have happened because of her talent as a ruler.
Aye, i have to go with me Irish brethren on this one. England may have been one of the most powerful and prosperous countries in the world, but it was on the backs of people like the Irish that they prospered. England should have been made to pay for the atrocities it committed. My family never had a kind word for the English monarchy nor their government.
If my sources are to be trusted, Queen Elizabeth accidentally (or deliberately, conspiracy theories abound) nuked England to hell back in 1438, and it took over 9000 years to gradually recover to its prior dizzy heights attained under King Walnut the Fourth. Word on the street has it that she also consumed live babies three times a day, and flossed her teeth nightly with the threaded souls of 10 000 screaming Jews. Thus I declare she was a historical failure and a disgrace to all things lovely.
It's hard to find a good woman like that these days...all of them being into roses and chocolate and stupid shit like that.
yet you deny that blacks have a claim for reparations in the United States (maybe you don't) (also, reparations don't fix race issues) The English beat the Irish down and degraded them for hundreds of years, but I'm sure there's a false equality now
Whatever Queen Elizabeths' rule was like, my impression of it is very much coloured by the Blackadder season that was set in that period Historically though, she did bring some order into the monarchic rule of the UK, after some quite incompetent and extravagant former inhabitants of the throne. She did not put on an iron glove on her fist, so much as the fist itself was of iron, and there were no doubt as to where power eminated from. In short, she was a ruthless dictator, but unlike most dictators, a very successfull one. Which means she had political skills, and the personality to carry through her grand project; to make the UK a great and vibrant empire. But that is all ancient history. Wonder what will happen to the UK monarchy when that clueless buffoon Charles inherits the throne? Will the establishment stand for it? Will we have another Prince Edward episode, another clueless buffoon? He was forced to abdicate for various reasons. His affair with mrs. Simpsons played a part, but far from the major one...
No, i don't believe in reparations for anyone. I meant the perpetrators should have been criminally liable, not their ancestors. My people came started coming to the United States in 1887. They have paid taxes to the government in one form or another since. They were rail laborers and coal miners and lived in poverty for the most part. why should their tax dollars go towards the government paying reparations for crimes that were committed before they were even here by people they don't know? What about the ancestors of those blacks that were slaves and such, should their tax dollars go toward reparations? Point is the people responsible are long dead and their ancestors and innocent people should not be held accountable for their transgressions. Excuse my ramblings as i just got back from a 4 bowl lunch.
It was a Golden Age, but I don't believe it was all down to her. Henry VII reinvented monarchism by reforming the feudal system and taxation. Henry VIII succeeded in bringing about a protestant majority (a bloody struggle, but a success nonetheless) and reformed the English Navy so that by the time of Elizabeth I's reign England was well on the way to naval supremacy. Not to mention that, after the violence and turmoil during the reign of Mary, when finally another protestant ascended to the throne the foundations to a perceived 'golden age' had alread been laid. So she may have precided over it and she managed it relatively well, but she wasn't responsible for it. Before I coninue, I completely agree that the Elizabethan treatment of Ireland (and Cromwell's during Charles I's reign) were utterly abhorrent. In her defense, though; England had newly reformed to protestanism and many powerful, disenchanted Catholic nobels made worrying allegiances with Ireland's Catholic nobility. I mean, I'm not excusing the wars and the invasion or the settling of protestants in Ireland, but to a monarch like Elizabeth who's country had suffered massively at the hands of religious intolerance and catholic insurrection, it's understandable (if not forgivable) why she was compelled to adopt such harsh measures in regards to Ireland.
I dunno, I think England has pretty much single-handedly made the world worse off. It's hard to turn a turd into a gold bar.
It was England's golden age like this is America's golden age. 2% of the population have 90% of the wealth while people are jobless, homeless and hungry.
Apologies for going off topic, but that's a sweepingly naive statement. England would be happy to give N. Ireland back were it not for the fact that the loyalists would start another civil war.
This was the best post on the topic. Mary Queen of Scots reign was horrible, and Elizabeth managed to bounce back off of that. I believe the part about your last statement, many historians give her the credit of producing the Golden age, even though I don't believe she could claim sole responsibility for it, not even majority of the responsibility for it.