填空题
Are the British people Europeans This
may seem a strange question to Africans and Asians, who tend to think of all
white men as Europeans. But the British, when they are in Britain, do not regard
themselves as Europeans. The Europeans, to them, are those rather excitable
foreigners from the other side of the English Channel, who have never learnt how
to speak English. Europe is "the Continent"; a place full of interest for
Britain tourists, but also the source of almost all the wars in which Britain
has ever been involved. Thus, although geographically speaking Britain is a part
of Europe, yet the fact that it is a separate island has made its people feel
very, very insular. They feel, and in many ways are, different from the rest of
Europe, and they sometimes annoy continental nations by failing to support them,
or even to understand them, in time of need. Where did the British people come from This is an extraordinary interesting question, since they are a mixture of many different races, and all these races invaded Britain before at various times from Europe. Nobody knows very much about Britain before the Romans came during the first century B. C., but there had been at least three invasions before that. The first of these was by a dark-haired Mediterranean race called the Iberians. The other two were by Celtic tribes: first the Baels, whose descendants are the modern Scots and Irish, some of whom still speak the Gaelic language; and secondly the Britons, who gave their name to the whole island of Britain. These were the people whom the Romans conquered. The Romans gave the Britain in very large numbers, so the British race survived until the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the "barbarians", i. e., the numerous Germanic tribes that overran the whole of Western Europe. |