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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!pagesat!netsys!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!actize
- From: actize@garnet.berkeley.edu
- Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
- Subject: More European History
- Message-ID: <1jo880$li@agate.berkeley.edu>
- Date: 22 Jan 93 07:37:36 GMT
- Distribution: ba
- Organization: University of California, Berkeley
- Lines: 26
- NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu
-
- From the years 1200 until the present day England, and by that I mean the
- descendants of the followers William the Conquerer, the Celts he conquered on
- what we know as the British Isles, the Celts he didn't conquer on the British
- Isles [those holdouts in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, who still exists today],
- all former and current members of the British Commonwealth [including U.S.A.,
- Austrailia, Canada, New Zealand] have had a profound effect on the world as we
- know it.
-
- There was a great rivalry between the Kingdoms of Spain & England until about
- 1800 when Spain fell on bad times. I think I'll throw in something about MA
- here, with some sort of double meaning:
-
- People in Spain were very good swordsman. Toledo steel made the finest swords.
- We can see some remnants of this art today in Bull-Fighting. They were also
- very good horseman. Both they & England colonized America. The problem the
- Spaniards had was that the British were better sailors. They defeated the
- Armada of King Phillipe of Spain in _____ (fill in the missing year, I forgot
- it). The story goes that there was a huge storm, an accident of nature, that
- severly crippled the Spaniard fleet when they attacked Britain. This may be
- exagerrated in the history books, I don't know.
-
- Anyway, the plain fact is the British were incomparable on the Sea. As England
- became weaker, the U.S. became prominent. It's kind of like a little brother
- growing up and taking care of the big brother. I realize that this is a gross
- simplification of U.S.-Britain relations, and yet, I find a hidden MA meaning
- in this. Fill in the hidden meaning: ______________________________ .
-