(UNICAMP - 2003- 2 fase - Questo 23)Old, strange A

(UNICAMP - 2003 - 2 fase - Questão 23)

Old, strange Albion

ENGLAND NEVER FINISHES what she starts. She was the first European country to topple monarchy and have a king beheaded, but it wasn’t until a century later that the republican revolution that counted took place — in France. England set off the Industrial Revolution, yet she is the least advanced, in technological terms, of the industrial countries. Karl Marx wrote Capital in the British Museum and regarded England as the epitome of an industrial state heading for social upheaval; the upheaval took place in Russia. England never underwent a social revolution: her class structure was impervious to the Industrial Revolution, to several periods of economic depression, to two world wars, and to the rise and fall of her empire. The seats of all empires experienced an identity crisis with the twilight of their imperial domination — not so England. She just packed and went back home, with nothing learned. The Beatles’ dream began in Liverpool but flourished in Woodstock, in the United States, and was over in California. The English invented soccer but won the World Cup just once, at home in 1966, and some say that it was with undue help from a referee.

a) Qual o argumento central do texto?

b) Por que o autor menciona o fato de a Inglaterra ter decapitado um de seus reis para nos convencer desse argumento?

c) Em que sentido a menção à Revolução Industrial reforça esse mesmo argumento?