Everyone agrees that before eating an egg, the original method was to break the larger end of the egg. However, the grandfather of the current emperor ate eggs when he was a child and happened to break one of his fingers while cracking an egg according to the ancient method, so his father, the emperor at that time, issued a royal decree ordering all the subjects to break the smaller end of the egg when eating eggs, and those who disobeyed the decree were heavily punished.
The people resented this order. History tells us that there were six revolts from this, in which one of the emperors gave his life, and another lost his throne...Hundreds of great books were published on this dispute, though the books of the Great Tuan school have always been banned, and the law forbids any person of that school to be an official.
The quotation describes the king of Lilliput's change of orientation and reasoning for opening the egg as well as the reaction of Lilliputian nationals to the move and the change in law, sparking of wars and religious reforms that the event incurred.
The "Big Enders" allude to Catholicism; the "Little Enders" to Protestantism. Swift used the struggle between the "Big Enders" and the "Little Enders" to satirize the debate between Catholics and Protestants over church services and the conflict between the monarch and Parliament in English history.
Expanded:
The first place in Gulliver's Adventures, Gulliver's Travels, is Lilliput. In this microscopic land, parties are at odds, and neighbors not only want to defeat but enslave each other. The king of Lilliput uses a rope competition to select officials, and in order to obtain a few colorful threads from the king, the officials do ridiculous performances as if they were clowns.
The court is a microcosm of England at the time, and even Lilliput's customs and regulations are exactly the same as those of England at the time; in the second volume, the author even criticizes England by name.
Gulliver's lengthy description of England's history, institutions, and present state to the king of the kingdom, and all the things he did to justify the country to himself, but from the eyes of the kingdom, England's history is full of "avarice, partisanship, hypocrisy, treachery, cruelty, wrath, madness, hatred, envy, lust, insidiousness, and ambition," which produce the worst evils. " producing the worst evils.
The author satirizes every aspect of English society by borrowing the King's words, "a humble and incompetent little worm like that" is "the most pernicious class of little vipers that nature has ever tolerated to crawl on the ground"; and in Volume III, by commenting on Raggeddau's Academy of Science people engaged in boring and absurd scientific research, satirizing the pseudo-science of the time in England.
The depiction of Lepita Island criticizes the exploitation and oppression of Ireland by England.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Gulliver's Travels