The 18th – 19th centuries

House of Hanover.In 1714, George, Elector of Hanover, became king in accordance with the Act of Settlement, 1702. The act stipulated that, after the death of the childless Queen Anne (the last legitimate Stuart monarch) the British monarchy should be Protestant and Hanoverian. The Hanoverian era continued through 4 successive Georges and ended with the last representative of the line, William IV, who died in 1837. The coming of the Hanoverians to the British throne was not unanimously welcomed. George I spoke no English and was as much concerned with fostering the interests of Hanover as with giving full attention to his role and duties in Britain. The major opposition to the Hanoverians came from the Jacobites, who supported the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne. Two main Jacobite rebellions occurred, the 1^st in 1715, the 2^nd in 1745. Both were marked by poor military organisation, lacklustre leadership and exaggerated hopes of support. Despite some Jacobite successes in battle, the rebellions were ruthlessly crushed by the British army. The Battle of Culloden, in March 1746 - the last battle fought on British soil - marked the final blow to the Jacobites' hopes as the duke of Cumberland led the government forces to a decisive victory. Thereafter the Hanoverians' grip on political power faced no serious challenge. Because of the Tory connection with the Jacobites, King George allowed the Whigs to form his government. Among the king’s ministers was Robert Walpole, who remained the greatest political leader for over 20 years. He is considered Britain’s first Prime Minister. Robert Walpole was able to bring back public confidence.

Political upheaval.Britain was governed under a mixed constitution, achieved through the Glorious Revolution of 1689. The monarch ruled in conjunction with the 2 houses of parliament. All 3 parties were closely involved in political decisions. Gradually, however, the House of Commons and the prime minister assumed more political control than had been the case under the Stuarts. Parliament existed under an unreformed system until the Great Reform Actof 1832. Thus for virtually all the period from 1714 to 1837, members of the Commons and Lords came from the landed interest. They were unpaid as politicians and were elected in open ballots. The franchise was limited to a small minority of Protestant adult males. Westminster and Whitehall dominated the British political stage, though vigorous political debates occurred outside their confines.

Ireland was granted legislative independence in 1782, but the chief executive roles in Dublin were British appointees. The Irish parliament was dissolved when the Act of Union (1801) created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Radical groups (British politicians who openly supported the colonists) - such as the supporters of John Wilkes in the 1760s; the corresponding societies of the 1790s; and the Hampden clubs founded in 1812 - all pressed for parliamentary reform. But it was not until after the Napoleonic Wars that a fully-fledged reform movement emerged with a mass platform.

The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828) and the granting of Catholic emancipation (1829) introduced political rights for Protestant dissenters and Roman Catholics. These concessions were followed by the Whig Party introducing, after much struggle, the Great Reform Act. This revised existing parliamentary constituencies and extended the franchise moderately, but it did not introduce a secret ballot or parliamentary democracy.

Britain at war.For over a third of the Hanoverian period, Britain was involved in international wars. In the War of the Austrian Succession (1740 - 1748) Britain moved against French expansionism in the Low Countries and the Caribbean. In the Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763), Britain clashed with France, later allied with Spain, for dominance in North America and India, and supported Prussia in the European campaigns against Austria and Russia. Britain fought the Americans in their War of Independence (1776 - 1783). In the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793 - 1801 and 1802 - 1815), the British army and navy locked horns with France in Europe, the Caribbean, Egypt and India. The War of the Austrian Succession had no decisive outcome. Britain famously lost the American War of Independence, but triumphed in the Seven Years' War and in the wars against France that culminated in Wellington's victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. The financial means to wage war extensively after 1793 permitted Britain to forge a global empire by 1815 that was impressive in its scope and stronger in both the Atlantic and Indian oceans and around their shores than any other European state had achieved.

Cost of victory.The cost of victory was high. Some 1,700 British were killed or wounded, with 6,000 enemy casualties and nearly 20,000 prisoners. Many of those lives, as well as Villeneuve's flagship, were lost in the storm that followed the battle. Trafalgar, as the battle was named by George III, had crushed the naval power of a deadly enemy, and - although they had fought like heroes - the Spanish and French had been annihilated.

Points of view.The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) is a high point in British history - a famous victory, a famous tragedy, an event that everybody knows something about and everybody celebrates. It is rather surprising, therefore, that there is no easy consensus as to what it actually achieved.At the time, and for long afterwards, the British believed that in the hour of his death Nelson had wrecked Napoleon's invasion plans and ensured Britain's ultimate victory over Napoleonic France.In contrast, French historians preferred to dismiss the battle as an unfortunate but essentially marginal affair. In Britain, meanwhile, historians for the past half-century have agreed that Trafalgar only confirmed what everybody had always known. Britain controlled the sea after Trafalgar, but then she had always controlled the sea, and would have continued to do so even if Napoleon's Combined Fleet had not put to sea in October 1805. There were, however, conflicts within some of the new states. Contestants for power in certain coastal states were willing to seek European support for their ambitions and Europeans were only too willing to give it. The growth of Britain's empire in Africa, India and elsewhere in the eastern hemisphere by 1815 has often been seen as the result of a systematic search for a new empire to replace the wealth of the lost American colonies. Not only is there little evidence of such conscious planning and implementation, but the value of the western empire to Britain remained enormous, completely overshadowing her Asian trade until the 1840s. The reality was far from coherent.

Population explosion.During the Hanoverian era, Britain experienced considerable demographic growth, the birth of an industrial economy, and extensive social change. The British population doubled in the century after 1721, from 7.1 to 14.2 million people. Most of the growth occurred after 1750, and particularly after the 1780s. Between 1810 and 1820, average family size reached 5 or 6 children per family, the highest rate in any decade in modern British history. This surge in population was to some degree the result of falling mortality, which itself was partly the result of widespread smallpox inoculation in the early 19^th century. After 1760, a gradual but continuing rise in the rates of industrial and economic growth led to Britain becoming the world's first industrial nation. Britain built factories and canals, extended agricultural productivity through parliamentary enclosure, experienced rapid urban growth, manufactured and patented new industrial techniques, achieved a breakthrough in fuel sources for energy and traded extensively along its own coasts and with Ireland, Europe and the wider world. Industrialisation did not affect all parts of the nation equally. It was particularly strong in south Lancashire, Yorkshire, Birmingham and the Black Country, the Edinburgh-Glasgow corridor and London. Though industrialisation brought disruption to communities, pollution, booms and slumps and unequal gains, it led in the long term to a better standard of living for most workers.

Social upheaval. Industrialisation brought considerable social change to Britain. Factory work depended on labour mobility, the installation of new machinery and the allocation of workers to specialised tasks. Domestic industrial work changed over the generations. Popular education was heavily influenced by Christian morality. Women were increasingly employed in more menial tasks in industry, while men assumed the role of breadwinners. Religious and educational provision for the lower classes underwent considerable change. Protestant nonconformity, especially Methodism(a new religious movement which offered hope and self-respect to the new proletariat), gained adherents and offered more spontaneous, emotional Christian worship than the Church of England provided. Popular education was heavily influenced by Christian morality. It played a larger role in the lives of working communities after the 1800 than before, largely because of the rise of monitorial schools teaching the so-called three R's - reading, writing and arithmetic.

Sea power. Britain's development between 1714 and 1837 had an important international and military dimension. An empire based on commerce, sea power and naval dominance consolidated British overseas settler societies. At the beginning of the 18^th century, Britain possessed colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, numerous sugar islands in the Caribbean and a foothold in Bengal. Georgia became a British colony in 1732. Britain acquired the Ceded Islands in 1763. Despite the disastrous loss of the 13 North American colonies in the American War of Independence in 1783, Britain subsequently acquired settlements in New South Wales, Sierra Leone, Trinidad, Demerara, Mauritius and the Cape Colony. She also extended her hold over Bengal and Madras. In the Indian Ocean, the English India Company dominated trade with India, south east Asia and China.

Acts of Union: The creation of the United Kingdom.Devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has sharpened English awareness of unsettled constitutional issues. But state formation, transformation and even disintegration have been persistent themes of British and Irish history since the 16^th century. The formation of any early modern state was achieved usually by absorption or by conquest. England had absorbed Wales and Cornwall by 1543, through parliamentary incorporation, political and cultural integration of the ruling elites, and administrative cohesion across church and state.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 2344