History

The 18^th – 19^th 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 concernedwith 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 in1715, 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 Act of 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.

Trade and the British Empire.

The long 18^th century, from the Glorious Revolution until Waterloo, was the period in which Britain rose to a dominant position among European trading empires, and became the first western nation to industrialise. The extent of economic change between 1688 and 1815 can be discerned through a glimpse at the state of economic and social conditions at home, and the growth of trade and empire at the beginning and end of that period. In 1688 England and Wales had a population of 4.9 million, and the internal economy was still largely based on agricultural work and production. Domestic industry flourished, with many workers pursuing dual occupations on a seasonal basis in industry and agriculture. English society contained a flourishing and more extensive middling sector than any other western country, including the Dutch Republic. This provided a strong platform for commerce with, and settlement in, far-flung territories. Merchants sent out ships to trade with North America and the West Indies, where England had established a network of colonies, following on from the permanent settlement of Virginia in 1607 and the acquisition of Barbados in 1625. Some 350,000 people had emigrated from England across the Atlantic by the end of the 17^th century. In 1686 alone these colonies shipped goods worth over £1 million to London. Exports to the colonies consisted mainly of woollen textiles; imports included sugar, tobacco and other tropical groceries for which there was a growing consumer demand. Trade and settlement also occurred in Asian waters. This was mainly based around the activities of the East India Company, a large joint-stock company based in London. The ships of the East India Company fleet traded mainly in bullion, textiles and tea with Bengal. In 1688 Britain was still a vulnerable competitor for stakes in overseas colonies and trade - her rivals were the trading empires of France and the Netherlands, as well as Spain and her client state, Portugal.

Britain and the Rise of Science. By 1700, there was a commitment to science as the firm basis for success in commerce and industry. Britain's rapid industrialisation over the next century and its domination of world trade confirmed the importance of science in driving the economy. In Britain, scientific development reached its zenith in the second half of the 17^th century, during the period known as the 'scientificrevolution'. The foundation was laid for modern science in Britain long before the Polish mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) demonstrated a model of the universe in which the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun. At Merton College, Oxford, Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253) and his student Roger Bacon (1219-1292) argued that geometry was the basis for comprehending the mysteries of nature, and that mathematical models provided our understanding of the world around us. We may trace the birth of the so-called 'scientific revolution' in Britain to the activities of 3 influential figures, all of whom flourished around the year 1600, and all of whom belonged to an exclusive inner circle of advisers to the royal family of the day, Elizabeth I, James I, and above all James's eldest son Prince Henry.

Science took off in Britain with the Restoration of the monarchy. In late 1660, John Wilkins (1614-72), former Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, with a group of talented young experimental scientists and some gentlemen 'virtuosi' (amateur enthusiasts), founded the Royal Society. Among those active in the Society in the early years were some of the major figures in British science: Robert Boyle (1627-91), Robert Hooke (1635-1703), Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), and Sir William Petty (1623-87). In 1675 the Royal Observatory was established at Greenwich, and the talented astronomer John Flamsteed (1646-1719) appointed the first Astronomer Royal. Among those closely associated with charting the heavens over the next 25 years were Edmond Halley (1656-1742) and Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton, who emerged from scholarly near-reclusiveness at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1690s, to become Master of the Royal Mint (assuring the reliability of English coinage), and President of the Royal Society in 1703, now stands as a figurehead for British scientific achievement. By 1700 there were scientific institutions across Britain, and a commitment to science as the firm basis for success in commerce and industry, and for national prosperity, was an established plank in the political agenda.

Life in town and country. In 1700 England and Wales had a population of about 5,5 million then grew quickly to about 8,8 million by the end of the century. Including Ireland and Scotland the total population was about 13 million. In 1700 England was still the land of small villages. By the middle of the century Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds were already large. But such new towns were still treated as villages and so had no representation in Parliament. All the towns smelled bad. There were no drains. They also were centres of disease. As a result only 1 child in 4 in London lived to become an adult. It was the poor who died youngest. They were buried together in large holes dug in the ground. These were not covered with earth until they were full. During the 18^th century efforts were made to make towns healthier. Streets were built wider, so that the carriages drawn by horses could pass each other. From 1734, London had a street lighting system.

The use of child labour in the workhouse and in the new factories increased towards the end of the century. This was hardly surprising. A rapidly growing population made a world of children. Children of the poor had always worked as soon as they could walk. Workhouse children were expected to learn a simple task from the age of 3, and almost all would be working by the age of 6 or 7. Then, quite suddenly at the end of the century, child labour began to be seen as shameful. A 1^st blow had been struck some years earlier. Horrified by the suffering of children forced to sweep chimneys, two men campaigned for almost 30 years to persuade Parliament to pass a Regulating Act in 1788 to reduce the cruelty involved. In the 19^th century the condition of poor children was to become a main area of social reform.

Victorian Britain, 1837 - 1901 (the 19^th century)

Covered in honours. In the same year as Trafalgar (1805), a British army landed in Portugal to fight the French. This army was commanded by Wellington, a man who had fought in India. After several victories against the French in Spain he invaded France and with the help of the Prussian army he finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium in June 1815. Wellington was covered in honours by Britain and by all the European powers, but instead of retiring he entered the British Cabinet in 1818, staying there as Master-General of Ordinance until 1827. The following year he became prime minister and in 1829, despite being a reactionary Tory, and against his private inclinations, he helped pass the Catholic Relief Act, with the aid of Sir Robert Peel. He resigned in 1830 when it became clear that he could not prevent parliamentary reform from being enacted.As commander-in-chief of the British Army between 1827 and 1828, and from 1842 until his death in 1852, Wellington was a force for conservatism, and it has been argued that the lack of army reform under his leadership led to the British army being ill-prepared for the Crimean War.

Parliamentary reform. Fear of Charles’s interest in the Catholic church and of the monarchy becoming too powerful in the 17^th century resulted in the 1^st political parties in Britain. One of these parties was a group of MPs who became known as “Whigs”, a rude name for cattle drivers. The Whigs were afraid of an absolute monarchy and of the Catholic faith with which they connected it. They also wanted to have no regular or “standing” army; they believed strongly in allowing religious freedom. The Whigs were opposed by another group, nicknamed “Tories”, an Irish name for thieves – they upheld the authority of the crown and the Church and were naturally inheritors of the “Royalist” position. These 2 parties (Whigs and Tories) became the basis of Britain’s two-party parliamentary system of government. Tory governments since the 1790s had provided a strong thread of anti-reformist continuity. The Whig government that followed it under Earl Grey, however, came into office with plans for parliamentary reform, and a succession of Whig leaders proclaimed that reform was necessary to secure the state. It rapidly became clear that opposition to reform remained strong in the House of Commons and overwhelming in the House of Lords, and this led to the Whigs' first reform bill running into the parliamentary sands. A general election held in 1831 gave the Whigs an unassailable majority for reform in the Commons but it did little to change opinion in the Lords, and the Lords' rejection of the Whigs' second reform bill in October led to widespread rioting throughout Britain. For a time, the authorities lost control of Derby, Nottingham and Bristol. Castles and country houses were hastily reinforced against attack. During the winter of 1831-32, the nation stood on a knife-edge. In the spring, the Lords showed signs of renewed recalcitrance, and the King, as a desperation measure, invited the Duke of Wellington back to form a government. In response, reform leaders made plans to bring the country to a halt by having their supporters withdraw funds from the banks, using the slogan: 'To stop the Duke, go for Gold'.The crisis was averted. The Lords backed down and the Reform Bill was passed. But what if the Lords had stood firm? Historians will always debate 'might-have-beens' and no one can prove things one way or the other. However, the potential for revolution in 1831-32 is clear. Public support for parliamentary reform had never been greater. Outside London, no professional police force was in place and the mechanisms of control available to the authorities were old-fashioned and creaky. There was as yet no railway network to move troops rapidly to areas that were out of control. Revolutions have been mounted elsewhere on less.The Whigs' perception that a measure of concession to popular opinion was necessary in the interests of national security was undoubtedly correct. But if they had not won over the King and the Lords in 1832, then the potential for a revolutionary response certainly existed. So, Britain avoided political revolution in the 19^th century, but it is far from clear that it was bound to do so. In 1831-32, to adapt a phrase used by the Duke of Wellington about the Battle of Waterloo, it had been a pretty 'near run thing'.

A British Revolution in the 19^th Century?

No violent political revolution has occurred in Britain since the civil wars of 1642-51. Yet in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries virtually every other state in Europe has experienced at least one forcible overthrow of government and its replacement by another, from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Britain's transformation was a major force for good. Its commercial and industrial revolutions offered the country's increasing population jobs and greater prosperity.

Political repression. But how exceptional was Britain? Did it avoid revolution by divine intervention, by good management and wise statesmanship - or simply by luck? Historians nowadays are far less likely to ascribe Britain's largely peaceful progress in the 19^th century to divine intervention. Some have argued that the threat of violent revolution was indeed real and that Britain escaped it, not by the hand of God but by the skin of its teeth.The French Revolution inspired reformers in Britain as much as it frightened the British Crown and landowning classes. It is worth remembering that the Hanoverian dynasty, which provided Britain with its monarchs from 1714 to 1901, was only rarely popular, and was frequently criticised for its lack of understanding of the British people.In that decade, a number of political movements emerged to press for parliamentary reform. Some, like the London Corresponding Society, were organised and directed by skilled craftsmen and depended on the support of working people. They embraced political objectives drawn directly from French examples. They wanted to replace royal and aristocratic rule with representative government based on the Rights of Man - the influential political pamphlet by Thomas Paine.

The government of William Pitt the Younger, already at war with revolutionary France, was thoroughly alarmed by the prospect that revolutionary ideas might be exported to Britain, and it responded to these ideas with political repression. From 1794, radical political leaders could be arrested without trial. In 1795, during a period of high food prices and severe public agitation, stones were thrown at the King's carriage as he went to Westminster to open a new session of parliament. In the fevered atmosphere of the time, such actions could easily be interpreted as portending revolution. Within weeks, a parliament dominated by fearful landowners had passed legislation that redefined the law of treason, and that made it almost impossible to hold public meetings in support of reform. Pitt's policies succeeded, at least on 1 level. Throughout the remainder of the wars with France, which went on until 1815, support for reform never again approached the heights of 1795. Support among all ranks in society for what was increasingly seen as a patriotic war also boosted the government. However, the most determined of the disaffected radicals were merely driven underground, and in the years 1796-1803 government spies found evidence of revolutionary conspiracy. Much of this evidence centred around Irishmen. Radicals in fact attempted revolution in Ireland in 1798, against British domination of their lands. Had the hoped-for substantial French support for the insurgents been forthcoming, the endeavour might have come much closer to success. In the event, the most important consequence was the creation of a new 'United Kingdom' of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, to which substantial numbers of Irish folk were never reconciled.

Revolutionary activities. Against the lowering and portentous backdrop of revolution in France, the most important influence on the political lives of two generations of politicians from the younger Pitt (1759-1806) to Robert Peel (1788-1850), all threats of revolution were taken seriously. During periods of economic turbulence, such as 1815-20 and during the so-called Reform Act crisis of 1829-32, masses of people could appear on the streets in support of either democracy or republicanism. The most famous such occasion was in August 1819 when a large crowd assembled at St Peter's Fields in central Manchester to hear a pro-reform speech from Henry 'Orator' Hunt, the most gifted radical speaker of his day. Fearing uncontainable disorder, and perhaps even revolution, the Manchester authorities over-reacted. They sent in troops to disperse the crowd by force. Eleven people were killed and the radicals were given a huge propaganda boost by referring to the event as 'Peterloo', in a grim analogy with the Duke of Wellington's famous victory over Napoleon at Waterloo 4 years earlier. During the European revolutionary wars of the 1790s British government propaganda could - just about - confect George III as the symbol of the nation. His eldest son, George, however, first as Prince Regent from 1810 and then as George IV from 1820 to 1830, provoked more contempt than respect. The early 19^th-century monarchy was unable to inspire national unity. Indeed, it was part of the problem.

Victoria's empire. In 1882 Britain was in the later stages of acquiring the largest empire the world had ever seen. By the end of Victoria's reign, the British empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth's surface and almost a quarter of the world's population. It would be a gross exaggeration to claim, as many contemporaries did, that those living in a British colony felt privileged to be ruled by a people anxious to spread the virtues of an ordered, advanced and politically sophisticated Christian nation to those 'lesser breeds' previously 'without the law'. Britain's status as the financial capital of the world also secured investment inflows which preserved its immense prosperity.

Industrial Revolution. Victoria came to the throne during the earlyphase of the world's first industrial revolution. Industrialisation brought with it new markets, a consumer boom and greater prosperity for most of the propertied classes. It also brought rapid, and sometimes chaotic change as towns and cities expanded at a pace which precluded orderly growth. Life expectancy at birth - in the high 30s in 1837 - had crept up to 48 by 1901.Desperately poor housing conditions, long working hours, the ravages of infectious disease and premature death were the inevitable consequence. The Victorian town symbolised Britain's progress and world pre-eminence, but it also witnessed some of the most deprived people, and depraved habits, in the civilised world. Taming, and then improving, Britain's teeming cities presented a huge challenge. Mortality data revealed that, in the poorer quarters of Britain's larger cities, almost one child in five born alive in the 1830s and 1840s had died by the age of five. Polluted water and damp housing were the main causes. Death rates in Britain as a whole remained obstinately above 20 per thousand until the 1880s and only dropped to 17 by the end of Victoria's reign. One of the great scourges of the age - tuberculosis - remained unconquered, claiming between 60,000 and 70,000 lives in each decade of Victoria's reign.

Politics. At the beginning of Victoria's reign, about a fifth of adult males were entitled to vote. That proportion increased, through parliamentary reform acts passed in 1867 and 1884, to one-third and two-thirds respectively. No women could legally vote in parliamentary elections until almost 18 years after Victoria's death - and the queen herself was no suffragist. Women did, however, play an increasingly influential role both in locally-elected school and poor law boards and in local government from the 1870s onwards.During the Victorian era, the United Kingdom could plausibly be considered the world's superpower.If not democratic, the political system was becoming increasingly representative. The struggle for political supremacy between William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli in the late 1860s and 1870s represents perhaps the most sophisticated political duel in the nation's history. On the home front, the nation was only beginning to get to grips with widespread poverty while considerably more than half the adult population remained without a vote. Victorian supremacy by 1901 was only skin deep.

Disraeli and Gladstone: Opposing Forces. Disraeli and Gladstone were both politicians of extraordinary ability - but their personalities clashed and they heartily loathed each other.

Mutual dislike. In the general election of 1 April 1880, the Conservative party under Benjamin Disraeli was crushingly defeated by the Liberals (known as Whigs) - under William Gladstone. There is no doubt that the two statesmen hated each other. They had been leaders of their respective parties since 1868, but were dominant figures long before that. They had very different social origins.

For the next 28 years, the Torys were to be the minority party, with occasional intervals in office.Disraeli's task was to rebuild the party that he had himself done so much to destroy.The task was not an easy one. Free trade had triumphed, and was the basis of a long economic boom, which only ended in the late 1870s. The Conservatives abandoned protection but unwillingly; they could not oust the Liberals, whom Gladstone eventually joined in 1859, and whom he fortified with a series of notable budgets. From 1846 to 1868 there were no serious issues of principle. Politics became a matter of the 'Ins' and 'Outs' but not the less bitter for that.Disraeli became prime minister in February 1868.The two leaders were now face to face. Their style of debate was as different as their personalities. Campaigning on the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland, Gladstone won the election called at the end of 1868, and proceeded on a strenuous programme of what would nowadays be called 'modernisation'. Entry into the army and civil service was reformed, the judicial system was overhauled, electoral procedure was rationalised and the secret ballot was introduced. In 1874 Disraeli won the first clear Conservative victory since Sir Robert Peel in 1841. He saw that the country had had enough constitutional reform. And his government passed a series of measures of social political improvement in the field of health, housing, sale of food and drugs, factory conditions and agricultural tenancies. What really mattered to Disraeli, however, was not home affairs but foreign and imperial policy. He was a strong supporter of empire and of English nationalism. This was a traditional Conservative mantra, but as long as Palmerston was leader of the Liberals it was hardly possible for the Conservatives to outbid them in terms of patriotic self-assertion. Palmerston's death left a vacancy.

The Chartist Movement 1838 – 1848. In the lead up to the events of 1848, the People's Charter was published - in May 1838 - as a draft parliamentary bill. It contained 6 points: manhood suffrage; the ballot; abolition of property qualifications for MPs; payment of MPs; equal electoral districts; and annual elections. Thousands of working people had rallied together on the basis of this charter, and hundreds of them had gone to prison for their beliefs.In 1848 the British establishment watched in horror as revolution swept across Europe. In London, Chartist leaders delivered a petition to Parliament asserting the rights of ordinary people. In the years 1839, 1842 and 1848, the Chartist Movement urged Parliament to adopt 3 great petitions. Of these, the best known is the final petition, with 6 million signatures (although a number of these were later found to be fake), presented to Parliament on 10th April 1848 after a huge meeting on Kennington Common. This event achieved great prominence in the story of Chartism, due largely to the reaction of the authorities as they faced the challenges of that turbulent year.Working people had proclaimed themselves as Chartists at crowded meetings throughout March 1848. The authorities had viewed this campaign with great concern, and some of the propertied classes had come to believe that the Chartists intended revolution, even though the Movement's leaders always emphasized their commitment to peaceful protest. Chartism was a national movement. Though it was particularly strong in the textile towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, as well as in the east midlands.

Victorian Technology. Until the 1840s the success of British industrial expansion rested largely on cotton and, to a lesser extent, wool textiles and a proliferation of smaller scale consumer goods. The economy flourished when cotton boomed and exports were high. However, when markets became overstocked and confidence was shaken, the economy went into recession. This pattern of boom and slump continued throughout the 19th century. However, the success of the economy came to rest on much broader foundations by the 1840s with the expansion of railway networks first at home then abroad. Furthermore, there was growing demand from other industrialising nations and the range of British manufactures was extended, particularly in iron and steel sectors and in engineering. Risks were great and bankruptcy rates were high but start up costs in most sectors were relatively low. Capital and credit were easily available and many individuals and families became wealthy and successful.So superior in terms of competitiveness and pricing were most British manufactures of the mid 19th century, that the extension of free trade created a further positive dynamic.The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked the peak of British economic dominance.

Communication revolution. The spread of the railway in Victorian Britain was closely linked to the development of the electric telegraph. In 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone developed the electric telegraph which used an electric current to move magnetic needles and thus transmit messages in code. The first operational telegraph system linked Euston station and Camden town, and from there it spread all over the railway network, used both to carry messages and to control signalling. The technology of the telegraph rapidly expanded, making possible mass communication on both national and global scales. With instruments in every post office, the telegraph, and its visible offspring, the telegram, personal communication on a scale hitherto inconceivable became commonplace. A telegraph cable was laid across the Channel in 1851, followed by others across the Irish and North Seas.

Changes in thinking. The most important idea of the 19^th century was that everyone had the right to personal freedom, which was the basis of capitalism. It soom became very clear that the freedom of factory owners to do as they pleased had led to slavery and misery for the poor, not to happiness or freedom. By 1820 more and more people had begun to accept the idea that government must interfere to protect the poor and the weak. The result was a number of laws to improve working conditions. One of these, in 1833, limited the number of hours that women and children were allowed to work. Another law the same year abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.

Social and economic improvements. Between 1875 and 1914 the condition of the poor in most of Britain greatly improved as prices fell by 40 per cent and real wages doubled. Life at home was made more comfortable. Most homes now had gas both for heating and lighting. In 1870 and 1891 two Education Acts were passed. As a result of these, all children had to go to school up to the age of 13. England now started to build “redbrick” universities in the new industrial cities. These new universities were unlike Oxford and Cambridge, and taught more science and technology to feed Britain’s industries.

HISTORY

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1190