The History of Great Britain: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries – War, Revolution and Reform

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries – War, Revolution and Reform

Leading Questions

  • How did the United Kingdom continue to develop?

  • How did the political system change and evolve?

  • How did the British Empire grow and why?

  • What was Britain’s relationship to the continent?

  • How did Britain become the ‘workshop of the world’?

  • What were the reasons for the First World War and what were its results?

The Beginnings of Industrialisation

  • An agrarian society becomes an industrial one

  • Technical innovations change production; machines are introduced and take over

  • Proto-industrialisation starts in the countryside

  • High point of changes: ca. 1770-1830, but starts earlier

The Beginnings of Industrialisation: Pre-conditions in the British Isles

  • Agrarian Revolution → higher yields → more people can be fed (enclosures, better seeds, new crops (e.g. potato), fertilizers, change in crop-rotation, improvement of tools)

  • Population growth → growing markets

    • 1750: 7 million

    • 1801: 10 million

    • 1851: 20 million (results of falling death rate – better food and hygiene; and higher birth rates – earlier marriages)

  • Transport revolution (turnpike roads, stage coaches, canals, etc.)

  • Political union → common market

  • World-wide trade

  • Accumulated wealth that could be invested

  • World-wide markets

  • Mentality (upper classes invest in mines, canals, etc.)

  • Colonies with cheap raw materials and markets

The Beginnings of Industrialisation: Technical innovations

  • Proto-industrialisation in the eighteenth century (home industry, e.g. of weavers)

  • Technical innovations

    • 1769 Steam Engine (James Watt)

    • 1814 Locomotive (Robert Stephenson)

    • 1733 Flying Shuttle (John Kay)

    • 1770 Spinning Jenny (Hargreaves)

The Beginnings of Industrialisation: Industrial Revolution in Rural Areas

  • Industrial Revolution starts in rural areas

    • Important: availability of coal, iron and fast-flowing waters

    • e.g. Coalbrookdale in the Midlands, seat of the Darby family (Abraham Darby I-III)

Industrialisation

  • Later: production moves to factories, becomes mechanized and industrialized; artificial energy (steam, later gas and electricity)

  • Initial Industries

    • Textile industry (pace-maker industry)

    • Iron and Steel industries

    • Coal mines

Industrialisation: Transport and Consequences

  • Transport and the Industrial Revolution

    • Steam ships

    • 1825 first railway line: Stockton – Darlington

    • Britain becomes the ‘workshop of the world’

  • Growth of industrialised towns, e.g. Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham → slums, poverty, long working hours, low wages, bad working conditions, machines dominate rhythm of work, large workforce available

  • Manchester Liberalism (i.e. high capitalism)

Industrialisation and its Consequences: Social Changes

  • Changes in British society (emergence of two new classes: factory owners and factory labourers = new urban working class)

  • ‘The social question’ (dominant problem in 19th c.)

Political and Social Reform in the 19th Century

  • Necessary through changes caused by Industrial Revolution (changed structure of society) → working classes found political organisations (unions, friendly societies) to improve living conditions, violent uprisings and demonstrations

  • Political influence French Revolution (fear of social upheaval → see Jacobins)

  • Factory Laws (1833, 1844, 1847, etc.) reduce working hours of women and children

  • Poor Law Amendment Act (1834)

  • Reform Acts (1832, 1867, 1884) extend franchise and reorganise constituencies

  • 1829 Metropolitan Police founded (Robert Peel)

The Reform Acts: Situation Before 1832

  • Situation before 1832:

    • Representation of counties and boroughs

    • 40-shilling-freeholder qualification (right to vote based on form of land / house ownership)

    • Problem of unequal representation (rotten boroughs, e.g. Gatton: 2 electors, Old Sarum: 0)

    • Political corruption (pocket boroughs)

    • Unequal representation of different parts of United Kingdom (esp. Scotland)

The Reform Acts: 1832, 1867, 1884

  • 1832 Reform Act: extends franchise from ca. 500,000 adult males to 800,000 (total population: 24 mill) = new voters mostly middle classes, working classes still excluded → Chartist movement, a working-class reform movement

  • 1867 and 1884 Reform Acts extend franchise further, plus redistribute constituencies

The Chartists

  • A working-class reform movement, founded as a result of disappointments in 1832 Reform Acts

  • Demand further democratic reforms

  • Demands: E.g. equal constituencies, universal male suffrage, secret ballot and payment for MPs

  • 3 attempts to submit Charta to Parliament: 1839, 1842 and 1848

Further Reforms

  • The Catholic Relief Act (1829)

    • Restrictions against Catholics removed → able to attend Parliament, take offices, etc.

    • Part of gradual Disestablishment of Anglican Church

  • Agitation for Home Rule in Ireland (unsuccessful)

Further Reforms: Slavery

  • Slavery and the Slave Trade

    • 1807 End of Slave Trade in British Empire

    • 1833 Slavery abolished in British Empire

    • Britain amply compensates the slave owners

The Victorian Era (1832 / 1837 – 1901)

  • ‘The history of the Victorian Age will never be written. We know too much about it.’ (Lytton Strachey)

  • Early Victorian Era (1830s and 1840s)

    • Time of social unrest and political agitation

    • ‘The Hungry Forties’

    • Corn Laws (repealed 1846)

    • The Victorian Poor Laws and the workhouses, cf. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

The Irish Famine

  • Failure of potato harvest in successive years since 1845

  • British government reacts slowly and inadequately (belief in laissez-faire)

  • 1 million dead, 1 million emigrants to England or the US

  • Decline of Gaelic language use

The Victorian Era: High and Late

  • High Victorian Era (1850s and 1860s)

    • ‘Age of Equipoise’

    • Age of High Farming

    • The Realist novel (e.g. George Eliot)

    • Britain as the leading world power (economically and politically)

    • 1851 the Great Exhibition

  • Late Victorian Era (ca. 1870 until 1901)

    • Time of economic crisis

    • Second phase of industrialisation (other countries threaten British dominance)

    • Aestheticism and Fin-de-siècle feeling

    • The Age of New Imperialism

    • The Suffragette Movement

The Victorian Era: Morality and Conflicts

  • Moral conservatism vs. ‘the other Victorians’

    • “The Angel in the House” and domesticity vs. growing emancipation movement (e.g. Married Women’s Property Act)

    • Belief in progress, science and technology vs. nostalgia for the past

  • Science vs. religion (esp. Darwinism)

  • Reform vs. Conservatism

  • Technical and medical improvements vs. continuing poverty

Remembering the Victorians

  • Victorians as stuffy, boring and old-fashioned

  • Fascination for things Victorian

    • Steam-punk

    • Neo-Victorian fiction

    • Heritage film

The British Empire in the 19th Century

  • Before the Age of New Imperialism

    • 1783 Loss of American colonies → end of First Empire

    • Second Empire / Imperialism of Free Trade

    • Britain as dominant imperial power

    • Dominion status granted to Canada (1867) and other white settler colonies

    • Free trade as most profitable strategy But: British government moves in where necessary e.g. 1857-8 ‘Indian Mutiny’ → takes over control 1876 Victoria becomes Empress of India

The Age of the New Imperialism (ca. 1870 to 1914)

  • New competitors for remaining land (Germany, Japan and United States)

  • Germany as new aggressive power in Europe (1870-1 War against France with subsequent unification; German fleet programme of Wilhelm II)

  • Scramble for Africa

  • Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) shows British weakness

The British Empire ca. 1900

  • UK controls 20% of the world’s land surface and rules 25% of the world’s population

Imperialist Ideology in Britain

  • Celebrating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee

  • Imperialism sells

  • Selling the Empire to Children

  • Celebrating British war heroes – Robert Baden-Powell, defender of Mafeking

Britain in the Early 20th Century: Domestic Politics

  • Domestic Politics

    • Poverty and affluence

    • 1908 Liberal Party introduces Old Age Pension for those over 70

    • 1911 National Insurance Act: attempt to introduce medical insurance

    • 1914 series of strikes and violence

    • 1911 after failure of ‘People’s Budget’ (tax for affluent and landowners, to finance pension, etc.) → Liberals reduce the power of the House of Lords

Britain in the Early 20th Century: Irish Question and Suffragettes

  • Agitation for Home Rule in Ireland

    • Attempts for Home Rule defeated in British Parliament

    • Opposed by Protestants in Northern Ireland (fear of losing privileged position)

    • 1913 Ulster Volunteer Force and Irish National Volunteers founded → violence, fear of civil war

  • The Suffragette Movement

    • Fighting for right to vote

    • Important suffragettes: Emmeline Pankhurst, Millicent Garrett Fawcett

    • Hunger strikes and force feeding

  • Summary: British society before WWI characterised by unrest and violence

The Path to the First World War

  • Ottoman Empire and Russian – Austrian rivalries

  • German – French antagonism

  • Germany and Britain: the British Navy vs. the Kaiser’s ‘Neue Kurs’

  • Creation of alliances – Triple Alliance (Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy) vs. Triple Entente (France, Russia and United Kingdom)

  • Militarist ideology

  • War as a legitimate means of politics

  • War as a remedy again

  • fin-de-siècle fatigue

  • War and 100 years of peace in the UK

  • Arms race (e.g. between Germany and UK over fleet)

The First World War – Outbreak

  • June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo by Serbians

  • Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbian government

  • Break-off diplomatic relations Austria − Serbia, declaration of war

  • Mobilization of Russia (in support of Serbia) → automatic mobilization of France (in support of Russia) and Germany (in support of Austria)

  • Germany invades Belgium and Luxemburg as part of the Schlieffen Plan

  • Great Britain joins the war to protect ‘little Belgium’

The First World War (August 1914 to November 1918) – Facts and Figures

  • Facts and Figures

    • Worldwide:

      • 70 million soldiers mobilized

      • 9.4 million dead soldiers

      • 30 million dead civilians

    • United Kingdom:

      • 6 million soldiers mobilized

      • 700,000 dead

  • Allies (France, Great Britain, USA, Serbia, Italy, …) vs. Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria)

  • Names: The First World War, the Great War

Important Theatres of War: The Western Front

  • The Western Front

    • Main theatre of war

    • Dominated by static trench warfare, artillery, poison gas, barbed wire

    • Modern, ‘total war’

War at the Western Front – Central Events for the British Army

  • Initial Stages: the Schlieffen Plan, the First Battle of the Marne, the Race to the Sea

  • Spring 1915: The Second Battle of Ypres: 1st use of poisoned gas by German army

  • 1 July 1916: Battle of the Somme starts (over 57,000 British casualties on first day) first use of tanks in Battle of the Somme

  • 1918: German spring offensive – initially successful

Other Theatres of War & The Home Front

  • Other Theatres of War

    • War against the Ottoman Empire

    • 1915 The ANZACs and the Gallipoli campaign: Attempts to open the Dardanelles

    • The War in Arabia

  • The Home Front

    • The First World War as a ‘total war’

    • The Home Front as producer of shells, food, machinery, arms, …

    • The Home Front as victims

      • Food shortages

      • Aerial attacks

The Situation in 1918

  • Economy: British dominance threatened

  • Europe: Britain as victor of WWI

  • Empire: largest expansion, but threatened

  • Domestic: Irish question unsolved

  • Political system: move towards greater democracy