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Britain in the eighteenth century
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2.3. Britain in the eighteenth century
Britain under George I actually had two decades of relative peace and stability. The most significant events of that period were the internal political affairs. In fact, throughout those years a smooth transition from limited monarchy to Parliamentary government took place in Great Britain. One of the important events of that time became the appointment of Robert Walpole, a member of Whig party, the first Prime Minister in the British history.
In 1739 Britain declared war on Spain, and in 1742 parliamentary pressure forced Walpole to resign. The conflict between Britain and Spain has been known as the War of Jenkins’s Ear (1739-1748). Between 1739 and 1763, Great Britain was generally at war. The War of Jenkin’s Ear merged with the war of the Austrian Succession of 1740-1748, in which Great Britain allied with Austria against Prussia , France, and Spain. The country being at war, the Scottish Jacobites decided to take advantage of it and made their last major attempt to recover the British throne for the Stuart dynasty in 1745. Prince Charles Edward landed in Scotland with the army of highlanders and Jacobites and captured Edinburgh, winning the battle of Prestonpans. Still, Charles failed to attract many supporters in England and had to retreat to Scotland, where he was defeated by the government army under Duke of Cumberland’s command, and Charles had to flee to France. The War of the Austrian Succession ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle signed in the October 1748 recognizing the Hanoverian succession in Britain.
A lot of problems remained unsolved, and eight years later they resulted in a new war of 1756-1763 between Great Britain, Prussia, and Hanover on one side and Austria, France, Spain, Saxony, Sweden and Russia on the other.
The wars of the eighteenth century were almost all followed by the acquisition of new colonies. The colonies already established were growing rapidly both in wealth and population. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the British colonies in America already had about two hundred thousand inhabitants and lay in a long line from Maine to Florida.
In 1760 George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III. The new king had a deep sense of moral duty and tried to play a direct role in governing his country, though he had to face probably the worst political problem in the whole British history. Long accustomed to a considerable degree of self-government, and freed, after 1763, from the French danger, British colonists in America resented any attempts to make them pay a share of the cost of imperial defense in the form of assorted taxes and duties. They also resented attempts to treat colonial legislatures as secondary to the government in London. American resistance led to the calling of the First Continental Congress in 1774, and in April 1775 war broke out at Lexington and concord in America. The British felt the rebellious colonists had to be brought to their senses, and king George III was firmly against giving in to them. Though British governmental authority in the 13 colonies collapsed in 1775, forces were able to occupy first Boston and later New York City and Philadelphia, but the Americans did not give up. France was brought into the war on the American side in 1778, then the Spanish and the Dutch also joined the anti-British side. In 1783 Britain had to recognize American independence in the Treaty of Paris. The 13 British colonies were recognized as independent states and were granted all British territory south of Great Lakes; Florida and Minorca were ceded to Spain, and some West Indian and African colonies to France.
2.4. Britain in the nineteenth century
The beginning of the nineteenth century was remarkable for Great Britain for its union with Ireland. In Ireland, some of the Irish united under the and began to demand independence, being affected by the French Revolution. They formed the organization known as the United Irismen. They quickly took the lead of the whole national movement, and attempted to initiate a rebellion in 1796, with the help of the French troops which were ready to land in Ireland. The landing failed, and the English government began to eliminate its enemies. In 1798 it seized a number of the Irish leaders, and placed the whole Ireland under the military law. All the Irish uprising were suppressed, and finally the rebellion and an attempt of the French invasion led to the Act of Union with Ireland of 1801. The Dublin legislature was abolished, and one hundred Irish representatives were allowed to become members of Parliament in London. So in the very beginning of the nineteenth century the United Kingdom took the political and geographical shape of the country we know today. Still, the Act of Union caused great indignation in Ireland, and another powerful insurrection took place in 1803.
In 1790’s, the wars of the French Revolution merged into the Napoleonic Wars, as Napoleon Bonaparte took over the French revolutionary government, and Britain was engaged into the conflicts. Throughout the whole period of Napoleonic wars, Britain won two battles of great importance, one of them against the combined French and Spanish navy at Trafalgar, and another against the French army at Waterloo. The naval battle of Trafalgar was fought on October 21, 1805. The battle took place off Cape Trafalgar on the southern coast of Spain, where a British fleet of 27 ships under the command of admiral Nelson faced a slightly larger enemy fleet commanded by a French admiral. The goal of the French was to land the reinforcements in southern Italy, but they were intercepted by Nelson on October 21 and engaged in a battle. Finally, some 20 French and Spanish ships were destroyed or captured, while not a single British vessel was lost. The great victory is recorded in the name of Trafalgar square in London, which is dominated by the granite column supporting a large statue of Nelson, who was mortally wounded and died in the course of battle.
The final victory over Napoleon after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815 laid the foundations for a great extension of the British Empire. As one of the members of anti-Napoleonic coalition, Britain got a number of strategic key points, such as Malta, Mauritius, Ceylon, Heligoland and the Cape. Yet the first result of the peace was a severe political and economic crisis.
The British had assumed that the ending of war would open a vast market for their goods and had piled up stocks accordingly. Instead, there was an immediate fall in the demand for them because Europe was still too disturbed and too poor to take any significant quantity of British good. This post-war crisis was marked by a sudden outburst of class conflict, as a series of disturbances began with the introduction of the Corn Bill in 1815 and went on until 1816. The object of the Corn Laws of 1815 was to keep the price of wheat at the famine level it had reached during the Napoleonic Wars, when supplies from Poland and France were prevented from reaching Britain. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, a small, temporary tariff being retained till 1849. Still, there was no fall in prices, what could be explained by a number of reasons: increasing population of Britain, greater demand due to the revival of industry, bad harvests in a number of years and the Crimean War which soon interrupted the import of wheat from Poland.
Another act of law that became the result of the economic crisis was the Reform Bill of 1832, which had two sides. One regularised the franchise, giving the vote to tenant farmers in the counties and to the town middle class. Another swept away the rotten boroughs and transferred their members to the industrial towns and the counties.
In the first half of the nineteenth century a protest organisation called the Chartist Movement gained power. The Chartist Movement urged the immediate adoption of the so-called People’s Charter, which would have transformed Britain into a political democracy, and also was expected to improve living standards. Drafted in 1838, it was at the heart of a radical campaign for Parliamentary reform of the inequities remaining after the Reform Bill of 1832. Some of the main demands were universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, annual general elections and the secret ballot. There were three unsuccessful attempts to present the Charter to the House of Commons were made in 1839, 1842 and 1848, and the rejection of the last one brought an end to the movement.
The years between 1829 and 1839 were the time of foundation of the modern police force in Great Britain. This development became the direct result of the upsurge of a militant working class movement in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The Chartist Movement with its demonstrations and riots played the major role in initiation of the reorganisation of the police. One more reason for it were the multiple problems of factory workers.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain had become an industrial nation. In the earliest stages of the Industrial Revolution, when machinery was crude and unreliable, factory owners were determined to get the fullest possible use out of this machinery in the shortest possible time. Hours of work rose to sixteen and even eighteen a day, and in this way the greatest output could be obtained with the least outlay of capital. The terrible conditions of labour caused a number of legislation acts to ease the burden of factory workers. The first legislation, passed in 1802, was a very mild act to prevent some of the worst abuses connected with the employment of children. It was followed by the Cotton Factories Regulation Act of 1819 which forbade the employment of children under nine and cut their hour down to thirteen and a half a day. One more effective act was passed in 1833, which provided a number of regular inspections to control the labor conditions. In 1847 the Ten Hour’s Bill limited the hours of women and young people and secured a ten hour day for most of the men.
The years 1837 – 1901 are remarkable in the British history for what is called the Victorian period. King William IV died in June 1837, yielding the throne to his niece, Victoria, and so the great Victorian epoch started. 1837 to 1848 is considered as the early Victorian period, which was not that much different from the beginning of the nineteenth century as the following years. The time between 1848 and 1866 is known as the years of Mid-Victorian prosperity. Rapid and efficient development of manufactures and commerce took place mainly due to the removal of protective duties on food (such as he Corn Laws of 1815) and raw materials. Also, the British industry and the technological development began to experience a steep rise in those years. The first half of the nineteenth century is widely known among historians as the Railway Age. The idea of railway emerged as a result of the development of steam locomotives, but building locomotives and rail systems was so expensive that railroads were not widely used in Britain until the late 1830’s, when the increase in economics began.
The striking feature of the Victorian time was the growing urbanization of Britain, which is commonly explained as the result of the development of industry. In 1801, 20 per cent of Britain’s people lived in towns, and by the end of the nineteenth century, it was 75 per cent. The inflow of people in towns was caused by the increasing demand for new workers at factories and plants.
The middle of the century was marked by the Crimean War which lasted for three years (1853-1856). In 1853, Russia attempted to gain territories in the Balkans from the declining Ottoman Empire. Great Britain, France and Austria joined the Ottomans in a coalition against Russia to stop the expansion. Britain entered this war because Russia was seeking to control the Dardanells and thus threatened England’s Mediterranean sea routes. Although the coalition won the war, bad planning and incompetent leadership on all sides, including the British, characterized the war, leading to the large number of casualities. The exposure of the weaknesses of the British army lead to its reformation.
Among the internal problems, Britain experienced much disturbance in its relations with Ireland. A set of conflicts, based on both the political and religious grounds, followed the British attempts to suppress the Irish struggle for independence throughout the whole nineteenth century.
2.5. Britain in the twentieth centuryQueen Victoria died in January 1901, and Edward VII, the son of Queen Victoria ascended the throne. Edwardian Britain was a powerful and rich country, much of its wealth coming from business abroad. By that time, British money had been invested in many countries, and British banks and insurance companies had customers and did business all over the world, and, as the result, much of the policy and affairs concerning the Edwardian Britain at that time were the international ones.
In 1902, when Germany, supported by the Triple Alliance, became extremely powerful and the ambitions of the Kaiser became evident, Britain entered the Anglo-Japanese alliance to avoid political isolation. The war of 1904-1905 between Russia and Japan made the first one and Britain nearly enemies, with the end of the war political situation changed. In 1907 the Triple Entente of Great Britain, Russia and France was achieved as a countermeasure to the expansion of the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy in Balkans.
Still, while the reign of King Edward VII was taking place, many of the British were concerned with domestic matters. Some important changes in the way that people lived and were governed happened.
In 1900 the Labour Representation Committee, which soon became the Labour Party, was formed. Its aim was to see working people represented in Parliament, with the powerful support of trade unions.
The Education Act of 1902 met the demand for national system of secondary education. The government began providing such kind of education, although only a small number of schoolchildren could pay for the secondary school, and the rest had to be clever enough to pass the scholarship exams.
The general election of 1906 gave the Liberal Party an overwhelming majority in Parliament, with the programme including old-age pensions, government employment offices, such as Employment Exchanges, unemployment insurance, a contributory programme of national medical insurance for most workers, and a board to fix minimum wages for miners and others; but women still were not given the right to vote.
The years 1911 to 1914 were marked with strikes by miners, dock workers, and transport workers, as wages scarcely kept up with rising prices; suffragists carried out numerous demonstrations in favour of the enfranchisement of women, and while the Britain was in the midst of these domestic problems and disputes, World War I broke out.
The first large operation in which the British expeditionary force took part was the battle of Marne in 1915, which also happened to become the turning point of the whole war in the West front. The German advance across the French territory was halted, and it made the quick victory of the Germans impossible and gave time for great but slowly mobilized material resources of the British Empire to have their effect. In the course of the following years the war turned into the stalemate with mostly positional fighting and no significant advances of any of the combatants; the peace among Germany and Britain was signed in 1918.
World War I had both positive effect on the British industry and negative effect on the internal political situation. The Irish problems drew to the 1916 Easter Rebellion. If necessary, the Irish nationalists were ready to seek German aid and support in fighting the British government. The rebellion led to some several hundred casualities and imprisonment and execution of most of the Irish political leaders. The civil war in Ireland began and lasted until the peace treaty of 1921. Most of the Ireland became the Irish Free State, independent of British rule in all but name. One more result of the disturbances in Ireland was the development of the new Irish Sinn Fein political party.
World War I created more opportunities for women to work outside domestic service. Women aged 30 and over were granted the vote by the Reform Act of 1918, and the same Act granted the vote to all men over the age of 21. In 1928 women were given voting rights that were equal to those of men.
The immediate post-war years were marked by economic boom, rapid demobilization, and much labour strife. By 1921, however, the number of people without work had reached one million. Between 1929 and 1932, the depression more than doubled an already high rate of unemployment. Unemployment rose to more than 2 million in the 1930’s. In the course of several years, both the levels of industrial activity and of prices dipped by a quarter, and industries such as shipbuilding collapsed almost entirely.
Between 1933 and 1937, the economy recovered steadily, with the construction, automobile, and electrical industries leading the way. Unemployment remained high, however, especially in Wales, Scotland, and northern parts of England.
In 1936 King Edward VIII ascended the throne, and a remarkable occasion took place. Edward preferred to be happy in private life rather than to dedicate himself to the royal duties and discharged his duty as a king and emperor in favour of a love affair. Edward VIII was succeeded by his brother, George VI.
In 1939 World War II broke out. After the surrender of France in 1940, Britain remained the only resisting country in the West front. In 1940, also, one of the greatest aerial battles in history took place. The so-called Battle of Britain was the British answer to the permanent attempts of Germany to ruin the industry of United Kingdom and to suppress the spirit of the British people by heavy air bombardments. By the end of 1940 almost all aircraft factories in England were destroyed, and a few British fighter squadrons remained operational, but the ability of Luftwaffe to carry out offensive operations in the West was almost zeroed due to very heavy losses. The real help in struggle against Germany was that beginning early in 1941, the still-neutral United States granted lend-lease aid to Britain.
Luckily, the British Isles experienced no ground fighting throughout the whole war, and no British troops were engaged in ground operations until the Allies landing in France in 1944. Before that date, British took part in the coordinated Anglo-American operations in North Africa, fighting against German troops there, the most significant battle being that at El Alamein, where the Allies managed to defeat one of the best German commanders-in-chief Rommel. After the landing in Normandy, which didn’t play the big role in the course of war, but helped to bring it to closure sooner than it was expected, it took only ten month to make Germany to surrender on 8 May, 1945.
When World War II ended, the British government launched a number of important programmes in an effort to restore the county’s economy. The National Insurance Act of 1946 was a consolidation of benefit laws involving maternity, disability, old age, and death, as well as assistance if unemployed. In 1948 the National Health Service was set up. The general election of 1945 gave the Labour party the majority in Parliament, and the party launched a programme of nationalization of private industries to improve the economical situation.
In 1949 Britain joined other Western powers in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which was created as a counterweight to the Warsaw Block countries, leaded by USSR. Also, the late 1940’s in the British Empire were marked with the beginning of decolonization.
In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II inherited the throne from George VI. The early 1950’s brought economic recovery with flourishing of trade and the boom of housing construction, and since that time Britain has been steadily developing in economical, political, social and scientific aspects, becoming one of the leading countries in the world.
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