The House Hanover and the Victorian Period

1714 to 1901

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain

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The Stuarts

The House of Hanover

1714

When the last true Stuart, Queen Anne died in August 1714, and following the process of the Act of Settlement 1701, the electoral prince of Hanover, George Ludwig von Braunschweig - Luneburg, became George I.

George I, 1714 to 1727

George I was even less an English King than James VI and William of Orange. He brought with him an exotic entourage; did not bother to learn English; and his speeches were read by the Lord Chancellor. He was, though, a toned down monarch, the Hanoverians having not the money nor desire to aspire to the opulence of the Sun King in France. He rather lived on a domestic scale at Kensington Palace.

No bill has ever failed to gain royal assent since George’s accession. The monarch still governed, but required parliamentary consent to do so. A constitutional balance was thus achieved. Parliamentary Sovereignty became a fundamental constitutional principle. The absence of a constitution in a British context really means the absence of a written constitution which limits the powers of Parliament.

Most Tories accepted the Hanoverian succession, assuming that the Tory government would continue and the Church would be protected.

However George was not apolitical and threw out the Tories, angry at their Peace of Utrecht 1713 and supported a Whig coup. The Whigs then impeached the former Secretary of State, Robert Harley and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke (who had negotiated the Utrecht terms), the latter who fled to France.

The combination of executive and legislative powers ended the purist form of the separation of powers to that extent.

At his Coronation in October 1714, there was an outbreak of violence. In Catholic Ireland and Highland Scotland, Jacobitism was strong. In England there was increasing discontent at high taxes. Plans started to emerge for a Jacobite uprising. A small armed rebellion materialised in Catholic area of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

1715

However disaster struck early for the Jacobites when their intended primary supporter, Louis XIV died in September 1715, just as the Earl of Mar rallied a Scottish army.

The Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 (also referred to as the Fifteen or Lord Mar's Revolt), was the attempt by James Francis Edward Stuart (also called the Old Pretender) to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled House of Stuart. A diversionary rising had been planned in Northumberland to accompany the main rising in the West.

The rising in the West was forestalled by prompt Government action, but the rising in Northumberland went ahead on 6 October 1715.

The Northumbrian Jacobites were led by local Tory Member of Parliament Thomas Forster and the wealthy Catholic James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater. The local leaders hoped to seize Newcastle upon Tyne as a key port, cutting off London's coal supply, and expected significant support from local Catholic gentry, disaffected Tories, and a landing of French troops. They marched through various Northumbrian towns like Alnwick and Morpeth, gathering recruits but failing to gain widespread popular support or capture Newcastle due to a swift government response in fortifying the city. The Northumbrian force, numbering around 300, moved north and met up with Scottish border Jacobites and a contingent of Highlanders under Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum at Kelso.

The English Jacobites joined with a force of Scottish Borderer Jacobites, led by William Gordon, 6th Viscount Kenmure, and this small army was joined by Mackintosh's contingent. They marched into England as far as Preston, where the Government forces caught up with them. This led to the Battle of Preston, on 12 to 14 November. The Jacobites won the first day of the battle, killing large numbers of Government forces, but Government reinforcements arrived the next day and the Jacobites eventually surrendered.

The first Jacobite rebellion petered out by November 1715. There is an In Our Time podcast, The Jacobite Rebellion, the Stuart dynasty's attempt to reclaim the throne of England.

1716

George I was sufficiently unflustered to visit Hanover for five months in mid 1716.

The Septennial Act 1716 reduced the frequency of elections to seven years. Jean Jacques Rousseau quipped that the English were free, but only once every seven years.

1718

The Derby Silk Mill, also known as Lombe's Mill, is widely regarded as the world's first fully mechanised factory. It was built for the Lombe brothers, John and Thomas, in the early 1700s, with operations starting around 1718 to 1721. The mill was built for throwing silk, a process of spinning raw silk into a strong, high-quality thread called organzine.

1720

The South Sea Bubble was a financial crisis in 1720 that began with a speculative frenzy over the South Sea Company, which was initially formed to reduce national debt by trading slaves and goods with Spanish America. Both France and Britain accumulated vast debts due to the wars. A Scot, John Law, persuaded the French government in 1717 to adopt his new scheme to swap state bonds for shares in a new monopoly trading company. The British caught wind of this and set up their own similar scheme, through the South Sea Company, in 1719.

The South Sea Company, officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of fishing, was a British joint-stock company originally founded in 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of national debt. The company was also granted a monopoly to trade with South America and nearby islands, hence its name. The modern use of the term South Seas to refer to the entire South Pacific was unknown in England at the time.

When the company was created, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain controlled South America. There was no realistic prospect that trade would take place, and the company never realised any significant profit from its monopoly. The South Sea Company share price rocketed top 700% and many flocked to jump on the bandwagon, just as the better informed, including Robert Walpole, decided that it was time to cash in.

The bubble burst in 1720 collapsing to little above its original flotation price. The economic bubble became known as the South Sea Bubble. In Great Britain, a considerable number of people were ruined by the share collapse, and the national economy greatly reduced as a result. The founders of the scheme engaged in insider trading, using their advance knowledge of when national debt was to be consolidated to make large profits from purchasing debt in advance. Huge bribes were given to politicians to support the Acts of Parliament necessary for the scheme. Company money was used to deal in its own shares, and selected individuals purchasing shares were given loans backed by those same shares to spend on purchasing more shares. The expectation of profits from trade with South America was used to encourage the public to purchase shares, but the bubble prices reached far beyond the profits of the slave trade.

In France, the fiasco prompted by John Law, ruined their credit for a century.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the South Sea Bubble, the speculation mania in early 18th-century England which ended in the financial ruin of many of its investors.

About this time nearly everyone in London stupidly got involved in an enormous bubble that appeared at South Sea. Some were persuaded that it would be a Good Thing if all the money in the country, including the National Debt, were sunk in it; others got into it merely with the object of speculating how soon it would be before it burst (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

1722

The Norfolk Squire and Whig politician, Sir Robert (“Robin”) Walpole, was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer and considered to be the first Prime Minister from 1722 to 1742.

Walpole ought never to be confused with Walpole, who was quite different; it was Walpole who lived in a house with the unusual name of Strawberry Jam and spent his time writing letters to famous me (such as the Prime Minister, Walpole etc) (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

Walpole was on a path to self enrichment, from which wealth he built Houghton Hall in Norfolk.

His novelty came from his practice of parliamentary management. He spent time in the Commons. He cultivated MPs. He explained policy. He had private meetings. He patronised supporters with favours and office.

Purist Whig policies including toleration of religious dissent and a significant role in European politics, leading to high taxation, were unpopular, reinforced by the South Sea Bubble fiasco.

Walpole steered toward a more coalition approach, with restraint on taxation and public spending and a period of peaceful interlude from the European wars.

The role of opposition against Walpole was adopted by Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, who himself took a less extreme approach and returned to England in 1723. He represented the Country Party resentment of taxation, promoted ideas of a patriotic king ruling in the national interest, and was an early proponent of empire, focused on seapower. He suggested a new synthesis of the separation of powers, which would in time feed into the bedrock of the British and US constitution.

There was satire against Walpole. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) mocked his selfishness and political manoeuvring. Alexander Pope described the dullness of his government in The Dunciad (1728). John Gay authored the first stage musical, The Beggar’s Opera, portraying politicians as criminals. William Hogarth portrayed decadence and corruption in Gin Lane and The Rake’s Progress, a series of paintings which tell the story of Tom Rakewell, the Rake, who inherits a fortune from his city merchant father only to fritter it away on an extravagant lifestyle which ultimately leads to his downfall.

Walpole fought back. He raised the Jacobite spectre to threaten the Tories. He used public money to bribe and to buy newspapers and to pay for his propogandists.

1723

The Black Act added 50 capital offences to the penal code including some forms of poaching. Commonly known as the Black Act, or the Waltham Black Act, it was passed in 1723 in response to a series of raids against landowners by groups of poachers, known as the Blacks from their habit of blacking their faces when they undertook the raids. The Act was expanded over the years and greatly strengthened the criminal code by specifying over 200 capital crimes, many with intensified punishment. Arson, for example, had its definition expanded to include the new crime of burning, or threatening to burn, haystacks.

Knatchbull’s Act enabled workhouses in parishes.

1724

Daniel Defoe’s A Tour through the whole island of Great Britain describes Britain on the eve of the Industrial Revolution through a series of journeys or circuits. The book is a detailed account of the country's geography, economy, and society, covering towns, people's living conditions, and trade. Though presented as a travelogue, it is based on Defoe's past experiences and reliance on other sources, and its enduring value lies in its vivid, matter of fact portrayal of an emerging nation.

1727

George II, 1727 to 1760

George II was born in Hanover the son of George I and Sophia of Celle. He married Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach in 1705.

The coronation of George II and his wife Caroline of Ansbach took place on October 11, 1727, at Westminster Abbey. The event was a grand spectacle, magnificent and lavish. Handel’s Zadok the Priest was sung at the Coronation and at every Coronation since then.

1728

Vitus Johanssen Bering reached the vicinity of the strait separating Asia and North America in August 1728 and, due to poor visibility and his mission's objective, turned back before sighting the American coast. He entered the strait now named after him and sailed north, convinced he saw no landmass connecting Asia and America, and returned to Kamchatka.

1729

The Gin Act of 1729 was a law designed to curb gin consumption by imposing a £20 annual license fee on retailers and a 5s per gallon excise duty on distillers. However, this and subsequent acts were largely ineffective because they were difficult to enforce, and the high costs encouraged illegal sales and smuggling. While the Act intended to reduce consumption, it actually spurred more illicit, dangerous production and failed to significantly curb the gin craze.

Charles Wesley founded the Methodists at Lincoln College Oxford. John Wesley, his brother Charles, and others formed a group called the Holy Club dedicated to rigorous spiritual discipline, Bible study, and charitable work, including visiting prisons and the poor. They were mockingly called Methodists by their peers due to their structured, "methodical," approach to faith.

1730

The first seaside towns appeared in Brighton and Margate. Brighton evolved from a poor fishing town into a premier seaside resort after 1730, driven by the rise of the sea-bathing cure, the patronage of the Prince Regent, and improved transport links. The primary catalyst for Margate’s evolution was the growing belief from the 1730s in the health benefits of bathing in and drinking seawater.

Charles Turnip Townsend promoted crop rotation. A key figure in the British Agricultural Revolution, he was known for popularising the Norfolk four course system of crop rotation, which eliminated the need to leave fields fallow and significantly increased agricultural productivity.

1732

The Bastardy Act of 1732 aimed at shifting the financial burden of supporting an illegitimate child from the parish ratepayers to the child's parents, primarily the putative father. The core aspects of the law were punitive and deterrent. Unmarried mothers were expected to name the father of their child under oath during a Bastardy Examination.

1733

Latin was replaced by English in public records by the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730.

The flying shuttle was invented by John Kay in 1733 as a pivotal innovation that helped trigger the Industrial Revolution's mechanisation of the textile industry. It dramatically increased the speed and efficiency of weaving.

1734

Jethro Tull (1674 to 21 February 1741) published essays on improving farming including the use of the seed drill. Jethro Tull was an English agricultural pioneer from Berkshire, an important figure in the British Agricultural Revolution. He perfected a horse drawn seed drill in 1701 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows. He later developed a horse drawn hoe. Tull's methods were adopted by many land owners and helped to provide the basis for modern agriculture.

1735

The Hawkhurst smugglers were a notorious eighteenth century gang that operated along England's south coast, from Dorset to Kent, using inns like the Mermaid Inn in Rye as their base. They smuggled goods like brandy, tea, and tobacco, and were known for using violence, secret tunnels, and hidden cellars to avoid authorities. The gang's violent and audacious actions, including the raid on the customs house at Poole, ultimately led to a public backlash and their downfall, with many members being executed or transported.

1739

The Great Frost in Britain was a period of extreme and prolonged cold that struck Europe, including Britain and Ireland, from Christmas Eve 1739 until March 1740, part of the Little Ice Age.

The War of Jenkins' Ear, with Spain, 1739 to 1740, was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain, named after a British sea captain, Robert Jenkins, whose ear was severed by Spanish sailors in 1731 during a skirmish at sea. Fueled by trade disputes, particularly over Spanish smuggling crackdowns and territorial conflicts in the Americas, the incident became a rallying cry for war after Jenkins presented his preserved ear to Parliament in 1738.

Formation of Methodist Societies around London.

Dick Turpin, began his life of crime as a butcher, then joined a violent gang involved in poaching and house-breaking in Essex. After the gang was broken up, he became a highwayman, committing robberies and murder. Following the murder of a forest-keeper, Thomas Morris, Turpin fled to Yorkshire and assumed the alias John Palmer. He was arrested in Beverley, initially for shooting a man's cockerel and threatening the owner. While imprisoned in York Castle on suspicion of horse theft, he wrote to his brother-in-law for help. His brother-in-law refused the letter, which had postage due, and it was returned to the post office. Turpin's former schoolmaster happened to see the letter, recognised his handwriting, and identified him as the notorious Dick Turpin, sealing his fate. Turpin was tried at the York Assizes in March 1739 and convicted on two charges of horse theft. He was not tried for the more violent crimes that made him famous in the south of England. Turpin was reportedly calm at his execution, conversed with the executioner, bowed to the large crowd of spectators, and then, after briefly showing a tremble in his right leg, threw himself off the ladder to ensure a quicker end.

Turpin's body was initially buried in St George's Churchyard. However, it was stolen by body snatchers the next morning to be sold for medical dissection. An angry mob intervened, recovered the body, and reburied it in the original grave, filling the coffin with quicklime to deter further attempts. Turpin's legend was largely romanticised in the 19th century, particularly through William Harrison Ainsworth's novel Rookwood (1834), which added the fictional, famous ride from London to York on his mare Black Bess.

The downfall of Robert Walpole started in 1739 as the War of Jenkins Ear drew Britain into the War of Austrian Succession (1740 to 1748).

1740

The death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740 led to the European War of Austrian Succession in which the British and Dutch supported Marie Theresa’s claim to the Austrian throne against the Prussians and French.

However early patriotic excitement waned after naval failures and Walpole became unpopular for perceived corruption.

1741

New charities and reform organisations were emerging. The Foundling Hospital opened in London, with outposts elsewhere across the country.

Vitus Bering returned to Kamchatka in 1741 with a new, larger expedition than in 1728. During this voyage, a storm separated his ship from his partner, Alexey Chirikov, but Bering was able to sight the southern coast of Alaska and land on Kayak Island. He also documented some of the Aleutian Islands.

1742

Dr William’s Library recorded a general register of births of Protestant Dissenters of the Three Denominations of Baptists, Presbyterians and Independents.

Walpole was pressed to leave office in February 1742. However the Whigs continued in power.

1743

George II personally led his troops at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743, becoming the last British monarch to lead his troops into battle. It was a victory for the British led Pragmatic Army against the French.

1745

In 1745 the French were victorious over the British at Fontenoy in Flanders. Fought near Tournai, the French army, led by Marshal Saxe, repelled Allied attempts to relieve the besieged city, using a strong defensive position to their advantage. The Allies ultimately retreated after suffering heavy casualties, allowing France to capture Tournai and consolidate control over Flanders.

The ongoing wars had caused Britain’s worst economic recession for a century. The Hanoverians became a target of unpopularity.

In the Jacobite Rebellion of Forty Five, Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, landed in the Western Isles of Scotland on 23 July 1745 and, with a few dozen supporters, marched to Glenfinnan to raise the Stuart standard on 19 August 1745. He had left behind him a letter to Louis XV pleading for his help.

He planned to march into England, relying on the French to invade. At first his surprise operation seemed to favour the Jacobites and they beat a smaller British and Irish force at Prestonpans on 21 September 1745. Most of the British Forces were deployed in the Low Countries as the Scots crossed into England. However the English Jacobites, apart from some diehard Yorkshire Catholics, were fearful of the consequences of failure. The Scottish army reached Derby but lacked any significant English support and they turned back north on 5 December 1745 to focus the fight in the Highlands. The French had embarrassing difficulties which led to a lack of support from them. There is an In Our Time podcast on the Jacobite Rebellion, the Stuart dynasty's final attempt to reclaim the throne of England.

1746

On 16 April 1946, at the Battle of Culloden, 1746, the Scottish army was defeated by the British forces under the Duke of Cumberland, the King's second son, who ruthlessly repressed the rebels and Scottish traditions. Both sides alleged atrocities by the other. Romantic tales followed, of Bonnie Prince Charlies’ rescue by Flora MacDonald and the rescue of a Scottish peer from the tower. However a grim fate awaited the rank and file of the Jacobites.

The end of the ’45 marked the final ending of the Civil War.

1747

A tax was imposed on all horse drawn carriages.

1748

The end of the War of Austrian Succession left Britain and France in a cold war.

1750

In 1750, the population of Great Britain was about 7 million, with the majority of people living in rural areas and working in agriculture. This figure was a significant increase from previous centuries, and a precursor to the rapid population growth that would occur during the Industrial Revolution.

1751

The Army introduced Regimental numbers. The 1751 Royal Warrant ordered that infantry and cavalry regiments should be known by a permanent number according to their order of precedence, rather than by their commanding colonel's name. They were however soon given official titles such as the King’s Own.

1752

Estates forfeited by the Jacobites were bestowed to the Crown.

On 14 September 1752 Great Britain and its colonies transitioned from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar system, a change mandated by the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.

1753

The Bow Street Runners were appointed to patrol London’s streets. Operating out of the magistrates' court at No. 4 Bow Street, they represented an evolution towards modern policing, replacing the largely ineffective system of amateur parish constables and corrupt thief-takers. Henry Fielding and his blind half-brother, Sir John Fielding sought to combat rising crime rates in London, particularly highway robbery.

The Licensing Act required the recording of full registers of victuallers to be kept by the Clerk of the Peace as Quarter Sessions.

1754

Hardwicke’s Marriage Act required marriages to take place in the parish where either bride or groom had been born. Parties to a marriage were required to be 21 years old or have parental consent and marry in a licensed church.

The first official British Army printed list, first published in 1740, but annually from 1754, provided an official roll of officers and their standing within the military hierarchy.

The French were interested in expanding in north America, and claims into the Great Plains. They pushed south along the Ohio river. The first direct clash was in May 1754 in the Ohio valley. Major George Washington, son of a Virginia planter, with 100 Virginia militiamen and native allies, attacked a small French patrol.

1755

The Seven Years War 1755 to 1763 was a global conflict between Great Britain and Prussia against France, Austria, and their allies, driven by European power struggles over Silesia and colonial disputes in North America and India. Britain emerged victorious, gaining vast territories in North America, including Canada, and establishing dominance in India, while Prussia cemented its status as a major European power. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Hubertusburg, which redrew global maps and fueled future conflicts, such as the American Revolution.

The old enemies Austria and France allied against their new enemies, Prussia and Britain. The war also involved Sweden and Spain and later Russia and has been called the real First World War.

A large British expedition was ambushed and killed in the Ohio valley on 9 July 1755 by the French.

1756

The French took the offensive on three continents. The French raided into New York and Pennsylvania and captured Fort William Henry in New York. The French captured the British naval base in Minorca and invaded Hanover. The French ally, the Nawab of Bengal captured Calcutta from the British in 1756. Prisoners were crammed into a small cell, the Black Hole of Calcutta, where many died. The Black Hole of Calcutta was a dungeon in Fort William, India, where British prisoners were confined in horrific conditions by the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, after he captured the fort in 1756. Whilst accounts vary, the event became a rallying cry for the British, who used it to justify their military actions against the Nawab and the expansion of their authority in India.

Guernsey and Alderney became bases for privateering expeditions. Situated just miles off the Cotentin Peninsula of France, Alderney provided a crucial base for quickly intercepting French merchant shipping in the English Channel. Privateers operated legally under Letters of Marque issued by the British Crown, which authorised private ship owners to capture enemy vessels and bring them to port as prizes. Privateering was a low cost way for Britain to augment its naval power and disrupt French commerce during the war, forcing France to divert resources to protect its trade routes.

This was a time of the worst harvest failure for generations and the most significant food riots of the century in August 1756. The governing class was accused of failing the nation.

Admiral Byng was accused of cowardice at Minorca, court martialled and shot.

The Laudable Society was founded, a mutual benefit or friendly society dedicated to providing financial support, specifically for widows.

William Pitt the Elder represented new patriotic demands. He was a ruthless, ambitious, intelligent politician, if unstable and unpredictable. He became Secretary of State in 1756 (and again from 1757 to 1761). He advocated the commitment of large sums and resources to the military objectives.

(1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

1757

The Militia Act revived county militias. 30,000 men were raised between 1757 and 1763.

The company clerk who became a soldier, Robert Clive secured Bengal at the Battle of Plassey, India, on 23 June 1757, a decisive victory for the British East India Company. He defeated the Nawab of Bengal. Although a small skirmish where the British were outnumbered, the battle was won because the Nawab's commander-in-chief, Mir Jafar, had secretly conspired with Clive and defected, leaving much of the Nawab's army ineffectively positioned. This victory was a major turning point that established British political dominance in India, paving the way for their eventual rule over the subcontinent.

1759

1759 was a year of British victories.

The Capture of Quebec by General James Wolfe followed a decisive victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which was the culmination of a three-month siege. British forces scaled the cliffs to surprise and defeat French forces led by General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on 13 September 1759. Both commanders were mortally wounded, and the city surrendered a few days later, a victory that ultimately led to the British conquest of Canada.

At the Battle of Minden in Hanover, fought on 1 August 1759, a small force of six British battalions routed the French after a mistaken order to advance. Despite suffering heavy losses when the infantry advanced prematurely, they successfully repelled multiple French cavalry charges. A key failure for the Allies was the refusal of their cavalry commander, Lord George Sackville, to advance when ordered, which squandered the opportunity to fully rout the fleeing French forces.

An audacious naval action by Admiral Sir Edward Hawke at Quiberon Bay, Brittany on 20 November 1759 led to the destruction of the core of the French navy. The battle occurred during a gale, as the French tried to escape a British blockade of Brest. Hawke pursued the French into Quiberon Bay and, despite dangerous weather, destroyed a significant portion of their fleet, ending the immediate threat of a French invasion of Britain.

1760

The industrial revolution began in around 1760, a period of economic and social transformation. It marked a shift from a largely agrarian, craft economy and domestic production system to one dominated by machine manufacturing, the factory system, and new energy sources like steam power.

Robert Bakewell began pioneering innovative agricultural practices including the selective breeding of sheep.

George III, 1760 – 1820

1761

In a mood of victories, George III’s first act, with ambitions as a patriotic king, was to sack his Whig ministers. Traditional Tory families took new roles as JPs and militia officers. Whig grandees were humiliated.

Some Whigs accepted the changed political landscape, but others resisted, particularly:

· The Old Whigs and the Revolution Whigs who sought to restrain George

· The Rockingham Whigs, who followed Charles Watson-Wentworth, Second Marquess of Rockingham who owned significant land in Yorkshire.

· The actions of John Wilkes to undermine the Earl of Bute and the King himself.

The Parliamentary Enclosure Acts between 1750 and 1845 legalised the enclosure of landowners’ property, transforming the countryside.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the 18th and 19th century enclosure movement which divided the British countryside both literally and figuratively.

The Bridgewater Canal opened, followed by a period of canal building.

John Harrison’s chronometer allowed the determination of longitude at sea.

1762

Records were required to be kept in metropolitan parishes of parish poor infants.

1763

Mortimer’s Universal Directory listed retail shops in London.

William Dade, a Yorkshire clergyman, started the practice to keep detailed parish registers, which practice spread.

The Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years War. France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there. It left Britain dominant in North America and eastern India.

At first this was welcomed euphorically by the American colonialists. The journalist Benjamin Franklin spoke proudly as a Briton, and saw the future of the British Empire in America. James Otis, who would later be a rebel leader rejoiced “We love, esteem and reverence our mother country, and adore our King”.

However the King and his ministers saw things differently – they wanted to reduced the financial burden of the colonies, whilst stabilising and rationalising the growing empire in preparation for further war with France.

· They intended to increase the power of governors to enforce trade regulations and induce greater contribution to defence (the Americans were the most lightly taxed anywhere in the world)

· They sought to limit encroachment onto native land in fear that it would provoke a bloody an costly conflict – the Royal Proclamation of 1763 recognised indigenous land ownership and there were treaties between the Crown and the American nations.

The American colonial citizens were resistant to these changes:

· They felt they had been the real heroes in the prior wars – they stressed loyalty to the Crown whilst resisting the Westminster Parliament.

· Colonial assemblies sought to set their own taxes and decide their contribution to defence.

· They wanted to buy cheap land, including the former French territories, but were prevented from doing so.

· They were encouraged by the campaign for greater liberty by John Wilkes in the 1760s and felt they were subject to a systematic assault on their liberties as free born Englishmen.

The Whigs in opposition in England felt they were facing an absolutist plot led by the king to undermine the constitution. They complained at bureaucracy in the growing army and navy and abuses of power by the East India Company.

1764

James Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny.

Lloyds Register of Shipping.

1765

The first attempt to levy direct taxation on the American colonies was the Stamp Act 1765, which was violently resisted. The British needed to station a large army in North America and on 22 March 1765 the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which sought to raise money to pay for this army through a tax on all legal and official papers and publications circulating in the colonies. When a colonial congress called for a boycott of British goods, the Act was repealed.

1766

Hanway’s Act required all pauper children under 6 from metropolitan parishes to be sent to school in the countryside, separating the children from their parents.

The Declaratory Act 1766 stated that Parliament had a right in principle to legislate in America, even if it prudently refrained to do so.

1769

Captain James Cook claimed New Zealand for Britain.

Richard Arkwright patented his water frame.

Bengal was the victim of famine from 1769 to 1770. It was widely blamed on oppression by the East India Company. John Wesley anticipated divine vengeance. However despite concerns. It was felt that there could be no turning back – the loss of Indian trade would cause British bankruptcy and dominance of absolutist France.

1770

Lord Frederick North became the new Tory Prime Minister.

Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay.

A rise in grain prices saw the potato surpassing bread as the staple of the working man’s diet.

First water powered mills begin the age of mass production in factories.

Exports and imports had shifted away from the Continent so that by the 1770s over half were from further afar and new commodities such as tea, cotton and sugar were being consumed. The merchant navy protected by Navigations Acts, expanded. Government revenues from trade grew. The Caribbean was particularly important, as the source of sugar.

America

The British colonists could not work with the heat and disease, and so over 3 M people were shipped from Africa as slaves between 1660 and 1807. At its peak in the 1780s, 120 Africans were transported each day.

The triangular trade was established by Britain and France:

· Manufactured good to Africa to buy slaves;

· Slaves sold in the Caribbean to buy sugar.

The mainland colonies were swelling in population, but were more modest providers of wealth. However up to this stage, there was no sign of these colonies growing apart from their mother country.

Lord North had the idea of abolishing existing duties, leaving only a light duty on tea from India, following the principle of the Declaratory Act to demonstrate Parliament’s power to legislate. This had the effect to make tea cheaper, so the Patriots would find it difficult to oppose.

India

Asia was the focus for luxury goods, spices, fine textiles and significantly, tea.

The Europeans built fortified trading posts at Calcutta (founded in 1690 and with 120,0009 people by 1760), Bombay and Madras.

War with France transformed the European approach in India.

The Mughal Empire had been established in the 1520s by Muslim invaders from central Asia. There was a Golden Age marked by the Taj Mahal (1650) and Great Mosque of Delhi (1656). Then there was a period of fragmentation – defeats by the Hindu Marathas and the Persian sack of Delhi in 1739. By the late eighteenth century, there had been fragmentation into regional power centres, often ruled by Mughal nawabs, governors.

The French and the British both raised local military forces. By 1761, the East India Company had 2,000 European and 23,000 Indian soldiers.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the East India Company.

1772

The first Navy Lists were published.

Publication of the first Morning Post.

1773

The Boston Tea Party, December 1773. A group of patriots threw a shipload of tea into the sea bringing to the fore the question of who would govern America.

Captain Cook reached Antarctica.

The East Indies Regulating Act 1773 tried to bring some control over the East India Company.

1774

The Quebec Act in 1774 placed Quebec into the hands of a royal governor, without an elected assembly.

The Madhouse Act required all ‘madhouses’ to be licensed, and aimed to counter abuses including imprisonment of rejected spouses. The Act remained in force until 1959.

By 1774 there were patriots in England and America who felt they were fighting to protect a threat to fundamental British liberties. This was encapsulated in calls for no taxation without representation. Samuel Johnson’s pamphlet, The Patriot in 1774 provided the contrary argument that He that accepts protection stipulates obedience.

A continental Congress of patriot committees met in Philadelphia in September 1774.

· The North government offered compromise.

· Leading colonial politicians were reluctant to break from the mother country.

1775

Watt’s steam engine was patented.

See the Industrial Revolution. There is an In Our Time podcast, The Industrial Revolution and about the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain. There is another about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.

A Second Continental Congress in 1775 still denied any intention to break with Britain or seek independence.

However patriot hotbeds, especially in New England, were growing restless.

Shooting began at Lexington in April 1775 followed by a pitched battle at Bunker Hill, outside Boston, in June 1775.

The American War of Independence, 1775-1783

1776

The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776:

We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Loyalties were split in both America and Britain.

About a third of those in Britain supported the American Patriots including Whigs, dissenters and those with American business interests, particularly focused on Bristol at the heart of American trade. The use of force in America was deplored.

However there was also public resentment at the rebellion and support for the use of force against the rebels came from most Anglicans and the Methodists (a Whig peer pointed out that Methodism was becoming popular by forcing the country into a destructive war).

There was a reemergence of the religious divides of the Civil War – the colonial Patriots were equated to the Roundheads and supported by Dissenters and Ulster Presbyterians. Unitarians were the avant garde of dissent.

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in 1776 and was the intellectual leader of the revolution. 100,000 copies were sold. He saw American independence as inevitable and that it would allow prosperous and peaceful isolation from quarrels in Europe. England to Europe, America to itself!

There is an In Our Time podcast about the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century and another about the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith. There is another Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations. There is another about the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 to 1797). There is another about The Bluestockings, a group of prominent women intellectuals in 18th-century England.

There was nevertheless strong loyalist support in America. German and Scottish settlers had little kinship with the patriot roundheads. Volunteers for new British Regiments came readily from Jacobite clans. Flora MacDonald, thirty years after her saving of Bonnie Prince Charlie, was a prominent Tory in North Carolina. The established nations, including Mohawks, Creeks, Delaware, Iroquois and Cherokees, feared invasion by the colonists and worried about the risk that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 would be overturned. When freedom was declared to any enslaved African who joined the Crown forces, up to 100,000 slaves joined the army, many who had belonged to George Washington.

The War went relatively well for the Crown in America initially. New York was occupied and defended in 1776. George Washington’s weak Continental Army withdrew to Pennsylvania. The British aimed to isolate them there, and sought a defeat by 1777. The British sent a force of 5,000 men under General Burgoyne south to link up with General Howe at New York.

An Act which allowed decommissioned ships to be used as prison hulks.

1777

Washington’s army was defeated on 11 September 1777 at Brandywine by General How and Philadelphia was taken.

However Burgoyne’s force was then cut off at Saratoga (19 September to 7 October 1777) and, with dwindling supplies, forced to surrender on 17 October 1777.

A tax was imposed on male servants.

1778

The French became interested in the opportunities of the American Civil War, especially after Saratoga, the French foreign ministry declaring that 1778 will decide the fate of England, and the predominance of France.

· There was a minor action in June 1778 between British and French frigates off Brittany.

· The American Civil War thus became another world war.

· Spain joined in 1779 and besieged Gibraltar and Holland.

· The French planned its coup de grace by landing a force of 20,000 on the Ilsa of Wight.

· Militia camps were set up around London

· Defiant anthems were composed: Tho’ Monsieur and Don should combine, What have true British heroes to fear? What are Frogs, and soup-meagre and wine, To beef, and plum pudding, and beer?

James Cook and George Vancouver were the first Europeans to reach British Columbia.

Louis XVI of France declared war on Britain.

1779

The French and Spanish fleet of 104 ships gathered in Normandy, but was hit by plague and the threat petered out without a fight.

In India, new threats were faced, by a strong alliance of Indian states, the Maratha Confederation and Haider Ali, the ruler of Mysore, Southern India. The Bombay force of the East India Company surrendered Marathas in 1779 and the Madras army was defeated by Hailder Ali in 1780. Company troops in Bengal were massacred by their former ally, the rules of Benares. Warren Hastings, the governor general, fled for his life.

Increased reliance on Ireland for support to its armed forces, led to concessions to Irish demands:

· The Irish Relief Act 1778 and the Catholic Relief Act 1778 reduced legal disabilities of Catholics in Ireland.

· There was a greater assertion of autonomy by the Irish “Grattan’s Parliament.

1780

Britain started its largest ever mobilisation in its struggle to survive. The navy was increased from 16,000 sailors to 100,000 by 1782 and the army expanded to 250,000 soldiers. Irish and Scots were recruited into the military forces. These were not released criminals as has been suggested but included skilled craftsman and a strong officer corps.

Political discontent inevitably accompanied these new times. A Whig Association Movement pressed for parliamentary reform. John Wesley asked why Catholics basked in the sun while Dissenters were stigmatised as the enemy.

The famous Commons motion was tabled in April 1780: “The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.”

However the Loyalists across Great Britain and Ireland felt their Britishness.

On 6 June 1780 a petition was presented to Parliament demanding the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act.

There followed five days of riots, known as the Gordon Riots in London in protest against the Catholic Relief Act. The Gordon Riots of 1780 were several days of rioting in London motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment. They began with a large and orderly protest against the Papists Act 1778, which was intended to reduce official discrimination against British Catholics enacted by the Popery Act 1698. Lord George Gordon, head of the Protestant Association, argued that the law would enable Catholics to join the British Army and plot treason. The protest led to widespread rioting and looting, including attacks on Newgate Prison and the Bank of England and was the most destructive in the history of London. They were dramatized by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge. The rioters were mainly respectable apprentices and labourers and included the radical William Blake. They were well informed. Noone was killed by the crowds. The city authorities refused to act, perhaps out of fear or from sympathy. After five days the troops were given reassurances about the lawfulness of preventing further disturbance and the King ordered them to fire on those who refused to disperse after the reading of the Riot Act. 160 rioters were tried and 26 (mainly young) were hanged.

The crowd that 9 years later stormed the Bastille in France was only a fraction of the size of the rioters mustered by Gordon. They have largely been forgotten as the anti catholic basis for the riots has been seen with retrospective distaste by later radical movements.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Gordon Riots of 1780, and why a Westminster protest against 'Popery' in June 1780 led to widespread rioting across London, lethally suppressed

Methodist registers began.

Notwithstanding the Gordon Riots, there was some stabilisation politically and militarily during 1780. The Spanish were occupied in the Siege of Gibraltar. Washington’s army was having problems with mutiny and desertion.

1781

Washington begged for more help from the French. In March 1781 the French sent its Atlantic fleet to the West Indies, and after failing to capture Jamaica, it sailed to Virginia in July 1781. A small British force was trapped at Yorktown and the British surrendered.

1782

Lord North resigned as rime Minister and the Whig Rockingham returned to office in March 1782. He began to withdraw troops from America.

The French sailed again for Jamaica. The British fleet confronted them in the only great battle fought by the Royal Navy outside European waters until the twentieth century. The Battle of the Saints in the Caribbean on 9 to 10 April 1782 ended in a British victory which was their greatest success over the French during the American War. The action tilted the advantage to Britain against the French.

Gilbert’s Act allowed parishes to form unions to maintain workhouses for the elderly and infirm.

1783

The Stamp Duty Act introduced tax on baptisms, marriage and burials (not paupers).

The volcano Laki erupted in Iceland which had catastrophic effects on European weather and caused many deaths.

Rockingham and his successor, Lord Shelburne, were eager to end the war in America. Several significant constitutional changes occurred at this time:

· An opposition party came to power despite its opposition to the king and sacked previous office holders before taking measures to diminish the power of the Crown

· The Civil List came under parliamentary scrutiny.

· A new post of Foreign Secretary was created.

Shelburn led peace negotiations. The Treaty of Paris created the United States. Full independence was given to all 13 colonies involved in the rebellion. Little concern was given to the fete of the loyalists and the freed slaves. The native American allies were abandoned in a sentence of death for their civilisation.

If the intent had been there the half hearted patriots could have been defeated, but Britain was fighting a world war, and so had wider interests to defend. An idealised version of the American Revolution prevailed in the ‘Whig Histories’.

England was written off as a second rate power.

However, and paradoxically, Britain became more politically and economically stable after the war. She retained the Westy Indies, Canada, Gibraltar and its position in India. Trade with the United States would in time become a significant bulwark of Britain’s economy. A long trade boom began in 1783. By 1821, the US took 44% of its imports from Britain.

A new model of Britain emerged, more paternalistic and progressive.

American independence had relieved Britain of significant burdens on its economy, particular in the cost of defence in America.

In December 1783, the king orchestrated a defeat to the Whig ministry in the House of Lords. George II then appointed William Pitt the Younger as prime minister to rally patriot forces around the patriot king. Pitt then won an early general election. There was a rally to Pitt’s patriotic policies. The king became popular and nicknamed Farmer George, in part due to his agricultural interests.

The loss of America placed greater focus on India. There were growing concerns about the East India Company which was seen as utterly incorrigible, and there was an attempt in 1783 to set up a political board of control, but this was seen as a political move to control the wealth from India.

Warren Hastings was the first Governor General. He tried to reform Company rule, and promoted moderation and greater reliance on Indian laws, ideas and institutions and employment of Indian people. This seemed a move towards a more respectful approach. However the bottom line was that Britain was eager to extend its power through taxation and trade.

The British were now actively interacting with the rest of the world.

· Sir William Johnson married into Mohawk nobility.

· James Skinner, born in Calcutta in 1778 to an East Indian Company officer and an Indian mother became Colonel of Skinner’s Horse.

1784

The invention of the threshing machine.

The first mail coaches were introduced.

A Game Tax was levied on all qualified to kill or sell game.

Taxes introduced on owners of hoses used for transport or racing.

William Pitt was Prime Minister, 1784-1801

1785

In 1785, after 10 years of service, during which he helped extend and regularise the nascent Raj, Warren Hastings resigned. On return to England, Hastings was impeached in the House of Commons for alleged crimes in India, notably embezzlement, extortion and coercion, and an alleged judicial killing of Maharaja Nandakumar. At first thought unlikely to succeed, the prosecution was managed by MPs including Edmund Burke, encouraged by Sir Philip Francis, whom Hastings had wounded during a duel in India, Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. When the charges of the indictment were read, the 20 counts took Edmund Burke two full days to read. The House sat for 148 days over a period of seven years during the investigation. The House of Lords acquitted him of all charges on 24 April 1795. The Company subsequently compensated him with £4,000 annually, retroactive to the date he returned to England, but did not reimburse his legal fees, which he claimed to have been £70,000.

The impeachment of Hastings, and the anti slavery movement showed a growing sensitivity to the negative outcomes of the Empire, but Britain was at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on colonial trade. The dilemma was that it was becoming difficult to retain Britain’s status as a wealthy and prosperous nation, whilst avoiding the darker aspects.

Prior to the 1770s, Britain had not been vocal in its criticism of slavery. I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, For how could we do without sugar and rum? However from the 1770s, there was a campaign against slavery. In 1785 the vice chancellor of Cambridge set his students an essay prize on whether slavery was right and it was won by Thomas Clarkson, an important slave campaigner.

First edition of The Times.

A tax was imposed on female servants.

1787

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded.

1788

A penal colony was established in Botany Bay in Australia.

After serious bouts of illness in 1788-89 and again in 1801, George III became permanently deranged in 1810. He was mentally unfit to rule in the last decade of his reign; his eldest son - the later George IV - acted as Prince Regent from 1811. Some medical historians have said that George III's mental instability was caused by a hereditary physical disorder called porphyria.

1789

William Wilberforce, with the encouragement of William Pitt, began a long parliamentary campaign to ban the slave trade. However the issue was taken ff the agenda for some time, by the beginning of another war with France.

The French Revolution began. On 14 July 1789, a few hundred Parisiens stormed the Bastille. At first England welcomed this new development in the affairs of their old enemy France.

· The House of Commons promoted a day of thanksgiving for the French Revolution.

· William Pitt hoped for friendly relations with the new nation

· The Dissenters and Whigs in opposition were particularly enthusiastic and saw it as a blow to popery and superstition.

Before long there were differing views on the subject:

· The Unitarian intellectual, Dr Richard Price, preached that most governments were usurpations on the rights of men.

· But Edmund Burke replied in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) saying the revolution had become a spectator sport for the middle class, and a free society relied upon respect for its institutions. The revolution caused suffering and loss. He argued that societies grew organically and he was appalled by the sudden destruction of institutions.

· In reply, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) dismissed Burke’s ideas. The new French constitution was the rational course of thins. For a nation to be free, it is sufficient that it wills it to be so. In June 1792 Paine was summoned for seditious libel.

· Fundamental divisions in British politics, reopened Civil War divisions.

· Radical Societies emerged.

· There was rioting, though not violent.

Soon after America had ceased to be memorable, the French Revolution broke out (in France). This, like all other Revolutions, was chiefly due to Liberty, Fraternity, Equality etc, but also to the writings of Madame Tousseau, the French King’s mistress, who believed in everyone returning to a state of nature and weas therefore known as la belle savage (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

1790

The invention of a new surfacing treatment for roads by John McAdam.

1791

Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man was published.

The Canada Act divided Canada into Upper and Lower Canada.

The Universal British Dictionary in 5 large volumes gave details of counties, schools and other facilities.

1792

The first Regency Crisis

The September massacres in France of 1792 led to the butchering of women and children on the streets of Paris and Louis XVI and Marie Antionette were executed in the escalating Terror (la Terreur). This was the context of Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities, contrasting the Terror with peace and security in Britain. The scene was set in the classic description of life in 1775, before the dramas of the ensuing years:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:” after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them.

The mood regarding the French Revolution changed. There was hostility to the violence.

Soon there were some 2,000 Loyalist Societies, such as the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, founded in November 1792.

There were also smaller numbers of Radical Societies, such as the London Corresponding Society which was founded in January 1792 by the Scottish Dissenter, Thomas Hardy. A circle formed around the Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Wordsworth.

In April 1792, France declared war on Austria and Prussia. Initially intending to remain neutral, William Pitt assured the Commons on 17 February 1792 that Britain might reasonably expect fifteen years of peace.

1793

The execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 shocked the English public. There was a new fear for the independence of Holland, and Britain pledged to support the Dutch. The French revolutionary leaders were buoyed by a euphioc belief in their invincibility and strove to spread their revolutionary message across Europe.

The French Republic declared war on Britain and Holland on 1 February 1793.

Thomas Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution and was granted honorary French citizenship. Paine was selected as one of nine deputies to be part of the convention's Constitutional Committee, who were charged to draft a suitable constitution for the French Republic. He drafted a call on British people to revolt.

The French Revolutionary Wars 1793 to 1802. With a short break from March 1802 to May 1803, war with France would last for the next twenty years.

Britain adopted its usual strategy to encourage and finance a coalition against France. The French navy was weak and easily routed by the Royal Navy. However the Franch Army was formidable and was able to raise vast armies through mobilisation and terror.

The war that followed is another candidate for the first real world war.

The Friendly Societies Act.

There were splits in the Whig party and concerns about William Pitt’s closeness to George III. William Pitt was reserved and often irritating and not ideal as a war leader. However he had strong willpower and a sound knowledge of finance, which was helpful in the critical strategic concern of war finances.

In France there were initially expectations of quick victory. France’s unruly army swarmed into Savoy, Germany, Belgium and Holland. A revolutionary dictatorship took power, in which the dominant figure was the yo0ung lawyer, Maximilien Robespierre. There was counter revolutionary resistance focused on peasants and Catholics.

France was soon in the grip of civil war and terror, with 16,000 executed on the guillotine and thousands more slaughtered. Refugees streamed into England.

Despite gruesome events in France, there remained support for the revolution in England and Thomas Paine continued to promote an invasion of England. The Dissenters still saw the revolution as a struggle against popery.

Britain’s economic situation was precarious:

· A booming population, but imports becoming more difficult due to the war.

· Local workforce mobilised for war.

· Climatic conditions, partly caused by south east Asian volcanic activity causing poor harvest in 1791, 1792, 1794, 1795, (with serious shortages 1795 to 1796) 1800 (with serious shortages 1800 to 1801), 1811 and 1812 (with serious shortages 1809 to 1810).

The Royal Navy sailed into the French base at Toulon in August 1793 to support French Royalist rebels. They were forced to withdraw under canon fire commanded by the young artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte. The siege was the first involvement of the British Royal Navy with the French Revolution.

1795

Now General Bonaparte put down a royalist rising in Paris in October 1795.

Corsican patriots threw out the French and tried to join the British Empire, but were unable to hold out.

Britain’s main war aim was the independence of Holland, but Holland fell in early 1795 and became a French satellite. British troops in the Low Countries under George III’s second son, Frederick, the Grand Old Duke of York soon had to march down again.

The government took a carrot and stick approach to the hardships arising from war.

· Corn exports stopped and grain was imported from US, Canada and India.

· However “Pitt’s reign of terror” began in May 1794, which led to a restriction on civil liberties and suspension of habeas corpus, focused on the “Two Acts” in the wake of the stoning of King George III on his way to open Parliament in 1795:

o The Treason Act 1795 (sometimes also known as the Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act) made it high treason to "within the realm or without compass, imagine, invent, devise or intend death or destruction, or any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim or wounding, imprisonment or restraint, of the person of ... the King". The Act became a permanent Act in 1817.

o The Seditious Meetings and Assemblies Act 1795 restricted the size of public meetings to fifty persons.

The Speenhamland system for poor relief was introduced offering financial assistance linked to the price of bread, but this effected the south of England.

The Quota Acts forced counties to supplement recruitment to the Royal Navy.

Food riots and widespread famine in England following poor harvests and high prices caused by the war with France.

1796

Napoleon marched into Italy. He defeated an Austrian army and the French were soon in possession of northern Italy, the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhineland.

Chaplains’ Returns recorded baptisms, marriages and burials overseas.

Edward Jenner’s first vaccination against smallpox.

The Retreat near York opened, offering a more humane approach to the treatment of persons with mental illness.

The Supplementary Militia Act raised an additional 64,000 men, by ballot, to serve in the war against France.

The Army began to record deaths of serving personnel.

1797

In February 1797 a small force of 1,400 French landed accidentally in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire in an effort to burn Bristol. They quickly surrendered after seeing a group of Welsh women dressed in red cloaks, who they thought to be a Ridgment of soldiers. Perhaps thousands of local Welsh women dressed in their traditional scarlet tunics and tall black felt hats had come to witness any fighting between the French and the local men of the militia. The by then inebriated invasion force mistook them for Redcoats. Although a fiasco, the incident caused a run on the Bank of England.

There were serious naval mutinies in 1797.

· In April 1797, the Channel Fleet at Spithead refused to put to sea and there was violence until an agreement was reached for better pay, food and leave conditions.

· There followed mutinies at the Nore and Yarmouth. The public turned against them. By 13 June 1797 the mutiny was over and 30 sailors were hanged.

· They were in reality more like collective bargaining for better conditions and Nelson commented that the mutinies had been the most manly I ever heard of and does the British sailor infinite honour.

1798

Napoleon led an invasion of Egypt in a bid to dominate the Mediterranean. However his fleet was annihilated by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile on 1 August 1798. 11 of 13 battleships were destroyed or captured. Napoleon abandoned his army in Egypt and returned to France.

Encouraged by Napoleon’s failure in Egypt, a Second Coalition emerged of Britain, Austria, Russia and Turkey. The French Revolution was under threat.

There was a United Ireland uprising in 1798, though brutally crushed. The ‘Irish Question’ had become a perennial concern.

There is an In Our Time podcast on The Irish Rebellion of 1798, led by the United Irishmen, who were inspired by American and French revolutions, and the impact this had across Ireland.

There were big increases in taxation to fund the war. There was an introduction of the first income tax, at 10% on incomes over £200.

The second phase of the French Revolutionary Wars was the First War with Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798-1802.

Battle of the Nile, 1798

Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population.

1799

The Russians and Austrians advanced in Italy, Switzerland and Germany. British and Russian troops landed in Holland and seized the Dutch fleet.

Napoleon seized dictatorial power and became First Consul in November 1799. He offered peace terms, which were rejected.

1800

In Summer 1800 there were attempts at coordination of attacks on France, but the plan unravelled and the French rallied.

The tide had turned again and now Britian was threatened. There was rationing and starvation at home.

Napoleon defeated the Austrians in a surprise attack after marching over the Alps, at Marengo.

Pitt's Bill for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom.

1801

United Kingdom population was 16.3 million.

In March 1801 General Abercrombie landed in Egypt and defeated a larger French army at the Battle of Alexandria.

On 2 April 1801, Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen.

In November 1801 William Pitt admitted that the intended war aims were unattainable.

The Treaty of Amiens was agreed in March 1802 with an enlarged France getting control over its gains including the Low Countries.

Food prices fell and tourists streamed abroad, even to see post Revolutionary France.

Napoleon ordered a naval building programme and openly planned another invasion of Egypt.

1802

Frances fresh global visions meant that before long, a relatively minor issue sparked fresh conflict. The Treaty of Amiens required Britian to abandon Malta, but the British stayed on. An ultimatum expired and on 12 May 1803, Britain declared war.

The Napoleonic Wars 1803 to 1815

The ordinary folk in Britain and France were horrified at the resumption of hostilities.

However even those who had initially supported the revolution had become disillusioned. Frances involvement of the neutral Switzerland turned Wordsworth against it. There remained a hardline few, such as Ebenezer Aldred, Unitarian minister of Wakefield who thought Britain was guilty of imperialism and decadence and was shocked at the near naked portrayal of Britannia. He held the unpatriotic view that the Beast foreseen in the biblical Book of Revelation was Great Britain, a wicked and degenerate nation, guilty of imperialism, slave trading and sodomy, not to mention its regrettable habit of stamping the image of the Whore of Babylon on its coins.

The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 improved conditions of apprentices working in cotton mills.

1803

Napoleon turned his attention to an invasion olf Britain. He built up a force of 2,500 gunboats and landing craft and an ‘Army of England’ of 165,000. There was a fervour across Britian and panic in Colchester that the invasion had been sighted.

· The regular army was avoided by respectable English workmen. It was always short of men, though bolstered by Irish and Scottish recruits.

· But a formidable local volunteer force grew up. The Volunteer Corps was a British voluntary part-time organization for the purpose of home defence in the event of invasion, during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. For instance the Leeds Volunteer Corps (1794–1802, 1803–1808) was line infantry regiment of volunteers in the West Riding of Yorkshire. They were active during the Napoleonic Wars and were part of the British Volunteer Corps and units like the East York Militia Regiment and the North Holderness Volunteer Infantry and the volunteer infantry of West Yorkshire.

· By 1805 there were 800,000 men doing some form of military service, 20% of the active male population, comparable to the world wars of the twentieth century.

· Recruitment was encouraged by propaganda but also by opportunities for rape and pillage.

Defence preparations were undertaken extensively, mainly focused south of Great Yarmouth, but extending from Cornwall to Scotland. 168 Martello Towers were constructed. The Volunteers role was to slow down the invaders and while non combatants were to leave the scene of an invasion with all the food in their possession, volunteer units would muster at rendezvous points.

This was a war for Britain’s existence. Success by Napoleon would mean long military occupation; dividing up of the United Kingdom; destruction of Britain’s naval power; annexation of its colonies; diversion of its trade to France; and an end to the Industrial Revolution.

1804

The first railway steam locomotive.

Napoleon became Emperor of France.

One sixth of British men served in the army or navy.

1805

In 1805 Napoleon summoned his fleet on the Channel for an invasion of Britain, but Admiral Villeneuve had cold feet and Napoleon angrily abandoned the venture.

Napoleon marched his army to Germany and Austria.

He defeated the Austrians and the Russians at:

· The Battle of Ulm on 20 October 1805

· The Battle of Austerlitz on 21 October 1805.

After Austerlitz, William Pitt retorted, Roll up the map of Europe, it will not be wanted these ten years.

However on 21 October 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, the French and Spanish fleet was destroyed.

· Nelson asked that every man will do his duty.

· It was a one sided battle, and the Royal Navy was dominant.

· Two third of the Franco Spanish fleet of 33 ships of the line were captured or destroyed by 29 British ships, at a cost of 448 British lives.

· French casualties were dreadful- 571 of the 643 crew of the Redoutable were killed.

There is an In Our Time podcast on The Battle of Trafalgar (1805).

See the Royal Navy in Napoleonic Times in Farndales and the Sea.

Napoleon did not give up, and began the construction across Europe of a fresh fleet.

Despite dominance at sea, the French continued to dominate the Continent. Britain could have little influence there without allies.

1806

William Pitt died in January 1806 after being Prime Minister for 18 years. There followed a period of three years of political instability with three Prime Ministers, including the Ministry of All the Talents.

A military academy opened at Woolwich for the training of officers.

Napoleon’s attempted economic blockade of Britain.

1807

Napoleon signed the Treaty of Tilsit with defeated Russia in 1807. Britain was alone.

Economically, Britain was faring well. Agriculture had increased its farmed acreage. The French sought to attack merchant shipping which damaged British trade, but the French suffered worse.

Napoleon’s Continental System required control of the whole European coastline. Vast organised smuggling ensued. France’s customs revenue collapsed.

Sanctions and counter sanctions

Napoleon resorted to a land blockade to wreck British trade. London retaliated with orders in 1807 to forbid any ship from any country to trade with Napoleonic Europe.

The Peninsular War (1807-1814)

To close off access, Napoleon tried to take over Portugal and Spain in 1807 to 1808. Resistance was provoked including a 3 May 1808 uprising in Madrid (depicted by Goya’s painting).

Britain gave financial, naval and military assistance to the rebels.

Abolition of Slavery

A consequence of the trade war was the abolition of slavery. Politicians saw its abolition as morally and politically attractive. There were high costs associated with slavery and the British were using freed slaves as soldiers. The French had brutally reintroduced slavery in 1803 and ant slavery became patriotic. The import and use of slaves in Britain was outlawed by a large majority, but continued in the colonies.

There is an In Our Time podcast about the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the life of William Wilberforce.

1808

The County Asylums Act encouraged the construction of private asylums for the mentally ill.

Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington), dismissed by Napoleon as the sepoy general, having gained experience in India, led the British military force in the Peninsula. The army was British, with only 20% English, and largely Irish and Scottish. It was initially only 30,000 strong relying heavily on Spanish and Portuguese allies. It was initially chaotic and the British army gained a reputation fort drunkenness, looting and rape. Wellington himself admitted that some of his men were the scum of the earth, but they were also adventurous and patriotic.

The Battle of Sahagun on 21 December 1808 was a dawn attack in the snow by the British 15th Hussars, routing a French cavalry brigade and setting the standard for British cavalry in the Peninsular War; ‘Success to the Fifteenth; and ‘God Save the King’.

1809

The Battle of Corunna, 16 January 1809 ensured the escape of the British army from Spain on 16th January 1809, during the Peninsular War, with the death of Sir John Moore at the moment of success.

The Battle of Talavera, 27 to 28 July 1809. The British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley combined with a Spanish army under General Cuesta to fight in operations against French-occupied Madrid. At nightfall, the French army withdrew a short distance after several of its attacks had been repulsed; the allies, having suffered comparable casualties to the French, made no attempt to pursue. The British victory south of Madrid on 28th July 1809 over Joseph Bonaparte, the King imposed on Spain by Napoleon, and his French army in the Peninsular War.

1811

With Spanish and Portuguese allies, exports from the Iberian Peninsula and from South American colonies increased to Britain.

George III’s bouts of mental illness meant that his unpopular son, George became Prince Regent.

Population of the United Kingdom reached 18.5 million.

First Luddite activity, in Nottingham.

1812

In February 1812, a government of Pitts’ supporters against the Whigs, led by Spencer Percival, brought some stability.

However in May 1812, Spencer Percival was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons.

There followed a period of political chaos, until he was succeeded by Robert Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool, who remained in office for the next 15 years.

The Battle of Salamanca on 22 July 1812 saw Wellington’s victory over the French army of Marshal Marmont, during the Peninsular War, leading to the re-capture of Madrid; also known as the Battle of Los Arapiles or Les Arapiles

Napoleon recklessly invaded Russia in 1812 with his Grand Armée of 220,000, which was decimated by Russian resistance, the burning of Moscow as the French sought to winter there, disease and the weather.

The British funded a rejuvenated alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria who were able to field a 700,000 strong force, funded by income tax, trade with India and taxes levied in India.

The textile industry faced continued barriers to trade imposed by Napoleon’s Continental System. When bad weather exacerbated hardships in 1811 and 1812, weavers, knitters and croppers in Lancashire and Yorkshire inspired by the mythical Ned Ludd, began to break up new machinery. There were pitched battles.

The Framebreaking Act imposed the death penalty for Luddites.

Gas lamps became widely used to light streets.

From 1812 to 1815, Britain was at war with the recently independent United States. The fighting took place along America's Canadian frontiers and Atlantic coastlines. Militarily, the conflict ended in stalemate, but it had a lasting impact on the communities of North America. A dispute arose with the US about its trade with Napoleonic Europe. The Americans attacked in July 1812 and there was a period of naval skirmishing. The American invasion of Canada was resisted, and a 3,700 British force landed in US and burned Washington. Peace was agreed in 1815.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.

1813

The Battle of Vitoria was Wellington’s decisive defeat of Joseph Bonaparte’s French army on 21 June 1813 in North-Eastern Spain in the Peninsular War.

Between 16 to 19 October 1813, the French lost 60,000 men at the Battle of Leipzig, or the Battle of the Nations, the bloodiest confrontation before the First World War.

1814

Wellington’s army crossed the Pyrenees. He ordered his soldiers not to pillage and pay for supplies. The French landowners were delighted.

Support for Napoleon dissolved. Napoleon abdicated on 6 April 1814. As compensation he was given the Isle of Elba off the Italian coast.

The Battle of Toulouse on 10 April 1814 sealed the end for Napoleon.

There was celebration and relief in Britain. A miniature naval battle was displayed on the Serpentine.

James Pigot published national directories comprising information about professional people, gentry and nobles, clergy, and coach and carrier services.

1815

Napoleon left Elba on 1 March 1815, with 600 men and regained power by May.

The British were forced to finance a final campaign allied with Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Holland.

Napoleon marched against a British army mustering in Belgium, when the Prussians were still on their way to support him.

At the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, a ‘near run thing’, the British suffered 15,000 casualties, almost one in four. The British army put up a stoical resistance, calmed by calls of Steady lads, steady. Victor Hugo contrasted the precision and foresight of the British against the guesswork and supernatural instinct of Napoleon. The British disciplined volleys, controlled stillness in the face of violence, founded a new British ideal of masculine courage. The names of soldiers are recorded in medal rolls.

Impressment into the Royal Navy ended.

It has been estimated that British military losses between 1793 and 1815 from combat, shipwreck and disease was 210,000, which compares to the First World War. The war effort was supported by heavy taxation, state efficiency and political and military leadership.

Britain emerged the richest and most powerful state on the world stage, although mass unemployment followed demobilisation of the army. Britain would now make a permanent impact on global affairs. It’s coal powered and mechanised economy and worldwide network was now the bulwark for what followed.

Until the 1860s the British and Russians would dominate the western and eastern spheres, and mass European migration across the rest of the world, would bring global influence.

Between 1815 and 1850 Britain struggled though with its explosive population and with food shortages. It also faced new problems with epidemic diseases.

The lavishness of the Regency and the widely detested Beau Brummel were quickly rejected – Beau Brummel died in penniless exile.

The weight of taxation, debt and a growing poor mean there was pressure for reform.

Mount Tambora is a volcano on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, then part of the Dutch East Indies, and its 1815 eruption was the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded human history. There were food shortages in 1816 to 1817.

During the war a booming population meant an extension of cultivation across common land. Landlords and tenant farmers made profits, but the poor lost customary rights by the enclosure of the land.

In 1815, the first of the Corn Laws helped farmers, but disastrously impacted upon the poor. It gave protection to domestic producers by excluding imports of grain until the price reached 80s a quarter for wheat and other measures for other cereals.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Corn Laws, cause of one of the most explosive political debates in the 19th century.

There were concerns that Britain was heading for famine. These were the circumstances in which Thomas Malthus argued that population inevitably outran food supply and would be checked by natural forces. His ideas were influential until the 1850s He feared that the Poor Law would encourage dependency and the breeding of too many children.

The population in England grew from 8.6M in 1801 to 17M in 1851, about 98%. The urban population tripled in the same period. In the 1820s, London doubled, Bradford grew 78%.

One way to escape this cycle was to import more food, and security of the seas through naval supremacy remained a priority.

John Stuart Mill recognised a divide between supporters of:

· Jeremy Bentham (1748 to 1832) and his utilitarianism, which saw the universe as self regulating. He advocated the seeking of the greatest happiness to the greatest number. The main driver was individual choice, ot society. The role of Government is to regulate individuals through reward and punishment. He advocated all seeing inspectors in prisons, which were adopted in Millbank and Pentonville.

· Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 to 1834) promoted paternalism and interventionism. He thought that society needed leadership and high minded government. Coleridge with Wordsworth had by now abandoned his youthful hopes for the French Revolution and found consoilation in the English countryside. He disliked the market and everything being sold for the highest price.

Lord Liverpool’s government saw the early stages of a professional civil service and the idea of His Majesty’s Opposition, as a government in making.

Britain began a period of global dominance not seen until the US from the 1980s.

There was however some reluctance to widen the imperial project.

· There was a strong post war pressure to reduce taxation and debt.

· Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary thought it was not our business to collect trophies.

· The navy was cut back from 713 ships in 1814 to 121 in 1818.

· There was an initial desire fort a friendly relaxation of the costs of empire.

· Military spending was about 2 to 3% of national income, but Britain’s imperial wealth allowed for a relatively powerful military force to be sustained.

· The navy had about 50,000 men by mid century.

· However the army was generally over stretched. In 1857 at the time of the Indian Mutiny, there were only 23,000 British soldiers in northern India. There was a massacre of British troops in Afghanistan in 1841 and 1880 and at Isandlwana in 1879.

· However from 1815, Britain was in practice invulnerable to invasion and there was no calculated attack on its empire until Japan in 1941.

· Britain continued to dominate the seas and in the 1880s, the Royal; Navy had 38 large battleships. It adopted a two power standard, to remain larger than the next two strongest naval powers combined.

The context of this dominance was a period of global fragmentation of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century, the Chinese Empire from the mid eighteenth century, and the Ottoman empire after defeat by Austria and Russia in the late eighteenth century. The Spanish and Portuguese empires had been finished off by the Napoleonic Wars. There were new and sometimes aggressive nations appearing in Africa and Asia, such as the Asante and Zulus.

The British started to view their empire as a duty as well as an interest, spreading Christian civilisation, constitutional freedoms and humanitarian rights. Cecil Rhodes quipped that this was philanthropy plus 5% profit. However Whig policies were largely driven by support for civil and religious liberties.

The Treaties of 1814 and 1815 left Britain and Russia as the dominant European powers. Alexander I promoted a distinct policy of his Holy Alliance to establish permanent international organisation based on religious mystic principles.

The Portuguese government repeatedly asked Britain for assistance; the Swedes asked for patrols in the Baltic; Britain discouraged Russia and Prussia from intervening in France; and helped to bring Greek independence. It promoted Italian independence from the 1850s and defended the Ottoman empire from France, Egypt, Austria and Russia. It sent a fleet to counter moves by Prussia and Austria in Denmark.

Britain’s soft power spread the adoption of British styles of clothing, the English language and its system of government, the mother of all Parliaments. British style democracies were established in Belgium (1832), the Netherlands (1848), Denmark (1848), Italy (1860), Sweden (1867) and Spain (1874). British economic structures became a global model along with its technology (railways and steam power) and institutions.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain‘s overseas possessions had increased from 26 to 43. During the nineteenth century, its expansion averaged 100,000 square miles each year.

Yet Britain had little appetite for expansion. Parts of Indonesia were returned to Holland in 1824. The Ionian islands were ceded to Greece. There was no attempt to regain Corsica who had asked to join the Empire and it turned down request from Ethiopia, Mexico, Uruguay, Sarawak, Katanga and Morocco. Britain was not at all sure she wanted an empire. She preferred to see it as a free association. Disraeli’s famous phrase in full went: There never was a jewel in the crown of England that was so truly costly.

British presence in India had initially been commercial, through the Chartered Honourable East India Company (“HEIC”). Over the second half of the eighteenth century it was increasingly government under a nominal Mughal sovereignty as an agent of the British government. It was of huge economic and strategic importance to Britain. It was governed for a mix of motives of improvement, destiny (a ‘new Rome’), and fortune. In 1835 the Utilitarians James Mill and Thomas Babington Macaulay drafted an education policy for India focused on the teaching of English and European science, philosophy and history.

(Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 534 to 541).

1816

A Whig-Radical Alliance in 1816 abandoned income tax, though this meant the government became more dependent on regressive indirect taxes.

· The opposition Whigs were led by Earl Grey.

· The Radicals were small in size and divided.

· The Whigs and Radicals combined had about 150 seats in 1815.

The ‘Year without a Summer’ led to dire harvests.

1817

Maps of most English counties published by the Greenwood Brothers.

1818

Spending on poor relief grew from £5.4M in 1814 to £8M in 1818.

1819

The Peterloo Massacre on 16 August 1819 – 15 dead and several hundred injured.

1820

There were violent plots and riots. The Cato Street Conspiracy was an attempt to murder all the British cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London. The police had an informer and the plotters fell into a police trap and 13 were arrested, while one policeman was killed. Five conspirators were executed, and five others were transported to Australia. How widespread the Cato Street conspiracy was is uncertain. It was a time of unrest; rumours abounded. Malcolm Chase noted that, "the London-Irish community and a number of trade societies, notably shoemakers, were prepared to lend support, while unrest and awareness of a planned rising were widespread in the industrial north and on Clydeside."

First Europeans settled in New Zealand.

George IV, 1820-1830

1821

Population of the United Kingdom was 20.9 million.

Michael Faraday invented the electric motor.

The Greek War of Independence attracted people from Britain including Lord Byron.

During the 1820s there was a vision to transform the world through free trade. Its prophet was Richard Cobden, co founder of the Anti Corn Law League. It probably made Britain overall poorer, but its benefits were cheaper food, a stimulation of world trade and cheaper Brish manufactured goods. It came to be felt that it was so beneficial that no government, such as China and Japan, had a right to deny its benefits to their own people. In part this might explain a contradictory approach to stop the African slave trade whilst exporting opium to China.

There is an In Our Time podcast on David Ricardo and his argument for free trade after the Napoleonic Wars. He argued that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.

1823

The requirement that either bride or groom were to have been resident in a parish for 4 weeks was reduced to 15 days.

1824

The Ashanti War.

Act to repeal the law allowing magistrates to fix wages of workmen.

Act repealing law preventing workmen seeking work from travelling to different parts of the country.

Repeal of the Combination Laws (preventing fixing of wages by 'combinations' or masters and workers) enabled workers to establish trade unions.

1825

The opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway – the first public steam railway.

1826

White’s first commercial directory published for Hull and listing names and addresses.

1827

Greenwood’s Map of London.

The Shepherd’s Calendar, a poetic account of the cotemporary farming year by John Clare, was published.

Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh.

In 1827 Lord Liverpool resigned as Prime Minister after a stroke.

1828

Perry’s Bankrupt and Insolvent Gazette published monthly.

An Act to Regulate the Carrying of Passengers in Merchant Vessels regulated the safety of emigrants to the colonies.

1829

The first Bobbies appointed by Sir Robert Peel.

Stephenson’s steam locomotive won the Rainhill Trials.

The Catholic Relief Act 1829 allowed Irish and British Catholics to sit in the House of Commons.

1830

Wellington and Robert Peel became convinced that Catholic emancipation was politically necessary to avoid Ireland becoming ungovernable. Many Tories did not accept this. It was some of the opponents of Catholic emancipation who demanded a more representative House of Commons.

Wellington resigned in November 1830, partly in exasperation at the rebel opposition to emancipation and calls for constitutional reform.

Economic recession was made worse by taxes and Church tithes and there was some disorder and riot (the Swing Riots) in November to December 1830. There were protests against low wages and poor law overseers.

Lord Charles Grey, the Whig Leader, took office as Prime Minister, with a manifesto to reform the constitution.

There were European revolutions in Belgium and France in 1830.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened.

A significant rise in those emigrating from Britain following the agricultural depression.

The Plymouth Brethren established in Plymouth.

Rural Rides by William Cobbett published a detailed account of the English countryside.

1830-1837 - William IV

1831

Opening of the first great railway between Liverpool and Manchester

The Parish Register Abstract collated all parish records before 1813.

The Royal Geographical Society was formed in London.

Population of the United Kingdom was 24.1 million.

Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of England provided details on towns and villages in England.

A cholera epidemic spread by infected drinking water killed about 7,000 in London. But the same disease killed 18,000 in centrally administered Paris.

New Social problems gave rise to new ideas in the 1830s:

· Owenism. Robert Owen (1771) to 1858) was a Welsh businessman who owned a textile mill at New Lanark with Jeremy Bentham. He adopted a new enlightened model providing schools and houses for his workers with ambitions to change human society. He campaigned for cooperative societies in England, for factory regulation and trade unions.

· Young Englandism was a romantic gothic revival aspiring to a more humane and fraternal society. It drew on a romantic view of paternalism in medieval aristocracy and was a prototype to one nation Toryism. It was the political starting place for a clever young novelist, Benjamin Disraeli, whose novels Coningsby and Sybil or the Two Nations expressed its ideas. He promoted the idea that legitimate rule involved social responsibility. Paternalistic Toryism campaigned in the 1830s to limit hours and improve factory conditiopns, and to protect women and child workers.

Young England ideas were taken forward by Richard Oastler and Michael Sadler, both Leeds linen merchants.

Industrialists retorted that the new Tory paternalists cared less about farm labourers on large estates.

The new ideas were not necessarily supported by those affected by social change. Factory work could given women greater independence. The rural poor found escape from over populated villages to towns and factories, escaping dependency. The work was risky, but provided more regular work and there were opportunities for adventure and new social; and cultural opportunities.

Problems arose from the lack of good governance, outwith the traditional control of church and parish in rural communities.

1831

The constitution was archaic and unjust. However it was not a significant issue among ordinary folk. The system worked ok. Rotton boroughs such as Old Sarum which allowed 7 burgesses to elect two MPs had some benefit in allowing unrepresented talent to find a way into politics. Potwalloper boroughs bizarrely allowed everyone with a hearth to boil a pot to vote, but brought wide representation such as 50,000 mostly working class voters in Preston. Those without the vote used petitions to have some voice. Antiquated, not ideal, but not seen to be a big issue.

The Great Reform Bill of 1832, the "Great Charter of 1832" aimed to bring significant change to the electoral system including the abolition of ‘rotton boroughs’. It passed by a single vote. However it was defeated in committee. William IV, convinced of the need for Reform, dissolved Parliament. The elections of October 1831 returned a pro Reform majority.

· Supporters of constitutional reform gravitated to the Whigs, who before long started to call themselves Liberals.

· Opposition came from the Tories, led by Sir Robert Peel, wanted to preserve the 1688 constitution and started to call themselves Conservatives.

A second Bill was defeated in the Lords in October 1831.

1832

A third Bill was amended and delayed in the Lords and Grey resigned in May 1832. Wellington failed to form a Tory government and Grey returned to office. The Lords surrendered and the Reform Act passed in June 1832.

The Representation of the People Act 1832 was not however democratic.

· It abolished potwalloper boroughs which had provided some working class representation.

· It disenfranchised all in receipt of poor law relief.

· It expressly excluded women.

· It introduced forty shilling freeholders in the counties, providing a new category of voters who were substantial tenants, more likely to vote with their landlords.

The total electorate nonetheless increased by 45% from 497,000 to 811,000, 18% of adult males.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Great Reform Act of 1832, a landmark in British political history.

The Reform Bill had two important clauses, which said (1) that some of the Burrows were rotten and that the people who lived in them should not be allowed either to stand or to have seats; (2) that ‘householders, leaseholders and copyholders who had £10 in towns pr freeholders who paid 40s in the country for 10 years or leaseholders (in the country) and copyholders for 21 years in towns (paying a rent of £50) should in some cases (in towns) have a vote (for 1 year) but others for 41 years (in the country) paying a leasehold or copyhold of £10 should not. When this unforgettable Law was made known there was great rejoicing and bonfires were lit all over the country (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

Electoral registers compiled.

The Whigs benefitted by winning a large majority at an early election. They slashed public spending to 10%.

The Anatomy Act 1832 allowed unclaimed corpses to be used for medical purposes. This partly explained the fear and hatred of the workhouse.

1833

Parliament enacted a watered down Factory Act 1833 which attempted to regulate factory hours in the textile industry.

Slavery was abolished in the British Colonies in 1833 and 780,993 slaves were freed. Canada (as part of the British Empire) became a destination for American slaves to escape on the “Underground Railroad”.

The death penalty was ended for all but murder.

1834

There was a trend towards a more mechanistic approach based on Utilitarianism and political economy, focused on science, method, discipline and economy. There were a new breed of inspectors, such as Edwinb Chadwick who became Secretary of the new Poor Law Commission and control of the General Board of Health, which introduced for instance the self flushing narrow diameter sewer.

The Poor Law was reformed in 1834. The New Poor Law Act 1834 led to the construction of over 300 workhouses over the next five years. Outdoor relief forced all paupers into workhouses. There was considerable opposition particularly in northern England.

See Poverty.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Poor Laws, the 19th century legislation intended to discourage poor people from seeking relief instead of work, with handouts replaced by the workhouse.

The palace of Westminster caught fire and burned down in 1834.

In the 1830s, life for farm workers was hard and they could not bear more cuts to their pay. In Dorset they organised a union to fight back but this brought harsh punishments. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six agricultural labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, England, who, in 1834, were convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. They were arrested on charges under an obscure act during a labour dispute over cut wages before being convicted in R v Loveless and Others and sentenced to penal transportation to Australia. People around the country campaigned and won the freedom of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. They were pardoned in 1836 after mass protests by sympathisers and support from Lord John Russell and returned to England between 1837 and 1839.

Slavery

In 1814 Castlereagh had pressed the French to agree to abolish the slave trade, during Napoleon’s brief internment on Elba. Wellington put similar pressure on Spain and Portugal. The Treaty of Vienna in 1815 included a condemnation of the slave trade.

Anti slavery campaigning peaked in 1833, with 5,000 petitions and about 1.5M signatures.

Parliament emaciated 800,000 slaves across the empire in 1834 and paid £20M in compensation to the owners in order to achieve this.

In 1843 British subjects were forbidden to own slaves anywhere in the world. The Boers responded by trekking out of British territory.

From 1808 to 1870, the Royal Navy had a permanent squadron, sometimes a sixth of its ships, patrolling from Freetown to intercept slave traders from West Africa. This was thankless and gruelling. There was exposure to yellow fever. France and US refused to allow the navy to search their ships. When the trade continued, the navy adopted more aggressive tactics, including the blockading of rivers. In 1861 it occupied Lagos. Over 60 years it captured hundreds of slave ships and freed 160,000 slaves.

Britain signed 45 treaties with African rulers to stop the traffic at source. Its campaign against the aggressive slaving kingdom of Asante, was at the request of Africans on the coast. Central Africa was devastated by Muslim slavers who took 25,000 to 30,000 people each year during the 1860s. The consul General in Cairo in the 1860s, Thomas Reade, spied out Egyptian slave markets in disguise.

Palmerstone ordered seizure of Portuguese slave ships in 1839 and declared Brazilian slave ships as pirates.

The American Civil War reversed US policy n 1862.

Whilst not in its economic interests, British was sufficiently wealthy to allow its humanitarian and religious lobby to prevail.

In 1885, Britain pressed for the insertion of an anti slavery agreement in the Berlin Act on the partition of Africa.

There was no panacea. There was a huge multiplication of indentured labour and unsaleable slaves were held cruelly by slavers.

There was a difficult relationship with settlers. Māoris from New Zealand first visited London in the 1820s. They encouraged white settlers in the 1820s and 1830s. Many settlers were innocuous, even benevolent. However others were less scrupulous. Captain William Hobson signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 with Māori rulers, intended to control white settlement and regulate land sale. British troops ended up fighting the Māori in the 1860s to defend the settlers whose aggressive behaviour the British government deplored.

(Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 543 to 547).

1835

The Merchant Shipping Act led to the listing of all crews.

1836

The Tithe Commutation Act ended the ancient system of paying tythes in goods. Fixed charges were introduced. Tithe maps were prepared across the country.

The Prisoners’ Counsel Act 1836 regularised the adversarial system in court.

1837

Queen Victoria, 1837-1901

On the death of William IV, Queen Victoria, though asleep at the time and thus in her nightdress, showed great devotion to duty by immediately ascending the throne. In this bold act she was assisted by Lord Melbourne and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who were both properly dressed. Finding herself on the throne, Queen Victoria immediately announced her intention of being Good and plural but not amused (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

An image of Victorian England conveys convention, ugliness, humourlessness, hypocrisy, harshness and snobbery. The reality was more complex. There was propriety and convention, but also emotion and an enthusiasm for modernity.

This was not a time of chaos, but of growth of new cities, roads and sewers, viaducts, telegraph wires, gas, water, schooling.

There was a Victorian energy and confidence.

There was a degree of cultural unity overlapping the new class structure through a taste for similar things such as horse racing, cricket, nooks, poetry and paintings.

Victoria was not snobbish, nor racist, nor insular. She was not typically English and embodied an international idea of traditional monarchy, becoming in time the matriarch of a European royal clan. Albert, the Prince Consort was intelligent and earnest. She suirvived six assassination attempts.

London’s first railway station (Euston) opened.

Beginning of civil registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths (“BMD”).

Burke’s Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland published details of land owners and holders of high rank outside the nobility.

1838

There was a growing conviction, in the aftermath of the New Poor Law, that the government, elected by the propertied class, was unfair and hostile to ordinary people.

Chartism started in 1838. The People’s Charter was drafted by William Lovett, an Owenite activist, with its ‘six points’: universal male suffrage; the removal of the property qualification for MPs; annual elections; equal constituency sizes; payment for MPs; and secret ballots in elections. It soon bore 1.2M signatures.

Chartism brought together a range of causes – Owenism, trade unionism, factory reformers, temperance promoters, land reformers. They adopted Methodist like approaches with lectures, dances, sports, sermons etc.

There is an In Our Time podcast on Chartism.

Outbreaks of smallpox.

Samuel Morse demonstrated the telegraph.

The Public Record Office established in Chancery Lane.

1839

The Anti-Corn Law League, formed in Manchester in 1839, led by Richard Cobden and John Bright. It condemned trade barriers and aristocratic oppression. It was supported by a new business class, and by Evangelicals and Dissenters.

The corn laws were heavy duties levied on imported corn. The landowners and agriculturalists wished to keep foreign corn out of the country, by imposing duties on imported corn, so that the price of home grown corn would be kept up. The Corn Laws however caused suffering among the poor and crippled trade.

Farmers led a counter campaign.

The new Postage Scheme

1839-1841 - First War with China (the “Opium Wars”).

1839-1842 - First Afghan War

The County Police Act allowed voluntary rural forces.

1840

Railways were constructed at enormous speed in the 1840s and 1850s. Thackeray in 1860 recognised a new era of the railroad replacing an age of stage coaches, pack horses, highwaymen, druids and ancient Britons.

With these changes came a growth in ideas of freedom. Science was the embodiment of progress. The universe was seen as perpetually developing. The British considered themselves to be naturally free and became enthralled with free trade and libertarian language.

There was a harping for small government – criticism of grandmotherly government, harped later calls against the nanny state.

Yet Victorian Britain could be intrusive and authoritarian:

· The Factory Acts including the Factory Act 1833 instituted inspection and enforcement.

· The New Poor Law was unparallelled for its social intervention.

· The payment of income tax abolished in 1815 but reintroduced in 1842 required detailed declaration and inspection of matters long felt to be private matters.

· A series of Public Health and Sanitary Acts from 1848 allowed sanitary inspectors to enter private dwellings, order cleansing, stop nuisances and remove the sick to hospital.

· The Contagious Diseases Acts 1864 saw state intervention in vice.

· The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824 to curb rowdy blood sports such as bull baiting. It became Royal from 1840 and transformed perceptions from national toughness instilled by blood sports.

Local authorities tended to be less oppressive, but managed local issues financed by local rates including Poor Law guardians, elected school boards under the Education Act 1870 and watch committees supervising the police.

Introduction of the Penny Stamp.

Henry Mayhew described the condition of the poor in London in articles for the Morning Chronicle.

The 1840s were an era of emergencies – The First Opium War, the New Zealand wars, the First Anglo Aghan War, the First Sikh War and a dispute with France over influence in Spain.

It was also a time of economic boom across Europe as railways were built across Europe using British capital, entrepreneurs, workmen and equipment, which lasted until 1846.

Britain’s proactive pursuit of global free trade marked a tension in Anglo Chinese relations. Chinese consumers were eager to buy opium grown in India, and opium was a valuable asset to the East India Company including merchants such as Jardine & Matheson. The authorities in Peking insisted that this was stopped. For the Quing Empire much was at stake and contact with the outside world was seen as destabilising on the Chinese empire.

When Canton authorities destroyed opium stocks, the First Opium War stated (1840 to 1842). The British governments had other priorities, but felt it had to uphold its credibility.

The Chinese were alarmed by Royal Navy frigates sailing up the Pearl River to bombard and occupy Canton. The British were alarmed by Chinese resistance; some Manchu soldiers killed their families and committed suicide rather than surrender. Both were shocked by the cruelty of the other.

1841

The rural counter campaign against the corn laws gave the Tories a sweeping victory in 1841. The Tories now dominated the English counties. The Whigs dominated the larger towns, especially in the north, and Scotland and Ireland. He aimed to steer Britain into safer waters.

Sir Robert Peel (a Staffordshire landowner) became Prime Minister. He popularised the name Conservative. However Peel, though elected to support agriculture, recognised that Britian was becoming an industrial nation. He was supported by the Duke of Wellington.

In 1841, life expectancy was 41.7 years.

The first national census to record more detailed information.

The first excursion by rail organised by Thomas Cook. Launched by cabinet-maker Thomas Cook in Leicestershire in 1841, the business originally focused on one-day rail excursions.

Richard Beard opened the first photographic studio in Regent Street, London.

Population of the United Kingdom was 26.8 million.

The new Royal Fine Arts Commission was appointed in November 1841 to consider the decoration of the newly rebuilt Houses of Parliament, with a view to 'promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts' in England. The president was Prince Albert and it was not his finest hour. It was intended to shape the national memory with a school of mocumentary historical painting. There was disagreement between the traditional Whig aspirations with Albert’s aspirations to emphasise the royal.

1842

There were Chartist strikes and riots.

Peel slashed corn and other tariffs and reintroduced income tax for incomes over £150.

First Edition of the Illustrated London News.

The Treaty of Nanking 1842 ceded to Britain the sparsely inhabited island of Hong Kong, which had excellent anchorage, and opened five ‘treaty ports’, including Shanghai.

The aftermath was rebellion across China, the bloody Taiping rebellion (1850 to 1864), civil war in China between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict lasted for 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of Nanjing, renamed "Tianjing", in 1864. However, the last rebel forces were not defeated until August 1871. Estimates of the conflict's death toll range between 20 and 30 million people, representing 5–10% of China's population. While the Qing ultimately defeated the rebellion, the victory came at a great cost to the state's economic and political viability.

The retreat from Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War.

The Mines Act 1842 outlawed the employment of women and children under 10 in mines.

There was a shift from indirect taxes to Peel’s income tax.

The Mining and Collieries Act 1842 prohibited all underground work for women and girls, and for boys under 10.

1843

The New Zealand Wars

The Elizabeth Tower, originally named the Clock Tower, and popularly known as "Big Ben", was built as a part of Charles Barry's design for a new Palace of Westminster after the old palace was largely destroyed by fire on 16 October 1834. Although Barry was the chief architect of the neo-gothic palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for the design of the Clock Tower, which resembles earlier Pugin designs, including one for Scarisbrick Hall in Lancashire. Construction of the tower began on 28 September 1843.

1844

The Companies Act 1844 required the registration of all companies.

The Factories Act 1844 restricted hours of work for women and children and required registers to be kept listing child employees.

Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Classes in England, based on his work in Manchester.

The Railways Act 1844 extended rail travel. 200,000 ‘navvies’ were employed to construct new lines across the country.

The Bank Charter Act 1844 allowed only the Bank of England to issue banknotes in England.

The First Sikh War 1844.

1845

Failure of the potato crop in Ireland, leading to the famine. Ireland lose 16% of its population between 1845 and 1852.

The General Inclosure Act. An Act to facilitate the Inclosure and Improvement of Commons and Lands held in common. Enclosure, or the process that ended traditional rights on common land formerly held in the open field system and restricted the use of land to the owner, is one of the causes of the Agricultural Revolution and a key factor behind the labour migration from rural areas to gradually industrializing cities.

Kelly’s Directories began.

The Lunacy and County Asylum Acts described those with mental illness as patients and provided for inspection by Masters in Chancery of asylums. Mentally ill persons in workhouses were moved to asylums.

The first Medical Directory published with names, addresses ad qualifications of medical practitioners.

1846

There was a very hot summer. This was the start of a period of economic crisis across Europe.

The Hungry Forties was a period of economic slump across Europe which began in 1846. A speculative bubble of railway building burst. There was a dread of mass hunger and a revolutionary feel across Europe. This was a period of self examination in Britain.

An unknown plant disease arrived from America and started to cause an ecological catastrophe. Potatoes provided a staple cheap diet but harvests failed across Europe. Ireland, whose population had risen to 8M (England’s population was 15M) suffered worst. The famine left a dark stain on English history and bred hatred in years to come.

· In fact in September 1845, Peel imported American maize for Ireland to feed 500,000 for three months.

· In January 1846 a suspension of the Corn Laws allowed untaxed imports.

· The Public Works (Ireland) Bill provided employment.

· Irish nationalists tended to minimise the issue to avoid begging to England.

After the temporary suspension of the Corn Laws, they were formally abolished in January 1846.

There was angry debate and a split in the Conservative party. Two thirds of the party agreed with Pitt that the agricultural sector needed support, as the provider of church revenue, justice and provision for the poor. Liberals and Radicals had overwhelmingly (95%) voted for repeal. Peel’s followers, including William Ewart Gladstone, gravitated to the Liberals. The repeal had little immediate economic effect, but it split the Conservative party.

Peel’s government fell after repealing the Corn Laws in June 1846.

A Whig Government under Lord John Russell came to power.

The end of the Corn Laws was the end of a political idea which saw Britain as primarily an agricultural country, feeding itself, with a paternalistic landed elite, the vision of Burke, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

By 1846 over half the population lived in towns.

The Whigs continued the public works programme in Ireland which employed over 700,000 at its peak.

1847

In January 1847, direct food distribution in Ireland through soup kitchens fed 3M people a day. Voluntary contributions reached £435,000 (about £100M today).

However the assistance to Ireland was not enough in the face of the famine. It was immense in scale and duration and could not have been prevented. The Whig government might have lacked foresight, but it wasn’t guilty of deliberate heartlessness. Public opinion blamed the Irish landlords and prosperous tenant farmers for failing to meet their obligation to feed the poor.

A typhus epidemic killed more the 30,000 people.

The Factories Act 1847, also known as the Ten Hours Act restricted the working hours of women and young persons (13–18) in textile mills to 10 hours per day. The practicalities of running a textile mill were such that the Act should have effectively set the same limit on the working hours of adult male mill-workers.

The Consolidated General Order regulated life in workhouses across the country.

1848

Chartism continued to campaign for parliamentary suffrage. The climax in April 1848 was a mass meeting at Kennington Common. Revolution was in the air. 85,000 special constables were recruited and Queen Victoria retired to the Isle of Wight. There were rousing speeches, but the meeting broke up peacefully. The petition was taken to Westminster, but again rejected.

Chartism then faded from public consciousness. In Britain, fundamental liberties had already been won in 1688. Britain had developed a tradition for peaceful protest. Extremism within Chartism was seen as alien. There was a feeling that the undemocratic government nevertheless responded to public demands.

The California gold rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood in the Compromise of 1850. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation, and the California genocide.

Year of Revolutions across Europe. First stirrings of rebellion arose in Switzerland and Naples. On 24 February 1848 there was an uprising in Paris, which installed a democratic republic. Revolution spread across Germany, the Habsburg Empire and Italy.

The springtime of revolution started to turn more ugly. There was a workers’ uprising in Paris in June 1848. Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President of the French Republic in December 1848.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ The Communist Manifesto.

Cholera epidemic claimed 52,000 lives.

Public Health Act 1848.

1849

The first edition of Who’s Who.

First edition of quarterly Notes and Queries.

1850

The first emigrants arrived in New Zealand.

The first census in the United States to name all household members.

1851

After the California Gold Rush began in 1848, many people went there from Australia, so the New South Wales government sought approval from the British Colonial Office for the exploitation of mineral resources, and offered rewards for finding gold. The Australian gold rushes began in 1851. Significant numbers of workers moved from elsewhere in Australia and overseas to where gold had been discovered. Gold had been found several times before, but the colonial government of New South Wales (Victoria did not become a separate colony until 1 July 1851) had suppressed the news out of the fear that it would reduce the workforce and destabilise the economy.

Population of the United Kingdom was 27.5 million.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition, was an international exhibition that took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World's Fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century. The event was organised by Henry Cole and Prince Albert. It was housed in the astonishing Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton. Victoria declared its opening the greatest day in our history. It was a source of national pride. Over the six months during which it was open, an average of 43,000 people attended each day, the largest indoor crowd ever.

Britain congratulated herself as the greatest and most highly civilised people.

Not everyone was so congratulatory of progress. John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold were scathing of materialism.

There is an In Our Time podcast about the 1851 Great Exhibition, housed in the magnificent Crystal Palace, the exhibition showcased Victorian Britain's technical ingenuity and industrial might.

The first Canadian census.

The first Religious census was held on 30 March 1851 recording all places of worship across England, Scotland and Wales.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Napoleon III in a coup. Britain reacted with relief that she had escaped the revolutionary violence of the last few years and with sympathy for the victims of oppression, and suspicion of the new French regime.

Britain was supportive of emerging nationalist leaders including the Hungarian leader and opponent of Habsburg domination in Hungary, Lajos Kossuth; and the Italian leaders Guiseppe Mazzini and Guiseppe Garibaldi.

1852

To Britain’s alarm Napoleon III revived Frances empirical ambitions, forbidden by the Treaty of Paris 1815. This was a blow to Cobdenite internationalists and the peace lobby.

Threatened by a new danger, Britain started to increase its naval expenditure.

At the start of two decades of global crisis: China was still in turmoil and there was unrest in British colonies.

This sparked off a move towards increased taxation for defence and consolidation of the empire.

The Burials Act allowed local authorities to open cemeteries to relieve the over crowding of churchyards.

Serious floods in Holmfirth in West Yorkshire.

1853-1856

Gladstone was chancellor in 1853 to 1854.

Gladstone’s budget of 1853 set some financial rules for the new era including a consensus on the need for curbing the spending of taxpayer’s money and avoiding redistribution.

Gladstone commissioned the Tory, Sir Stafford Northcote and the Whig Sir Charles Trevelyan to eliminate patronage in the civil service.

· The civil service was e3fficient and relatively accountable.

· However there was no clear line between politics and administration.

· The Civil Service Commission 1855 oversaw recruitment.

· The Order in Council 1870 required recruitment by competitive examination.,

· These reforms did not make the civil service democratic, but provided a barrier to corruption,.

· The new civil service was still small – In the 1860s, the Foreign Office had 85 and the whole UK civil service had 1,173 professional grade civil servants; 1801 superior grade and 10,000 general clerks.

· In time it became the domain of public school Oxbridge graduates. Balliol College Oxford grew a reputation for training a national elite.

The aim was to create a neutral state which was non political.

Alongside this the Crown took an increasingly apolitical role. It was a symbol and the apex of power. Walter Bagehot in his English Constitution (1867) referred to the dignified part in contrast to the efficient part. The Crown had a role to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. Vicvtoria continued to influence foreign policy, and Church and military appointments. The Crown generally benefitted from a growing legitimacy of state institutions which saw a decline in Republicanism.

The Crimean War, told in the story of John Farndale (FAR00337). There is an In Our Time podcast about The Charge of the Light Brigade.

This was the first war which was borught directly to public knowledge by the press led by the pioneering Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, early photography and the work of Alfred Tennyson.

Causes of the Crimean War: (1) The English had not yet fought against the Russians; (2) The Sick Man of Europe (cured later by Floremnce Nightingale); (3) Russia was too big and was pointing in the direction of India; (4) The French thought that the Holy Places ought to be guarded (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).

Public opinion was hostile to Russia and Austria and Napoleon III was ready for action against Russia. The British and French both saw intervention as a struggle against tyranny.

Britain’s military weakness and inadequate leadership was exposed:

· The stoical suffering and courage of the troops.

· Florence Nightuingale’s purge of care of the woundd and sick, alongside Mary Seacole who sold food and drink.

Britain became an ally to France, which gave Napoleon III an opportunity to remodel Europe.

A London cholera epidemic killed more then 10,000 people.

Records for naval ratings began to give details of birth, physical appearance, occupation and ships where served.

Vaccination against smallpox, administered through workhouses, became compulsory and registers of those vaccinated were kept from 1862.

1854

Large urban populations and dropping life expectancy corresponded to Dickens’ images of Coketown (1854). A French visitor to Birmingham commented, if the people go to hell, they won’t find anything new.

Yet these views missed as much as they say. There were horrible slums, but most people didn’t live in slums. Those in England were probably better off than elsewhere in the world.

The Battle of Balaclava.

The Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead.

1856

The Second War with China, the Arrow War, began when Chinese authorities arrested the crew of the British registered Arrow. The governor of Hiong Kong, Sir John Bowring tried to acquire greater commercial access by China in November 1856. The Chinese governor of Canton offered a reward for British heads. The Earl of Elgin was sent to negotiate. He disliked the Hong Kong merchants, but allowed a bombardment of Canton in December 1857 and an expedition to Peking in 1860.

There was a minor conflict with Persia in 1856 to 1857.

The County and Borough Police Act 1856 required the compulsory establishment of county forces.

1857-1859

The Indian Mutiny

The Bengal army mutinied in February, April and May 1857. This spread across north central India and involved peasants and princes.

Its causes were perhaps a combination of:

· British military exposure from the Crimean War.

· A prophesy of British defeat a hundred years after Clive’s victory in 1757.

· Political, economic and religious grievances.

· Deteriorating conditions of service in what had one been an attractive employment.

· Princely dislike of British takeovers of ‘lapsed’ states.

· The abolition of sati, the burning of widows to legalise remarriage, a historical practice in India in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre.

· Anonymous papers circulating declaring that Britain sought to overthrow all religions.

· The introduction of new rifle cartridges believed to be greased with pork and cow fat, polluting for Muslims and Hindus.

The British were horrified by the savage violence. At Cawnpore, after a three week siege from, June to July 1857, only a few men escaped and the 200 captured women and children were butchered and thrown into a well.

The British, particularly those whose families had been killed, took the lead in response. Villages suspected of harbouring rebels were burned. The governor general, Lord Canning (“Clemency Canning”), tried to reign in the response.

The revolt did not spread beyond the north central provinces. The Madras and Bombay armies stayed loyal to the Crown, as did the Sikhs and Gurkhas of the Bengal army.

The Siege of Delhi was one of the decisive conflicts of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Seeking a symbol around which to rally, the first sepoys to rebel sought to reinstate the power of the Mughal Empire, which had ruled much of the Indian subcontinent in the previous centuries. Lacking overall direction, many who subsequently rebelled also flocked to Delhi. Large numbers of rebels were committed to the defence of a single fixed point, perhaps to the detriment of their prospects elsewhere, and their defeat at Delhi was thus a very major military setback. The British recapture of Delhi and the refusal of the aged Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah II to continue the struggle deprived the rebellion of much of its national character. Although the rebels still held large areas, there was little co-ordination between them, and the British were able to overcome them separately.

3,000 British and 8,000 Indian troops stormed the city on 14 September 1857. There was bloody stalemate in the narrow streets. Eventually the rebels fled. Soldiers looted the city, especially the Red Fort.

Fighting continued for about two years.

The East India Company was abolished and the Indian possessions transferred to the Crown. 600 princely states continued as semi autonomous dependencies.

There followed a pardon to rebels not involved in murder, and a State of Peace was finally declared in 1859.

Following the mutiny, India became de industrialised, but from the 1850s, mechanised cotton mills were built. Famous names appeared such as J N Tata who visited Lancashire in 1872 and his son Sir Dorabji Tata, who established a huge steelworks in 1911. Traditional subsistence farming went into decline. There were famines in 1876-9, 1889-91 and 1896-1902. There was a growth in export orientated commercial agriculture and railway building.

1857

The East India Company passed control of India to the British government (“the Raj”), which lasted from 1858 to 1947.

The Matrimonial Causes Act allowed divorce on grounds of adultery.

1858

The Great Stink in London accelerated the construction of sewers.

There is an In Our Time podcast about The Great Stink of 1858 and the work of Joseph Bazalgette to fix it.

On 14 January 1858, Italian nationalists threw bombs at Napoleon III. It emerged that some of the bombers were from England. To placate the furious reaction from France, the government introduced a Conspiracy to Murder Bill, but there was public outcry. Palmerstone resigned but returned to office the following year.

The rapprochement with France over Crimea, turned to a French invasion scare. Napoleon didn’t want war however and he pointedly invited Victoria and Albert to a gala at Cherbourg, an ambiguous invitation, since Cherbourg would be the invasion point for an attack on England.

1859

Napoleon went to war with Austria to destroy its power over the Italian states. In 1859 he defeated the Austrians in northern Italy. Victorian liberals were supportive of Italians in their struggle for liberty.

Disraeli's Reform Bill.

Diphtheria epidemic.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published.

Medical registers began to record medical practitioners.

1860

In January 1860, Napoleon agreed to a commercial treaty with Britain, negotiated between Richard Cobden and the French free trade economist, Michel Chevalier.

This open up the French market to British goods. It was the first, but short lived European economic community, extended across western and central Europe and including free movement of peoples, rights of citizenship and a form of single currency, the Latin Currency Union. It was exactly what the free traders were looking for.

However later in 1860, Napoleon annexed Nice and Savoy, which were Sardinian territories. She then launched the world’s most powerful warship.

Enormous fortifications, Palmerstone’s follies, were quickly built in Portsmouth, Plymouth and elsewhere. An even bigger warship, HMS Warrior, was built. Men flocked to join the volunteers around cricket clubs, free masons, and the London Scottish.

The Royal Navy supported Garibaldi in his landing of a tiny army in Sicily, and then on to invade Naples. The small Italian states collapsed and a Sardinian government, encouraged by the British was established under King Victor Emmanuel and his pro British minister, Cavour. The peninsula was united as the Kingdom of Italy. Garibaldi was enthusiastic in his praise of Britain and adopted the English way. He visited England in 1864. Thomas Cook began tourist trips to Italy.

The Māori War in New Zealand.

An Anglo French force landed in China to march to Peking in August 1860. Private Moyse of the Buffs was taken prisoner and beheaded for refusing to know tow to a Chinese officer, And thus with eyes that would not shrink, With knee to man unbent, Unfaltering on its dreadful brink, To his red grave he went. Elgin ordered the destruction of the Summer Palace.

The Convention of Peking 1860 extended concessions to foreigners, ceded Kowloon and allowed British diplomats at Peking.

Not wanting a collapse, Britian treated China as an informal protectorate. In 1860 Major Charles (“Chinese”) Gordon volunteered for the 'Arrow' war against the Chinese. In May 1862 Gordon's corps of engineers was assigned to strengthen the European trading centre of Shanghai, which was threatened by the insurgents of the Taiping Rebellion. A year later he became commander of the 3,500-man peasant force raised to defend the city. During the next 18 months Gordon's troops played an important role in suppressing the Taiping uprising and took command of the force at Songjiang, which had received the name of "Ever Victorious Army". Gordon led them at once to the relief of Changsu, a town 40 miles northwest of Shanghai.

1861

Population of UK was 29 million.

1861 to 1865

The American Civil War began in 1861. At first, the southern Confederate armies were successful, better led and motivated.

There was strong anti slavery feeling in Britian, with a strong impact from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). The novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the US, and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".

However President Abraham Lincoln repeatedly indicated that the north was not fighting for an end to slavery, but for preservation of the Union and the British saw expansion threatening Canada. The southern states were the main suppliers of raw materials to Britain.

Opinion was divided. The government were cautious; Lord John Russell, the Foreign Secretary warned They who in quarrels interpose, Will often get a bloody nose.

The American Civil War led to a blockade of cotton exports which had a devastating effect on the English textile industry. This led to riots in 1863.

In Russia, Alexander II emancipated serfs.

1862

In Summer 1862, Napoleon III suggested mediation in the American Civil War led by France, Britain and Russia. Gladstone formed the view that secession of the south was inevitable. However Abolishonists disagreed. Many textile workers, especially in Lancashire, suffering from the war in the south, also disagreed.

The Land Registry Act 1862 led to recording of the conveyance of land. The system was improved in further Acts in 1875, 1897 and 1925.

The last recorded slaving voyage left from Liverpool.

Prince Albert died of Typhus.

1863

The first urban underground railway opened from Paddington to Farringdon.

The Confederates were defeated at the bloody Battle of Gettysburg.

Japan was ruled by the feudal shogun government, with a puppet emperor, which forbade foreign access. After 1853 foreign diplomats were reluctantly admitted, but were often threatened and attacked. Foreign ships were fired on in 1863 and as British squadron bombarded the port of Kagoshima, which sparked a restoration of the emperor in 1867 followed by a period of economic westernisation.

1864

A flood in Sheffield left 270 dead.

In 1864, Prussia and Austria annexed the mostly German speaking Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark.

1865

The Morant Bay rebellion in October 1865 began with a protest march to the courthouse by hundreds of people led by preacher Paul Bogle in Morant Bay, Jamaica. Some were armed with sticks and stones. After seven men were shot and killed by the volunteer militia, the protesters attacked and burned the courthouse and nearby buildings. Twenty-five people died. Over the next two days, poor freedmen rose in rebellion across most of St. Thomas-in-the-East parish. The governor, Edward Eyre, declared martial law. Houses were burned amd nearly 500 were killed. There was an outcry in Britain and Eyre was removed.

1866

A cholera epidemic killed 5,500 people in London’s East End.

In 1866 Prussia declared war on Austria. It had swift military success and declared the North German Confedxeration.

1867

Voting was not seen widely as an individual human right. Democracy was about representation of interests and there was an acceptance that landowners and businessmen could represent employees. Electoral reform was therefore a matter of tidying up after the 1832 Act. Often it was part of the political scheming. Gladstone saw an opportunity in franchising a select proportion of the working class as buttressing his policy for cutting expenditure and maintaining peace. Disraeli under a slogan of Household Suffrage looked to have an Act past that would keep the Tories in power.

The Second Reform Act 1867 gave householders the vote in borough constituencies, but not in the counties. New voters in towns voted Liberal anyway and there was little effect on Tory voters. About 30% of adult men could now vote.

There were some indications of future support for women’s suffrage.

The general election in 1868 was barely affected by the reforms.

The larger electorate was harder to manage. Widening the franchise began years of electoral corruption and a gilded age of bribery. A common practice was to hire ‘committee’ rooms’ in public houses with free refreshments and cash for expenses. Electoral turnout could be encouraged up to 90%. The Liberal candidate for Bradford in 1868 hired rooms in 158 pubs and spent £7,000 (well over £1M today).

The MP for Windsor was so popular that he would have retained his seat for as long as he liked and was a personal; friend to every inhabitant of the borough.

There was also a development of more elaborate political organisation, such as the Conservative Primrose League, which by 1900 included half a million women.

New professional politicians emerged, such as ‘Radical Joe’ Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill, who adopted calculated publicity seeking by taking on controversial issues to attract a national following and force themselves to the front of British politics.

The Second Great Reform Act enfranchised male town dwellers and widened eligibility for men in rural areas.

The British North America Act 1867 was passed for the Confederation of North American Colonies, united under the name, the Dominion of Canada. This was the start of a period of consolidation of empire. In due course Australia, New Zealand and South Africa followed.

The Abyssinian Expedition.

The Agricultural Gangs Act 1867 regulated the employment of women and children and required licences for gang masters.

The new Palace of Westminster was completed in 1867.

1868

Disraeli became prime minister in 1868 (on the resignation of the Earl of Derby due to gout).

The abolition of public executions.

The transportation pf convicts to Australia ended.

1869

The Debtor’s Act 1869 ended imprisonment for debt.

The completion of the Suez Canal. This led to a strong presence by Britain in Egypt, Sudan and East Africa.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

1870

The Married Women‘s Property Act 1870 gave married women the right to keep their own earnings and property inherited after marriage.

Women now admitted to Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

The Agricultural Depression – land values dropped and extensive bankruptcies amongst farmers.

Teachers were required to keep attendance lists and log books of events on a weekly basis.

1870-1871

The Franco-Prussian War 1870 to 1871. In July 1870 Prussia’s Otto von Bismark went to war with Napoleon III’s armies of France. In September 1870 Paris was besieged.

In January 1871 a German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles, consuming all the German states except Austria and the annexation of a large slice of north eastern France.

A new era in European history had begun.

Britain was generally sympathetic to German unification and was friendly with the new Italian state. In 1870, most Britons felt France was the main aggressor. Victoria’s eldest daughter was heir to the Prussian throne. Britain was most concerned by the independence of Belgium.

1871

Population of UK was 31.6 million

Bank holidays were introduced for bank workers and soon were practised more widely.

The Great Gale hit the north east coast of England.

The Trades Union Act

The Regulation of the Forces Act 1871 (“the Cardwell Reforms”) created a regimental structure for the army.

The Paris Commune insurrection in May 1971.

There was though a burgeoning of concern about the new power of Germany. The Battle of Dorking by G T Chesney imagined a German invasion of Britain.

1872

The Ballot Act (secret ballot) made voting private but had little effect on corruption except possibly to help voters take bribes from both sides.

1873

The Second Ashanti War

The Panic of 1873 was the start of an economic depression from 1873 to 1877.

The Returns of Owners of Land listed those with more then one acre in England and Wales.

1874

Disraeli was Prime Minister in 1874 after an election victory.

The Public Worship Regulation Act

The Factory Act 1874 introduced a 56 hour week.

The Births and Deaths registration Act made registration compulsory, within 42 days.

Massive storms hit the Yorkshire coast.

1875

The Employers and Workmen Act 1875 recognised a right to collective bargaining and soon led to unionisation being seen as a right.

· “Combination” by workers became legal in the 1820s.However the Master and Servants Acts 1823 and 1867 continued to punish workers for breaking contracts.

· After 1875 the British workforce became more unionised. This was a contrast to the position in France, Germany and US.

· Unions tended to be peaceful but adversarial with employers.

A Christian uprising in Turkish ruled Bosnia and Bulgaria was denounced as the Bulgarian Horrors. A Russian army invaded Bulgaria and marched on Constantinople.

Disraeli took the traditional approach to defend the Ottoman Empire against Russia.

1876

Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

The Battle of Little Big Horn in USA.

Disraeli warned the Russians off Constantinople. The chant, We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do gave rise to a new notion of jingoism.

1877-1878

Disraeli and the Queen agreed to Victoria’s proclamation as Empress of India.

The Russo-Turkish War.

1877

Britain annexed the Transvaal.

1878-1879

The Second War with Afghanistan.

A Congress in Berlin in 1878 shored up the core of the Ottoman Empire and ceded Cyprus to Britain.

1878

The Factory and Workshop Act 1878 consolidated previous legislation and applied it to all trades. The m,inim working age was raised to 10 years old and children under 10 were to attend school. The age was later raised to 11 in 1891 and 12 in 1901.

1879

The Cape had been taken as a naval base during the Napoleonic Wars. There followed a familiar pattern of reluctant imperial expansion led by settlers, mostly Dutch Boers, who were difficult to control.

The British were thus drawn in to the Zulu wars who saw early triumph against the British at Isandlwana in 1879.

A public telephone service was introduced in Britain.

1880

Disraeli was defeated in 1880 and died in April 1881.

The First Anglo-Boer War.

The Elementary Education Act 1880 made schooling compulsory for 5 to 10 year olds and children under 13 in work had to demonstrate a certain standard.

Greenwich Meantime (“GMT”) was introduced across Great Britain.

The first British telephone directory.

1881

The Boers decimated a small British force at Majuba in February 1881.

The UK population was 35 million.

The agricultural depression across Europe struck Ireland hard. Tensions were inflamed between largely Protestant landlords and largely Catholic tenants. London’s first reaction was coercion, detention without trial and mayhem followed with disruptive Irish representation at Westminster.

A Home Rule Party emerged led by the fox hunting, cricket playing nationalist squire, Charles Stuart Parnell.

The Land Act 1881 created a land court to arbitrate land rents and increase tenant rights.

1882

In Ireland hardline nationalists stabbed the Chief Secretary for Ireland and his deputy in Phoenix Park Dublin.

The Married Women’s Property Act 1882 gave married women in England, Wales and Ireland the same rights as single women to control their financial affairs, including ownership of property, running a business, being liable for debts and making wills.

1883

The Corrupt Practices Act 1883 limited the amount of money that could be spent and started to have an impact on corruption. By the 1900s people gradually become less tolerant of corruption.

1884

The Scramble for Africa

The scramble for Africa began in the southern Mediterranean.

In 1881 the French claimed a protectorate over Morocco.

Britain’s main interest was driven by events in Egypt. The Suez Canal was built by French engineers in the 1860s. Disraeli had bought the near bankrupt Khedive’s shares in the canal in 1874. To ensure the honouring of Egyptian debt, a prototype IMF was formed as an international commission to manage state finances. In June 1882 British troops occupied Egypt after anti western riots. Gladstone was Prime Minister. A nationalist coup under Arabi Pasha was defeated by a British military force in September 1882. Gladstone was sympathetic to Egypptian independence, but Evelyn Baring was appointed agent and Consul General and remained, effectively as governor, for the next 24 years. Had this episode not occurred there would probably have been no scramble.

Another Berlin Conference divided Africa among the European colonial powers. Proponents of the approach saw it as progressive, taking responsibility for exploitation and victimisation across Africa. Britain pressed for agreement to abolish slavery in states taken over by European states.

· France laid claim to vast areas in western and central Africa.

· Italy joined in and sought Libya and Ethiopia.

· Germany entered the race.

· Semi independent African states including Ethiopia, Egypt , Liberia, Transvaal, the Orange Free State and the Muslim Sokoto Caliphate also expanded their territories.

· Individuals also became involved including King Leopold of the Belgians’ interest in Congo and Cecil Rhodes who set up the British South African Trading Company.

Whitehall was unenthusiastic, but went along with the momentum. In 1885 Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister dismissed the drawing of lines on maps where no white man’s foot ever trod.

However the British claimed and occupied:

· West African coastal outposts in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and the vast colony Nigeria to keep the French out.

· In East Africa, it saw no particular economic motive, but was driven to suppress the slave trade. The former slaving island of Zanzibar became a Protectorate and the mainland territories further north became British East Africa, later Kenya.

Britain’s involvement in Egypt enmeshed her in a struggle with Egypt’s southern colony, the Sudan.

In 1883 the new leader, the Mahdi annihilated an Egyptian army of 10,000 men commanded by the British officer, Hicks Pasha. The Gladstone government were unwilling to get involved, but sent General Charles “Chinese” Gordon, an eccentric, unpredictable, dangerous commander, who was as fatalistic about death as his opponents. He refused to evacuate Khartoum, obliging Gladstone to send a force to fight to Mahdists in 1884. British troops arrived in Khartoum two days after it had fallen and the romanticised death of Gordon caused a backlash against Gladstone at home.

The Third Reform Act 1884 gave the vote to most male householders in the countryside.

After the 1884 reform gave near male democracy, there was a trend away from moralism towards economics and sociology, with a focus on concepts like unemployment. People turned to Darwin to explain social conditions as a cause of deterioration.

The Fabian Society was formed in 1884, a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fabian Society was also historically related to radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition.

1885

In March 1885, the Penjdeh incident, a Russian threat in Afghanistan, was another crisis, leading to Asian rivalry with Russia.

1886

Gladstone's Home Rule Bill for Ireland. Gladstone was converted to Home Rule and felt that a self governing Ireland would curb extremism and ‘outgrow popery’. The issue opened a political rift and split the Liberal Party. Gladstone’s Bill was defeated in 1884 by a Unionist Alliance with Tories and Liberal Unionists.

1887

Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee

1888

The first Kodak camera.

Jack the Ripper murders began in Whitechapel.

The start of professional football.

1889

First moving pictures recorded on celluloid.

The Prevention of Cruelty to and Protection of, Children Act 1889.

Charles Booth began a detailed survey of the London Poor including a map (The Life and Labour of the People). There is an In Our Time podcast about Charles Booth and the Labour Survey, to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why.

1891

The population of the United Kingdon was 37.8 million.

200 lost their lives in the Great Blizzard.

1892

Despite splits over the Irish Question, the Liberals emerged as the largest party in the 1892 elections.

1893

Gladstone’s second Irish Home Rule Bill unlike the first attempt, which was defeated in the House of Commons, the second Bill was passed by the Commons but vetoed by the House of Lords.

The Conservative and Unionist Party became the predominant political force for more than a century.

The Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act 1893 raised the school leaving age to 11 (and in 1899, to 12) years.

The Independent Labour Party was founded in Bradford, a non Marxists Socialist party. It attracted future politicians including James Keir Hardie and James Ramsay MacDonald.

1894

Gladstone finally resigned in 1894.

The Parish Councils Bill

The Royal Mail started to deliver picture postcards.

The Local Government Act 1894 established Urban and Rural District Councils and Parish Councils elected by rate payers.

1895

In the 1895 elections, all the candidates of the new Independent Labour Party came bottom of the poll. Most unions and workers remained Liberal.

The Factories and Workshops Bill

The notification of infectious diseases became compulsory.

The first Dictionary of National Biography.

In South Africa, the Boers, patriarchal and racists colonial farmers, had established a turbulent South African Republic. The discovery of gold and diamond turned the lands into a wild west and income from mining allowed the Boers to build up supplies of arms and ammunition to shoot down all the armies of Europe.

The New Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, supported by Cecil Rhodes, a diamond millionaire felt that security required a reunification of the empire.

A plan was hatched to ferment an uprising in South Africa by secret encouragement of the Jameson Raid into the Transvaal in December 1895. However the raiders were rounded up by the Boers and it became a fiasco.

1896-1899

The Sudan War

1896

The invention of the wireless telegraph invented by Marconi was first used in England.

Eleven years after the death of Gordon, General Kitchener led an Anglo Egyptian force against the Mahdists.

1897

The Diamond Jubilee.

The Spithead review.

1898

The Battle of Omdurman in September 1848 was fought during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan between a British–Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by British Commander-in-Chief (sirdar) Major General Horatio Herbert Kitchener and a Sudanese army of the Mahdist State, led by Abdallahi ibn Muhammad (the Khalifa), the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. The battle took place on 2 September 1898, at Kerreri, north of Omdurman. The battle was romanticised for the last full scale cavalry charge, in which the 23 year old Winton Churchill took part.

The value of total estate was shown in probate indexes in England and Wales.

There was concern at US threats against British Guiana in 1895 and then an attack on Spain in 1898 to seize the Philippines and make Cuba a satellite.

1899

The Victoria County History provided detailed commentaries on each county including details of buildings of historical note. See also British History on line.

1899-1902

The Second Anglo-Boer War

Britain had built up forces in the Cape after the fiasco of the Jameson Raid. The Boers declared war on Britain in October 1899. Britain’s garrisons at Ladysmith and Mafeking were besieged and relief forces were badly mauled in December 1899.

Opinion at home was divided. Liberals felt that further intervention was immoral and expensive. Others, including the Fabian Society, supported further intervention.

The majority view was for continued intervention and led to a Conservative victory at the khaki election in October 1900.

The war became more onerous than had been imagined. British soldiers were icked off by concealed snipers armed with Mauser rifles. The defeat at Spion Kop became renown.

A third of army recruits were rejected for their physical unfitness. This was taken as a sign of biological deterioration, although in reality it was because the fit young folk found better paid jobs.

Volunteers from across Europe and from Ireland joined the Boers. The British were reinforced by Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The British force built up to 250,000 strong commanded by Lord Roberts of Kandahar and Sir Herbert Kitchener of Omdurman.

Kitchener embarked on a scorched earth policy, setting up barbed wire fences across the country protected by blockhouses and armoured trains and civilians were evacuated to overcrowded concentration camps.

The Boers surrendered in 1902 and accepted British sovereignty and a federation was formed with the British colonies of the Cape and Natal.

However the Boers largely won the peace and self government was gradually conceded. The losers were the Africans who were left to a racist government, with Swaziland, Bechuanaland and Basutoland continuing to remain outwith the new government’s regime.

This was a period of experiments with eugenics, and ‘national efficiency’, exhorting the middle classes to reproduce more, but it didn’t go to the horrendous more radical ideas of the 1940s in Germany.

1900

Higher elementary schools provided education from 10 to 15 years old.

1901

The House of Saxe Coburg Gotha and House of Windsor