Lecture: The 19th century
The Napoleonic wars
Further development of the country
Political changes
Britain and its colonies
The Napoleonic wars
In the 1790s the wars of the French revolution turned into the Napoleonic
wars as Napoleon took over the French government.
Most of Europe fell under Napoleon’s control. He was planning to invade
Britain. Britain decided to fight France at sea because it had a stronger navy. The
commander of the British fleet, Admiral Nelson, won brilliant victories over the
French navy, near the coast of Egypt and finally near Spain, at Trafalgar in 1805,
where he destroyed the French-Spanish fleet (at the price of his life). The British
forces never stepped on the British soil. Admiral Nelson was buried in
Westminster Abbey and the column set up in the centre of London is topped with a
bronze statue of the national hero.
The Duke of Wellington, one of the very few generals, finally defeated
Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium in June 1815 together with the armies of Russia,
Austria, and Prussia.
Further development of the country
The cost of bread rose quickly, and this led to increases in price of almost
everything. While prices doubled, wages remained the same. Starving farm
workers rioted in the south, people tried to add to their food supply by catching
wild animals and birds. But almost all the wood was enclosed. New laws were
made to stop people hunting animals for food. They might be sent to a new colony
in Australia for seven years or even be hanged if they hunted with a knife or gun.
These laws showed how the rich feared the poor.
The rich feared the poor in the fast growing towns even more. They were
harder to control and if they had been organized, a revolution like in France might
have been. But they had no leaders. Several riots, however, took place but soldiers
attacked people. Besides hunger, crime was the mark of poverty.
Robert Peel, the Prime Minister of the time, established a regular police
force for London in 1829. At first people laughed at his blue-uniformed men in
their top hats. But during the next thirty years almost every town and country
started its own police force. The new police soon proved themselves successful as
much crime was pushed out of larger cities, then out of towns and then out of
countryside. Peel was able to show that certainty of punishment was far more
effective than cruelty of punishment.
The beginning of the century saw the innovation of Robert Owen, a factory
owner from Scotland. He gave workers shorter working hours and encouraged
trade unions. He built his factory in the countryside, away from the smog and dirt
of big cities and provided good housing and school for their children. Owen was
able to prove that his workers produced more goods in less time. Better working
and living conditions resulted in an increase in labour productivity.
The Whigs understood better than the Tories the need to reform the law in
order to improve social conditions. The first attempts were made in 1830 but they
were turned down by the House of Lords. In 1832 the Lords accepted the Reform
Bill, but more because they were frightened by the riots in the streets outside than
they accepted the idea of reform.
In 1833 slavery was abolished. Workhouses were opened providing the
homeless with work and shelter. Abandoned children were also taken care of in the
workhouses. There was a law limiting working hours from 16 (18) to 10 hours a
day for children, prohibiting their employment under 9 years of age and appointing
inspectors to see that the decisions were enforced. The worst fate was for children
who worked as chimneysweeps. They seldom lived to become adults.
In 1836 a special law placed the registration of births, deaths and marriages
in the hands of the state rather than the church.
The greatest example of Britain’s industrial power in the mid-nineteenth
century was its railway system. In fact, industrialists had built the railways to
transport goods, not people, in order to bring down the cost of transport. By 1870
the railway system of Britain was almost complete. The canals were soon empty as
everything went by rail. In 1851 the government made the railway companies
provide passenger trains, which stopped at all stations for a fare of one penny per
mile. The middle classes took advantage of the new opportunity to live in suburbs,
from which they traveled into the city every day by train. The suburb was a copy of
the country village with all the advantages of the town. The social effects of the
industrial revolution were enormous. Machinery put many people out of work.
They tried to join together to protect themselves against powerful employers. They
wanted fair wages and reasonable conditions in which to work. Since 1824 workers
had been allowed to join in unions. Most of these unions were small and weak.
Political Changes
In 1851 an official population survey was carried out for the fist time. It
showed that the nation was not as religious as its people had believed. In the 19 th
century the middle class grew more quickly and included greater differences of
wealth, social position and kinds of work. It included those who worked in the
professions such as the Church, the law, the medicine, the civil service, the
diplomatic service, the army, and the navy. It included the commercial classes who
were the real creators of wealth in the country. Industrialists were often self-made
men who came from poor beginnings. This class included both the very successful
and rich industrialists and the small shopkeepers and office workers of the growing
towns and suburbs.
Much of what we know today as the modern state was built in the 1860and
1870s. The number of voters increased from 20 per cent to 60 percent of men in
towns and to 70 per cent in the country, including some of the working class.
In1872 voting was carried out in secret for the first time, allowing people to vote
freely without fear.
The growth of newspaper industry strengthened the importance of popular
opinion. Democracy grew quickly. A national political pattern appeared. England,
particularly the south, was more conservative, while Scotland, Wales, Ireland and
the north of England appeared more radical. This pattern generally continued since
then. The House of Commons grew in size to over 650 members, and the House of
Lords lost the powerful position it had held in the 18th century.
Democracy also grew outside Parliament. In 1844 “Co-operative
Movement” was started by a few trade unionists. Its purpose was self-help, through
the net of workshops which sold goods at a fair and low price, and which shared all
the profits among its members. Co-operative self-help was a powerful way in
which the working class gained self-confidence in spite of its weak position. The
English trade unions sought to achieve their goals through parliamentary
democracy. In 1868 the first congress of trade unions met in Manchester,
representing 118,000 members. The following year the new Trades Union
Congress established a parliamentary committee with the purpose of achieving
worker representation in Parliament. The trade unions’ mixture of worker struggle
and desire to work democratically within Parliament led eventually to the
foundation of the Labor Party.
During the same period the machinery of modern government was set up.
During the 1850s a regular civil service was established to carry out the work of
government, and “civil servants” were carefully chosen after taking examinations.
The army was reorganized and from 1870 officers were no longer to buy their
commissions. In 1867 the first move was made to introduce free and compulsory
education for children.
Britain and its colonies
Not long before the 19th century began, Britain had lost its most important
American colonies in a war of independence.
One section of the colonial empire was Ireland. During this century it was, in
fact, part of the UK itself. The British culture and way of life came to predominate
in Ireland. In the 1840s the potato crop failed two years in a row and there was a
terrible famine. Millions of peasants, those with Irish Gaelic language and
customs, either died or emigrated. By the end of the century almost the whole of
the remaining population were using English.
Another part of the empire was made up of Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, where the settlers from the British Isles formed the majority of the
population. These countries had complete internal self-government but recognized
the overall authority of the British government.
India, an enormous country with a culture more ancient than Britain’s, was
under the British rule. Thousands of civil servants and troops were sent there to
govern it. Because India was so far away and the journey from Britain was too
long British officials spent most of their working lives in India and returned to
Britain when they retired. They imposed British institutions and methods of
government on the country.
Large parts of Africa also belonged to the empire. Most of Britain’s African
colonies started as trading bases on the coast. Besides the colonies mentioned
above, the empire included numerous smaller areas and islands. Most of them were
acquired because of their strategic position along trading routes.
In the 19th c the British changed their attitudes towards colonization
completely: previously it had been seen as a matter of settlement, commerce and
military strategy. The aim was to possess territory but not govern it. By the end of
the century colonization was seen as a matter of destiny. Colonization brought
wealth to Britain, Britain became the world’s foremost economic power. This
together with long years of stability unequalled elsewhere in Europe, gave the
British a sense of supreme confidence, even arrogance, about their culture and
civilization. They came to see themselves as having a duty to spread this culture
and civilization around the world.
Queen Victoria
reigned from 1837 to 1901. During her reign she became a popular symbol
of Britain’s success in the world. As a hard-working, religious mother of nine
children, devoted to her husband, Prince Albert, she was regarded as the
personification of contemporary morals. The idea that the monarch should set an
example to the people in such matters was unknown before this time.