History Of England
Celtic Domination
some five or six centuries
before the birth of Christ, a tall fair people called Celts came across the channel in small boats. The Goidels, or Gaels (who are still found in Ireland
and in the Highlands of Scotland), formed the first great migration. Then came
the Brythons, or Britons (still found in Wales and Cornwall), who gave their name to the island of Britain. The Celts knew how to smelt iron and were
skilled in arts and crafts. They became the ruling class, and the native folk
adopted the Celtic language and the Celts' Druid religion.
Roman Rule
Julius Caesar raided Britain
in 55 BC and again in 54 BC. Nearly 90 years later Rome undertook the conquest
of the island in earnest. In AD 43 Emperor Claudius gathered a force of about
40,000 to invade the island. All the area that is now England was soon subdued
and added to the Roman Empire as the province Britannia.
A widowed Icenian queen,
golden-haired Boudicca, led a great uprising against the Romans in AD 60, but
her barbarian horde was no match for the Roman soldiers. The people of Scotland
were harder to subdue. Emperor Hadrian decided conquering them was not worth
the trouble, so he had a wall built 73 1/2 miles (118 kilometers) long across
the narrow neck of the island to keep them out. South of this wall the Romans
built more than 50 cities and connected them with military roads. Some of these
roads, such as the famous Watling Street, serve as the foundations for modern
highways.
The cities contained Roman baths and
open-air theaters; temples to Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva; and houses with
colonnaded terraces, mosaic floors, and hot-air furnaces. Upper-class Britons
in the towns spoke Latin and wore the Roman toga. Commerce and industry
prospered, protected by Roman law. Later, when Rome became Christian, Roman
missionaries spread Christian teachings in Britain.
In
AD 410 the Goths swept down on
Rome, and no more Roman legions came to protect Britannia. The Britons, left to
themselves, were unable to form a government. Local chieftains warred with one
another. Barbarians from Scotland and pirates from Ireland ravaged the land. In
vain a Briton wrote for aid to a Roman consul, saying: "The barbarians drive us
to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians."
Anglo-Saxon Invasions
Soon a more dangerous enemy appeared.
Across the North Sea came bands of pirates in long black ships. They were the
Teutonic peoples--Angles, Saxons, and Jutes--from the region of modern Denmark.
They found the island easy to invade. In the south and west a low coast thrusts
out toward the continent. From the coast navigable rivers lead inland across a
rolling plain. The land itself, covered with green the year round, seemed
miraculous. Centuries later people learned that the British Isles, so far
north, owe their mild climate to the warm Gulf Stream.
The invaders plundered city after city
and drove the Britons ever farther westward. Farmers and herdsmen followed in
the wake of the warriors. The newcomers were pagans, worshipers of Odin and
Thor, and had no use for Roman cities or Roman law. They cleared the forests
for farmland and built longhouses grouped around the large log hall of their
chief, which was decorated with carving and paint and hung with shining
armor.
By AD 600 the ruin of Rome's
Britannia was complete. The original Celtic stock survived only in the
mountains of Wales and in Cornwall. Except in these areas Christianity and the
Celtic language died. Britain came to be called Angle-land (later England)
after the Angles, and the people spoke Anglo-Saxon The small Anglo-Saxon tribes
gradually merged into seven or eight little kingdoms. The Jutes, a small tribe,
held the Isle of Wight and land to the north. The Saxons established themselves
in Wessex on the south coast. The Angles ruled Mercia in the Midlands, East
Anglia on the east coast, and Northumbria in the northeast. When a king died an
assembly called the witenagemot, meaning "meeting of the wise," chose a new
king.
Mission of Augustine
In the year 597 Augustine, an Italian
monk, landed with 40 followers on the coast of Kent. He had been sent by Pope
Gregory I to win the Angles over to the Christian faith. He baptized Ethelbert,
king of Kent, repaired the old Roman church at Canterbury, and founded a
Benedictine abbey there. The pope made him archbishop for his services. Hence
from that time on, the archbishop of Canterbury has been primate of the church
in England Christianity spread rapidly. Learned
monks brought to England a knowledge of architecture, law, philosophy, and
Latin. A new civilization began to take shape, but it was checked by another
invasion.
Danes Invade England
The new invaders were
Scandinavians from Norway and Denmark. The English called them Danes. Summer
after summer these bold pirates rowed up the rivers in their longboats,
plundered the rich monasteries, and went home with the gold and gems. Soon
after 850 a great force remained in England, bent on conquest. Then permanent
settlers poured in. The Danes were farmers and traders as well as warriors.
When they founded a town--usually a port--they fortified it and opened a
market. All of eastern England north of the Thames passed under the rule of the
Danish jarls, or earls, and came to be known as the Danelaw, the part under
Danish law.
The Danes would probably have
wiped out Christianity in England if it had not been for Alfred the Great, king
of Wessex. Alfred defeated the Danes' great army at Chippenham in 878 and
forced the Danish leader to sign a treaty agreeing to leave Wessex free. The
Danes promised also to be baptized, and many did become Christians. Alfred
began English prose literature by translating Latin books into Anglo-Saxon. He
also built schools and ordered the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', the first
historical record of England, to be begun.
a century after Alfred's time the
Danes started once more to raid England's shores. In 991 the incompetent
Ethelred the Unready tried to buy them off by paying them yearly a large sum in
silver, called the Danegeld, or Dane tax, which was raised by a heavy tax on
the people. Nevertheless the Danes came again, and in 1016 Canute, the king of
Norway and Denmark, made himself king of England also. He proved to be a wise
and strong ruler, but after his death his empire fell apart, and in 1042 the
Danish dynasty in England ended.
The English line then returned to
the throne with Edward, son of Ethelred. He had been reared by French monks and
was called The Confessor.
Norman Conquest (1066)
While the Danes were invading England,
other Norsemen raided the coast of France. On the southern shore of the English
Channel they established the Duchy of Normandy. These Norsemen, or Normans,
became French in language and culture. In the 11th century the Duchy of
Normandy was rich, populous, and powerful.
When Edward the Confessor died
childless, William, duke of Normandy, claimed the English crown. He was a
second cousin of Edward, and he had exacted an oath from Harold, earl of
Wessex, to support his claim. The English Witan nevertheless elected Harold
king. William appealed to the pope. The pope supported William and declared
Harold guilty of perjury.
William gathered together a "host of
horsemen, slingers, and archers" and set sail for England. Harold met him with
foot soldiers armed with battle-axes. The two armies clashed in the famous
battle of Hastings on Oct. 14, 1066.
Harold was killed on the battlefield.
The victorious William went up to London and was crowned king of England in
Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day.
Feudal System Under William I
For five years William I was busy
putting down revolts in his new kingdom. He seized the land of all Saxons who
fought against him and distributed it among his Norman followers--except for
vast tracts that he kept for himself as crown lands. On his own estates and on
those of favored barons he ordered strong fortified castles
built. in return for the grant of land--called
a fief--each lord had to swear loyalty to the king, furnish knights for the
king's army, attend the king's court, and aid the king with money on certain
occasions. Farmers were reduced to the class of serfs, or villeins, as the
Normans called them. A villein could not leave the manor on which he was born.
This system of land tenure was the basis of feudalism, which held sway all over
Europe in the Middle Ages. the efficiency of William's rule is
shown by the survey he had made of all the property in England. His agents
visited every manor, found out who owned it, how many people lived there, and
reported what the feudal lord ought to pay the king in taxes and feudal
service. The findings were recorded in the famous Domesday Book. It was called
Domesday (day of doom) because no one could escape its judgment.
The date of the Norman
Conquest--1066--is one of the most important dates in English history. The
Conquest cut England's ties with Scandinavia and connected England with France.
French, the language of the Norman rulers, became blended with the Anglo-Saxon
speech of the common people, enriching the native language with many new words
and ideas. Wooden churches and abbeys were replaced with beautiful stone
buildings in the Norman style. Foreign monks and bishops, brought in by the
Normans, made the monasteries centers of learning. Anyone who wanted to study
went into the church as a matter of course. The king's secretaries, judges, and
most of his civil servants were churchmen, because only churchmen had the
necessary education. When he was crowned, William I, the
Conqueror, promised to govern according to the laws of Edward the Confessor.
The Witan survived in his great council of advisers, the curia regis,
which was attended by earls, barons, bishops, and abbots; but the council
no longer had the power to choose the king. As feudal overlord of the whole
country, William bequeathed England to his second son, William II. He left
Normandy to his eldest son, Robert.
William II, Henry I, and Stephen
William II (called William Rufus, the
"Red King") came to the throne in 1087. He was a harsh ruler and few mourned
him when he was killed by an arrow--shot by an unknown hand--while he was
hunting (see William, Kings of England). Robert had gone off on the
First Crusade, to recover the Holy Land from the Turks. A third son, Henry I,
was therefore able to become king without a struggle, in 1100. When Robert
returned, Henry crossed the Channel, defeated him, and gained Normandy also. He
gave both England and western France a peaceful, orderly rule.
Henry I exacted a promise from the
barons to recognize his daughter Matilda as their ruler. However, when he died,
some of the barons broke their promise and instead chose Stephen, a grandson of
William the Conqueror. Stephen was a gallant knight but a weak king. Throughout
his reign lawless barons fought private wars, each seeking to increase his
power. Twice he was challenged by Matilda and her supporters, who nearly
defeated him in 1141. When Stephen died (1154), the people were ready to
welcome a strong ruler who would restore order.
Henry II Restores the Royal Power
The strong ruler was found in Henry
Plantagenet, count of Anjou. His mother was Matilda (or Maud), daughter of
Henry I of England; his father was Geoffrey of Anjou. He came to the throne of
England as Henry II, first of the Plantagenet line of kings, who were to rule
England for 245 years. By marriage and inheritance, he came into possession of
all western France. He spent most of his long reign, 1154-89, in his French
possessions; yet he became one of England's great rulers.
Henry II sent out trained justices
(judges) on circuit to different towns in England to sit in the county courts.
The judges kept records of their cases. When one judge had decided a case,
other judges trying the same kind of case were likely to adopt the decision
that had been recorded. In the course of years, legal principles came to be
based on these decisions. Because this case law applied to all Englishmen
equally, it came to be called the common law. The circuit justices also made
more extensive use of juries and started the grand jury system in criminal law.
Henry carried on a long and bitter
struggle with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who asserted the
independence of the church courts against the king's authority. The church
triumphed when Becket was murdered. After making peace with the pope, Henry did
penance at Becket's tomb. Becket became a sainted martyr, and for centuries
people made pilgrimages to his shrine at Canterbury.
Richard the Lion-Hearted, the brave and
reckless son of Henry II, succeeded his father in 1189. After a few months he
left England and went off on his long crusade. The country suffered little in
his absence because Hubert Walter governed it better than Richard himself would
have. King John and Magna
Carta
In 1199 Richard I was succeeded by his
brother John, the most despicable of English kings. By a series of blunders
John lost almost all his French possessions except the southwest corner. The
English barons refused to help him regain his territory. Angered by his
tyrannical rule, they drew up a list of things that even a king might not do.
On June 15, 1215, they forced him to set his seal to this Great Charter (in
Latin, Magna Carta) of English liberties.
Magna Carta is regarded as one of the
most notable documents in history. The rights it listed were, in the main,
feudal rights of justice and property that had been recognized by previous
kings; but now for the first time these rights were insisted upon against the
king's will. Thus an important principle was established--that the king himself
must govern according to law. In later years, whenever a king over-extended his
powers, the people could remind him of Magna Carta.
The Rise of Parliament
Henry III, John's eldest son, was
crowned at the age of nine and ruled 56 years, 1216-72. He was pious and well
meaning but incompetent and extravagant. The barons took a strong stand against
him in Parliament. (The term parliament was gradually coming into use for the
Great Council.) In 1264 the barons, led by Simon de Montfort, rose against the
king and brought on the Barons' Wars. These wars ended when Earl Simon was
killed in battle.
Henry III's son, Edward I, who ruled
England from 1272 to 1307, wisely accepted the limitations on the king's
authority. His parliament of 1295 is called the Model Parliament because it
included representatives of both shires and towns as well as the Great Council.
Many of the laws passed in Edward's reign exist in modified form
today.Edward I conquered and annexed Wales
but failed in his effort to subdue Scotland. He died on his way north to put
down an uprising led by the Scottish hero Robert Bruce. His incompetent son,
Edward II, then took up the task and was decisively defeated by Bruce at
Bannockburn. In 1327 Parliament used its new power to depose Edward II and
place his son, Edward III, on the throne.
Flowering of English Medieval
Life
The 13th century was a time of great
enthusiasm for art and learning. In architecture the low, square towers and
rounded arches of the Norman period gave place to the delicate spires and
pointed arches of the early English, or Gothic, style. New learning was brought
into England by friars and other scholars from the Continent. Oxford University
won renown all over Europe. One of its teachers, Roger Bacon, a friar, urged
the study of nature and the experimental method in seeking knowledge. The
Crusades opened commerce with the Orient and brought in new
ideas.Towns became noted for particular
manufactures. Craft guilds held a monopoly of manufacture, and merchant guilds
controlled local markets. Foreign merchants were allowed to sell their wares
only at certain annual fairs.
The Hundred Years' War and the Black
Death
Knighthood was still in flower while
Edward III was on the English throne from 1327 to 1377. The king himself
excelled in "beautiful feats of arms." He soon had a chance to prove his skill.
During his reign began the long struggle with France called the Hundred Years'
War. In 1346 Edward's army won a brilliant victory at Crecy with a new English
weapon, the longbow. The next year Edward took Calais, a French seaport. In
1356 his son Edward, the Black Prince, won the famous battle of Poitiers.
The war had come to a temporary halt
when the Black Death swept over Western Europe in 1348-49, recurring repeatedly
over the next century. More than a fourth of England's population perished.
Whole villages were wiped out, and great areas of farmland went to weeds. The
serfs who survived demanded high money wages. If their lord refused, they moved
to another manor. The government tried to halt the rise in wages and bind the
laborers to their manors once more, but it could not enforce its Statute of
Labourers. The landlords sought labor at any price, and the laborers formed
alliances to resist the law. John Wycliffe's "poor priests" (Lollards) and
other traveling preachers increased the discontent by denouncing the landlords.
Richard II, grandson of Edward III, was
14 years old when a great band of peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and John Ball,
marched on London (1381) from Kent. The boy king went out boldly to meet them.
"We will that you make us free forever," the peasants asked. Richard promised
to help them, and they returned peaceably to their homes. The king did not keep
his promise. Within a week the judges hanged 1,500 ringleaders of the revolt.
The feudal system of villenage, however, could not be revived. The serfs were
gradually giving place to a new class of farmers--free yeomen. Richard II thirsted
for absolute rule and came into conflict with the powerful barons. His cousin Henry, duke of
Lancaster, led a revolt against him in 1399, imprisoned him in the Tower of
London, and compelled him to abdicate. Parliament then placed Henry on the
throne of England as Henry IV. The House of Lancaster ruled England
only 62 years, 1399-1461. During this period three Henrys--father, son, and
grandson--wore the crown. Their reigns were filled with plots and rebellions,
murders and executions. Parliament had made them kings, and they needed its
support to keep the throne. They therefore consulted it on all affairs.
The End of the Middle Ages in
England
In 1455, two years after the
Hundred Years' War ended, the House of York and the House of Lancaster plunged
into a long and bloody struggle for the crown called the Wars of the Roses.
Henry VI, of the House of Lancaster, was captured and murdered. Edward IV, of
the House of York, spent most of his reign fighting to keep his crown. The last
Yorkist king, Richard III, gained the throne when Edward's sons were declared
not to be the rightful heirs. Peace came with Richard's death in the battle of
Bosworth Field. The date of Richard's death--1485--may well be used to mark the
close of the Middle Ages in English history.
The Wars of the Roses were the
death throes of the feudal system. Battles and executions thinned the ranks of
the nobles, and their fortified castles were no longer impregnable after the
invention of gunpowder. A new aristocracy was pushing up through the broken
crust of feudal society. In the towns a rich capitalist class appeared. Country
squires--the landed gentry--also grew wealthy. The new aristocracy began to
seek political power.
England was now the chief
cloth-exporting country in the world. Enterprising employers, tired of the
restrictions of the guild system, supplied wool to farmers and villagers to be
spun and made up into cloth. This method of manufacture was called the domestic
system, or the putting-out system. It grew steadily and caused the breakup of
the guild system's monopoly. Serfdom also gradually died out. The gentry leased
their land to yeomen who paid money wages to their free
laborers.
French, the speech of the
governing classes, had become blended with Anglo-Saxon into an English speech
somewhat similar to the language used today. The great poet Geoffrey Chaucer
wrote in this English and the Bible was translated into it. These works were
among the first printed by William Caxton, who brought a printing press to
England from Belgium in 1476. Printing made it possible for many more people to
have books and helped spread the New Learning of the Renaissance. Before the
15th century ended, Spanish and Portuguese explorers had opened up new
continents across the Atlantic Ocean.
Henry VII, First of the
Tudors
After a century of wars, England
enjoyed a century of almost unbroken peace under the Tudors. When this strong
dynasty ended, England was a modern nation.
Henry VII, first of the Tudor
line, became king by defeating and slaying Richard III in the battle of
Bosworth Field (1485). He crushed the barons and made Parliament once more
obedient to the king's will. Only the medieval church, still wealthy and
powerful, remained an obstacle to his authority. He was popular with the
commons--the middle classes in town and country--because he built up an orderly
government, aided commerce and industry, and kept the country at peace and out
of debt. With his encouragement, John Cabot in 1497 piloted an English ship
across the Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland, five years after Columbus discovered
the New World.
The English
Reformation
Henry VIII, ruled 1509-47, is
famous as the king who had six wives in succession. When he put aside his first
wife, Catherine of Aragon, the pope excommunicated him. Henry, enraged, had
Parliament cut the ties that bound the English church to the papacy (1534) and
forced the English clergy to acknowledge the king rather than the pope as the
"only supreme head of the Church of England."
Henry's quarrel with the pope was
made easier by the Protestant Reformation. Yet Henry claimed to be a devout
Roman Catholic. He burned Protestants at the stake almost as readily as he
hanged and beheaded the "traitors" who upheld the pope. His attack on the
papacy was prompted in part by greed. By dissolving the monasteries he was able
to seize their lands and buildings and the costly ornaments of the shrines. He
used some of his new riches to fortify the coasts and build England's first
real navy. At his death the royal fleet numbered 71 vessels, some of which were
fitted out with cannon.
Henry VIII's only son, Edward VI,
was ten years old when he came to the throne (1547), and he died at the age of
16. The Lord Protectors who ruled in his stead favored the Protestant cause.
They forbade the Catholics to hold Mass and required Thomas Cranmer's English
Prayer Book to be read instead of the Latin Mass.
These laws were speedily repealed
when Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ascended the throne.
Mary had been brought up in the Catholic faith and she held resolutely to
it.
Elizabeth I and England's Golden
Age
Elizabeth I, Mary's half sister,
in turn repealed Mary's laws. In her reign the Church of England took the form
it has today. It kept the Catholic governmental organization of archbishops,
bishops, and deans, but it rejected the headship of the pope. It permitted the
clergy to marry, and it again ordered the reading of the English Prayer Book.
Many people accepted this "middle way." But it was bitterly opposed by the
Roman Catholics (Papists), and also by the extreme Protestants (Puritans), who
insisted on a simpler, "purer" form of service with no "Popish
rites."
The long reign of Elizabeth I,
1558-1603, was England's Golden Age. The Renaissance, which began in Italy in
the 14th century, at last reached the northern island. "Merry England," in love
with life, expressed itself in music and literature, in architecture, and in
adventurous seafaring. William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist, mirrored the
age in verse that lifted the English language to its fullest beauty.
Throughout the land could be heard
the sound of hammers and saws of builders--a sure sign of prosperity.
Elizabethan manor houses, usually built around an open court, blended the
English style with the new Italian. English glassworks supplied small clear
panes for lattice windows. The increasing use of brick made it easier to build
chimneys and fireplaces even for common houses.
Exploration; Defeat of the Spanish
Armada
English seamanship and
shipbuilding reached the highest point they had yet attained. Francis Drake
sailed around the world. Walter Raleigh made the first attempt to found an
English colony in America. These and other courageous privateers reaped rich
rewards--chiefly at the expense of Spain--from plundering, piracy, smuggling,
and the slave trade. Elizabeth encouraged them on the ground that they
protected Protestant England against Catholic Spain.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada
(1588) established the superiority of English ships and sailors and made the
English conscious of their ocean destiny. English merchants began to seek
distant markets for their goods. In 1600 the now old queen chartered the famous
East India Company, giving it a monopoly of trade with the Far East. From this
small start Britain's Indian Empire was to
grow.
Unemployment and Poor
Relief
Not all classes shared in the
increasing prosperity. The population had doubled since the Black Death and now
numbered about 4 million. There was land hunger again. The growth of the cloth
industry increased the demand for wool and made it profitable for the
landowners to turn farmlands into pasture. They fenced in (enclosed) the
pastures with hedgerows. "Where 40 persons had their livings," the laborers
complained, "now one man and his shepherd hath all." Men thrown out of work by
the enclosures became vagabonds and terrorized the townfolk. Whipping the
"sturdy beggars" failed to solve the problem.
Throughout the Middle Ages the
monasteries had given alms to the poor. Now that the monasteries were no more,
the government took over the task. Elizabeth's famous statute of 1601, an Act
for the Relief of the Poor, required every parish to levy rates (local taxes)
for poor relief. Children were to be put out as
apprentices if their parents could not support them. Wages of artisans and farm
laborers were fixed by law. All able-bodied men were compelled to work. They
could no longer move freely from place to place. They were practically serfs
again, except that they had no rights in the land. The Poor Laws enacted during
Elizabeth's reign remained on the books, although with amendments, until after
World War II.
Birth of the British Empire
The Tudor dynasty came to an end when
Elizabeth I died in 1603. The crown of England then passed to the Stuart line
of Scotland. The new king was called James VI in Scotland and James I in
England. The two countries, having the same ruler, were now bound together in a
personal union, but for another century they had separate
parliaments.
James boldly announced that he would
rule as an absolute monarch, responsible to God alone. This view of monarchy
was called the divine right of kings. It was generally accepted on the
continent of Europe, but it ran counter to the nature of the English people.
Parliament resisted James at every point. By insisting that all people conform
to the Church of England, he won the enmity of the Puritans and the Catholics.
A small band of Catholic extremists, including Guy Fawkes, formed the Gunpowder
Plot to blow up king and parliament together.
James allowed the navy to decay and
suppressed privateering. Yet it was in his reign that colonial expansion began
and the British Empire was born. The colony of Jamestown, Virginia, was started
in 1607. In 1620 the Pilgrims landed on the rocky shore of New England. Other
colonists swiftly followed. Some went to escape religious persecution and some
to find free land. They spread English civilization into the wilderness.
Under Charles I, who ruled 1625-49,
active colonization continued. Charles was glad to have the troublesome
Puritans leave England. Great wealth flowed into London from American tobacco,
the African slave traffic, and the silks and spices of
India.
England's Civil War
Charles was as obstinate a despot as
his father. In 1629 he dissolved Parliament, determined to rule by himself
alone. Eleven years later he became involved in a war with Scotland and was
obliged to summon Parliament to raise money for his armies. When Parliament
refused to vote the money, Charles dissolved it. Before the year ended he
summoned it again. This time Parliament forced the king to agree not to
dissolve it without its consent. It lasted, with some interruptions, from 1640
to 1659 and is known as the Long Parliament.
Puritans dominated the House of
Commons. Instead of aiding the king, they passed laws to curb his power. The
king went in person to the House, determined to arrest five of its leaders, but
"the birds had flown." Parliament issued a call to arms, a revolutionary act.
The powerful new middle class put its great resources behind the Puritans. The
king rallied the royalist aristocracy, High Church Anglicans, and the Catholics
to his standard.
The Parliamentary army went into battle
singing psalms. In 1644 the Puritans defeated Charles's Cavaliers at Marston
Moor. In this battle Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader, won the name
Ironsides. The next year he gained a decisive victory at Naseby.
In 1648 Colonel Pride, a Puritan, stood
at the entrance to the Commons with a force of soldiers and allowed only
Roundheads to enter. (The Puritans were called Roundheads because they cut
their hair short. The Cavaliers wore long flowing locks.) The group that
remained after Pride's Purge was called the Rump Parliament.
The Rump sentenced Charles to
execution, and he was beheaded on Jan. 30, 1649. The Rump then declared England
a Commonwealth (that is, a republic), without a king or a house of
lords.
The Commonwealth and the
Protectorate
The Rump Parliament governed England
while Cromwell put down revolts in Ireland and Scotland with great cruelty. In
1653 he came back from the wars, dismissed Parliament, and "nominated" a
Parliament of his own (called Barebone's Parliament after one of its members,
Praisegod Barebone). The Commonwealth then took the name of Protectorate, with
Cromwell as Lord Protector
The Puritans closed the theaters,
suppressed horse racing, cockfighting, and bearbaiting, and made Sunday
strictly a day of worship. Cromwell's rule was more despotic than the king's.
Yet the revolution accomplished its purpose. When the monarchy was revived it
became a limited monarchy. The Church of England never again tried to include
all Englishmen.
When Cromwell died in 1658 his eldest
son, Richard Cromwell, became Lord Protector. Too weak to control the army,
Tumbledown Dick resigned the next year. In 1660 George Monk, one of Cromwell's
generals, brought an army from Scotland and had the Rump of the Long Parliament
recalled to dissolve itself. A new Parliament was elected and at once offered
the crown to the exiled son of Charles I.
England Under the
Restoration
The people of London joyously welcomed
Charles II when he arrived from France with the gay court of Cavaliers that had
been exiled with him. The bleak Puritan age was suddenly ended. Theaters opened
again. Footlights, curtains, and painted scenery were introduced. For the first
time women appeared on the stage. In spite of renewed censorship, Restoration
dramatists delighted Londoners with sparkling comedies that laughed at Puritan
virtues. John Dryden best represented the Restoration period. Its greatest
poet, however, was still the Puritan John Milton, who had faithfully served
Cromwell. Now blind, he retired from public life to write the greatest epic in
the English language, 'Paradise Lost'.
England's greatest architect, Sir
Christopher Wren, rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral, following London's Great Fire
of 1666. Science flourished along with the arts. Isaac Newton formulated laws
of the universe. An observatory was established at Greenwich.
Catholics fared somewhat better than
Puritans under Charles II. His "Cavalier Parliament" in 1662 passed an Act of
Uniformity depriving of their offices all clergymen who did not accept
everything in the Anglican Prayer Book. This act tended to throw all
nonconformists (Independents, Presbyterians, Baptists, and the new Quaker sect)
into a single class, called dissenters. To make things easier for Catholics,
Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence in 1672. Parliament forced him to
retract this and passed a Test Act (1673), which made it impossible for
Catholics to hold public office.
The Birth of Political
Parties
Charles II leaned toward Catholicism.
His brother James, heir to the throne, was an avowed Catholic. In 1679 an
"Exclusion Bill" was presented in Parliament to bar James from the kingship.
Charles prevented its passage by dissolving Parliament. The governing classes
at once split into bitter factions-- the Tories, who opposed the bill, and the
Whigs, who favored it. Thus were born the first great political parties in
history.
The names Whig and Tory were both terms
of derision. Tory was Irish slang for a "popish" outlaw. Whig was a term of
contempt in Scotland for a fanatic Presbyterian. The Tories, descended from the
Cavaliers, represented the landed aristocracy. They upheld the divine right of
kings and the Anglican church. The Whigs, descended from the Roundheads,
represented the commercial classes of the cities. They championed Parliament
against the king and urged toleration for nonconformists.
Following the decline of Spanish and
Portuguese sea power, the Dutch Netherlands became a serious rival of England
in the Far East, in Africa, and in America. In the 17th century England fought
three commercial wars against the Dutch (1652-54, 1665-67, and 1672-74). The
Netherlands then dropped out of the race for world commerce and American
dominions. In the third war the English joined forces with the French--not yet
aware that France was to be the next rival England had to
face.
The Glorious Revolution of
1688
Charles II died in 1685, and his
brother, James II, stepped quietly to the throne. However, when a male heir to
James was born, in 1688, Tory and Whig leaders joined together and decided to
set aside the Catholic line of kings. They invited Mary, a daughter of James,
and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, to occupy the throne as joint
sovereigns. When William arrived from Holland, James fled to the continent.
Parliament was careful to lay down
conditions for the new sovereigns. William and Mary accepted its Declaration of
Rights, and Parliament speedily enacted it into law as the famous Bill of
Rights. The act made the king responsible to Parliament and subject to the laws
and provided that henceforth no Roman Catholic could wear England's crown.
Parliament, and not inheritance or divine right, would determine the succession
to the throne. This was the fruit of the so-called Glorious Revolution--a
revolution without bloodshed. John Locke published a defense of the Revolution
in which he proclaimed the supremacy of the legislative assembly as the voice
of the people.
The Struggle with
France
While England was in the throes of
revolution, France, under Louis XIV, was achieving a dominant position in
Europe. With internal conflict ended, England turned its attention abroad. In
1689 it joined with Holland and several German states in the War of the Grand
Alliance against France. The war spread to America, where it was called King
William's War. It marked the beginning of a long struggle to decide whether
France or England was to control India and North America
When William died, in 1702, Louis XIV
proclaimed James Stuart, son of James II, king of England, Scotland, and
Ireland. Parliament, however, had provided that if William and Mary had no
children, the crown should pass to Anne, a Protestant, daughter of James II by
his first wife. James Stuart kept up his claim to the throne for 65 years and
became known as the Old Pretender. His son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, known as the
Young Pretender, made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the throne in 1745
Queen Anne's Reign
As soon as Anne came to the
throne in 1702, England entered upon another war with France to break up a
threatened combination of France and Spain. This was called in Europe the War
of the Spanish Succession. In America it was known as Queen Anne's War. The
Duke of Marlborough led the English, Dutch, and Germans to brilliant victories,
and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave England important territories (all Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland) in the New World.
Birth of the Kingdom of Great
Britain
The most notable event in
Anne's reign was the union of England with Scotland. Since 1603 the two nations
had been loosely associated under the same king. The Act of Union (1707) united
them in a single kingdom, called Great Britain, and joined their parliaments.
Thereafter the government and parliament in London were called British rather
than English.
Walpole, Britain's First Prime
Minister
The Stuart line came to an end when
Anne died, since none of her 17 children survived her. She was succeeded in
1714 by the nearest Protestant heir, George I, a prince of the House of
Hanover, a small state in Germany
George did not speak English, and he
was so wrapped up in his beloved Hanover that he took little interest in
British affairs. He soon began to stay away from meetings of his inner council,
or cabinet, and left the government in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, the
able Whig leader. George II, who ruled 1727-60, also stayed away from meetings
of his ministers. Walpole made himself supreme in the government, selected his
colleagues, and insisted they work with him or leave the cabinet. He thus
became the first prime minister.
Walpole promoted trade and commerce and
strove to avoid war. But in 1739 the British people became aroused over the
story of Robert Jenkins, a sea captain, who claimed the Spaniards had boarded
his ship and cut off his ear. Walpole was persuaded to declare war against
Spain in 1739--the War of Jenkins' Ear. He resigned when this war merged into
another continental war, the War of the Austrian Succession, in America called
King George's War. When peace was made, in 1748, the real issue--whether France
or Britain was to prevail in India and North America--was still
unsettled.
Britain Wins French
Territory
The struggle with France was
renewed in the Seven Years' War, which broke out in 1756. This war brought to
the fore a leader of genius, William Pitt, earl of Chatham. He carried on the
struggle against France in America, Africa, and India, as well as in Europe and
on the sea. The war cost France almost all its territory in North America and
India and vastly extended Britain's empire. Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace
Mann, in Italy: "You would not know your country again. You left it a private
little island living upon its means. You will find it the capital of the
world."
The American Revolution
Before the Seven Years' War ended,
George III began his 60-year reign, 1760-1820. Determined to "be a king" and
quite unfit to be one, he got rid of Pitt and put his own Tory friends in
power.
The Tory government imposed new taxes
on the American Colonies. The colonists insisted the British Parliament had no
right to tax them without their consent. Pitt and Edmund Burke counseled
compromise, but George III and his ministers obstinately insisted on their
course. Troops were sent to enforce the decrees, and the colonists met force
with force. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of
Independence. Two years later France entered the war on the side of the
colonists. The Americans finally won their independence, and Britain lost the
most valuable part of its colonial empire.
George III's attempt at personal rule
was now completely discredited. Parliament regained its leadership. William
Pitt, second son of the earl of Chatham, became prime minister in 1783 and held
the position for 17 years.
Britain's Classical Age
The numerous wars of the 18th century
were fought with small professional armies and hardly disturbed the even tenor
of life in the "fortunate isle." Even the loss of the American Colonies was
little felt. Britain was still mistress of the seas, and its mariners and
traders soon built a second empire greater than the old. Before the century
ended, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution were to produce
tremendous upheavals. Until the storm broke, Britain was quiet and
settled.
The years 1740-80 were Britain's
classical age--an age of art and elegance, of enlightenment and religious
tolerance. Wealth and leisure became more widely diffused. In town and country
the middle class put up comfortable, dignified homes in the Queen Anne and
Georgian styles. Into them went furniture designed by Thomas Chippendale,
Thomas Sheraton, and the Adam brothers, and beautiful china, glass, and silver
plate made by skilled English handicraftsmen. The dress of the age was
extravagant. Men wore bright-colored silk coats, waistcoats, and breeches;
women appeared in hoopskirts and elaborate headdresses or high pompadours. The
three great portrait painters of the age--Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough,
and George Romney--pictured the fashionable aristocrats, while William Hogarth
caricatured both the fashionable and the common people.
Alexander Pope, a bitter satirist, was
the leading poet of the age; but the most characteristic literary figure was
Samuel Johnson, who gathered with other writers in London's coffeehouses to
discuss and debate
The government was little concerned
with reform. Individuals, however, were showing a growing sensitivity to the
wretched condition of the poor. Hundreds of charity schools, Sunday schools,
and hospitals were founded, all at private expense. John Howard made prison
reform his life's work
William Wilberforce set in motion a
campaign that was to free the slaves in all the British colonies by 1833. The
new humanitarian spirit was quickened by the Methodist movement, a tremendous
religious revival led by John Wesley
The Industrial
Revolution
Britain now entered upon the greatest
revolution in all history. It began with inventions in the textile
industry--John Kay's flying shuttle, to speed up weaving, and James Hargreave's
spinning jenny, for making yarn. These inventions transformed the textile
industry, which had seen almost no change for thousands of years. By 1781 James
Watt had developed a steam engine to run these and other machines. During the
next 15 years cotton manufactures trebled. The great Industrial Revolution was
under way.
The revolution in agriculture also
began in the 18th century. In the time of Queen Anne, British landowners began
to devote their wealth and personal attention to improving methods of
cultivation. On their enclosed fields they practiced scientific rotation of
crops and pasture and new methods of draining, drilling, sowing, and
fertilizing. They began to grow root crops (turnips and potatoes) in fields
instead of in small gardens. By selective breeding and proper winter feeding of
stock they doubled the average weight of cattle and
sheep.
Improved Nutrition and
Transportation
Fresh beef and mutton replaced salt
meat in the winter diet. Scurvy and other skin diseases, prevalent in earlier
centuries, grew rare even among the poor. The increasing knowledge of medicine
combined with better nutrition to bring about a sharp drop in the death
rate--from 33 in a thousand in 1830 to 23 at the end of the century. As a
consequence population increased enormously.
Great improvements in inland transport
accompanied the revolutions in industry and agriculture. In Queen Anne's reign
coal was still carried on packhorses. Roads were so poor that wheels stuck in
the mud or broke on hard, dry ruts and huge stones. The government still took
little interest in road building. Private initiative supplied the need.
Turnpike companies laced the land with roads and made their profit by
collecting fees at tollgates. Heavy wagons lumbered over the new turnpikes, and
light stagecoaches sped along them at ten miles an hour, stopping at coaching
inns for new relays of fast horses. In 1750 a great era of canal building
began. Before the end of the century the land was interlaced with a network of
waterways. Like the roads, the canals were built for profit by private
companies.
Britain's threefold revolution was
accomplished by private initiative. Individualism, the spirit of the age, freed
men's minds and energies. Yet many government restrictions still shackled
industry and commerce. Adam Smith, creator of the science of political economy,
called attention to their harmful effect. Complete freedom of industry and
trade, he said, would unleash even greater productive energy. His ideas,
published in 'Wealth of Nations' (1776), gave direction to the new industrial
age.
Challenge of Napoleon
The outbreak of the French Revolution
ended the harmony of 18th-century Britain. Class faced class in bitter
controversy. Thomas Paine upheld the revolutionists in a stirring appeal to the
masses, 'The Rights of Man'. Edmund Burke eloquently voiced the attitude of
conservative Englishmen: "The French," he declared, "have shown themselves the
ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto existed in the world."
People were horrified when France set
up a republic and executed Louis XVI. George III went into mourning and
expelled the French envoy. France declared war, and Britain promptly joined the
coalition of European monarchs against the new French republic. The war dragged
on without much result until the young general Napoleon Bonaparte began to win
amazing victories. By 1797 Britain was left to carry on the war alone. Britain,
weak on land, was supreme on the sea. Admiral Horatio Nelson's victory of the
Nile (1798) gave the British navy control of the Mediterranean and secured the
route to India. At Trafalgar (1805) Nelson annihilated the French fleet.
Napoleon, victorious on the Continent, was unable to invade the island kingdom;
so he sought to ruin the "race of shopkeepers" by forbidding Europe to trade
with Britain. Britain countered by blockading all European ports controlled by
Napoleon. The United States, exasperated by Britain's interference with its
commerce, declared war on Britain in 1812
Britain meanwhile had built up an army,
led by the duke of Wellington. Wellington first drove the French out of Spain.
In 1815 he commanded the British forces at the battle of Waterloo, which
destroyed Napoleon's army. Before the year ended, a British ship carried off
Napoleon to an island prison.
Effects of the War with
France
Triumph over France brought Great
Britain national glory and financial profit. The empire expanded and British
control over sea routes was made secure. The increased demand for British goods
stimulated commerce and quickened the pace of the Industrial Revolution.
British blast furnaces and textile mills supplied munitions and clothes not
only for the armies of Great Britain but for its allies as well.
English poetry reached the highest
point it had touched since the age of Shakespeare. The ideas of the French
Revolution ended the Classical Age on the continent as well as in Britain and
gave birth to a new back-to-nature movement in art and literature called the
Romantic Movement. The Romanticists extolled emotion as the Classicists had
reason. They sought the beautiful in nature or in medieval art rather than in
classical models.
Changes appeared also in dress and
morals. Women ceased to powder their hair. Men discarded wigs and cut their
hair short. Wool and cotton began to replace silks, satins, and velvets for
both men and women. The reformers of the age sent missionaries into foreign
lands, but they took little interest in the increasing wretchedness of
Britain's poor.
The war swelled the fortunes of
landlords, merchants, and manufacturers. To the poor it brought misery. Men and
women toiled 12 to 18 hours a day in mines and factories. Wages were at
starvation levels. Child labor was widespread. Laissez-faire (from a French
term, meaning "let it alone"), the rough beginning of a free market economy,
was becoming the order of the day in industry. The new freedom, unfortunately,
did not extend to the working classes. They were forbidden to hold meetings, to
organize unions, even to publish pamphlets. When workers rioted and smashed the
new machines, the government made machine breaking a capital crime. Fourteen
Luddites (so called after a feebleminded youth who destroyed two stocking
frames) were put to death in Yorkshire in 1811.
Inspired by the revolt of the French
peasants, the Irish rose against English rule in 1798. In 1800 Pitt succeeded
in bringing Ireland into a union with Great Britain similar to that between
England and Scotland. The Act of Union went into force Jan. 1, 1801, creating
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The mass of the Irish,
however, being Catholics, were still excluded from the government. George III
allowed only Church-of-England Irish to sit in
Parliament.
The Coming of Democracy
The factory system made tremendous
changes in the social structure. Two new classes had appeared--the capitalists,
or entrepreneurs, who owned the factories and machines, and the mass of the
workers, who were dependent upon the capitalists for employment. Large
manufacturing cities had risen in the north, close to the coalfields. Many of
these cities had no representation in Parliament because no new boroughs had
been created to send up members since the time of Charles II. In the south of
England Tory proprietors of boroughs with few or no inhabitants (called pocket
boroughs or rotten boroughs) continued to send representatives. Cornwall sent
as many members to the House of Commons as all Scotland.
The spirit of reform was gradually
making itself felt. Jeremy Bentham, called the utilitarian, made utility the
test of law and said government should promote "the greatest happiness of the
greatest number" by scientific legislation. Philosophic radicals such as James
Mill advocated a laissez-faire individualism. Robert Owen showed in his New
Lanark mills in Scotland that good hours, good wages, and healthy factory
conditions could be made to pay.
William Cobbett, a radical journalist,
led a campaign for universal suffrage because he believed workmen could improve
their condition only by achieving the right to vote. The great industrial city
of Manchester had no parliamentary representation. In 1819 a crowd of 60,000
assembled on St. Peter's Field to choose a "legislative representative."
Mounted soldiers charged into the crowd, killed 11 persons, and wounded many.
This Peterloo Massacre aroused great indignation and gave the deathblow to the
old Toryism.
George III became insane in his later
years and blind as well. For nine years before his death his incompetent eldest
son governed as prince regent. (This period, 1811-20, is therefore known as the
Regency.) On his father's death, the prince regent became King George
IV
The more progressive Tories now began a
series of reforms that opened a new era. Trade unions were partially legalized
in 1825. Catholics were admitted to Parliament--after a struggle of many
years--by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Harsh criminal laws were
reformed, reducing capital offenses to about a dozen. (In 1800, 200 offenses
had been punishable by death.) In 1829 Robert Peel set up, for the first time
in history, a civilian police force. Started in London, it spread quickly to
other cities. The people called the police by either of Peel's names--bobbies
or peelers
William IV, brother of George IV, began
his short reign in 1830. The reform of Parliament had by now become the burning
issue. Extreme Tories, led by the duke of Wellington, stood fast against it.
Reform groups in Parliament, including the moderate Tories, drew together and
supported Earl Grey, the Whig leader. Wellington's government fell and the
Whigs came into power. Lord John Russell introduced a strong reform bill. In
the face of tremendous opposition in the House of Lords, the Great Reform Act
was passed in 1832.
Parliamentary Reform
The Reform Act created 43 new boroughs
and deprived the rotten boroughs of their representatives in Parliament. The
battle for universal suffrage, however, was still to be fought. The Reform Act
slightly increased the number of voters by lowering the property
qualifications; but the mass of the working people were still too poor to
vote.
During the 1830s the Tories dropped
their somewhat discredited name and became known as the Conservative party. The
free-trade Conservatives (Peelites) gradually merged with the Whigs, who were
to become the new Liberal party. Liberalism in the 19th century meant
individualism. The true Liberal of that day championed freedom of thought and
religion, freedom of trade, freedom of contract between the individual employer
and the individual workman, and unrestricted competition. The party was made up
chiefly of the industrial middle class.
The Victorian Age
William IV died in 1837, in the seventh
year of his reign, and Victoria, his 18-year-old niece, became queen of Great
Britain. Three years later she married her cousin Albert, a German prince. As
prince consort, Albert gave valuable aid to the queen until his death in
1861
The young girl entered eagerly upon her
new duties. Her long reign, 1837-1901, was to be immensely creative in
literature and science, and before its close Britain reached the first place
among nations in wealth and power. In the first years of her rule, however, the
country seemed to be almost on the verge of revolution.
A series of bad harvests, beginning in
1837, continued into the Hungry Forties. England suffered a wheat famine,
Ireland a potato famine. A high tariff on grain (called corn in England) kept
out foreign wheat. The price of bread soared. A new Poor Law (1834) had ended
the outdoor relief for paupers that had been begun in the time of Queen
Elizabeth I. The workhouses that took its place (described in Dickens' novel
'Oliver Twist') were more dreaded than jails. Wages were miserably low. A
tremendous migration began from the British Isles to Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and the United States.
A group of reformers called Chartists
drafted in 1838 a bill called the People's Charter, calling for universal
manhood suffrage. Meanwhile an Anti-Corn Law League had been formed in 1836, to
campaign for the free entry of foreign wheat to feed the hungry poor. Sir
Robert Peel, the Conservative prime minister, was finally converted to their
view; and in 1846 he put through Parliament the famous bill repealing the Corn
Laws. Wheat at once poured in from overseas. Prosperity returned, even for the
farmers. The working people now began to turn their attention to the new trade
unions and to the cooperative movement, started in 1844 by the Rochdale
Pioneers.
Free Trade and
Prosperity
The success of the Corn Law
repeal encouraged the government to remove the tariff on other foods and on the
raw materials needed by manufacturers. With free trade, Britain entered upon
its period of greatest prosperity. Iron and steel output expanded greatly.
Steam and machinery came to be used increasingly in every kind of manufacturing
process. A tremendous boom in railway building caused many old posting inns to
fall into disuse. By 1848 a large part of the new trackage was paralleled by
telegraph wires. "Penny postage," introduced throughout the British Isles in
1840, provided a cheap and uniform postage rate prepaid with an adhesive stamp.
Commerce was set free in 1849 by the repeal of the old Navigation Laws, which
had permitted only British ships to carry goods between different parts of the
empire. The application of steam power to oceangoing vessels stimulated the
growth of the merchant marine and the navy. Commerce expanded enormously. In
1851 the country celebrated its industrial progress in the first great
international fair, called the Great Exhibition. The government began to take
more interest in the empire, which provided the manufacturers with both markets
and raw materials. The Crimean War (1854-56) was fought to protect British and
French imperial interests against Russia's threatened advance toward the
Mediterranean and India. After helping the British East India Company put down
the Sepoy Rebellion in India (1857), Parliament deprived the company of its
political powers and transferred the government of India to the British crown
Wider Suffrage and
Imperialism
The Reform Act of 1832 had benefited
only the middle class. In 1867 Parliament took another long step in the
direction of democracy by putting through the second Reform Act. This gave the
vote to almost all adult males in the towns. The bill had been introduced by
Benjamin Disraeli, a Conservative. Nevertheless the new voters, many of them
workingmen, supported William Gladstone, Liberal leader. With Gladstone's first
and greatest ministry, 1868-74, an era of reform set in.
The Education Act of 1870 set up
elementary schools financed in part by the government. In the same year
competitive examinations were introduced for employment in the civil service.
The Trade Union Act of 1871 gave full legal recognition to trade unions. In
1872 the secret ballot was introduced in parliamentary
elections.
Imperialism came into the ascendancy in
1874 with Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative ministry. Disraeli obtained for
Britain financial control of the Suez Canal, key to Britain's eastern empire.
In 1876 he had Queen Victoria declared empress of India. When Russia defeated
Turkey and advanced close to Constantinople, he called the Congress of Berlin
(1878), which checked Russian ambitions
During Gladstone's second ministry,
1880-85, a third Reform Bill was enacted, in 1884. This gave rural voters the
same voting privileges as the townspeople. The "Grand Old Man" went down to
defeat because he championed Home Rule for Ireland. The Irish question split
the Liberal party into Home Rulers and Unionists. The Liberal Unionists, led by
Joseph Chamberlain, gave their support to the Conservative party because they
wanted no separate parliament for Ireland. A coalition of Conservatives and
Liberal Unionists took office.
During the three ministries of Robert
Salisbury, the government brought the navy to a high state of efficiency and
secured for Britain the lion's share in the partition of Africa. To stimulate
interest in the empire, it celebrated the 50th and 60th years of Victoria's
rule (1887 and 1897) with magnificent "jubilees" attended by Indian princes and
representatives of all the far-flung dominions and colonies. Before the century
ended, the British were engaged in the Boer War (1899-1902) against the Dutch
farmers (Boers) in South Africa. After some humiliating defeats, Britain won
the war and annexed the two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State. Following annexation, Britain granted self-government to South Africa
under the leadership of Jan Smuts, a Boer. Before the war was over, Queen
Victoria died (1901), ending the longest reign in British history. Edward VII,
her son, succeeded her.
An Age of Peace and
Progress
The Victorians called their age
"modern" and thought it superior to all past centuries. It was an age that
envisioned an indefinite future of progress with peace and plenty. Wages and
working conditions steadily improved. Dividends from British industry and from
foreign investments supported a leisure class. The population of the United
Kingdom increased in the last half of the century from 28 million to nearly 42
million people. The age was extraordinarily creative in literature and science.
The poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning expressed the Victorians'
optimism and religious feeling. But it was chiefly an age of the novel,
represented by William Thackeray and Charles Dickens, and the essay. In pure
science, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had worldwide
influence
The Victorians did not excel in music
or in painting. Architecture actually deteriorated, owing in part to the
progress in technology that caused a breakdown of craftsmanship and tradition.
Cheap manufactured knickknacks cluttered Victorian
parlors.
The Labour Party and the New
Liberalism
When Edward VII came to the throne, in
1901, Britain was no longer the only "workshop of the world." The Industrial
Revolution was now in full swing in other countries. Germany, the United
States, and Japan competed strongly with Britain in foreign markets.
Unemployment soon became chronic. Serious unrest stirred the working
classes.
Germany not only competed with British
industry but had become the greatest military power on the Continent; and in
1900 it began to expand its navy, challenging British control of the seas. To
meet this threat, Britain abandoned its "splendid isolation" and entered into
an alliance with Japan in 1902. In 1904 it concluded the Entente Cordiale with
France, and in 1907 it reached a similar agreement with Russia.
In 1900 the British Trades Union
Congress held a conference to form a new political party. Delegates were
invited from various socialist organizations. Chief among these was the Fabian
Society. The Fabians were middle-class intellectuals who had been advocating
national ownership of land and industry since 1883. The new party became known
at once as the Labour party.
Fabian teachings had been spreading
also in the Liberal party. The "new" Liberals of the 20th century no longer
advocated a policy of laissez-faire in government. They had turned against
individualism and classical economics and favored extending the powers of the
state to abolish poverty. They still held to the 19th-century Liberal doctrine
of free trade. On this issue they won the election of 1906. Labour party
representatives supported the Liberal program of social
legislation.
Lloyd George's Social
Legislation
The driving power of the new government
was David Lloyd George, chancellor of the exchequer under Herbert Asquith from
1908 to 1916. In 1908 he put through Parliament an Old Age Pensions Act
granting pensions to all old people with a small income. On Jan. 1, 1909, over
half a million men and women drew their first pensions.
Pensions and the constantly expanding
navy vastly increased the expenses of the British government. In 1909 Lloyd
George proposed heavy taxes on the wealthy and a new tax on land. The House of
Lords rejected his budget.
A constitutional struggle took place
that ended in the Parliament Act of 1911, which stripped the House of Lords of
much of its power. The way was now open for the passage of a National Insurance
Act (1912) to pay wage earners unemployment and sickness
benefits.
In the midst of the parliamentary
struggle Edward VII died (1910). He was succeeded by his only surviving son,
George V.
World War I and Its Aftermath
On the eve of World War I the people of
Great Britain were concerned with militant suffragettes, workingmen's strikes,
and an Irish crisis. War broke out with startling suddenness on Aug. 1, 1914.
Britain declared war three days later, and the British dominions and colonies
were automatically drawn in. British and empire troops fought in France and
Belgium, at Gallipoli, and in Palestine, while the navy held the seas and
prevented food and supplies from reaching Germany.
Lloyd George became the war leader in
1916 when he succeeded Asquith as head of the Nationalist government, a
coalition of Liberal and Conservative parties. The peace treaties, which he
negotiated, added more territory to the vast British Empire in Asia, Africa,
and the Pacific. The United Kingdom itself, however, was made smaller by an act
of Parliament granting self-government to southern Ireland as a dominion of the
British Commonwealth.
In 1918 Lloyd George's government
passed an Education Act abolishing all fees in state-supported elementary
schools. The same year it extended manhood suffrage and granted the right to
vote to single women over 30 and married women over 35 who met certain property
qualifications. In 1919 women became eligible for Parliament. Universal adult
suffrage was not achieved until 1928.
The war had vastly increased the
national debt. By imposing heavy income taxes, the government managed to
balance the budget while increasing payments to the unemployed. Industrial
peace, however, did not return. After a few years of prosperity, exports
declined and unemployment rose. A wave of strikes engulfed the
country.
The Conservatives deserted the
Nationalist coalition and defeated the Liberals in 1922. The Labour party
(which had come out openly for socialism in 1918) voted with the Liberals to
turn out the Conservatives, and in 1924 Ramsay MacDonald was chosen to head
Britain's first Labour government. He remained in office only nine months,
going down to defeat partly because he advocated closer relations with
Russia.
Under Stanley Baldwin as prime
minister, the Conservatives returned to power for almost five years (1924-29).
Again unemployment relief was increased. The cause of unemployment was the
shrinking world market for British coal, textiles, and steel. The Labour party
believed full employment could be attained by government ownership of basic
industries. The unions called a general strike in 1926 to force through their
demands. The strike was quickly ended except for the coal miners, the most
distressed of the workers.
The regular election of 1929 favored
the Labour party, and MacDonald formed a cabinet. The world depression
dislocated international trade and currencies and plunged Britain into a
financial crisis. The number of unemployed mounted to nearly 3 million. The
leaders of the three parties then formed a coalition cabinet called the
National government. MacDonald retained the premiership, but he now owed his
support chiefly to the Conservatives. The Labour party had expelled him when
his government introduced drastic economies. He resigned in 1935 and Baldwin
again became prime minister.
Three Kings in One Year
George V died in January 1936,
and his eldest son, Edward, the popular prince of Wales, came to the throne as
Edward VIII. Before his coronation, the king announced his intention of
marrying an American, Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, as soon as her second
divorce became absolute. Parliament and the dominions' governments disapproved.
Edward abdicated on Dec. 11, 1936, and his brother, the duke of York, was
proclaimed king as George VI.
Britain Abandons Free
Trade
Since the repeal of the Corn Laws in
1846, Britain had been practically a free-trade country. Almost all other
nations had put up tariffs that handicapped British exporters. When the world
depression caused a slump in trade, the dominions asked Britain to import more
raw materials from them. In return, they would favor British manufactures. In
1932 Parliament passed the Import Duties Act. The act imposed a basic tariff of
10 percent on all goods not specifically exempted. This paved the way for the
Ottawa imperial conference in the same year, which worked out "preferential"
tariffs within the empire.
The Statute of Westminster (1931) had
recognized the complete control by the dominions of their foreign as well as
domestic affairs. The Ottawa conference strengthened the ties of the
Commonwealth by binding the members into a closer economic union. This,
however, did not check the growing nationalism in India and other Asian
dependencies.
Outbreak of World War
II
In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in
Germany and soon began to rearm the country. Britain, absorbed in domestic
troubles, was unprepared for war. Hitler seized Austria in March 1938, then
made demands on Czechoslovakia. Britain, along with France, adopted a policy of
appeasement, hoping Hitler's demands could be satisfied short of war. Neville
Chamberlain, who had become prime minister in 1937, believed he had achieved
"peace in our time" when Hitler pledged at Munich (Sept. 30, 1938) that he had
"no further territorial claims in Europe." Six months later Hitler broke the
pact and took over most of Czechoslovakia.
Britain joined with France in
guaranteeing Poland's independence. Hitler took no action until after the
Soviet Union signed a peace pact with Germany (Aug. 24, 1939). Eight days later
(September 1) his army marched into Poland. Britain and France declared war two
days later.
The Battle of Britain
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded
Belgium and The Netherlands. On the same day Winston Churchill succeeded
Chamberlain as prime minister. Britain lost most of its armament in the famed
retreat from the Dunkirk beaches. When France fell in June the British began
their "year alone" and suffered the furious onslaught of German bombers. "Let
us therefore brace ourselves to our duty," said Churchill, "and so bear
ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand
years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour.' "
The battle of Britain was a victory
that ranked in importance with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Britain was
saved from invasion by its navy and its air force. British and Commonwealth
troops fought on the far-flung battlefields of this war, and British leaders
played a strong role in the formation of the United Nations.
Six years of war cost the United
Kingdom 397,762 in dead and missing and thousands of civilian casualties.
Millions of properties were damaged or destroyed. Britain received extensive
United States Lend-Lease aid but met most of the huge war expenditures by
selling overseas investments, by large overseas borrowing, by domestic loans,
and by a tremendous increase in taxation.
Britain's Socialist
Revolution
In 1945 Britain held its first general
election in ten years. The Labour party received an overwhelming majority.
Clement Attlee, its leader, succeeded Churchill as prime minister. The party
was elected on a socialist platform and at once embarked on a nationalization
program. The state bought out shareholders in the Bank of England, the coal
mines, all inland transport, aviation, gas, and electricity. It subsidized
housing and food. It put through the "cradle-to-grave" social insurance plan
drawn up under Churchill's ministry. It also set up a National Health Service
to provide free medical care.
The postwar government faced grave
financial difficulties. It cut imports to bare necessities and ruled that
almost the entire output of Britain's factories must be sold abroad instead of
in the home market. It fixed prices, rationed scarce goods, limited wages, and
called on people to practice austerity.
To offset the loss of income from
foreign investments, Britain needed to double its exports above the prewar
level. In 1949 the postwar sellers' market ended, and the high prices of
British products caused a swift drop in exports. The government scaled down the
value of the British pound from $4.03 to $2.80. This made it possible for
British manufacturers to sell their goods in dollar markets but increased the
price of necessary imports from dollar countries. Foreign loans and credits,
especially Marshall Plan aid from the United States, helped in financial crises
and in the task of rehabilitating overage and war-damaged industrial
plants.
Decline in World Power
The British Empire suffered severe
losses in territory and world influence in the years 1947-49. India, Pakistan,
and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) became self-governing nations within the
Commonwealth, and Burma (now Myanmar) gained complete independence. Eire
(southern Ireland) cut all ties with Britain and took the name of the Republic
of Ireland.
On the continent of Europe, Britain no
longer held its historic balance of power. For centuries it had helped prevent
a strong nation from dominating the continent by throwing its weight toward
that nation's rivals. Now the Soviet Union controlled all Eastern Europe. The
only other world power was the United States. It used its influence to organize
the nations of Western Europe for cooperation in defense and economic progress.
Britain was not ready to share in a united Europe. It joined the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949 to meet the threat of Soviet
aggression, and expanded its armament production. British land, sea, and air
forces shared in the United Nations action in South Korea in 1950-53. Later,
Britain joined the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) of the Middle East and
the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
In the 1950s many of Britain's postwar
problems remained unsolved, but its economy rode on a wave of prosperity.
Manufacturing output exceeded prewar production early in the decade. In 1959
the output of steel had risen 55 percent above that of 1938. Between 1949 and
1959 domestic production increased and exports rose by 40 percent. Most Britons
in the early 1960s were earning twice as much as they had been in 1949. In 1951
the Conservatives returned to power. Winston Churchill, then 76, again became
premier. On Feb. 6, 1952, George VI died. His elder daughter succeeded him as
Elizabeth II.
The Conservatives lifted certain
controls set by the Socialist government. In 1953 they denationalized iron and
steel and trucking. Food rationing ended in 1954. Churchill resigned as premier
in 1955 and was succeeded by Sir Anthony Eden.
Great Britain withdrew its last troops
from the Suez Canal zone in June 1956, according to an earlier agreement. In
July Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain and France protested
vigorously. In October Israeli forces invaded Egypt. After demanding a
cease-fire between them, Britain and France sent forces into the canal zone.
They were branded as aggressors in the United Nations. The Anglo-French troops
withdrew as a United Nations task force moved in. In January 1957 Eden resigned
as prime minister and was succeeded by Harold Macmillan.
The death knell of colonialism sounded
in the 1950s and 1960s as most of the foreign territories of the European
powers won independence. The British had trained their colonies for
self-government, so they usually parted with Britain as friends and the new
nations remained in the Commonwealth. A notable exception was South Africa,
which became a republic and left the Commonwealth in 1961. Throughout the 1960s
independence was achieved by more than 20 British colonies and trusteeships in
Africa, Asia, South America, and the West Indies. By the mid-1980s almost all
of the Pacific and West Indies island units had also become independent. The
secessionist state of Rhodesia, which had unilaterally declared itself
independent (a status not recognized by Britain) in 1965 and a republic in
1970, reverted to colonial status in 1979 before finally achieving independence
as Zimbabwe in 1980. In 1997 Hong Kong returned to complete Chinese control for
the first time since the middle of the 19th century.
Post-1950s
Leadership
In October 1963 Macmillan resigned. He
was succeeded by another Conservative, Sir Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home. In
1964 Labourite Harold Wilson became prime minister. After a Conservative
victory in 1970, Edward Heath took office. A pay strike by coal miners, in the
midst of a worldwide energy crisis, led Heath to call a new election in
February 1974, and Wilson returned as prime minister.
Wilson resigned in March 1976 and was
succeeded by another Labourite, James Callaghan. In 1979 Callaghan, who had
headed a minority government for two years, became the first British prime
minister since 1924 to lose office after a no-confidence motion. Margaret
Thatcher, who had been the Conservative party leader since 1975, became
Britain's first woman prime minister.
War with Argentina.
In 1982 Britain went to
war with Argentina over a faraway dependency in the South Atlantic. Known as
the Islas Malvinas in Argentina and the Falkland Islands in Britain, the land
had been the subject of debate between the two countries ever since Britain
reclaimed the islands as a crown colony in 1833. The issue of their sovereignty
was shifted to the United Nations in 1964, and diplomatic discussions began the
next year. Argentina's invasion of the Falklands 17 years later, while these
negotiations continued, came as a complete surprise. Britain's recapture of the
islands ten weeks later restored Conservative popularity and encouraged
Thatcher to call a general election in 1983, a year earlier than required. Her
Conservative party won an overwhelming victory.
Coal miners' strike.
A bitter coal miners'
strike dominated 1984. The government was determined to close 20 or more
uneconomical mines and to exercise its constitutional and political authority.
Although the year was marked by violence and much political wrangling, the
striking miners went back to work almost exactly a year later. The government's
victory tilted the balance of power against the trade union
movement.
Soccer tragedies.
Increased fear of
inner-city rioting, as well as terrorism, caused English police to break with
tradition and carry guns openly. During the 1985 European soccer finals in
Brussels, unruly supporters of the team from Liverpool were held responsible
for 39 deaths in the collapse of a stadium wall. In a rush on the overcrowded
terraces (standing area) of a Sheffield stadium in 1989, 94 spectators
died.
End of Thatcherism. In 1987
Thatcher became the first British prime minister in more than 150 years to win
a third consecutive election. By 1990 she had become the longest-serving
British leader of the century, but her 15-year tenure as head of the
Conservative party ended in that year. The reasons for discontent with
Thatcherism ranged from her domineering personal style to the abolition of the
local property tax in favor of a flat-rate community charge, or poll tax. With
loss of power, Thatcher resigned in November 1990. Her successor as prime
minister was John Major, a top minister in her cabinet
In 1992 elections Major led
the Conservatives to victory again, extending their winning streak to four
elections since 1979. During his second term, however, Major came under severe
scrutiny from opponents inside and outside the Conservative party. In
particular, the question of British integration in the EU split the party. In
late 1996 the Conservatives lost their majority in Parliament for the first
time since they wrested control of the government from the Labour party in
1979.
Rise of New Labour.
As the Conservatives
splintered, they faced a serious threat from popular Labour party leader Tony
Blair. Labour had suffered repeated Parliamentary losses, and many suspected
that the party had lost touch with the British voters when Blair took over its
leadership in 1994. Blair refashioned the Labour party as "New" Labour, dumping
controversial party platforms that hinted of the Labour party's past
affiliation with socialist causes, such as the nationalization of industries.
On May 1, 1997, Blair became the youngest person elected prime minister of
Britain in the 20th century as he led the Labour party to a landslide victory
over the Conservatives. Labour won 43 percent of the popular vote and captured
418 out of a total of 659 seats in the British Parliament. The Conservative
party, en route to its worst finish since 1832, won only 30 percent of the vote
and secured only 165 seats in Parliament, down from a pre-election total of 323
seats.
European Union. In 1959 Great
Britain helped found the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The more
tightly knit European Economic Community (EEC) made greater economic gains,
however, and the Macmillan government sought EEC entry to stimulate Britain's
trade. Since the tariff agreements between Commonwealth countries conflicted
with EEC regulations, long negotiations and compromises were necessary. France
vetoed Britain's bid for EEC membership in 1963 and again in 1967. On Jan. 1,
1973, Britain finally joined the group, by then renamed the European
Communities (EC) and later the European Union (EU). In 1988 Thatcher attacked a
plan to establish a European federal economic and political state with a
central bank and a common community currency. Her continued hard line against
greater EC integration led to the division within her Conservative party that
contributed to her downfall in 1990.
Major was chosen as head of
the Conservative party in 1990 after staking his bid to power on the idea of
British integration in the EU. Many British Conservatives, however, began to
lose confidence in the proposed creation of a single economic currency, known
as the euro, on the grounds that the single currency system was a threat to
national sovereignty. Some members of the party, known as euroskeptics,
suggested that Major abandon plans to integrate British currency into the
single-currency system. Divisions within the Conservative ranks concerning the
question of integration contributed to the party's defeat in 1997. Following
his election, Blair, who had described his stance on the EU as a "wait and see"
policy during his 1997 campaign, emerged as a strong proponent for the strict
continuance of the EU budgetary guidelines.
Northern Ireland. A general
strike in Northern Ireland in May 1974 led to the collapse of its
five-month-old coalition government and forced Britain to resume direct rule
over the province. British attempts to help stabilize the long-standing dispute
between the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority continued over
the next decade. In a move strongly opposed by the Protestants, a 1985 accord
with the Republic of Ireland gave it a consultant role in the governing of
Northern Ireland. Incidents of terrorism persisted--for example, a bombing in
Northern Ireland that killed 11 people in 1987, the shooting deaths of three
Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists in 1988, and the bombing deaths of ten
British military band students in 1989. In 1991 the IRA fired three mortar
rounds at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's official
residence.
In August 1994 the IRA declared a
cease-fire. Disappointed by the slow progress of peace efforts, however, the
IRA shattered the cease-fire with a series of bombings in February 1996. In
June of that year negotiations aimed at reaching a settlement to the conflict
began in Belfast. The talks were attended by the British and Irish governments
and all the major political parties in Northern Ireland except Sinn Fein, the
political wing of the IRA, which was excluded by Major and Prime Minister John
Bruton of Ireland until the IRA reinstituted its cease-fire. In July 1997 the
IRA resumed the cease-fire, clearing the way for the participation of Sinn Fein
in multiparty discussions that began in September of that year. At the start of
the talks Sinn Fein agreed to renounce the use of violence and terror as means
of settling the territorial dispute. In December 1997 Gerry Adams, the leader
of Sinn Fein, made a historic visit to 10 Downing Street to meet with Prime
Minister Blair to discuss the peace process. The negotiations in Belfast
yielded a landmark accord in April 1998 designed to end direct British rule
over Northern Ireland and bring about a lasting peace.
This article was contributed by Ian M.
Matley, Professor of Geography, Michigan State University, East
Lansing. From the website: http://history-world.org/england.htm
some five or six centuries
before the birth of Christ, a tall fair people called Celts came across the channel in small boats. The Goidels, or Gaels (who are still found in Ireland
and in the Highlands of Scotland), formed the first great migration. Then came
the Brythons, or Britons (still found in Wales and Cornwall), who gave their name to the island of Britain. The Celts knew how to smelt iron and were
skilled in arts and crafts. They became the ruling class, and the native folk
adopted the Celtic language and the Celts' Druid religion.
Roman Rule
Julius Caesar raided Britain
in 55 BC and again in 54 BC. Nearly 90 years later Rome undertook the conquest
of the island in earnest. In AD 43 Emperor Claudius gathered a force of about
40,000 to invade the island. All the area that is now England was soon subdued
and added to the Roman Empire as the province Britannia.
A widowed Icenian queen,
golden-haired Boudicca, led a great uprising against the Romans in AD 60, but
her barbarian horde was no match for the Roman soldiers. The people of Scotland
were harder to subdue. Emperor Hadrian decided conquering them was not worth
the trouble, so he had a wall built 73 1/2 miles (118 kilometers) long across
the narrow neck of the island to keep them out. South of this wall the Romans
built more than 50 cities and connected them with military roads. Some of these
roads, such as the famous Watling Street, serve as the foundations for modern
highways.
The cities contained Roman baths and
open-air theaters; temples to Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva; and houses with
colonnaded terraces, mosaic floors, and hot-air furnaces. Upper-class Britons
in the towns spoke Latin and wore the Roman toga. Commerce and industry
prospered, protected by Roman law. Later, when Rome became Christian, Roman
missionaries spread Christian teachings in Britain.
In
AD 410 the Goths swept down on
Rome, and no more Roman legions came to protect Britannia. The Britons, left to
themselves, were unable to form a government. Local chieftains warred with one
another. Barbarians from Scotland and pirates from Ireland ravaged the land. In
vain a Briton wrote for aid to a Roman consul, saying: "The barbarians drive us
to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians."
Anglo-Saxon Invasions
Soon a more dangerous enemy appeared.
Across the North Sea came bands of pirates in long black ships. They were the
Teutonic peoples--Angles, Saxons, and Jutes--from the region of modern Denmark.
They found the island easy to invade. In the south and west a low coast thrusts
out toward the continent. From the coast navigable rivers lead inland across a
rolling plain. The land itself, covered with green the year round, seemed
miraculous. Centuries later people learned that the British Isles, so far
north, owe their mild climate to the warm Gulf Stream.
The invaders plundered city after city
and drove the Britons ever farther westward. Farmers and herdsmen followed in
the wake of the warriors. The newcomers were pagans, worshipers of Odin and
Thor, and had no use for Roman cities or Roman law. They cleared the forests
for farmland and built longhouses grouped around the large log hall of their
chief, which was decorated with carving and paint and hung with shining
armor.
By AD 600 the ruin of Rome's
Britannia was complete. The original Celtic stock survived only in the
mountains of Wales and in Cornwall. Except in these areas Christianity and the
Celtic language died. Britain came to be called Angle-land (later England)
after the Angles, and the people spoke Anglo-Saxon The small Anglo-Saxon tribes
gradually merged into seven or eight little kingdoms. The Jutes, a small tribe,
held the Isle of Wight and land to the north. The Saxons established themselves
in Wessex on the south coast. The Angles ruled Mercia in the Midlands, East
Anglia on the east coast, and Northumbria in the northeast. When a king died an
assembly called the witenagemot, meaning "meeting of the wise," chose a new
king.
Mission of Augustine
In the year 597 Augustine, an Italian
monk, landed with 40 followers on the coast of Kent. He had been sent by Pope
Gregory I to win the Angles over to the Christian faith. He baptized Ethelbert,
king of Kent, repaired the old Roman church at Canterbury, and founded a
Benedictine abbey there. The pope made him archbishop for his services. Hence
from that time on, the archbishop of Canterbury has been primate of the church
in England Christianity spread rapidly. Learned
monks brought to England a knowledge of architecture, law, philosophy, and
Latin. A new civilization began to take shape, but it was checked by another
invasion.
Danes Invade England
The new invaders were
Scandinavians from Norway and Denmark. The English called them Danes. Summer
after summer these bold pirates rowed up the rivers in their longboats,
plundered the rich monasteries, and went home with the gold and gems. Soon
after 850 a great force remained in England, bent on conquest. Then permanent
settlers poured in. The Danes were farmers and traders as well as warriors.
When they founded a town--usually a port--they fortified it and opened a
market. All of eastern England north of the Thames passed under the rule of the
Danish jarls, or earls, and came to be known as the Danelaw, the part under
Danish law.
The Danes would probably have
wiped out Christianity in England if it had not been for Alfred the Great, king
of Wessex. Alfred defeated the Danes' great army at Chippenham in 878 and
forced the Danish leader to sign a treaty agreeing to leave Wessex free. The
Danes promised also to be baptized, and many did become Christians. Alfred
began English prose literature by translating Latin books into Anglo-Saxon. He
also built schools and ordered the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', the first
historical record of England, to be begun.
a century after Alfred's time the
Danes started once more to raid England's shores. In 991 the incompetent
Ethelred the Unready tried to buy them off by paying them yearly a large sum in
silver, called the Danegeld, or Dane tax, which was raised by a heavy tax on
the people. Nevertheless the Danes came again, and in 1016 Canute, the king of
Norway and Denmark, made himself king of England also. He proved to be a wise
and strong ruler, but after his death his empire fell apart, and in 1042 the
Danish dynasty in England ended.
The English line then returned to
the throne with Edward, son of Ethelred. He had been reared by French monks and
was called The Confessor.
Norman Conquest (1066)
While the Danes were invading England,
other Norsemen raided the coast of France. On the southern shore of the English
Channel they established the Duchy of Normandy. These Norsemen, or Normans,
became French in language and culture. In the 11th century the Duchy of
Normandy was rich, populous, and powerful.
When Edward the Confessor died
childless, William, duke of Normandy, claimed the English crown. He was a
second cousin of Edward, and he had exacted an oath from Harold, earl of
Wessex, to support his claim. The English Witan nevertheless elected Harold
king. William appealed to the pope. The pope supported William and declared
Harold guilty of perjury.
William gathered together a "host of
horsemen, slingers, and archers" and set sail for England. Harold met him with
foot soldiers armed with battle-axes. The two armies clashed in the famous
battle of Hastings on Oct. 14, 1066.
Harold was killed on the battlefield.
The victorious William went up to London and was crowned king of England in
Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day.
Feudal System Under William I
For five years William I was busy
putting down revolts in his new kingdom. He seized the land of all Saxons who
fought against him and distributed it among his Norman followers--except for
vast tracts that he kept for himself as crown lands. On his own estates and on
those of favored barons he ordered strong fortified castles
built. in return for the grant of land--called
a fief--each lord had to swear loyalty to the king, furnish knights for the
king's army, attend the king's court, and aid the king with money on certain
occasions. Farmers were reduced to the class of serfs, or villeins, as the
Normans called them. A villein could not leave the manor on which he was born.
This system of land tenure was the basis of feudalism, which held sway all over
Europe in the Middle Ages. the efficiency of William's rule is
shown by the survey he had made of all the property in England. His agents
visited every manor, found out who owned it, how many people lived there, and
reported what the feudal lord ought to pay the king in taxes and feudal
service. The findings were recorded in the famous Domesday Book. It was called
Domesday (day of doom) because no one could escape its judgment.
The date of the Norman
Conquest--1066--is one of the most important dates in English history. The
Conquest cut England's ties with Scandinavia and connected England with France.
French, the language of the Norman rulers, became blended with the Anglo-Saxon
speech of the common people, enriching the native language with many new words
and ideas. Wooden churches and abbeys were replaced with beautiful stone
buildings in the Norman style. Foreign monks and bishops, brought in by the
Normans, made the monasteries centers of learning. Anyone who wanted to study
went into the church as a matter of course. The king's secretaries, judges, and
most of his civil servants were churchmen, because only churchmen had the
necessary education. When he was crowned, William I, the
Conqueror, promised to govern according to the laws of Edward the Confessor.
The Witan survived in his great council of advisers, the curia regis,
which was attended by earls, barons, bishops, and abbots; but the council
no longer had the power to choose the king. As feudal overlord of the whole
country, William bequeathed England to his second son, William II. He left
Normandy to his eldest son, Robert.
William II, Henry I, and Stephen
William II (called William Rufus, the
"Red King") came to the throne in 1087. He was a harsh ruler and few mourned
him when he was killed by an arrow--shot by an unknown hand--while he was
hunting (see William, Kings of England). Robert had gone off on the
First Crusade, to recover the Holy Land from the Turks. A third son, Henry I,
was therefore able to become king without a struggle, in 1100. When Robert
returned, Henry crossed the Channel, defeated him, and gained Normandy also. He
gave both England and western France a peaceful, orderly rule.
Henry I exacted a promise from the
barons to recognize his daughter Matilda as their ruler. However, when he died,
some of the barons broke their promise and instead chose Stephen, a grandson of
William the Conqueror. Stephen was a gallant knight but a weak king. Throughout
his reign lawless barons fought private wars, each seeking to increase his
power. Twice he was challenged by Matilda and her supporters, who nearly
defeated him in 1141. When Stephen died (1154), the people were ready to
welcome a strong ruler who would restore order.
Henry II Restores the Royal Power
The strong ruler was found in Henry
Plantagenet, count of Anjou. His mother was Matilda (or Maud), daughter of
Henry I of England; his father was Geoffrey of Anjou. He came to the throne of
England as Henry II, first of the Plantagenet line of kings, who were to rule
England for 245 years. By marriage and inheritance, he came into possession of
all western France. He spent most of his long reign, 1154-89, in his French
possessions; yet he became one of England's great rulers.
Henry II sent out trained justices
(judges) on circuit to different towns in England to sit in the county courts.
The judges kept records of their cases. When one judge had decided a case,
other judges trying the same kind of case were likely to adopt the decision
that had been recorded. In the course of years, legal principles came to be
based on these decisions. Because this case law applied to all Englishmen
equally, it came to be called the common law. The circuit justices also made
more extensive use of juries and started the grand jury system in criminal law.
Henry carried on a long and bitter
struggle with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who asserted the
independence of the church courts against the king's authority. The church
triumphed when Becket was murdered. After making peace with the pope, Henry did
penance at Becket's tomb. Becket became a sainted martyr, and for centuries
people made pilgrimages to his shrine at Canterbury.
Richard the Lion-Hearted, the brave and
reckless son of Henry II, succeeded his father in 1189. After a few months he
left England and went off on his long crusade. The country suffered little in
his absence because Hubert Walter governed it better than Richard himself would
have. King John and Magna
Carta
In 1199 Richard I was succeeded by his
brother John, the most despicable of English kings. By a series of blunders
John lost almost all his French possessions except the southwest corner. The
English barons refused to help him regain his territory. Angered by his
tyrannical rule, they drew up a list of things that even a king might not do.
On June 15, 1215, they forced him to set his seal to this Great Charter (in
Latin, Magna Carta) of English liberties.
Magna Carta is regarded as one of the
most notable documents in history. The rights it listed were, in the main,
feudal rights of justice and property that had been recognized by previous
kings; but now for the first time these rights were insisted upon against the
king's will. Thus an important principle was established--that the king himself
must govern according to law. In later years, whenever a king over-extended his
powers, the people could remind him of Magna Carta.
The Rise of Parliament
Henry III, John's eldest son, was
crowned at the age of nine and ruled 56 years, 1216-72. He was pious and well
meaning but incompetent and extravagant. The barons took a strong stand against
him in Parliament. (The term parliament was gradually coming into use for the
Great Council.) In 1264 the barons, led by Simon de Montfort, rose against the
king and brought on the Barons' Wars. These wars ended when Earl Simon was
killed in battle.
Henry III's son, Edward I, who ruled
England from 1272 to 1307, wisely accepted the limitations on the king's
authority. His parliament of 1295 is called the Model Parliament because it
included representatives of both shires and towns as well as the Great Council.
Many of the laws passed in Edward's reign exist in modified form
today.Edward I conquered and annexed Wales
but failed in his effort to subdue Scotland. He died on his way north to put
down an uprising led by the Scottish hero Robert Bruce. His incompetent son,
Edward II, then took up the task and was decisively defeated by Bruce at
Bannockburn. In 1327 Parliament used its new power to depose Edward II and
place his son, Edward III, on the throne.
Flowering of English Medieval
Life
The 13th century was a time of great
enthusiasm for art and learning. In architecture the low, square towers and
rounded arches of the Norman period gave place to the delicate spires and
pointed arches of the early English, or Gothic, style. New learning was brought
into England by friars and other scholars from the Continent. Oxford University
won renown all over Europe. One of its teachers, Roger Bacon, a friar, urged
the study of nature and the experimental method in seeking knowledge. The
Crusades opened commerce with the Orient and brought in new
ideas.Towns became noted for particular
manufactures. Craft guilds held a monopoly of manufacture, and merchant guilds
controlled local markets. Foreign merchants were allowed to sell their wares
only at certain annual fairs.
The Hundred Years' War and the Black
Death
Knighthood was still in flower while
Edward III was on the English throne from 1327 to 1377. The king himself
excelled in "beautiful feats of arms." He soon had a chance to prove his skill.
During his reign began the long struggle with France called the Hundred Years'
War. In 1346 Edward's army won a brilliant victory at Crecy with a new English
weapon, the longbow. The next year Edward took Calais, a French seaport. In
1356 his son Edward, the Black Prince, won the famous battle of Poitiers.
The war had come to a temporary halt
when the Black Death swept over Western Europe in 1348-49, recurring repeatedly
over the next century. More than a fourth of England's population perished.
Whole villages were wiped out, and great areas of farmland went to weeds. The
serfs who survived demanded high money wages. If their lord refused, they moved
to another manor. The government tried to halt the rise in wages and bind the
laborers to their manors once more, but it could not enforce its Statute of
Labourers. The landlords sought labor at any price, and the laborers formed
alliances to resist the law. John Wycliffe's "poor priests" (Lollards) and
other traveling preachers increased the discontent by denouncing the landlords.
Richard II, grandson of Edward III, was
14 years old when a great band of peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and John Ball,
marched on London (1381) from Kent. The boy king went out boldly to meet them.
"We will that you make us free forever," the peasants asked. Richard promised
to help them, and they returned peaceably to their homes. The king did not keep
his promise. Within a week the judges hanged 1,500 ringleaders of the revolt.
The feudal system of villenage, however, could not be revived. The serfs were
gradually giving place to a new class of farmers--free yeomen. Richard II thirsted
for absolute rule and came into conflict with the powerful barons. His cousin Henry, duke of
Lancaster, led a revolt against him in 1399, imprisoned him in the Tower of
London, and compelled him to abdicate. Parliament then placed Henry on the
throne of England as Henry IV. The House of Lancaster ruled England
only 62 years, 1399-1461. During this period three Henrys--father, son, and
grandson--wore the crown. Their reigns were filled with plots and rebellions,
murders and executions. Parliament had made them kings, and they needed its
support to keep the throne. They therefore consulted it on all affairs.
The End of the Middle Ages in
England
In 1455, two years after the
Hundred Years' War ended, the House of York and the House of Lancaster plunged
into a long and bloody struggle for the crown called the Wars of the Roses.
Henry VI, of the House of Lancaster, was captured and murdered. Edward IV, of
the House of York, spent most of his reign fighting to keep his crown. The last
Yorkist king, Richard III, gained the throne when Edward's sons were declared
not to be the rightful heirs. Peace came with Richard's death in the battle of
Bosworth Field. The date of Richard's death--1485--may well be used to mark the
close of the Middle Ages in English history.
The Wars of the Roses were the
death throes of the feudal system. Battles and executions thinned the ranks of
the nobles, and their fortified castles were no longer impregnable after the
invention of gunpowder. A new aristocracy was pushing up through the broken
crust of feudal society. In the towns a rich capitalist class appeared. Country
squires--the landed gentry--also grew wealthy. The new aristocracy began to
seek political power.
England was now the chief
cloth-exporting country in the world. Enterprising employers, tired of the
restrictions of the guild system, supplied wool to farmers and villagers to be
spun and made up into cloth. This method of manufacture was called the domestic
system, or the putting-out system. It grew steadily and caused the breakup of
the guild system's monopoly. Serfdom also gradually died out. The gentry leased
their land to yeomen who paid money wages to their free
laborers.
French, the speech of the
governing classes, had become blended with Anglo-Saxon into an English speech
somewhat similar to the language used today. The great poet Geoffrey Chaucer
wrote in this English and the Bible was translated into it. These works were
among the first printed by William Caxton, who brought a printing press to
England from Belgium in 1476. Printing made it possible for many more people to
have books and helped spread the New Learning of the Renaissance. Before the
15th century ended, Spanish and Portuguese explorers had opened up new
continents across the Atlantic Ocean.
Henry VII, First of the
Tudors
After a century of wars, England
enjoyed a century of almost unbroken peace under the Tudors. When this strong
dynasty ended, England was a modern nation.
Henry VII, first of the Tudor
line, became king by defeating and slaying Richard III in the battle of
Bosworth Field (1485). He crushed the barons and made Parliament once more
obedient to the king's will. Only the medieval church, still wealthy and
powerful, remained an obstacle to his authority. He was popular with the
commons--the middle classes in town and country--because he built up an orderly
government, aided commerce and industry, and kept the country at peace and out
of debt. With his encouragement, John Cabot in 1497 piloted an English ship
across the Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland, five years after Columbus discovered
the New World.
The English
Reformation
Henry VIII, ruled 1509-47, is
famous as the king who had six wives in succession. When he put aside his first
wife, Catherine of Aragon, the pope excommunicated him. Henry, enraged, had
Parliament cut the ties that bound the English church to the papacy (1534) and
forced the English clergy to acknowledge the king rather than the pope as the
"only supreme head of the Church of England."
Henry's quarrel with the pope was
made easier by the Protestant Reformation. Yet Henry claimed to be a devout
Roman Catholic. He burned Protestants at the stake almost as readily as he
hanged and beheaded the "traitors" who upheld the pope. His attack on the
papacy was prompted in part by greed. By dissolving the monasteries he was able
to seize their lands and buildings and the costly ornaments of the shrines. He
used some of his new riches to fortify the coasts and build England's first
real navy. At his death the royal fleet numbered 71 vessels, some of which were
fitted out with cannon.
Henry VIII's only son, Edward VI,
was ten years old when he came to the throne (1547), and he died at the age of
16. The Lord Protectors who ruled in his stead favored the Protestant cause.
They forbade the Catholics to hold Mass and required Thomas Cranmer's English
Prayer Book to be read instead of the Latin Mass.
These laws were speedily repealed
when Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ascended the throne.
Mary had been brought up in the Catholic faith and she held resolutely to
it.
Elizabeth I and England's Golden
Age
Elizabeth I, Mary's half sister,
in turn repealed Mary's laws. In her reign the Church of England took the form
it has today. It kept the Catholic governmental organization of archbishops,
bishops, and deans, but it rejected the headship of the pope. It permitted the
clergy to marry, and it again ordered the reading of the English Prayer Book.
Many people accepted this "middle way." But it was bitterly opposed by the
Roman Catholics (Papists), and also by the extreme Protestants (Puritans), who
insisted on a simpler, "purer" form of service with no "Popish
rites."
The long reign of Elizabeth I,
1558-1603, was England's Golden Age. The Renaissance, which began in Italy in
the 14th century, at last reached the northern island. "Merry England," in love
with life, expressed itself in music and literature, in architecture, and in
adventurous seafaring. William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist, mirrored the
age in verse that lifted the English language to its fullest beauty.
Throughout the land could be heard
the sound of hammers and saws of builders--a sure sign of prosperity.
Elizabethan manor houses, usually built around an open court, blended the
English style with the new Italian. English glassworks supplied small clear
panes for lattice windows. The increasing use of brick made it easier to build
chimneys and fireplaces even for common houses.
Exploration; Defeat of the Spanish
Armada
English seamanship and
shipbuilding reached the highest point they had yet attained. Francis Drake
sailed around the world. Walter Raleigh made the first attempt to found an
English colony in America. These and other courageous privateers reaped rich
rewards--chiefly at the expense of Spain--from plundering, piracy, smuggling,
and the slave trade. Elizabeth encouraged them on the ground that they
protected Protestant England against Catholic Spain.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada
(1588) established the superiority of English ships and sailors and made the
English conscious of their ocean destiny. English merchants began to seek
distant markets for their goods. In 1600 the now old queen chartered the famous
East India Company, giving it a monopoly of trade with the Far East. From this
small start Britain's Indian Empire was to
grow.
Unemployment and Poor
Relief
Not all classes shared in the
increasing prosperity. The population had doubled since the Black Death and now
numbered about 4 million. There was land hunger again. The growth of the cloth
industry increased the demand for wool and made it profitable for the
landowners to turn farmlands into pasture. They fenced in (enclosed) the
pastures with hedgerows. "Where 40 persons had their livings," the laborers
complained, "now one man and his shepherd hath all." Men thrown out of work by
the enclosures became vagabonds and terrorized the townfolk. Whipping the
"sturdy beggars" failed to solve the problem.
Throughout the Middle Ages the
monasteries had given alms to the poor. Now that the monasteries were no more,
the government took over the task. Elizabeth's famous statute of 1601, an Act
for the Relief of the Poor, required every parish to levy rates (local taxes)
for poor relief. Children were to be put out as
apprentices if their parents could not support them. Wages of artisans and farm
laborers were fixed by law. All able-bodied men were compelled to work. They
could no longer move freely from place to place. They were practically serfs
again, except that they had no rights in the land. The Poor Laws enacted during
Elizabeth's reign remained on the books, although with amendments, until after
World War II.
Birth of the British Empire
The Tudor dynasty came to an end when
Elizabeth I died in 1603. The crown of England then passed to the Stuart line
of Scotland. The new king was called James VI in Scotland and James I in
England. The two countries, having the same ruler, were now bound together in a
personal union, but for another century they had separate
parliaments.
James boldly announced that he would
rule as an absolute monarch, responsible to God alone. This view of monarchy
was called the divine right of kings. It was generally accepted on the
continent of Europe, but it ran counter to the nature of the English people.
Parliament resisted James at every point. By insisting that all people conform
to the Church of England, he won the enmity of the Puritans and the Catholics.
A small band of Catholic extremists, including Guy Fawkes, formed the Gunpowder
Plot to blow up king and parliament together.
James allowed the navy to decay and
suppressed privateering. Yet it was in his reign that colonial expansion began
and the British Empire was born. The colony of Jamestown, Virginia, was started
in 1607. In 1620 the Pilgrims landed on the rocky shore of New England. Other
colonists swiftly followed. Some went to escape religious persecution and some
to find free land. They spread English civilization into the wilderness.
Under Charles I, who ruled 1625-49,
active colonization continued. Charles was glad to have the troublesome
Puritans leave England. Great wealth flowed into London from American tobacco,
the African slave traffic, and the silks and spices of
India.
England's Civil War
Charles was as obstinate a despot as
his father. In 1629 he dissolved Parliament, determined to rule by himself
alone. Eleven years later he became involved in a war with Scotland and was
obliged to summon Parliament to raise money for his armies. When Parliament
refused to vote the money, Charles dissolved it. Before the year ended he
summoned it again. This time Parliament forced the king to agree not to
dissolve it without its consent. It lasted, with some interruptions, from 1640
to 1659 and is known as the Long Parliament.
Puritans dominated the House of
Commons. Instead of aiding the king, they passed laws to curb his power. The
king went in person to the House, determined to arrest five of its leaders, but
"the birds had flown." Parliament issued a call to arms, a revolutionary act.
The powerful new middle class put its great resources behind the Puritans. The
king rallied the royalist aristocracy, High Church Anglicans, and the Catholics
to his standard.
The Parliamentary army went into battle
singing psalms. In 1644 the Puritans defeated Charles's Cavaliers at Marston
Moor. In this battle Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader, won the name
Ironsides. The next year he gained a decisive victory at Naseby.
In 1648 Colonel Pride, a Puritan, stood
at the entrance to the Commons with a force of soldiers and allowed only
Roundheads to enter. (The Puritans were called Roundheads because they cut
their hair short. The Cavaliers wore long flowing locks.) The group that
remained after Pride's Purge was called the Rump Parliament.
The Rump sentenced Charles to
execution, and he was beheaded on Jan. 30, 1649. The Rump then declared England
a Commonwealth (that is, a republic), without a king or a house of
lords.
The Commonwealth and the
Protectorate
The Rump Parliament governed England
while Cromwell put down revolts in Ireland and Scotland with great cruelty. In
1653 he came back from the wars, dismissed Parliament, and "nominated" a
Parliament of his own (called Barebone's Parliament after one of its members,
Praisegod Barebone). The Commonwealth then took the name of Protectorate, with
Cromwell as Lord Protector
The Puritans closed the theaters,
suppressed horse racing, cockfighting, and bearbaiting, and made Sunday
strictly a day of worship. Cromwell's rule was more despotic than the king's.
Yet the revolution accomplished its purpose. When the monarchy was revived it
became a limited monarchy. The Church of England never again tried to include
all Englishmen.
When Cromwell died in 1658 his eldest
son, Richard Cromwell, became Lord Protector. Too weak to control the army,
Tumbledown Dick resigned the next year. In 1660 George Monk, one of Cromwell's
generals, brought an army from Scotland and had the Rump of the Long Parliament
recalled to dissolve itself. A new Parliament was elected and at once offered
the crown to the exiled son of Charles I.
England Under the
Restoration
The people of London joyously welcomed
Charles II when he arrived from France with the gay court of Cavaliers that had
been exiled with him. The bleak Puritan age was suddenly ended. Theaters opened
again. Footlights, curtains, and painted scenery were introduced. For the first
time women appeared on the stage. In spite of renewed censorship, Restoration
dramatists delighted Londoners with sparkling comedies that laughed at Puritan
virtues. John Dryden best represented the Restoration period. Its greatest
poet, however, was still the Puritan John Milton, who had faithfully served
Cromwell. Now blind, he retired from public life to write the greatest epic in
the English language, 'Paradise Lost'.
England's greatest architect, Sir
Christopher Wren, rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral, following London's Great Fire
of 1666. Science flourished along with the arts. Isaac Newton formulated laws
of the universe. An observatory was established at Greenwich.
Catholics fared somewhat better than
Puritans under Charles II. His "Cavalier Parliament" in 1662 passed an Act of
Uniformity depriving of their offices all clergymen who did not accept
everything in the Anglican Prayer Book. This act tended to throw all
nonconformists (Independents, Presbyterians, Baptists, and the new Quaker sect)
into a single class, called dissenters. To make things easier for Catholics,
Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence in 1672. Parliament forced him to
retract this and passed a Test Act (1673), which made it impossible for
Catholics to hold public office.
The Birth of Political
Parties
Charles II leaned toward Catholicism.
His brother James, heir to the throne, was an avowed Catholic. In 1679 an
"Exclusion Bill" was presented in Parliament to bar James from the kingship.
Charles prevented its passage by dissolving Parliament. The governing classes
at once split into bitter factions-- the Tories, who opposed the bill, and the
Whigs, who favored it. Thus were born the first great political parties in
history.
The names Whig and Tory were both terms
of derision. Tory was Irish slang for a "popish" outlaw. Whig was a term of
contempt in Scotland for a fanatic Presbyterian. The Tories, descended from the
Cavaliers, represented the landed aristocracy. They upheld the divine right of
kings and the Anglican church. The Whigs, descended from the Roundheads,
represented the commercial classes of the cities. They championed Parliament
against the king and urged toleration for nonconformists.
Following the decline of Spanish and
Portuguese sea power, the Dutch Netherlands became a serious rival of England
in the Far East, in Africa, and in America. In the 17th century England fought
three commercial wars against the Dutch (1652-54, 1665-67, and 1672-74). The
Netherlands then dropped out of the race for world commerce and American
dominions. In the third war the English joined forces with the French--not yet
aware that France was to be the next rival England had to
face.
The Glorious Revolution of
1688
Charles II died in 1685, and his
brother, James II, stepped quietly to the throne. However, when a male heir to
James was born, in 1688, Tory and Whig leaders joined together and decided to
set aside the Catholic line of kings. They invited Mary, a daughter of James,
and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, to occupy the throne as joint
sovereigns. When William arrived from Holland, James fled to the continent.
Parliament was careful to lay down
conditions for the new sovereigns. William and Mary accepted its Declaration of
Rights, and Parliament speedily enacted it into law as the famous Bill of
Rights. The act made the king responsible to Parliament and subject to the laws
and provided that henceforth no Roman Catholic could wear England's crown.
Parliament, and not inheritance or divine right, would determine the succession
to the throne. This was the fruit of the so-called Glorious Revolution--a
revolution without bloodshed. John Locke published a defense of the Revolution
in which he proclaimed the supremacy of the legislative assembly as the voice
of the people.
The Struggle with
France
While England was in the throes of
revolution, France, under Louis XIV, was achieving a dominant position in
Europe. With internal conflict ended, England turned its attention abroad. In
1689 it joined with Holland and several German states in the War of the Grand
Alliance against France. The war spread to America, where it was called King
William's War. It marked the beginning of a long struggle to decide whether
France or England was to control India and North America
When William died, in 1702, Louis XIV
proclaimed James Stuart, son of James II, king of England, Scotland, and
Ireland. Parliament, however, had provided that if William and Mary had no
children, the crown should pass to Anne, a Protestant, daughter of James II by
his first wife. James Stuart kept up his claim to the throne for 65 years and
became known as the Old Pretender. His son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, known as the
Young Pretender, made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the throne in 1745
Queen Anne's Reign
As soon as Anne came to the
throne in 1702, England entered upon another war with France to break up a
threatened combination of France and Spain. This was called in Europe the War
of the Spanish Succession. In America it was known as Queen Anne's War. The
Duke of Marlborough led the English, Dutch, and Germans to brilliant victories,
and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave England important territories (all Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland) in the New World.
Birth of the Kingdom of Great
Britain
The most notable event in
Anne's reign was the union of England with Scotland. Since 1603 the two nations
had been loosely associated under the same king. The Act of Union (1707) united
them in a single kingdom, called Great Britain, and joined their parliaments.
Thereafter the government and parliament in London were called British rather
than English.
Walpole, Britain's First Prime
Minister
The Stuart line came to an end when
Anne died, since none of her 17 children survived her. She was succeeded in
1714 by the nearest Protestant heir, George I, a prince of the House of
Hanover, a small state in Germany
George did not speak English, and he
was so wrapped up in his beloved Hanover that he took little interest in
British affairs. He soon began to stay away from meetings of his inner council,
or cabinet, and left the government in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, the
able Whig leader. George II, who ruled 1727-60, also stayed away from meetings
of his ministers. Walpole made himself supreme in the government, selected his
colleagues, and insisted they work with him or leave the cabinet. He thus
became the first prime minister.
Walpole promoted trade and commerce and
strove to avoid war. But in 1739 the British people became aroused over the
story of Robert Jenkins, a sea captain, who claimed the Spaniards had boarded
his ship and cut off his ear. Walpole was persuaded to declare war against
Spain in 1739--the War of Jenkins' Ear. He resigned when this war merged into
another continental war, the War of the Austrian Succession, in America called
King George's War. When peace was made, in 1748, the real issue--whether France
or Britain was to prevail in India and North America--was still
unsettled.
Britain Wins French
Territory
The struggle with France was
renewed in the Seven Years' War, which broke out in 1756. This war brought to
the fore a leader of genius, William Pitt, earl of Chatham. He carried on the
struggle against France in America, Africa, and India, as well as in Europe and
on the sea. The war cost France almost all its territory in North America and
India and vastly extended Britain's empire. Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace
Mann, in Italy: "You would not know your country again. You left it a private
little island living upon its means. You will find it the capital of the
world."
The American Revolution
Before the Seven Years' War ended,
George III began his 60-year reign, 1760-1820. Determined to "be a king" and
quite unfit to be one, he got rid of Pitt and put his own Tory friends in
power.
The Tory government imposed new taxes
on the American Colonies. The colonists insisted the British Parliament had no
right to tax them without their consent. Pitt and Edmund Burke counseled
compromise, but George III and his ministers obstinately insisted on their
course. Troops were sent to enforce the decrees, and the colonists met force
with force. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of
Independence. Two years later France entered the war on the side of the
colonists. The Americans finally won their independence, and Britain lost the
most valuable part of its colonial empire.
George III's attempt at personal rule
was now completely discredited. Parliament regained its leadership. William
Pitt, second son of the earl of Chatham, became prime minister in 1783 and held
the position for 17 years.
Britain's Classical Age
The numerous wars of the 18th century
were fought with small professional armies and hardly disturbed the even tenor
of life in the "fortunate isle." Even the loss of the American Colonies was
little felt. Britain was still mistress of the seas, and its mariners and
traders soon built a second empire greater than the old. Before the century
ended, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution were to produce
tremendous upheavals. Until the storm broke, Britain was quiet and
settled.
The years 1740-80 were Britain's
classical age--an age of art and elegance, of enlightenment and religious
tolerance. Wealth and leisure became more widely diffused. In town and country
the middle class put up comfortable, dignified homes in the Queen Anne and
Georgian styles. Into them went furniture designed by Thomas Chippendale,
Thomas Sheraton, and the Adam brothers, and beautiful china, glass, and silver
plate made by skilled English handicraftsmen. The dress of the age was
extravagant. Men wore bright-colored silk coats, waistcoats, and breeches;
women appeared in hoopskirts and elaborate headdresses or high pompadours. The
three great portrait painters of the age--Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough,
and George Romney--pictured the fashionable aristocrats, while William Hogarth
caricatured both the fashionable and the common people.
Alexander Pope, a bitter satirist, was
the leading poet of the age; but the most characteristic literary figure was
Samuel Johnson, who gathered with other writers in London's coffeehouses to
discuss and debate
The government was little concerned
with reform. Individuals, however, were showing a growing sensitivity to the
wretched condition of the poor. Hundreds of charity schools, Sunday schools,
and hospitals were founded, all at private expense. John Howard made prison
reform his life's work
William Wilberforce set in motion a
campaign that was to free the slaves in all the British colonies by 1833. The
new humanitarian spirit was quickened by the Methodist movement, a tremendous
religious revival led by John Wesley
The Industrial
Revolution
Britain now entered upon the greatest
revolution in all history. It began with inventions in the textile
industry--John Kay's flying shuttle, to speed up weaving, and James Hargreave's
spinning jenny, for making yarn. These inventions transformed the textile
industry, which had seen almost no change for thousands of years. By 1781 James
Watt had developed a steam engine to run these and other machines. During the
next 15 years cotton manufactures trebled. The great Industrial Revolution was
under way.
The revolution in agriculture also
began in the 18th century. In the time of Queen Anne, British landowners began
to devote their wealth and personal attention to improving methods of
cultivation. On their enclosed fields they practiced scientific rotation of
crops and pasture and new methods of draining, drilling, sowing, and
fertilizing. They began to grow root crops (turnips and potatoes) in fields
instead of in small gardens. By selective breeding and proper winter feeding of
stock they doubled the average weight of cattle and
sheep.
Improved Nutrition and
Transportation
Fresh beef and mutton replaced salt
meat in the winter diet. Scurvy and other skin diseases, prevalent in earlier
centuries, grew rare even among the poor. The increasing knowledge of medicine
combined with better nutrition to bring about a sharp drop in the death
rate--from 33 in a thousand in 1830 to 23 at the end of the century. As a
consequence population increased enormously.
Great improvements in inland transport
accompanied the revolutions in industry and agriculture. In Queen Anne's reign
coal was still carried on packhorses. Roads were so poor that wheels stuck in
the mud or broke on hard, dry ruts and huge stones. The government still took
little interest in road building. Private initiative supplied the need.
Turnpike companies laced the land with roads and made their profit by
collecting fees at tollgates. Heavy wagons lumbered over the new turnpikes, and
light stagecoaches sped along them at ten miles an hour, stopping at coaching
inns for new relays of fast horses. In 1750 a great era of canal building
began. Before the end of the century the land was interlaced with a network of
waterways. Like the roads, the canals were built for profit by private
companies.
Britain's threefold revolution was
accomplished by private initiative. Individualism, the spirit of the age, freed
men's minds and energies. Yet many government restrictions still shackled
industry and commerce. Adam Smith, creator of the science of political economy,
called attention to their harmful effect. Complete freedom of industry and
trade, he said, would unleash even greater productive energy. His ideas,
published in 'Wealth of Nations' (1776), gave direction to the new industrial
age.
Challenge of Napoleon
The outbreak of the French Revolution
ended the harmony of 18th-century Britain. Class faced class in bitter
controversy. Thomas Paine upheld the revolutionists in a stirring appeal to the
masses, 'The Rights of Man'. Edmund Burke eloquently voiced the attitude of
conservative Englishmen: "The French," he declared, "have shown themselves the
ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto existed in the world."
People were horrified when France set
up a republic and executed Louis XVI. George III went into mourning and
expelled the French envoy. France declared war, and Britain promptly joined the
coalition of European monarchs against the new French republic. The war dragged
on without much result until the young general Napoleon Bonaparte began to win
amazing victories. By 1797 Britain was left to carry on the war alone. Britain,
weak on land, was supreme on the sea. Admiral Horatio Nelson's victory of the
Nile (1798) gave the British navy control of the Mediterranean and secured the
route to India. At Trafalgar (1805) Nelson annihilated the French fleet.
Napoleon, victorious on the Continent, was unable to invade the island kingdom;
so he sought to ruin the "race of shopkeepers" by forbidding Europe to trade
with Britain. Britain countered by blockading all European ports controlled by
Napoleon. The United States, exasperated by Britain's interference with its
commerce, declared war on Britain in 1812
Britain meanwhile had built up an army,
led by the duke of Wellington. Wellington first drove the French out of Spain.
In 1815 he commanded the British forces at the battle of Waterloo, which
destroyed Napoleon's army. Before the year ended, a British ship carried off
Napoleon to an island prison.
Effects of the War with
France
Triumph over France brought Great
Britain national glory and financial profit. The empire expanded and British
control over sea routes was made secure. The increased demand for British goods
stimulated commerce and quickened the pace of the Industrial Revolution.
British blast furnaces and textile mills supplied munitions and clothes not
only for the armies of Great Britain but for its allies as well.
English poetry reached the highest
point it had touched since the age of Shakespeare. The ideas of the French
Revolution ended the Classical Age on the continent as well as in Britain and
gave birth to a new back-to-nature movement in art and literature called the
Romantic Movement. The Romanticists extolled emotion as the Classicists had
reason. They sought the beautiful in nature or in medieval art rather than in
classical models.
Changes appeared also in dress and
morals. Women ceased to powder their hair. Men discarded wigs and cut their
hair short. Wool and cotton began to replace silks, satins, and velvets for
both men and women. The reformers of the age sent missionaries into foreign
lands, but they took little interest in the increasing wretchedness of
Britain's poor.
The war swelled the fortunes of
landlords, merchants, and manufacturers. To the poor it brought misery. Men and
women toiled 12 to 18 hours a day in mines and factories. Wages were at
starvation levels. Child labor was widespread. Laissez-faire (from a French
term, meaning "let it alone"), the rough beginning of a free market economy,
was becoming the order of the day in industry. The new freedom, unfortunately,
did not extend to the working classes. They were forbidden to hold meetings, to
organize unions, even to publish pamphlets. When workers rioted and smashed the
new machines, the government made machine breaking a capital crime. Fourteen
Luddites (so called after a feebleminded youth who destroyed two stocking
frames) were put to death in Yorkshire in 1811.
Inspired by the revolt of the French
peasants, the Irish rose against English rule in 1798. In 1800 Pitt succeeded
in bringing Ireland into a union with Great Britain similar to that between
England and Scotland. The Act of Union went into force Jan. 1, 1801, creating
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The mass of the Irish,
however, being Catholics, were still excluded from the government. George III
allowed only Church-of-England Irish to sit in
Parliament.
The Coming of Democracy
The factory system made tremendous
changes in the social structure. Two new classes had appeared--the capitalists,
or entrepreneurs, who owned the factories and machines, and the mass of the
workers, who were dependent upon the capitalists for employment. Large
manufacturing cities had risen in the north, close to the coalfields. Many of
these cities had no representation in Parliament because no new boroughs had
been created to send up members since the time of Charles II. In the south of
England Tory proprietors of boroughs with few or no inhabitants (called pocket
boroughs or rotten boroughs) continued to send representatives. Cornwall sent
as many members to the House of Commons as all Scotland.
The spirit of reform was gradually
making itself felt. Jeremy Bentham, called the utilitarian, made utility the
test of law and said government should promote "the greatest happiness of the
greatest number" by scientific legislation. Philosophic radicals such as James
Mill advocated a laissez-faire individualism. Robert Owen showed in his New
Lanark mills in Scotland that good hours, good wages, and healthy factory
conditions could be made to pay.
William Cobbett, a radical journalist,
led a campaign for universal suffrage because he believed workmen could improve
their condition only by achieving the right to vote. The great industrial city
of Manchester had no parliamentary representation. In 1819 a crowd of 60,000
assembled on St. Peter's Field to choose a "legislative representative."
Mounted soldiers charged into the crowd, killed 11 persons, and wounded many.
This Peterloo Massacre aroused great indignation and gave the deathblow to the
old Toryism.
George III became insane in his later
years and blind as well. For nine years before his death his incompetent eldest
son governed as prince regent. (This period, 1811-20, is therefore known as the
Regency.) On his father's death, the prince regent became King George
IV
The more progressive Tories now began a
series of reforms that opened a new era. Trade unions were partially legalized
in 1825. Catholics were admitted to Parliament--after a struggle of many
years--by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Harsh criminal laws were
reformed, reducing capital offenses to about a dozen. (In 1800, 200 offenses
had been punishable by death.) In 1829 Robert Peel set up, for the first time
in history, a civilian police force. Started in London, it spread quickly to
other cities. The people called the police by either of Peel's names--bobbies
or peelers
William IV, brother of George IV, began
his short reign in 1830. The reform of Parliament had by now become the burning
issue. Extreme Tories, led by the duke of Wellington, stood fast against it.
Reform groups in Parliament, including the moderate Tories, drew together and
supported Earl Grey, the Whig leader. Wellington's government fell and the
Whigs came into power. Lord John Russell introduced a strong reform bill. In
the face of tremendous opposition in the House of Lords, the Great Reform Act
was passed in 1832.
Parliamentary Reform
The Reform Act created 43 new boroughs
and deprived the rotten boroughs of their representatives in Parliament. The
battle for universal suffrage, however, was still to be fought. The Reform Act
slightly increased the number of voters by lowering the property
qualifications; but the mass of the working people were still too poor to
vote.
During the 1830s the Tories dropped
their somewhat discredited name and became known as the Conservative party. The
free-trade Conservatives (Peelites) gradually merged with the Whigs, who were
to become the new Liberal party. Liberalism in the 19th century meant
individualism. The true Liberal of that day championed freedom of thought and
religion, freedom of trade, freedom of contract between the individual employer
and the individual workman, and unrestricted competition. The party was made up
chiefly of the industrial middle class.
The Victorian Age
William IV died in 1837, in the seventh
year of his reign, and Victoria, his 18-year-old niece, became queen of Great
Britain. Three years later she married her cousin Albert, a German prince. As
prince consort, Albert gave valuable aid to the queen until his death in
1861
The young girl entered eagerly upon her
new duties. Her long reign, 1837-1901, was to be immensely creative in
literature and science, and before its close Britain reached the first place
among nations in wealth and power. In the first years of her rule, however, the
country seemed to be almost on the verge of revolution.
A series of bad harvests, beginning in
1837, continued into the Hungry Forties. England suffered a wheat famine,
Ireland a potato famine. A high tariff on grain (called corn in England) kept
out foreign wheat. The price of bread soared. A new Poor Law (1834) had ended
the outdoor relief for paupers that had been begun in the time of Queen
Elizabeth I. The workhouses that took its place (described in Dickens' novel
'Oliver Twist') were more dreaded than jails. Wages were miserably low. A
tremendous migration began from the British Isles to Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and the United States.
A group of reformers called Chartists
drafted in 1838 a bill called the People's Charter, calling for universal
manhood suffrage. Meanwhile an Anti-Corn Law League had been formed in 1836, to
campaign for the free entry of foreign wheat to feed the hungry poor. Sir
Robert Peel, the Conservative prime minister, was finally converted to their
view; and in 1846 he put through Parliament the famous bill repealing the Corn
Laws. Wheat at once poured in from overseas. Prosperity returned, even for the
farmers. The working people now began to turn their attention to the new trade
unions and to the cooperative movement, started in 1844 by the Rochdale
Pioneers.
Free Trade and
Prosperity
The success of the Corn Law
repeal encouraged the government to remove the tariff on other foods and on the
raw materials needed by manufacturers. With free trade, Britain entered upon
its period of greatest prosperity. Iron and steel output expanded greatly.
Steam and machinery came to be used increasingly in every kind of manufacturing
process. A tremendous boom in railway building caused many old posting inns to
fall into disuse. By 1848 a large part of the new trackage was paralleled by
telegraph wires. "Penny postage," introduced throughout the British Isles in
1840, provided a cheap and uniform postage rate prepaid with an adhesive stamp.
Commerce was set free in 1849 by the repeal of the old Navigation Laws, which
had permitted only British ships to carry goods between different parts of the
empire. The application of steam power to oceangoing vessels stimulated the
growth of the merchant marine and the navy. Commerce expanded enormously. In
1851 the country celebrated its industrial progress in the first great
international fair, called the Great Exhibition. The government began to take
more interest in the empire, which provided the manufacturers with both markets
and raw materials. The Crimean War (1854-56) was fought to protect British and
French imperial interests against Russia's threatened advance toward the
Mediterranean and India. After helping the British East India Company put down
the Sepoy Rebellion in India (1857), Parliament deprived the company of its
political powers and transferred the government of India to the British crown
Wider Suffrage and
Imperialism
The Reform Act of 1832 had benefited
only the middle class. In 1867 Parliament took another long step in the
direction of democracy by putting through the second Reform Act. This gave the
vote to almost all adult males in the towns. The bill had been introduced by
Benjamin Disraeli, a Conservative. Nevertheless the new voters, many of them
workingmen, supported William Gladstone, Liberal leader. With Gladstone's first
and greatest ministry, 1868-74, an era of reform set in.
The Education Act of 1870 set up
elementary schools financed in part by the government. In the same year
competitive examinations were introduced for employment in the civil service.
The Trade Union Act of 1871 gave full legal recognition to trade unions. In
1872 the secret ballot was introduced in parliamentary
elections.
Imperialism came into the ascendancy in
1874 with Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative ministry. Disraeli obtained for
Britain financial control of the Suez Canal, key to Britain's eastern empire.
In 1876 he had Queen Victoria declared empress of India. When Russia defeated
Turkey and advanced close to Constantinople, he called the Congress of Berlin
(1878), which checked Russian ambitions
During Gladstone's second ministry,
1880-85, a third Reform Bill was enacted, in 1884. This gave rural voters the
same voting privileges as the townspeople. The "Grand Old Man" went down to
defeat because he championed Home Rule for Ireland. The Irish question split
the Liberal party into Home Rulers and Unionists. The Liberal Unionists, led by
Joseph Chamberlain, gave their support to the Conservative party because they
wanted no separate parliament for Ireland. A coalition of Conservatives and
Liberal Unionists took office.
During the three ministries of Robert
Salisbury, the government brought the navy to a high state of efficiency and
secured for Britain the lion's share in the partition of Africa. To stimulate
interest in the empire, it celebrated the 50th and 60th years of Victoria's
rule (1887 and 1897) with magnificent "jubilees" attended by Indian princes and
representatives of all the far-flung dominions and colonies. Before the century
ended, the British were engaged in the Boer War (1899-1902) against the Dutch
farmers (Boers) in South Africa. After some humiliating defeats, Britain won
the war and annexed the two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State. Following annexation, Britain granted self-government to South Africa
under the leadership of Jan Smuts, a Boer. Before the war was over, Queen
Victoria died (1901), ending the longest reign in British history. Edward VII,
her son, succeeded her.
An Age of Peace and
Progress
The Victorians called their age
"modern" and thought it superior to all past centuries. It was an age that
envisioned an indefinite future of progress with peace and plenty. Wages and
working conditions steadily improved. Dividends from British industry and from
foreign investments supported a leisure class. The population of the United
Kingdom increased in the last half of the century from 28 million to nearly 42
million people. The age was extraordinarily creative in literature and science.
The poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning expressed the Victorians'
optimism and religious feeling. But it was chiefly an age of the novel,
represented by William Thackeray and Charles Dickens, and the essay. In pure
science, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had worldwide
influence
The Victorians did not excel in music
or in painting. Architecture actually deteriorated, owing in part to the
progress in technology that caused a breakdown of craftsmanship and tradition.
Cheap manufactured knickknacks cluttered Victorian
parlors.
The Labour Party and the New
Liberalism
When Edward VII came to the throne, in
1901, Britain was no longer the only "workshop of the world." The Industrial
Revolution was now in full swing in other countries. Germany, the United
States, and Japan competed strongly with Britain in foreign markets.
Unemployment soon became chronic. Serious unrest stirred the working
classes.
Germany not only competed with British
industry but had become the greatest military power on the Continent; and in
1900 it began to expand its navy, challenging British control of the seas. To
meet this threat, Britain abandoned its "splendid isolation" and entered into
an alliance with Japan in 1902. In 1904 it concluded the Entente Cordiale with
France, and in 1907 it reached a similar agreement with Russia.
In 1900 the British Trades Union
Congress held a conference to form a new political party. Delegates were
invited from various socialist organizations. Chief among these was the Fabian
Society. The Fabians were middle-class intellectuals who had been advocating
national ownership of land and industry since 1883. The new party became known
at once as the Labour party.
Fabian teachings had been spreading
also in the Liberal party. The "new" Liberals of the 20th century no longer
advocated a policy of laissez-faire in government. They had turned against
individualism and classical economics and favored extending the powers of the
state to abolish poverty. They still held to the 19th-century Liberal doctrine
of free trade. On this issue they won the election of 1906. Labour party
representatives supported the Liberal program of social
legislation.
Lloyd George's Social
Legislation
The driving power of the new government
was David Lloyd George, chancellor of the exchequer under Herbert Asquith from
1908 to 1916. In 1908 he put through Parliament an Old Age Pensions Act
granting pensions to all old people with a small income. On Jan. 1, 1909, over
half a million men and women drew their first pensions.
Pensions and the constantly expanding
navy vastly increased the expenses of the British government. In 1909 Lloyd
George proposed heavy taxes on the wealthy and a new tax on land. The House of
Lords rejected his budget.
A constitutional struggle took place
that ended in the Parliament Act of 1911, which stripped the House of Lords of
much of its power. The way was now open for the passage of a National Insurance
Act (1912) to pay wage earners unemployment and sickness
benefits.
In the midst of the parliamentary
struggle Edward VII died (1910). He was succeeded by his only surviving son,
George V.
World War I and Its Aftermath
On the eve of World War I the people of
Great Britain were concerned with militant suffragettes, workingmen's strikes,
and an Irish crisis. War broke out with startling suddenness on Aug. 1, 1914.
Britain declared war three days later, and the British dominions and colonies
were automatically drawn in. British and empire troops fought in France and
Belgium, at Gallipoli, and in Palestine, while the navy held the seas and
prevented food and supplies from reaching Germany.
Lloyd George became the war leader in
1916 when he succeeded Asquith as head of the Nationalist government, a
coalition of Liberal and Conservative parties. The peace treaties, which he
negotiated, added more territory to the vast British Empire in Asia, Africa,
and the Pacific. The United Kingdom itself, however, was made smaller by an act
of Parliament granting self-government to southern Ireland as a dominion of the
British Commonwealth.
In 1918 Lloyd George's government
passed an Education Act abolishing all fees in state-supported elementary
schools. The same year it extended manhood suffrage and granted the right to
vote to single women over 30 and married women over 35 who met certain property
qualifications. In 1919 women became eligible for Parliament. Universal adult
suffrage was not achieved until 1928.
The war had vastly increased the
national debt. By imposing heavy income taxes, the government managed to
balance the budget while increasing payments to the unemployed. Industrial
peace, however, did not return. After a few years of prosperity, exports
declined and unemployment rose. A wave of strikes engulfed the
country.
The Conservatives deserted the
Nationalist coalition and defeated the Liberals in 1922. The Labour party
(which had come out openly for socialism in 1918) voted with the Liberals to
turn out the Conservatives, and in 1924 Ramsay MacDonald was chosen to head
Britain's first Labour government. He remained in office only nine months,
going down to defeat partly because he advocated closer relations with
Russia.
Under Stanley Baldwin as prime
minister, the Conservatives returned to power for almost five years (1924-29).
Again unemployment relief was increased. The cause of unemployment was the
shrinking world market for British coal, textiles, and steel. The Labour party
believed full employment could be attained by government ownership of basic
industries. The unions called a general strike in 1926 to force through their
demands. The strike was quickly ended except for the coal miners, the most
distressed of the workers.
The regular election of 1929 favored
the Labour party, and MacDonald formed a cabinet. The world depression
dislocated international trade and currencies and plunged Britain into a
financial crisis. The number of unemployed mounted to nearly 3 million. The
leaders of the three parties then formed a coalition cabinet called the
National government. MacDonald retained the premiership, but he now owed his
support chiefly to the Conservatives. The Labour party had expelled him when
his government introduced drastic economies. He resigned in 1935 and Baldwin
again became prime minister.
Three Kings in One Year
George V died in January 1936,
and his eldest son, Edward, the popular prince of Wales, came to the throne as
Edward VIII. Before his coronation, the king announced his intention of
marrying an American, Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, as soon as her second
divorce became absolute. Parliament and the dominions' governments disapproved.
Edward abdicated on Dec. 11, 1936, and his brother, the duke of York, was
proclaimed king as George VI.
Britain Abandons Free
Trade
Since the repeal of the Corn Laws in
1846, Britain had been practically a free-trade country. Almost all other
nations had put up tariffs that handicapped British exporters. When the world
depression caused a slump in trade, the dominions asked Britain to import more
raw materials from them. In return, they would favor British manufactures. In
1932 Parliament passed the Import Duties Act. The act imposed a basic tariff of
10 percent on all goods not specifically exempted. This paved the way for the
Ottawa imperial conference in the same year, which worked out "preferential"
tariffs within the empire.
The Statute of Westminster (1931) had
recognized the complete control by the dominions of their foreign as well as
domestic affairs. The Ottawa conference strengthened the ties of the
Commonwealth by binding the members into a closer economic union. This,
however, did not check the growing nationalism in India and other Asian
dependencies.
Outbreak of World War
II
In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in
Germany and soon began to rearm the country. Britain, absorbed in domestic
troubles, was unprepared for war. Hitler seized Austria in March 1938, then
made demands on Czechoslovakia. Britain, along with France, adopted a policy of
appeasement, hoping Hitler's demands could be satisfied short of war. Neville
Chamberlain, who had become prime minister in 1937, believed he had achieved
"peace in our time" when Hitler pledged at Munich (Sept. 30, 1938) that he had
"no further territorial claims in Europe." Six months later Hitler broke the
pact and took over most of Czechoslovakia.
Britain joined with France in
guaranteeing Poland's independence. Hitler took no action until after the
Soviet Union signed a peace pact with Germany (Aug. 24, 1939). Eight days later
(September 1) his army marched into Poland. Britain and France declared war two
days later.
The Battle of Britain
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded
Belgium and The Netherlands. On the same day Winston Churchill succeeded
Chamberlain as prime minister. Britain lost most of its armament in the famed
retreat from the Dunkirk beaches. When France fell in June the British began
their "year alone" and suffered the furious onslaught of German bombers. "Let
us therefore brace ourselves to our duty," said Churchill, "and so bear
ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand
years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour.' "
The battle of Britain was a victory
that ranked in importance with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Britain was
saved from invasion by its navy and its air force. British and Commonwealth
troops fought on the far-flung battlefields of this war, and British leaders
played a strong role in the formation of the United Nations.
Six years of war cost the United
Kingdom 397,762 in dead and missing and thousands of civilian casualties.
Millions of properties were damaged or destroyed. Britain received extensive
United States Lend-Lease aid but met most of the huge war expenditures by
selling overseas investments, by large overseas borrowing, by domestic loans,
and by a tremendous increase in taxation.
Britain's Socialist
Revolution
In 1945 Britain held its first general
election in ten years. The Labour party received an overwhelming majority.
Clement Attlee, its leader, succeeded Churchill as prime minister. The party
was elected on a socialist platform and at once embarked on a nationalization
program. The state bought out shareholders in the Bank of England, the coal
mines, all inland transport, aviation, gas, and electricity. It subsidized
housing and food. It put through the "cradle-to-grave" social insurance plan
drawn up under Churchill's ministry. It also set up a National Health Service
to provide free medical care.
The postwar government faced grave
financial difficulties. It cut imports to bare necessities and ruled that
almost the entire output of Britain's factories must be sold abroad instead of
in the home market. It fixed prices, rationed scarce goods, limited wages, and
called on people to practice austerity.
To offset the loss of income from
foreign investments, Britain needed to double its exports above the prewar
level. In 1949 the postwar sellers' market ended, and the high prices of
British products caused a swift drop in exports. The government scaled down the
value of the British pound from $4.03 to $2.80. This made it possible for
British manufacturers to sell their goods in dollar markets but increased the
price of necessary imports from dollar countries. Foreign loans and credits,
especially Marshall Plan aid from the United States, helped in financial crises
and in the task of rehabilitating overage and war-damaged industrial
plants.
Decline in World Power
The British Empire suffered severe
losses in territory and world influence in the years 1947-49. India, Pakistan,
and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) became self-governing nations within the
Commonwealth, and Burma (now Myanmar) gained complete independence. Eire
(southern Ireland) cut all ties with Britain and took the name of the Republic
of Ireland.
On the continent of Europe, Britain no
longer held its historic balance of power. For centuries it had helped prevent
a strong nation from dominating the continent by throwing its weight toward
that nation's rivals. Now the Soviet Union controlled all Eastern Europe. The
only other world power was the United States. It used its influence to organize
the nations of Western Europe for cooperation in defense and economic progress.
Britain was not ready to share in a united Europe. It joined the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), formed in 1949 to meet the threat of Soviet
aggression, and expanded its armament production. British land, sea, and air
forces shared in the United Nations action in South Korea in 1950-53. Later,
Britain joined the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) of the Middle East and
the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
In the 1950s many of Britain's postwar
problems remained unsolved, but its economy rode on a wave of prosperity.
Manufacturing output exceeded prewar production early in the decade. In 1959
the output of steel had risen 55 percent above that of 1938. Between 1949 and
1959 domestic production increased and exports rose by 40 percent. Most Britons
in the early 1960s were earning twice as much as they had been in 1949. In 1951
the Conservatives returned to power. Winston Churchill, then 76, again became
premier. On Feb. 6, 1952, George VI died. His elder daughter succeeded him as
Elizabeth II.
The Conservatives lifted certain
controls set by the Socialist government. In 1953 they denationalized iron and
steel and trucking. Food rationing ended in 1954. Churchill resigned as premier
in 1955 and was succeeded by Sir Anthony Eden.
Great Britain withdrew its last troops
from the Suez Canal zone in June 1956, according to an earlier agreement. In
July Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain and France protested
vigorously. In October Israeli forces invaded Egypt. After demanding a
cease-fire between them, Britain and France sent forces into the canal zone.
They were branded as aggressors in the United Nations. The Anglo-French troops
withdrew as a United Nations task force moved in. In January 1957 Eden resigned
as prime minister and was succeeded by Harold Macmillan.
The death knell of colonialism sounded
in the 1950s and 1960s as most of the foreign territories of the European
powers won independence. The British had trained their colonies for
self-government, so they usually parted with Britain as friends and the new
nations remained in the Commonwealth. A notable exception was South Africa,
which became a republic and left the Commonwealth in 1961. Throughout the 1960s
independence was achieved by more than 20 British colonies and trusteeships in
Africa, Asia, South America, and the West Indies. By the mid-1980s almost all
of the Pacific and West Indies island units had also become independent. The
secessionist state of Rhodesia, which had unilaterally declared itself
independent (a status not recognized by Britain) in 1965 and a republic in
1970, reverted to colonial status in 1979 before finally achieving independence
as Zimbabwe in 1980. In 1997 Hong Kong returned to complete Chinese control for
the first time since the middle of the 19th century.
Post-1950s
Leadership
In October 1963 Macmillan resigned. He
was succeeded by another Conservative, Sir Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home. In
1964 Labourite Harold Wilson became prime minister. After a Conservative
victory in 1970, Edward Heath took office. A pay strike by coal miners, in the
midst of a worldwide energy crisis, led Heath to call a new election in
February 1974, and Wilson returned as prime minister.
Wilson resigned in March 1976 and was
succeeded by another Labourite, James Callaghan. In 1979 Callaghan, who had
headed a minority government for two years, became the first British prime
minister since 1924 to lose office after a no-confidence motion. Margaret
Thatcher, who had been the Conservative party leader since 1975, became
Britain's first woman prime minister.
War with Argentina.
In 1982 Britain went to
war with Argentina over a faraway dependency in the South Atlantic. Known as
the Islas Malvinas in Argentina and the Falkland Islands in Britain, the land
had been the subject of debate between the two countries ever since Britain
reclaimed the islands as a crown colony in 1833. The issue of their sovereignty
was shifted to the United Nations in 1964, and diplomatic discussions began the
next year. Argentina's invasion of the Falklands 17 years later, while these
negotiations continued, came as a complete surprise. Britain's recapture of the
islands ten weeks later restored Conservative popularity and encouraged
Thatcher to call a general election in 1983, a year earlier than required. Her
Conservative party won an overwhelming victory.
Coal miners' strike.
A bitter coal miners'
strike dominated 1984. The government was determined to close 20 or more
uneconomical mines and to exercise its constitutional and political authority.
Although the year was marked by violence and much political wrangling, the
striking miners went back to work almost exactly a year later. The government's
victory tilted the balance of power against the trade union
movement.
Soccer tragedies.
Increased fear of
inner-city rioting, as well as terrorism, caused English police to break with
tradition and carry guns openly. During the 1985 European soccer finals in
Brussels, unruly supporters of the team from Liverpool were held responsible
for 39 deaths in the collapse of a stadium wall. In a rush on the overcrowded
terraces (standing area) of a Sheffield stadium in 1989, 94 spectators
died.
End of Thatcherism. In 1987
Thatcher became the first British prime minister in more than 150 years to win
a third consecutive election. By 1990 she had become the longest-serving
British leader of the century, but her 15-year tenure as head of the
Conservative party ended in that year. The reasons for discontent with
Thatcherism ranged from her domineering personal style to the abolition of the
local property tax in favor of a flat-rate community charge, or poll tax. With
loss of power, Thatcher resigned in November 1990. Her successor as prime
minister was John Major, a top minister in her cabinet
In 1992 elections Major led
the Conservatives to victory again, extending their winning streak to four
elections since 1979. During his second term, however, Major came under severe
scrutiny from opponents inside and outside the Conservative party. In
particular, the question of British integration in the EU split the party. In
late 1996 the Conservatives lost their majority in Parliament for the first
time since they wrested control of the government from the Labour party in
1979.
Rise of New Labour.
As the Conservatives
splintered, they faced a serious threat from popular Labour party leader Tony
Blair. Labour had suffered repeated Parliamentary losses, and many suspected
that the party had lost touch with the British voters when Blair took over its
leadership in 1994. Blair refashioned the Labour party as "New" Labour, dumping
controversial party platforms that hinted of the Labour party's past
affiliation with socialist causes, such as the nationalization of industries.
On May 1, 1997, Blair became the youngest person elected prime minister of
Britain in the 20th century as he led the Labour party to a landslide victory
over the Conservatives. Labour won 43 percent of the popular vote and captured
418 out of a total of 659 seats in the British Parliament. The Conservative
party, en route to its worst finish since 1832, won only 30 percent of the vote
and secured only 165 seats in Parliament, down from a pre-election total of 323
seats.
European Union. In 1959 Great
Britain helped found the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The more
tightly knit European Economic Community (EEC) made greater economic gains,
however, and the Macmillan government sought EEC entry to stimulate Britain's
trade. Since the tariff agreements between Commonwealth countries conflicted
with EEC regulations, long negotiations and compromises were necessary. France
vetoed Britain's bid for EEC membership in 1963 and again in 1967. On Jan. 1,
1973, Britain finally joined the group, by then renamed the European
Communities (EC) and later the European Union (EU). In 1988 Thatcher attacked a
plan to establish a European federal economic and political state with a
central bank and a common community currency. Her continued hard line against
greater EC integration led to the division within her Conservative party that
contributed to her downfall in 1990.
Major was chosen as head of
the Conservative party in 1990 after staking his bid to power on the idea of
British integration in the EU. Many British Conservatives, however, began to
lose confidence in the proposed creation of a single economic currency, known
as the euro, on the grounds that the single currency system was a threat to
national sovereignty. Some members of the party, known as euroskeptics,
suggested that Major abandon plans to integrate British currency into the
single-currency system. Divisions within the Conservative ranks concerning the
question of integration contributed to the party's defeat in 1997. Following
his election, Blair, who had described his stance on the EU as a "wait and see"
policy during his 1997 campaign, emerged as a strong proponent for the strict
continuance of the EU budgetary guidelines.
Northern Ireland. A general
strike in Northern Ireland in May 1974 led to the collapse of its
five-month-old coalition government and forced Britain to resume direct rule
over the province. British attempts to help stabilize the long-standing dispute
between the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority continued over
the next decade. In a move strongly opposed by the Protestants, a 1985 accord
with the Republic of Ireland gave it a consultant role in the governing of
Northern Ireland. Incidents of terrorism persisted--for example, a bombing in
Northern Ireland that killed 11 people in 1987, the shooting deaths of three
Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists in 1988, and the bombing deaths of ten
British military band students in 1989. In 1991 the IRA fired three mortar
rounds at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's official
residence.
In August 1994 the IRA declared a
cease-fire. Disappointed by the slow progress of peace efforts, however, the
IRA shattered the cease-fire with a series of bombings in February 1996. In
June of that year negotiations aimed at reaching a settlement to the conflict
began in Belfast. The talks were attended by the British and Irish governments
and all the major political parties in Northern Ireland except Sinn Fein, the
political wing of the IRA, which was excluded by Major and Prime Minister John
Bruton of Ireland until the IRA reinstituted its cease-fire. In July 1997 the
IRA resumed the cease-fire, clearing the way for the participation of Sinn Fein
in multiparty discussions that began in September of that year. At the start of
the talks Sinn Fein agreed to renounce the use of violence and terror as means
of settling the territorial dispute. In December 1997 Gerry Adams, the leader
of Sinn Fein, made a historic visit to 10 Downing Street to meet with Prime
Minister Blair to discuss the peace process. The negotiations in Belfast
yielded a landmark accord in April 1998 designed to end direct British rule
over Northern Ireland and bring about a lasting peace.
This article was contributed by Ian M.
Matley, Professor of Geography, Michigan State University, East
Lansing. From the website: http://history-world.org/england.htm