History of Great Britain

split the Tory Party. In November 1830, after the election prompted by the

death of George IV and the accession of his brother, William IV, a

predominantly Whig ministry headed by the 2nd Earl Grey took over.

Reforms of the 1830s

The great political issue of 1831 and 1832 was the Whig Reform Bill. After

much debate in and out of the House of Commons and after a threat to swamp

a reluctant House of Lords with new and sympathetic peers, the measure

became law in June 1832. It provided for a redistribution of seats in favor

of the growing industrial cities and a single property test that gave the

vote to all middle-class men and some artisans. In England and Wales the

electorate grew by 50 percent. In Ireland it more than doubled, and in

Scotland it increased by 15 times. The bill set up a system of registration

that encouraged political party organization, both locally and nationally.

The measure weakened the influence of the monarch and the House of Lords.

Other reforms followed. The Factory Act of 1833 limited the working hours

of women and children and provided for central inspectors. Slavery was

abolished in the same year, and the controversial New Poor Law, enacted a

year later, also involved supervision by a central board. The Municipal

Corporations Act (1835) provided for elected representative town councils.

An Ecclesiastical Commission was set up in 1836 to reform the established

church, and a separate statute placed the registration of births, deaths,

and marriages in the hands of the state rather than the church.

In 1837 the elderly William IV was succeeded as monarch by his 18-year-old

niece, Victoria. She and her husband, Albert, came to symbolize many

virtues: a close-knit family life, a sense of public duty, integrity, and

respectability. These beliefs and attitudes, which are often known as

“Victorian,” were also molded by the revival of evangelical religion and by

utilitarian notions of efficiency and good business practice.

Chartists and Corn Law Reformers

The Whig reform spirit ebbed during the ministry of Lord Melbourne, and an

economic depression in 1837 brought to public attention two powerful

protest organizations. The Chartists urged the immediate adoption of the

People’s Charter, which would have transformed Britain into a political

democracy (with universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, and

secret ballot) and which was somehow expected to improve living standards

as well. Millions of workers signed Charter petitions in 1839, 1842, and

1848, and some Chartist demonstrations turned into riots. Parliament

repeatedly rejected the People’s Charter, but it proved more receptive to

the creed of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League. League leaders such

as Richard Cobden expected the repeal of tariffs on imported food to

advance the welfare of manufacturers and workers alike, while promoting

international trade and peace among nations. Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative

ministry succeeded Melbourne, and became active in reducing Britain’s

tariffs but brought back the income tax to make up for lost revenue. In the

winter of 1845 and 1846, spurred by an Irish potato blight and consequent

famine, Peel proposed the complete repeal of the Corn Laws. With Whig aid

the measure passed, but two-thirds of Peel’s fellow Conservatives condemned

the action as a sellout of the party’s agricultural supporters. The

Conservatives divided between Peelites and protectionists, and the Whigs

returned to power under Lord John Russell in 1846.

During the Peel and Russell years the trend toward free trade continued,

aided by the 1849 repeal of the Navigation Acts, and a system of

administrative regulation was gradually established. Women and children

were barred from underground work in mines and limited to 10-hour working

days in factories. Regulations were also imposed on urban sanitation

facilities and passenger-carrying railroads, and commissions were set up to

oversee prisons, insane asylums, merchant shipping, and private charities.

Attempts to subsidize elementary education, however, were hampered by

conflict over the church’s role in running schools.

Mid-Victorian Prosperity

From the late 1840s until the late 1860s, Britons were less concerned with

domestic conflict than with an economic boom occasionally affected by wars

and threats of war on the Continent and overseas. The Great Exhibition of

1851 in London symbolized Britain’s industrial supremacy. The 10,600-km

(6600-mi) railroad network of 1850 more than doubled during the mid-

Victorian years, and the number of passengers carried annually went up by

seven times. The telegraph provided instant communication. Inexpensive

steel was made possible by Henry Bessemer’s process, developed in 1856, and

a boom in steamship building began in the 1860s. The value of British

exports tripled, and overseas capital investments quadrupled. Working-class

living standards improved also, and the growth of trade unionism among

engineers, carpenters, and others led to the founding of the Trades Union

Congress in 1868. In the aftermath of the Continental revolutions of 1848,

a Britain governed by the Peelite-Liberal coalition of Lord Aberdeen

drifted into war with an autocratic, expansionist Russia. In alliance with

the France of Napoleon III, Britain entered the Crimean War in 1854.

Parliamentary criticism of army mismanagement, however, caused the downfall

of Aberdeen. He was replaced by Lord Palmerston, a staunch English

nationalist and champion of European liberalism, who saw the war to its

conclusion—a limited Anglo-French victory in 1856. In 1857 and 1858, the

Sepoy Mutiny was suppressed, and Britain abolished the East India Company,

making British India a crown colony. In contrast, domestic self-government

was encouraged in Britain’s settlement colonies: Canada (federated under

the British North America Act of 1867), Australia, New Zealand, and Cape

Colony (South Africa). Britain maintained a difficult neutrality during the

American Civil War (1861-1865). It encouraged the unification of Italy, but

witnessed with apprehension Prince Otto von Bismarck’s creation of a German

Empire under Prussian domination.

The Gladstone-Disraeli Rivalry

During the 16 years after Palmerston’s death in 1865, the rivalry of

William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli dominated British politics. Both

had begun as Tories, but in 1846 Gladstone had become a Peelite and had

thereafter gradually moved toward liberalism. As Palmerston’s chancellor of

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up with the Reform Bill of 1867, which Disraeli successfully piloted

through the House of Commons. The measure enfranchised most urban workers.

It almost doubled the English and Welsh electorates and more than doubled

the Scottish. It also launched the era of mass political organization and

of increasingly polarized and disciplined parliamentary parties.

Disraeli succeeded Derby as prime minister early in 1868, but a Liberal

election victory in December of that year gave the post to Gladstone.

Gladstone’s first cabinet was responsible for numerous reforms: the

disestablishment of the Church of Ireland; the creation of a national

system of elementary education; the full admission of religious dissenters

to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; a merit-based civil service;

the secret ballot; and judicial and army reform. During the Disraeli

ministry that followed, the Conservatives passed legislation advancing

“Tory democracy”—trade union legalization, slum clearance, and public

health—but Disraeli became more concerned with upholding the British Empire

in Africa and Asia and scoring a diplomatic triumph at the Congress of

Berlin (1878).

A whistle-stop campaign by Gladstone in 1879 and 1880 restored him to the

prime ministership. His second cabinet curbed electoral corruption and,

with the Reform Act of 1884, extended the vote to almost all males who

owned or rented housing. The measure made the single-member parliamentary

district the general rule. Gladstone became increasingly concerned with

bringing peace and land reform to Ireland, which was represented in

Parliament by the Irish Nationalist Party of Charles Stewart Parnell. When

Gladstone became a convert to the cause of home rule—the creation of a semi-

independent Irish legislature and cabinet—he divided the Liberal Party and

led his brief third ministry to defeat in 1886. A second effort to enact

home rule during Gladstone’s fourth ministry, which lasted from 1892 to

1894, was blocked by the House of Lords.

Late Victorian Economic and Social Change

The same agricultural depression that led to unrest among Irish tenant

farmers in the second half of the 19th century also undermined British

agriculture and the prosperity of country squires. The mid-Victorian boom

gave way to an era of deflation, falling profit margins, and occasional

large-scale unemployment. Both the United States and Germany overtook

Britain in the production of steel and other manufactured goods. At the

same time, Britain remained the world’s prime shipbuilder, shipper, and

banker, and a majority of British workers gained in purchasing power. The

number of trade unionists grew, and significant attempts were made to

organize the semiskilled; the London Dock Strike of 1889 was the result of

one such effort. Social investigators and professed socialists discovered

large pockets of poverty in the slums of London and other cities, and the

national government as well as voluntary agencies were called on to remedy

social evils. Despite a high level of emigration to British colonies and

the United States—more than 200,000 per year during the 1880s—the

population of England and Wales doubled between 1851 and 1911 (to more than

36 million) and that of Scotland grew by more than 60 percent (to almost 5

million). Both death rates and birth rates declined somewhat, and a series

of changes in the law made it possible for a minority of women to enter

universities, vote in local elections, and keep control of their property

while married.

The Late Victorian Empire

A relative lack of interest in empire during the mid-Victorian years gave

way to increased concern during the 1880s and 1890s. The raising of tariff

barriers by the United States, Germany, and France made colonies more

valuable again, ushering in an era of rivalry with Russia in the Middle

East and along the Indian frontier and a “scramble for Africa” that

involved the carving out of large claims by Britain, France, and Germany.

Hong Kong and Singapore served as centers of British trade and influence in

China and the South Pacific. The completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 led

indirectly to a British protectorate over Egypt in 1882. Queen Victoria

became empress of India in 1876, and both Victoria’s golden jubilee (1887)

and her diamond jubilee (1897) celebrated imperial unity. The Conservative

ministries of Lord Salisbury were preoccupied with imperial concerns as

well. The policies of Salisbury’s colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain,

contributed to the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899. Britain suffered

initial reverses in that war but then captured Johannesburg and Pretoria in

1900. Only after protracted guerrilla warfare, however, was the conflict

brought to an end in 1902. By then Queen Victoria was dead.

The Edwardian Age (1901-1914)

In the aftermath of the Boer War, Britain signed a treaty of alliance with

Japan (1902) and ended several decades of overseas rivalry with France in

the Entente Cordiale (1904). After Anglo-Russian disputes had also been

settled, this link became the Triple Entente (1907), which faced the Triple

Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. As the reign of King Edward VII

began, however, most Britons were more concerned with domestic matters.

Arthur Balfour’s Education Act in 1902 helped meet the demand for national

efficiency with the beginnings of a national system of secondary education,

but the measure stirred old religious passions. In the course of Balfour’s

ministry, the Conservative Party was divided between tariff reformers, who

wanted to restore protective duties, and free traders. The general election

of 1906 gave the Liberals an overwhelming majority. Union influence led to

the appearance of a small separate Labour Party of 29 members as well. The

Liberal government, headed first by Henry Campbell-Bannerman and then by

Herbert Asquith, gave domestic self-government to the new Union of South

Africa and partial provincial self-government to British India in 1909 and

1910. Under the inspiration of David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, it

also laid the foundations of the welfare state. Its program, from 1908 to

1912, included old-age pensions, government employment offices,

unemployment insurance, a contributory program of national medical

insurance for most workers, and boards to fix minimum wages for miners and

others. Lloyd George’s controversial “people’s budget,” designed to pay the

costs of social welfare and naval rearmament, was blocked by the House of

Lords and led in due course to the Parliament Act of 1911, which left the

Lords with no more than a temporary veto. The Conservatives made a

comeback, however, in the general elections of 1910, and the Liberals were

thereafter dependent on the Irish Nationalists to stay in power. Although

the economy seemed to be booming, wages scarcely kept up with rising

prices, and the years 1911 to 1914 were marked by major and divisive

strikes by miners, dock workers, and transport workers. Suffragists staged

violent demonstrations in favor of the enfranchisement of women. When the

Liberal government sought to enact home rule for Ireland, non-Catholic

Irish from Ulster threatened force to prevent Britain from compelling them

to become part of a semi-independent Ireland. In the midst of these

domestic disputes, a crisis in the Balkans exploded into World War I.

The Era of World Wars

Although the competitive naval buildup of Britain and Germany is often

cited as a cause of World War I, Anglo-German relations were actually

cordial in early 1914, and Britain was Germany’s best customer. It was

Germany’s threat to France and its invasion of neutral Belgium that

prompted Britain to declare war.

Britain in World War I

A British expeditionary force was immediately sent to France and helped

stem the German advance at the Marne. Fighting on the Western Front soon

became mired in a bloody stalemate amid muddy trenches, barbed wire, and

machine-gun emplacements. Battles to push the Germans back failed

repeatedly at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Efforts to outflank

the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, and Turkey) in the Balkans, as at

Gallipoli (1915), failed also. At the Battle of Jutland (1916), the British

prevented the German fleet from venturing into the North Sea and beyond,

but German submarines threatened Britain with starvation early in 1917;

merchant-ship convoys guarded by destroyers helped avert that danger.

In May 1915 Asquith’s Liberal ministry became a coalition of Liberals,

Conservatives, and a few Labourites. Lloyd George became minister of

munitions. Continued frustration with the nation’s inability to win the

war, however, led to the replacement of Asquith by Lloyd George, heading a

predominantly Conservative coalition, in December 1916. Problems in

Ireland, chiefly the 1916 Easter rebellion, resulted in several hundred

dead. By 1918 the annual budget was 13 times that of 1913; tax rates had

risen fivefold, and the total national debt, fourteenfold.

Although many Britons welcomed the end of czarist rule in Russia in 1917,

they saw the Communist decision to make a separate peace with Germany as a

sellout. Only the entry of the United States into the war made possible

General Douglas Haig’s successful tank offensive in the summer of 1918 and

the German surrender in November. The election called immediately

thereafter gave the Lloyd George coalition an overwhelming mandate. The

Labour Party, now formally pledged to socialism, became the largest

opposition party, while the Asquith wing of a divided Liberal Party was

almost wiped out. By then the Reform Act of 1918 had granted the vote to

all men over the age of 21 and all women over 30.

Changes Wrought by the War

Lloyd George represented Britain as one of the Big Three (together with

France and the United States) at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The

resulting treaties enlarged the British Empire as former German colonies in

Africa and Turkish holdings in the Middle East became British mandates. At

the same time Britain’s self-governing dominions—Canada, Australia, New

Zealand, and South Africa—became separate treaty signatories and separate

members of the new League of Nations. An intermittent civil war in Ireland

ended with a treaty negotiated by Lloyd George in 1921. Most of the island

became the Irish Free State, independent of British rule in all but name.

The six counties of Northern Ireland continued to be represented in the

British Parliament, although they also gained their own provincial

parliament. The immediate postwar years were marked by economic boom, rapid

demobilization, and much labor strife. By 1922, however, the boom had

petered out. That year a rebellion by a group of Conservative members of

Parliament ended the prime ministership of Lloyd George, and the wholly

Conservative ministry of Andrew Bonar Law represented a return to “normal

times.”

The Interwar Era

During the early 1920s a major political shift took place in Britain. The

general election of 1922 gave victory to the Conservatives, but another

one, called a year later by Bonar Law’s successor, Stanley Baldwin, left no

party with a clear majority. As a consequence, Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour

Party leader, became the first professed socialist to serve as prime

minister of Great Britain. His first ministry in 1924, rested on Liberal

acquiescence; it lasted less than a year, when yet another election brought

back Baldwin’s Conservatives. Lloyd George’s and Asquith’s efforts at

Liberal reunion failed to restore the party’s fortunes, and it has remained

a minor party in British politics. The Baldwin ministry restored the gold

standard and enacted several social-reform measures, including the Widows’,

Orphans’, and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, a national electric power

network, and a reform of local government. In 1928 women were given voting

rights that were equal to those of men.

Between 1929 and 1932 the international depression more than doubled an

already high rate of unemployment. In the course of three years, both the

levels of industrial activity and of prices dipped by a quarter, and

industries such as shipbuilding collapsed almost entirely. MacDonald’s

second Labour government found itself unable to cope with the depression,

and in 1931 it gave way to a national government, headed first by MacDonald

and then by Baldwin and made up mostly of Conservatives. The Labour Party

denounced MacDonald as a traitor, but the national government won an

overwhelming mandate in the general election of 1931. It took Britain off

the gold standard, restored protective tariffs, and subsidized the building

of houses. Between 1933 and 1937, the economy recovered steadily, with the

automobile, construction, and electrical industries leading the way.

Unemployment remained high, however, especially in Wales, Scotland, and

northern England. Interwar society was influenced by the radio (monopolized

by the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was begun in 1927) and the

cinema, but British life was little affected by the continental ideologies

of communism and fascism. The empire remained a fact, even though the

Statute of Westminster (1931) proclaimed the equality of Commonwealth

nations such as Canada and Australia. Religious attendance declined, but

King George V maintained the prestige of the monarchy. When his son, Edward

VIII, insisted on marrying a twice-divorced American in 1936, abdication

proved to be the only acceptable solution. Under Edward’s brother, George

VI, the monarchy again provided the model family of the land.

Britain and World War II

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