History of Great Britain

History
of Britain

The kingdom of Great Britain was
formed by the Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland. England
(including the principality of Wales, annexed in the 14th century) and Scotland
had been separate kingdoms since the early Middle Ages, but since 1603 the same
monarch has ruled both lands. Only in 1707, however, did London become the
capital of the entire island. Great Britain from then on had a single
Parliament and a single system of national administration, taxation, and
weights and measures. All tariff barriers within the island were ended. England
and Scotland continued, however, to have separate traditions of law and
separate established churches—the Presbyterian in Scotland, the Anglican in
England and Wales. For the history of the two countries before 1707, see
Britain, Ancient; England; Scotland.

A Century of Conflicts

One of the chief purposes of the
planners of the Act of Union had been to strengthen a land preoccupied with the
War of the Spanish Succession. Under the leadership of John Churchill, 1st
Duke of Marlborough, Britain and its allies had won many battles against
France, then the most populous and powerful European state, but by 1710 it
seemed clear that not even Marlborough could prevent Louis XIV of France from
installing a Bourbon relation on the Spanish throne. Marlborough and his
political allies were replaced by members of the Tory Party, who in due course
made peace with France. In the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Britain acknowledged
the right of the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish crown. At the same time, France
ceded to Britain the North American areas of Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, and
Newfoundland. Spain ceded Gibraltar and the Mediterranean island of Minorca and
granted to British merchants a limited right to trade with Spain’s American
colonies; included in that (until 1750) was the asiento—the right to
import African slaves into Spanish America.

Because Queen Anne had no surviving
children, she was succeeded, according to the Act of Settlement (1701), by her
nearest Protestant relative, the elector of Hannover, who came from Germany in
1714 and was accepted as King George I of Great Britain. A
new era of British history began.

Government in the 18th Century

Although the first years of George
I’s reign were marked by two major crises—the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 by
followers of Queen Anne’s half brother, James Stuart, and the South Sea Bubble,
a stock market crash of 1720—Britain was actually entering two decades of
relative peace and stability. Local government was left largely in the hands of
country gentlemen owning large estates. As justices of the peace, they settled
the majority of legal disputes. They also administered roads, bridges, inns,
and markets and supervised the local operation of the Poor Law—aid to orphans,
paupers, the very old, and those too ill to work. At the national level, many
Britons came to take pride in their mixed government, which happily combined
monarchical (the hereditary ruler), aristocratic (the hereditary House of
Lords), and democratic (the elected House of Commons) elements and also
provided for an independent judiciary. The reign of Queen Anne had been marked
by parliamentary elections every three years and by keen rivalry between Whig and Tory
factions. With the coming of George I, the Whigs were given preference over the
Tories, many of whom were sympathetic to the claims of the Stuart pretenders.
Under the Septennial Act of 1716, parliamentary elections were required every
seven years rather than every three, and direct political participation
declined. Parliament was made up of 122 county members and 436 borough members.
Virtually all counties and boroughs sent two members to Parliament, but each
borough, whether a large city or a tiny village, had its own tradition of choosing
its members of Parliament. Even those Britons who lacked the right to vote
could claim the rights of petition, jury trial, and freedom from arbitrary
arrest. Full political privileges were granted only to members of the Anglican
church, but non-Anglican Protestants could legally hold office if they were
willing to take Anglican communion once a year.

The Era of Robert Walpole

Although the king could appoint
whomever he wished to his government, he found it convenient to select members
of Parliament, who could exercise influence there. Such was the case of Robert
Walpole, who was appointed first lord of the Treasury (and came to be known as
prime minister) in 1721 in the aftermath of the South Sea Bubble. The Bubble
was sparked by the financial collapse of the giant South Sea Company. The crash
slowed down the commercial boom of the previous three decades, a time when the
Bank of England had been founded, the concept of a long-term national debt
formulated, and many large joint-stock companies established. In part because
George I could not speak English and in part because both he and his son, King George
II, were often in Hannover, Germany, which they continued to rule, Walpole
was able to build up and dominate a government machine. He presided over an informal
group of ministers that came to be known as the cabinet, and he controlled
Parliament by his personality, his policies, and his use of patronage. His
influence, however, had limits. Hoping to curb smuggling, Walpole in 1732 and
1733 sought to replace a land tax and customs duties on imports with an excise
tax on wine and tobacco collected from retailers, but parliamentary critics and
popular rioters protested against the army of tax collectors that the bill
would have created, and Walpole was ultimately forced to give up his plan.
During his administration, Walpole kept Great Britain out of war, and even
Anglo-French relations remained cordial. In the late 1730s, however, a war
party emerged in Parliament. Its members sought revenge against Spain for the
harassment by Spanish coast guards of British merchants who wished to trade
with Spanish colonists in the Americas. In 1739, against Walpole’s better
judgment, Britain declared war on Spain, and two years later parliamentary
pressure forced Walpole to resign.

Two Decades of Conflict

Between 1739 and 1763, Great Britain
was generally at war. The war against Spain (see Jenkins’s
Ear, War of) soon merged with the War of the Austrian Succession,
which began in 1740, pitting Prussia, France, and Spain against Austria. Great
Britain became Austria’s chief ally, and British armies and ships fought the
French in Europe, in North America, on the high seas, and in India, where the
English and French East India companies competed for influence. In 1745 the Scottish
Jacobites, taking advantage of Britain’s involvement on the Continent, made
their last major attempt to recover the British throne for the Stuart dynasty.
Prince Charles Edward (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”) landed in Scotland, won the
allegiance of thousands of Highlanders, and in September captured Edinburgh and
proclaimed his father King James III. Marching south with his army, he came
within a hundred miles of London, but failed to attract many English
supporters. In December he retreated to Scotland. The following April he was
defeated at the Battle of Culloden and fled to France.

The War of the Austrian Succession
ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which, as far as Britain was
concerned, restored the territorial status quo. By then, a series of
short-lived ministries had given way to the relatively stable administration of
Henry Pelham. During the mid-1750s the British found themselves fighting an
undeclared war against France both in North America (see French
and Indian War) and in India. In 1756 formal war broke out again. The Seven
Years’ War (1756-1763) pitted Britain, allied with Prussia,
against France in alliance with Austria and Russia. For Britain the war began
with a series of defeats in North America, in India, in the Mediterranean, and
on the Continent (where the French overran Hannover). Under strong popular
pressure, King George II then appointed the fiery William Pitt the
Elder as the minister to run the war abroad, while his colleague, the duke of
Newcastle, oiled the political wheels at home. Pitt was an expert strategist
and conducted the war with vigor. The French fleet was defeated off the coast
of Portugal, the English East India Company triumphed over its French
counterpart in Bengal and elsewhere, and British and colonial troops in North America
captured Fort Duquesne (on the site of present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania),
Quйbec, and Montrйal. Although Pitt was forced from office in 1761 and the
British negotiated separately from Prussia, the Treaty of Paris (1763) was a
diplomatic triumph. All French claims to Canada and to lands east of the
Mississippi River were ceded to Britain, as were most French claims to India.
Spain, which had entered the war on the French side in 1762, ceded Florida. The
Treaty of Paris established Britain’s 18th-century empire at its height.

Population Growth, Urbanization, and Industrialization

During the first half of the 18th
century, the population of Great Britain increased by less than 15 percent.
Between 1751 and 1801, the year of the first official census, the number rose
by one-half to 16 million, and between 1801 and 1851, the population grew by
more than two-thirds to 27 million. The reasons include a decline of deaths
from infectious diseases, especially smallpox; an improved diet made possible
by more efficient farming practices and the large-scale use of the potato; and
earlier marriages and larger families, especially in those areas where new
industries were starting up. A quickening of economic change was noticeable by
the 1780s, when James Watt perfected the steam engine as a new source of power.
New inventions mechanized the spinning and weaving of imported cotton. Between
1760 and 1830 the production of cotton textiles increased twelvefold, making
the product Britain’s leading export. At the same time, other inventions
comparably raised the production of iron, and the amount of coal mined
increased fourfold. By 1830 this Industrial Revolution had
turned Britain into the “workshop of the world.”

The towns that spread across
northwestern England, lowland Scotland, and southern Wales accustomed a
generation of workers to factory life. The advantages were more regular hours,
higher wages than those received by handicraft workers or farm laborers, and
less dependence on human muscle power; many machines could be operated by women
and children. The disadvantages included the devaluation of old artisan skills,
a new emphasis on discipline and punctuality, and a less personal relationship
between employer and employee. For several decades also, such civic amenities
as water and sewage systems did not keep pace with the growth of population.
London remained Britain’s largest city, a center of commerce, shipping,
justice, and administration more than of industry. Its population, estimated at
600,000 in 1701, had grown to 950,000 by 1801, and to 2.5 million by 1851,
making it the largest city in the world. By then, Britain had become the first
large nation to have more urban than rural inhabitants.

The Early Years of King George III

In 1760, the aged George II was
succeeded by his 22-year-old grandson, George III. The new
British-born king had a deep sense of moral duty and tried to play a direct
role in governing his country. To this end he appointed men he trusted, such as
his onetime Scottish tutor, Lord Bute, who became prime minister in 1762.
Bute’s ministry was not a success, however, and four short-lived ministries
followed until 1770, when George found, in Lord North, a leader pleasing both
to him and to the majority of Parliament.

During the 1760s, politicians out of
office spurred a campaign of criticism
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an expansion of the right to vote, and an increase in the frequency of meetings
of Parliament.

The American Revolution

The fears expressed by Wilkes’s
supporters confirmed the more radical American colonial leaders in their
suspicion of the British government. Long accustomed to a considerable degree
of self-government and freed, after 1763, from the French danger, they resented
the attempts by successive British ministries to make them pay a share of the
cost of imperial defense in the form of assorted taxes and duties. They also
resented British attempts to enforce mercantilistic regulations and to treat
colonial legislatures as secondary to the government in London. American
resistance led in due course to the calling of the First Continental Congress
in 1774 and the commencement of hostilities the following year. Although
parliamentary critics such as Edmund Burke continued to urge conciliation, the
king and Lord North felt the rebellious colonists had to be brought to their
senses.

British governmental authority in the
13 colonies collapsed in 1775. Although British forces were able to occupy
first Boston and later New York City and Philadelphia, the Americans did not
give up. After the defeat of General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, the
civil war within the British Empire became an international one. First the
French (1778), then the Spanish (1779), and the Dutch (1780) joined the
anti-British side, while other powers formed a League of Armed Neutrality. For
the first time in more than a century, the British were diplomatically
isolated. After General Charles Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in 1781,
opposition at home to the frustrations and high taxation brought on by the
American war compelled Lord North to resign and his successors to sign a new
Treaty of Paris in 1783. The 13 colonies were recognized as independent states
and were granted all British territory south of the Great Lakes. Florida and
Minorca were ceded to Spain and some West Indian islands and African ports to
France.

Pitt, Reform, and Revolution

In the wake of the war, many old
institutions were reexamined. The Economical Reform Act of 1782 reduced the
patronage powers of the king and his ministers. The Irish Parliament,
controlled by Anglo-Irish Protestants, won a greater degree of independence.
The India Act in 1784 gave ultimate authority over British India to the
government instead of the English East India Company. The India Act was
sponsored by William Pitt the Younger, who was named prime
minister late in 1783 at the age of 24. Pitt remained in office for most of the
rest of his life and did much to shape the modern prime ministership. In the
aftermath of the American war, he restored faith in the government’s ability to
pay interest on the much-increased national debt, and he set up the first
consolidated annual budget. Pitt was also sympathetic to political reform,
repeal of restrictions on non-Anglican Protestants, and abolition of the slave
trade, but when these measures failed to win a parliamentary majority, he
dropped them.

Reformers, such as Charles
James Fox and Thomas Paine, were inspired by
the revolution that began in France in 1789, but others, such as Edmund
Burke, became fearful of all radical change. Pitt was less concerned with
French ideas than actions, and when the French revolutionary army invaded the
Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and declared war on England in February 1793, a
decade of moderate reform in Britain gave way to 22 years of all-out war.

The Napoleonic Wars

In the 1790s, the wars of the French
Revolution merged into the Napoleonic Wars, as Napoleon
Bonaparte took over the French revolutionary government. Pitt’s
First Coalition (with Prussia, Austria, and Russia) against the French
collapsed in 1796, and in 1797 Britain was beset by naval defeat, by naval
mutiny, and by French invasion attempts. The war caused a boom in farm
production and in certain industries. At the same time it caused rapid
inflation: Wage rates lagged behind prices, and Poor Law expenses grew. In 1797
the Bank of England was forced to suspend the payment of gold for paper
currency, and Parliament voted the first income tax. Rebellion and a French
invasion threat led to the Act of Union with Ireland (1801). The Dublin
legislature was abolished, and 100 Irish representatives became members of the
Parliament in London; only an Irish viceroy and a London-appointed
administration remained in Dublin.

Despite the defeat of the French in
the Battle of the Nile in 1798, the war did not go well for Britain. The Second
Coalition collapsed in 1801, and Britain made peace with Napoleon at Amiens the
following year. War broke out again the following year, but between 1805 and
1807 the Third Coalition also collapsed. Napoleon’s plans to invade Britain
were foiled by the British naval victory under Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar.
Napoleon then sought to drive Britain into bankruptcy with his Continental
System. Difficulties in enforcing that system prompted Napoleon’s invasion of Russia
in 1812. This led to the Fourth Coalition (Britain, Russia, Austria, and
Prussia) and to Napoleon’s downfall two years later. Britain’s contribution
included an army led by the duke of Wellington fighting in Spain and, after
Napoleon’s return from exile in Elba, the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The
War of 1812 with the United States was for Britain a sideshow that brought no
territorial changes.

A Century of Peace

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars,
King George III, by then insane, had been succeeded by his eldest son, who
reigned first as prince regent and then as King George IV. Although a patron of
art and Regency architecture, the prince regent became unpopular because of his
gluttony and his personal immorality. His attempt to divorce his wife, Caroline
of Brunswick, provided much cause for scandal.

Postwar Government (1815-1830)

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of
Liverpool, presided as Tory prime minister from 1812 to 1827, over a cabinet of
luminaries including Viscount Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, who
represented Britain at the Congress of Vienna (1815). Former Dutch possessions
such as the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were added to the
British Empire, and a balance of power was restored to continental Europe.
Although eager to consult its European partners about possible territorial
changes, Britain soon made it clear that it had no desire to join the Holy
Alliance (Russia, Austria, and Prussia) in policing Europe.

Rapid demobilization after the wars,
economic depression, and bad harvests led to rioting in 1816. The Liverpool
government sought to aid landlords with protective tariffs (the Corn Laws of
1815) and to aid other supporters by repealing the wartime income tax in 1817
and restoring the gold standard in 1819. The so-called Six Acts in 1819 curbed
the freedom of the press and the rights of assembly. A giant political protest
demonstration near Manchester that year was broken up by the militia. The
economy recovered during the early 1820s, and government policies became more
moderate. George Canning, who replaced Castlereagh as foreign secretary,
welcomed the independence of Spain’s South American colonies and aided the
Greek rebellion against Turkish rule—a cause also hailed by romantic poets such
as Lord Byron. William Huskisson at the Board of Trade cut tariffs and eased
international trade. Robert Peel, the home secretary, reformed the criminal law
and instituted a modern police force in London in 1829. Barriers to labor union
organization were also reduced during this time.

Despite an early 19th-century
religious revival, especially among Methodists and other non-Anglican
Protestants, Tory ministries remained reluctant to challenge religious and
political fundamentals. In 1828 Parliament agreed, however, to end political
restrictions on Protestant dissenters, and one year later the government of the
duke of Wellington was challenged in Ireland by a mass movement called the
Catholic Association. Wellington bought peace in Ireland by granting Roman
Catholics the right to become members of Parliament and to hold public office,
but in so doing 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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ultimately came 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

Memories of World War I left Britons
with an overwhelming desire to avoid another war, and the country played a
leading role in the League of Nations and at interwar disarmament conferences
such as those in Washington, D.C. in 1921 and 1922 and London in 1930 that
limited naval size. Conscious that Germany might have been unfairly treated at
the 1919 peace conference, the British government followed a policy of
appeasement in dealing with Adolf Hitler’s Germany after 1933. Germany’s
decisions between 1934 and 1936 to leave the League of Nations, rearm, and
remilitarize the Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of
Versailles were accepted. So was the German annexation of Austria
in 1938. In his efforts to keep the peace at all costs, Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain also acquiesced to the Munich Pact of 1938,
which gave Germany the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia. Only after the
German annexation of Prague in March of 1939 did Britain make pledges to Poland
and Romania.

When Hitler invaded Poland in September
1939, Britain and France declared war, and World War II began.
The
defeat********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************at
achieved by any other power. Although a German invasion plan was foiled by
British air supremacy, large parts of London and other cities were destroyed
and some 60,000 civilians were killed. Beginning early in 1941, the
still-neutral United States granted lend-lease aid to Britain.

The nature of the war changed with
the German invasion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in June
1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Churchill then
forged the “Grand Alliance” with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and U.S. president
Franklin D. Roosevelt against Germany, Italy, and Japan. In the immediate
aftermath of the Japanese intervention, much of the British Empire in Southeast
Asia was overrun, but late in 1942 the tide turned. The British contribution
included the Battle of the North Atlantic against the German submarine menace
and the campaign led by General Bernard Montgomery against the German army in North
Africa. Churchill corresponded continually and met often with Roosevelt, and
British forces joined American in the 1943 invasion of Sicily and Italy, the
invasion of France in 1944, and the ultimate defeat of the Axis powers in 1945.

The Winds of Change

The general election of 1945 gave the
Labour Party for the first time a majority of the popular vote and an
overwhelming parliamentary majority. The result was less a rebuke of
Churchill’s wartime leadership than an expression of approval of Labour’s role
in the war and of hope that the party would bring more prosperity.

Clement Attlee’s Ministry (1945-1951)

During the years that followed,
Labour, led by Clement Attlee, sought to build a socialist
Britain, while surviving postwar austerity, dismantling the empire, and
adjusting to a cold war with the USSR. The two measures that established a
welfare state in Britain, the National Insurance Act of 1946 (a consolidation
of benefit laws involving maternity, unemployment, disability, old age, and
death) and the National Health Service, set up in 1948, were widely popular.
Both drew on the wartime reports of Sir William Beveridge, a Liberal. The
nationalization of the Bank of England, the coal industry, gas and electricity,
the railroads, and most airlines proved relatively noncontroversial, but the
Conservatives vigorously if vainly opposed the nationalization of the trucking
and the iron and steel industries. In 1948 Labour eliminated the last remnants
of plural voting (that is, voting in more than one constituency) and reduced
the delaying powers of the House of Lords from two years to one. These changes
were instituted in the midst of a postwar era of austerity. The national debt
had tripled, and for the first time since the 18th century Britain had become a
debtor nation. With the end of U.S. lend-lease aid in 1945, the British import
bill had risen abruptly long before military demobilization and reconversion to
peacetime industry had been accomplished. Wartime regulations, therefore, had
been kept; food rationing in 1946 and 1947 was more restrictive than during the
war.

Postwar Germany was divided into
occupation zones among the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France, but
efforts to reach agreement on a peace treaty with Germany broke down as it became
clear that the USSR was converting all of Eastern Europe into a Soviet sphere.
Britain, assisted by the U.S.-sponsored Marshall Plan (1948-1952), joined other
Western powers and the United States in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) in 1949 in order to counter the Soviet threat. The British government
felt less able, however, to play an independent role in the Middle East, and in
1948 it gave up its Palestinian mandate, which led to the establishment of
Israel and the first Arab-Israeli War. Aware of Britain’s depleted coffers and
sympathetic toward their nationalist causes, the Labour government granted
independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 and to Burma (now known as Myanmar)
and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1948.

Conservative Rule (1951-1964)

Its program of social reform
apparently accomplished, the Labour government’s parliamentary majority was
sharply reduced in the general election of 1950, and the election of 1951
enabled the Conservatives under Winston Churchill to slip back into power. Except
for denationalizing iron and steel, the Conservatives made no attempt to
reverse the legislation or the welfare-state program enacted by Labour, and the
early 1950s brought steady economic recovery. As income tax rates were reduced
and the framework of wartime and postwar regulation largely dismantled, housing
construction boomed and international trade flourished. With a veteran world
statesman heading Britain’s government, the accession of a young queen drew the
attention of the world to London for the coronation of Elizabeth II in June
1953. During these years Britain perfected its own atomic and hydrogen bombs
and pioneered in the generation of electricity by nuclear power. Churchill’s
hopes for another diplomatic summit meeting were disappointed, but Stalin’s
death in 1953 led to an easing of the Cold War.

Eden and Macmillan

Churchill’s successor, Foreign
Secretary Anthony Eden, led his party to a second election
victory in the spring of 1955. In the same year he helped negotiate an Austrian
peace treaty and participated in a summit conference at Geneva.

Eden’s tenure as prime minister,
however, was cut short by the crisis that followed Egypt’s nationalization of
the Suez Canal in 1956. British forces had been withdrawn from the canal only a
year earlier, and an Anglo-French reoccupation in 1956 was halted by
Soviet-U.S. pressure. The episode led both to the loss of much of Britain’s
remaining influence in the Middle East and to Eden’s resignation. His
successor, Harold Macmillan, presided over a period
of renewed consumer affluence. In 1959 he led the Conservatives to their third
successive election victory—the fourth time in a row that the party gained
parliamentary seats.

Decolonization

In Africa, Macmillan’s government
followed a deliberate policy of decolonization. The Sudan had already become
independent in 1956, and during the next seven years Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia,
Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Kenya followed suit. Most of these states
remained members of a highly decentralized multiracial Commonwealth, but the
Union of South Africa, dominated by a white minority of Boer descent, left the
Commonwealth in 1961 and declared itself a republic. Independence was also
given to Malaysia, Cyprus, and Jamaica during Macmillan’s tenure.

Even as imperial ties loosened, tens
of thousands of immigrants—especially from the West Indies and Pakistan—poured
into Britain. Their arrival caused intermittent social strife and led to
efforts to limit further immigration sharply, while ensuring legal equality for
the immigrants and their descendants.

As Britons turned their attention
away from their overseas empire, they became increasingly aware that their
economy, although prospering, was growing less rapidly than those of their
Continental neighbors. In 1961 Macmillan applied for British membership in the
European Community (EC), or Common Market (now called the European Union). Many
Britons felt unprepared to cast their lot with continental Europe, but for the
moment their feelings proved immaterial, because the application was vetoed by
President Charles de Gaulle of France. In 1963 Macmillan was replaced as
Conservative prime minister by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. In the general election
of 1964, however, the latter was narrowly defeated by the Labour Party, headed
by Harold Wilson.

The Permissive Society

During the 1960s, Britain experienced
a widespread mood of rebellion against the conventions of the past—in dress, in
music, in popular entertainment, and in social behavior. The phenomenon had its
positive consequences in helping to make “swinging” London a world capital of
popular music, theater, and, for a time, fashion. Among the negative side
effects, however, were a rising crime rate and a spreading drug culture.

Harold Wilson’s Labour government
sympathized with some of these trends. It sought both to expand higher
education opportunities and to end a high school system that separated the
academically inclined from other students. During the later 1960s, laws on
divorce were eased, abortion was legalized, curbs on homosexual practices were
ended, capital punishment was abolished, equal pay for equal work was
prescribed for women, and the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.

In economic life the Labour
government became more rigorous. A persistent trend toward inflation,
unfavorable balance of trade, and unbalanced government budgets led to a
wage-and-price freeze in 1966 and attempts thereafter to secure “severe
restraint.” These actions eased certain economic problems but at the price of
alienating many of Labour’s union supporters, and in 1970 the Conservatives
returned to power under Edward Heath.

Battle Against Inflation

A major theme of British history
since the mid-1960s has been the battle to eliminate double-digit inflation.
Heath’s policy of deliberate economic expansion did not accomplish that goal,
however, and the attempt to curb the legal powers of labor unions in 1971
evoked a mood of civil disobedience among union leaders. More working days were
lost because of strikes in 1972 than in any year since the general strike of
1926. Heath hoped to solve economic problems by “floating the pound,” that is,
by freeing Britain’s currency from earlier fixed rates of exchange with other
currencies, and by again seeking British admission to the EC. Britain did join
in 1973, and two years later the first national referendum in British history
approved the step by a 2-1 margin. An attempt by Heath in 1972 and 1973 first
to freeze and then sharply to restrain wage and price increases was defied by
the miners. When Heath appealed to the public in the general election of
February 1974, the results were indecisive. A revival in the popular vote of
the Liberal Party, however, enabled Harold Wilson to form a minority Labour
government that lasted five years under his leadership and that of James
Callaghan.

Irish and Scottish Problems

During the 1970s, successive British
governments also faced difficulties in Ireland and Scotland. A civil rights
movement supporting social equality for the Roman Catholic minority in Northern
Ireland clashed violently with Protestant extremists. In 1969 the British
government sent troops to keep order, and in 1972 it abolished Northern
Ireland’s autonomous parliament. A campaign of terrorism by the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) followed; its aim was to unite Northern Ireland
with the Irish Republic in defiance of the wishes of a majority of the Northern
Irish people. British measures gradually curbed but could not totally halt the
wave of bombings and killings in Northern Ireland and England. In Scotland, a
Scottish Nationalist Party scored impressive gains in the elections of 1974,
and Callaghan’s ministry attempted to set up a semi-independent parliament in
Edinburgh. When only 33 percent of the Scottish electorate supported the plan in
a 1979 referendum, the project died, at least temporarily.

Economic Woes Under Labour 

The Labour government of 1974 to 1979
began by ending all legal restrictions on wage and price rises, but after the
annual inflation rate topped 25 percent in 1975, the government did succeed in
obtaining some trade union restraints on wage claims in return for an end to
some voluntary restraints on wage claims; the inflation rate declined somewhat
between 1976 and 1979. In return, union leaders demanded an end to legal
restraints on union power and more government subsidies for housing and other
social services. By the late 1970s, British politics seemed to be polarizing
between left-wing Labourites, who sought an ever larger role for the state in
order to impose social equality, and Conservatives, who hoped to restore a
greater role to private enterprise and individual achievement. By the beginning
of 1979, Callaghan’s government was dependent on two minor parties. A winter of
labor unrest undercut his claims to be able to deal successfully with the
unions, and a vote of no confidence in March 1979 went against him.

The Thatcher Decade

In the elections of April 1979 the
Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, emerged with a
substantial majority of parliamentary seats and with the first woman prime
minister in British or European history. She was to remain in office for the
next 11 years, making hers the longest continuous prime ministership since the
end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Thatcher’s first years were
difficult. She sought to halt inflation by a policy of high interest rates and
government budget cuts, rather than of wage and price freezes. By 1981 and 1982
those policies were showing some success, but only at the cost of the highest
unemployment rates since the 1930s. The government was jolted in April 1982
when Argentina forcibly occupied the Falkland Islands, a
British-held archipelago in the South Atlantic that Argentina had long claimed.
When U.S. mediation efforts failed, Thatcher sent a British counterinvasion
fleet, and in June that force succeeded in recapturing the islands.

The decisive Conservative victories
in the elections of June 1983 and June 1987 were the consequence not only of
widespread popular support for the government’s Falklands policy, but also of a
sharp division in the ranks of the political opposition. In 1980 a group of
Labour Party members headed by Roy Jenkins and David Owen broke away and in
1981 formed the Social Democratic Party. The new party joined with the Liberals
to constitute an influential alliance that ultimately won relatively few
parliamentary seats but did garner 25 percent of the total popular vote in 1983
and 23 percent in 1987 (compared to 28 and 31 percent for Labour and 42 percent
in both elections for the Conservatives).

The years between 1982 and 1988 were
economic boom years in Britain. The living standards of most Britons rose and
the rate of unemployment gradually ebbed. British industries became more
efficient, and London maintained its role as one of the world’s top three
centers of finance. The economic role of government declined as Thatcher
promoted privatization—the turning over to private investors of government
monopolies such as British Airways, the telephone service, and the distribution
of gas and water. Public housing tenants were strongly
encour********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ble-digit
inflation, the enactment of an unpopular “poll tax” (as a substitute for local
government real estate taxes), and the alienation of some members of her
cabinet over the prime minister’s increasingly critical attitude toward
cooperation with her EC colleagues.

John Major

Thatcher was succeeded as
Conservative Party leader and prime minister by John Major, who
continued Thatcher’s policy of maintaining close ties with the United States.
British troops fought as part of the multinational coalition led by the United
States in the Persian Gulf War (1991). In 1992,
despite an economic recession, Major led his party to victory in the April
general elections, though with a reduced majority. Opposition leader Neil
Kinnock, who had gradually moved his Labour Party back from the left toward the
ideological center, resigned after the election. Following the Conservatives’
election victory, Major’s government faced a growing financial crisis as the
pound weakened in the currency market, inflation and unemployment grew, and the
nation entered a recession. As a result, Major received the lowest approval
rating, 14 percent, of any prime minister in British history.

One of John Major’s main
accomplishments in office occurred in 1993, when he was instrumental in opening
a dialogue between the British government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Major and Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds issued a statement
requiring the IRA to cease terrorist activities for three months, after which
time Sinn Fein, the organization’s political wing, would be invited to
join talks on the future of Northern Ireland. In August 1994 the IRA announced
a cease-fire, bringing to a halt the violence that is estimated to have killed
more than 3000 people in the previous 25 years. In May 1995 representatives
from the British government and the IRA met face-to-face for the first time in
23 years.

Despite this breakthrough, the
Conservative Party continued to lose ground. Though beset by low opinion polls,
large defeats in local elections in April and May 1995, and a series of
scandals, its most serious problem was the growing rift within the party over
policy toward Europe and the European Union (EU). Many Conservatives felt that
closer British relations with the EU would undermine British sovereignty, and
the constant internal conflict over this issue severely damaged the party. In
July 1995, in an attempt to solidify the party, John Major resigned as leader
of the Conservatives, forcing an election for a new leader. Major won against
an anti-European opponent, but one-third of the party voted against him or
abstained. Dissatisfaction with the progress of the Northern Ireland talks led
the IRA to resume its campaign of violence in February 1996 by setting off a
large bomb in London that injured more than 100 people.

 In March and April of 1996 the
government disclosed that a link may exist between bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease), an infection
that had been found in some British cattle, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease (CJD), a degenerative human brain disorder. This disclosure led the
European Union to ban British beef, which devastated the British cattle
industry, further damaging the Conservatives’ popularity. In April the
Conservatives suffered a substantial loss in local parliamentary elections to
the opposition Labour Party, headed by Tony Blair. This
loss trimmed the Conservative parliamentary majority to just one seat.

During the second half of 1996 and
early 1997 Major struggled to regain support for his party, but was
unsuccessful. The split within the party over the issue of European relations,
most specifically the question as to whether the economic and monetary union
(EMU) proposed by the European Union would damage the British economy,
continued to widen. In national elections in May 1997 the Conservatives were
swept out of office in a landslide. The Labour Party won almost 45 percent of
the vote and came away with 419 seats and a 179-seat majority in the House of
Commons. The Conservatives had their worst showing in over 150 years, receiving
about 33 percent of the vote and losing almost half of their seats, to finish
with 165. Labour leader Tony Blair became prime minister, and after the
election, John Major announced that he would resign as head of the Conservative
Party as soon as a replacement could be found.