A HISTORY OF BRIITAIN V 1700 TO...

Britain changed a lot in the 1700s. By 1745 Britain was one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world! In 1707 England and Scotland had joined together to make Great Britain! As if this wasn't enough Britain had a series of new royal families – twice!

Britain had a huge empire and controlled large parts of America and Canada

Trading cloth, spices, tobaccos, and food had made Britain rich

Britain had the biggest navy and the best battleships in the world

Britain had a Prime Minister and political parties like we have today

The Parliament changed the rules about who could rule Britain. Roman Catholics were not allowed to rule... this meant James VII and his son James Francis could not be kings. Instead their closest Protestant relatives were allowed

First the Protestant nephew of James VII, William of Orange became King, and later a relative of Queen Anne, the German George of Hanover, took the throne.

As had happened among the Dutch, shifting religious beliefs and rising commerce was accompanied by a decline in demand for religious uniformity

The orderly cosmos described by Isaac Newton in the late 1600s was seen as a model for government organization. With Copernicus, Galileo and Newton a new optimism about the benefits of learning had arisen among intellectual elite, in conflict with the old and common belief that the world was a mystery never to be fathomed by humanity. Many continued to believe in God's interventions, including people who believed in science, but the belief that the world functioned solely by God's magic was starting to decline, as was the belief that all humanity needed to get by was spontaneity and proper religious attitude.

Britain was becoming more literate. Personal correspondence and other forms of writing were on the rise. Literate folks gathered in groups interested in science or literature. A variety of learned journals were published. Book production increased, and so too did newspaper distribution. More people believed in the efficacy of literacy. In Scotland in 1700 around 45 percent the population could read, and by the end of the 1700s it would rise to 85 percent. England's literacy rate in this period would rise from 45 to 63 percent.

But for ordinary people life was still very hard. If you couldn't work you did not get paid and went hungry. If you were ill and couldn't pay a doctor you would die.

Improving Commerce

Until the 1720s, England's population growth had been held in check by periodic harvest failures and by diseases such as influenza, smallpox, dysentery and typhus. At around 5.25 million in 1720, England's population would be around nine million at the end of the century. London's population in this period rose from around 700,000 to over one million.  This was a larger population than that of Paris.

France had more than three times England's population, but Britain was taking a lead in commerce – ahead also of the Dutch, which was economically progressive but had a fraction of Britain's population: a little less than 2 million in 1720. With the rise in Britain's commerce, London had become a busier place and had been gathering more people from England's rural areas and from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. And London also had migrants from Germany, Holland and France. London had become a great center for the arts and fashion.

In the 1700s England had an agricultural output that was "at least twice that of any other European country, and was to continued so until the 1850s" (Appleby,The Relentless Revolution, p. 83). And this benefited development in general.

Early in the century, Thomas Newcomen created a steam driven piston in a cylinder, used for pumping water from mines. However, Britain remained largely unadvanced in technology. Watches, for example, were still inaccurate curiosities. People kept time by the ringing of church bells. And more importantly, Britain was still dependent on waterpower. But in the 1700s, productivity and real wages were inching upwards. People's lives were improving materially. They were able to get more in return for their labor. Britain was exporting more grain than it was importing. Britain was a big producer of woolen cloth, and it led the world in maritime trade.

Trade with India made available new fabrics. English men and women had begun wearing lighter and brighter clothing instead of heavy wool and linen. A new interest in variety and consumerism had developed. The idea that it was okay to find delight in buying things was taking hold. With the rise of a cultural of trade, investing in trade, and the rise of consumerism, Christian asceticism was in decline. The Puritanism of Cromwell's time had faded. So was adherence to the biblical admonitions regarding the accumulation or lending of money.

Thinking was loosening up. Joyce Appleby writes that like other European societies in England "a censorship system was in place, but unlike them, it was rarely enforced." More people were writing, and there were more readers becoming accustomed to discussion. Silence while accepting authoritarian admonitions was not the virtue that it had been when there was less change and availability of variety and novelty. "Elsewhere in Europe," writes Appleby, vigorous censorship stifled the emergence of a reading and talking public. Everywhere there was fear of disorder." 

In England a spirit of enterprise was growing. Writes Appleby: "Self assertive individuals did the innovating in England whether they were improving farmers and landlords, joint-stock trading company managers, interloping merchants, cheese mongers, or professional lenders."

According to Appleby, by the end of the 1600s, "Those who promoted the market economy were greatly aided by a public discourse about how nations grow wealthy. Efficiency, ingenuity, disciplined work, educated experimentation all became a part of a new ethic." 

It was in this environment that the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-90) wrote his book the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.

With the new hussle and bussle of English life, people were accepting a higher taxation than was common elsewhere, from which came appreciated services that were a part of that hussle-bussle. Taxes in Britain were orderly rather than the haggling that existed elsewhere – while economic success in England, according to Appleby, was demonstsrating the benefits that accrued from "allowing men and women to make their own self-interested choices."

Class and Power

Class privilege remained, with most men unqualified to vote because of a land qualification law. A few owned much of the country's agricultural land. Some others owned small farms. Some people rented land from the big landowners, giving the landowner a share of the wealth they produced. And many others labored for wages on the landowner's property and were able to graze a pig or a cow on the village common.

Religious Organization and Politics

Religious organization remained an issue as Great Britain moved into the 1700s. The dominant religious body remained the Church of England (the Anglicans), which conservatives considered the orthodox faith. The Church of England was favored by England's landowning elite, and parliament's House of Lords was an Anglican preserve. Referring to the Church of England, the conservative political party, the Tories, was also called the 'Church' party.

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers were called Dissenters. In England in 1689, religious pluralism had been legalized, but the Blasphemy Act of 1698 had made denial of the Trinity punishable by imprisonment. Denying that Christianity was the truth or denying the authority of the Scriptures was also made illegal. But these laws were rarely invoked. In England, the last execution for heresy had been in the early 1600s, and the last to have been executed in Scotland for heresy was a nineteen year-old student at Edinburgh in 1698.

From 1710 to 1714, conservatives tried to revive the union between the state and the Church of England. They feared that if people were left free to choose their religion there would be a dramatic spread of Dissenters. Also they thought that religious disunity was an affront to God, that it threatened the salvation of individuals and national security. Some Anglican conservatives also blamed crime and vice on religious disunity. But the conservatives failed to pass their legislation. In the 1720s they also failed in their effort to strengthen the laws against blasphemy.

To the surprise of the conservatives, the number of Dissenters remained stagnant. The Church of England remained dominant in rural England, in the universities and in grammar schools, while the Dissenters remained strongest in the cities and with the middle class. And from the Anglicans a small new denomination emerged. Two Anglicans at Oxford University, John Wesley and George Whitefield, started a movement dedicated to nurturing spirituality through prayers, devotional readings, self-examination, fasting, frequent communion and good works, which won them the nickname of Methodist.

Catholics remained a persecuted minority, largely clustered in remote parts of the country, as Protestants remained fearful of plots to bring Catholicism back via England's enemies abroad – Spain or France.

Protestant "dissenters" continued to be able to run for a seat in parliament, but their representation there was small, and Dissenters did not enjoy legal equality with the Anglicans. A law passed in 1753 held that only marriages performed by an Anglican clergyman were legal. Dissenters might be denied the right of burial in a churchyard. They might receive discriminatory consideration in a court of law. And Dissenters had to pay a special tax.

Values, Crime and Punishment

 People in Britain drank, gambled and fought duels. Moralists worried about the rise in sexual promiscuity and a decline in family values. They preached on the need of women to resist men inflamed by libertine principles and pornographic literature and the need of women to remain virgins until marriage. Prostitution was rampant. A German visitor to London complained of passing a "lewd female" every ten yards on a December evening along Fleet Street, including girl prostitutes as young as twelve.

Crime was increasing with the advancing economy. In London were habitual offenders and gangs of delinquent youths. Responding to crime, politicians made more offenses punishable by death. Capital crimes numbered in the dozens, including horse and sheep stealing and shoplifting to the value of five shillings. But rather than being hanged, many deemed guilty of a capital crime were sent to the Americas.

English Law

English law had been created across centuries. It was a gathering of complexities and contradictions – void of elegant simplicity. The influence of Roman law on English law remained a rumor – Roman law used only occasionally as a mere ornament to the considerations of jurists. Law in England was drawn from English experience, and it was criticized for its anomalies, complexity, uncertainties, its slowness, its tedious forms, its confounding of simple matters into confusing language that helped enrich lawyers at the expense of honest people.

In the mid-1700s, a lawyer named William Blackstone made a name for himself writing and lecturing in praise of English law. And in writing about the law he improved it. He tried to bring the law into conformity with science and the age of reason. Blackstone mapped the law's tortuous complexities and depicted the nation's constitution and laws as a reflection of the natural order of the cosmos and the nation's development across history. British law and liberty he wrote was the "noblest inheritance of mankind."

Blackstone approved of law which held that husband and wife were one person and that the husband was that person. In other words, Blackstone approved of law that held that a wife had no right to own property in her own name and that the wages she earned belonged to her husband.

Blackstone was not without his contradictions. He claimed that the power of parliament was absolute and elsewhere in his work that the legislature could not destroy human rights. But he advanced the use of such phrases as crimes and misdemeanors, ex post facto law, due process and judicial power. Blackstone denounced slavery as inimical to "natural rights" and to British law. He advanced the idea that the instant any slave landed in England he or she was free. And acting on general principles of "God-given right," English law, he claimed, protected "a Jew, a Turk or a heathen as well as to those who press the true religion of Christ." He described freedom of the press as "essential to the nature of a free state." And trial by jury he called the "glory of the English law."

In England the idea was widespread that common people had rights. It was an idea too among people in England's American colonies.

 Jacobitism

 Refers to the political movement in Great Britain and Ireland to restore the Roman Catholic Stuart King James II of England and his heirs to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. The movement took its name from Jacobus, the Latinised form of James, and refers to a long series of Jacobite risings between 1688 and 1746.

Jacobite ideology comprised four main tenets: The divine right of kings, the "accountability of Kings to God alone", inalienable hereditary right, and the "unequivocal scriptural injunction of non-resistance and passive obedience",though these positions were not unique to the Jacobites. What distinguished Jacobites from Whigs was their adherence to 'right' as the basis for the law, whereas the Whigs held to the idea of 'possession' as the basis of the law. However, such distinctions became less clear over time, with an increase in the use of contract theory by some Jacobite writers during the reign of George I. 

Jacobites contended that James II had not been legally deprived of his throne, that the Convention Parliament and its successors were not legal. Scottish Jacobites resisted the Act of Union 1707, while not recognising Parliamentary Great Britain Jacobites recognised their monarchs as Kings of Great Britain.

The Glorious Revolution

The 1745 Jacobite rising really began in 1688 when King James II (also called James VII in Scotland) lost his crown and was replaced by his own daughter and his Dutch nephew! This was called the Glorious Revolution. How did this happen?

James was not very popular. He believed in something called Divine Right. This means that he thought God had made him king and that he didn't have to listen to anyone!

James followed a different religion to most of his people. He became a Roman Catholic while his people stayed Protestant. The people feared he'd make them all Roman Catholic too! This was a big deal at this time. People were scared of Roman Catholics taking over!

James' daughter Mary was still a Protestant. She had married her Dutch cousin William, who was also James' nephew! William was also a Protestant

Important people in government asked Mary and William to come to England with William's army and get rid of James! The people were happier with a Protestant royal family

In 1688 William and Mary became rulers of England and Scotland

King James did have his friends though. They didn't like the idea of a foreign king and wanted James to come back.

The Act of Union

Another reason for the Jacobite rising of 1745 was a law called the Act of Union. The Act was signed in 1707 and joined England and Scotland together to make Great Britain. Before then Scotland and England had always been different countries. What did this mean?

For many years Scotland and England had shared the same rulers but remained as separate countries

The Act of Union was planned to make the two countries a lot closer

Many Scottish people were unhappy with this idea. They thought England was bullying Scotland!

When the Scottish Parliament eventually signed the Act there were riots in the streets of Scotland.

Many Scots became Jacobites because they thought the Stuarts would get rid of the Union and make Scotland a separate country again

Some people did like the Act though. Scotland became a richer country and many people made huge amounts of money.

The 1715 Jacobite Rising
There had already been a Jacobite rising before Bonnie Prince Charlie started one. In 1715 Bonnie Prince Charlie's father, James Francis Stuart, came to Scotland and tried to get the thrones of England and Scotland back.

In 1714 the Queen of Britain, Queen Anne, died without any children to take over. She actually had 18 children but they all died before she did!

The Jacobite friends of James Francis wanted him to be the next King because he was Anne's closest relative

But James Francis was a Roman Catholic and British Protestants did not want him!

The crown was given to the closest Protestant relative of Anne's in stead. Anne's German relative George of Hanover was offered the throne after Anne died.This made the Jacobites very angry!

The new King, George I, could not speak English and was very unpopular

In 1715 James Francis arrived in Scotland and raised a Jacobite army

The Jacobite Rising was very badly planned though. James Francis also became ill and eventually the rising failed

Many Jacobites felt that had the Rising been better planned they could have won and put the James Francis back on the thrones of England and Scotland. When Bonnie Prince Charlie tried again in 1745, many Jacobites thought they could win this time.


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Intellectual climate

Newcomen and other inventors benefitted from the intellectual climate. "Britain was characterised by the free expression of new ideas," says Professor of History Jeremy Black from Exeter University.

Over the previous 100 years, a cascade of scientific breakthroughs had swept across the country. Sir Isaac Newton was able to explain the force of gravity for the first time. Robert Boyleshowed that air and gas had physical properties.

There was a prolific exchange of scientific and technological ideas. And Britain, unlike many European countries, did not suffer censorship by Church or state.

It was the Age of Reason. The established Christian view, of a world created by God, was being challenged by one which conformed to scientifically proven principles of nature.

Alongside the new discoveries was a growing movement of people, trying to find practical applications for these new discoveries.

Men of action and men of ideas, industrialists and scientists - often from very different backgrounds - met to share their ideas and observations, in what was to be called the Industrial Enlightenment. They unleashed a wave of free thinking and creativity.

Matthew Boulton owned an engineering works in Birmingham. Together he and James Watt - a self-taught Scottish scientist - began to manufacture more efficient steam engines.

Boulton & Watt became the most important engineering firm in the country, meeting considerable demand. Initially this came from Cornish mine owners, but extended to paper, flour, cotton and iron mills, as well as distilleries, canals and waterworks.

Eric Svedenstierna, a prominent official of the Swedish Iron Bureau, reported in 1803 his impression that steam engines "are as common in England, and are found in far greater numbers, as are water and wind mills with us".

This sense of progress even attracted painters to capture potent industrial scenes, such as the ironworks depicted in Coalbrookdale  By Night.

This was the Industrial Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, railways and canals were built. Great cities appeared and scores of factories and mills sprang up.

Fundamental Shifts in Social Structure

The industrialization of Europe, like the French Revolution, left a permanent mark on society. Life as it was described in the 18th century changed drastically; classes shifted, wealth increased, and nations began assuming national identities. Describing this industrialization as a revolution is apt - despite the longer timeframe involved, the social consequences and economic changes that the world has faced because of industrialization easily equate the political effects that any of the European revolutions had. The changes can not be underestimated in importance to society today.

Until the early 18th Century, most people lived off the land as they had done for countless generations - an agricultural existence, defined by the harvests and the seasons, and ruled by a small political and social elite.

But in the 150 years that followed, there was an unprecedented explosion of new ideas and new technological inventions which created an increasingly industrial and urbanised country.

With the advent of industrialization, however, everything changed. The new enclosure laws—which required that all grazing grounds be fenced in at the owner's expense—had left many poor farmers bankrupt and unemployed, and machines capable of huge outputs made small hand weavers redundant. As a result, there were many people who were forced to work at the new factories. This required them to move to towns and cities so that they could be close to their new jobs. It also meant that they made less money for working longer hours. Add to this the higher living expenses due to urbanization, and one can easily see that many families' resources would be extremely stretched.

As a result, women and children were sent out to work, making up 75% of early workers (Stearns). Families were forced to do this, since they desperately needed money, while factory owners were happy to employ women and children for a number of reasons. First of all, they could be paid very little, and children could be controlled more easily than adults, generally through violent beatings. Children also had smaller hands, which were often needed to reach in among the parts of a machine. Furthermore, employers found that children were more malleable, and adapted to the new methods much better than adults did. Children were also sent to work in mines, being small enough to get more coal and ore from the deep and very often unsafe pits (Stearns). They could also be forced to work as long as eighteen hours each day. For these reasons, children as young as eight years old were sent to factories—usually those which manufactured textiles—where they became part of a growing and profitable business.

This unprecedented growth and profit was another social change that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. The laissez-faire approach taken by the government—and advocated by philosopher-economist Adam Smith—allowed capitalism to flourish. There were little or no government regulations imposed upon factory policies, and this allowed the wealthy, middle-class owners to pursue whichever path was most profitable, regardless of the safety and well being of their workers. This relentless pursuit of money caused another important social change: the ultimate breakdown of the family unit.

Since workers, especially women and children, were labouring for up to eighteen hours each day, there was very little family contact, and the only time that one was at home was spent sleeping. People also had to share housing with other families, which further contributed to the breakdown of the family unit. As a result, children received very little education, had stunted growth, and were sickly. They also grew up quite maladjusted, having never been taught how to behave properly (Sadler). The living conditions were indeed horrible; working families often lived in slums with little sanitation, and infant mortality skyrocketed. During the early Industrial Revolution, 50% of infants died before the age of two (Stearns).

However, the social changes that took place were not all negative. Most classes eventually benefited in some way from the huge profits that were being made, and by 1820 most workers were making somewhat better wages. The "widespread poverty and constant threat of mass starvation…lessened, [and] overall health and material conditions of the populace clearly improved" (Porter). The government, however, did have to eventually intervene in order to put an end to child labour and other unacceptable practices.

Reforms Implemented due to Social Conditions

Until the publication of the Sadler Report in 1833, the poor social conditions in Britain went largely ignored by the ruling classes. It was commissioned in 1832, and the Sadler committee undertook a great investigation into the various aspects of life for the working classes, hearing testimony from members of the working class. The Sadler Report eventually found evidence of human rights abuse and terrible working conditions, suggesting that reform had to be implemented to avoid general social unrest (Habermab).

Before the Report, governments were averse to the implementation of reforms based on their strict policy of laissez-faire, a large part of the liberalism that the government found sacred. After its publication, however, the British government was forced to act. Following is a list of the various reforms implemented due to the social and working conditions in Britain.

Year	Act or Investigation	Terms
1802	Health and Morals of Apprentices Act	Hours of work were limited to 12 per day, with no night work allowed. Employers were to provide education, decent clothing and accommodation. Inspectors were to enforce the Act and appoint visitors. For all textile factories employing over 20 persons, proper ventilation was to be provided and mills were to be whitewashed twice a year.
1833	Factory Act	No children under 9 were to work in factories (silk mills exempted). Children under 13 years were to work no more than 9 hours per day and 48 hours per week. Children under 18 were not to work nights. 4 paid Inspectors were appointed. Two 8-hour shifts per day of children were to be allowed.
1844	Factory Act	Women and young persons (13-18) were to work no more than 12 hours per day. Children under 13 were to work no more than 6 1/2 hours per day. No child under 8 was to be employed.
1847	Factory Act	Women and young persons were to work no more than 10 hours per day.
1850	Factory Act	Women and young persons to work in factories only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. or 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
1853	Factory Act	Children were only to work during the same hours as women and young persons.
1860	Bleach and Dye Works Act	This extended existing provisions to bleach and dye works.
1864	Factory Acts Extension Act	Extended the previous acts to cover more industry types.
1878	Factory Act	Extended the Factory Acts to all industries. No child anywhere under the age of 10 was to be employed. 10-14 year olds could only be employed for half days. Women were to work no more than 56 hours per week (Factory Legislation 1802-1878).

Dissent in England

The Luddites

It was in 1811 that the most outspoken and violent movement to protest the Industrial Revolution began. In the first few months of that year, manufacturers in the city of Nottingham began to receive threatening letters from the mysterious "General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers." Workers of the area, angry at employers who were reducing wages and even replacing experienced employees with unskilled (and therefore less expensive) laborers, began to revolt, breaking into factories and destroying hundreds of stocking frames in the space of a few weeks. The concept became known as Luddism, and over the next year the movement spread throughout the industrial centres of England. Damages inflicted were generally restricted to the destruction of factories and mills, but did occasionally extend to violence against people, including the killing of William Horsfall, the owner of a large mill in the area of Yorkshire (Luddites - the machine breakers).The government's reaction to Luddism was quick and crushing. A reward of £50 was offered to anyone who could provide information about the Luddites, and in February of 1812 a law was passed making the destruction of machines a capital offence. Twelve-thousand troops were sent to protect factories in Nottingham and other regions where Luddites were active; at least 23 people were executed for attacks on mills in the summer of 1812, and many others were deported to Australia. Although some violence continued, the Luddite movement in England had disintegrated by 1817.

         

 Peterloo
Although English officials had managed to repress the violence of the Luddites, they could not stop the discontent that was growing across the country. Workers became interested in politics for the first time, demanding better working conditions, less corruption in the government, and universal sufferage. In 1819, a "reform meeting" was arranged to take place in Manchester on August 16th where two radicals, Henry Orator Hunt and Richard Carlile, were to speak (The Peterloo Massacre). The public assembly at St. Peter's Field drew a crowd estimated at 50 000 people, which worried the city magistrates and induced them to call in the military to quell a potential riot. The Manchester Yeomanry responded and, led by Captain Hugh Birley, charged into the docile crowd, killing eleven people and wounding 400. It was later said that many of the soldiers had been drunk at the time but the British parliament supported the troops, and several of the event's organizers were charged with unlawful assembly and sentenced to time in jail. The event became known as the Peterloo Massacre, in a reference to Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

Effects on the Rest of the World

The quick industrialization across Europe during the 19th century led to a great increase in goods produced as well as a demand for raw materials.

This demand, coupled with increased nationalist pride, led nations to seek colonies abroad in which to produce and trade goods.

The main expansion for the European colonial powers occurred in Africa. By 1914, the entire continent with the exception of Liberia and Abyssinia were controlled by European nations.

England also took control of India and Hong Kong during this period of expansion. By the beginning of WWI, England had an empire which stretched across every continent in the world. Vast amounts of natural resources were extracted from these colonies, which aided the British industrial effort but left many of the nations bankrupt

In short, industrialization in Europe had far reaching consequences for the rest of the world. While it made Britain the ultimate power for over a century, it can be argued that its rule over the world caused conflict and internal strife which continues to this day.

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