The transformation of the economic and cultural life, 1793 1815

Dudas Kinga University Transilvania of Braov 1st year English Romanian group

Sentence outline: 1. Introduction : The Napoleonic Wars had a great influence on the economic developments in Great Britain between 1793 1815. Together with the economic developments, changed the cultural life too. Body / Content : 2. War, with its increased demands, had stimulated the development of Great Britain. 2.1. War immediately stimulated the heavy industry. 2.2. There were great improvements in transport: roads, canals, docks were built. 3. The years after 1790 a new spirit moved in : the romanticism. 3.1. The most important things for the existence were the jobs and the wages. 3.2. Romanticism in English literature began in the 1790s. 3.3 The rebellion against old rules is also apparent in painting. 3.4. Music alone of the arts showed no sign of being revivified by the experiments of shifting society. 3.5. Architecture was quickly affected by social development. 4. Conclusion: This period represents the beginning of an era which will be known later as The Great Industrial Revolution. Abstract : Under the reign of George III, between 1793 1815 there were many important wars the
Napoleonic Wars which set the future of Great Britain. During these 22 years Great Britain struggled with France and progressed in almost all her domains: agriculture, industry, transport, cotton, woolen and silk industry. Even if the existence of Britons wasnt always of dream and even if this existence depended of the territory where the people were living, the cultural life was never omitted. The literature, the painting, the music and even the architecture acquainted an era when they offered to the nation big names, such as Byron, Jane Austen, Turner, James Wyatt, John Nash and so on.

Key words: Napoleonic Wars, development, great economic changes, cultural life, arts, Romanticism

1. Introduction For this project I chose to describe the economic and cultural life in England between 1793 1815. I chose this topic because I think it illustrates the period in which the economic and cultural life begins to develop, and which will help England to become one of the most advanced civilizations all over the world. As we all know, the Napoleonic Wars had a great influence on the economic development of Great Britain. As General von Gneisenau said, Great Britain has no greater obligation to any mortal on earth than to this ruffian [Napoleon]. For through the events which he has brought about, Englands greatness, prosperity, and wealth have risen high. She is the mistress of the sea and neighter in this dominion nor in world trade has she now a single rival to fear. (Kennedy, 1976:123) Together with the economic developments, changed the cultural life too, the literature, the music, the painting, the architecture. Ill talk about these changes and their results in the third main chapter of my project. During the reign of George III, the King of Great Britain between 26.10.1760 29.01.1820, there were two important wars in which Great Britain was involved: the American Revolutionary War (1775 1783) and the Napoleonic Wars (1793 1801, 1803 1814, 1815). Because the period I have chosen doesnt include the years in which the Britons have struggled with the Americans, Ill talk in my project mainly about the consequences of the Napoleonic Wars, in which the Britons remained involved till the end, when they have played the central role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Now, that Ive introduces the core of the development of Great Britain the Napoleonic Wars I think I can go on to present what major changes it caused to Great Britain. 2. Great economic changes In spite of the convinction that the prosperity of the country was best served by peace, war, with its increased demands, had stimulated rather than retarded the development of Great Britain. Agriculture benefited from the war, because many European products, particularly grain, were cut off and English landowners rushed in to fill the gap. Industrys rise was much more spectacular, for the years 1793 1815 revealed beyond any shadow of doubt that a

real revolution in technology and output was under way. The steam engine was being used in a variety of ways, and many further technological advances were made. A whole network of canals was built to improve internal communications; new turnpikes and iron rail tracks supplemented them. Cotton, the fastest growing industry of all, was a multiplier in itself, demanding ever more machinery, steam power, coal and labour, becoming Britains greatest export. The steel, machine tools, armaments, woolen and silk industries were also expanding, although at a more modest pace. The shipyards, too, were busy catering for the Royal Navys orders. As you could see, Great Britains almost every domain had developed during the mentioned years. In the following subchapters Ill detail the changes in the area of the heavy industry and in the area of the transport. 2.1. Heavy Industry War immediately stimulated one industry, that of iron and steel. The demand for munitions encouraged an increase in output of iron. The output of pig iron in Great Britain in 1788 was 68.000 tons, in 1806 the output had swollen to 258.000 tons. He extraction of such quantities from the ore was possible because the use of coke in blast furnaces was already known and the whole industry took it up as demand increased. Expansion of the industry was also aided by improving the bellows of furnaces with the application of a double acting blowing cylinder. The development of the steel was less dramatic. From 1793 Boultons firm placed a regular order for cast steel and from 1799 onwards steel was being bought to make the cutting and boring tools for new machines. It was not only by increasing demand that war contributed to the advance of iron and steel; it also diminished the supply from abroad. Earlier in the century bar - iron from Russia and Sweden had been essential to England. It had been superior to the home produced. Because the price of the iron imported from abroad increased, even doubled, Great Britain began to import less and less. Meanwhile the country began to export, so by 1812 it was claimed that she had become a net exporter of iron. From 1803, for the first time, government departments used British iron instead of Russian even for the most exacting requirements of the services. This was the official recognition of the ability of the home industry to meet all demands as regards quality as well as quantity.

The anxiety of the iron masters was not whether they could meet the demand but about the danger of over production. By 1812 the ironmasters, in their turn, experienced a slackening of demand for their material. The Coalbrookdale company decided to extinguish a furnace. The Sheffield steel industry worked through 1812 at half capacity. That the iron industry could continue its general expansion despite such set backs [] can be explained by its cultivation of the home market. It is at this point that the importance of iron to the expansion of all other industry becomes clear. The use of iron for bridges was the most famous example of selling the product for new uses. (Watson, 1960:507) 2.2 Shipping and transport Great Britains insular position, complemented by her naval mastery the Royal Navy provided that basic security from Napoleonic invasion which no other European country possessed. Although this geographical position offers a great security, as her positive point, I think it has its own negative side : Great Britain cannot cooperate with any other country without shipping. Expanding commerce, selling the increased product of industry, needed more shipping. Anyway, this wasnt a problem for the country, because the ship building was always in rose. In 1802, for example, there were 19.772 vessels representing 2.037.000 tons. From 1803 ship building slackened and did not reach the 1802 level again until 1815. The proof of Great Britains activities upon the waters can be found in the great development of docks. Between 1789 and 1815 the system of London docks East India, West India, London, Commercial, and Surrey docks has been built. Liverpool was extending her docks on each side of the Mersey and using iron in the place of wood. Bristol diverted the Avon, built locks and dock basin, in a vain attempt to hold her own against Liverpools challenge. Hull was just beginning to equip herself as a great port. All along the coast harbour works and safety lights witnessed to a new activity on the seas. While the shipping was developing, people from all around the country required easier connection between the great towns, for the movement of goods and people to become easier. The roads, long admired as the best in Europe, benefited by the extension and consolidation. About 20.000 miles of important roads were maintained in 1815.

Canal building reached its peak in these twenty years. Between 1793 and 1805 the Grand junction canal linked London with Warwickshire , with a side line to Oxford. [] Birmingham was connected with the Severn. The Gloucester and Berkeley system was half finished. Up in Scotland the Firth and Clyde canal began operations in 1790, the Crinan canal was being built from 1803. (Watson, 1960: 518-519) The benefits which resulted from this great improvement in transport were not confined to trade and industry; there were also important social, and even political repercussions. With better transport not only goods but people and ideas could travel more freely. London newspapers with their news and advertisements could reach a wider reading public; fashion and clothes, furniture and even architecture could spread more rapidly. As roads improved and coatch services multiplied and became faster it was easier for the middling sort to travel both for business and for pleasure. 3. Cultural life The effect of the great economic changes of the war years upon the lives of the people has been a subject of dispute among historians. Greater physical mobility and greater variety in economic activity must of necessity produce greater changes in the structure and balance of the society. Thats why Ive chosen to talk a little about the Britons life, to tell you what was important for them in that period of time, to tell you on what the stress was. The years after 1790 a new spirit moved in : the Romanticism. How does this change the arts? Whats new in this new spirit? Well find out in the following. 3.1. Existence The most important things for the existence were the jobs and the wages. Depending by the countrys territories, there were places where the wages were rising and places where people were working only to win their day by day cost of living. There were places where many people were losing their jobs because their old skill was replaced by machinery and places where the demand for unskilled labour was so great that not only the wives and children found work in the mills, or workshops or even mines, but even the

orphan and destitude children of the workhouse authorities were sent to work in the cotton mills. While the cost of living remained high, wages were rising and falling all the time, so thats why nobody had stability in those days. Those who prospered, despite rising costs, in an age of expansion were those who worked in the developing industries with their great demand for labour, or those skilled men who were not replaced by machinery. Taking in consideration all this black picture of a population plunging into misery, I dont think its a surprise that gambling and drink were both vices in this period. It should not be concluded that Great Britain was a misery country, because of course there are some powerful considerations to be set on the other side. One of them is the foundation of many associations which helped the educational development : the Royal Lancasterian Association , the National society for the Education of the Poor, the Sunday Schools and so on. Even if the stress was on the filling of the stomachs and the clothing of the backs, in the following well see that people werent occupied only with these and well also see that there happened many beautiful and praiseworthy things between 1793 1815 even if we talk about the war years. 3.2. Literature Romanticism in English literature began in the 1790s with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Everywhere the firm horizons were dissolving, the classical stability was giving way to inexhaustible discontent, languor, and homesickness . (Watson, 1960:53) From my point of view, the most important representatives for the romanticism in literature are Sir Walter Scott, William Blake, Jane Austen, Byron, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Walter Scott the romantic impulse was not fully developed. Hes a romantic because he scorned the universality of the classical view and absorbed himself completely in the ancient customs of a small corner of Britain.

A much more obvious example of the romantic movement, and one where the influence of the social history of these years can be seen directly, is the work of William Blake. Jane Austen was as unromantic as it is possible to be. Shes a great novelist for her exquisite sense of proportion and the delicacy of her sarcasm all that is unlike the romantic movement. Byron, though in his life he was to be the type figure of romantic excess, was in his best work closer to the old than to the new world. Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote the poems mentioned above in a common, everyday language, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart can find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity. William Makepeace Thackeray is a representative of the Victorian era, but I would like to mention here his excellent satire about the years of the Napoleonic Wars : Vanity Fair. We can perfectly imagine the british society after reading this richly comic dissection. Thackeray illustrates very well the activities of the regiment in their free time, their march, when they are leaving for the fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, the reaction of the society when the Gazette first published the results of the two battles ( Thackeray , 1877:335). After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Thackeray put the stress on the presentation of the falling society. We can follow the failure of John Sedley, the life of Becky Sharp and her husband, who in spite of the fact that they were very poor, they were involved in the competition in which the winner was that who gave ever more magnificient parties in the style. My opinion is that, at the end of his satire, the writer punished or rewarded each character depending of his/her attitude during the novel. I think he used this method for mirroring his opinion about the mentioned period. 3.3.Painting The rebellion against old rules is also apparent in painting. The most important personalities of the painting of this era are Lawrence and Turner. Lawrence abandoned the old principles, preferring to make an immediate impression with the picture as a whole. The intent was to use the dress and setting as much as the face as poise to establish a mood.

The abandonment of the classical framework was beginning in landscape painting also, where the master was Turner. His paintings are illustrating Byrons and Scotts poems and topographical surveys. His landscapes are painted with feeling of movement. 3.4.Music Music alone of the arts showed no sign of being revivified by the experiments of shifting society. That the taste of the public was perceptive would seem to be suggested by the enthusiastic reception given to Haydn on his visits to Britain in 1791 1792 and 1794 1795. No new British composer worthy of note made his appearance. The most significant figure was probably that of Charles Dibdin. Dibdin wrote patriotic pieces about the sea some of which attained enormous vogue because they chimed in with enthusiasm for Nelsons navy. 3.5.Architecture Architecture was quickly affected by social development. From 1790 onwards the middle class men of improved fortune were everywhere demanding new homes. One strong current in architecture therefore was the provision of substantial villas in moderate gardens for the successful business man. Romantic interest in the past naturally stimulated the Gothicism. There was a movement towards simplicity of line and towards the purity of classical style and an interest in making buildings lighter in appearance, more graceful and particularly more picturesque. From my point of view in the area of architecture the most significant representatives are James Wyatt, Sir John Soane and John Nash. While James Wyatt came into evidence with the extraordinary buildings he built between 1800 and 1807, John Soanes originality was in his treatment of interiors. The greatest exponents of the more characteristic movement of the age, the picturesque, were John Nash and Humphrey Rapton, the gardener.

4. Conclusions In conclusion, the Napoleonic Wars represented the greatest test which Britain had had to encounter in its rise. During these years of war the economic part of the country flourished and the cultural life got an upsurge with the apparition of a new cultural current, the Romanticism. This period represents the beginning of an era which will be known later as The Great Industrial Revolution.

References : Culpin, C. (1987) Making modern Britain: British social and economic history from 18th century to the present. London : Collins Educational Kennedy, P. (1976) The rise and fall of British naval mastery. London : Penguin Group Marshall, D. (1962) Eighteenth century England. Essex : Longman House Plumb, J.H. (1975 The first four Georges. Glasgow : Hamlyn Thackeray, W. M. (1877) Vanity fair. London : Penguin Group Watson, S. J. (1960) The reign of George III 1760 1815. Oxford : Oxford University Press