VICTORIAN ENGLAND - THE AGE

PART II

GOVERNMENT
Queen Victoria became a symbol of all that was good and glorious in 19 th-century
Britain, and the members of the Royal Family became treasured representatives of the
country. The real governing authority was the Parliament (one of the great achievements
of the period was represented by the attempt to build some kind of parliamentary
democracy).

THE ECONOMY
It is highly visible that Victorian Britain witnessed an economic boom (more
factories were built, particularly in the North of England; heavy engineering, machine
tool production, highly-mechanized cotton and wool industries were also developing in
the same period). By 1851 Great Britain was the world’s shipper, the centre of the
world’s insurance and banking. It was also the source of much of the world’s capital for
investment. To give just an example, most of the railways in the United States were built
with British capital. By 1870, Britain’s foreign trade amounted to 4 times that of France,
Germany, Italy and the USA put together; at the same time, the pound became the
internationally recognized unit of currency.
The attitude of the Victorian government towards economic matters could be
summed up in the structure laissez faire – according to which the state tried not to
interfere as much as possible with free trade between individuals, businesses or states.

FOREIGN POLICY
The coordinate of 19th-century British foreign policy was expansion; the need to
conquer new territories was brought about by the economic booming which required new
markets and an endless supply of raw materials. By the end of the nineteenth century,
approximately one-quarter of the earth’s land surface was part of the British Empire, and
more than 400 million people were governed by Great Britain (Australia, Canada, Egypt,
Cyprus, Hong Kong etc.). India became the jewel in the British Imperial Crown and

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when Queen Victoria was declared empress of India in 1876, the event was greeted by
her subjects as a sign that their country was indeed the greatest power in the world.

REFORM AND EVERYDAY LIFE

While the sense of national pride at their country’s exalted position on the world
stage may have been gratifying to the British people, what mattered most to them was the
quality of their lives at home. The process of social development and political reform
which had begun earlier in the century continued throughout the Victorian period:
 By 1870 the working day was limited to ten hours a day and sixty hours a week.
 Education up to the age of 13 became compulsory, but not free, in 1870 (Forster
Education Act).
 The Second Reform Bill of 1867 doubled the number of people who could vote,
and in 1872 the Secret Ballot was introduced. Women still could not vote.
 The setting up of Health Commissions in 1867 and a Local Government Board in
1871 helped to improve municipal and health services.
 In 1840 a cheap postal system was introduced.
 Popular newspapers began to appear in the 1870s.
All these developments combined to improve the living and working conditions
of a population that had doubled between 1815 and 1871 (26 million people).

VOICES OF DISSENT
In spite of all these facts, Britain was far from being a paradise on earth. Much
criticism focused on the deprivation and squalor that was still to be found in the cities.
While the middle and upper classes gloried in the prosperity of the times, the fast-
growing industrial working class began to question the premise that such prosperity
necessarily involved exploitative working conditions and undemocratic political
representation.
In 1838 a People’s Charter was drawn up which, among other political reforms,
called up for the right to vote for all men. Although the movement, called Chartism, was
dissolved and only partially achieved its aims, it marked the beginning of organised
working class politics in Britai/n.

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 The Trades Union Congress was set up in 1869 to defend workers’ rights, and
acted as support to the thousands of workers who went on strike after 1870 when the
economic boom turned into recession. The Independent Labour Party was founded in
1893 as a means of demanding electoral reform and social justice.

IRELAND
In 1845, Ireland was hit by a devastating potato famine that resulted in over a
million deaths, while hundreds of thousands more were forced to emigrate. The state of
destitution that the country found itself in led many to believe that political independence
from Britain could only improve matters. Thus initiative belonged to the Irish Prime
Minister, Gladstone, but his two attempts to introduce a limited form of independence
(Home Rule) were defeated in Parliament.

THE BOURGEOIS FAMILY

The Victorians praised the virtues of family life - the Victorian family was
patriarchal, bound by unspoken rules and the wife was seen as the domestic angel who
provided a safe haven for her husband and a strong, moral example for the children. She
was the household manager, responsible for the moral instruction of the servants as well
as for that of the children. Families were large, and the average wife spent “about 15
years in a state of pregnancy and nursing children in the first year of life.”
Queen Victoria herself gave birth nine times; although all of her children lived to
adulthood, she did not enjoy childbearing: “What you say of the pride of giving life to a
soul is very fine my dear,” she wrote to her oldest daughter, "but I think much more of
our being like a cow or a dog at such moments when our poor nature becomes so very
animal and unecstatic.”

Dividing the Victorian ERA - it is customary to divide the Victorian period into three
manageable sections:
I. The Early Victorian Period (1830-50) - Economic, political, social difficulties
became increasingly evident during these two early decades, and it was clear that “the
spirit of the age” differed from anything that had gone before. The two most important

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political events during this period were the Reform Bill of 1832, which gave limited
representation to the prosperous middle class sections of Britain, and the Rep 1eal of the
protectionist Corn (i.e. Wheat) Laws in 1846.
 The First Reform Bill (1832) was necessitated mainly by the inequalities in
representation between the traditionally-enfranchised rural areas and the rapidly growing
cities of newly industrial England; for example, such large industrial centres as
Birmingham and Manchester were unrepresented in Parliament, while parliamentary
members continued to be returned from numerous so-called “rotten boroughs,” which
were virtually uninhabited rural districts 2. Although the bill left the working classes and
large sections of the lower middle classes without the vote, it gave the new middle classes
a share in responsible government. This political initiative influenced Britain’s future
development, setting the stage in future decades for further democratization that would
keep pace with changing demographics and expectations.
 Repeal of the Corn Laws (1846). The Corn3 Laws were a series of laws which
basically kept corn prices at a high level. This measure was intended to protect English
farmers from cheap foreign imports of grain following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The working people disliked such protectionism because it increased food prices, and
industrial capitalists disliked it because they had to pay their workers higher wages. The
repeal of the corn laws was a triumph for middle-class economic aspirations.
 The Hungry Forties. In spite of the 1832 Reform Bill and the Corn Law Repeal,
economic troubles continued to generate working-class unrest, and the manufacturing
class still didn’t have the control they wanted over the political system. The 1840’s were
particularly tough times, sometimes called the “Hungry Forties” because of the famine in
Ireland and intense misery in Britain. Many people feared a socialist revolution (Marx’s
Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, a year of revolution on the Continental
Europe.)
 The Chartist Movement had at its core the so-called “People’s Charter” of 1838,
which demanded:
 The institution of secret ballot

1
Repeal – abrogare, anulare.
2
1 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/495344/Reform-Bill
3
‘Corn’ is taken to mean ‘grain’ in general

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  Universal male suffrage
 General elections be held annually
 Members of Parliament not be required to own property
 A salary for MPs
 Electoral districts of equal size
The movement in general failed to cross class boundaries and gain the necessary
support among members of the ruling aristocracy and landed gentry.
 The Sage Writers4. In literature, the so-called Victorian sage-writers made their
appearance during the early part of the period. John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, in which
he proposes the ‘harm’ principle), Thomas Carlyle (The French Revolution; A History)
and Matthew Arnold (Culture and Anarchy) were the promoters of this new creative
form of nonfiction that tried to find a new principle of moral authority and intelligibility
for a country undergoing deep political unrest and religious doubt.

II. The Mid-Victorian Period (1851-70) - The Great Exhibition (1851) and the
Second Reform Bill (1867)
 In 1851 the Great Exhibition at the specially built “Crystal Palace” displayed the
latest and grandest scientific wonders to an admiring world, thus symbolizing the
industrial, military and economic superiority of Great Britain. Parliamentary
attempts to deal with the crisis atmosphere of the “Hungry Forties” were to a large extent
successful, at least insofar as there was no radical revolution in Britain. While the
aristocracy continued to hold the reigns of political and social power, it at least gave the
urban middle classes a say in British affairs. There was still much social inequality, but
the Second Reform Bill of 1867 extended the vote to still more of the middle class and
even to some working-class householders, furthering Britain’s move towards greater
democracy. The dominant word of mid-Victorian England seemed to be progress - social,
political, scientific, and economic progress. In spite of some conflicts (the Crimean
War5), on the whole the mid-Victorian years were prosperous and generated much hope
for better things to come.
4
Sage writing = a form of writing in which the writer instructs the reader about contemporary social issues.
5
a conflict between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Emire, the British Empire, the
Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia as part of a long-running contest between the major
European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire.

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III. The Late Victorian Period (1871-1901)

 Empire and the State. The late Victorian Period witnessed economic
uncertainties (agricultural depression) and a general desire towards imperial conquest.
However, events in India and Africa (the Boer Wars lasted from 1899-1902), among
other places, were to show the dangers of imperialism. Whilst adventurous on the level
of foreign affairs, British authorities recorded genuine progress in the areas of health,
democratic participation, education, women’s rights, financial accountability for banks
and corporations, and other areas. This period also saw one last Reform Bill (1884) that
largely completed the decades-long project of expanding the male franchise (in spite of
suffragette campaigns, women did not get the vote in Britain until after World War I,
1918.)

 Literary Decadence and Modernity. Increasingly as the century progressed, the

U.S. and Prussia threatened British hegemony - Britain was not alone in seeking to play
a large role on the world’s stage. By Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 it was clear to
just about everyone that her era was over. From the late 1880’s through the mid-1890’s,
a brilliant period of literary Decadence flourished, its most notable figure being Oscar
Wilde. A more ‘modern’ world awaited Great Britain in the twentieth century.

TASK

1. Complete the following sentences: a. A laissez-faire economic policy

meant that....
b. In Victorian England people were generally better educated and informed because….
c. The system of government ...
d. The foreign policy of Victorian England implied…
e. Ireland….
f. The three periods of the the Victorian Age are….
g. The representative events for each period are….
h. Mention what you consider to be the main events in Britain in 1837-1901.