8. The Victorian age. Britain and World Wars. Welfare State.

T he Victorian Age - named for Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901 - saw another peak reached, economically, politically, and culturally, with the diffusion of the English language and literature throughout the world. The growth of the United States helped make the fortune of Britain, for during this time, which has been called the Railway Age, British entrepreneurs built railroads at home and overseas as well.

The growth of the industrial working class necessitated cheaper food. In 1846 the repeal of the Corn Laws initiated the era of free trade. British agricultural interests were further hit when wheat from the American Middle West, transported by rail and steamship, poured into Britain from the 1870s on.

The unfortunate Crimean War (1854-56) revealed the inefficiency of aristocratic government and speeded up army reform. Benjamin Disraeli sought to broaden the appeal of the old Tory party and, building on the beginnings made by Sir Robert Peel, created the modern Conservative party. On the other side the Whigs gradually developed into the Liberal party, led for many years by William Ewart Gladstone.

Gladstone, the champion of reform, began the task of dismantling the old regime in England as well as in Ireland, where he disestablished the Anglican Church of Ireland and began to dispossess the landlords in hopes of creating a society of peasant proprietors. He favored self-government for Ireland, but his Home Rule Bills were defeated (1886 and 1894) by Unionist opposition. Gladstone championed liberalism and self-government everywhere (including South Africa).

During this period the civil service was transformed by the introduction of an examination system. Numerous “public schools” (actually private institutions) were founded for the growing middle class. In 1870 a national system of primary education was belatedly created; not until 1902 was a complete nationwide system of secondary education brought into existence.

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 ended the rule of the East India Company in India, and administration there was taken over directly by the crown. In Canada, where the Scottish element was large and provided many political leaders, the provinces formed a confederation in 1867. Australia achieved a similar federal union in 1901. Hopes of collaboration between the Dutch Boers and the British in South Africa were disastrously set back by the South African War of 1899-1902. The British won the war, but the establishment (1910) of the Union of South Africa gave the Boers (Afrikaners) effective control. Britain obtained substantial colonial holdings elsewhere in Africa as a result of the late-19th-century partition of that continent by the European powers.

Britain had enjoyed a century of unprecedented security behind the shelter of naval supremacy, which was no threat to others and indeed gave security to both North and South America. The determination of the new German Empire to build a powerful navy gravely threatened Britain’s existence, since it depended on overseas imports to feed its population. This, more than anything, caused Britain to end its isolationist policy toward Europe and align itself with France and Russia in the Triple Entente (1904, 1907).

In the ensuing World War I (1914-18) Britain lost the large part of a generation of young men. The domestic effect of the war was to accelerate many social and political developments. The Reform Act of 1832 gave the vote to all men who owned a house, but it was not until 1918 that the right to vote was given to all men over 21 and to women over 30. Women under 30 had to wait until 1928 for the vote. The role played by the middle class in politics and government was growing. Increasing nationalist revolutionary activity and unionist resistance led to the partition (1920) of Ireland and the creation (1922) of the Irish Free State in the south. The war also split the old Liberal party, and after the defeat of its renegade leader David Lloyd George in 1922, it dwindled and never regained strength. Its place was taken by the Labour Party, which formed its first government in 1924. Economic dislocation caused widespread hardship and industrial unrest in the early 1920s, and in 1926 there was a general strike. Economic difficulties increased with the worldwide Depression of the 1930s.

The abdication (1936) of King Edward VIII - so that he might marry an American divorcee - provided temporary distraction from economic woes and the mounting threat of Nazi Germany. The appeasement policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain failed, and in September 1939, Britain again declared war on Germany. Wartime leadership was soon assumed by Winston Churchill.

Having many colonies, Britain controlled large areas of the world. The British had a strong feeling of their importance, but the end of the Empire happened quickly, just after the Second World War. India, one of the most important colonies, became independent in 1947. In the 1960s, the African and Caribbean countries also became independent. Most former colonies, however, retained some ties with Britain in the Commonwealth of Nations. British people began to realise that their country was no longer an imperial, world power.

The post World War II Labour government greatly extended social services and created (1948) the National Health Service, a system of socialized medicine. It also nationalized the Bank of England, the coal and steel industries, the railroads, communications facilities, and a number of other vital enterprises.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain experienced mounting economic problems – partly the product of its loss of colonial markets, partly the result of its failure to keep pace with more recently industrialized nations. Britain entered the European Economic Community in 1973, thus loosening Commonwealth ties.