9. The 18th Century: the political parties, expansion of the empire. The Agricultural Revolution.

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. 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.

Expansion of the empire.

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history and for a substantial time was the foremost global power. It was a product of the European age of discovery, which began with the maritime explorations of the 15th century, that sparked the era of the European colonial empires. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population.[1] It covered about 32.6 million km² (14.2 million square miles)[2], about a quarter of Earth's total land area. Though it has now mostly evolved into the Commonwealth of Nations, British influence remains strong throughout the world: in economic practice, legal and governmental systems, society, sports (such as cricket and football), and the English language itself, to name just a few. The British East India Company was probably the most successful chapter in the British Empire's history.

Because of its size at the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because the empire's span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous colonies. The decline of the Mughal Empire, which had separated into many smaller states controlled by local rulers who were often in conflict with one another, allowed the Company to expand its territories, which began in 1757, when the Company came into conflict with the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah. Under the leadership of Robert Clive, the Company troops defeated the Nawab on 23 June 1757 at the Battle of Plassey, mostly because of the treachery of the Nawab's former army chief Mir Jafar. Mir Jafar's treachery turned the battle into a mere skirmish. This victory, which resulted in the virtual conquest of Bengal, established the British East India Company as both a military and commercial power. However, the Company did not claim absolute authority over the territory for a long time. They preferred to rule through a puppet Nawab who could be blamed for the administrative failures caused by excessively avaricious economic exploitation of the territory by the Company. This event is widely regarded as the beginning of British rule in India. The wealth gained from the Bengal treasury allowed the Company to strengthen its military might significantly. This army (comprised mostly of Indian soldiers, called sepoys, and led by British officers) conquered most of India's geographic and political regions by the mid 19th century and thus the Company's territories were substantially augmented.

The Company fought many wars with local Indian rulers during its conquest of India, the most difficult being the four Anglo-Mysore Wars (between 1766 and 1799) against the South Indian Kingdom of Mysore ruled by Hyder Ali, and later his son Tipu Sultan (The Tiger of Mysore) who developed the use of rockets in warfare. Mysore was only defeated in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War by the combined forces of Britain and of Mysore's neighbours, for which Hyder Ali and especially Tipu Sultan are remembered in India as legendary rulers. There were a number of other states which the Company could not conquer through military might, mostly in the North, where the Company's presence was ever increasing amidst the internal conflict and dubious offers of protection against one another. Coercive action, threats and diplomacy aided the Company in preventing the local rulers from putting up a united struggle against British rule. By the 1850s the Company ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent and as a result, the Company began to function more as a state and less as a trading concern.

The Company was also responsible for the illegal opium trade with China against the Qing Emperor's will, which later led to the two Opium Wars (between 1834 and 1860). As a result of the Company's victory in the First Opium War, it established Hong Kong as a British territory. The Company also had a number of wars with other surrounding Asian countries, the most difficult probably being the three Anglo-Afghan Wars (between 1839 and 1919) against Afghanistan, which were mostly unsuccessful from the British perspective.

The Agricultural Revolution.

The British Agricultural Revolution describes a period of agricultural development in Britain between the 16th century and the mid-19th century, which saw a massive increase in agricultural productivity and net output. This in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped drive the Industrial Revolution.

Beginning as early as the 12th century, some of the common fields in Britain were enclosed into individually owned fields, and the process rapidly accelerated in the 15th and 16th centuries as sheep farming grew more profitable. This led to farmers losing their land and their grazing rights, and left many unemployed. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the practice of enclosure was denounced by the Church, and legislation was drawn up against it; but the developments in agricultural mechanization during the 18th century required large, enclosed fields in order to be workable. This led to a series of government acts, culminating finally in the General Inclosure Act of 1801. Mechanization

Jethro Tull made the first advancements in agricultural technology with his seed drill (1701)—a mechanical seeder which distributed seeds efficiently across a plot of land. However, he was not the first to invent a seed drill. It took a century after the publication in 1731 of his Horse hoeing husbandry for farmers to widely adopt the technology.

Four-field crop rotation

Selective breeding

In England, Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke introduced selective breeding (mating together two animals with particularly desirable characteristics), and inbreeding to reduce genetic diversity in desirable animals programs from the mid 18th century as methods for producing bigger and more profitable livestock. This led to the change of the favourite type of meat to mutton. The British Agricultural Revolution was sparked in part by advancements in Flanders. The large and dense population of Flanders forced farmers to take advantage of every inch of useable land, so the country became a pioneer in drainage and reclamation technology. The Agricultural Revolution in Britain proved to be a major turning point in history. The population in 1750 reached the level of 5.7 million.

Britain as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution was the major shift of technological, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions in the late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity.[1] The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.

The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complex and remain a topic for debate, with some historians seeing the Revolution as an outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the end of feudalism in Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th century. As national border controls became more effective, the spread of disease was lessened, therefore preventing the epidemics common in previous times. The percentage of children who lived past infancy rose significantly, leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure movement and the British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, encouraging the surplus population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the newly-developed factories. The colonial expansion of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th century.Technological innovation protected by patents (by the Statute of Monopolies 1623) was, of course, at the heart of it and the key enabling technology was the invention and improvement of the steam engine.The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an important driver of the Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods traded amongst them. In terms of social structure, the Industrial Revolution witnessed the triumph of a middle class of industrialists and businessmen over a landed class of nobility and gentry.Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and factories, but these were often under strict working conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by machines. Harsh working conditions were prevalent long before the industrial revolution took place as well. Pre-industrial society was very static and often cruel—child labour, dirty living conditions and long working hours were just as prevalent before the Industrial Revolution.

18. The British Enlightenment of the 18^th century.

The Scottish Enlightenment was a period of intellectual ferment in Scotland, running from approximately 1730 to 1800.

In the period following the Act of Union 1707 Scotland's place in the world altered radically. Following the Reformation, many Scottish academics were teaching in great cities of mainland Europe but with the birth and rapid expansion of the new British Empire came a revival of philosophical thought in Scotland and a prodigious diversity of thinkers. Arguably the poorest country in western Europe in 1707, it was now able to turn its attentions to the wider world without the opposition of England. Scotland reaped the economic benefits of free trade within the British Empire together with the intellectual benefits of having established Europe's first public education system since classical times. Under these twin stimuli, Scottish thinkers began questioning assumptions previously taken for granted; and with Scotland's traditional connections to France, then in the throes of the Enlightenment, the Scots began developing a uniquely practical branch of humanism to the extent that Voltaire said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."

The first major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment was Francis Hutcheson, who held the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1729 to 1746. A moral philosopher with alternatives to the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, he founded one of the major branches of Scottish thinking, and opposed Hobbes' disciple David Hume. Hutcheson's major contribution to world thought was the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which brought the greatest good to the most people.