HIS 352                                                                                                  Professor Adelson

Industrial Britain, from the 1790s to the 1870s

1. Britain from the 1780s to the 1870s was the richest and most powerful nation in the world, the first industrialized country, the most rapidly urbanized region, and the nation whose financial, political and cultural life was most emulated by others.  Post Victorian historians were initially critical of nineteenth century values, but historical sympathy has increased since World War II.
   
2. Demographic patterns
   1. Population explosion --Malthus wrote in 1798, official census in 1801, but unreliable until 1850s
      1. Before 1760s, no decade had more than a 3% increase
      2. 1770s-6%; 1780s-9%; 1790s-11%; 1800s-14%; 1810s-18%, with double-digit growth for the rest of the 1800s, although the rate of growth declined in the 1880s
   2. Unprecedented urbanization
      1. Movement from south to the north and northwest, where the most coal deposits and jobs were found
      2. By the 1850s, more people lived in British cities than in the countryside; agriculture no longer led employment
      3. Six new cities tied to industry:  Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Glasgow
      4. London only grew from 1 to 2 million (1800-1850)
   3. Emigration in the millions; immigration in the thousands
      1. From 1830 to 1850, 2.2 million (1.3 to U.S.) emigrated, a smaller number in 1850s and 1860s, then leaped
      2. Irish famine of the 1840s--1 million died; 1.5 emigrated
      3. 162,000 criminals transported from 1790s to 1870s
      4. Fewer immigrants --many Irish, some Jews in 1800s
         
3. Economic developments
   1. "The Industrial Revolution" coined by Arnold Toynbee in the late 1800s and used by Marxist and socialist historians to attack "the captains of industry" and expose "the conditions of the working classes;" after World War II, conservative social scientists like Rostow used Britain as model for industrial "take-off."  Recent scholarship suggests the story not so simple; e.g. Peter Sterns at Carnegie Mellon.
   2. Facts contributing to industrial development: innovative technology; natural resources; demand; foreign trade; financial conservatism; abundant labor and capital; govt. policies
   3. Industrial developments came first with textiles (1780s-1810s); heavy machinery (1820s-1830s); rail and steam (1840s-1850s)
   4. The impact of the French Revolutionary -Napoleonic Wars
      1. An economic stimulus to industry, trade, and agriculture
      2. National debt quadrupled in 25 years despite income tax
      3. Economic dislocation--Corn Laws and protectionism; post-war collapse, 1815-1820; recovery in early 1820s; bust in late 1820s; depression in 1830s and 1840s; boom in the 1850s-1860s; depression in the 1870s
   5. New economic terms and thinking built on Adam Smith, the classical economist writing of a pre-industrial world
      1. Supply and demand and the market price
      2. Market, land, or labor "theories of value"
      3. "Business cycles", "boom," "recession," "depression"
      4. Man reduced to being an economic calculating figure
      5. The meaning of the working place and time change
   6. Simplified, popular notions of laissez-faire individualism, but where lies the responsibility? with the individual? work? family? church? neighborhood? city? county? nation? world?
      
4. The transformation of society and its new seriousness
   1. Not just industry, but more urbanism and greater mobility contributed to basic changes, the cumulative effect of which was revolutionary; not the black and white world of Charles Dickens, but one of many grey shades; it is easier to caricature this era than to characterize it accurately
   2. The notions associated with middle class Victorianism did not await the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), for a new seriousness already apparent in the religious revival, attitudes toward government, work, thrift, self-help, belief in progress, voluntarism, public responsibility
   3. The growth of class consciousness
      1. The upper class
      2. the middle class (phrase first coined in English in 1811)
      3. The working class
   4. Gender segregation:  homo economicus; femina domestica
   5. Middle class seriousness strongest among the nonconformists of the North --the winds of reform blew from the industrial north to the more aristocratic south, regionalism being almost as pronounced in the British Isles as in North America.  Middle class economic reform came from the Manchester School.
      
5. Class and class consciousness:  The unprecedented demographic and economic changes from the 1780s to the 1870s made people identify with the upper, middle, or working class.   The cultural, religious, and educational values of the middle class produced a new morality, which in turn affected the era's political and public life, the focus of the next lecture.  Contrary to Marxist historiography, class consciousness did not lead to class warfare in nineteenth century Britain--one of the most interesting questions historians still try to answer.  Some would emphasize migration from Britain as a safety valve; some would credit religion with diverting the common people's expectations from earthly existence; some would credit political reforms and improvements that were gradually made in response to rapid industrialization and urbanization; and some would highlight the class system, especially the social deference and paternalistic authority or the pivotal role of the middle class.  Historical consensus about the middle class does not exist for a variety of reasons:
   1. The personal ambivalence and agendas of historians themselves
   2. the middle class is easier to caricature than to characterize correctly.  It included any household whose head worked for a living and which included live-in servants (the bigger the house and the more servants, the higher the economic standing in the middle class).  Maintaining public respectability through one's personal reputation, family, church, community, and profession was even more important
   3. The term "middle class" was not coined until 1811
   4. The middle class had no models, so it had to come up with its own individual, family, and social values rather than emulating its superiors, as in the past.  The middle class disapproved of:
      1. the aristocratic notions that a gentleman did not work for a living, noblesse oblige, and excessive luxury and leisure;
      2. the lower class, when it failed to pull itself up by its boots or to conduct itself as the middle class thought it should.
   5. The middle class emphasized public industry, punctuality, manners, thrift, sobriety, honesty and utility as well as personal responsibility to family, church, profession, and community
   6. The middle class promoted many reforms in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, when its leaders were on the offensive against the old aristocratic regime; by the last third of the century, the middle class would become less cohesive and more complacent
   7. The public role of women was defined by the middle class, a morality that the domestics kept up in the home; upper classes could not be publicly indifferent to middle class morality, but working classes ignored it whenever possible.
      
6. Religious revival from the 1780s to the 1870s inculcating seriousness
   1. Victorianism preceded Queen Victoria--the new seriousness of mind;
   2. Evangelical or low-church Anglicanism mimicked the Methodists
      1. The Clapham Sect--the Thorntons, Wilberforce, More
      2. The Sunday School Movement
      3. Bible and Missionary Societies and religious publication
      4. Emphasis on the word rather than ritual, good works rather than high marks; religious fundamentalism
      5. Abolishing the slave trade--the Caxton Hall lobby
      6. The social gospel
   3. Dissenting/Nonconformist sects--the Congregationalists and Baptists went evangelical; the Presbyterians and Unitarians more tied to the Enlightenment and hostile to fundamentalism
   4. High-Church Anglicanism
      1. Reaction to the Oxford Movement at "England's Vatican"
      2. Tractarians, Keble, Pusey, Newman from the late 1830s
   5. Roman Catholic revival
      1. Irish immigrants from the 1840s
      2. Aristocratic conversion from the 1850s
   6. Building Gothic Revival churches
   7. Sectarianism
      1. Defining ethnic, social, local identities
      2. Affecting national, public policy
   8. Education defined by class
      1. National education blocked by sectarianism
      2. Public schools before and after Arnold at Rugby (1828-1842)
      3. Oxford and Cambridge--abortive reform
      4. The education of girls
   9. The Great Exhibition of 1851--a celebration of modern progress
   10. Defenders and critics of Middle class morality and Victorian progress
       1. The utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
       2. The individualism of Samuel Smiles (1812-1904)
       3. The romanticism of Samuel, Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
       4. The heroic views of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
       5. The aesthetics of John Ruskin (1819-1900)
       6. The liberalism of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
       7. The humanism of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
       8. The social critique of William Morris (1834-1896)
   11. The ambiguities and ambivalence still have authenticity
       
7. Politics on the national, imperial & local levels; oligarchic politics continued through the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, which delayed any effective administrative reforms until the 1820s.  The Parliamentary Act of 1832 expanded the national oligarchy and opened up the possibility for more reforms during the 1830s and 1840s, but the pace of reform slowed during the prosperous 1850s and 1860s until the 1867-68 Parliamentary Act paved the way for the first modern national party organization in British history.
   1. General assumptions of British political live from the 1780s to 1870s
      1. All British leaders feared a revolution occurring in Britain as in France, but some favored repression while other advocated reform.  The latter argued that revolution could only be avoided in Britain by gradual reform and adaptating to change.
      2. Most ideas for reform sprang from Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarian followers who believed that institutions should be continued only if they were found useful and contributed greatest good for the greatest number of people.  Their rational approach underlay the Royal Commissions, where experts thoroughly investigated a specific problem, recommended specific remedies to be carried out locally or nationally.
      3. Most pressure for reform came from the newly-industrialized regions of the north, where the middle class was impatient to become represented in parliament.  Hostile, to the national oligarchy, which had long used parliament for its purposes, the northerners believed that good government was local, cheap, and limited.  This assumption underlay their caution about socio-economic reform and governmental regulation.
      4. Most supporters of reform believed in human progress, that society was improving and evolving towards something better than before, with Britain's parliament to be a model for the world.
   2. Politics and waging war against the French, 1793-1802, 1803-1815
      1. The old methods did not work, so the younger Pitt had to take new measures to assure sufficient men, money, and morale; the state repressed radicals and critics in wartime.
      2. Irish sympathies for France and the Act of Union, 1801
      3. Economic opportunities and dislocations, 1803-1814
      4. Lord Castlereagh and the Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815
   3. Politics of postwar stirrings and Tory repression, 1815-1820
      1. Tory and Whig MPs, their views, clubs and publications
      2. The Corn Law of 1815 protected landowners
      3. The Banking Law of 1819 backed the currency with gold
      4. Radicals speeches and demonstrations led Lord Liverpool's administration to pass the Coercive Acts in 1817 and, following the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, the Six Acts.
      5. Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet:  "England in 1819"
      6. Cato Street conspirators caught before assassinating cabinet.
   4. Tory administrative reforms in the 1820s
      1. Home Office legal reform and a professional police:  Robert Peel
      2. Foreign Office abandoned European reactionary regimes
      3. Board of Trade started to move towards freer trade
   5. A showdown over parliamentary reform in the late 1820s and early 1830s
      1. In 1828, Catholic Emancipation repealed Test/Corporation Acts
      2. In 1829, the Birmingham Political Union founded
      3. In 1830, William IV became king that required new elections when France faced yet another revolution
      4. From 1830 to 1832, the Whigs introduced reform bills
      5. The Parliamentary Reform Act passed in 1832, redistributed seats, rid the House of Commons of rotten boroughs, increased the electorate by 50% (still only 1 in 20 persons could vote)
   6. Middle class reforms during the 1830s and 1840s
      1. More local reforms by opening up closed municipalities
      2. Factory Act of 1833 improved on those of 1802 and 1819
      3. Poor Law of 1834
      4. Mining Act of 1842
      5. Anti-Corn Law League; Peel repealed the Corn Law in 1846
      6. Ten-Hour Act of 1847
      7. Public Health Acts of 1842 and 1848
   7. The Hungry Forties:  Owenist Cooperatives, Trade Unionism, Chartism before and after Europe's revolutions of 1848
   8. Viscount Palmerston dominated the prosperous 1850s and 1860s
      1. His background and on-the-job training in office
      2. The aristocratic Foreign Secretary and the middle class
      3. The man the country needed in the Crimean War, 1854-1856
      4. Palmerston's popularity greater than Queen Victoria
      5. His popularity obfuscated politics until his death in 1865
   9. The Parliamentary Act of 1867-68 doubled the electorate, greatly increased urban voters, and set the stage for national parties
      1. The Modern Conservative party led by Disraeli
      2. The Modern Liberal party led by Gladstone