Answer the following questions on topic 4:

1) What did Queen Victoria rescue the monarchy from?

Queen Victoria came to the throne as a young woman in 1837 and reigned until her death in
190 l. She did not like the way in which power seemed to be slipping so quickly away from
the monarchy and aristocracy, but like her advisers she was unable to prevent it. Victoria
married a German, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, but he died at the age of 42 in 1861. She
could not get over her sorrow at his death, and for a long time refused to be seen in public.

By the mid-1860s her ministers – and even her own children – were becoming frantic at her
continued retreat from public view and her dogged refusal to take part in any form of public
ceremonial. Anti-monarchical feeling was growing.

By the end of the 1860s discontent escalated into outright republican challenges and calls for
Victoria’s abdication. Then, just when all seemed lost, the monarchy was rescued from
disaster. The queen's advisers persuaded her to take a more public interest in the business of
the kingdom. She did so, and she soon became extraordinarily popular. By the time Victoria
died the monarchy was better loved among the British than it had ever been before. The
widowed queen proved herself as the head of a ceremonial and constitutional monarchy that
survives to this day.

2) What two periods in Queen Victoria’s reign can be distinguished?

In the history of the United Kingdom, the Victorian era was the period of Queen
Victoria’s reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Her reign of 63 years
and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors. It was a period of
industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and
was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire.

Historians sometimes divide Victoria’s reign into two or even three distinct parts. During her
early years as Queen (1837-1861), she settled not only into her royal duties, but also into
family life with her relationship with Albert contributing to the ideal of domesticity that was
becoming prevalent at the time. The second part of her reign was one of withdrawal, after she
entered a protracted period of mourning, following the death of Albert (in 1861). The final
part of her life (from around 1872 onwards) was one of gradual rehabilitation, as she returned
to the limelight, culminating in a number of public events to celebrate her life, most notably
her golden (1887) and diamond (1897) jubilees. This period of pomp and grandeur was an
important part in elevating the popularity of the monarchy.

3) What role did Our Life in the Highlands play in the British society?

The publication of the queen 's book Our life in the Highlands in 1868 was one more
important step to Queen Victoria’s popularity. The book was the queen 's own diary, with
drawings, of her life with Prince Albert at Balmoral, her castle in the Scottish Highlands. It
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delighted the public, in particular the growing middle class. They had never before known
anything of the private life of the monarch, and they enjoyed being able to share it. The
queen also wrote about her servants as if they were members of her family.

The increasingly democratic British respected the example of family life which the queen
had given them, and shared its moral and religious values. But she also touched people's
hearts. She succeeded in showing a newly industrialized nation that the monarchy was a
connection with a glorious history. In spite of the efforts of earlier monarchs to stop the
spread of democracy, the monarchy was now, quite suddenly, out of danger. It was never
safer than when it had lost most of its political power.

"We have come to believe that it is natural to have a virtuous sovereign," wrote one
Victorian. Pure family morality was an idea of royalty that would have been of little interest
to the subjects of earlier monarchs.

4) What was the aim of the Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations?

In 1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations inside
the Crystal Palace, in London. The exhibition aimed to show the world the greatness of
Britain's industry. No other nation could produce as much at that time. At the end of the 18th
century, France had produced more iron than Britain. By 1850 Britain was producing more
iron than the rest of the world together.

Britain had become powerful because it had enough coal, iron and steel for its own enormous
industry, and could even export them in large quantities to Europe. With these materials it
could produce new heavy industrial goods like iron ships and steam engines. Britain made
and owned more than half the world's total shipping. This great industrial empire was
supported by a strong banking system developed during the 18th century.

Thus, the Great Exhibition could proudly demonstrate the Britain’s triumph as the workshop
of the world and a model of social and political stability.

5) How did the transport system in Britain change during the 19th century?

The greatest example of Britain's industrial power in the mid-19th century was its railway
system. Indeed, it was mainly because of this new form of transport that 6 million people
were able to visit the Great Exhibition, 109,000 of them on one day.

In fact, industrialists had built the railways to transport goods, not people, in order to bring
down the cost of transport. By 1840 2,400 miles of track had been laid, connecting not only
the industrial towns of the north, but also London, Birmingham and even an economically
unimportant town like Brighton. By 1870 the railway system of Britain was almost complete.
The canals were soon empty as everything went by rail. The speed of the railway even made
possible the delivery of fresh fish and raspberries from Scotland to London in one night.

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In 1851 the government made the railway companies provide passenger trains which stopped
at all stations for a fare of one penny per mile. Now people could move about much more
quickly and easily. The middle classes soon took advantage of the new opportunity to live in
suburbs, from which they travelled into the city every day by train.

6) What countries did Britain colonize in the 19th century?

British Empire, a worldwide system of dependencies — colonies, protectorates, and other

The 19th century marked the full flower of the British Empire. The Treaty of Amiens (1802)
made Trinidad and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) officially British, and in the Treaty of Paris
(1814) France ceded Tobago, Mauritius, Saint Lucia and Malta. New Zealand became
officially British in 1840, after which systematic colonization there followed rapidly. Partly
owing to pressure from missionaries, British control was extended to Fiji, Tonga, Papua, and
other islands in the Pacific Ocean, and in 1877 the British High Commission for the Western
Pacific Islands was created.

In the wake of the Indian Mutiny (1857), the British crown assumed the East India
Company’s governmental authority in India. Britain’s acquisition of Burma (Myanmar) was
completed in 1886, while its conquest of the Punjab (1849) and of Balochistān (1854–76)
provided substantial new territory in the Indian subcontinent itself. The French completion of
the Suez Canal (1869) provided Britain with a much shorter sea route to India. Britain
responded to this opportunity by expanding its port at Aden, establishing a protectorate in
Somaliland (now Somalia), and extending its influence in the sheikhdoms of southern Arabia
and the Persian Gulf, which was, like Gibraltar and Malta, a link in the chain of
communication with India through the Mediterranean, was occupied in 1878. Elsewhere,
British influence in the Far East expanded with the development of the Straits Settlements
and the federated Malay states, and in the 1880s protectorates were formed over Brunei and
Sarawak. Hong Kong island became British in 1841, and an “informal empire” operated in
China by way of British treaty ports and the great trading city of Shanghai.

The greatest 19th-century extension of British power took place in Africa, however. Britain
was the acknowledged ruling force in Egypt from 1882 and in Sudan from 1899. In the
second half of the century, the Royal Niger Company began to extend British influence in
Nigeria, and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Gambia also became British possessions.
Britain’s victory in the South African War (1899–1902) enabled it to annex the Transvaal
and the Orange Free State in 1902 and to create the Union of South Africa in 1910.

As a result, by the end of the 19th century, the British Empire comprised nearly one-quarter
of the world’s land surface and more than one-quarter of its total population.

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7) Describe the two-party system which developed in 1865.

The preexisting Tory and Whig parties experienced a phase in the 19th century where the
Whigs formed the Liberal Party, and the Tories newly grouped under the Conservative Party.

During the period of Tory decline in Parliament the name 'Conservative' began to be used, as
politician Robert Peel rallied together the opponents of further reform in the 1830s. By 1832
the term 'Conservative Party' had effectively replaced 'Tory' in common use by the press and
politics. Peel issued the Tamworth Manifesto in 1834, which outlined the goals of the
Conservatives. The Tamworth Manifesto can be seen as a crucial point for the grouping of
the Tory party into the Conservative Party. Robert Peel was successfully elected Prime
Minister in 1841 as the leader of the Conservatives.

From 1846 until 1865 the most important political figure was Lord Palmerston, described by
one historian as "the most characteristically mid-Victorian statesman of all." He was a
Liberal, but he often went against his own party's ideas and values. This was not totally
surprising, since he had been a Tory as a young man under Canning and had joined the
Whigs at the time of the 1832 Reform Bill. It was also typical of the confusing individualism
of politics that the Liberal Lord Palmerston was invited to join a Tory government in 1852.

After Palmerston's death in 1865 a much stricter "two party" system developed, demanding
greater loyalty from its membership. The two parties. Tory (or Conservative as it became
officially known) and Liberal, developed greater party organization and order.

8)What changed in Ireland during Victoria’s reign?

The main internal problem of the period was the situation in Ireland. All land there belonged
to landowners, mostly of British origin, and Irish peasants had to sell most of their produce to
pay high rents. As a result, they practically lived on potatoes. When a disease destroyed the
potato crop in two successive years, a terrible famine broke out: between 1845 and 1851,
about 800,000 people died of starvation and fever and about one million Irishmen emigrated,
mostly to the USA. A series of Land Acts were passed to rectify the situation, and a struggle
for home rule started in the second half of the century.

9) How did the authority of the Church change in Queen Victoria’s reign?

Throughout the 19th century England was a Christian country. Within the overwhelming
Christian majority there were, however, many varieties of belief – and many disagreements.
At the beginning of the century the difficulty of creating new parishes – a process that until
1843 required an Act of Parliament – meant that the Church was poorly represented in
England’s new manufacturing cities. The enthusiasm for building or restoring churches in
Victoria’s reign was galvanized by the ‘High Church’ Oxford Movement: between 1851 and
1875, 2,438 churches were built or rebuilt. One result of these changes was a major increase
in the number of Church of England clergymen, from 14,500 in 1841 to 24,000 in 1875.

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Legislation in the 1820s had removed some of the barriers that had excluded Christians
outside the Church of England – such as Catholics and Methodists – from most public offices
and degrees at Oxford or Cambridge. Pressure for further change was encouraged when the
1851 census revealed that out of a population of nearly 18 million, only 5.2 million attended
Church of England services, with 4.9 million attending other Christian places of worship.
This blow to the Church of England led to pressure for further reforms, culminating in an
1871 Act of Parliament that abolished all religious requirements for attendance at
universities.

The 19th century was also the first time in England that a substantial number of public
figures openly declared that they had no religious beliefs. Scientific advances such as Charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution made it more difficult for many educated people to accept the
literal truth of the Bible. Some intellectuals and writers rejected the teachings of Christianity
altogether.

However, the 19th century was far from irreligious. As the old certainties crumbled, new
faiths emerged, such as Spiritualism, established in England by the 1850s, and Theosophy,
which drew on Buddhism and Hinduism.

10) What did the invention of the bicycle mean to British younger women?

The invention of the bicycle was very important. For the first time people could cycle into
the countryside, up to fifty miles from home. It gave a new freedom to working-class and
middle-class people, who met each other for the first time away from work. More
importantly, it gave young women their first taste of freedom. Up till then they had always
had an older woman as a companion to make sure that nothing "happened" when they met
men. Now these young women had a means of escape. and escape they did.