BRITAIN AND IRELAND: A CONCISE HISTORY

CHAPTER 1: BRITONS, CELTS AND ROMANS, c. 4000 CB-AD

410
PREHISTORIC EUROPE AND THE BRITISH ISLES
- Old Stone Age: before ice melted, chipped tools
- Middle Stone Age: 8000-3500 BC
- New Stone Age: production of food, monument building
- The Bronze Age: 2400-700 BC, exchange of raw materials, agricultural
technology, warfare
- Iron Age: Celts, hill forts and small towns constructed, intensified trade

THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN: INVASION CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT

- Claudius (10 BC-AD 54) wanted to establish his reputation with the troops
and gain respect; he arrived in Britain in AD 43 and quickly overpowered
local armies
- Britain was divided into three; Romans favoured self-financing as self-
administering local elites; client-kingdoms; later coloniae & municipium &
civitates
- Resistance in Wales and the north, e.g. Boudicca; Hadrian’s Wall
constructed to control the movement of people in and out of the province, it
became the northern frontier until the end of Roman Britain
- Repeated fragmentation of Britain; the death of Theodosius (395),
withdrawal of the troops needed elsewhere and the breakdown of the
administration over economic needs signalled the end of Roman Britain

Economy, society and culture

- 5 million people; ⅘ of the workforce engaged in food production, the rest worked as
blacksmiths, small manufacturers or traders
- Roman roads and towns improved transport and trade; the army was the
biggest customer, boosted production
- Increased contact between different peoples a) expanded trade and the use
of coinage b) hill-forts were replaced by towns spread over larger areas and
placed in positions advantageous for transport and communication c) early
states dominated by powerful social elites and single rulers d) alliances;
Romans encountered a stratified society with a well-developed social and
political structure, which suited the Romans, they ruled indirectly through
the cooperation of the local elites
- Countryside organized around villas
- Romans introduced Latin and literacy; Latin in administration, Vulgar Latin
in working populations, Celtic amongst the rural peasantry
- Roman Britain contained a multitude of religions, e.g. the official state
religion, the imperial cult, imported religions, local Celtic cults
- Planned roads, street systems, new techniques of construction and interior
decoration
- Hydraulic and sanitary convenience: temples, amphitheatres, forums,
townhouses

CHAPTER 2: SAXONS, DANES AND NORMANS, 410-1154

ANGLES, JUTES AND SAXONS
- The Angles, Jutes and Saxons moved from x and north Germany into Britain

Migrants, invaders, settlers

- With the withdrawal of Rome’s central authority, Britain and Ireland were
left with small kingdoms, with power bases consisting of warrior bands
sustained by tribute and booty which competed for wealth and power by
forging temporary alliances amongst each other and with foreign tribes
- Movement of Saxons into the isle from east and south; this movement was
checked by a victory at Mount Badon and gave Britains more than a
generation of peace
- The Anglo-Saxon settlement created three broad cultural zones i) an English
speaking Anglo-Saxon east ii) a Celtic north and west where P-Celtic and
Pictish languages persisted iii) Ireland and small parts of western Britain Q-
Celtic was spoken; Germanic and Celtic peoples did not mix

Christianity
- Introduced in the 3rd century, suffered setbacks but gained acceptance by
the elites and peoples of Ireland and the western Celtic fringes of Britain;
the monks became the leaders of the Church; disagreements between Celtic
and Roman branches; Theodore of Tarsus succeeded in creating an
organized, united church

Kingship
- By the 7th century: the Heptarchy; by the mid 9th century: three larger
kingdoms resulted from internal competition and external pressure from the
Scandinavian invaders; kingdom of Alba (Scots), kingdom of England,
subservient Wales, divided Ireland

THE SCANDINAVIANS
- Norwegians in Scotland, Ireland and north-west England, Danes in eastern
and southern England; raided the Welsh coast; first they came for booty
from unprotected monasteries and coastal settlements, then they came to
stay; in 865 a raiding army invaded East Anglia and captured York, but was
defeated by Alfred, recognized the Danelaw
- Second wave: aim was political domination, Cnut became king of England in
1016; gave England a period of peace and prosperity; throne passed to
Edward the Confessor
- Scottish territories colonized by the Scandinavians; settlements established
in Ireland, trading gave a boost to Irish economy; Wales remained
untouched (ish)

THE NORMANS
- Battle of Hastings: one of the longest battles in medieval history, bloody
- After the Norman Conquest: changes in land ownership, in 1086 only four of
the great landowners were Anglo-Saxon; old families protested but were
harried; Norman Conquest imposed a new royal family, culture, language
and a new ruling class
- English stratum replaced by Norman elite: i) greater emphasis on the
obligation of English subjects to Norman lords ii) control from the center
increased iii) shift away from close relations with Scandinavia to Continental
Europe iv) Norman French became the language of the ruling class until the
14th century

Lords, vassals, serfs

- Hierarchical society based on personal loyalty; duties exchanged for
protection; based on the holding of land by the king
- Land given by the king to his vassals (thegns, barons) who pledged loyalty
and service to him; life revolved around the manor and self-supporting farm,
income came from the sale of farm produce, but the work was done by
peasants (serfs, villeins); serfs were given housing in exchange for their
work and a fee
- Life in western Europe became dominated by landowners as regional
military leaders
- Inheritance: land and inherently power - primogeniture, ultimogeniture;
political marriages as kingdoms conjoined and their territories increased

CHAPTER 3: LATE-MEDIEVAL STRUGGLES: WITHIN THE

BRITISH ISLES AND ON THE CONTINENT, 1154-1485
- Improvements in Europe
- Improved economy
- Agriculture: more land by felling trees, clearing land, draining
marshes, setting up dykes; improved working conditions
through the use of iron ploughs drawn by horses; raised wider
varieties of crops, greater yields through the three-field system
- Higher productivity in the countryside led to better health and
fertility; growth of urban centers
 - Reorganization of Catholic Church (emphasis on spiritual and worldly
hierarchy and power); new forms of religious life (new order:
mendicant friars, preached gospel in public)
- Expanded intellectual & geographical horizons
- Rediscovery of Greek and Roman philosophy
- Translation of Arabic works in science and philosophy
- War in the East, Near East and Spain
- Expansion of Europe because:
- Major military enemies were in decline or appeared vulnerable
- European political policy-making was dominated by feudal
aristocracies who saw their legitimate occupation as the
expansion of Christendom and the exercise of martial values
- Economic success + growing population provided resources for
military campaigns
- The Catholic faith provided ideological impetus
- Five major political developments in Western Europe
1. William of Normandy conquered England (1066) replacing its Anglo-
Saxon aristocracy with a Norman elite, thereby tying England to the
Continent politically and culturally
2. The Angevin/Plantagenet dynasty (1154-1399) created an increasingly
powerful monarch & succeeded in exercising its hegemony over the
other 3 kingdoms
3. The Plantagenet kings of England were vassals to the king of France;
England tried to expand its influence in the continent and to unite the
crowns of England and France
4. Taxes needed to finance wars

Political Struggles in The Isles, 1154-1272

- Henry II
- Re-established a stable government after two decades of civil war
- Delegated authority to chief justiciars
- Reformed civil and criminal law, making it national in scope
- Won consent and cooperation of of the greater magnates in the realm;
conflict with the Church
- Family rebellion
- Richard I (1189-1199)
- Kept Empire intact
- John Lackland (1199-1216)
- Lost all the Continental lands; England briefly invaded by the French
- Magna Carta: noted specific limitations of royal rights
- Henry III
- Used display and ceremony to emphasise his kingship visavis the
growth of constitutional ideas
- Tried to recover lost lands but alienated his barons
 - Provisions of Oxford (1258) and of Westminster (1259): tried to limit
royal authority
- Civil War (1264-68): Simon de Montfort captures won the Battle of
Lewes (May, 1264), captured both the king and his heir
- Simon de Monfort
- Summoned knights and burgesses to a parliament in January 1965
- Conquest of Ireland, began in 1167
- Henry II saw to it that all lesser Irish kings and bishops x
- Henry awarded ‘the lordship of Ireland’ to John (1177); when John
became king the lordship of Ireland was fused with the kingdom of
England (1199)
- Scotland
- David I (1124-53): combined Celtic and Norman traditions to form a
strong Scottish monarchy; overran the north of England
- Malcolm IV (1153-65): became embroiled in internal Scottish
conflicts, Henry II recovered Cumberland and Westmoreland
- William I (1165-1214): signed the first treaty with France (1168, the
Auld Alliance); tried to regain lost land but failed; Treaty of Falaise
(1174): William vowed homage to Henry; abrogated in 1189 for
10,000 marks, English suzerainty
- Wales
- Shifting alliances, unlear

Political Struggles On The Continent And In The Holy Land

- Military-monastic order of the Swordbrothers expanded into eastern Europe
and colonized the region with German-speaking peoples
- Christians slowly regain the Spanish peninsula from the Muslims; eventually
forming Spain and Portugal & strong, militant Christian mentality
- Pilgramage and holy war in the Near East
- Recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims who had taken Jerusalem
- Safeguard Christian pilgrimage
- Win material gain
- Look for chivalrous adventures
- Reunify Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman Catholic churches
(separated in 1054)
- Deadly intolerance of any non-Christian people
- The Holy land remained under Muslim control
- 1291 Muslim victory partially blocked European overland trade to the
East, forced Europeans to seek new routes to India and the Far East;
when these were discovered Britain, because of its maritime location,
was excellently placed for an ever expanding trade
- Stimulated trade and knowledge transfer between East and West
enabling italian merchants to enter and profit from Muslim trading
networks so that they could take the lead in Europe’s future
 development; Europe benefited immensely from the philosophical,
scientific and technological knowledge from missionaries that
followed merchants to convert

Political Struggles of the Isles, 1272-1485

Edward I (1272-1307):
- Domestic policy focused on i) introduced statute law; ii) the necessity
for a parliament-like institution (parliment of 1295 became the model,
two representatives from all 40 counties and 114 chartered
boroughs), the representative principle ensured Parliment’s role in
uniting England into a national community; iii) compromise with the
Church that set limits to the further extention of its landed property
without royal consent and ensured its contributions to state finances;
- Expelled jews in 1290
- Colonisation of Ireland; importing people from England, Wales and
the Continent, displacing native Irishmen; Ireland had previously been
a source of men, money and maintenance BUT a) agricultural boom
stabilized in the late 13th century b) North European Famine (1315-
17) c) Scottish Wars of Independence spilled over into the country
THEN a) the structure of the lordship began to crack b) economic and
social instability followed c) which was exacerbated by the effects of
the Black Death d) the control exerciced by the Irish government in
Dublin began to break down and was eventually restricted to the Pale;
Gaelic resurgence BUT i) irish chiefs were unable to achieve long-
term cooperation ii) Anglo-Irish magnates were strong enough to
resist their individual attacks
- Wales: Treaty of Mongomerry (1267) Henry conceded title of Prince of
Wales to Llywelyn and territorial gains; Edward subjugated Wales to
two devastating campaigns in which he regained all territories;
Edward built castles to ensure the suppression of later revolts,
introduced English common law, gave title of ‘Prince of Wales’ to his
infact son, shires were created to govern conquered territories, Welsh
church was brought more firmly under English control
- Scotland: 13th century, country had stabilized and friendly friendship
with England had developed; Alexander III dies - more conflict and
succesion crisis; Margaret ‘Maid of Norway’ (married to king Eirik II)
was the sole descendant, six guardians were elected but died when
she arrived, Edward I asked to help keep the peace, made himself
overlord of the country, the Great Cause, John Balliol crowned (1292);
signed a treaty of mutual aid (1295) with France which was at war
with England; Scots raided the south of the borders, English retaliate
with a large army, Scots defeated, John had to submit Edward and
Scotland was placed under direct English rule; revolt in 1297, war of
attrition, Robert Bruce takes the throne, consolidated his position
 after Edward; Treaty of Edinburgh (1328): scottish independence;
Edward Balliol takes the throne and acknowledges Edward III as his
overlord and cedes southern Scotland; David invades the north of
England (1346), captured but Edward recognises him as king of
Scotland; England was much stronger militarily but was involved in
too many wars, the Scots forged a robust national consciousness and
eventually a coherent political community out of their many wars;
struggle continued

The Hundred Years War, 1328-1453

- Dynastic war: 1340, Edward III adopted the title of King of France; Treaty of
Bretigny (1360): agreed to a lucrative territorial settlement; Britain
controlled most of northern France 1420-1435 BUT i) impact of Joan of Arc
on French morale ii) defection of the Burgundians; eventually lost; useless
war

Medieval Changes In Agriculture

- The heavy iron plough, five developments allowed its wider use: i) a horse-
collar ii) iron horse-shoe iii) watermills and windmills iv) cultivation of oats
v) three-field crop rotation
- Increased cultivation area and agricultural productivity, population
increased over 5 million until 1300

The Black Death

- Bubonic and pneumonic plague caused by bacteria and transmitted from
rats to humans through flea bites; spead from Central Asia, reaching the
south coast of England in June 1348; decline of the population

Society and Culture

- Effects of the Black Death: i) decreasing demand for food brough an end to
the preceding decades of economic expansion and led to a reorientation in
agriculture and a decline in trade and industry and thus the contraction of
towns; ii) acute labour shortage and an inflammatory rise of wages
- Ordinance (1349) & the Statutes of Labourers (1351) BUT hard to enforce
because landlords competed for labour; workers revolt (1381); the feudal
structure cracked, workers came and went in relation to the wages they
were offered, standard of living rose
- Conflicts between monarchs contributed to the disintegration of the feudal
system; lords held fiefs from multiple monarchs, in case of conflict they had
to decide who to support
- Increasingly weak position of the lords in relation to their workers because
of the labour shortage + aristocratic warfare - erosion of the feudal system;
 no longer based on personal royalties but rather loyalty to country and
monarch
- Construction of castles, cathedrals and abbeys: effort by monarchs, church
and richer lords to sustain a pyramidal structure to society; added to their
lustre and authority
- Educational institutions required: Church
- Language: Latin was used by the church and academic sphere; Anglo-
Norman French used by the royal court, the governing elite and the courts;
- English: the language of an oppressed people since 1066, reemerged
in a new form in the 13th century, the effects of the Black Plague gave
greater weight to the English speaking lower classes, because of
conflict the elite became alienated from France; in 1363 the Lord
Chancellor opened a parliamentary session in English; rise of
vernacular literature; process of expansion, standardisation and
legitimation

CHAPTER 4: RENAISSANCE; RECONNAISSANCE;

REFORMATION; REVOLUTION, 1485 - 1689
Renaissance
- Revival of art, literature and learning; from 14th to 17th century;
rediscovery of Greek and Latin classical texts that had survived in the
Byzantine and Arab empires
- From 12th century onwards: period of intense translating from Arab and
Greek into Latin in Italy and Spain
- Transfusion of cultural knowledge: Greek, Muslim, Jewish and Christian
cooperation, knowledge transfer
- The idea of universities, from muslim origin, entered into Christian
Europe
- The individual gained the ability to understand morality through the study of
ancient texts, without the clergy
Reconnaissance
- Discovery, exploration, colonisation, settlement
- Henry ‘the navigator’; Columbus; Vasco da Gama; Ferdinand
Magellan
- The rise of Europe and its expansion into the west and east
- However, global trading networks preceded european exploration; relied on
navigational technologies developed in China and Arab world
Reformation
- Religious movements that aimed to reform the roman catholic church but
created protestant churches; crises of papal authority: i) Investment
Contests and the Great Schism: monarchs wanted to appoint the higher
clergy and impose taxation, three popes; ii) the Council of Constance re-
espablished papal singularity and punished heretics, BUT Council could now
 override papal authority; iii) clerical abuses, such as indilgenses, immunity
from civil justice and exemption from taxes, sale of offices
- Wars of religion & religious persecution
Revolution
- i) Tudor monarchs establish a centralised national English monarchy; ii)
Stuart monarchs and their difficulties with dealing with a) multiple
kingdons, b) religious division c) the cost of war; iii) the final settlement

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATIONS

- Henry VIII (1509-47): wanted to secure Tudor legacy with a male heir;
sought annulement
- Pope Clement VII faced two problems: i) annulment would undermine
papal authority by undoing the dispensation of his predecessor; ii)
Clement VII was prisoner of Charles V, Catherine’s nephew
- Cranmer and Cromwell: declare Henry supreme leader of England’s
spiritual affairs; did so by i) giving H jurisdiction over clergy and
canon law; ii) ending all payments of the English clergy to Rome; iii)
giving H the sole right to fill high ecclesistical positions; iv)
proclaiming H the only supreme head of the CoE; v) dissolving the
monasteries
- By 1550 ¼ of the land in England had been transferred from
ecclesiastical to lay hands
- England became truly Protestant under Edward VI (1547-53)
- Mary I (1553-8): sought to reestablish Catholisism in England, married
Philip of Spain to procure a Catholic heir, persecuted Protestants
- Elisabeth I (1558-1603): forged a religious compromise (the Elisabethan
settlement), formed the basis for a moderate but Protestant national church
- In Wales: resistance was scant because lords and gentry would profit from
the dissolution of the monasteries;
- Elisabethan Settlement: allowes Welsh to be the official language of
worship in Wales; Welsg Bible published in 1588
- The Scottish Reformation:
- Catholicism was identified with the Auld Alliance, while Protestantism
was identified with friendphip with England

STATE AND SOCIETY UNDER THE TUDORS

The Tudor Monarchs
- Henry VII: extend his royal authority, by i) reducing expenses and filling the
royal coffers by selling monopolies; ii) married Elisabeth of York, thus
uniting the houses of York and Lancaster; iii) winning the loyalty of the
nobility and assuming jurisdiction over them through the Court of Star
Chamber responsable for cases involving the nobility and staffed by the
King’s key advisers; iv) giving administrative duties to 600 unpaid justice of
 peace from the gentry, which saved money and encouraged the self-
confidence of the gentry as a counterbalance to the nobility
- Tudor monarchy: personal and patrimonial; were accountable to God alone and
disobedience to the monarch meant disobedience to God; obliged to defende the realm,
uphold the Church and administer justice; actually: augment their royal power to secure their
territorial sovereignty and dynastic succession →subordinate the nobility, control feudal
privilege and increase revenues to finance military forces; symbolic politics: royal buildings,
heraldry, elaborate rituals and ceremomnial displays
- Limitation: monarch could not change the laws of the nation at his pleasure,
could not govern without the consent of parliament; after Elisabeth: state
separate from the monarch

The Periphery
- Administrative Reorganisation of Wales: Acts of Union (1536, 1543): i)
reduced the powers of the marcher lords; ii) created seven new shires; iii)
introduced the English county government apparatus; iv) established
English laws; v) made English the language of judicial and administrative
business, but maintained Welsh as the language of worship
- Henry VIII and the integration of Ireland: H proclaimed king of Ireland in
1541 by the Irish parliament, Gaelic noble and lands: ‘surrender and re-
grant’; however Ireland was much larger and politically fragmented than
Wales, failed and doed with H.
- Edward VI: Anglo-Irish relations broke down
- Mary I: Irish Parliament passed laws that let Eglish settlers take land
in Ireland (1557)
- Elisabeth I: English colonists introduced to monitor and control
strategic trouble spots; Catholic Gaelic chiefs and Old English
landowners vs Protestant New English settlers - revolts - Nine Years
War - defeat (English Reformation exacerbated the problems of the
borderlands)

The Social Order

- Middle Ages: kinghths defend the realm, patients prayed for it, peasants
provided upkeep
- Mid 16th century: society became more stratified;
- For the ruling elite: hierarchy; 5% owned 60% of the land; nobility
consisted of 5o families by 1600; united by common interest (we love
class consciousness) and collective identity contrasted with ‘the
poorer sorts’
- ‘The great chain of being’; oppressive; valued disseminated by the
Church; Commonwealth imagined as a family; families formulated in
terms of authority and subordination; natural
 The Economy
- English cloth exports doubled between 1470s-1550s, shipping need rose as a
consequence: tonnage doubled between 1570-1630s; english merchants
drove out competitors
- Unstable 16th century: rich got richer, profited from the redistribution of
monastic lands and population growth; poor got poorer, rise in the cost of
living, fivefold between 1510-1625; inflation due to south american gold
increasing the amount of money in circulation, purchasing power cut by
60%; rise of agriculture, loosening of feudal ties, rise of the poor

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; 1485-1603

- Henry VII tried to secure and maintain peace after the War of the Roses:
marriage of son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon (1501) and Margaret to
James IV of Scotland (1503); England was a second-rate power who’s main
role was to oppose France; Henry VIII’s wars with France and Scotland
resulted in financial exhaustion
- Charles V crowned Holy Roman Empire; European relations saw a struggle
between House Valois and Habsburg; Henry VIII was generally pro-
Habsburg but his breach with Rome complicated things + growth of
Protestantism under Edward VI
- Mary I: pro-Habsburg, but Philip forced England into a war with
France, England losts its last continental foothold (1558)
- Situation with France improved: Scotland ended the Auld Alliance
under the Protestant Reformation; France sank into religious turmoil
- Elisabeth I concludes a mutual defence alliance with France in 1572;
Dutch United Provinces declare their independence from Spain (1579)
with minimal support from Lizzie (1584); Philip sends an Armada to
reimpose Catholisism in England but fails (1588)
- Elisabeth’s ‘sea dogs’: harried the Spaniards

STATE AND SOCIETY; 1603-89

An Unstable Union
- James VI of Scotland becomes also James I of England in 1603; three causes
of instability: i) multiple kingdoms, ii) religious divisions, iii) how to keep a
financial and political system intact in the face of inflation, the rising cost of
war and different traditions of financial exaction; overdetermined by iv)
long-term developments in economic vitality, political power and cultural
prestige of different social groups (declining aristocracy, rise of the gentry,
rise of the middle clases), shift from feudal to capitalist economy
- Scotland: absentee monarchs; England legislated for England, Wales and
Ireland
 The War(s) of the Three Kingdoms
The Scots War
- Charles offended the nobility by attempting to renegotiate land tenure in
Scotland, non-compliance and non-cooperation; C tried to impose english
religious law without general assembly or parliament: Scottish people
reacted with massive acts of passive disobedience, the National Covenant
(1638)
- Charles responded with military force (English Army, Protestant
forces from Ireland, loyal Catholic forces from Ireland and Highlands);
did not seek support from parliament, financed through loans and
non-parliamentary exactions
- First Scots’ War: ended in 1639, Charles money dwindled, no Irish
assistance, Scots seemed prepared for a fight
- Scottish constitutional revolution: Parliament was to meet at least
every three years (Triennial Act), legislation no longer required the
royal assent
- Charles summons parliament in 1640 to finance a war, but parliament
is hostile to both his bill and his plans; Parliament dissolved
- C wanted war anyways, but slow English mobilisation, Scots took
initiative, C lost in a single engagement
The Irish Rebellion
- In Ireland: colonial dispossetion of Gaelic Catholic Irish lands; with the
weakening of the monarchy in Scotland and England: hopes of recclaiming
lands and political and religious rights
- Rebellion against the settlers, 2000-4000 Protestant settlers killed;
1642: Catholic Confederation of Ireland, bound itself to defend their
church, crown and liberty
Response
- Anglo-Scots were the victims of the rebellion, theerby bringing England and
Scotland closer together
- ‘Grand Remonstrance’ (1641-2): breakdown of trust within the English
government; list of royal abuses, Parliament demanded full control of the
army and the executive
- Stalemate in Ireland: poorly organised and equipped rebels couldn’t gain
territory, the royalist English and Scots covenanters coundn’t mount a
successful counter-offensive
The English Civil War (1642-46)
- The Royalists vs the Parlamentariand
- Charles negotiated a one-year ceasefire in Ireland in exchange for
religious concessions, so that English army could help in England;
eventually Irish Catholic force
- Scots with the parlamentarians, regarded a victory for Charles in
England as a threat to Scottish Presbyterianism; Scots wanted a say in
the final deal
 - Catholic Irish troops wreaked havoc in western Scotland, but Charles
was losing the war in England; Charles surrendered to the Scots in
1646
- Factors: Scottish intervention, parlamentarians help the richest and
post densely populated cities and port cities
- English Parliament: i) the Presbytarians (wanted negotiation with Charles);
ii) the Independents (war group, wanted radical political and religious
settlement); iii) large middle group
- Conflict; army stages a coup in 1647, seized the political initiative
from Parliament and took custody of the king
- Moderate groups wanted an agreement with the king (Heads of
the Proposals) vs radical group (Agreement of the People)
- Scots make an agreement with Charles, the engagement, supported
by the Scottish Parliament; army crushed by the parlametarian army
- Rump Parliament: Parliamentarians purged House of Commons of
MPs inclined to negotiate with Charles; 80 MPs left
- High Court: tried the king for trason, abolished the monarchy
and the House of Lords in England, Wales and Ireland;
established England and Wales as a ‘Commonwealth and Free
State’ with a republican army
- Charles executed in January 1649
The Aftermath
- Scottish shocked by the regicide without Scottish consultation; Scottish
covenant government proclaimed Charles II as king of GB and Ireland; more
war, Scottish royalists defeated by parlamentarian army; Scotland placed
under English rule, its parliament and GA were abolished, English military
and administration control established
- Ireland: enforced union with England, ethnic clensing, land confiscated and
redistributed; by 1650s, only 20% of Irish lands were in Catholic hands

Interregnum? Commonwealth? Republic? Protectorate? (1649-1660)

Interregnum
- ‘Period between reigns’
Commonwealth
- Republic ruled by a single-chamber parliament and a council of state with
Cromwell as its chairman (the Rump)
- ‘Barbone’s parliament’: Rump dissolved, replaced by 144 handpicked
members forming an assembly; resigned its authority to Cromwell after 6
months
Protectorate
- Army proposed the ‘Instrument Government’, designed to create a balance
between the army and Parliament
- Divided political power between a single-chamber parliament, an
elected council and the executive, with Cromwell as Lord Protector
 - First Parliament (1654): purged and dissolved
- Second Parliament (1656-8): formulated a second written constitution, make
Cromwell king (attempt to curtail Cromwell’s power by making him respect
the the ancient laws of kingship); Cromwell accepted the constitution and
the right to name his heir
More about Cromwell
- Incorporated the four nations into into a single political unitthrough bloody
conquest; tried and executed Charles I; imposed a written constitution;
dictatorial, based on his use and control of the military
- After his death (1659): re-establishment of Commonwealth and Rump; army
supervised election of a Convention Parliament, Parliament invited Charles
II to return from exile, established the terms of the Restoration

The Restoration
- Restoration Settlement: granted full indemnity to all but regicides, settled
disputes over confiscated land; monarchy returned
- Religious intolerance: resentment over imposed bishops on presbyterians in
Scotland, in England Anglican church re-established and tolerance of sects
ended
- Anti-Catholic feeling: Charles II agreed to convert to Catholicism and
improve the lot of English Catholics in exchange for a pension from Louis
XIV
- Response from Parliament: office holders required to receive Anlican
communion, swear allegiance to the monarch and repudiate Catholic
doctrine
- Test Act (1673): excluded Catholics from the military and civil office
- Test Act the second (1678): excluded Catholics from Parliament
- Popish Plot (1678)
- Exclusion Crisis (1678-81)

The Crisis of 1688 and its solution

- James II (brother to Charles II, Catholic after marriage to Mary of Modena)
succeeds Charles II in 1685
- Doesn’t denounce persecution of Huguenots in France (1685) - causes
Protestant subjects anxiety
- Positive discrimination for Catholics
- Catholic male heir born in 1688
- The ‘Immortal Seven’ ask William of Orange to protect Protestant
religion and ancient liberties
- Whigs wanted to depose James and limit the powers of the Crown
- Tories and Anglican clergy wanted to stop the undermining of the CoE
- Ordinary people detested his Catholisism
- William wanted England as an ally against France
 - William arrives; James cannot fight because officers defect, flees the
country; thrones declared vacant, offered to William and Mary as joint
sovereigns, offered the Scottish crown after Scottish Parliament depose
James II
The Glorious Revolution
- The Bill of Rights (1689): presented by Convention Parliament to William
and Mary, condemned acts of Charles II and James II
- i) psrliaments had to meet frequently, ii) elections had to be free, iii)
freedom of speech, and debates and proceedings in Parliament should
not be questioned other than in Parliament, iv) parliamentary
consents necessary to suspend statutes, levy taxation and maintain a
peacetime standing army
- Established England as a constitutional monarchy
- Jacobite push-back in Ireland, battles:
- Boyne (1690)
- Aughrim, Treaty of Limerick (1691): confiscation of Catholic property,
laid down rigid penal code against Catholics

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, 1603-89

- France & Spain: Catholic, politically strong, potentially hostile; Dutch
Republic: Protestant, potentially and ally, rival in commerce
- Thirty Years War (1618-48): religious wars, confrontation between houses of
Habsburg and Bourbon
- Mercantilist economic policy: i) accumulate as much money as possible; ii)
import cheap raw materials; iii) export expensive finished products; iv) make
your products cheap domestically and foreign products expensive through
protective duties on foreign goods; v) build new industries; vi) improve
domestic infrastructure; vii) unify the systems of weights and measures; viii)
acquire colonies to supply raw materials; ix) build national merchant fleet
- Navigation Act (1651): attacked the prominent role of the Dutch in
European and colonial trade; resulted in the Anglo-Dutch War (1652-
4) and others
- Colonial expansion
- East: widening network of the East India Company
- West: migration led to the growth of settler colonies
- Push factors: religious conflicts, deportation of criminals
- Pull: land purchaised in tropical regions of the Caribbean and
crops grown
- Indentured servants or slaves provided by the Royal
African Company
- Jamaica: seized by England from Spain in 1655; at the heart of the
Spanish Indies, served as: trading point in peacetimes, meeting point
for smugglers and privateers in wartime
THOUGHTS AND CULTURE IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH
CENTURIES
- Learning in medieval times: i) through Bible, ii) through ancient
philosophers
- Learning during the Renaissance: creating new knowledge
- Philosophy of science: mankind can understand and master nature
- Intellectual transformation: i) moving infinite universe with Earth as one of
many celestial bodies, all dominated by a the laws of nature; ii) ways of
knowing based on observed facts and mathematical laws; iii) secular
questions

Astronomy, philosophy, institutions of learning

- Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo (hypothesis that the universe was
governed by rational lwas which could be expressed mathematically),
Newton (theory of universal gravitation)
- Bacon (empirical observation and induction), Descartes (deduction), Hobbes
(theories on human behaviour), Locke (knowledge not innate but produced
by the impact of the environment on the human mind)
- Académie Francaise (1635), the Royal Society of London (groups of natural
philosophers started meeting in 1645, officially founded in 1660), Royal
Observatory at Greenwich (1675), the Royal Society of Edonburgh (1783),
Royal Irish Academy in Dublin (1785)

Witch hunts
- Anxiety caused by changing views, e.g. across religious lines, common
spacegoat: people practising magic and witchcraft
- Between 1400-1700: 70,000 to 100,000 people condemned to death
for practising witchcraft
- England and Scotland: legislation against witchcraft passed in 1563; more
panics in Scotland
- England, mid-sixteenth to end of seventeenth century: 500 persons
put to death; in Scotland: 1000 to 1500 persons, 85% single women
between forty and sixty
- Torture of suspects not allowed in England while allowed in
Scotland
- Aggressive Calvinist of the Kirk regarded witchcraft as a
heretical, diabolical conspiracy against God and the state
- Statutes against witchcraft replaced in 1736

Literature
- Humanism encouraged individual reading; tenfold increase of published
books between 1500-1630; need for financial support and protection
because of drastic censorship
 - Literature became a central means of depicting, disseminating and
discussing the material and intellectual transformations of the age
- Elisabethan Era
- Prose: treatises on education and court etiquette, historical chronicals
and histories, geographical descriptions and philosophical essays
- Poetry: the sonnet; drama
- Shakespeare
- Metaphysical poets

CHAPTER 5: TOWARDS INTERNAL STABILITY AND EXTERNAL

EXPANSION, 1689-1789
National Consolidation, International Self-Assertion and Imperial Expansion
- Process of political consolidation and incomrporation leads to: Act of the
Union (1707) created the United Kingdom of Great Britain - Act of Union
(1800) created the UK of GB and Ireland
- Military conflicts with France: conflict with William of Orange (1689-97);
European succession crises in Spain (1702-13) and Austria (1740-8); Seven
Years War (1756-63) caused by colonial competition in India and North
America; American War of Independence (1778-81)
- Prosperous: largest free-trade area in the world, booming agricultural
sector, growing international trade; politically influential in the Continent
and its colonies; culturally coherent; versatile in the arts, philosophy,
science; creation of a British identity and nationalism

FROM UNION TO UNION

- Louis XIV supported the Stuarts after William and Mary took the throne
causing nine years of war that finacially exhauted France; Treaty of Ryswick
(1697): William recognised as king of England, Scotland and Ireland; war
resumed by William after Spanish throne was left to Louis XIV (1702-13);
France recognised James II’s son as James III king of England, violating the
Treaty
- Act of Settlement (1701): designed to end anxieties over succession, throne
should descend to Anne and then Sophia of Hanover (if Anne had no
children); future monarchs had to support the CoE and could not involve
England in military conflict without Parliamnet’s consent
- Overruling of hereditary rights of the Stuarts and ignoring legitimate
claims to the crown: the monarchy had become secondary to
Parliament
The Union of 1707
Blackmailing Scotland
- War with France encourages England to seek closer relationship with
Scotland, rebuffed by Scotland, had profited from the Crisis of 1688 by an
increase in authority;
- Scots passed their own Act of Security (1703) insisting on their own right to
choose their own monarch who might be a Stuart (Jacobite sentiment had
been fostered by episcospal clergyman refusing to accept Presbyterian
settlement); Scots demanded ‘free communication of trade’ with England in
exchange for agreement on monarch;
- English Commons passes Aliens Act (1705): Scots would be treated as aliens
and Scottish exports to England would be embargoed if Scots did not agree
to discuss a union between the countries
- Negotiations: independence of Kirk and continued use of Scottish Law;
freedom of trade, Scotland offered a sum equivalent to £26 million
- Treaty of Union passed 110 to 69; succession given to Sophia of Honover
The Union
- New British Parliament, aka. Enlarged English Parliament in Westminster
(property as basis of allocation of political power)
- Commons: 513 English and Welsh, 45 Scottish
- Lords: 190 English and Welsh, 19 Scottish
- Hanovian succession: George I (1714-27)
- Unpopular; complaints about the ‘singular insensitivity and
clumsiness with which the English political establishment treated
Scotland after 1707’; 1713: proposal to dissolve the union defeated by
4 votes
- Jacobite rebellions fail (1715)
- Violent suppression of Jacobitism by Duke of Cumberland after 1745 in the
highlands

The Union of 1800

- British and Irish Parliaments were purely protestantin 1707; BUT British
population 9/10 Protestant while Irish population ¾ Catholic; Irish
Parliament suborditate to English Parliament, Declaratory Act (1720)
asserted the right of British Parliament to pass legislation binding in Ireland
- Anglo-Irish Protestant ‘patriots’ and colonial nationalism
- Argued that Ireland was a separate kingdom which should be
governed by its own laws through its own institutions; inspired by the
American Decleration of Independence
- 1778: removal of restrictions on Catgolic ownership; 1779: free trade with
Britain granted; 1782: Declaratory Act repealed, Catholic Relief Act removed
the worst restrictions on the clergy and lay people; steps towards ‘legislative
independence’
 - Society of United Irishmen (1791): middle class Presbyterians, Protestants
and Catholics; committed to parliamentary reform and Irish control of Irish
affairs; later embraced universal male suffrage; committed to the union of
Irishmen of all denominations
- Suppresed, recognised itself as a secret movement geared to armed
insurrection; sought minilary support in France, granted; 1798:
claimed to have 280,000 members
- More repression, insurrection leaderless and so collapsed (1798)
- Response from BP: events of 1798 confirmed the need for direct control of
Ireland (two threats: i) nationally, showed that the conventions of 1782 were
unreliable; ii) internationally, insurrection had been supported by French
troops, enabled the enemy to enter the country)
- Union negotiated; 4 bishops, 28 peers and 100 MPs
- Protestants not happy because they feared that London would not
continue to support their supremacy; Catholics hoped for political
emancipation
- Treasury and taxation systems brought together; day-to-day government in
Dublin; Ireland faced economic hardship in the following decades

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SOCIETY

- Nobility and clergy: estates, hierarchical structure inheited from the middle
ages; exempt from taxes; England (1700): less than 200 noble families,
owned 15-20% of landed wealth; 4,000 gentry families owned 50% of the
land; property tax; land value doubled in the 18th century as agriculture
became more productive
- Landed aristocracy influenced the court and national politics, the gentry 1
excercised local authority as justices of peace (see: Tudor monarchs); power
of the HoC grew compared to HoL; similar interests, as both houses mainly
consisted of landowners
- 75% of the population were peasants; the nobles, Church and State exacted
tazes and tithes in labour, kind or cash
- Middle classes lived in towns and cities; engaged in commerce and
manufacture
- Rare upwards mobility, common downward mobility; 30% depended on poor
relief; between 1688 and 1810, the number of offences punishable by death
rose to over 220; by 1780, 50 provincial dailies
- Emergence of a ‘public sphere’ for the middle classes to congregate, debate
and influence society; clubs dedicated to various interests, ‘civil society’;
increased Britain’s supply of expertise, created a patriotic sense of cultural
identity

1 those who are not members of the nobility but are entitled to a coat of arms,
especially those owning large tracts of land
THE ENLIGHTNMENT
- The creation of a ned network of ideas about nature, society and the place of
human beings in them; a communicating network of intellectuals
subscribing to a characteristic cluster of ideas which grew into an
intellectual movement, created an international community of philosophers
and irreversibly influenced the world view of generations to come; key ideas:
- i) reason and rationality tempered by experience and experiment as
ways of organising knowledge; ii) reason as the prime faculty of
human beings, producing secular knowledge free of religious dogma;
iii) all knowledge about the natural and social world is based upon
empirical facts which human beings can through their sense organs;
iv) scientific knowledge and the scientific method; v) scientific
discovery can produce general laws which govern the universe
without exception; vi) the individual is the starting point of
knowledge, society consists of the individuals living in it; vii) the
principle characteristics of human nature are always the same
everywhere, thus cultural differences should be tolerated; viii) the
human condition can be improved and happiness increased, however
the extension of freedom to the lower classes and women is
problematic

The philosophes and their ideas

- Three generations: Montesquieu and Voltaire, influenced by Locke and
Darwin; Rousseau, Diderot, Jean le Rond d’Ambert and Hume, combined
critiques of clerical institutions with an interest of the scientific method;
Smith, Ferguson, Kant, Turgot, Mandelsohn, Baccaria, Condorcet and
Wollstonecraft, developed specialised perspective that would later become
academic disciplines; nucleus of the public sphere, rising significance of
public opinion
- Critisisms of the teaching of the christian churches
- Original sin: stressed the importance of the grace of God to the
detriment of the possibilities of reforming the present
- Material privileges
- Deism: God as the rational creator of an ordered universe
- Critiques of society
- Beccaria: innocent until proven guilty, crime as a transgression of the
laws of nature; punishment as a utilitarian mean of deterrence
- Smith: resources as boundless, individuals free to pursue their self-
interest without regulation or monopolies + meet the demands and
needs of the market = prosper individually and create an ever-
expanding economy which would benefit everyone (jesus christ)
- Quesnay, influenced by Chinese ideas of political economy,
laissez-faire: little government intervention
- Transfer of knowledge from China to Europe
Political thought and practice
- Montesquieu: limited monarchy as the best political system, like in Britain
- Power should be divided between different branches of government
- Wollstonecraft: women’s liberation
- ‘Enlighneted monarchs’: harnessed enlightenment rationality to the actions
of the state in order to strengthen their own power and interest

The British Experience

- In the ‘Glorious Revolution’, England produced a system of parliamentary
representation and constitutional government which included individual
liberty, substantial religious toleration and freedom of speech and
publishing. For intellectuals: would capitalism be the solvent of society or its
very cement?
- Scottish experience: better economy and cultural life; Scottish
Enlightnment, Edinburgh as the ‘athens of the north’

Literary culture
- Emergence of print culture, chief vehicle for communicating ideas; reading
as an individual activity, discussion as a group activity; lending libraries;
periodicals communicated information and opinions, encouraging thought
and discussion; 50% of men literate, 30%-50% of women; rise of prose
fiction, 40% of literary production

THE TRANSATLANTIC ECONOMY

- Initially, the colonial powers were motivated by the mercantilist idea that
the world’s resources were limited and every nation must obtain as much of
them as possible. Goals:
- i) extract precious minerals; ii) grow raw materials, refined in the
mother country and re-exported; iii) exclude other nations from
trading with these colonies
- Trade expanded fivefold in the 18th century; triangular trade: manufactured
goods from europe exchanged for slaves in Africa who were then sold to the
Americas, raw materials sent back to Europe

The slave trade

- Slaves acquired through warfare, kidnapping and tribute; 15% mortality
rate across the Atlantic
- Britain was the leading slave trading nation (41.3%), Portugal (29.3%),
Denmark (1.2%), Sweden & Brandenburg (0.1%)

BRITAIN, EUROPE AND THE WORLD

- Colonies treated with ‘wise and salutary neglect’; allowed to self-govern
European and global rivalries
- The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13): strengthened France and
weakened Austria.
- War of Austrian Succession (1740 - 1790): Charles VI left no male heir,
Prussia invades and annexes Silesia (Poland); France backs Prussia (hoping
to take the low countries from Austria); Britain backs Austria (prevent
France from taking the low contries); 1744: France backs Spain (who had
been fighting Britain) in the Americas; 1748: peace in Europe
- Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763): reversal of alliances (‘diplomatic
revolution’); Prussia fears invation from Russia, negotiates alliance with
Britain; French ready to conclude an alliance with Austria, French-Austrial
alliance joined by Russia, Sweden and some germanic states; Austria attacks
Saxony (German); nothing changed in Europe
- In the Americas: France ceases to be a great colonial power, Spanish
empire infiltrated by Britain; British take Canada and eastern half of
the Mississippi, dominant in the West Indies, increased influence in
India through the East India Company
- British national debt doubles

Political corruption
- Robert Walpole: Whig MP from 1701 to 1742
- George I and George II depended on the advice of a group of Whig
politicians who had supported the Hanovian succession; George III (r. 1760-
1820) wanted to choose his own ministers (instead of those few Whigs) and
enhance his monarchical powers, attempted to buy influence in Parliament
through royal patronage but Parliament resisted; 1763: John Wilkes
becomes the spokesperson for the opposition to the king; Wilkes accused of
libel and expelled, re-elected in 1768 (and three times after that) but was
refused his seat; campaigns in support for Wilkes (‘Wilkes and Liberty’) by
the middle classes and aristocrats; 1774: allowed to take his seat
- Put into question the monarchy and Parliament

Colonial rebellion: the thirteen colonies

- After the Seven Years War: huge amount of war debt & large territory in North
America that needed to be administered and protected; standing army financed ⅓ by
the colonist through taxes and the rest by the british taxpayer; colonists had been used
to practical independence, rebelled
- Sugar Act (1764) & Stamp Act (1765), colonists threatened to boycott
British imports and the Stamp Act was repealed; GB tried to enforce
measures by stationing troops in Boston; Boston Massacre (1770); 1773: tea
tax, Boston tea party, Coercive Acts; 1774/5: First and Second Continental
 Congress, George III declared the colonies in rebellion; Common Sense
(1775); 1776: open ports, Declaration of Independence
- Civil war; patriots advocating separation were in the minority; British: half-
hearted naval warfare, overextended army; foreign intervention; 1781:
surrender at Yorktown
- Political system based on the consent of the governed; reshaped british
attitudes towards empire
- Swing to the East: new trading triangle, manufactured goods from Britain to
India - opium from India to China - tea, silk and chinaware from China to
Britain

CHAPTER 6: POLITICAL REFORMS, INDUSTRIAL

REVOLUTION, IMPERIAL RULE, 1789-1914
- The long 19th century: 1789-1914; starting with the French Revolution and
ending with WWW1
- Rise of Germany in Europe, rise of Britain internationally

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES
- Conflicts: i) the French Revolution and its aftermath; ii) political order
pressured by a) popular demands for liberal reforms and b) internal and
colonial rivalries; iii) the Industrial Revolution and its repercussions; iv)
enfrinchisement; v) loss of traditional worldviews and their replacement

The revolution in France and the reconstruction of Europe’s political order

- Started as a middle class attempt to limit the monarchy (with strong support
form the lower classes) grew into popular revolt; resulted in the abolition of
feudalism, the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’, a
constitutional monarchy were the monarch was bound by law
- France declares war with Austria (1792), Austria and Prussia prepare a joint
invasion; early defeats create panic, massacre of political suspects and
execusion of Louis XVI; Britain and the First Coalition (Spain, Low
Countries, Austria, Prussia, England and Sardinia) declare war on France;
internal conflict, Bonaparte seized power in 1799
- The destruction of the strongest and most centralised state of the ancien
regime;
- In France, establishment of the political supremacy of the middle
class in the towns, the bulk of landed property was transferred to the
peasentry in the countryside;
- In Europe, revolutionaries represented ideals of liberty, equality,
fraternity and popular sovereignty -- LIBERALIST AND NATIONALIST
(key features of the 19th century); inspired debates on citizen’s rights,
parliamentary reform, and the nature of government
 - In Britain, concern; government suspended Habeas Corpus (1794) and
introduced the Two Gagging Acts (1795) which limited the freedom to hold
public meetings or lectures on political subjects; supression of rebellion by
the United Irishmen (1797/8) and naval mutinies;
- British war efforts: i) rule of the waves, to compensate for the dominance of
the french army; ii) defeat french attacks on imperial outposts; iii) provide
financial support for allies
- Successful: victory in Egypt (1798) established british dominance in
the Mediterranian; french outed from India; victory at Trafalgar
(1805) destroyed French and Spanish ships, thus making an invasion
of the British mainland impossible
- Loss of life, financial cost, slowing down the Industrial Revolution,
however extension of British trade at the expense of France
After the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815)
- Congress of Vienna (1814/15): establish the post-Napoleonic order of
Europe; moderate territorial settlements; congress system to maintain
peace;
- New pattern of European politics with Prussia as the Continent’s leading
power; balanced antagonism; conflicts exported to other territories

Industrialisation
- Labour power (increasing number of workers) were mobilised and
effectively combined with new sources of power (and power-driven machines
and engines) to work in places of production (mills, factories) under
contractual wage labour conditions; increasing labour divisions, longer
hours and contracts)
- Suez canal (1869) and Panama canal (1914); growth of railway system;
postal system, telegraph; telephone; photography, sound recording, radio,
moving picture

Colonialism - Imperialism
- Colonies were profitable as suppliers of raw materials, buyers of goods, and
strategic spots
- Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were fought both on the Continent and
abroad; resulted in huge territorial losses for France but gains for Britain;
- Post-war years: Portugal and Spain lost their colonies in South
America, France took Algiers (1830)
- British ‘dual-strategy’: i) penetrated other countries economically ii)
but would occupy the region based on the ‘need’ to anticipate a
competitor
- Economic explanations: need for resources, trade and export of capital
- Political explenations: nationalism
- Sociological explenations: racial superiority, social organisation, culture,
religion
The right to vote
- Enfrinchisement of men then women (step by step, limited by property,
literacy and gender)
- Fall in illiteracy rates

Culture and ideology

- Loss of absolutist monarchies and certain christian dogmas
- Enlightenment offered:
- Self-confidant continuity
- Belief in and documentation of human achievements in labour
and intelectual and artistic creativity to further the progress of
humanity
- Emergence of science, creation of systems of thought and
knowledge, historical thinking
- Disruptive self-doubt
- Social and intellectual costs of these developments (alianation,
loss of faith)
- Limits of natural science, waning capacity of literature and the
arts to capture and critisise social reality

THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

The Industrial Revolution
- From an agrarian society to an industrial one; Britain as its origin; technical
inventions and innovations that changed the process of production (in
addition to exchange and consumption); social change
- Preceded by improvements in the agricultural sector, resulting in higher
yields
- i) enclosures increased the amount of arable land; ii) improved seed
increased and improved fertilization & more extensive use of
manpower; iii) technical innovations, such as the four-course rotation
system & improvements of the soil & tools; iv) local and regional
specialisations
- More money available in every household → growing demand for consumer goods, either
imported from the colonies or produced by the expanding sector of skilled manual workers
and the domestic industry
- Emergence of world trade and the world market for Britain; modern history
of capital:
- i) accumulation of profits; ii) opening up markets that would later
absorb mass products from the mother country; iii) creating a
complex network of relations of exchange with flexible infrastructure
 - Population growth: 7 million in 1750, 10 million in 1801, 20 million in 1851;
falling death rate (due to better food, nourishement, higiene and healthcare)
and rising birth rate (women would marry earlier); towns grew into cities
- Begginings: the cotton industry
- Produced high rates of growth and export & functioned as pacemaker
for other sectors; new inventions increased demand in the iron
industry (which necessitated transport); organised in factories, female
workers and children, lower wages therefore higher profits
- Coal: main source of energy
- Iron industry: main building material; later steel
- Lower Scotland: powerhouse of innovation and entrepreneurs; shipbuilding,
processing of jute
- Wales: mining (coal, copper, iron, ore)
- Knowledge transfer through merchants, explorers and missionaries
- Britain, Europe and North America: i) assimilated and refined foreign
technological discoveries, and invented some thanks to a dense dtructire of
civil institutions; ii) harnessed their technology to an economic system bent
on growth, facilitated by the development of specific institutions (bank,
insurance, stock exchange); iii) created medium-sized states which
competed through innovation and warfare; iv) laissez-faire

Political reform
- Protests, riots and revolts of the labouring populations; some concessions
but also centralised bureaucratic state excersising high level of social
control (ex. Poor laws, moral codes, police force)
- Social classes: landowners, trading and manufacturing bourgeoisie & rural
middle classes (tenant farmers) & the labouring classes
- Machines and factories demanded that the labouring people adapted to
unknown work processes, high demands of discipline, articicial work flow;
reactions:
- i) protests, demonstrations, riots, attacks on factories, armed
uprisings; ii) forming political and cultural organisations, agitated and
petitioned for improvement
- Factory laws (1833/44/47/50) reduced working hours of women and children
but gave them lower stature; reformed penal code, convicted criminal would
not be ‘lost’ but ‘corrected’ and reitroduced into the workforce; Poor Law
Amendment Act (1834) intended to prevent the starvation of the poor;
Reforms Acts (1832/67/84) extended the franchise and reorganised the
constituencies
- First Reforms Act (1832) increased the electorate; most new voters were
from the middle classes
- Working classes perceived themselves as excluded; Chartism,
demanded equal constituencies, universal male suffrage, vote by
 secret ballot, payment for MPs, abolition of property qualification for
MPs, annual elections; chart submitted three times, rejected
- Second Reforms Act (1867) extended the vote to working-class electors in
the boroughs on the basis of household suffrage; Third Reforms Act (1884)
extended the vote to working class voters in the countryside

The monarchy
- Prestige of the monarchy waned under the Hanoverian successors; George I
& II did not speak English, were dependent on the Whig faction; George III
was relieved of his duties in 1811 because of madness, tried to gain greater
influence through patronage, ‘old corruption’, lost the American colonies;
George VI & William IV were despised; monarchy was regarded as
incompetent, decadent and corrupt, debates on its abolition
- Republicanism grew under Victoria’s reign (1837-1901); simultaneously the
monarchy was reinvented, Victoria made herself ‘empress of india’
transforming the monarchy into an imperial institution

Gender relations
- Middle-class family: hirearchally structured social group with the husband’s
absolute authority as its apex, responsible for the economic prosperity,
legal security, and social contact of the family with the outside world;
woman as the ‘angel of the house’, responsible for running the household,
raising the children, creating a sphere of warmth and harmony
- Working class family: necessity for two wages, still gender divisions
remained; technologies were developed using women workers, then
replaced by men; family wage, men received higher wages because they
were believed to be responsible for the whole family while women were only
responsible for themselves

Famines
- Union with Ireland was universally interpreted as an annexation in response
to the revolutionary conflicts of 1798 because it was accompanied by hardly
any economic and administrative integration; administration remained
distinctly colonial; economic non-development particularly in the agrarian
sector left a growing population dangerously dependent on decreasing
means of subsistence, the potato was the staple diet of a third of the
population by the mid-1840s
- The blight struck in 1845: population fell by 2 million, 1 million died of
starvation, the rest emigrated to Britain, the US and Australia
- Peel’s Whig government bought and distributed corn from America and
established a programme of public works; Russel’s Whig government (1846)
refused to temper with market forces; relief through workhouses instead of
kitchens, more people died of disease
 - In the Scottish Highlands, the potato famine was avoided: i) only 200,000
people at risk; ii) less potato dependency, greater diversity of food, better
ratio of land to population; iii) the Free Church of Scotland, the Edinburgh
and Glasgow Relief Committees provided relief, insead of the state; iv)
landowners supported the inhabitants of their estates in times of crisis; v)
simultaneous economic boom in the Lowlands, people could emigrate and
earn their living

Catholic emancipation - repeal - Home rule - migration

- Catholic emancipation bill passed in 1821 in the HoC, however HoL and
George IV remained hostile
- Catholic Association (1824) grew into a mass movement, suppressed under
the Unlawful Societies Act in 1825, relaunched as the New Catholic
Association; Daniel O’Connel won a seat at the HoC in 1828; Catholic Relief
Act (1829) allowed both Protestant and Catholic dissenters to enter
Parliament
- Attempts to repeal the Act of Union, first attempt defeated in Parliament in
1834, second collapsed in 1843; Young Ireland rebellion in 1848; the Fenian
movement (1858); two developments: the disestablishment of the (P) Church
of Ireland in 1869 and the constitutional Home Rule movement
- After the famine, decrease in smallholdings; Land Act (1881) granted fair
rents, fixity of tenure and free sale; Home Rule Bill (1914) implemented
after WW1
- Republicans and separatists: Ireland suffered from subjections to a foreign
force which had to be expelled as soon as possible; loyalist unionists: the
existence and survival of the Union and the Empire were the same;
‘devolutionaries’: the Union was to become a part of an imperial federation
embracing the whole Empire; the Irish were both colonial and colonialists,
the Empire offered opportunities of employment and emigration, Irish
people became a significant element in settler colonies
- Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia, granted full parliamentary rights in
the late 1850s

Cultures and ideologies

- Intense interest in the past, a sincere concern for the lives of ordinary
people and a preference for the vernacular formed Romanticism; writers and
artists came to depend on the growing ‘bourgouis’ public; institutions were
created that allowed easier access to art, such as libraries and museums; the
‘realist novel’
- Mental transformations: i) strong interdenominational evangelicalism,
literalist reading of the Bible, conversion-preaching, sabbatarianism and
temperence; ii) strong interest in the cultural traditions in the ‘Gaelic’
nations (in Scotland, pride in national lore and heroes came to underpin a
sense of identity which enabled the Scots to see themeselves as equal
 partners in the Union; in Ireland, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the
Gaelic League aimed to restore Gaelic Ireland, linguistic and archelogical
discoveries supported the Irish claim to an impressive ancient culture; in
Wales, recovery of Welsh sense of history, literary and musical traditions
became well known, traditions revived); iii) the Irish Renaissance, tied to
nationalist ideas and planning
- Critical agnostic spirit with an intense interest in the systematic collection,
classification and dissemination of knowledge, Education Act made
elementary education compulsory

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

- Three periods: i) 16th century to 1780s, the American colonies and West
Indies; ii) 1763-1869, Quebec, American independence, Dominion of Canada,
Suez Canal; iii) 1870-1914, ‘new imperialism’
- Mercantilist philosophy (wealth increase through protected trade): i)
Navigation Act (1651), foundation for lucrative trade with the West Indies;
ii) leading slave-trade nation in the 18th century after the War of the
Spanish Succession; iii) trade tripled in the 18th century
- Twofold strategy: i) consolidate territories that would later become
dominions; ii) economic penetration instead of military conquest
- Grab for Africa suggested that ‘liberal imperialism’ was on the wane, competitors were
catching up; India:key to Britains imperial structure, i) politically, size of the army, ii)
economically, it finananced ⅖ of Britain’s payment deficits

Colonial relationships, modes of imperial control, ‘race’, and colonial

resistance
- Three types of colonial countries: i) Canada, Australia, US, NZ, conquered
and settled by Europeans, exterminated or undermined indiginous
populations, white majority held power; ii) South Africa, Zimbabwe,
indiginous populations defeated and dispossesed, used as cheap labour,
lands transformed into white settlements, power mantained by white
majority by force; iii) India, West Indies, parts of Asia and Africa, governed
but not settled by Europeans, colonial possessions
- White-settler colonies evolved through ‘representative governments’ and
‘responsible governments’ to become self-governing dominions; crown
colonies were ruled from London, or by the Colonial Office (1854)
- Scientific research on ‘racial differences’; degenerationism: God created one
civilisation but later punished human hubris by differentiating the one
civilisation into more advanced and more ‘degenerated’ ones; ‘progressive
social evolution’: savagery-barbarism-civilisation stages of development,
upon meeting lesser cultures the advanced are destined to dominate, civilize
or destroy
 - Resistance: Haitian Black Jacobin revolution (1791) achieved independence
in 1804, became the model

CHAPTER 7: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: DEVASTATION AND

DECLINE, RECONSTRUCTUON AND REORIENTATION, 1914-
99

WARTIME DEVASTATIONS AND PEACETIME DIFFICULTIES

- World wars as the result of endless competition among nation states for
resources and raw materials; shattered economies and deeply rooted
convictions (inevitability of progress

The Great War

- Huge loss of men and financial costs; 15% of the wealth of the country was
wiped out; put an end to Britain’s central position within the international
economy
- Higher governmental control over the economy, labour, industry and
society: direct taxation increased, collaboration between employers and
trade unions, conscription introduced in 1916, health of men acknowledged
(pre-war poverty causing malnutrition), civilian living standards improved
thanks to almost full employment and relatively successful ‘management’,
women experienced higher economic and personal independence

The interwar years

- Attempts at re-establishing and stabilizing the national economy, searching
for international security, coping with the trauma and aftermath of the war
- Economic aftermath: ruin of foreign trade (British dominated markets were
penetrated by Japan and US), necessity to convert a wartime industry to
peace-time production; earnings derived from services curtailed since 40%
of the merchant fleet was gone; recession (1920/21) threw 1.5 million people
into unemployment, unemployment figures between 1-2 million, peaking at 3
million during the Crash of 1929, National Unemployment Workers
Movement; rising living standard, nascent welfare-state
- Internationally: i) ‘dominion nationalism’; ii) Ireland - postponement of Home
Rule (1914), Easter Rising (1916), partition and settlement (1919/22); iii) the
victors of WW1 were unable to agree on and enforce a peaceful order in
Germany, rise of fascisim in Italy and Germany, appeasement of Hitler failed
- Domestic perspective: inertia and drift

The Second World War

- 28% of the country’s wealth wiped out
- Children evacuated to the countryside, conscription introduced immediately,
agricultural output increased to make Britain self-sufficient, certain
 industries were converted to wartime construction, price control and food
rationing introduced to prevent inflation, 7 million women were drawn into
the workforce

The postwar years

- NATO (1949) & Warsaw Pact (1955): Britain as junior partner to the US,
economically dependent on foreign loans from US, US consulted in
important forein affairs, dependent on US for access to nuclear weaponry,
often indifferent to the process of European cooperation and integration
- Labour party introduced the welfare state, though limited by economic
devastation

RECONSTRUCTION AND ITS LIMITS

The economy
- 2.7 million dollars from the Marshall Plan; first post-war decade: rapid
growth, full employment, low inflation
- Decline: cuts to the welfare state because of massive rearmament
programme, pound devalued in 1947; resources were redirected from
export-oriented industries to the armament industry, causing Britain to lose
important export markets and slowing down recovery; GDP grew by 2.5%,
but rivals grew faster; Britain’s share of world trade shrank from 25% to
10%, shipbuilding market shrank from 37% to 3.7%
- Reasons for decline: poor labour relations, bad management,
contradictory government policies towards industry discouraging
higher levels of investment
- Pound devalued again in 1973, unemployment reached 1 million in 1978
- Thatcher & neoliberalism: cut spending, provided incentives for the private
sector, privatised industries, emasculated the trade unions
- Successfully combated inflation, turned industries profitable and cut
government services
- 3 million unemployed for 5 years, 20% living under the poverty line