Overview of British History

OVERVIEW OF BRITISH HISTORY

AND

THE VICTORIAN ERA

SECTION 1: ERAS IN BRITISH HISTORY

British History: The Middle Ages
After the departure of the Romans in the fifth century, the island of Great Britain was largely controlled by Anglo-Saxon settlers from the north whose various kingdoms unified during the 10th century. In 1066 the Norman king William I, known as William the Conqueror, invaded England, ushering in centuries of rule by monarchs of French origin. The 12th, 13th and 14th centuries saw the development of a distinct English culture and the establishment of a system of law, including the issue in 1215 of the Magna Carta. In the late 1340s, the plague pandemic known as the Black Death devastated England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, killing an estimated one-third of the British population.

Topics of Interest: Middle Ages, The Crusades, The Real Robin Hood, Richard I, Magna Carta, Black Death

British History: The Tudor Period (1485-1603)
Following the dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses, Henry VII of the House of Tudor ascended the throne in 1485. His son, Henry VIII, broke with the Roman Catholic Church, appointing himself head of the Church of England and effectively making England a Protestant nation. The 44-year reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, was marked by a flourishing of British literature, music and theater. Elizabeth also led England during its 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada, an event that weakened the Spanish Empire and paved the way for future British colonization of North America.

Topics of Interest: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Exploration of North America, William Shakespeare

British History: The Stuart Period (1603-1714)
After the death of his cousin Elizabeth I, James I of the House of Stuart, which had ruled Scotland since the late 14th century, ascended the throne of England, bringing the kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland under a single crown. In 1649, in the midst of the English Civil War, the Stuart dynasty was briefly overthrown when parliamentarians executed Charles I and replaced the monarchy with a republican form of government; it was restored to power with the return of Charles II from exile in 1660. In 1707, the Treaty of Union combined the kingdoms of England, Wales and Scotland, creating the United Kingdom. Perhaps most significantly, the Stuart Period saw the establishment of numerous colonies and trading posts in North America and the Caribbean as the British Empire began to take shape.

Topics of Interest: English Civil Wars, Jamestown Colony, Plymouth Colony

British History: The Georgian Era (1714-1837)Born and raised in Germany, George I succeeded his second cousin Anne to the British throne in 1714, becoming the first monarch of the House of Hanover. In the decades that followed, waves of reform and unrest swept the realm, laying the foundation for the modern British political system and inspiring an artistic revolution. Meanwhile, the British Empire continued to expand through trade, exploration and military victories in conflicts such as the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars. It also suffered a major loss in the form of its 13 American colonies, which gained their independence after decades of escalating tensions and a violent eight-year struggle. In the final years of the Georgian Era, Great Britain emerged as the strongest imperial power on the planet, dominating global trade and leading the world in industry and technology.

Topics of Interest: 13 Colonies, Stamp Act, American Revolution

British History: The Victorian Era (1837-1901)Bolstered by the riches of its territories abroad and rising standards of living at home, most of the United Kingdom enjoyed a period of prosperity and unprecedented population growth during Queen Victoria’s reign; the exception was Ireland, where in the 1840s a severe famine caused a million deaths and spurred a mass exodus. The era was deeply influenced by the Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the late 18th century and reached its zenith under Victoria, and by advances in the scientific realm, including Darwin’s work on evolution. Britain continued to pursue an expansionist agenda during this period and fought in several conflicts, including the Crimean War and the Boer Wars.

Topics of Interest: Queen Victoria, Industrial Revolution, Jack the Ripper

British History: The 20th CenturyThe United Kingdom entered the 20th century as the most powerful nation in the world. Within 50 years, it had weathered a violent revolt that culminated in the 1922 secession of the Irish Free State, later known as the Republic of Ireland, and two devastating world wars that upended the global balance of power. The interwar and postwar periods also witnessed the rise and ultimate success of independence movements in many of Britain’s spheres of influence overseas, including India, Sudan, South Africa, Palestine and Hong Kong. The mighty British Empire slowly gave way to a commonwealth of independent nations with shared values and loose cultural ties. On the domestic front, Britain’s social and political institutions underwent a major transformation as women gained the right to vote, immigrants arrived from new corners of the globe and the state became more involved in the lives of its citizens.

Topics of Interest: Titanic, World War I, Battle of the Somme, Winston Churchill, World War II, Battle of Britain

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“British History.” History. 2003. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.

SECTION 2: THE VICTORIAN ERA

ARTICLE 1

Overview of the Victorian Era

by Anne Shepherd

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first English monarch to see her name given to the period of her reign whilst still living. The Victorian Age was characterized by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere - from advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Over time, this rapid transformation deeply affected the country's mood: an age that began with a confidence and optimism leading to economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's place in the world. Today we associate the nineteenth century with the Protestant work ethic, family values, religious observation and institutional faith.

For the most part, nineteenth century families were large and patriarchal. They encouraged hard work, respectability, social deference and religious conformity. While this view of nineteenth century life was valid, it was frequently challenged by contemporaries. Women were often portrayed as either Madonnas or whores, yet increasing educational and employment opportunities gave many a role outside the family.

Politics were important to the Victorians; they believed in the perfection of their evolved representative government and in exporting it throughout the British Empire. This age saw the birth and spread of political movements, most notably socialism, liberalism and organised feminism. British Victorians were excited by geographical exploration, by the opening up of Africa and Asia to the West, yet were troubled by the intractable Irish situation and humiliated by the failures of the Boer War. At sea, British supremacy remained largely unchallenged throughout the century.

During the Victorian heyday, work and play expanded dramatically. The national railway network stimulated travel and leisure opportunities for all, so that by the 1870s, visits to seaside resorts, race meetings and football matches could be enjoyed by many of this now largely urban society. Increasing literacy stimulated growth in popular journalism and the ascendancy of the novel as the most powerful popular icon.

The progress of scientific thought led to significant changes in medicine during the nineteenth century, with increased specialization and developments in surgery and hospital building. There were notable medical breakthroughs in anaesthetics - famously publicized by Queen Victoria taking chloroform for the birth of her son in 1853 - and in antiseptics, pioneered by Joseph Lister (1827-1912). The public's faith in institutions was evident not only in the growth of hospitals but was also seen in the erection of specialized workhouses and asylums for the most vulnerable members of society.

Whilst this brief overview can only partially summarize some characteristics of the nineteenth century, it does illustrate that society was disparate and that no one feature can serve to give a definitive view of what it meant to be “Victorian.” Rather, it is better perhaps to consider the multifarious and diverse research that has evolved in recent years and make up your own mind.

Shepherd, Anne. “Overview of the Victorian Era.” History in Focus. Apr. 2001. Web. 04 Feb. 2013.

ARTICLE 2

Overview of the Victorians

For much of the last century the term Victorian, which literally describes things and events in the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), conveyed connotations of "prudish," "repressed," and "old fashioned." Although such associations have some basis in fact, they do not adequately indicate the nature of this complex, paradoxical age that was a second English Renaissance. Like Elizabethan England, Victorian England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture.

In science and technology, the Victorians invented the modern idea of invention -- the notion that one can create solutions to problems, that man can create new means of bettering himself and his environment.

In religion, the Victorians experienced a great age of doubt, the first that called into question institutional Christianity on such a large scale. In literature and the other arts, the Victorians attempted to combine Romantic emphases upon self, emotion, and imagination with Neoclassical ones upon the public role of art and a corollary responsibility of the artist.

In ideology, politics, and society, the Victorians created astonishing innovation and change: democracy, feminism, unionization of workers, socialism, Marxism, and other modern movements took form. In fact, this age of Darwin, Marx, and Freud appears to be not only the first that experienced modern problems but also the first that attempted modern solutions. Victorian, in other words, can be taken to mean parent of the modern -- and like most powerful parents, it provoked a powerful reaction against itself.

The Victorian age was not one, not single, simple, or unified, only in part because Victoria's reign lasted so long that it comprised several periods. Above all, it was an age of paradox and power. The Catholicism of the Oxford Movement, the Evangelical movement, the spread of the Broad Church, and the rise of Utilitarianism, socialism, Darwinism, and scientific Agnosticism, were all in their own ways characteristically Victorian; as were the prophetic writings of Carlyle and Ruskin, the criticism of Arnold, and the empirical prose of Darwin and Huxley; as were the fantasy of George MacDonald and the realism of George Eliot and George Bernard Shaw.

Landow, George P. “Victorian and Victorianism.” Victorian Web. 2 Aug. 2009. Web. 04 Feb. 2013.

ARTICLE 4
Victorian taste

What did the Victorians like? What kind of furniture, silverwork, jewelry, wallpaper, and glass did they buy for their own homes? Even to begin to answer that question one must put the terms "Victorian" and "Victorians" within quotation marks twice — first because the Victorian years, which lasted from 1835 (or even 1830) to 1903 or a few years beyond, obviously divides into three, four, or even five periods. Whereas the early part of Victoria's reign saw interest in a medieval or Gothick Revival in all aspects of architecture and design, much of the mid- and late-Victorian period was a time of the lush, abundant, cluttered look that most of us associate with the term "Victorian." Then, from the 1880s onward, a series of reactions against High Victorian taste took place — Aestheticism, Art Nouveau, Japonisme, the Arts and Crafts movement, the Celtic Revival and the Liberty style, and finally Art Deco, which reached its height much later, in the 1930s and '40s. Therefore, when anyone talks about "Victorian taste," we have to find out to which part of Victoria's reign they refer.

Second and equally important, Victorian taste varied widely according to social class and the not-always-closely-related matter of economic status. To begin with, many members of the nobility and land-owning gentry, who lived in homes their families had occupied for centuries, found themselves surrounded by Elizabethan, Jacobean, and eighteenth-century furnishings, and unless they were self-consciously interested in contemporary taste, they were often unlikely to replace perfectly good furniture or silver, however old and out-of-fashion, with any examples of new taste. A conservative, prosperous, but not particularly wealthy member of the squierarchy, like Ralph Carbury of Trollope's The Way We Live Now, had no fashionable furnishings. Similarly, members of the working classes, farm workers, and unemployed poor, who together made up far more than half of the Victorian population, did not have the resources to furnish their homes with properly Victorian things.

By and large, then, questions of Victoran taste refer primarily to the middle and professional classes, to factory owners in the industrial North, and a very few wealthy trendsetters.

Landow, George P. “What was Victorian taste, really?” The Victorian Web. Aug. 1999. Web. 04. Feb. 2013.

ARTICLE 6

Brief Biography of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens(Charles John Huffam Dickens) was born in Landport, Portsmouth, on February 7, 1812. Charles was the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (1789–1863). The Dickens family moved to London in 1814 and two years later to Chatham, Kent, where Charles spent early years of his childhood. Due to the financial difficulties they moved back to London in 1822, where they settled in Camden Town, a poor neighborhood of London.
The defining moment of Dickens's life occurred when he was 12 years old. His father, who had a difficult time managing money and was constantly in debt, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtor's prison in 1824. Because of this, Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work in a warehouse that handled 'blacking' or shoe polish to help support the family. This experience left profound psychological and sociological effects on Charles. It gave him a firsthand acquaintance with poverty and made him the most vigorous and influential voice of the working classes in his age.
After a few months Dickens's father was released from prison and Charles was allowed to go back to school. At fifteen his formal education ended and he found employment as an office boy at an attorney's, while he studied shorthand at night. From 1830 he worked as a shorthand reporter in the courts and afterwards as a parliamentary and newspaper reporter.
In 1833 Dickens began to contribute short stories and essays to periodicals.A Dinner at Popular Walkwas Dickens's first published story. It appeared in theMonthly Magazinein December 1833. In 1834, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the soon to be famous pseudonymBoz. Dickens's first book, a collection of stories titledSketches by Boz, was published in 1836. In the same year he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of theEvening Chronicle. Together they had 10 children before they separated in 1858.
Although Dickens's main profession was as a novelist, he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life, editingThe Daily News,Household Words, andAll the Year Round. His connections to various magazines and newspapers gave him the opportunity to begin publishing his own fiction at the beginning of his career.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Clubwas published in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837. Pickwick became one of the most popular works of the time, continuing to be so after it was published in book form in 1837. After the success of Pickwick Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate:Oliver Twist(1837-39),Nicholas Nickleby(1838-39),The Old Curiosity ShopandBarnaby Rudgeas part of theMaster Humphrey's Clockseries (1840-41), all being published in monthly instalments before being made into books.
In 1842 he travelled with his wife to the United States and Canada, which led to his controversialAmerican Notes(1842) and is also the basis of some of the episodes inMartinChuzzlewit. Dickens's series of five Christmas Books were soon to follow;A Christmas Carol(1843),The Chimes(1844),The Cricket on the Hearth(1845),The Battle of Life(1846), andThe Haunted Man(1848). After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846) Dickens continued his success withDombey and Son(1848), the largely autobiographicalDavid Copperfield(1849-50),Bleak House(1852-53),Hard Times(1854),Little Dorrit(1857),A Tale of Two Cities(1859), andGreat Expectations(1861).
In 1856 his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place, an estate he had admired since childhood. In 1858 Dickens began a series of paid readings, which became instantly popular. In all, Dickens performed more than 400 times. In that year, after a long period of difficulties, he separated from his wife. It was also around that time that Dickens became involved in an affair with a young actress named Ellen Ternan. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, but it was clearly central to Dickens's personal and professional life.
In the closing years of his life Dickens worsened his declining health by giving numerous readings. During his readings in 1869 he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke. He retreated to Gad's Hill and began to work onEdwin Drood, which was never completed.
Charles Dickens died at home on June 9, 1870 after suffering a stroke. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: