we call Victorian Era, or Victorian Era, to the period of almost a century in which Great Britain went from being a country dedicated to agriculture to a fully industrialized country. It is the era of the Industrial Revolution, the railway, social revolutions, etc. A whole century dedicated to a queen, in a country that evolved at different rates. Next we will know its politics, society, architecture and everything you need to know about this exciting historical era, the It was Victorian.
The Victorian Era | Situation
The British Empire experienced its heyday in the mid-19th century. A period in which profound social, cultural and political changes coincide with the reign of Victoria I. When Queen Victoria I came to the throne, England maintained an agrarian and rural economy; When the queen died, she left behind a developed country, with a railway, industry and a new social class, which from then on would play a very important role.
In the Victorian Era Great Britain became the First world potency, its economy prospers and with it its imperialist desires, culminating when Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India, as the last colony annexed to the Empire. Great Britain had a large fleet and had become master of maritime trade and prepared for the great industrial revolution.
The Victorian Era | The reign of Queen Victoria I
the wars of Napoleon Bonaparte they had finished in 1815And while the Revolution and Imperial France had changed the face of Europe and exhausted the imagination of the entire world, there was also, more silently, the mighty Britain, which would soon enter the scene as the world’s leading power. In this frame Princess Victoria was born in 1819.
In what remained of the nineteenth century, and even beginning the twentieth, Britain it would remain the world’s leading power, far above any other. Towards the 19th century, it still retained much of its colonial empire: Areas of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Canada, Australia, and hundreds of islands around the world remained under the control of the British kingdom, and its prolific Royal Navy. Great Britain controlled areas so far away within the globe that at all times there was one of its colonies illuminated by the sun’s rays, as also happened with the Spanish Empire.
Victoria I, reigned for a long period of time, starting his reign when he was only 18 years old after the death of her paternal uncle, King William IV, on June 20, 1837. She did not leave the throne until her death, at the age of 63, in 1901. A woman of exquisite manners, but with the requirements that you have to have a Queen with a Sense of State and a relative compassion.
Queen Victoria always tried to protect the cosmopolitan interests of the time and wanted strengthen international relations between the different monarchical houses European, marrying their children with heirs and heiresses of the different monarchical houses of old Europe. She is a queen with great Germanic influences and also married to a German, Prince Albert. Her first child, Victoria, would later become the wife of Frederick III, Kaiser of Imperial Germany.
In the year of her death, in 1901, most of the rulers of the European continent were Victoria’s nephews, cousins, or even grandchildren. Among them, Wilhelm II, who led Germany to First World War. It’s true, more than half of the world’s population during the Victorian Era lived outside the British Empire. But this fact also emphasizes another more eloquent one: Nearly half the world’s population actually lived in some area of the globe ruled by Queen Victoria. from London.
This was the stamp of Victory about world history. For much of the 19th century, the British pound sterling was the currency of world markets, the British fleet the ultimate authority overseas, the smoky factories and countless railways the example for all other powers to follow. they imitated the Industrial Revolution british.
The change in the mode of production (formerly with peasants and artisans as actors, now with workers in factories) soon revolutionized society and the economy of the whole world, leading to the industrial age. While the development of railway and other industries catalyzed the new type of capitalist production, Queen Victoria boldly ruled her kingdom, influencing the entire world.
The Victorian Era | Politics
This period is a period of economic consolidation, the colonies and their colonial system will provide the raw materials necessary for the success of the industrial revolution.
A century in which Great Britain needed stability and achieved it through various conflicts and wars like the one in Crimeawars that increased with the arrival of the new imperialist policies that put the different colonies on a war footing and that would end up leading to the Boer Wars.
The parties that made up the House of Commons were the Whigs and the Toriesit is at this time when the Whig, change becoming the Liberals.
Some of the important reforms carried out by the prime ministers during this Era were:
- Robert Peell: applied a tax to those who had high incomes (more than 150 pounds per year) and established the basis for a liberal trade policy could be created.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1865-1868 and 1874-1880): He granted the right of universal suffrage to both the petty bourgeoisie and the workers. Later, he promoted equal rights between employers and workers.
- William Gladstone (1868-1874,1880,1892,1894) instituted the secret ballot in 1872. In 1884 the right to vote came to rural owners and the countryside.
The governments alternated during the Victorian Era, but none addressed the problem of the need for self-government in Ireland, a fact that was not given due importance and that would later play a very important role, especially at the end of this Victorian era.
riots in india like that of 1857, when the sepoys, native members of the army of The British East India Company, they rebelled against her rule. Different social sectors of the population joined this revolt. Before the continuous revolts, the company was suppressed in August 1858, passing India from being a Colony governed by the British Company to depend directly on the British Crownthus beginning the period of the British Raj.
Little by little they took over economically important places, as in 1875 when Great Britain bought the shares that Egypt had on the suez canal, taking advantage of the lack of liquidity of the Egyptian government and its need to settle debts, something that Great Britain took advantage of without hesitation. Eight years later, in 1882, Egypt became a Protectorate of Great Britain, they subtly occupied the lands surrounding the Suez Canal, the excuse, to ensure trade routes to India.
They begin to settle different societies of intellectualssome like the Fabian society whose objective was to promote the socialist movement, important people such as Friedrich Hayek, George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, were active members of this society. Movements that had their maximum representation when in 1887, thousands of people from the socialist sphere, unemployed and poorly paid workers demonstrated against the Government in Trafalgar Squareresulting in hundreds of injuries and two deaths, this Sunday in November would go down in history as Bloody Sunday.
The Victorian Era | Economy
Victorian Britain It was eminently textile, with the arrival of the industry, especially in the world of clothing, GDP skyrocketsmechanization and industrialization it employs a sector of the population that until now had felt marginalized. Mechanization begins to settle in factories.
The creation of new factories It was also a boost in the steel industry, the colonial operations began to be more profitable than ever. The transport revolution with the appearance of the railway and the steamboat, they make necessary the creation of a heavier industry, an industry created for iron, steel and coal.
Another new trade begins to bear fruit, coal trading, necessary for the new steam industry, steel and iron are needed for transport and factories, half the world needs it, and Great Britain aware of this will become the main exporter.
The Victorian Era | The society
The society of the Victorian Era responds to a economic prosperity that was experienced during this time, the hegemony of the British Empire at the international level and the growing popularity of the monarchy as a symbol of national unity, created a type of society where a new social class, the middle class, began to dictate their tastes and impose behaviors. The estates were clearly differentiated:
- The royalty
- Gentry
- Middle class
- workers/workers
In front of one high society that had never disappeared, full of nobles and large estates, the upper bourgeoisie appears, a class that were originally merchants and that with the industrial revolution, had become the new rich, who could never qualify for higher social classes but who were the ones who really managed the economy.
the middle classes, they adored money, exalted work and recognized effort as a form or means of economic prosperity. The family begins to provide order and stability, becoming a domestic ideal, where temperance and order can only be achieved through strict religious morality.
Finally the class of workers and laborers, always at the mercy of the availability of a daily wage to be able to live, it is the lowest class, the outcasts of society, whose advantage is the number, they are massive and they will also have an important role in the social revolutions of the time, thanks to the subsequent appearance of the unions, which would fight to improve the conditions of these most disadvantaged classes.
The Victorian Era – The Society | The High Society
During the victorian era there were, as in any period, different social classes. On one side were the higher social classes, composed of those who had noble titles or were holders of large family fortunes. Members of the monarchies, priests, aristocrats, etc. belonged to this upper class.
The nobility was still at the top of society, owners of large estates and above all, the heirs of the social valuesyes Most of them did not have large amounts of liquid money, if in titles and possessions, but not in cash, so many of them were forced to become related to the social class that had it, the upper bourgeoisie.
the upper bourgeoisie They were the owners of…