Victorian History
The Victorian era, from the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 until
her death in 1901, was an era of several unsettling social developments
such as the growth of English democracy, the education of the masses, the
progress of industrial enterprise and the consequent rise of a materialistic
philosophy, and the plight of the newly industrialized worker. In addition,
the unsettling of religious belief by new advances in science, particularly
the theory of evolution and the historical study of the Bible, drew other
writers away from the immemorial subjects of literature into considerations
of problems of faith and truth. When William IV was succeeded by his 18-year-old
niece Victoria in 1837, she and her husband Albert came to symbolize a
close-knit family life, a sense of public duty, integrity, and respectability.
This period saw a trend toward free trade continued, aided by the 1849
repeal of the Navigation Acts, and a system of administrative regulation
was gradually established. Women and children were barred from underground
work in mines and limited to 10-hour working days in factories. Regulations
were also imposed on urban sanitation facilities and passenger-carrying
railroads, and commissions were set up to oversee prisons, insane asylums,
merchant shipping, and private charities. Attempts to subsidize elementary
education, however, were hampered by conflict over the church's role in
running schools.
From the late 1840s until the late
1860s, Britons were less concerned with domestic conflict than with an
economic boom occasionally affected by wars and threats of war on the Continent
and overseas. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London symbolized Britain's
industrial supremacy. The 10,600-km (6600-mi) railroad network of 1850
more than doubled during the mid-Victorian years, and the telegraph provided
instant communication. Inexpensive steel was made possible by Henry Bessemer's
process and a boom in steamship building began in the 1860s. In 1857 and
1858, the Sepoy Mutiny was suppressed, and Britain abolished the East India
Company, making British India a crown colony. Hong Kong and Singapore served
as centers of British trade and influence in China and the South Pacific
and the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 led to a British protectorate
over Egypt in 1882. The policies of Joseph Chamberlain contributed to the
outbreak of the Boer War in 1899. Britain suffered initial reverses in
that war but then captured Johannesburg and Pretoria in 1900. Only after
protracted guerrilla warfare, however, was the conflict brought to an end
in 1902. By then Queen Victoria was dead.
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