Queen Victoria(1837-1901)came to the throne during a difficult political period. Famine in Ireland and and the birth of the movement for Irish independence, led by Charles S. Parnell (1846-91), who asked for Home Rule (self-government) for Ireland, but it was rejected.
Britain set herself at the head of the liberal forces in Europe,- identified with political liberalism and free trade -opposed to European monarchies such as Austria and Russia, which were absolutist and protectionist. Britain togehter with France won the Crimean War (1854-56), due to a dispute between Turkey and Russia.
During the reign of Queen Victoria the British Empire expanded thanks to two processes: the impulse to consolidate overseas markets and the population surplus at home. Australia,New Zealand, Canada, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were part of the Empire.
India was ‘the jewel in the crown’, the richest a part of the Empire — in 1876 Queen Victoria became Empress of India.
In South'Africa British won the Boer War (1899-1902) against the descendants of the Dutch colonists (called Boers) and gained control over Orange and Transvaal, rich in gold and diamonds.
It was believed that having an empire was a duty: ‘the white man’s burden’, the right to civilise other populations.
The Empire was of supreme importance for Great Britain, it gave it commercial and financial greatness. Only Germany and the United States were able to challenge Britain's supremacy.
SOCIETY
The Reform Bill of 1832 had partly given the middle class the right to vote, the Chartist movement that wrote the People’s Charter (1838) asked for the extension of the right to vote to the working class. It was only in 1867 with the second Reform Bill that town workers obtined the right to vote, but still excluded miners and agricultural workers. A third Reform Bill in 1884 gave the right to vote to all male workers.
Thanks to its Empire and its industry and science, Britain became the world’s leading political and economic power.
The invention of the steam locomotive and steam boat, made the triumph of industry possible. Scientific research was applied to the invention and construction of machines. Very important discoveries were the electricity, the telegraph and gas lighting in city streets.
The poor endured terrible conditions. With the Poor Law of 1834 the poor were amassed in workhouses where they did very unpleasant jobs in return for food and shelter in terrible conditions such like as in urban slums in large towns. However, during the Victorian Age some important social reforms were carried out. The most important were the Mines Act (1862), which made the employment of women and children in mines illegal, and the Trade Union Act (1875), which made the activities of the unions of workers legal.
THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE: The Victorian era was a complex and contradictory time. It was marked by progress, stability, and great social reforms, but it was also characterized by poverty, injustice, and social unrest, ‘the two nations’, a society made up of only two classes, the rich and the poor. Different thinkers, Carlyle
John Stuart Mill , and John Ruskin, were concerned with the damage industrialization was bringing to man and the environment. The miserable condition of the British working class greatly contributed to the revolutionary theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , who both lived in England and together wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848).
Victorian morals and religion were deeply shaken by the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859)by Charles Darwin (1809-82). In proclaiming that man was the result of gradual evolution, scientists challenged the Christian belief in the creation of man by God as told by the Bible. Darwin postulated the idea that man was only an evolved ape.