United Kingdom

Victorian era; empire at its height

Late Modern Era / 19th Century · ~1800 – 1914

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the most powerful state of the nineteenth century. It was the first country to industrialise, and by 1900 its empire covered roughly a quarter of the world's land and people. The Victorian era is named for Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901. Many historians treat it as the age in which Britain's influence peaked, around the middle of the century and into the 1870s.

Britain's rise rested on coal, iron, steam power, factories, railways and a navy that protected world trade. At home the century brought expanded voting rights, new cities, public health reform and long struggles over poverty, religion and Ireland. Overseas, Britain ruled India directly after 1858 and built colonies and trading networks across Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Challenges from Germany, the United States and nationalist movements in the later decades began to erode its lead before 1914.

Things happened, and the rest is history

The Act of Union with Ireland
Event
What happened
After the Irish rebellion of 1798, the British and Irish parliaments pass Acts of Union in 1800. They take effect on 1 January 1801 and create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Irish members now sit in the parliament at Westminster, and the Irish parliament in Dublin is abolished.
The rest is history
Catholic emancipation was promised by many supporters of the Union but blocked by King George III, and it only came in 1829. Ireland stayed an uneasy part of the state through the Great Famine of the 1840s, the land struggles and the Home Rule debates of the later century. Historians link these tensions to the partition of Ireland in 1921. The Union therefore shaped British politics through the whole Victorian era.
Sources
1. PrimaryUnion with Ireland Act 1800 (40 Geo. III c. 38). Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, 1800.
2. BookKelly, James. Ireland and the Act of Union. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.
Trafalgar and the Royal Navy's supremacy
Event
What happened
On 21 October 1805 a British fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson is killed in the battle. The victory ends French hopes of invading Britain by sea. Britain's navy then dominates the oceans through the rest of the Napoleonic Wars.
The rest is history
After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, no other navy could challenge Britain's for several decades. This let Britain protect its merchants, take key bases such as Cape Colony, Malta and Ceylon, and later suppress the Atlantic slave trade at sea. Many historians see this naval security as a basis of the global trade and empire of the Victorian age. The peace settlement of 1815 left Britain the leading power outside Europe's mainland.
Sources
1. BookRodger, N. A. M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. London: Allen Lane, 2004.
2. BookKennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. London: Allen Lane, 1976.
The Industrial Revolution and the railways
Event
What happened
From the late eighteenth century, steam engines, mechanised cotton mills and ironworks spread across Britain, especially in the north and Midlands. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opens in 1830 as the first intercity line run entirely by steam locomotives. Within two decades the railway network links most major towns.
The rest is history
By the mid-nineteenth century Britain produced a large share of the world's coal, iron and manufactured goods, and Manchester and Birmingham grew into huge industrial cities. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London displayed this lead. Historians debate how fast the change was, but agree it transformed work, towns and wealth. Britain's industrial strength paid for its fleet and its overseas investment.
Sources
1. BookHobsbawm, E. J. Industry and Empire. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968.
2. BookAllen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
The Great Reform Act of 1832
Event
What happened
After years of pressure and unrest, the Representation of the People Act 1832 passes under Earl Grey's Whig government. It removes many tiny 'rotten boroughs' and gives seats to new industrial towns. It also enlarges the electorate, though most men and all women still cannot vote.
The rest is history
The Act did not create democracy, but it accepted that Parliament could be reformed and that the new middle class deserved a voice. Later acts followed in 1867 and 1884, widening the male vote further. Chartism in the 1830s and 1840s pressed for more. By 1918 votes for most men and some women arrived, and the 1832 Act is seen as the first step on that road.
Sources
1. PrimaryRepresentation of the People Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45). Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 7 June 1832.
2. BookEvans, Eric J. The Great Reform Act of 1832. London: Methuen, 1983.
Abolition of slavery in the British Empire
Event
What happened
Britain bans its ships from the transatlantic slave trade in 1807. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 then ends slavery in most of the empire from 1834. Enslaved people in the Caribbean are first made apprentices, and apprenticeship ends early in 1838. The government pays £20 million in compensation to slave owners, not to the enslaved.
The rest is history
Campaigners such as William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and many enslaved people's own resistance, including the Jamaican uprising of 1831, drove the change. The Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron later patrolled against the trade. Historians still debate how far moral campaigning or economic and political change explains abolition. The compensation loan was finally paid off by taxpayers in 2015.
Sources
1. PrimarySlavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73). Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 1833.
2. BookHochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Free trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws
Event
What happened
The Corn Laws taxed imported grain and kept bread prices high. After the Anti-Corn Law League's campaign and the Irish potato famine, Prime Minister Robert Peel pushes repeal through Parliament in 1846. His Conservative party splits over it. Britain moves steadily towards free trade over the following years.
The rest is history
Free trade became the guiding economic idea of Victorian Britain. Cheap food fed the growing towns, and Britain's merchants, shipping and banks came to dominate world commerce. The Navigation Acts were also ended in 1849. Free trade lasted as national policy until the 1930s, though it was challenged from the 1880s.
Sources
1. BookSchonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. From the Corn Laws to Free Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
2. PrimaryImportation Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. c. 22). Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 1846.
The Indian Rebellion and the Crown takes over India
Event
What happened
In May 1857 soldiers of the East India Company's army rise at Meerut, and revolt spreads across northern and central India. The Company and British forces suppress it by 1858 with great violence on both sides. Parliament passes the Government of India Act in August 1858. It ends Company rule and places India under the Crown.
The rest is history
Queen Victoria was proclaimed to rule India in November 1858, and in 1877 she took the title Empress of India. Britain then governed through a Viceroy, a large army and a civil service, and also through princely states. The rebellion left deep distrust between rulers and ruled. India became the centre of the empire's wealth and military power until independence in 1947.
Sources
1. PrimaryGovernment of India Act 1858 (21 & 22 Vict. c. 106). Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 2 August 1858.
2. BookDalrymple, William. The Last Mughal. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
Victoria's reign and the Diamond Jubilee
Event
What happened
Victoria becomes queen in June 1837 at age eighteen, after the death of her uncle William IV. In 1840 she marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and they have nine children. Albert dies in December 1861. Her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and Diamond Jubilee in 1897 are marked by large celebrations in London with troops from across the empire.
The rest is history
The monarchy's political power was limited, but Victoria became a symbol of the nation and empire. Her children and grandchildren married into many European royal houses. She died on 22 January 1901 after 63 years on the throne, then the longest reign in British history. Her death is often taken as the end of the Victorian era.
Sources
1. BookHibbert, Christopher. Queen Victoria: A Personal History. London: HarperCollins, 2000.
2. BookPlunkett, John. Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Queen Victoria: "We are not amused"
Popular belief
The legend
Queen Victoria is said to have answered a risqué joke at court with the stern words 'We are not amused'. The phrase is quoted as proof of her severe, humourless character.
The rest is history
No reliable record shows her saying it at the time the story claims. Her granddaughter's account says the queen denied ever saying it. Victoria's own journals show her laughing often and enjoying theatre and comic songs. The phrase is probably a later invention that suited the stereotype of 'Victorian' stiffness.
Sources
1. BookHibbert, Christopher. Queen Victoria: A Personal History. London: HarperCollins, 2000.
"The empire acquired in a fit of absence of mind"
Popular belief
The legend
A popular belief holds that the British Empire grew almost by accident, picked up carelessly with no plan. The idea comes from the line that Britain acquired its empire 'in a fit of absence of mind'.
The rest is history
The line comes from the historian J. R. Seeley's 1883 book The Expansion of England. Seeley was making a point about how little attention English historians had paid to expansion, not claiming it was unplanned. The record shows many deliberate moves, such as the seizure of Singapore in 1819, the conquest of the Punjab in 1849 and the occupation of Egypt in 1882. Historians still debate how far policy was planned or driven by local agents and trade.
Sources
1. BookSeeley, J. R. The Expansion of England. London: Macmillan, 1883.
2. BookPorter, Andrew, ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume III: The Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
The sun never sets on the British Empire
Popular belief
The legend
It is often said that the sun never set on the British Empire, because its lands lay in every time zone, so it was always daytime somewhere in its territory. The saying is repeated as a plain fact about Victorian Britain.
The rest is history
The phrase was used earlier for other empires such as Spain's, and was applied to Britain in the early nineteenth century. It is a boast rather than a measured claim, but at its height the empire really did span territories across the globe. By 1920 it covered around a quarter of the world's land area. Critics and later historians point out that the phrase hides the violence and inequality of imperial rule.
Sources
1. BookFerguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London: Allen Lane, 2003.
The Victorians were prudish about table legs
Popular belief
The legend
Victorians are said to have been so prudish that they covered piano and table legs with little skirts, to avoid the indecency of bare legs.
The rest is history
There is little evidence that this was common practice. The tale seems to come from a few anecdotes, notably Captain Frederick Marryat's 1839 travel book about the United States, which mentions a seminary that dressed piano legs in 'little trousers'. Victorian attitudes to sex and the body were complicated, and covered furniture was mostly a matter of dust and fashion. The story shows more about later ideas of Victorians than about their lives.
Sources
1. BookMarryat, Frederick. A Diary in America. London: Longman, 1839.
2. BookHoughton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.

← Back to the outline

Things happened, and the rest is history

The Act of Union with Ireland

Trafalgar and the Royal Navy's supremacy

The Industrial Revolution and the railways

The Great Reform Act of 1832

Abolition of slavery in the British Empire

Free trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws

The Indian Rebellion and the Crown takes over India

Victoria's reign and the Diamond Jubilee

Queen Victoria: "We are not amused"

"The empire acquired in a fit of absence of mind"

The sun never sets on the British Empire

The Victorians were prudish about table legs