President James Monroe’s 1823 annual message to Congress contained the Monroe Doctrine, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
Understandably, the United States has always taken a particular interest in its closest neighbors – the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Equally understandably, expressions of this concern have not always been favorably regarded by other American nations.
The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Buried in a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823, the doctrine warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs. The doctrine was conceived to meet major concerns of the moment, but it soon became a watchword of U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere.
The Monroe Doctrine was invoked in 1865 when the U.S. government exerted diplomatic and military pressure in support of the Mexican President Benito Juárez. This support enabled Juárez to lead a successful revolt against the Emperor Maximilian, who had been placed on the throne by the French government.
Almost 40 years later, in 1904, European creditors of a number of Latin American countries threatened armed intervention to collect debts. President Theodore Roosevelt promptly proclaimed the right of the United States to exercise an “international police power” to curb such “chronic wrongdoing.” As a result, U. S. Marines were sent into Santo Domingo in 1904, Nicaragua in 1911, and Haiti in 1915, ostensibly to keep the Europeans out. Other Latin American nations viewed these interventions with misgiving, and relations between the “great Colossus of the North” and its southern neighbors remained strained for many years.
In 1962, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked symbolically when the Soviet Union began to build missile-launching sites in Cuba. With the support of the Organization of American States, President John F. Kennedy threw a naval and air quarantine around the island. After several tense days, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw the missiles and dismantle the sites. Subsequently, the United States dismantled several of its obsolete air and missile bases in Turkey.
ROOSEVELT COROLLARY
President Theodore Roosevelt’s assertive approach to Latin America and the Caribbean has often been characterized as the “Big Stick,” and his policy came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
President Theodore Roosevelt
Although the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was essentially passive (it asked that Europeans not increase their influence or recolonize any part of the Western Hemisphere), by the 20th century a more confident United States was willing to take on the role of regional policeman. In the early 1900s Roosevelt grew concerned that a crisis between Venezuela and its creditors could spark an invasion of that nation by European powers. The Roosevelt Corollary of December 1904 stated that the United States would intervene as a last resort to ensure that other nations in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their obligations to international creditors, and did not violate the rights of the United States or invite “foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” As the corollary worked out in practice, the United States increasingly used military force to restore internal stability to nations in the region. Roosevelt declared that the United States might “exercise international police power in ‘flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence.’” Over the long term the corollary had little to do with relations between the Western Hemisphere and Europe, but it did serve as justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
DOLLAR DIPLOMACY
Dollar Diplomacy, foreign policy created by U.S. Pres. William Howard Taft (served 1909–13) and his secretary of state, Philander C. Knox, to ensure the financial stability of a region while protecting and extending U.S. commercial and financial interests there. It grew out of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt’s peaceful intervention in the Dominican Republic, where U.S. loans had been exchanged for the right to choose the Dominican head of customs.
Under the name of Dollar Diplomacy, the Taft administration engineered such a policy in Nicaragua. It supported the overthrow of José Santos Zelaya and set up Adolfo Díaz in his place; it established a collector of customs; and it guaranteed loans to the Nicaraguan government. The resentment of the Nicaraguan people, however, eventually resulted in U.S. military intervention as well.
The first 10 amendments to the Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. James Madison wrote the amendments, which list specific prohibitions on governmental power, in response to calls from several states for greater constitutional protection for individual liberties. For example, the Founders saw the ability to speak and worship freely as a natural right protected by the First Amendment. Congress is prohibited from making laws establishing religion or abridging freedom of speech. The Fourth Amendment safeguards citizens’ right to be free from unreasonable government intrusion in their homes through the requirement of a warrant.
The Bill of Rights was strongly influenced by the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason. Other precursors include English documents such as the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the English Bill of Rights, and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties.
One of the many points of contention between Federalists, who advocated a strong national government, and Anti-Federalists, who wanted power to remain with state and local governments, was the Constitution’s lack of a bill of rights that would place specific limits on government power. Federalists argued that the Constitution did not need a bill of rights, because the people and the states kept any powers not given to the federal government. Anti-Federalists held that a bill of rights was necessary to safeguard individual liberty.
Madison, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, altered the Constitution’s text where he thought appropriate. However, several representatives, led by Roger Sherman, objected, saying that Congress had no authority to change the wording of the Constitution. Therefore, Madison’s changes were presented as a list of amendments that would follow Article VII.
The House approved 17 amendments. Of these, the Senate approved 12, which were sent to the states for approval in August 1789. Ten amendments were approved (or ratified). Virginia’s legislature was the final state legislature to ratify the amendments, approving them on December 15, 1791.
TRAILS OF TEARS
The events surrounding the «Trail of Tears» are some of the most tragic in the history of the United States government’s treatment of the Native American people. In 1830, the U.S. enacted the Indian Removal Act, which forced the Native Americans in the eastern portion of the country to relocate to western territories. The provisions of the act called for the signing of the Treaty of New Echota in 1838; however, most of the Cherokee tribes did not accept the treaty and refused to leave. Therefore, President Martin Van Buren dispatched troops to gather approximately 17,000 Cherokees into camps and then force their relocation west. An estimated 4,000 Cherokees died during the relocation — most in the camps from disease.
The phrase «Trail of Tears» — or as the Cherokees call it, «The Trail Where They Cried» — can also refer to the forced relocation of other Native American tribes — most notably the Choctaw Nation, which also suffered thousands of deaths in its removal from Mississippi to Oklahoma in the 1830s.
The actual Trail of Tears site is a historic park in Kentucky along the trail the Cherokees followed on their long migration west. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that made the Trail of Tears a National Historic Trail.
THE CONSTITUTION
The Constitution of the United States established America’s national government and fundamental laws, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. It was signed on September 17, 1787, by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Under America’s first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, the national government was weak and states operated like independent countries. At the 1787 convention, delegates devised a plan for a stronger federal government with three branches—executive, legislative and judicial—along with a system of checks and balances to ensure no single branch would have too much power. The Bill of Rights were 10 amendments guaranteeing basic individual protections, such as freedom of speech and religion, that became part of the Constitution in 1791. To date, there are 27 constitutional amendments.
America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was ratified in 1781, a time when the nation was a loose confederation of states, each operating like independent countries. The national government was comprised of a single legislature, the Congress of the Confederation; there was no president or judicial branch.
The Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war and regulate currency; however, in reality these powers were sharply limited because Congress had no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops.
The Declaratory Act was a measure issued by British Parliament asserting its authority to make laws binding the colonists “in all cases whatsoever” including the right to tax. The Declaratory Act was a reaction of British Parliament to the failure of the Stamp Act as they did not want to give up on the principle of imperial taxation asserting its legal right to tax colonies.
When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on March 1766, it concurrently approved the Declaratory Act to justify its repeal. It also declared all resolution issued by the Stamp Act Congress null and void. This act meant that a Parliamentary majority could pass any law they saw fit affecting British subjects and colonists alike.
The British government yielded on the Stamp tax because it was an obstruction to business and trade between the colonies and Britain and the non-importation agreement was hurting British companies.
As a response to the Stamp Act Congress resolutions where representatives of the colonies questioned Britain’s right to tax them without representation, members of the Imperial Parliament declared their right to legislate the colonies stating a “virtual representation” as they were part of the British Empire. Colonists argued that they were represented only in their provincial assemblies making them the only legislative body legally able to levy internal taxes in the colonies. This concept, known as “No taxation without representation” was the slogan adopted by the opposition. External taxes such as the Navigation Acts or the Sugar Act were considered trade duties.
The model of virtual representation acknowledged the fact that members of Parliament represented all British citizens. The Imperial Parliament represented the interests of those living across the Atlantic and in all British colonies and not only the districts that elected them. This concept did not sit well with colonists as it did not guarantee the protection of British subjects outside Britain. Even with physical representation Parliament was too far, three thousand miles away, to exert any influence and make timely and informed decisions. The only way it could work was for the provincial government to legislate on internal taxation.
Many in the colonies celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act and did not vigorously protest the Declaratory Act. However the Sons of Liberty including Samuel Adams, James Otis and John Hancock, saw more taxation coming their way.
The Boston Tea Party was a protest by the American Colonists against the British government. They staged the protest by boarding three trade ships in Boston Harbor and throwing the ships’ cargo of tea overboard into the ocean. They threw 342 chests of tea into the water. Some of the colonists were disguised as Mohawk Indians, but the costumes didn’t fool anyone. The British knew who had destroyed the tea.
Why did the Boston Tea Party happened?
In the 1760s, Britain was deep in debt, so British Parliament imposed a series of taxes on American colonists to help pay those debts.
The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed colonists on virtually every piece of printed paper they used, from playing cards and business licenses to newspapers and legal documents. The Townshend Acts of 1767 went a step further, taxing essentials such as paint, paper, glass, lead and tea.
Britain felt the taxes were fair since much of its debt was earned fighting wars on the colonists’ behalf. The colonists, however, disagreed. They were furious at being taxed without having any representation in Parliament, and felt it was wrong for Britain to impose taxes on them to gain revenue.
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the 13 colonies that formed in Philadelphia in May 1775, soon after the launch of the American Revolutionary War. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met between September and October of 1774.
The First Continental Congress petitioned King George III to repeal the Intolerable Acts and initiated a boycott of British goods. The First Congress established that the Second Continental Congress would convene on May 10, 1775.
Many of the same 56 delegates present at the First Continental Congress were in attendance at the Second Congress. The delegates reappointed former Continental Congress president, Peyton Randolph, and secretary, Charles Thomson, to reprise their roles at the Second Congress. Randolph was soon called away by other duties and succeeded by John Hancock as president. Other notable members of the Congress included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.
By the time the Second Continental Congress met, the American Revolutionary War was already underway. For the first few months of this conflict, the Patriots had carried on their struggle in an ad-hoc and uncoordinated manner. At this point, Congress intervened and assumed leadership of the war effort.
On June 14, 1775, Congress voted to create the Continental Army from Boston militia units. Congressman George Washington of Virginia was appointed commanding general of the army. On July 6, 1775, Congress approved a Declaration of Causes outlining the rationale and necessity for taking up arms in the 13 colonies. On July 8, Congress extended the Olive Branch Petition to the British Crown as a final, unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation.
The Congress assumed all the functions of a national government, such as appointing ambassadors, signing treaties, raising armies, appointing generals, obtaining loans from Europe, and disbursing funds. In the meantime, the Second Continental Congress tried to lead the new country through the war with borrowed funds and no authority to levy taxes. The Congress relied on money, supplies, and troops from the states to support the war effort; however, individual states frequently ignored requests for support.
In September 1777, the Continental Congress was forced to relocate to York, Pennsylvania, as British troops occupied the city of Philadelphia.
Declaración of independence
Declaration of Independence, in U.S. history, document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies had resolved that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Accordingly, the day on which final separation was officially voted was July 2, although the 4th, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted, has always been celebrated in the United States as the great national holiday—the Fourth of July, or Independence Day.
The Declaration of Independence was written largely by Jefferson, who had displayed talent as a political philosopher and polemicist in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America, published in 1774. At the request of his fellow committee members he wrote the first draft. The members of the committee made a number of merely semantic changes, and they also expanded somewhat the list of charges against the king. The Congress made more substantial changes, deleting a condemnation of the British people, a reference to “Scotch & foreign mercenaries”, and a denunciation of the African slave trade.
The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America; four more states soon joined them. The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, ended in Confederate surrender in 1865. The conflict was the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and much of the South left in ruin.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809 near Hodgenville, Kentucky. He was brought up in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. His parents were poor pioneers and Lincoln was largely self-educated. In 1836, he qualified as a lawyer and went to work in a law practice in Springfield, Illinois. He sat in the state legislature from 1834 to 1842 and in 1846 was elected to Congress, representing the Whig Party for a term. In 1856, he joined the new Republican Party and in 1860 he was asked to run as their presidential candidate.
In the presidential campaign, Lincoln made his opposition to slavery very clear. His victory provoked a crisis, with many southerners fearing that he would attempt to abolish slavery in the South. Seven southern states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy. Four more joined later. Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union even if it meant war.
Fighting broke out in April 1861. Lincoln always defined the Civil War as a struggle to save the Union, but in January 1863 he nonetheless issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in areas still under Confederate control. This was an important symbolic gesture that identified the Union’s struggle as a war to end slavery.
In the effort to win the war, Lincoln assumed more power than any president before him, declaring martial law and suspending legal rights. He had difficulty finding effective generals to lead the Union armies until the appointment of Ulysses S Grant as overall commander in 1864.
In 1864, Lincoln stood for re-election and won. In his second inaugural address, he was conciliatory towards the southern states.
On 9 April 1865, the Confederate general Robert E Lee surrendered, effectively ending the war. It had lasted for more than four years and 600,000 Americans had died. Less than a week later, Lincoln was shot while attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC and died the next morning, 15 April 1865. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a strong supporter of the Confederacy.
Gettysburg Address
On November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered what would become his most famous speech and one of the most important speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address. Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War, the National Cemetery of Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania.
The Civil War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the preservation of the Union created in 1776, and the dead at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause. Lincoln evoked the Declaration of Independence, saying it was up to the living to ensure that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” A common interpretation was that the President was expanding the cause of the Civil War from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for equality and abolishing slavery.
The 13th and 14th amendments
The 13th Amendment
This amendment explicitly banned slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States. An exception was made for punishment of a crime. This amendment also gave Congress the power to enforce the article through legislation.
The 14th Amendment
This amendment set out the definitions and rights of citizenship in the United States. The first clause asserted that anyone born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of the United States and of the state in which they live. It also confirmed the right to due process, life, liberty, and property. This overturned the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) Supreme Court ruling that stated that black people were not eligible for citizenship.
The amendment also defined the formula for determining political representation by apportioning representatives among states based on a count of all residents as whole persons. This contrasted with the pre-Civil War compromise that counted enslaved people as three-fifth in representation enumeration. Southern slave owners wanted slaves counted as whole people to increase the representation of southern states in Congress. Even after the 14th Amendment, native people not paying taxes were not counted for representation.
Finally, the amendment dealt with the Union officers, politicians, and debt. It banned any person who had engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States from holding civil or military office. Finally, it declared that no debt undertaken by the Confederacy would be assumed by the United States.
CONSTITUTION
Black Codes
Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Though the Union victory had given some 4 million slaves their freedom, the question of freed blacks’ status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved. Under black codes, many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor. Outrage over black codes helped undermine support for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party.
Under Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, nearly all the southern states would enact their own black codes in 1865 and 1866. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans—including the right to buy and own property, marry, make contracts and testify in court (only in cases involving people of their own race)—their primary purpose was to restrict blacks’ labor and activity.
Some states limited the type of property that blacks could own, while virtually all the former Confederate states passed strict vagrancy and labor contract laws, as well as so-called “antienticement” measures designed to punish anyone who offered higher wages to a black laborer already under contract.
Blacks who broke labor contracts were subject to arrest, beating and forced labor, and apprenticeship laws forced many minors (either orphans or those whose parents were deemed unable to support them by a judge) into unpaid labor for white planters.
Passed by a political system in which blacks effectively had no voice, the black codes were enforced by all-white police and state militia forces—often made up of Confederate veterans of the Civil War—across the South
first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607.
The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it. With passage to the Colonies expensive for all but the wealthy, the Virginia Company developed the system of indentured servitude to attract workers. Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy.
The timing of the Virginia colony was ideal. The Thirty Year’s War had left Europe’s economy depressed, and many skilled and unskilled laborers were without work. A new life in the New World offered a glimmer of hope; this explains how one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.
Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues. While the life of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn’t slavery. There were laws that protected some of their rights. But their life was not an easy one, and the punishments meted out to people who wronged were harsher than those for non-servants. An indentured servant’s contract could be extended as punishment for breaking a law, such as running away, or in the case of female servants, becoming pregnant.
For those that survived the work and received their freedom package, many historians argue that they were better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country. Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year’s worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the treacherous journey by sea and the harsh conditions of life in the New World, satisfaction was a modest life as a freeman in a burgeoning colonial economy.
In 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites. However, slave laws were soon passed – in Massachusetts in 1641 and Virginia in 1661 –and any small freedoms that might have existed for blacks were taken away.
As demands for labor grew, so did the cost of indentured servants. Many landowners also felt threatened by newly freed servants demand for land. The colonial elite realized the problems of indentured servitude. Landowners turned to African slaves as a more profitable and ever-renewable source of labor and the shift from indentured servants to racial slavery had begun.
The first legislature anywhere in the English colonies in America was in Virginia. This was the House of Burgesses, and it first met on July 30, 1619, at a church in Jamestown. Its first order of business was to set a minimum price for the sale of tobacco.
Although the first session was cut short because of an outbreak of malaria, the House of Burgesses soon became a symbol of representative government. The 22 members of the House of Burgesses were elected by the colony as a whole, or actually men over 17 who also owned land. Royally appointed councillors (of which there were usually six) and governor rounded out the legislature. The governor was originally appointed by the Virginia Colony and later by the Crown.
The House of Burgesses, which met at first only once a year, could make laws, which could be vetoed by the governor or the directors of the Virginia Company. This continued to be the standard until 1624, when Virginia became a royal colony. At this time, England took much more control of things in Virginia, restricting the powers of the House of Burgesses.
Through the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, many leaders of the move toward independence made their names in the House of Burgesses. Patrick Henryintroduced seven resolutions against the Stamp Act there in 1765.
The fact that the burgesses could make their own laws was very much on the mind of many people in the American colonies, especially when Great Britain continued to pass harsh laws that the colonists viewed as «taxation without representation.»
Famous burgesses also included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
THE PILGRIMS:
THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
The Mayflower Compact was a set of rules for self-governance established by the English settlers who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower. When Pilgrims and other settlers set out on the ship for America in 1620, they intended to lay anchor in northern Virginia. But after treacherous shoals and storms drove their ship off course, the settlers landed in Massachusetts instead, near Cape Cod, outside of Virginia’s jurisdiction. Knowing life without laws could prove catastrophic, colonist leaders created the Mayflower Compact to ensure a functioning social.
Of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, there were 50 men, 19 women and 33 young adults and children. Just 41 were true Pilgrims, religious separatists seeking freedom from the Church of England.
The others were considered common folk and included merchants, craftsmen, indentured servants and orphaned children—the Pilgrims called them “strangers.”
Seeking the right to worship as they wished, the Pilgrims had signed a contract with the Virginia Company to settle on land near the Hudson River, which was then part of northern Virginia. The Virginia Company was a trading company chartered by King James I with the goal of colonizing parts of the eastern coast of the New World.
The Mayflower Compact was important because it was the first document to establish self-government in the New World. It remained active until 1691 when Plymouth Colony became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Mayflower Compact was an early, successful attempt at democracy and undoubtedly played a role in future colonists seeking permanent independence from British rule and shaping the nation that eventually became the United States of America.
THANKSGIVING DAY
Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people, wich was a dinner done by those who survived the first year in the new world after travel from the UK. The American holiday is particularly rich in legend and symbolism, and the traditional fare of the Thanksgiving meal typically includes turkey, bread stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. With respect to vehicular travel, the holiday is often the busiest of the year, as family members gather with one another.
THE 13 COLONIES
THE NORTH COLONIES
The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620. Ten years later, a wealthy syndicate known as the Massachusetts Bay Company sent a much larger (and more liberal) group of Puritans to establish another Massachusetts settlement. With the help of local natives, the colonists soon got the hang of farming, fishing and hunting, and Massachusetts prospered.
As the Massachusetts settlements expanded, they generated new colonies in New England. Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was not pious enough formed the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven (the two combined in 1665). Meanwhile, Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was too restrictive formed the colony of Rhode Island, where everyone–including Jews–enjoyed complete “liberty in religious concernments.” To the north of the Massachusetts colony, a handful of adventurous settlers formed the colony of New Hampshire.
THE MIDDLE COLONIES
The middle colonies contained Native American tribes of Algonkian and Iroquois language groups as well as a sizable percentage of African slaves during the early years. Unlike solidly Puritan New England, the middle colonies presented an assortment of religions.
The middle colonies included Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.
Advantaged by their central location, the middle colonies served as important distribution centers in the English mercantile system. New York and Philadelphia grew at a fantastic rate. These cities gave rise to brilliant thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, who earned respect on both sides of the Atlantic. In many ways, the middle colonies served as the crossroads of ideas during the colonial period.
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES
By contrast, the Carolina colony, a territory that stretched south from Virginia to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was much less cosmopolitan. In its northern half, hardscrabble farmers eked out a living. In its southern half, planters presided over vast estates that produced corn, lumber, beef and pork, and–starting in the 1690s–rice. These Carolinians had close ties to the English planter colony on the Caribbean island of Barbados, which relied heavily on African slave labor, and many were involved in the slave trade themselves. As a result, slavery played an important role in the development of the Carolina colony. (It split into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.)
In 1732, inspired by the need to build a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements in Florida, the Englishman James Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony. In many ways, Georgia’s development mirrored South Carolina’s.
In 1700, there were about 250,000 European and African settlers in North America’s thirteen English colonies. By 1775, on the eve of revolution, there were nearly 2.5 million. These colonists did not have much in common, but they were able to band together and fight for their independence.
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kindom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death
Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at the age of 18. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.
Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet «the grandmother of Europe». After Albert’s death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.
Her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover.
CHILD LABOUR
why did people employed children?
• they were cheap • they had small fingers • they did not complain • they could crawl under machines
What kind of jobs did children do?
Chimney sweepers
Factory workers
Streetsellers
Coal Mines
Crossingsweepers
Small Children Worked as Chimney Sweeps
Being tiny, children could scramble up or down the chimneys of upper-class Victorian houses; some were as young as three years old.
The job of a chimney sweep was to brush off accumulated soot in the chimney. Of course, they wore no protection against the rough brickwork, so their knees and elbows would be sliced and bruised until they developed calluses. Then, there was all the soot they had no choice but to inhale causing lung damage.
Occasionally, the boys would get stuck in the narrow passages of a chimney. The boss’s solution was simple; light a fire to encourage them to wriggle free.
The boys who did this work were often taken out of workhouses and “apprenticed” to chimney sweeps, who frequently beat them to terrorize them into doing the dangerous work.
Young People in Coal Mines
Other children were sent down into the coal mines at the age when today’s kids are starting kindergarten.
Hurriers and fillers were small children who loaded trucks with coal by hand as it was pried from the coal face by older men.
Other children would then drag the trucks of coal along passageways often no more than three feet high. Many children developed a permanent stoop as their spines deformed. Then, there was the ever-present danger of cave-ins and explosions.
Trappers were employed to open and close ventilation doors in the passages as the truckloads of coal were hauled to the mine shaft. The trappers worked in total darkness in shifts of between 12 and 18 hours a day.
Payment was a few pennies a week to add to the meagre earnings of families that lived in absolute squalor.
Factory workers
In textile mills children cleaned machines while
the machines were kept running, and there were many accidents. Many children lost their fingers or arms in the machinery and some were crushed by the huge machines
Street sellers
Thousands of poor children worked and lived on city streets.They worked very long hours for very little money.
To buy bread they sold flowers, matches, ribbons, buttons, bootlaces, polishes shoes.
Crossing-sweepers
A lot of poor children swept away horse-dung and other rubbish in the road.
What was wrong with the working conditions for children?
They started working at the age of five
Children worked very long hours with little breaks and no fresh air.
They often worked in very dangerous conditions
There was no education for the poor, so they could not get better paid jobs when they were older.
Children were paid very little because they were younger
Laws to protect children
These are three laws passed by Parliament.
• 1841 Mines Act With this law children, under the age of 10, could not workunderground in coal mines.
• 1847 Ten Hour Act No child could work more than 10 hours in a day.
• 1874 Factory Act No child under the age of 10 could be employed in a factory
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Jane’s parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. When Jane was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father’s extensive library.
HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote Love and Freindship [sic], a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. Using that framework, she unveiled her wit and dislike of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, a distinct perspective that would eventually characterize much of her later writing. The next year she wrote The History of England…, a 34-page parody of historical writing that included illustrations. These notebooks, encompassing the novels as well as short stories, poems and plays, are now referred to as Jane’s Juvenilia.
She continued to write, developing her style in more ambitious works such as Lady Susan, another epistolary story about a manipulative woman who uses her sexuality, intelligence and charm to have her way with others. Jane also started to write some of her future major works, the first called Elinor and Marianne, another story told as a series of letters, which would eventually be published as Sense and Sensibility. She began drafts of First Impressions, which would later be published as Pride and Prejudice, and Susan, later published as Northanger Abbey by Jane’s brother, Henry, following Jane’s death.
In 1816, at the age of 41, Jane started to become ill with what some say might have been Addison’s disease. She made impressive efforts to continue working at a normal pace, editing older works as well as starting a new novel called The Brothers, which would be published after her death as Sanditon. Another novel, Persuasion, would also be published posthumously. At some point, Jane’s condition deteriorated to such a degree that she ceased writing. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, England.
WINCHESTER
Jane Austen played also an important role in feminism, is not that she reveled herself as a feminist, it was her life and her acts. Women weren’t supposed to write novels, which many considered to be lurid and in bad taste. They especially weren’t supposed to publish them. Women were supposed to confine their lives to the private sphere of family and the home. (In Persuasion, Austen writes: “We live at home, quiet, confined…”) The “public” aspect of publication should have disqualified Austen as an author—according to the customs of the time. But Austen did publish, and she published as “a lady,” rather than using a male pseudonym, as the Bronte sisters did later. It was obviously important to her that readers knew her books were written from a female perspective. In Austen’s works you can also find many demonstrations of feminist beliefs. While none of her characters agitate overtly for changes in gender norms, they also do not blindly follow the dictates of convention. Elizabeth Bennet is too outspoken for a woman and refuses to bow to societal pressure to marry for the sake of money. Fanny Price sticks to her internal sense of right and wrong no matter what her “betters” say. Sense and Sensibility is a very eloquent examination of how women wrestle with questions of being ruled by head or heart. In all of her books, the heroines are struggling to find a place in the world where they can be true to themselves—without compromising their values and needs.
Wilberforce was a deeply religious English member of parliament and social reformer who was very influential in the abolition of the slave trade and eventually slavery itself in the British empire.
William Wilberforce was born on 24 August 1759 in Hull, the son of a wealthy merchant. He studied at Cambridge University where he began a lasting friendship with the future prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. In 1780, Wilberforce became member of parliament for Hull, later representing Yorkshire. His dissolute lifestyle changed completely when he became an evangelical Christian, and in 1790 joined a leading group known as the Clapham Sect. His Christian faith prompted him to become interested in social reform, particularly the improvement of factory conditions in Britain.
The abolitionist Thomas Clarkson had an enormous influence on Wilberforce. He and others were campaigning for an end to the trade in which British ships were carrying black slaves from Africa, in terrible conditions, to the West Indies as goods to be bought and sold. Wilberforce was persuaded to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade and for 18 years he regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in parliament. The campaign was supported by many members of the Clapham Sect and other abolitionists. In 1807, the slave trade was finally abolished, but this did not free those who were already slaves. It was not until 1833 that an act was passed giving freedom to all slaves in the British empire.
Wilberforce’s other efforts to ‘renew society’ included the organisation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1802. He worked with the reformer, Hannah More, in the Association for the Better Observance of Sunday. Its goal was to provide all children with regular education in reading, personal hygiene and religion. He was closely involved with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was also instrumental in encouraging Christian missionaries to go to India.
Wilberforce retired from politics in 1825 and died on 29 July 1833, shortly after the act to free slaves in the British empire passed through the House of Commons.
Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire and was of rich, aristocratic ancestry. His early fascination with militarism saw him join the Royal Cavalry in 1895. As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill travelled widely, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa.
Churchill was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of the Liberal government. He was First Lord of the Admiralty (the civil/political head of the Royal Navy) by the time of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which he created. Heavily criticised for this error, he resigned from this position and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself.
The interwar years saw Churchill again ‘cross the floor’ from the Liberals, back to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924, when he controversially opted for Britain to re-join the Gold Standard. Following the Tory electoral defeat in 1929, Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the next 11 years out of office, mainly writing and making speeches. Although he was alone in his firm opposition to Indian Independence, his warnings against the Appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven correct when the Second World War broke out in 1939.
Following Neville Chamberlain’s resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government.
Churchill, who also adopted the self-created position of Minister for Defence, was active both in administrative and diplomatic functions in prosecuting the British war effort. However, Labour leader Clement Attlee’s unexpected General Election victory in 1945 saw Churchill out of office and once again concentrating on public speaking. In his 1946 speech in the USA, the instinctive pro-American famously declared that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”, and warned of the continued danger from a powerful Soviet Russia.
By his re-election in 1951, Churchill was, in the words of Roy Jenkins, “gloriously unfit for office”. Ageing and increasingly unwell, he often conducted business from his bedside, and while his powerful personality and oratory ability endured, the Prime Minister’s leadership was less decisive than during the war. His second term was most notable for the Conservative Party’s acceptance of Labour’s newly created Welfare State, and Churchill’s effect on domestic policy was limited. His later attempts at decreasing the developing Cold War through personal diplomacy failed to produce significant results, and poor health forced him to resign in 1955, making way for his Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.
Churchill died in 1965, and was honoured with a state funeral.
In Great Britain woman suffrage was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and was demanded by the Chartist movement of the 1840s. The demand for woman suffrage was increasingly taken up by prominent liberal intellectuals in England from the 1850s on ,notably by John Stuart Mill and his wife, Harriet. The first woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865, and in 1867 Mill presented to Parliament this society’s petition, which demanded the vote for women and contained about 1,550 signatures. The Reform Bill of 1867 contained no provision for woman suffrage, but meanwhile woman suffrage societies were forming in most of the major cities of Britain, and in the 1870s these organizations submitted to Parliament petitions demanding the franchise for women and containing a total of almost three million signatures.
The succeeding years saw the defeat of every major suffrage bill brought before Parliament. This was chiefly because neither of the leading politicians of the day, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, cared to affront Queen Victoria’s implacable opposition to the women’s movement. In 1869, however, Parliament did grant women taxpayers the right to vote in municipal elections, and in the ensuing decades women became eligible to sit on county and city councils. The right to vote in parliamentary elections was still denied to women, however, despite the considerable support that existed in Parliament for legislation to that effect. In 1897 the various suffragist societies united into one National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, thus bringing a greater degree of coherence and organization to the movement. Out of frustration at the lack of governmental action, however, a segment of the woman suffrage movement became more militant under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. After the return to power of the Liberal Party in 1906, the succeeding years saw the defeat of seven suffrage bills in Parliament. As a consequence, many suffragists became involved in increasingly violent actions as time went on. These women militants, or suffragettes, as they were known, were sent to prison and continued their protests there by engaging in hunger strikes.
Meanwhile, public support of the woman suffrage movement grew in volume, and public demonstrations, exhibitions, and processions were organized in support of women’s right to vote. When World War I began, the woman suffrage organizations shifted their energies to aiding the war effort, and their effectiveness did much to win the public wholeheartedly to the cause of woman suffrage. The need for the enfranchisement of women was finally recognized by most members of Parliament from all three major parties, and the resulting Representation of the People Act was passed by the House of Commons in June 1917 and by the House of Lords in February 1918. Under this act, all women age 30 or over received the complete franchise. An act to enable women to sit in the House of Commons was enacted shortly afterward. In 1928 the voting age for women was lowered to 21 to place women voters on an equal footing with male voters.
ELIZABETH II
Elizabeth II was the elder daughter of Prince Albert, duke of York, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. As the child of a younger son of King George V, the young Elizabeth had little prospect of acceding to the throne until her uncle, Edward VIII(afterward duke of Windsor), abdicated in her father’s favour on December 11, 1936, at which time her father became King George VI and she became heir presumptive. Her coronation was held at Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953.
On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, her son Prince Charles became heir apparent; he was named prince of Wales on 1958. The Queen’s other children were Princess Anne (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise), born on 1950, and created princess royal in 1987; Prince Andrew (Andrew Albert Christian Edward), born February on 1960, and created duke of York in 1986; and Prince Edward(Edward Anthony Richard Louis), born March 10, 1964, and created earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn in 1999.
With Elizabeth’s accession, it seemed probable the royal house would bear her husband’s name, becoming the House of Mountbatten, in line with the custom of a wife taking her husband’s surname on marriage. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary, favoured the retention of the House of Windsor, and so on 9 April 1952 Elizabeth issued a declaration that Windsor would continue to be the name of the royal house. The Duke complained, «I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.» In 1960, after the death of Queen Mary in 1953 and the resignation of Churchill in 1955, the surname Mountbatten-Windsor was adopted for Philip and Elizabeth’s male-line descendants who do not carry royal titles.
The British Empire continued its transformation into the Commonwealth of Nations. By the time of her accession in, her role as head of multiple independent states was already established. In 1953, the Queen and her husband embarked on a seven-month round-the-world tour, visiting 13 countries and covering more than 40,000 miles by land, sea and air. Throughout her reign, the Queen has made hundreds of state visits to other countries and tours of the Commonwealth.
In 1977, Elizabeth marked the Silver Jubilee of her accession. Parties and events took place throughout the Commonwealth, many coinciding with her associated national and Commonwealth tours. The celebrations re-affirmed the Queen’s popularity, despite virtually coincident negative press coverage of Princess Margaret’s separation from her husband.
Born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England, Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s Conservative Party leader and in 1979 was elected prime minister, the first woman to hold the position.
Two years after graduating from college, Thatcher made her first bid for public office. She ran as the conservative candidate for a Dartford parliamentary seat in the 1950 elections. Thatcher knew from the start that it would be nearly impossible to win the position away from the liberal Labour Party. Still she earned the respect of her political party peers with her speeches. Defeated, Thatcher remained undaunted, trying again the following year, but once more her efforts were unsuccessful. Two months after her loss, she married Denis Thatcher.
Thatcher won a seat in the House of Commons in 1959, representing Finchley. Clearly a woman on the rise, Thatcher was appointed parliamentary under secretary for pensions and national insurance in 1961. When the Labour Party assumed control of the government, she became a member of what is called the Shadow Cabinet, a group of political leaders who would hold Cabinet-level posts if their party was in power.
While the Conservative Party lost power in 1974, Thatcher became a dominant force in her political party. She was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, beating out Heath for the position. With this victory, Thatcher became the first woman to serve as the opposition leader in the House of Commons. England was in a time of economic and political turmoil, with the government nearly bankrupt, employment on the rise and conflicts with labor unions. This instability helped return Conservatives to power in 1979. As party leader, Thatcher made history in May 1979, when she was appointed Britain’s first female prime minister. As prime minister, Thatcher battled the country’s recession by initially raising interest rates to control inflation. She was best known for her destruction of Britain’s traditional industries through her attacks on labor organizations such as the miner’s union, and for the massive privatization of social housing and public transport.
In her second term, from 1983 to 1987, Thatcher handled a number of conflicts and crises, the most jarring of which may have been the assassination attempt against her in 1984. In a plot by the Irish Republic Army, she was meant to be killed by a bomb planted at the Conservative Conference in Brighton in October.
Returning for a third term in 1987, Thatcher sought to implement a standard educational curriculum across the nation and make changes to the country’s socialized medical system. However, she lost a lot of support due to her efforts to implement a fixed rate local tax—labeled a poll tax by many since she sought to disenfranchise those who did not pay it. Hugely unpopular, this policy led to public protests and caused dissention within her party.
George III was the third Hanoverian king of Great Britain. During his reign, Britain lost its American colonies but emerged as a leading power in Europe .He suffered from from recurrent fits of madness and after 1810, his son acted as regent
George III was born on 4 June 1738 in London, son of Frederick, Prince of Wales and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. He became heir to the throne when his father died in 1751, succeeding his grandfather George II in 1760. He was the first Hanoverian monarch to use English as his first language. In 1761, George married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and they enjoyed a happy marriage, with 15 children.
George chose his mentor the Earl of Bute as his first chief minister. He was a poor choice, isolating George from senior politicians. Effective government became almost impossible, and George was increasingly vilified. The instability following Bute’s resignation in 1763 did little to solve the crown’s financial difficulties, made worse by the Seven Years’ War. In 1770, George appointed Lord North as his first minister. Although an effective administrator, North’s government was dominated by disagreements with the American colonists over British attempts to levy taxes on them. War began in 1775 and was prolonged in 1779, at the king’s insistence, to prevent copycat protests elsewhere. The British defeat in 1781 prompted North to resign.
In 1783, North and the prominent Whig politician Fox formed a coalition government. Their plans to reform the East India Company gave George the chance to regain popularity. He forced the bill’s defeat in Parliament, and the two resigned. In their place George appointed William Pitt the Younger. The combination of Pitt’s skill and war with France in 1793 strengthened George’s position, but disagreements over emancipation of the Catholics – Pitt was in favour and George vehemently opposed – led to Pitt’s resignation in 1801.
The American war, its political aftermath and family quarrels put great strain on George. After serious bouts of illness in 1788 – 1789 and 1801, thought now to be caused by porphyria, he became permanently deranged in 1810. The Prince of Wales (later George IV) became regent.
George remained ill until his death at Windsor Castle on 29 January 1820. In 1801, under the Act of Union Great Britain and Ireland were united into a single nation – the United Kingdom. George was thus the first king of the new nation.
JACOBITE RISINGS (1715 AND 1745)
The Union of 1707 between Scotland and England was highly unpopular with the vast majority of the population in Scotland. Several articles of the Act of Union agreement were economically favourable to landowners in Scotland, but failed to deliver any economic advantages to the majority of the population for over thirty years.
Discontent was widespread and food riots occurred in the east coast burghs as the effects of famine were compounded by union taxes. Although the situation induced resistance to union-economics, it didn’t translate as universal support for the Jacobite cause of keeping the Stuarts on the throne in London. Many in Scotland now associated the Stuarts with Catholicism and suppression of the Protestant Kirk. The Union was designed to put an end to Jacobite hopes of a Stuart restoration by ensuring the German Hanoverian dynasty succeeded Queen Anne upon her death. However, the Stuarts did still command a lot of loyalty in Scotland, France and England – the British Union did inevitably re-ignite the Jacobite cause.
In 1708 the Jacobite claimant to the throne, the putative James VIII, and his French allies had attempted land in Scotland to incite a rising, but were foiled by adverse weather and outmanoeuvred by the Royal Navy. Six years later a motion in the House of Lords to dismantle the Union only just failed by four votes. Then, in the same year, Queen Anne died and was succeeded by George I of Hanover. The controversial question of succession intensified and the following year many nobles and Tories, disaffected with their lot within the union, rose in favour of a Stuart monarchy. The 1715 Jacobite Rising
The ’15 rising was led by John Erskine, Earl of Mar – a man who had voted for the Union originally and had been Secretary of State until 1714. He drew most of his support from north of the River Tay, in the north-east and Highlands of Scotland – areas where landowners had not benefited much from the Union and where Episcopalianism was dominant.
However, the Earl of Mar proved to be no great military leader. He fought a badly commanded battle at Sherriffmuir, where the Jacobites outnumbered the Hanoverian forces under the Duke of Argyll by two to one, but failed to win a decisive victory. Not even the arrival and coronation of James Stuart as King James VIII could reverse Jacobite fortunes. Eventually the rising fizzled out when 6000 Dutch troops landed in support of the Hanoverian government and the forces of King James scattered under the pressure of bad leadership and lack of foreign aid.
The 1745 Jacobite Rising
The final threat to the Union came with the 1745 Jacobite Rising when Charles Edward Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie as he was known, disappointed at French unwillingness to invade in 1744, decided to finance his own rising. Initially it was a startling success, once again drawing most of its support from the north-east and the Highland clans. The Jacobite army rapidly broke out of the Highlands, capturing Edinburgh, courtesy of Wade’s roads, and advancing as far south as Derby in England. However, with no sign of French support, the army retreated back to their stronghold in the Highlands and was finally defeated at Culloden Moor near Inverness in 1746.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during which predominantly agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, using hand tools or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and mass production. The iron and textile industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution, which also saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking. While industrialization brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in often grim employment and living conditions for the poor and working classes.
A number of factors contributed to Britain’s role as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. For one, it had great deposits of coal and iron ore, which proved essential for industrialization. Additionally, Britain was a politically stable society, as well as the world’s leading colonial power, which meant its colonies could serve as a source for raw materials, as well as a marketplace for manufactured goods.
As demand for British goods increased, merchants needed more cost-effective methods of production, which led to the rise of mechanization and the factory system.
Developments in the iron industry also played a central role in the Industrial Revolution. In the early 18th century, Englishman Abraham Darby discovered a cheaper, easier method to produce cast iron, using a coke-fueled furnace. In the 1850s, British engineer Henry Bessemer developed the first inexpensive process for mass-producing steel. Both iron and steel became essential materials, used to make everything from appliances, tools and machines, to ships, buildings and infrastructure.
The steam engine was also integral to industrialization. In 1712, Englishman Thomas Newcomen developed the first practical steam engine. By the 1770s, Scottish inventor James Watt had improved on Newcomen’s work, and the steam engine went on to power machinery, locomotives and ships during the Industrial Revolution.
The transportation industry also underwent significant transformation during the Industrial Revolution. Before the advent of the steam engine, raw materials and finished goods were hauled and distributed via horse-drawn wagons, and by boats along canals and rivers. In the early 1800s, American Robert Fulton (1765-1815) built the first commercially successful steamboat, and by the mid-19th century, steamships were carrying freight across the Atlantic. As steam-powered ships were making their debut, the steam locomotive was also coming into use.
In the early 1800s, British engineer Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) constructed the first railway steam locomotive. In 1830, England’s Liverpool and Manchester Railway became the first to offer regular, timetabled passenger services. By 1850, Britain had more than 6,000 miles of railroad track. Additionally, around 1820, Scottish engineer John McAdam (1756-1836) developed a new process for road construction. His technique, which became known as macadam, resulted in roads that were smoother, more durable and less muddy.
The Industrial Revolution brought about a greater volume and variety of factory-produced goods and raised the standard of living for many people, particularly for the middle and upper classes. However, life for the poor and working classes continued to be filled with challenges. Wages for those who labored in factories were low and working conditions could be dangerous and monotonous. Unskilled workers had little job security and were easily replaceable. Children were part of the labor force and often worked long hours and were used for such highly hazardous tasks as cleaning the machinery.
Charles I was born in Fife on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark. On the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 James became king of England and Ireland. Charles’s popular older brother Henry, whom he adored, died in 1612 leaving Charles as heir, and in 1625 he became king. Three months after his accession he married Henrietta Maria of France. They had a happy marriage and left five surviving children.
Charles’s reign began with an unpopular friendship with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who used his influence against the wishes of other nobility. Buckingham was assassinated in 1628. There was ongoing tension with parliament over money – made worse by the costs of war abroad. In addition, Charles favoured a High Anglican form of worship, and his wife was Catholic – both made many of his subjects suspicious, particularly the Puritans. Charles dissolved parliament three times between 1625 and 1629. In 1629, he dismissed parliament and resolved to rule alone. This forced him to raise revenue by non-parliamentary means which made him increasingly unpopular. At the same time, there was a crackdown on Puritans and Catholics and many emigrated to the American colonies.
Unrest in Scotland – because Charles attempted to force a new prayer book on the country – put an end to his personal rule. He was forced to call parliament to obtain funds to fight the Scots. In November 1641, tensions were raised even further with disagreements over who should command an army to suppress an uprising in Ireland. Charles attempted to have five members of parliament arrested and in August 1642, raised the royal standard at Nottingham. Civil war began.
The Royalists were defeated in 1645-1646 by a combination of parliament’s alliance with the Scots and the formation of the New Model Army. In 1646, Charles surrendered to the Scots, who handed him over to parliament. He escaped to the Isle of Wight in 1647 and encouraged discontented Scots to invade. This ‘Second Civil War’ was over within a year with another royalist defeat by Parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell. Convinced that there would never be peace while the king lived, a rump of radical MPs, including Cromwell, put him on trial for treason. He was found guilty and executed on 30 January 1649 outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall, London.
Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, died in 1685. Although he left a whole host of natural children, no legitimate heir to the throne was born of his marriage with the Portuguese Catharine of Bragança. His brother James II succeeded him to the throne, but the new King’s religious zeal and the measures he took in favour of Roman Catholicism rubbed the Protestants up the wrong way. As a matter of fact, his plea in favour of religious tolerance did not greatly differ from the view taken by Charles II, but the fact that James was openly a militant catholic made him much more threatening. In 1688, when his second wife, Maria of Modena, gave birth in 1688 to a little boy who was christened James Francis Edward (later the ‘Old Pretender’), the Protestants saw their hope – that James’ protestant daughter Maria would ever succeed her father – vanish. Instead, a catholic dynasty threatened to sit firmly on the English throne. The birth of the little prince was surrounded by mystery. Rumour had it that Maria of Modena was too old to have a child and that the baby had been smuggled into the delivery room by Jesuits.
When, against the dissolved Parliament’s will, James promulgated laws giving Roman Catholics greater religious freedom, some members of the House of Commons and church dignitaries asked William III to intervene. William was at war with France and saw in the request an excellent opportunity to get England on his side. The States General having given their assent, William III landed near Brixham in Devon with an army of 15,000 men on 5 November 1688. James’ army deserted and he himself fled to Kent, where he was taken prisoner. He fled to France after having been liberated.
In 1689, the Parliament convened and came to the conclusion that James had renounced the throne by fleeing to France. William and Mary were invited to reign together as King and Queen This triggered a Jacobean rebellion in Scotland, and James succeeded in mobilizing the Roman Catholics in Ireland as well. In 1690, William III was able to defeat James II once and for all at the Battle of Boyne in Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, ‘King Billy’ remains the hero of the protestant loyalists, who celebrate his victory over the Catholics at the Battle of Boyne every year on 12 July with marches and bonfires. These festivities and the marches of the Orange Order are a thorn in the side of the Roman Catholics and passions sometimes blaze in July, even though the sectarian violence of ‘The Troubles’ has now officially come to an end. For the sake of convenience, modern loyalist admirers forget that ‘King Billy’ had countless Roman Catholics in his armies and that the pope supported him as an ally in the conflict he had with the French King Louis XIV (with whom James entertained close relations).
OLIVER CROMWELL
Oliver Cromwell was born on 1599 in Huntingdon, England. His father, Richard Cromwell, was a younger son of one of the richest men in the district, Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, who was known as the «Golden Knight.»
In 1616 Cromwell entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He left the followin year after the death of his father. For the next few years he lived in London. In 1620 he married Elizabeth Bourchier.
Cromwell then returned to Huntingdon where he farmed his land and played a small part in local affairs, earning a reputation as a champion of the poor. During these years Cromwell experienced periods of deep depression. After much spiritual torment he became convinced that he was the instrument of God.
Charles I
When Cromwell entered Parliament in 1640, Charles I had ruled England for eleven years. The king had pursued policies in religion and finance, which had disagreed with many country gentlemen, including Cromwell. Furthermore, Charles I had plunged into war with Scotland, who soundly defeated the king.
The mood of Parliament was highly critical. Cromwell joined men in Parliament who believed Parliament should limit the power of the king and the Anglican Church. Cromwell was dedicated to the reform, or improvement, of the Church and of the court. He was also highly critical of the king.
By 1642 there was no way to avoid war between the King and Parliament. At the outbreak of war in August 1642, Cromwell was assigned a small army of men. He rapidly demonstrated not only his skill as a military leader but also his ability to develop an effective army from his force of raw recruits. Under the leadership of the Earl of Manchester, Cromwell’s commander, regiments from other counties were brought together as one force, known as the Eastern Association. Cromwell’s reputation as Parliament’s most forceful general was made at the battle of Marston Moor.
Battle of Marston Moor
After two years of war, the king was still in the field, and relations between Parliament and the army were growing sour. Many disliked the price paid for alliance with the Scots and most longed for peace. Cromwell, however, yearned for victory. He bitterly attacked the Earl of Manchester. He soon emerged as the effective leader of the parliamentary armies. He proved his exceptional abilities as a general on June 14, 1645, when he defeated the royalists’ army at Naseby in Northamptonshire. Within a year the royalist armies had surrendered.
In 1648 the royalists rose again, allied with the Scots, but in a lightning campaign Cromwell overtook both. The republicans were then determined to bring Charles I to trial, and Cromwell did nothing to stop them. At last agreeing that the king was «a man of blood» and should be executed, he signed Charles I’s death warrant.
The execution of the king settled nothing. Legally the House of Commons ruled, but the army, Scotland, and Ireland were soon in rebellion. In Ireland Cromwell fought a tough, bloody campaign in which he butchered thousands of soldiers at Drogheda and hundreds of civilians at Wexford. On June 26, 1650, Cromwell finally became commander of the parliamentary armies. At Dunbar in August 1650 he was pressed between the hills and the sea and was surrounded by an army of twenty thousand Scots. But mistakes by the Scottish commander, Leslie, enabled Cromwell to seize victory. Cromwell believed this victory was the work of God.
The next year Charles II and his Scottish army made a spirited dash into England, but Cromwell overtook them at Worcester on September 3, 1651.
For five years after the execution of the king, Parliament tried to formulate a new constitution. On April 20, 1653, Cromwell went with a handful of soldiers to the House of Commons, a part of Parliament. He ordered all the members out.
From Cromwell’s rule local government was brought under major generals, soldiers whom he could trust. This infuriated many. Under a new constitution and a reestablished Parliament, Cromwell took the title Lord Protector. This move also reestablished the House of Lords, another part of Parliament, and made Cromwell king in all but name.
Cromwell pursued an effective foreign policy. His navy enjoyed substantial success in the West Indies and he allied himself with France against Spain. These victories, combined with his effective handling of Scotland and brutal conquering of Ireland, made him a popular and powerful ruler. Shortly after his death on September on 1658, Cromwell’s government collapsed, and the restoration of the monarchy followed in 1660.
Henry VIII was born on 1491 at Greenwich, and died in London on 1547 being 55 years old. He was the second son of Henry VII and Elisabeth, doughter of Edward IV. His eldest brother Arthur died in 1502 that is whay he became king instead of the old son.
Henry VIII excelled in book learning as well as in the physical exercise, people expected a lot from him. Henry’s interest in foreign policy was focused on Western Europe, which was a shifting pattern of alliances centred round the kings of Spain and France, and the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry also invested in the navy, and increased its size from 5 to 53 ships.
The Tudor Navy.
The second half of Henry’s reign was dominated by two issues very important for the later history of England and the monarchy: the succession and the Protestant Reformation, which led to the formation of the Church of England.
Henry had married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had produced only one surviving child – a girl, Princess Mary. The Tudor dynasty had been established by conquest in 1485 and Henry was only its second monarch. England had not so far had a ruling queen, and the dynasty was not secure enough to run the risk of handing the Crown on to a woman so Henry VIII tried to persuade the Pope to give him the annulment of his marriage saying that it had never been legal but the Pope did not accept it. Henry VIII did not settle and the result was a series of Acts cutting back papal power and influence in England and bringing about the English Reformation.
CATHERINE OF ARAGON
Although what Pope had said, the second wive of the King Anne Boleyn was crowned, so the Pope responded with excommunication, and Parliamentary legislation enacting Henry’s decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church soon followed. An Act in restraint of appeals forbade appeals to Rome, stating that England was an empire, governed by one supreme head and king who possessed ‘whole and entire’ authority within the realm, and that no judgements or excommunications from Rome were valid.
ANNE BOLEYN
An Act of Submission of the Clergy and an Act of Succession followed, together with an Act of Supremacy which recognised that the king was ‘the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia’.
Henry’s second marriage had raised hopes for a male heir. Anne Boleyn, however, produced another daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and failed to produce a male child. Henry got rid of Anne on charges of treason which were almost certainly false, and she was executed. Henry’s third wife Jane Seymour, finally bore him a son, who was later to become Edward VI. Jane died in childbed, 12 days after the birth. One of the most popular things of the king’s life was that he had six wives in total.
JANE SEYMOUR
Parliament’s involvement in making religious and dynastic changes had been firmly established. For all his concern over establishing his dynasty and the resulting religious upheaval, Henry’s six marriages had produced one sickly son and an insecure succession with two princesses (Mary and Elizabeth) each of whom, at some stage, had been declared illegitimate
Thomas More was born on 7 February 1478 in London, the son of a successful lawyer. He later studied at Oxford, and qualified as a lawyer, although he did contemplate becoming a monk. From 1510 to 1518 he was one of the two under-sheriffs of London and in 1517 entered the king’s service, becoming one of Henry VIII’s most effective and trusted civil servants and acting as his secretary, interpreter, speech-writer, chief diplomat, advisor and confidant. In 1521 he was knighted, in 1523, he became the speaker of the House of Commons and in 1525 chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
At the same time More was building a reputation as a scholar . Around 1515, he wrote ‘The History of Richard III’ which established that king’s reputation as a tyrant and has been described as the first masterpiece of English historiography. In 1516, he published his most important work ‘Utopia’ – a description of an imaginary republic ruled by reason and intended to contrast with the strife-ridden reality of contemporary European politics. More remained a passionate defender of Catholic orthodoxy – writing pamphlets against heresy, banning unorthodox books, and even taking responsibility when chancellor for the interrogation of heretics.
More took the post of lord chancellor in 1529, just as Henry had become determined to obtain a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The previous chancellor, Lord Wolsey, had failed to achieve this objective. Henry was close to breaking with the Church of Rome, and the so-called ‘Reformation parliament’ was about to convene.
When Henry declared himself ‘supreme head of the Church in England’ – thus establishing the Anglican Church and allowing him to end his marriage – More resigned the chancellorship. He continued to argue against the king’s divorce and the split with Rome, and in 1534 was arrested after refusing to swear an oath of succession repudiating the pope and accepting the annulment of Henry’s marriage. He was tried for treason at Westminster and on 6 July 1535 was executed on Tower Hill.
QUEEN ELISABETH I
The daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I was born in Greenwich Palace, London, on the 7th of September 1533. Famously unwanted, because her tyrannical father was obsessed with having a son to succeed him, Elizabeth’s early life was troubled. When she was only two and a half years old her mother was beheaded and Elizabeth spent the rest of her childhood in the shadow of her father’s court. No one imagined then that she would grow up to become one of the most successful and famous rulers of all time.
Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, at the age of 25, having survived the troubled reign of her half-brother, King Edward VI, and imprisonment in The Tower of London during the reign of her Catholic half-sister, Queen Mary I. Elizabeth went on to rule for almost 45 years and her reign is known as The Golden Age, a time that saw the birth of Shakespeare, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the emergence of England as a world power.
Queen Elizabeth, known as The Virgin Queen because she never married or had children, was the last Tudor monarch. When she died in 1603, deeply mourned by her people who called her Good Queen Bess or Gloriana, a new dynasty came to the throne: the Stuarts.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Born at Linlithgow Palace, West Lothian on 8 December 1542.
Her claims to the throne of England were almost as strong as her claims to the Scottish throne. As Henry VII of England’s great-granddaughter, Mary was next in line to the English throne, after Henry VIII’s children. Given her youth and sex, the Scottish nobility decided that they must make peace with England, and they agreed that she should marry Henry VIII’s son, the future Edward VI.
EDWARD VI.
No sooner had the treaty been arranged, however, than Catholics opposed to the plan took the young Mary to Stirling Castle and, to Henry’s fury, they broke the match, preferring to return to Scotland’s traditional alliance with France. Henry thereupon ordered the savage series of raids into Scotland known as ‘The Rough Wooing’.
The Scots betrothed Mary to the French King Henri II’s heir, the Dauphin Francis, and sent her to be brought up at the French Court. Mary married the Dauphin in Paris on 24 April 1558. He succeeded to his father’s throne in 1559, making Mary Queen of France as well as Scotland, but his reign was brief for he died of an ear infection in 1560. The following year, despite the warnings of her friends, Mary decided to go back to Scotland .
At first Mary ruled successfully and with moderation but her marriage to her second cousin Henry, Lord Darnley initiated a tragic series of events made worse by factious Scottish nobles.
Darnley became the tool of Mary’s enemies and, with a group of conspirators, burst into her supper chamber, threatened the heavily pregnant queen and murdered her secretary.
The birth of Mary and Darnley’s son James that summer did nothing to improve their relationship, and when Darnley was murdered at Kirk o’Field, just outside the walls of Edinburgh , people suspected that she was implicated in the crime. Her subsequent marriage three months later to the Earl of Bothwell, generally believed to be the principal murderer by people, brought her inevitable ruin.
Her Protestant Lords rose against her and her army confronted theirs at Carberry Hill, near Edinburgh, on 15 June 1567. She surrendered, was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, Kinross-shire and forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son.
Mary escaped from Lochleven in 1568, only to be defeated at the Battle of Langside, near Glasgow, on 13 May. Fleeing south, she sought shelter in England, believing that Queen Elizabeth I would support her cause, but instead she was kept in captivity in England for 19 years.
The focus of a long series of Roman Catholic plots against Elizabeth, culminating in the Babington Plot to assassinate the English queen, led to Elizabeth’s ministers demanding Mary’s execution. Mary was finally executed at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire on 8 February 1587, at the age of 44.
She was buried in Peterborough Cathedral, but in 1612 her son James VI and I had her body exhumed and placed in the vault of King Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
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History and culture of the English speaking countries. 