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The colonisation of Australia and New Zealand began with the desire to find a place for penal settlement after the loss of the original American colonies. The first shipload of British convicts landed in Australia in 1788, on the site of the future city of Sydney. The majority of these convicts were young men, many of whom had committed only petty crimes. New South Wales opened to free settlers in 1819. By 1858, transportation of convicts was abo ... mehr
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Prior to 1797, the Bank of England was obliged to exchange banknotes, on demand, for gold. As a result, banknotes tended to be of relatively high denominations. The suspension of this obligation in February 1797 (until 1821) led to the issuing of the first £1 banknotes.
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The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a mushrooming of scholarly and popular works that we still consider \'classics\', for example, Defoe\'s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Hume\'s Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Johnson\'s Dictionary (1755), Smith\'s Wealth of Nations (1776), Gibbon\'s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Austen\'s Sense and Sensibility (1811), Scott\'s Waverley Novels (1814 onwards), Shelley\'s Frankenstein (1818) ... mehr
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In the aftermath of Culloden, many Highland chieftains either sold their ancestral lands or looked for new ways to exploit the land to earn more money. The local populations - no longer required for warfare - were \'cleared\'. On some occasions, this process was amicable and peaceful but, on others, considerable violence was used with houses being burned above people\'s heads and ill members of families being left to die.Some landlords provided a ... mehr
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During the American fight for independence, the Irish had raised a force of United Volunteers, announcing their loyalty to the Crown, and their influence was used to win an independent Irish Parliament. However, this caused bloody clashes between Catholics and Protestants, and the Prime Minister of the time, William Pitt, concluded that direct rule form London was the only solution.
After bribery of the Commons and gentry, Britain and Irel ... mehr
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In Britain, the census was introduced to help the government understand the country and better utilise the population in times of war. In 1801, in England and Wales, the population was nearly nine million while, in Scotland, the figure was a little over 1,600,000. (Ireland was not included until 1821, when her population was over 6,800,000). The census has been taken in the first year of the decade ever since (with the exception of 1941).
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Following the French Revolution, Napoleon I of France began a series of European wars. His aim was the conquest of Europe. In 1803, Britain resumed war against France, following an appeal from the Maltese (objecting to Napoleon\'s seizure of the island in 1798). In 1805, Napoleon\'s planned invasion of Britain from Boulogne ended with Nelson\'s victory at Trafalgar, and in 1806, Napoleon instituted an attempted blockade - \'the Continental System ... mehr
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For much of the 1780s, 1790s and early 1800s, the British fleet was involved in actions against the French and Spanish in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean. Admirals such as Rodney and Hood established British superiority but it was Horatio Nelson who secured British naval dominance. Successful at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and Copenhagen in 1801, his most famous encounter occurred off the Spanish coast at Trafalgar in October 1805. I ... mehr
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Since 1772, it had been legally recognised that individuals could not be slaves in Britain. Despite this, in the later eighteenth century, Britain dominated the international trade in slaves. Between 1782 and 1807, it is estimated that Britain traded in over 1,000,000 human lives.There was little public discontent in Britain concerning the traffic before the early nineteenth century but, in 1807, the slave trade was abolished within the British E ... mehr
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In the face of industrial revolution, traditional home workers were threatened by new machines and industrial practices. In Nottingham, in March 1811, organised machine breaking began - associated with Ned Ludd.Despite government attempt to limit spread, the machine breaking soon broke out across the Midlands and north of England. Mills and property were attacked and, occasionally, people were killed. In 1813, seventeen Luddites were executed in ... mehr
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From 1811 to 1820, George III\'s son acted as Regent, due to his father\'s illness. He was an unpopular figure, overweight and regarded as extravagant. He also lost public favour for his treatment of his wife, Princess Caroline of Brunswick. However, he was a supporter of the arts, and the period of his regency and monarchy were years of adventure and achievement in all the arts and sciences.
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Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, legislation was introduced to regulate the import of cereals in an attempt to maintain an adequate supply for consumers while providing a secure price for the producers. Cereals could not be imported into Britain until the domestic price reached eighty shillings a quarter. This price meant that cereals and bread were more expensive than they needed to be and this caused considerable agitation.Othe ... mehr
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On 16 August 1819, a crowd of over 50,000 gathered in St Peter\'s Fields in Manchester to hear a speech on parliamentary reform by Henry Hunt. The crowds were well behaved but the local authorities panicked and attempted to arrest Hunt and disperse the crowd. Eleven people were killed and around 400 injured in the melee.
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In February 1820 (only eight years after the shooting of Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval), a Jacobite plot was discovered to assassinate the entire cabinet. The leader, Arthur Thistlewood, was betrayed and arrested at a house in Cato Street. He, and other conspirators, were hung from the gallows.
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In the early nineteenth century, Britain had eight universities. Oxford and Cambridge were by far the most significant but other medieval foundations had survived at St Andrews (the oldest in Scotland, dating from c.1411), Glasgow and Aberdeen (two separate universities - King\'s and Marischal).Later foundations in Edinburgh (1582) and Dublin (1592) were also active, although other universities such as at London, Durham, Peterhead and Kirkwall ha ... mehr
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Following the work of the British steam pioneers, George Stephenson built the first public steam railway which ran from Stockton to Darlington in 1825. This heralded extensive railway building in Britain, providing a fast and economical means of transport and communication. Stephenson\'s next locomotive, the \'Rocket\' of 1829, achieved speeds of 50kph/30mph.
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William, Duke of Clarence, became William IV (1830-37) following the death of his brother, George, in 1830. In 1832, he secured the passage of the first Reform Bill by agreeing to create new peers to overcome the hostile majority in the House of Lords.
Also known as the \'Representation of the People Act\', the Reform Act aimed to extend the voting rights and redistribute Parliamentary seats. \'Pocket\' and \'Rotten\' boroughs were abolished, as ... mehr
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Victoria (1837-1901) succeeded her uncle, William IV in 1837, aged eighteen. Her reign would dominate the rest of the century and she would go on to be the longest reigning British monarch. In 1840, Victoria married her first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha and for the next twenty years they instituted several constitutional changes. Some of these changes - such as the move (in the 1840s and 1850s) to a more constitutional monarchy above part ... mehr
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During Victoria\'s reign, the revolution in industrial practices continued to change British life. With it came increased urbanisation and a burgeoning communications network. The industrial expansion also brought wealth and, in the nineteenth century, Britain became a champion of Free Trade across her massive Empire. Both industrialisation and trade were glorified in the Great Exhibitions, however by the turn of the century, Britain\'s industria ... mehr
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In Britain, the Post Office had been founded as early as 1635. With improved communication routes in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, services improved. This largely matched an increase in popular literacy. The modern postal service dates from 1840 when Sir Rowland Hill achieved parliament\'s backing for a \'Penny Post\'. This involved adhesive, pre-paid penny stamps for all letters (of a certain weight). The first stamps were printed with ... mehr
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