BEFORE AND DURING THE VICTORIAN AGE - Queen Victoria's Accession To The Throne (1830 - 1860)

BEFORE AND DURING THE VICTORIAN AGE

Queen Victoria's Accession To The Throne (1830 - 1860)

Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and remains there until1901: this is the longest reign in British history. After 1830 the period is know like Victorian Age.

This is a period of technological progress and in this period started to spread an idea of happiness. When Queen Victoria came out from the throne, the Indian Regions where united and they had had a consolidation of democracy; the merit of this success depends only in the person of the Queen. She is able to reign constitutionally and she is the niece of William IV, she didn't want to concentrate the power in her person but she want to have a role of mediator between the House of Lord and The House Of Commons, the government and the population. She tightens the relationship between the crown and the people. The period when there were reigns is a period of material progress, imperial expansion and political and constitutional developments.

Queen and Royal Family became the symbol of society, she was the wife of Albert Saxe Coburg Gotha only because she loves him and not for reason of state or other reasons. In their life they had nine children all brought up by them not like happened regularly in other Royal Family. In fact generally in Royal Family parents and children meet each other only in formal occasion. Victoria from the death of his husband dress only black clothes in signs of mourning. This exemplary family life and her strictly respectable and decent code of behaviour is generally know like Victorianism. This family became the symbol of typical middle class family.

Before she came to the throne there were a lot of problems:

1. the enclosures (the owner of lands saw that is more lucrative enclosure their field)
2. Industrial Revolution (advantages and disadvantages)
3. Trade Unions
4. Free Trade

In 1830 was built also the first railway of England an in 1839 started the first stamp and the Royal Mail. The government had to solve a lot of problems.

In 1832 the Reform Bill or the Reform Act, an electoral reform that abolished the rotten boroughs. In England in this period could be elected like Members of Parliament only the members of the House of Lord. This act must redistributed seats on a more equitable basis in the counties, and extended the franchise to male house holder in property worth 10 pounds a year or more. The members of Parliament were 657 like the district of England, a district could elect only one member. But after the Industrial Revolution there is a change in the distribution of population, some villages have the right to vote two members but there was quite desert. In this way all the man of the upper middle class had the right to vote.

In 1833 the Factory Act that stated that:

children couldn't work more than 7 hours a day and 48 hours a week

teenagers couldn't work for more than 9 hours a day and 69 hours a week

Adult were unprotected until 1847 when is promoted the Ten Hours Act that limited the hour of work of all workers.

In 1834 there was the most notorian law: The Poor Law Amendment Act that is the symbol of the principles both of Puritanism and Victorian Calvinism. This is a law against begging and state that everyone that couldn't pay debt or couldn't support himself is taken away from the street and put into a workhouse that is a place were people work and it was similar to a prison especially for the condition unpleasant and inhuman of these place. For the Victorian principles people had not to see certain thing. This kind of solution is typical of Puritanism and Calvinism because: if in your life you are rich and able to earn money and to lead an happy life God is together with you, if you were poor and unable to do this thing God abandons you. The house of work was generally in the hands of Clergy man. This is explained to us very well by Charles Dickens an author of this period that wrote a romance describing a workhouse in Oliver Twist.

In this period like we have well understood there is a sort of dualism: there is a medal with two faces that still exist but only one is showed, while the other is hide.

The first decade of Victorian Age was dominated by two important political tendencies:

The liberal campaign for free trade

The birth of Chartism

After the Napoleonic wars all the merchant have an unilateral need, the abolition of tariffs of import and export and the repeal of Corn Laws. The first was obtained immediately and so the trades become freely everywhere and every single law done after this law of import and export is done to benefit the middle class. Only one of these laws goes against the upper middle class and it was the abolition of Corn Laws passed in 1815 that cause a lot of financial problems. The first amendment favours the trading all over the Europe and if the trade flourishes also the government has benefit because the money enters into the economy of the state. The Abolition of Corn Laws is the first time that sees the government against landowners. England was in a terrible state of financial condition and these were proteshonist laws that prevent the entering of foreign corns into Great Britain. In this way the price of English corn is upper and English people is not happy for this so the Tory Minister Robert Peel was obliged to repeal the Corn Laws and thus betray his party of landowners but was also obliged to state that the Tory party was split.

In 1840s there is especially in Ireland a period called the Hungry Forties that explain an Irish potato famine. In Ireland the diet is based in potatoes and not in bread. The disease rotten potatoes into soil. There were about 4.000.000 of inhabitants:

1.000.000 died

2.000.000 is forced to emigrate to United States of America

1.000.000 remained in Ireland.

Robert Peel reduces also the price of bread after the abolition of Corn Laws.

From the 1838 to 1848 there were the birth of Chartism, that is a radical working class movement (the first movement that ask similar thing into the working class)that leaded by the Irishman Fergus O'Connor found 1.250.000 signature to shout the popular discontent for the condition of the workers and the votation of few people.

This movement asks:

1. Universal adult male suffrage (vote for all adult man)
2. Equal electoral district ( redistribution of district after the Industrial Revolution)
3. The right for a man without property to be a Member of Parliament (not only the members of the House of Lords)
4. The secret ballot
5. Annual general election
6. Payment of the members of Parliament.

Despite the great number of signature the government refused all the demands done by the House of Commons and the movement faded away the things that were asked were satisfied by 1850 to 1920 except the votation every year.

Britain had leading industrial and economic position in the world and this was symbolised by the Great Exhibition of 1851where goods coming from all the countries of the Empire were exhibited as well as from all parts of Britain. It was housed in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. There is a sense of uneasiness, this Empire with a lot of money and technological progress brings also poverty and ugliness. The contrast between these positive aspects and the guilty sense bring to the collapse and guarantee slowly the end of the empire. In Great Britain there were more slums than all over the world.