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 Table of Content
I. The Glorious Revolution (1688) ………………………………………………………………. 07

• Causes, and Results…………………………………………………………………….. 09

• William III and Mary II (1689-1702) …………………………………………………….. 10

• Queen Anne (1702-1714) ……………………………………………………………….. 13

II. Hanoverian Era (1714-1790) ………………………………………………………………….28

• Jacobite Rebellions (1715 and 1745) ……………………………………………….....29

• Robert Walpole and Whig Oligarchy …………………………………………………...42
• American War of Independence (1776) ………………………………………………...51

III. The Union of England and Scotland …………………………………………………...........72

IV. Union of England and Ireland ………………………………………………….....................81

V. The Old Colonial system ………………………………………………….............................85

VI. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars ……………………………………………...95

• Causes ………………………………………………….................................................98
• Britain and Napoleonic Wars …………………………………………………................107

• Impact on Britain …………………………………………………...................................120

VII. Industrial and Agricultural Revolution ………………………………………………….........123

• Causes ………………………………………………….................................................124

• Effects on Political and Social Life of Britain …………………………………………...131

• Party Politics ……………………………………………………………………………….140

• The Methodist Movement ………………………………………………………………...148

• Socialism ……………………………………………………………………………………154
• Liberalism …………………………………………………………………………………...155

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 • Colonization …………………………………………………………………………………157

• Chartest Movement ………………………………………………………………………...161

VIII. Robert Peel and return of Torries …………………………………………………………….170

• Internal policies ……………………………………………………………………………..172

• Irish Problem ………………………………………………………………………………..176

IX. Victorian Era (1837-1901) …………………………………………………............................191

• Internal Reforms ……………………………………………………………………………..192

• Liberals ………………………………………………………………………………………198
• Foreign Policy ……………………………………………………………………………....201
• Disraeli, Gladstone and Problems in Ireland …………………………………………...206
• Great Britain and Free Trade ……………………………………………………………...209

X. Edwardian Era (1901-1910) …………………………………………………………………....212

• Domestic and Foreign Policies (1901-1910)

• The Origins of Labor Party …………………………………………………...

XI. Britain, World War I and its Aftermath ……………………………………….…………...229-30

• Causes ……………………………………………………………………………………....233

• Britain and Peace settlement ………………………………………..…………………...235

• Effects of War on Britain ………………………………………………………..………...246
• League of Nations ………………………………………………………………………...254

• The Great Depression …………………………………………………………..………...270

• Appeasement and Rearmament ………………………………………..………………...274

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XII. Britain ,World War II and its Aftermath …………………………………………………...278

• Causes and events ……………………………………………………………………...280

• Churchill, War Conferences …………………………………………….…….….…...289

• Creation of U.N.O ……………………………………………………………….……...307
• Effects of war …………………………………………………………………………....312

• Reforms of Labour Government ………………………………………………..…....316

XIII. Great Britain and Cold War ………………………………………………………..……..325

• Creation of Common Wealth …………………………………………………………...327

• NATO …………………………………………………………………………………....334
• Decolonization of the British Empire …………………………………………………...344

• Internal Policies and EEC ……………………………………………………………...350

• Foreign Policy …………………………………………………………………………...357

XIV. Thatcherism to Cameroun (1979-2012) …………………………………………………...362

• Internal Policy ……………………………………………………………………………...370

• Society and culture …………………………………………………………………..…...372
• Foreign Policy ……………………………………………………………………………..380

• Falkland War ………………………………………………………………………….…...381

• John Major and his Policies ……………………………………………………………...387
• European Common Market and the Great Britain…………………………………....392

• Formation of EU …………………………………………………………………..……...394
• Tony Blair “New Labour” Economic Crunch, War on Terror and his Policies……..397
• Global Financial Crisis 2008 and the Great Britain………………………………..…406

• Reforms under Cameroun…………………………………………………………….…417

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The Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution,[b] also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King
James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) by a union of English
Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange).

William's successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army led to his ascending of the
English throne as William III of England jointly with his wife Mary II of England, in conjunction

with the documentation of the Bill of Rights 1689.

King James's policies of religious tolerance after 1685 met with increasing opposition by

members of leading political circles, who were troubled by the king's Catholicism and his close
ties with France. The crisis facing the king came to a head in 1688, with the birth of the King's

son, James Francis Edward Stuart, on 10 June (Julian calendar).[a] This changed the existing

line of succession by displacing the heir presumptive, his daughter Mary, a Protestant and the
wife of William of Orange, with young James as heir apparent. The establishment of a Roman
Catholic dynasty in the kingdoms now seemed likely. Some of the most influential leaders of the

Tories united with members of the opposition Whigs and set out to resolve the crisis by inviting
William of Orange to England,[1] which the stadtholder, who feared an Anglo-French alliance,
had indicated as a condition for a military intervention.

After consolidating political and financial support, William crossed the North Sea and English
Channel with a large invasion fleet in November 1688, landing at Torbay. After only two minor
clashes between the two opposing armies in England, and anti-Catholic riots in several towns,

James's regime collapsed, largely because of a lack of resolve shown by the king. However, this
was followed by the protracted Williamite War in Ireland and Dundee's rising in Scotland.[c] In
England's distant American colonies, the revolution led to the collapse of the Dominion of New

England and the overthrow of the Province of Maryland's government. Following a defeat of his
forces at the Battle of Reading on 9 December, James and his wife fled England; James,
however, returned to London for a two-week period that culminated in his final departure for

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France on 23 December. By threatening to withdraw his troops, William in February 1689

convinced a newly chosen Convention Parliament to make him and his wife joint monarchs.

The Revolution permanently ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in

England. For British Catholics its effects were disastrous both socially and politically: Catholics
were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over a century; they were

also denied commissions in the army, and the monarch was forbidden to be Catholic or to marry
a Catholic, this latter prohibition remaining in force until the UK's Succession to the Crown Act

2013 removed it in 2015. The Revolution led to limited toleration for Nonconformist Protestants,

although it would be some time before they had full political rights. It has been argued, mainly
by Whig historians, that James's overthrow began modern English parliamentary democracy:
the Bill of Rights 1689 has become one of the most important documents in the political history

of Britain and never since has the monarch held absolute power.

Internationally, the Revolution was related to the War of the Grand Alliance on mainland
Europe. It has been seen as the last successful invasion of England. It ended all attempts by

England in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century to subdue the Dutch Republic by military
force. However, the resulting economic integration and military co-operation between the

English and Dutch navies shifted the dominance in world trade from the Dutch Republic to
England and later to Great Britain.

The expression "Glorious Revolution" was first used by John Hampden in late 1689, and is an
expression that is still used by the British Parliament. The Glorious Revolution is also

occasionally termed the Bloodless Revolution, albeit inaccurately. The English Civil War (also

known as the Great Rebellion) was still within living memory for most of the major English
participants in the events of 1688, and for them, in comparison to that war (or even the
Monmouth Rebellion of 1685) the deaths in the conflict of 1688 were mercifully few.

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Causes:

The Glorious Revolution was a political coup that took place in Great Britain during the mid-17th

century; the main cause of this conflict was growing Protestant concern over King James II's
strict adherence to his Catholic faith. This conflict is also known as the Revolution of 1688, and
it resulted in the solidification of Parliament's power over the monarch and the Catholic King

James II being replaced by his daughter, the Protestant Queen Mary, and her husband King
William III. Although this was a political conflict that resulted in the deposition of a ruling

monarch, it was a relatively peaceful transition in military terms, resulting in little bloodshed.

Although the Glorious Revolution ended with King James II being replaced by a monarch of his
own bloodline and his removal from power didn't result from a violent military conflict, the
revolution does represent a foreign invasion of sorts. King William III, Mary's husband and King

James II's son-in-law, was a member of the Dutch aristocracy and was known as William of
Orange before he took the throne in England. Although the revolution may be referred to as the
Bloodless Revolution, Ireland and Scotland responded with force, which led to further

revolutionary conflict and much more bloodshed in those two areas

Results:

A result of the Glorious Revolution in England was that the government changed from an
absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. An absolute monarchy gives the king the
power to do anything without constraints from laws or parliament, whereas a constitutional

monarchy limits the king's power through parliament.

The Glorious Revolution occurred in England in 1688 and is also known as the English
Revolution, the Bloodless Revolution or the Revolution of 1688. It was a coup that overthrew
King James II without any bloodshed and placed King William III and his wife Mary in power.
The 1689 English Bill of Rights came from the revolution and established a democratic form of

government.

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William III and Mary II (1689-1702)

In 1689 Parliament declared that James had abdicated by deserting his kingdom. William

(reigned 1689-1702) and Mary (reigned 1689-94) were offered the throne as joint monarchs.

They accepted a Declaration of Rights (later a Bill), drawn up by a Convention of Parliament,

which limited the Sovereign's power, reaffirmed Parliament's claim to control taxation and
legislation, and provided guarantees against the abuses of power which James II and the other

Stuart Kings had committed.

The exclusion of James II and his heirs was extended to exclude all Catholics from the throne,
since 'it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this
protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince'. The Sovereign was required in his

coronation oath to swear to maintain the Protestant religion.

The Bill was designed to ensure Parliament could function free from royal interference. The
Sovereign was forbidden from suspending or dispensing with laws passed by Parliament, or

imposing taxes without Parliamentary consent.

The Sovereign was not allowed to interfere with elections or freedom of speech, and
proceedings in Parliament were not to be questioned in the courts or in any body outside
Parliament itself. (This was the basis of modern parliamentary privilege.)

The Sovereign was required to summon Parliament frequently (the Triennial Act of 1694

reinforced this by requiring the regular summoning of Parliaments).

Parliament tightened control over the King's expenditure; the financial settlement reached with

William and Mary deliberately made them dependent upon Parliament, as one Member of
Parliament said, 'when princes have not needed money they have not needed us'.

Finally, the King was forbidden to maintain a standing army in time of peace without
Parliament's consent.

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The Bill of Rights added further defences of individual rights. The King was forbidden to

establish his own courts or to act as a judge himself, and the courts were forbidden to impose
excessive bail or fines, or cruel and unusual punishments.

However, the Sovereign could still summon and dissolve Parliament, appoint and dismiss
Ministers, veto legislation and declare war.

The so-called 'Glorious Revolution' has been much debated over the degree to which it was

conservative or radical in character. The result was a permanent shift in power; although the
monarchy remained of central importance, Parliament had become a permanent feature of

political life.

The Toleration Act of 1689 gave all non-conformists except Roman Catholics freedom of

worship, thus rewarding Protestant dissenters for their refusal to side with James II.

After 1688 there was a rapid development of party, as parliamentary sessions lengthened and
the Triennial Act ensured frequent general elections.

Although the Tories had fully supported the Revolution, it was the Whigs (traditional critics of the
monarchy) who supported William and consolidated their position.

Recognising the advisability of selecting a Ministry from the political party with the majority in the
House of Commons, William appointed a Ministry in 1696 which was drawn from the Whigs.

Known as the Junto, it was regarded with suspicion by Members of Parliament as it met
separately, but it may be regarded as the forerunner of the modern Cabinet of Ministers.

In 1697, Parliament decided to give an annual grant of £700,000 to the King for life, as a

contribution to the expenses of civil government, which included judges' and ambassadors'
salaries, as well as the Royal Household's expenses.

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The Bill of Rights had established the succession with the heirs of Mary II, Anne and William III

in that order, but by 1700 Mary had died childless, Anne's only surviving child (out of 17
children), the Duke of Gloucester, had died at the age of 11 and William was dying. The

succession had to be decided.

The Act of Settlement of 1701 was designed to secure the Protestant succession to the throne,

and to strengthen the guarantees for ensuring parliamentary system of government.

Mary had died of smallpox in 1694, aged 32, and without children. According to the Act,
succession to the throne therefore went to Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover and James I's

granddaughter, and her Protestant heirs.

The Act also laid down the conditions under which alone the Crown could be held. No Roman

Catholic, nor anyone married to a Roman Catholic, could hold the English Crown. The
Sovereign now had to swear to maintain the Church of England (and after 1707, the Church of

Scotland).

The Act of Settlement not only addressed the dynastic and religious aspects of succession, it

also further restricted the powers and prerogatives of the Crown.

Under the Act, parliamentary consent had to be given for the Sovereign to engage in war or

leave the country, and judges were to hold office on good conduct and not at royal pleasure -
thus establishing judicial independence.

The Act of Settlement reinforced the Bill of Rights, in that it strengthened the principle that
government was undertaken by the Sovereign and his or her constitutional advisers (i.e. his or

her Ministers), not by the Sovereign and any personal advisers whom he or she happened to

choose.

One of William's main reasons for accepting the throne was to reinforce the struggle against
Louis XIV. William's foreign policy was dominated by the priority to contain French
expansionism. England and the Dutch joined the coalition against France during the Nine Years
War.

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Although Louis was forced to recognise William as King under the Treaty of Ryswick (1697),

William's policy of intervention in Europe was costly in terms of finance and his popularity.

The Bank of England, established in 1694 to raise money for the war by borrowing, did not
loosen the King's financial reliance on Parliament as the national debt depended on
parliamentary guarantees.

William's Dutch advisers were resented, and in 1699 his Dutch Blue Guards were forced to

leave the country.

Never of robust health, William died as a result of complications from a fall whilst riding at
Hampton Court in 1702.

Queen Anne (1702-1714)

Anne (6 February 1665 – 1 August 1714)[n 1] became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland

on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, two of her realms, the kingdoms of
England and Scotland, united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. She continued
to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death.

Anne was born in the reign of her uncle Charles II, who had no legitimate children. Her father,

James, was first in line to the throne. His suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in
England, and on Charles's instructions Anne was raised as an Anglican. Three years after he
succeeded Charles, James was deposed in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. Anne's Dutch

Protestant brother-in-law and Cousin William III became joint monarch with his wife, Anne's
elder sister Mary II. Although the sisters had been close, disagreements over Anne's finances,
status and choice of acquaintances arose shortly after Mary's accession and they became

estranged. William and Mary had no children. After Mary's death in 1694, William continued as
sole monarch until he was succeeded by Anne upon his death in 1702.

As queen, Anne favoured moderate Tory politicians, who were more likely to share her Anglican
religious views than their opponents, the Whigs. The Whigs grew more powerful during the
course of the War of the Spanish Succession, until in 1710 Anne dismissed many of them from

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office. Her close friendship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, turned sour as the

result of political differences.

Anne was plagued by ill health throughout her life. From her thirties onwards, she grew
increasingly lame and obese. Despite seventeen pregnancies by her husband, Prince George of
Denmark, she died without any surviving children and was the last monarch of the House of

Stuart. Under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701, she was succeeded by her second
cousin George I of the House of Hanover, who was a descendant of the Stuarts through his

maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, a daughter of James VI and I.

Early life:

Anne was born at 11:39 p.m. on 6 February 1665 at St James's Palace, London, the fourth child

and second daughter of James, Duke of York (afterwards James II and VII), and his first wife,
Anne Hyde.[1] Her father was the younger brother of King Charles II, who ruled the three

kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and her mother was the daughter of Lord
Chancellor Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. At her Anglican baptism in the Chapel Royal at
St James's, her older sister, Mary, was one of her godparents, along with the Duchess of

Monmouth and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon.[2] The Duke and Duchess of
York had eight children, but Anne and Mary were the only ones to survive into adulthood.[3]

As a child, Anne suffered from an eye condition, which manifested as excessive watering known
as "defluxion". For medical treatment, she was sent to France, where she lived with her paternal

grandmother, Queen Henrietta Maria, at the Château de Colombes near Paris.[4] Following her

grandmother's death in 1669, Anne lived with an aunt, Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans. On
the sudden death of her aunt in 1670, Anne returned to England. Her mother died the following
year.[5]

As was traditional in the royal family, Anne and her sister were brought up separated from their
father in their own establishment at Richmond, London.[6] On the instructions of Charles II, they
were raised as Protestants.[7] Placed in the care of Colonel Edward and Lady Frances

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Villiers,[8] their education was focused on the teachings of the Anglican church.[9] Henry

Compton, Bishop of London, was appointed as Anne's preceptor.[10]

Around 1671, Anne first made the acquaintance of Sarah Jennings, who later became her close
friend and one of her most influential advisors.[11] Jennings married John Churchill (the future
Duke of Marlborough) in about 1678. His sister, Arabella Churchill, was the Duke of York's

mistress, and he was to be Anne's most important general.[12]

In 1673, the Duke of York's conversion to Roman Catholicism became public, and he married a
Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, who was only six and a half years older than Anne. Charles

II had no legitimate children, and so the Duke of York was next in the line of succession,
followed by his two surviving daughters from his first marriage, Mary and Anne. Over the next
ten years, the new Duchess of York had ten children, but all were either stillborn or died in

infancy, leaving Mary and Anne second and third in the line of succession after their father.[13]
There is every indication that, throughout Anne's early life, she and her stepmother got on well
together,[14] and the Duke of York was a conscientious and loving father.[15]

Marriage:

Anne, circa 1684, painted by Willem Wissing and Jan van der Vaardt

In November 1677, Anne's elder sister, Mary, married their Dutch first cousin, William of
Orange, at St James's Palace, but Anne could not attend the wedding because she was

confined to her room with smallpox.[16] By the time she recovered, Mary had already left for her
new life in the Netherlands. Lady Frances Villiers contracted the disease, and died. Anne's aunt

Lady Henrietta Hyde (the wife of Laurence Hyde) was appointed as her new governess.[17] A
year later, Anne and her stepmother visited Mary in Holland for two weeks.[18]

Anne's father and stepmother retired to Brussels in March 1679 in the wake of anti-Catholic
hysteria fed by the Popish Plot, and Anne visited them from the end of August.[18] In October,

they returned to Britain, the Duke and Duchess to Scotland and Anne to England.[19] She

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joined her father and stepmother at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh from July 1681 until May

1682.[20] It was her last journey outside England.[21]

Anne's second cousin George of Hanover (her eventual successor) visited London for three
months from December 1680, sparking rumours of a potential marriage between them.[22]
Historian Edward Gregg dismissed the rumours as ungrounded, as her father was essentially

exiled from court, and the Hanoverians planned to marry George to his first cousin Sophia
Dorothea of Celle as part of a scheme to unite the Hanoverian inheritance. Other rumours

claimed she was courted by Lord Mulgrave (later made Duke of Buckingham), although he

denied it. Nevertheless, as a result of the gossip, he was temporarily dismissed from court.[24]

With George of Hanover out of contention as a potential suitor for Anne, King Charles looked
elsewhere for an eligible prince who would be welcomed as a groom by his Protestant subjects

but also acceptable to his Catholic ally, Louis XIV of France.[25] The Danes were Protestant
allies of the French, and Louis XIV was keen on an Anglo-Danish alliance to contain the power
of the Dutch. A marriage treaty between Anne and Prince George of Denmark, younger brother

of King Christian V, was negotiated by Anne's uncle Laurence Hyde, who had been made Earl
of Rochester, and the English Secretary of State for the Northern Department, Robert Spencer,

2nd Earl of Sunderland.[26] Anne's father consented to the marriage eagerly because it
diminished the influence of his other son-in-law, William of Orange, who was naturally unhappy
at the match.

Bishop Compton officiated at the wedding of Anne and George of Denmark on 28 July 1683 in

the Chapel Royal.[28] Though it was an arranged marriage, they were faithful and devoted

partners.[29] They were given a set of buildings in the Palace of Whitehall known as the Cockpit
as their London residence,[30] and Sarah Churchill was appointed one of Anne's ladies of the
bedchamber.[31] Within months of the marriage, Anne was pregnant, but the baby was stillborn

in May. Anne recovered at the spa town of Tunbridge Wells,[32] and over the next two years,
gave birth to two daughters in quick succession: Mary and Anne Sophia.

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Accession of James II and VII

When Charles II died in 1685, Anne's father became king as James II in England and Ireland

and James VII in Scotland. To the consternation of the English people, James began to give
Catholics military and administrative offices, in contravention of the Test Acts that were
designed to prevent such appointments.[34] Anne shared the general concern, and continued to

attend Anglican services. As her sister Mary lived in the Netherlands, Anne and her family were
the only members of the royal family attending Protestant religious services in England.[35]

When her father tried to get Anne to baptise her youngest daughter into the Catholic faith, Anne

burst into tears.[36] "The Church of Rome is wicked and dangerous", she wrote to her sister,
"their ceremonies – most of them – plain downright idolatry."[37] Anne became estranged from
her father and stepmother as James moved to weaken the Church of England's power.[38]

In early 1687, within a matter of days, Anne miscarried, her husband caught smallpox, and their
two young daughters died of the same infection. Lady Rachel Russell wrote that George and
Anne had "taken [the deaths] very heavily ... Sometimes they wept, sometimes they mourned in

words; then sat silent, hand in hand; he sick in bed, and she the carefullest nurse to him that
can be imagined."[39] Later that year, she suffered another stillbirth.

Mary of Modena and James Francis Edward, Anne's stepmother and half-brother

Public alarm at James's Catholicism increased when his wife, Mary of Modena, became
pregnant for the first time since James's accession.[40] In letters to her sister Mary, Anne raised

suspicions that the Queen was faking her pregnancy in an attempt to introduce a false heir. She

wrote, "they will stick at nothing, be it never so wicked, if it will promote their interest ... there
may be foul play intended."[41] Anne suffered another miscarriage in April 1688, and left
London to recuperate in the spa town of Bath.[42]

Anne's stepmother gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward, on 10 June 1688, and a Catholic
succession became more likely.[43] Anne was still at Bath, so she did not witness the birth,
which fed the belief that the child was spurious. Anne may have left the capital deliberately to

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avoid being present, or because she was genuinely ill,[44] but it is also possible that James

desired the exclusion of all Protestants, including his daughter, from affairs of state.[45][46] "I
shall never now be satisfied", Anne wrote to her sister Mary, "whether the child be true or false.

It may be it is our brother, but God only knows ... one cannot help having a thousand fears and
melancholy thoughts, but whatever changes may happen you shall ever find me firm to my
religion and faithfully yours."[47]

To dispel rumours of a supposititious child, James had 40 witnesses to the birth attend a Privy

Council meeting, but Anne claimed she could not attend because she was pregnant herself

(which she was not)[48] and then declined to read the depositions because it was "not
necessary".[49]

"Glorious Revolution"

In what became known as the "Glorious Revolution", William of Orange invaded England on 5

November 1688 in an action that ultimately deposed King James. Forbidden by James to pay
Mary a projected visit in the spring of 1687,[50] Anne corresponded with her and was aware of
the plans to invade.[51] On the advice of the Churchills,[46] she refused to side with James after

William landed and instead wrote to William on 18 November declaring her approval of his
action.[52] Churchill abandoned the unpopular king on the 24th. Prince George followed suit
that night,[53] and in the evening of the following day James issued orders to place Sarah
Churchill under house arrest at St James's Palace.[54] Anne and Sarah fled from Whitehall by a

back staircase, putting themselves under the care of Bishop Compton. They spent one night in
his house, and subsequently arrived at Nottingham on 1 December.[55] Two weeks later and

escorted by a large company, Anne arrived at Oxford, where she met Prince George in
triumph.[56] "God help me!", lamented James on discovering the desertion of his daughter on
26 November, "Even my children have forsaken me."[57] On 19 December, Anne returned to

London, where she was at once visited by William. James fled to France on the 23rd.[58] Anne
showed no concern at the news of her father's flight, and instead merely asked for her usual

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game of cards. She justified herself by saying that she "was used to play and never loved to do

anything that looked like an affected constraint".[59]

In January 1689, a Convention Parliament assembled in England and declared that James had
effectively abdicated when he fled, and that the thrones of England and Ireland were therefore
vacant. The Parliament or Estates of Scotland took similar action, and William and Mary were

declared monarchs of all three realms.[60] The Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689
settled the succession. Anne and her descendants were to be in the line of succession after

William and Mary, and they were to be followed by any descendants of William by a future

marriage.[61] On 24 July 1689, Anne gave birth to a son, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester,
who, though ill, survived infancy. As King William and Queen Mary had no children, it looked as
though Anne's son would eventually inherit the Crown.

Reign:

Portrait by Charles Jervas

Anne became Queen upon the death of William III on 8 March 1702, and was immediately

popular.[98] In her first speech to the English Parliament, on 11 March, she distanced herself
from her late Dutch brother-in-law and said, "As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can
very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall
not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England."[99]

Soon after her accession, Anne appointed her husband Lord High Admiral, giving him nominal
control of the Royal Navy.[100] Anne gave control of the army to Lord Marlborough, whom she

appointed Captain-General.[101] Marlborough also received numerous honours from the

Queen; he was created a Knight of the Garter and was elevated to the rank of duke. The
Duchess of Marlborough was appointed Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the Robes, and Keeper

of the Privy Purse.[102]

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Anne was crowned on St George's Day, 23 April 1702.[103] Afflicted with gout, she was carried

to Westminster Abbey in an open sedan chair, with a low back to permit her train to flow out
behind her.[104] On 4 May, England became embroiled in the War of the Spanish Succession,

in which England, Austria and the Dutch Republic fought against France and Spain.[105]
Charles II of Spain had died childless in 1700, and the succession was disputed by two
claimants: the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria and the Bourbon Philip, Duke of

Anjou.[106]

Act of Union:

While Ireland was subordinate to the English Crown and Wales formed part of the kingdom of
England, Scotland remained an independent sovereign state with its own parliament and laws.
The Act of Settlement 1701, passed by the English Parliament, applied in the kingdoms of

England and Ireland but not Scotland, where a strong minority wished to preserve the Stuart
dynasty and its right of inheritance to the throne.[107] Anne had declared it "very necessary" to
conclude a union of England and Scotland in her first speech to the English Parliament,[108]

and a joint Anglo-Scots commission met at her former residence the Cockpit to discuss terms in
October 1702. The negotiations broke up in early February 1703 having failed to reach an
agreement.[109][110] The Estates of Scotland responded to the Act of Settlement by passing
the Act of Security, which gave the Estates the power, if the Queen had no further children, to
choose the next Scottish monarch from among the Protestant descendants of the royal line of
Scotland.[111] The individual chosen by the Estates could not be the same person who came to

the English throne, unless England granted full freedom of trade to Scottish merchants.[112] At

first, Anne withheld royal assent to the act, but granted it the following year when the Estates
threatened to withhold supply, endangering Scottish support for England's wars.[113]

In its turn, the English Parliament responded with the Alien Act 1705, which threatened to

impose economic sanctions and declare Scottish subjects aliens in England, unless Scotland
either repealed the Act of Security or moved to unite with England.[114] The Estates chose the
latter option; the English Parliament agreed to repeal the Alien Act,[115] and new

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commissioners were appointed by Queen Anne in early 1706 to negotiate the terms of a

union.[116] The articles of union approved by the commissioners were presented to Anne on 23
July 1706,[117] and ratified by the Scottish and English Parliaments on 16 January and 6 March

1707 respectively.[118] Under the Acts of Union, England and Scotland were united into a
single kingdom called Great Britain, with one parliament, on 1 May 1707.[119] Anne, a
consistent and ardent supporter of union despite opposition on both sides of the border,

attended a thanksgiving service in St Paul's Cathedral. The Scot Sir John Clerk, 1st Baronet,

who also attended, wrote, "nobody on this occasion appeared more sincerely devout and
thankful than the Queen herself".[120]

Two-party politics:

Portrait from the school of John Closterman, circa 1702

Anne's reign was marked by the further development of a two-party system. In general, the

Tories were supportive of the Anglican church and favoured the "landed interest" of the country
gentry, while the Whigs were aligned with commercial interests and Protestant Dissenters. As a
committed Anglican, Anne was inclined to favour the Tories.[121] Her first ministry was

predominantly Tory, and contained such High Tories as Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham,
and her uncle Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester.[122] It was headed by Lord Treasurer Lord
Godolphin and Anne's favourite the Duke of Marlborough, who were considered moderate
Tories, along with the Speaker of the House of Commons, Robert Harley.[123]

Anne supported the Occasional Conformity Bill of 1702, which was promoted by the Tories and

opposed by the Whigs. The bill aimed to disqualify Protestant Dissenters from public office by
closing a loophole in the Test Acts, legislation that restricted public office to Anglican
conformists. The existing law permitted nonconformists to take office if they took Anglican
communion once a year. Anne's husband was placed in an unfortunate position when Anne
forced him to vote for the bill, even though, being a Lutheran, he was an occasional conformist

himself. The Whigs successfully blocked the bill for the duration of the parliamentary
session.[124] Anne reinstituted the traditional religious practice of touching for the king's evil

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that had been eschewed by William as papist superstition.[125] After the Great Storm of 1703,

Anne declared a general fast to implore God "to pardon the crying sins of this nation which had
drawn down this sad judgement".[126] The Occasional Conformity Bill was revived in the wake

of the storm,[127] but Anne withheld support, fearing its reintroduction was a ruse to cause a
political quarrel. Once again it failed.[128] A third attempt to introduce the bill as an amendment
to a money bill in November 1704 was also thwarted.[129]

The Whigs vigorously supported the War of the Spanish Succession and became even more

influential after the Duke of Marlborough won a great victory at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.

Many of the High Tories, who opposed British involvement in the land war against France, were
removed from office.[130] Godolphin, Marlborough, and Harley, who had replaced Nottingham
as Secretary of State for the Northern Department, formed a ruling "triumvirate".[131] They were

forced to rely more and more on support from the Whigs, and particularly from the Whig Junto—
Lords Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland—whom Anne disliked.[132] Sarah, the
Duchess of Marlborough, incessantly badgered the Queen to appoint more Whigs and reduce
the power of the Tories, whom she considered little better than Jacobites, and the Queen
became increasingly discontented with her.[133]

Half-crown coin of Queen Anne, 1708. The inscription reads in Latin: ANNA DEI GRATIA (Anne
by the Grace of God).

In 1706, Godolphin and the Marlboroughs forced Anne to accept Lord Sunderland, a Junto Whig
and the Marlboroughs' son-in-law, as Harley's colleague as Secretary of State for the Southern

Department.[134] Although this strengthened the ministry's position in Parliament, it weakened

the ministry's position with the Queen, as Anne became increasingly irritated with Godolphin
and with her former favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough, for supporting Sunderland and other
Whig candidates for vacant government and church positions.[135] The Queen turned for

private advice to Harley, who was uncomfortable with Marlborough and Godolphin's turn
towards the Whigs. She also turned to Abigail Hill, a woman of the bedchamber whose influence

grew as Anne's relationship with Sarah deteriorated.[136] Abigail was related to both Harley and

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the Duchess, but was politically closer to Harley, and acted as an intermediary between him and

the Queen.[137]

The division within the ministry came to a head on 8 February 1708, when Godolphin and the
Marlboroughs insisted that the Queen had to either dismiss Harley or do without their services.
When the Queen seemed to hesitate, Marlborough and Godolphin refused to attend a cabinet

meeting. Harley attempted to lead business without his former colleagues, and several of those
present including the Duke of Somerset refused to participate until they returned.[138] Her hand

forced, the Queen dismissed Harley.[139]

The following month, Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, attempted to
land in Scotland with French assistance in an attempt to establish himself as king.[140] Anne
withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill 1708 in case the militia raised in Scotland was

disloyal and sided with the Jacobites.[141] She was the last British sovereign to veto a
parliamentary bill, although her action was barely commented upon at the time.[142] The
invasion fleet never landed and was chased away by British ships commanded by Sir George

Byng.[143] As a result of the Jacobite invasion scare, support for the Tories fell and the Whigs
were able to secure a majority in the British general election, 1708.[144]

The Duchess of Marlborough was angered when Abigail moved into rooms at Kensington
Palace that Sarah considered her own, though she rarely if ever used them.[145] In July 1708,
she came to court with a bawdy poem written by a Whig propagandist, probably Arthur
Maynwaring,[146] that implied a lesbian relationship between Anne and Abigail.[147] The

Duchess wrote to Anne telling her she had damaged her reputation by conceiving "a great

passion for such a woman ... strange and unaccountable".[148] Sarah thought Abigail had risen
above her station, writing "I never thought her education was such as to make her fit company
for a great queen. Many people have liked the humour of their chambermaids and have been

very kind to them, but 'tis very uncommon to hold a private correspondence with them and put
them upon the foot of a friend."[149] While some modern commentators have concluded Anne

was a lesbian,[150] most have rejected this analysis.[n 2] In the opinion of Anne's biographers,

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she considered Abigail nothing more than a trusted servant,[152] and was a woman of strong

traditional beliefs, who was devoted to her husband.[153]

At a thanksgiving service for a victory at the Battle of Oudenarde, Anne did not wear the jewels
that Sarah had selected for her. At the door of St Paul's Cathedral, they had an argument that
culminated in Sarah offending the Queen by telling her to be quiet.[154] Anne was

dismayed.[155] When Sarah forwarded an unrelated letter from her husband to Anne, with a
covering note continuing the argument, Anne wrote back pointedly, "After the commands you

gave me on the thanksgiving day of not answering you, I should not have troubled you with

these lines, but to return the Duke of Marlborough's letter safe into your hands, and for the
same reason do not say anything to that, nor to yours which enclosed it."[156]

Death of her husband

Anne with her husband, Prince George of Denmark, painted by Charles Boit, 1706

Anne was devastated by her husband's death in October 1708,[157] and the event proved a

turning point in her relationship with the Duchess of Marlborough. The Duchess arrived at

Kensington Palace shortly before George died, and after his death insisted that Anne leave
Kensington for St James's Palace against her wishes.[158] Anne resented the Duchess's
intrusive actions, which included removing a portrait of George from the Queen's bedchamber
and then refusing to return it in the belief that it was natural "to avoid seeing of papers or
anything that belonged to one that one loved when they were just dead".[159]

The Whigs used George's death to their own advantage. The leadership of the Admiralty was

unpopular among the Whig leaders, who had blamed Prince George and his deputy George
Churchill (who was Marlborough's brother) for mismanagement of the navy.[160] With Whigs
now dominant in Parliament, and Anne distraught at the loss of her husband, they forced her to
accept the Junto leaders Lords Somers and Wharton into the cabinet. Anne, however, insisted
on carrying out the duties of Lord High Admiral herself, without appointing a member of the
government to take George's place. Undeterred, the Junto demanded the appointment of the

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Earl of Orford, another member of the Junto and one of Prince George's leading critics, as First

Lord of the Admiralty. Anne appointed the moderate Earl of Pembroke, on 29 November 1708.
Pressure mounted on Pembroke, Godolphin and the Queen from the dissatisfied Junto Whigs,

and Pembroke resigned after less than a year in office. Another month of arguments followed
before the Queen finally consented to put Orford in control of the Admiralty as First Lord in
November 1709.[161]

Sarah continued to berate Anne for her friendship with Abigail, and in October 1709, Anne wrote

to the Duke of Marlborough asking that his wife "leave off teasing & tormenting me & behave

herself with the decency she ought both to her friend and Queen".[162] On Maundy Thursday 6
April 1710, Anne and Sarah saw each other for the last time. According to Sarah, the Queen
was taciturn and formal, repeating the same phrases—"Whatever you have to say you may put

in writing" and "You said you desired no answer, and I shall give you none"—over and
over.[163]

War of the Spanish Succession

As the expensive War of the Spanish Succession grew unpopular, so did the Whig

administration.[164] The impeachment of Henry Sacheverell, a High Church Tory Anglican who
had preached anti-Whig sermons, led to further public discontent. Anne thought Sacheverell
ought to be punished for questioning the "Glorious Revolution", but that his punishment should
only be a mild one to prevent further public commotion.[165] In London, riots broke out in

support of Sacheverell, but the only troops available to quell the disturbances were Anne's
guards, and Secretary of State Sunderland was reluctant to use them and leave the Queen less

protected. Anne declared God would be her guard and ordered Sunderland to redeploy her
troops.[166] In line with Anne's views, Sacheverell was convicted, but his sentence—
suspension of preaching for three years—was so light as to render the trial a mockery.[166]

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Tinted engraving of Anne from an atlas commissioned by Augustus the Strong, 1707

The Queen, increasingly disdainful of the Marlboroughs and her ministry, finally took the

opportunity to dismiss Sunderland in June 1710.[167] Godolphin followed in August. The Junto
Whigs were removed from office, although Marlborough, for the moment, remained as
commander of the army. In their place, she appointed a new ministry, headed by Harley, which

began to seek peace with France. Unlike the Whigs, Harley and his ministry were ready to
compromise by giving Spain to the Bourbon claimant, Philip of Anjou, in return for commercial

concessions.[168] In the parliamentary elections that soon followed his appointment, Harley,

aided by government patronage, secured a large Tory majority.[169] In January 1711, Anne
forced Sarah to resign her court offices, and Abigail took over as Keeper of the Privy
Purse.[170] Harley was stabbed by a disgruntled French refugee, the Marquis de Guiscard, in

March, and Anne wept at the thought he would die. He recovered slowly.[171] Godolphin's
death from natural causes in September 1712 reduced Anne to tears; she blamed their
estrangement on the Marlboroughs.[172]

The elder brother of Archduke Charles, Emperor Joseph I, died in April 1711 and Charles
succeeded him in Austria, Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire. To give him also the Spanish

throne was no longer in Britain's interests, but the proposed Peace of Utrecht submitted to
Parliament for ratification did not go as far as the Whigs wanted to curb Bourbon ambitions.[173]
In the House of Commons, the Tory majority was unassailable, but the same was not true in the
House of Lords. The Whigs secured the support of the Earl of Nottingham against the treaty by

promising to support his Occasional Conformity bill.[174] Seeing a need for decisive action to
erase the anti-peace majority in the House of Lords, and seeing no alternative, Anne reluctantly

created twelve new peers.[175] Abigail's husband, Samuel Masham, was made a baron,
although Anne protested to Harley that she "never had any design to make a great lady of
[Abigail], and should lose a useful servant".[176] Such a mass creation of peers was

unprecedented.[177] On the same day, Marlborough was dismissed as commander of the

army.[178] The peace treaty was ratified and Britain's military involvement in the War of the
Spanish Succession ended.[179]

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By signing the Treaty of Utrecht, King Louis XIV of France recognised the Hanoverian

succession in Britain.[180] Nevertheless, gossip that Anne and her ministers favoured the
succession of her half-brother rather than the Hanoverians continued, despite Anne's denials in

public and in private.[181] The rumours were fed by her consistent refusals to permit any of the
Hanoverians to visit or move to England,[182] and by the intrigues of Harley and the Tory
Secretary of State Lord Bolingbroke, who were in separate and secret discussions with her half-

brother about a possible Stuart restoration until early 1714.[183]

Death

Anne was unable to walk between January and July 1713.[184] At Christmas, she was feverish,
and lay unconscious for hours,[185] which led to rumours of her impending death.[186] She
recovered, but was seriously ill again in March.[187] By July, Anne had lost confidence in

Harley; his secretary recorded that Anne told the cabinet "that he neglected all business; that he
was seldom to be understood; that when he did explain himself, she could not depend upon the
truth of what he said; that he never came to her at the time she appointed; that he often came

drunk; [and] last, to crown all, he behaved himself towards her with ill manner, indecency and
disrespect."[188] On 27 July 1714, during Parliament's summer recess, she dismissed Harley
as Lord Treasurer.[189] Despite failing health, which her doctors blamed on the emotional strain
of matters of state, she attended two late-night cabinet meetings that failed to determine
Harley's successor. A third meeting was cancelled when she became too ill to attend.[190] She
was rendered unable to speak by a stroke on 30 July 1714, the anniversary of Gloucester's

death, and on the advice of the Privy Council handed the treasurer's staff of office to Whig

grandee Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury.[191] She died at around 7:30 a.m. on 1
August 1714.[192] John Arbuthnot, one of her doctors, thought her death was a release from a
life of ill-health and tragedy; he wrote to Jonathan Swift, "I believe sleep was never more
welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her."[193]

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Anne was buried beside her husband and children in the Henry VII chapel on the South Aisle of

Westminster Abbey on 24 August.[194] The Electress Sophia had died on 28 May,[n 3] two
months before Anne, so the Electress's son, George, Elector of Hanover, inherited the British

Crown pursuant to the Act of Settlement 1701. The possible Catholic claimants, including
Anne's half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, were ignored. The Elector's accession was
relatively stable: a Jacobite rising in 1715 failed.[195] Marlborough was re-instated,[196] and the

Tory ministers were replaced by Whigs.

Hanoverian Era (1714-1790):

The House of Hanover (or the Hanoverians /ˌhænəˈvɪəriənz, -noʊ-, -ˈvɛr-/;[1][2] German: Haus
Hannover) is a German royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg

(German: Braunschweig-Lüneburg), the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the

Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It succeeded the
House of Stuart as monarchs of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714 and held that office until the
death of Queen Victoria in 1901. They are sometimes referred to as the House of Brunswick

and Lüneburg, Hanover line.

The House of Hanover is the only surviving branch of the House of Welf, which is the senior
branch of the House of Este.

Queen Victoria was the granddaughter of George III and was an ancestor of most major
European royal houses. She arranged marriages for her children and grandchildren across the
continent, tying Europe together; this earned her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe".

She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover; her son King Edward VII belonged to
the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father, Albert, Prince Consort. Under semi-
Salic law, Victoria could not inherit the Kingdom of Hanover and the Duchies unless the entire

male line became extinct; those possessions passed to the next eligible male heir, her uncle
Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale—the fifth son of George
III. The current head of the House of Hanover is Ernst August, Prince of Hanover

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Jacobite Rebellions (1715 and 1745)

The Jacobite risings (or Jacobite rebellions) were a series of uprisings, rebellions, and wars in

Great Britain and Ireland occurring between 1688 and 1746. The uprisings had the aim of
returning James VII of Scotland and II of England, the last Catholic British monarch, and later
his descendants of the House of Stuart, to the throne of Great Britain after they had been

deposed by Parliament during the Glorious Revolution. The series of conflicts takes its name
from Jacobitism, from Jacobus, the Latin form of James.

The major Jacobite risings were called the Jacobite rebellions by the ruling governments. The
"first Jacobite rebellion" and "second Jacobite rebellion" were known respectively as "the

Fifteen" and "the Forty-five", after the years in which they occurred (1715 and 1745).

Although each Jacobite rising had unique features, they were part of a larger series of military
campaigns by Jacobites attempting to restore the Stuart kings to the thrones of Scotland and
England (and after 1707, Great Britain). James was deposed in 1688 and the thrones were
claimed by his daughter Mary II jointly with her husband, the Dutch-born William of Orange (who
was also James II's nephew).

After the House of Hanover succeeded to the British throne in 1714, the risings continued, and

intensified. They continued until the last Jacobite rebellion ("the Forty-five"), led by Charles

Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender), who was soundly defeated at the Battle of Culloden in
1746. This ended any realistic hope of a Stuart restoration.

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Background

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citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February
2016)

During the 17th century, the kingdoms in Great Britain and Ireland suffered political and
religious turmoil in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Commonwealth ended with the

Restoration of Charles II, re-establishment of the Church of England and imposition of

Episcopalian church government.

In 1685 Charles II was succeeded by his Roman Catholic brother, James II and VII. James was
saw Covenanters them as troublemakers and initially tried to end their influence in Scotland.

The new king also tried to impose religious tolerance of Roman Catholics and Protestant
Dissenters, but antagonized many of the Anglican establishment by this action as they were

suspicious of Catholic power. James' half-hearted attempts to woo the Presbyterians seemingly
did not win him much popularity among that section of society either. They remembered his
earlier suppression of them and did not believe him to be sincere in his recognition of

Presbyterianism. Although these actions were widely unpopular, at first the majority of his
subjects tolerated these acts because James was in his 50s and both of his daughters were
committed Protestants. It seemed that James' reign would be short and the throne would soon
return to Protestant hands. In 1688 however James's young second wife Mary of Modena gave
birth to a boy, Prince James who was promptly baptized a Roman Catholic. Due to English and

Scottish succession laws, Prince James immediately supplanted his older half sisters as heir to

the throne. Now the prospect of a Catholic dynasty on the English, Scottish and Irish thrones
seemed all but certain.[1]

The "Immortal Seven" invited James's daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to
depose James and jointly rule in his place. On 4 November 1688 William arrived at Torbay,

England. After he landed, James fled London, returned and finally left for France on 23
December. In February 1689 the Glorious Revolution formally changed England's monarch, but

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many Catholics, Episcopalians and Tory royalists still supported James as the constitutionally

legitimate monarch.[1] The followers of James were named "Jacobites" after the Latin for
James, "Jacobus", and the name Jacobite was later used for those who sought to restore his

dynasty even after his death, citing his descendants as the rightful monarchs.

Scotland was slow to accept William, who summoned a Convention of the Estates which met on

14 March 1689 in Edinburgh. It reviewed a conciliatory letter from William and a haughty one
from James. On James's side, a modest force of a troop of fifty horsemen gathered by John

Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee was in town. Graham attended the convention at the

start but withdrew four days later when its support for William became evident. The convention
set out its terms, and William and Mary were proclaimed at Edinburgh on 11 April 1689, then
had their coronation in London in May. Crucially perhaps, William and Mary definitively accepted

the Church of Scotland as a Presbyterian institution after decades of intermittent efforts by

various monarchs, including James VI, Charles I, Charles II and James VII to mould the Church
of Scotland into an Episcopalian institution more pliable to Royal control.

The rising of 1689–92

On 16 April 1689 John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised James' standard on
the Dundee Law. Presbyterian historians later labelled him "Bluidy Clavers" for his presence as
an officer in the service of government forces loyal to the King at several altercations between
government forces and Covenanters during the reign of the Catholic James VII who was later
deposed. One example is the Battle of Drumclog, while another is the Battle of Bothwell Brig. In

letters written by the Viscount Dundee's own hand he was however an advocate of lenient

treatment of the Covenanters. Thus, the appropriateness of the title "Bluidy Clavers" being used
to describe John Graham of Claverhouse aside, the Jacobite hero has clearly not always been
viewed in a positive light by those sympathetic to the Covenanters or Cameronians. With

respect to the Viscount Dundee Sir Walter Scott coined the more romantic nickname "Bonnie
Dundee". This was from a poem Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1830 which later became a well

known song. James VII had already arrived in Ireland and a letter was on the way promising
Irish troops to assist the rising in Scotland.

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At first Viscount Dundee had difficulty in raising many supporters. The ineffectiveness of the

Williamite commander Major-General Hugh Mackay of Scourie encouraged support. Three

hundred Irish troops successfully landed at Kintyre to add to Dundee's forces. Dundee also

received support in the western Scottish Highlands from both Roman Catholic and Church of
Scotland clans. He also had some Lowland support, which is often overlooked by
historians[citation needed]. This included several peers of the realm, including James Seton, 4th

Earl of Dunfermline, who was a member of the privy council and who was Dundee's cavalry

commander for most of the rising. Other Lowland peers and gentry who rode with Dundee
included James Galloway, Lord Dunkeld; James Haliburton of Pitcur; Sir George Barclay; Lord
William Murray (son of the Marquis of Atholl), Alexander Fraser, elder brother of Simon Fraser,

later 11th Lord Lovat and Gilbert Ramsay, a prominent Edinburgh lawyer. Peers and members
of noble families who joined the Jacobites after Dundee's death include Kenneth Mackenzie, 4th

Earl of Seaforth; Thomas Fraser, 10th Lord Lovat; and Lord James Murray (another of Atholl's
sons).

By July the Jacobites had eight battalions and two companies, almost all Highlanders. Dundee
gained the confidence of the clans by cultivating the allegiance of each Highlander and
respecting the precedence of the clans. He realised that to them, the cause of Jacobitism was
secondary. At a time when infantry were trained to fight in formation, the Highlanders' method
was more informal. They set aside their plaids and other encumbrances before the battle, and
dropped to the ground to avoid enemy volleys. After quickly returning fire, they pursued their
foes, screaming in the Highland charge. They used heavy broadswords and targe (shield), or
whatever weapons they had, including pitchforks or Lochaber axes (a combined axe and spear

on a long pole). Such a charge was devastating to troops struggling to reform their lines, or fix
the recently introduced 'plug' bayonets.

The Highland charge routed a much larger Williamite force at the Battle of Killiecrankie on 27

July 1689. About two thousand Willamite troops were killed. Approximately six hundred

Highlanders were killed, plus a number of Jacobite Lowlanders, including Dundee himself,
Pitcur of Haliburton, and Gilbert Ramsay. At the street fighting of the Battle of Dunkeld on 21

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August, the Jacobite Highlanders were decisively defeated by the Cameronians who were led

by George Munro, 1st of Auchinbowie. Much of the North remained hostile to the Williamite
government. Expeditions to subdue the highlands were met with a series of skirmishes.

Jacobite forces suffered a heavy defeat at the Haughs of Cromdale on 1 May 1690. Later that
month Mackay constructed Fort William on the site of an old fort built by Cromwell. News in July

of William's victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne caused Jacobite hopes to fall. On 17
August 1691 William offered all Highland clans a pardon for their part in the Jacobite uprising,

provided that they took an oath of allegiance before 1 January 1692 in front of a magistrate. The

Highland chiefs sent word to James, now in exile in France, asking for his permission to take
this oath. James eventually authorised the chiefs to take the oath, but it was mid-December
before his message arrived. Despite difficult winter conditions, a few took the oath in time. The

brutality of the Massacre of Glencoe sped acceptance by the clans. By the spring of 1692 the
Jacobite chiefs had all sworn allegiance to King William.

The Jacobite war in Ireland

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reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2013)

The Williamite war in Ireland was the opening conflict in James's attempts to regain the throne.
It influenced the Jacobite rising in Scotland which "Bonnie Dundee" started at about the same
time. By its end in October 1691, the Irish Jacobite army left Ireland for France, becoming the

Irish Brigade. This later provided forces assisting "the Forty-five" (second Jacobite rebellion of
1745) in Scotland.

The Old Pretender

After the death of James II in 1701, the Jacobite claim to the thrones of Scotland and England
was taken up by his only surviving legitimate son, James Francis Edward Stuart (1688–1766).

His supporters proclaimed him James III of England and Ireland, and James VIII of Scotland.
The French king Louis XIV and Pope Clement XI formally recognised the Catholic monarch as

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King James III & VIII. Later, James was called "the Old Pretender", to distinguish him from his

son, Charles Edward Stuart (1720–1788), who became known as "the Young Pretender".

Planned invasion of 1708

After a brief peace, the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701 renewed French
support for the Jacobites. In 1708 James Stuart, the Old Pretender, sailed from Dunkirk with
6000 French troops in nearly 30 ships of the French navy. His intended landing in the Firth of

Forth was thwarted by the Royal Navy, under Admiral Byng. Over the tearful protests of James
himself, the French admiral chose not to risk a landing and opted to retreat instead of fight. The

French fleet, pursued by the British round the north of Scotland, lost ships and most of their men
in shipwrecks on the way back to Dunkirk.

A number of Jacobite lairds (James Stirling of Keir, Archibald Seaton of Touch, Archibald
Stirling of Garden, Charles Stirling of Kippendavie, and Patrick Edmonston of Newton) gathered

at Brig o' Turk in support of the invasion. They were arrested and imprisoned in Newgate, and
subsequently transferred to Edinburgh Castle and tried for high treason.[2] They were acquitted
of this charge, as the evidence against them only proved that they had drunk James' health.[3]

The rising of 1715 ("the Fifteen")

Broadside image: the Pretender, Prince James, Landing at Peterhead on 2 January 1716

Following the arrival from Hanover of George I in 1714, Tory Jacobites in England conspired to

organise armed rebellions against the new Hanoverian government. They were indecisive and
frightened by government arrests of their leaders. In Scotland 1715 is sometimes misleadingly

called the first Jacobite rebellion (or rising), which overlooks the fact that there had already been

a major Jacobite rising in 1689 [see above].

The Treaty of Utrecht ended hostilities between France and Britain. From France, as part of
widespread Jacobite plotting, James Stuart, the Old Pretender, had been corresponding with
the Earl of Mar. In the summer of 1715 James called on Mar to raise the Clans. Mar, nicknamed
Bobbin' John, rushed from London to Braemar. He summoned clan leaders to "a grand hunting-

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match" on 27 August 1715. On 6 September he proclaimed James as "their lawful sovereign"

and raised the old Scottish standard. Mar's proclamation brought in an alliance of clans and
northern Lowlanders, and they quickly overran many parts of the Highlands.

Mar's Jacobites captured Perth on 14 September without opposition. His army grew to around
8,000 men. A force of fewer than 2,000 men under the Duke of Argyll held the Stirling plain for

the government and Mar indecisively kept his forces in Perth. He waited for the Earl of Seaforth
to arrive with a body of northern clans. Seaforth was delayed by attacks from other clans loyal to

the government. Planned risings in Wales, Devon and Cornwall were forestalled by the

government arresting the local Jacobites.

Starting around 6 October, a rising in the north of England grew to about 300 horsemen under
Thomas Forster, a Northumberland squire and MP. This English contingent contained some

prominent people, including two peers of the realm, James Ratcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater,
and Lord Widdrington, and a future peer, Charles Ratcliffe, later fifth Earl of Derwentwater.
(Another future English peer, Edward Howard, later 9th Duke of Norfolk, joined the rising in

Lancashire). They joined forces with a rising in the south of Scotland under Viscount Kenmure.
Mar sent a Jacobite force under Brigadier William Mackintosh of Borlum to join them. They left

Perth on 10 October and were ferried across the Firth of Forth from Burntisland to East Lothian.
Here they were diverted into an attack on an undefended Edinburgh, but having seized Leith
citadel they were chased away by the arrival of Argyll's forces. Mackintosh's force of about
2,000 then made their way south and met their allies at Kelso in the Scottish Borders on 22

October, and spent a few days arguing over their options. The Scots wanted to fight government
forces in the vicinity or attack Dumfries and Glasgow, but the English were determined to march

towards Liverpool and led them to expect 20,000 recruits in Lancashire.

The Highlanders resisted marching into England and there were some mutinies and defections,

but they pressed on. Instead of the expected welcome the Jacobites were met by hostile militia
armed with pitchforks and very few recruits. They were unopposed in Lancaster and found

about 1,500 recruits as they reached Preston on 9 November, bringing their force to around
4,000. Then Hanoverian forces (including the Cameronians) arrived to besiege them at the

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Battle of Preston. The Jacobites actually won the first day of the battle, killing large numbers of

Government forces. However, Government reinforcements arrived, and the Jacobites

surrendered on 14 November.

In Scotland, at the Battle of Sheriffmuir on 13 November, Mar's forces were unable to defeat a
smaller force led by the Duke of Argyll and Mar retreated to Perth while the government army

built up. On 22 December 1715 a ship from France finally brought the Old Pretender to
Peterhead in person. But an ailing James proved far too timid and melancholy to inspire his

followers. He briefly set up court at Scone, Perthshire, visited his troops in Perth and ordered

the burning of villages to hinder the advance of the Duke of Argyll through deep snow. The
highlanders were cheered by the prospect of battle, but James's counsellors decided to
abandon the endeavour and ordered a retreat to the coast, giving the pretext of seeking a

stronger position. James boarded a ship at Montrose and escaped to France on 4 February
1716, leaving a message assigning his Highland adherents to shift for themselves.

Aftermath of "the Fifteen"

In the aftermath of the 'Fifteen', the Disarming Act and the Clan Act made some attempts to

subdue the Scottish Highlands. Government garrisons were built or extended in the Great Glen
at Fort William, Kiliwhimin (later renamed Fort Augustus) and Fort George, Inverness, as well as
barracks at Ruthven, Bernera (Glenelg) and Inversnaid, linked to the south by the Wade roads
constructed for Major-General George Wade.

On the whole, the government adopted a gentle approach and attempted to 'win hearts and
minds' by allowing the bulk of the defeated rebels to slip away back to their homes and

committing the first £20,000 of revenue from forfeited estates to the establishment of
Presbyterian-run, Scots-speaking schools in the Highlands (the latest in a series of measures
intended to promote Scots at the expense of Scottish Gaelic) and Presbyterianism at the
expense of Episcopalianism and Roman Catholicism.

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The rising of 1719 ("the Nineteen")

With France at peace with Britain and enjoying a rapprochement due to the Anglo-French

Alliance, the Jacobites found a new ally in Spain's Minister to the King, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni.
An invasion force set sail in 1719 with two frigates to land in Scotland to raise the clans. Twenty-
seven ships carried 5,000 soldiers to England, but the latter were dispersed by storms before

they could land. When the two Spanish frigates successfully landed a party of Jacobites led by
Lord Tullibardine and Earl Marischal with 300 Spanish soldiers at Loch Duich, they held Eilean

Donan Castle but this was soon captured and destroyed by a Royal Naval reconnaissance

force. They met only lukewarm support from a few clans. At the Battle of Glen Shiel, the
Spanish soldiers were forced to surrender to government forces.

Further action by Wade

In 1725 Wade raised the independent companies of the Black Watch as a militia to keep peace

in the unruly Highlands, but in 1743 they were moved to fight the French in Flanders. Their
commander at the Battle of Fontenoy in May 1745 was the Duke of Cumberland, soon to
command at Culloden.

The Young Pretender Planned invasion of 1744

In 1743 the War of the Austrian Succession drew Britain and France into open, though
unofficial, hostilities against each other. Leading English Jacobites made a formal request to
France for armed intervention and the French king's Master of Horse toured southern England

meeting Tories and discussing their proposals. In November 1743 Louis XV of France
authorised a large-scale invasion of southern England in February 1744 which was to be a
surprise attack. Troops were to march from their winter quarters to hidden invasion barges

which were to take them and Charles Edward Stuart, with the guidance of English Jacobite
pilots to Maldon in Essex where they were to be joined by local Tories in an immediate march
on London. Charles, (later known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender) was in exile

in Rome with his father (James Stuart, the Old Pretender), and rushed to France.

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As late as 13 February the British were still unaware of these intentions, and while they then

arrested many suspected Jacobites the French plans really went astray on 24 February when
one of the worst storms of the century scattered the French fleets which were about to battle for

control of the English Channel, sinking one ship and putting five out of action.

The barges had begun embarking some 10,000 troops and the storm wrecked the troop and

equipment transports, sinking some with the loss of all hands. Charles was officially informed on
28 February that the invasion had been cancelled. The British lodged strong diplomatic

objections to the presence of Charles, and France declared war but gave Charles no more

support.

The rising of 1745 ("the Forty-five")

Such is the connection between 1745 and the rising in the Gaelic mindset, that the '45 is known
as Bliadhna Theàrlaich (Charles' Year) in Scottish Gaelic.

Charles continued to believe that he could reclaim the kingdom and recalled that early in 1744 a
few Scottish Highland clan chieftains had sent a message that they would rise if he arrived with

as few as 3,000 French troops. Living at French expense, he continued to petition ministers for
commitment to another invasion, to their increasing irritation. In secrecy he also developed a
plan with a consortium of Nantes privateers, funded by exiled Scots bankers and pawning of his
mother's jewelry. They fitted out the 16-gun privateer Du Teillay and a ship of the line the
Elisabeth and set out from Nantes for Scotland in July 1745 on the pretence that this was a

normal privateering cruise, leaving a personal letter from Charles to Louis XV of France
announcing the departure and asking for help with the rising. The Elisabeth, carrying weapons,

supplies and 700 volunteers from the Irish Brigade, encountered the British Navy ship HMS Lion
and with both ships badly damaged in the ensuing battle the Elisabeth was forced back, but the
Du Teillay successfully landed Charles with his seven men of Moidart on the island of Eriskay in
the Outer Hebrides on 2 August 1745.

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The Scottish clans and their chieftains initially showed little enthusiasm about his arrival without

troops or munitions (with Alexander MacDonald of Sleat and Norman MacLeod of MacLeod
refusing even to meet with him), but Charles went on to Moidart and on 19 August 1745 raised

the standard at Glenfinnan to lead the second Jacobite rising in his father's name. This attracted
about 1,200 men, mostly of Clan MacDonald of Clan Ranald, Clan MacDonell of Glengarry,
Clan MacDonald of Keppoch, and Clan Cameron. The Jacobite force marched south from

Glenfinnan, increasing to almost 3,000 men, though two chieftains insisted on pledges of

compensation before joining.

David Morier's painting Culloden shows the highlanders still wearing the plaids which they
normally set aside before battle, where they would fire a volley then run full tilt at the enemy with
broadsword and targe in the "Highland charge" wearing only their shirts.

Britain was still in the midst of the War of the Austrian Succession and most of the British army
was in Flanders and Germany, leaving an inexperienced army of about 4,000 in Scotland under
Sir John Cope. His force marched north into the Highlands but, believing the rebel force to be

stronger than it really was, avoided an engagement with the Jacobites at the Pass of
Corryairack and withdrew northwards to Inverness. The Jacobites captured Perth and at

Coatbridge on the way to Edinburgh routed two regiments of the government's Dragoons. In
Edinburgh there was panic with a melting away of the City Guard and Volunteers and when the
city gate at the Netherbow Port was opened at night, to let a coach through, a party of
Camerons rushed the sentries and seized control of the city. The next day King James VIII was

proclaimed at the Mercat Cross and a triumphant Charles entered Holyrood palace.

Cope's army got supplies from Inverness then sailed from Aberdeen down to Dunbar to meet
the Jacobite forces near Prestonpans to the east of Edinburgh. On 21 September 1745 at the
Battle of Prestonpans a surprise attack planned by Lord George Murray routed the government

forces, as celebrated in the Jacobite song Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?. Charles
immediately wrote again to France pleading for a prompt invasion of England. There was alarm

in England, and in London a patriotic song which included a prayer for Marshal Wade's success
in crushing the rebels was performed, later to become the National Anthem.

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The Jacobites held the city of Edinburgh, though not the castle. Charles held court at Holyrood

palace for five weeks amidst great admiration and enthusiasm, but failed to raise a regiment
locally. Many of the highlanders went home with booty from the battle and recruiting resumed,

though Whig clans opposing the Jacobites were also getting organised. The French now sent
some weapons and funds, and assurances that they would carry out their invasion of England
by the end of the year. Charles's Council of war led by Murray was against leaving Scotland, but

he told them that he had received English Tory assurances of a rising if he appeared in England

in arms, and the Council agreed to march south by a margin of one vote.

Success at Prestonpans had not, as is often claimed, left the rebels in control of Scotland, for
the great bulk of the population remained bitterly hostile to the absolutist Stuarts who, prior to
their expulsion in a popular revolution, had presided over the notorious persecutions known as

Scotland's 'Killing Times'. Many Scottish burghs offered burgess status to any man who would
volunteer to fight against the Jacobites and, when the rebels passed near the town of
Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire, local loyalists mounted a raid on their baggage train.

The Jacobite army of under six thousand men had set out and an army under General George
Wade assembled at Newcastle. Charles wanted to confront them, but on the advice of Lord

George Murray and the Council they made for Carlisle and successfully bypassed Wade. At
Manchester about 250 Episcopalians formed a regiment, and a number of other Englishmen
had joined the Prince, mainly from rural Lancashire. One Englishman, John Daniel, from the
upper echelons of the yeoman class, brought in 39 recruits by himself. A Scotsman who was in

the Jacobite army and therefore an eyewitness, wrote home that 60 English recruits had joined
in just one day at Preston. The myth that no Englishmen joined the Prince is just that, a myth. At

the end of November French ships arrived in Scotland with 800 men from the Écossais
Royeaux (Royal Scots) and Irish Regiments of the French army.

The Jacobite army, now reduced by desertions to under 5,000 men, was manoeuvred by
Murray round to the east of a second government army under the Duke of Cumberland and

marched on Derby.

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They entered Derby on 4 December, only 125 miles (200 km) from London, with a resentful

Charles by then barely on speaking terms with Murray. Charles was advised of progress on the
French invasion fleet which was then assembling at Dunkirk, but at his Council of War he was

forced to admit to his previous lies about assurances. While Charles was determined to press
on in the deluded belief that their success was due to soldiers of the regulars never daring to
fight against their true prince, his Council and Lord George Murray pointed out their position.

The promised English support had not materialised, both Wade and Cumberland were

approaching, London was heavily defended and there was a fictitious report from a government
double agent of a third army closing on them.

They insisted that their army should return to join the growing force in Scotland. This time only
Charles voted to continue the advance, and he assented while throwing a tantrum and vowing

never to consult the Council again. On 6 December, the Jacobites sullenly began their retreat,
with a petulant Charles refusing to take any part in running the campaign which was fortunate
given the excellent leadership of Murray, whose brilliant feints and careful planning extracted
the army virtually intact. The French got news of the retreat and cancelled their invasion which
was now ready, while English Tories who had just sent a message pledging support if Charles
reached London went to ground again.

There was a rearguard action to the north of Penrith. The Manchester Regiment was left behind
to defend Carlisle and after a siege by Cumberland had to surrender, to face hanging or
transportation. Many died in Carlisle Castle, where they were imprisoned in brutal conditions

along with Scots prisoners whom Morier allegedly painted to depict the kilted clansmen in battle.
Many of the cells there still show hollows licked into the stone walls, as prisoners had only the

damp and moss on these stones to sustain themselves.

The Young Pretender had his headquarters at the County Hotel during a 3-day sojourn in

Dumfries towards the end of 1745. £2,000 was demanded by the Prince, together with 1,000
pairs of brogues for his kilted Jacobite rebel army, which was camping in a field not one

hundred yards distant. A rumour, however, that the Duke of Cumberland was approaching,

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made Bonnie Prince Charlie decide to leave with his army, with only £1,000 and 255 pairs of

shoes having been handed over.[4]

By Christmas the Jacobites came to Glasgow and forced the city to re-provision their army, then
on 3 January left to seize the town of Stirling and begin an ineffectual siege of Stirling Castle.
Jacobite reinforcements joined them from the north and on 17 January about 8,000 of Charles's

9,000 men took the offensive to the approaching General Henry Hawley at the Battle of Falkirk
and routed his forces.

The Jacobite army then turned north, losing men and failing to take Stirling Castle or Fort

William but taking Fort Augustus and Fort George in Inverness by early April. Charles now took
charge again, insisting on fighting an orthodox defensive action, and on 16 April 1746 they were
finally defeated near Inverness at the Battle of Culloden by government forces made up of

English and Scottish troops and Campbell militia, under the command of the Duke of
Cumberland. The seemingly suicidal Highland sword charge against cannon and muskets had
succeeded when launched against unprepared or disordered troops in earlier battles but failed

now that it was pitted against regulars who had time to form their ranks properly. Charles
promptly abandoned his army, blaming everything on the treachery of his officers, even though

after the defeat the stragglers and unengaged units rallied at the agreed rendezvous and only
dispersed when ordered to leave.

Charles fled to France making a dramatic if humiliating escape disguised as a "lady's maid" to
Flora MacDonald. Cumberland's forces crushed the uprising and effectively ended Jacobitism

as a serious political force in Britain. The decline of Jacobitism left Charles making futile

attempts to enlist assistance, and another abortive plot to raise support in England.

Robert Walpole:

Robert Walpole, 1st earl of Orford, also called (1725–42) Sir Robert Walpole (born August 26,
1676, Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England—died March 18, 1745, London), British statesman (in

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power 1721–42), generally regarded as the first British prime minister. He deliberately cultivated

a frank, hearty manner, but his political subtlety has scarcely been equaled.

Education and early career

Walpole was the third son of Colonel Robert Walpole by his wife, Mary Burwell. He was
educated at Great Dunham, Norfolk, and afterward became a scholar of Eton (1690–96) and
subsequently of King’s College, Cambridge (1696–98). The death of his elder surviving brother,

Edward, cut short his academic career, and, instead of entering the church, he returned to
Norfolk to help administer his father’s estates. He married Catherine Shorter of Bybrook, Kent,

on July 30, 1700. After his father’s death in the same year, he inherited a heavily encumbered
estate and also the family parliamentary seat at Castle Rising, for which he was immediately
elected. In 1702 he transferred to King’s Lynn, which he represented, with one short

intermission, for the next 40 years.

Walpole rapidly made his mark in the House of Commons, earning the reputation of being a
clear, forceful speaker, a firm but not fanatical Whig, and an active parliamentarian. He was
made a member in 1705 of Prince George of Denmark’s Council, which controlled the affairs of

the navy during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). His ability as an administrator
brought him to the attention of both the duke of Marlborough and Lord Godolphin. On February
25, 1708, he was promoted to secretary at war and in 1710 to treasurer of the navy, a post from
which he was dismissed on January 2, 1711, with the advent of the Tory Party to power after
the general election of 1710. During these years Walpole established himself as one of the

foremost of the younger Whig leaders; in society as well as in politics he made his mark. He

became a leading member of the Kit-Cat Club, a meeting place of many Whig men of letters. He
had many friends, but his expenses were so high that he fell heavily in debt. He had relied on
his political offices to keep himself afloat; nevertheless, he refused to compromise his principles

for the sake of his salary and perquisites.

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His assiduity in attending the Commons and his ability in debate made Walpole the effective

leader of the opposition, and the Tories determined to ruin him along with Marlborough. In
January 1712 he was impeached for corruption as secretary at war, found guilty, expelled from

the Commons, and sent to the Tower of London. He was immediately acclaimed as a martyr by
the Whigs, and he himself developed a hatred for the Tory leaders Robert Harley, earl of
Oxford, and Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, who brought about his fall. Walpole enjoyed

his revenge in 1714 at the accession of George I when, as well as being made paymaster

general of the forces, he became chairman of the secret committee that led to the impeachment
for treason of both Bolingbroke and Oxford. Walpole’s mastery of the Commons, allied to his
formidable industry, brought him rapid promotion. He became first lord of the Treasury and

chancellor of the Exchequer on October 11, 1715. His abilities also aroused jealousy, which was
exacerbated by a conflict over foreign policy that saw Walpole and his brother-in-law, Charles,

Viscount Townshend, on one side and two of the king’s closest advisers, James Stanhope and
Charles Spencer, earl of Sunderland, on the other. Walpole and Townshend maintained that
British interests were being sacrificed to the king’s Hanoverian interests in order to curry favour.

The break came in 1717, and Walpole and Townshend left the ministry; shortly afterward a
violent quarrel between the king and the prince of Wales split the royal family, and the
opposition acquired its own court at the prince’s residence, Leicester House.

During the next three years Walpole fought the government on every issue, achieving
considerable success in bringing about the rejection of the Peerage Bill (1719), which would
have limited the royal prerogative in the creation of peers. During this time, too, he became
friendly with Caroline of Ansbach, the princess of Wales, who was to help maintain him in power

when her husband succeeded to the throne in 1727 as George II. Walpole used his influence
with the prince to bring about a reconciliation with the king in April 1720 and his own subsequent
return to the ministry as paymaster general of the forces.

No sooner was Walpole back in office than the country was caught up in the speculative frenzy

associated with the South Sea Company, a joint-stock company with monopoly rights to trade
with Spanish America. A scheme was set up in 1720 whereby the company would take charge

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of a large part of the national debt. Although Walpole had favoured letting the Bank of England

take over the debt, he was no more prudent than many others and invested heavily in South
Sea stock. He was saved from financial disaster by the foresight of his banker, Robert Jacomb.

Nevertheless, Walpole had not been a promoter of the scheme, and he was free from the
stigma of corruption that marked many other ministers as well as the king’s German favourites.
He used his great political skill and persuasive powers of argument in the Commons to save the

Whig leaders and the court from the consequences of their folly. Some members had to be

sacrificed to appease public opinion, among them John Aislabie, chancellor of the Exchequer;
others died under the strain, the most notable being Stanhope and James Craggs and his son
James. Walpole restored confidence, maintained the Whigs in office, and greatly improved his

own and Townshend’s standing at court. He became first lord of the Treasury and chancellor of
the Exchequer in April 1721, offices that he was to hold until 1742. Townshend became once

more secretary of state and took over the control of foreign affairs. For some time, Walpole and
Townshend were forced to share power with John Carteret (later Earl Granville), who had
succeeded to Sunderland’s influence after Sunderland’s sudden death in April 1722. By 1724,

however, Walpole and Townshend obtained the dismissal of Carteret from his secretaryship of
state and had him sent to Ireland as lord lieutenant. For the rest of George I’s reign Walpole and
Townshend remained at the head of the ministry. Their position steadily grew stronger. The
hopes of the Jacobites, supporters of a return to the throne of the Stuarts, which the South Sea
Bubble had fanned, were quashed in 1723 by the exposure of the insurrection planned by
Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester. The outlook for the Tory Party was equally gloomy in

spite of the pardon given to Bolingbroke in 1725.

The long ascendancy

The supremacy in the Commons was maintained by Walpole until 1742. In 1727, at the
accession of George II, he suffered a minor crisis when for a few days it seemed that he might

be dismissed, but Queen Caroline prevailed on her husband to keep Walpole in office. In 1730

he quarreled with Townshend over the conduct of foreign affairs and forced Townshend’s
resignation, but his retirement had no effect on Walpole’s position. These were the years of

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Walpole’s greatness. His power was based on the loyal support given to him by George I and

George II. This enabled him to use all royal patronage for political ends, and Walpole’s
appointments to offices in the royal household, the church, the navy, the army, and the civil

service were, whenever possible, made with an eye to his voting strength in the House of
Commons. By these means he built up the court and treasury party that was to be the core of
Whig strength for many generations. These methods, however, never gave him control of the

House of Commons. His majorities at Westminster came about because his policy of peace

abroad and low taxation at home appealed strongly to the independent country gentlemen who
sat in Parliament. Also, Walpole possessed remarkable powers in debate: his knowledge of the
detail of government, particularly of finance, was unmatched, and his expression was clear,

forceful, and always cogent. He never underestimated the powers of the Commons, and no
minister, before or since, has shown such skill in its management.

Walpole needed all his art, for his rule was never free from crisis. Foreign affairs gave him
constant trouble. Although Townshend had secured the prospect of a settlement by the Treaty
of Hanover in 1725, which helped to strengthen the alliance between England and France, the
difficulties that had arisen with Spain over Gibraltar and British trading rights in the West Indies
proved intractable, and England hovered on the brink of war until Walpole intervened. By
showing willingness to negotiate he secured the Treaty of Seville (Sevilla) in 1729. This was
followed by a general settlement in 1731 at the Treaty of Vienna. When war broke out on the
Continent in 1733 over the question of the succession to the Polish throne, Walpole had to use
all his influence with the king in order to maintain England’s neutrality.

Many politicians, particularly those whom Walpole had driven into opposition, regarded his

foreign policy as a betrayal of England’s interests. They thought that he had become the dupe of
France to the neglect of England’s former allies (the Austrians and the Dutch), and that his
desire to maintain friendship with France led to weakness toward Spain. They also disapproved

of his use of patronage, which they stigmatized as corruption. They condemned his financial

schemes as a sham, particularly the sinking fund to abolish the national debt. The prime movers
in this opposition were William Pulteney, an able Whig whom Walpole had rejected in 1724 in

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favour of the duke of Newcastle as secretary of state, and Bolingbroke. They drew together a

miscellaneous collection of members in opposition: Jacobites, Hanoverian Tories, dissident

Whigs, and urban radicals. They attempted to give coherence to the party so formed, but with

little success. The liveliest part of their campaign was the violent press agitation against
Walpole. For this purpose they founded The Craftsman, which denigrated Walpole’s ministry
week after week. Walpole was lampooned in pamphlets, ballads, and plays, as well as in the

newspapers; and this constant stream of abuse, which was not without a certain element of

truth, did much to bring both Parliament and politics into contempt.

The great opportunity for the opposition came in 1733 when Walpole decided to check
smuggling and customs frauds by imposing an excise tax on wine and tobacco. This was
extremely unpopular, particularly with the London merchants, and the opposition did all in its

power to influence opinion. Walpole saved himself from defeat by withdrawing this measure, but
those politicians who had been indiscreet enough to show opposition to Walpole’s bill lost their
offices. These dismissals, however, weakened Walpole’s position; he lost considerable debating
skill as well as votes in the House of Lords, which at that time still played an important part in
government. After 1733 the list of able but dismissed Whig politicians grew large enough to
supply an alternative Whig ministry to Walpole’s own, and, after the excise crisis, the opposition
Whigs had far less need to rely on Tory and Jacobite elements in their battle against Walpole.
Bolingbroke himself realized this; he withdrew from politics and retired to France in 1735,
admitting defeat in his lifelong struggle with Walpole.

Growing unpopularity

Walpole won the general election of 1734, which had given rise to many violent contests and a
resurgence of the old bitterness about excise, but his growing unpopularity was underlined by
the loss of many seats in the large seaports and heavily populated counties. Nevertheless, his

majority, although diminished, remained comfortable. Without much difficulty he surmounted

troubles that arose in Edinburgh (the Porteous riots) over the royal pardon of a captain of the

guard who had fired on a crowd demonstrating at Edinburgh prison; he easily persuaded the
Commons to reject Sir John Barnard’s scheme to reduce the interest on the national debt and

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showed his contempt for the literary opposition (among whose members were Swift, Pope, and

Fielding) by imposing regulations on London theatres (1737). Yet from 1737 his position began
to weaken. The death of Queen Caroline had less effect than many have assumed, for by then

George II had developed great loyalty to his minister. More important was Walpole’s increasing
age, which led young politicians, such as William Pitt (afterward earl of Chatham), to look
elsewhere for their future advancement. The emergence as a leader of the opposition of

Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, who had quarreled violently with his parents, provided a focus

and a court for the “patriot boys,” as these young Whigs came to be called. The growing
difficulties with Spain over trading matters in the West Indies were used by this opposition to
embarrass Walpole. He did his utmost to settle these difficulties by negotiation, but in 1739 he

was forced to declare war against Spain—the so-called War of Jenkins’ Ear. He disapproved of
the war and made his views clear to his cabinet colleagues. These years, too, were darkened by

private grief as well as public anxiety. His wife, with whom he had been on indifferent terms,
died in 1737, and he was married by March 3, 1738, to his mistress of long-standing, Maria
Skerritt, a woman of great charm and wit. Three months later she died in childbirth.

The war with Spain did not prosper, and opposition continued to mount against Walpole. He
succeeded in winning the general election of 1741, but many Whig politicians, and a number of
independents, did not consider him capable of directing the war vigorously enough or of
surviving another seven years’ Parliament. His resignation was forced on February 2, 1742, on
a minor issue. The king created him earl of Orford (he had been knighted in 1725) and gave him
an annual pension of £4,000, but the Commons set up a committee to investigate his ministry
with a view to impeachment. They failed to secure sufficient evidence and the rancour against

Orford petered out. For the rest of his life he continued to play an active and valuable part in
politics. He did his utmost to secure the dismissal of Carteret, who had become secretary of
state on the fall of his ministry, and to secure the promotion of Henry Pelham, his protégé and

leader of the Walpole Whigs, to the position of chief minister. Orford’s influence with George II
remained powerful up to his death.

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Assessment

Although Walpole rejected the title of prime minister, which he regarded as a term of abuse, his

control of the treasury, his management of the Commons, and the confidence that he enjoyed of
the two sovereigns whom he served demonstrated the kind of leadership that was required to
give stability and order to 18th-century politics. He used his power to maintain the supremacy of

the Whig Party, as he understood it, and his prime concern was to forestall the machinations of
the Jacobites, which he took very seriously, by securing the Hanoverian succession. He thought

that this could best be achieved by prosperity and low taxation, which in turn depended on

peace and on freedom from foreign entanglements. In order to achieve strong support for this
policy he created as many obligations as possible among the politically powerful groups in the
country. The Jacobite rebellion in 1745 demonstrated both the reality of his fears and the

success of his policy.

The influence of Walpole’s long ministry on the structure of 18th-century politics was profound.
The Tory Party, split as it was between Hanoverians and Jacobites, faded into insignificance,

and to be a Whig became a necessity for the politically ambitious. The struggle for power
ceased to be a conflict between two parties and became a battle fought between divergent

groups, personalities, and policies within the Whig Party itself, in order to gain the support of the
court on the one hand and the independent country gentlemen in Parliament on the other. The
frank realism that Walpole had used in all appointments to office, as well as the violent,
prejudiced, and often exaggerated criticism to which this gave rise, did much to bring the

institutions of government into disrepute and to strengthen the early growth of urban radicalism,
particularly in the City of London. On the other hand, Walpole’s ministry had little influence on

constitutional development: many generations were to pass before any minister wielded power
comparable to his. Like his master, George II, he disliked cabinet government and used it as
sparingly as possible. He showed what could be done within the accepted conventions of the

constitution; he never attempted to change them.

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One side of Walpole’s life is too little noted. He possessed remarkable delight in and judgment

of works of art. His house, Houghton Hall, Norfolk, built and furnished under his close
supervision, is a masterpiece of Palladian architecture. To the distress of his son Horace, the

famous man of letters, Walpole’s collection of pictures was sold to the empress of Russia by
Walpole’s grandson George in 1779. Now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, it was one
of the most remarkable collections in Europe. He delighted in ostentation and lived in great

magnificence, spending freely the huge fortune that he made out of judicious speculation and

public office.

Whig Oligarchy

The Rockingham Whigs or Rockinghamite Whigs in 18th century British politics were a faction
of the Whigs led by Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, when he was

the opposition leader in the House of Lords during the government of Lord North (1732–1792)
from 1770 to 1782 and during the two Rockingham ministries of 1765–66 and 1782.

They opposed the British position which led to the American Revolution and sought
reconciliation after it. They also opposed King George III's influence on Parliament through

patronage. They were heavily dominated by wealthy aristocrats, many of whom had previously
been supporters of Duke of Newcastle during his spells as prime minister.

The faction showed less interest in holding office than in preventing a reassertion of royal
power. They were prepared to unite with reformers of all kinds to preserve the constitutional

settlement of 1689. But their essentially aristocratic and oligarchic character prevented them

from collaborating with "Country Party" reformers advocating radical or populistic measures.[1]

Edmund Burke was one of the leading spokesmen in the House of Commons.[2]

Powell, 2002, shows they did not favor Irish constitutional goals but when out of power they
used Irish problems to embarrass the government. During Rockingham's government in 1765–

66, his faction was generally hostile to the Irish Patriot Party, but during the administration of
Lord North, 1770-82, it supported the Patriots' charges of mismanagement of Irish affairs. In

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power again in 1782, the Rockinghamites made concessions to the Patriots' demand for Irish

legislative independence. They sought and failed to obtain a permanent solution that would
have involved British control over external legislation and Irish control over internal affairs. They

also failed to implement British party models in Ireland. Rockinghamites Charles James Fox and
Burke were actively involved in Irish issues, says Powell, the former opportunistically and the
latter with a genuine interest in reform.

In 1782 they joined forces with other members of the Opposition to bring down the North

government which had overseen the American War since the beginning, and was blamed for

the surrender of the British army at Yorktown. The new government was led by Rockingham
and began to seek peace terms, laying the foundations for the Treaty of Paris agreed in 1783.
Rockingham's unexpected death in July 1782 led to a split in the new government with some

Rockingham Whigs remaining in office under the new government of Lord Shelburne, and
others going into opposition led by Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke. After Rockingham's
death, the Duke of Portland became the head of the Rockingham Whig party.

American War of Independence (1776)

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of
Independence[19] and the Revolutionary War in the United States, was the armed conflict
between Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies, which had declared
themselves the independent United States of America.[N 1][20] Early fighting took place

primarily on the North American continent. France, eager for revenge after its defeat in the
Seven Years' War, signed an alliance with the new nation in 1778 that proved decisive in the

ultimate victory.[21] The conflict gradually expanded into a world war with Britain combating
France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Fighting also broke out in India between the British East
India Company and the French allied Kingdom of Mysore.

The American Revolutionary War had its origins in the resistance of many Americans to taxes,

which they claimed were unconstitutional, imposed by the British parliament. Patriot protests
escalated into boycotts, and on December 16, 1773, the destruction of a shipment of tea at the

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Boston Tea Party. The British government retaliated by closing the port of Boston and taking

away self-government. The Patriots responded by setting up a shadow government that took
control of the province outside of Boston. Twelve other colonies supported Massachusetts,

formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance, and set up committees and
conventions that effectively seized power. In April 1775 fighting broke out between
Massachusetts militia units and British regulars at Lexington and Concord. They fought the

battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, near Boston. The

battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and
thirteen of its colonies on the mainland of British America. The Continental Congress appointed
General George Washington to take charge of militia units besieging British forces in Boston,

forcing them to evacuate the city in March 1776. Congress supervised the war, giving
Washington command of the new Continental Army; he also coordinated state militia units.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress formally voted for independence, and issued its
Declaration on July 4.[22] Meanwhile, the British were mustering forces to suppress the revolt.
Sir William Howe outmaneuvered and defeated Washington, capturing New York City and New
Jersey. Washington was able to capture a Hessian detachment at Trenton and drive the British
out of most of New Jersey. In 1777 Howe's army launched a campaign against the national
capital at Philadelphia, failing to aid Burgoyne's separate invasion force from Canada.
Burgoyne's army was trapped, and surrendered after the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777.

This American victory encouraged France to enter the war in 1778, followed by its ally Spain in

1779, although not directly allied with America. Many people in Europe, especially in Spain and
Netherlands, believe that the new nation, technically British in American soil, shared the same

imperialistic trait as Britain. So instead, Spain allied with France under Pacte de Famille

In 1778, having failed in the northern states, the British shifted strategy toward the south,

bringing Georgia and South Carolina under control in 1779 and 1780. However, the resulting
surge of Loyalist support was far weaker than expected. In 1781, British forces moved through

Virginia and settled at Yorktown, but their escape was blocked by a French naval victory in

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September. Led by Count Rochambeau and Washington,[23] a combined Franco-American

army launched a siege at Yorktown and captured more than 8,000 British troops in October.[24]

The defeat at Yorktown finally turned the British Parliament against the war, and in early 1782
they voted to end offensive operations in North America. The war against France and Spain
continued, with the British defeating the long siege of Gibraltar, and inflicting several defeats on

the French in 1782. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and recognized the sovereignty
of the United States over the territory bounded roughly by what is now Canada to the north,

Florida to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west. France gained its revenge and little

else except a heavy national debt, while Spain acquired Great Britain's Florida colonies.

• First phase, 1775–1778

• Outbreak of the War 1775–1776

Massachusetts

Main article: Boston campaign

In February 1775 Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion. Lieutenant

General Thomas Gage, the British North American commander-in chief, commanded four
regiments of British regulars (about 4,000 men) from his headquarters in Boston, but the

countryside was in the hands of the Revolutionaries. On April 14, he received orders to disarm
the rebels and arrest their leaders.

The British marching to Concord in April 1775

On the night of April 18, 1775, General Gage sent 700 men to seize munitions stored by the
colonial militia at Concord, Massachusetts. Riders including Paul Revere alerted the

countryside, and when British troops entered Lexington on the morning of April 19, they found
77 Minutemen formed up on the village green. Shots were exchanged, killing several
Minutemen. The British moved on to Concord, where a detachment of three companies was
engaged and routed at the North Bridge by a force of 500 minutemen. As the British retreated
back to Boston, thousands of militiamen attacked them along the roads, inflicting many

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casualties before timely British reinforcements prevented a total disaster. With the Battles of

Lexington and Concord, the war had begun.[39]

The militia converged on Boston, bottling up the British in the city. About 4,500 more British
soldiers arrived by sea, and on June 17, 1775, British forces under General William Howe
seized the Charlestown peninsula at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British mounted a costly

frontal attack.[40] The Americans fell back, but British losses totaled over 1,000 men. The siege
was not broken, and Gage was soon replaced by Howe as the British commander-in-chief.[41]

General Gage wrote to the Secretary at War in London:

These people show a spirit and conduct against us they never showed against the
French….They are now spirited up by a rage and enthusiasm as great as ever people were
possessed of and you must proceed in earnest or give the business up. A small body acting in

one spot will not avail, you must have large armies making diversions on different sides, to
divide their force. The loss we have sustained is greater than we can bear. Small armies cannot
afford such losses, especially when the advantage gained tends to do little more than the

gaining of a post.[42]

In July 1775, newly appointed General Washington arrived outside Boston to take charge of the
colonial forces and to organize the Continental Army. Realizing his army's desperate shortage
of gunpowder, Washington asked for new sources. Arsenals were raided and some
manufacturing was attempted; 90% of the supply (2 million pounds) was imported by the end of
1776, mostly from France.[43] Patriots in New Hampshire had seized powder, muskets and

cannons from Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth Harbor in late 1774.[44] Some of the

munitions were used in the Boston campaign.

The standoff continued throughout the fall and winter. During this time Washington was
astounded by the failure of Howe to attack his shrinking, poorly armed force.[45] In early March
1776, heavy cannons that the patriots had captured at Fort Ticonderoga were brought to Boston

by Colonel Henry Knox, and placed on Dorchester Heights. Since the artillery now overlooked
the British positions, Howe's situation was untenable, and the British fled on March 17, 1776,

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sailing to their naval base at Halifax, Nova Scotia, an event now celebrated in Massachusetts as

Evacuation Day. Washington then moved most of the Continental Army to fortify New York
City.[46]

Quebec

Main article: Invasion of Canada (1775)

British soldiers and Provincial militiamen repulse the American assault at Sault-au-Matelot,

Canada, December 1775

Three weeks after the siege of Boston began, the Green Mountain Boys, a group of militia
volunteers led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, captured Fort Ticonderoga, a strategically
important point on Lake Champlain between New York and the Province of Quebec. After that
action they also raided Fort St. John's, not far from Montreal, which alarmed the population and

the authorities there. In response, Quebec's governor Guy Carleton began fortifying St. John's,
and opened negotiations with the Iroquois and other Native American tribes for their support.
These actions, combined with lobbying by both Allen and Arnold and the fear of a British attack

from the north, eventually persuaded the Congress to authorize an invasion of Quebec, with the
goal of driving the British military from that province. (Quebec was then frequently referred to as
Canada, as most of its territory included the former French Province of Canada.)[47]

Two Quebec-bound expeditions were undertaken. On September 28, 1775, Brigadier General
Richard Montgomery marched north from Fort Ticonderoga with about 1,700 militiamen,

besieging and capturing Fort St. Jean on November 2 and then Montreal on November 13.
General Carleton escaped to Quebec City and began preparing that city for an attack. The
second expedition, led by Colonel Arnold, went through the wilderness of what is now northern

Maine. Logistics were difficult, with 300 men turning back, and another 200 perishing due to the
harsh conditions. By the time Arnold reached Quebec City in early November, he had but 600 of
his original 1,100 men. Montgomery's force joined Arnold's, and they attacked Quebec City on

December 31, but were defeated by Carleton in a battle that ended with Montgomery dead,
Arnold wounded, and over 400 Americans taken prisoner.[48] The remaining Americans held on

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outside Quebec City until the spring of 1776, suffering from poor camp conditions and smallpox,

and then withdrew when a squadron of British ships under Captain Charles Douglas arrived to
relieve the siege.[49]

Another attempt was made by the Americans to push back towards Quebec, but they failed at
Trois-Rivières on June 8, 1776. Carleton then launched his own invasion and defeated Arnold at

the Battle of Valcour Island in October. Arnold fell back to Fort Ticonderoga, where the invasion
had begun. While the invasion ended as a disaster for the Americans, Arnold's efforts in 1776

delayed any full-scale British counteroffensive until the Saratoga campaign of 1777.

The invasion cost the Americans their base of support in British public opinion, "So that the
violent measures towards America are freely adopted and countenanced by a majority of
individuals of all ranks, professions, or occupations, in this country."[50] It gained them at best

limited support in the population of Quebec, which, while somewhat supportive early in the
invasion, became less so later during the occupation, when American policies against
suspected Loyalists became harsher, and the army's hard currency ran out. Two small

regiments of Canadiens were recruited during the operation, and they were with the army on its
retreat back to Ticonderoga.[51] Even after their retreat, the Patriots continued to view Quebec

as a part of their cause and made specific provisions for it to join the U.S. under the 1777
Articles of Confederation.

Expelling the royal officials

At the onset of war, the British had a significant force only in Boston, though this force would
evacuate by the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Patriots in all 13 colonies

were quick to establish new revolutionary governments based around various committees and
conventions that they had created in 1774 and early 1775. Royal governors and officials found
themselves powerless to stop the rebellion and in many places were forced to flee. In many
places the Patriots were energetic and were backed by angry mobs while the Loyalists were too

intimidated or poorly organized to be effective without the British army. The term "lynching"

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originated when Virginia Patriots held informal courts and arrested Loyalists (the term did not

suggest execution).

Loyalist Writings

Loyalist writings throughout the conflict persistently claimed that they were the majority, and
influenced London officials to believe that it would be possible to raise many Loyalist
regiments.[52] As late as 1780 the Loyalists were deceiving themselves and top London officials

about their supposedly strong base of support.[53]

Patriots overwhelmed Loyalists in the Snow Campaign in South Carolina in late 1775. Virginia's
governor Lord Dunmore attempted to rally a loyalist force but was decisively beaten in
December 1775 at the Battle of Great Bridge. In February 1776 British General Clinton took

2,000 men and a naval squadron to assist Loyalists mustering in North Carolina, only to call it
off when he learned they had been crushed at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. In June he

tried to seize Charleston, South Carolina, the leading port in the South, but the attack failed as
the naval force was repulsed by the Patriot forts.

Apart from the thirteen, no other British North American colony joined the rebellion.

British reaction

King George III issued a Proclamation of Rebellion in August 1775, and addressed Parliament
on October 26, 1775. He denounced "the authors and promoters of this desperate conspiracy"

who had "labored to inflame my people in America ... and to infuse into their minds a system of
opinions repugnant to the true constitution of the Colonies, and to their subordinate relation to

Great Britain ..." He detailed measures taken to suppress the revolt, including "friendly offers of

foreign assistance". The King's speech was endorsed by both Houses of Parliament, a motion in
the House of Commons to oppose coercive measures was defeated 278–108. The British
received an Olive Branch Petition written by the Second Continental Congress dated July 8,

1775, imploring the King to reverse the policies of his ministers. However, by this time the
invasion of Canada was already well under way, and Parliament debated on whether to accept

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the petition, but after a lengthy debate rejected it by 53 votes, viewing it as insincere. Parliament

then voted to impose a blockade against the Thirteen Colonies. The popularity of war in Britain
reached a peak in 1777.[54] The king himself took full control as he micromanaged the war

effort, despite the opposition of top officials including the prime minister North and the civilian
heads of the army and the navy. The king vehemently rejected independence and demanded
the use of Indians to distress the Americans.[55]

Separately, the Irish Parliament pledged its loyalty and agreed to the withdrawal of troops from

Ireland to suppress the rebellion in America.[56] Most Irish Protestants were against the war

and favored the Americans, but the Catholic establishment supported the king.[57] The
American Revolution was the first war in which Irish Catholics were allowed to enlist in the
army.[58]

Militarily, the weak British response to the rebellion in 1775 and early 1776 around Boston was
a losing cause; the British lost control of every colony.[59] The peacetime British army had been
deliberately kept small since the Glorious Revolution to prevent an abuse of power by the King.

To muster a force, the British had to launch recruiting campaigns in Britain and Ireland and hire
mercenaries from the small German states, both immensely time-consuming. The king wanted

to save money, and the administration of the army was inefficient. Russia refused to rent out
soldiers. After a year the British were able to ship Sir William Howe an army of 32,000 officers
and men to open a campaign in summer 1776. It was the largest force the British had ever sent
outside of Europe at that time.[60]

Campaign of 1776–1777

New York

American soldiers in the Battle of Long Island, 1776

Having withdrawn his army from Boston, General Howe now focused on capturing New York
City, which then was limited to the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Howe's force arrived off of
Staten Island across the harbor from Manhattan on June 30, 1776, and his army captured it

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without resistance. To defend the city, General Washington spread his forces along the shores

of New York's harbor, concentrated on Long Island and Manhattan.[61] While British and
recently hired Hessian troops were assembling, Washington had the newly issued Declaration

of American Independence read to his men and the citizens of the city.[62]

Washington's position was extremely dangerous because he had divided his forces between

Manhattan and Long Island, neither of which could match the full strength of the opposing force.
Military critics note that Howe could have trapped and destroyed Washington's entire army if he

had landed on Manhattan, but instead Howe decided to mount a frontal assault against Long

Island.[63] The British landed 22,000 men on Long Island in late August and badly defeated the
Continental army in the war's largest battle, taking over 1,000 prisoners and driving them back
to Brooklyn Heights. Instead of continuing his pursuit, Howe decided to lay siege to the heights,

claiming he wanted to spare his men's lives from an assault on the Patriot fortifications. He
actively restrained his subordinates from landing what could have been the finishing blow
against Washington's forces.[64] Washington initially reinforced his exposed position, but then
personally directed the withdrawal of his entire remaining army and all their supplies across the
East River on the night of August 29–30 without loss of men or materiel.[65] The unfavorable
direction of the wind had prevented British warships from blocking Washington's escape.

A peace conference took place on September 11 to explore the possibility of a negotiated

solution. The British advanced Lord North's "fixed contribution" formula of the preceding year
and indicated that other laws could be revised or repealed so long as the authority of Britain was

acknowledged. The American negotiators insisted they would not give up the Declaration of
Independence.[66]

Howe then resumed the attack. On September 15, Howe landed about 12,000 men on lower
Manhattan, quickly taking control of New York City. The Americans withdrew north up the island

to Harlem Heights, where they battled the next day repulsing a British advance. On September
21 a devastating fire broke out in the city which the Patriots were widely blamed for, although no

proof ever existed. On October 12 the British made an attempt to encircle the Americans, which
failed because of Howe's decision to land on an island that was easily cut off from the

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mainland.[67] The Americans evacuated Manhattan, and on October 28 fought the Battle of

White Plains against the pursuing British. During the battle Howe declined to attack
Washington's highly vulnerable main force, instead attacking a hill that was of no strategic

significance.[68][69]

Washington retreated, and Howe returned to Manhattan and captured Fort Washington in mid

November, taking about 3,000 prisoners. Thus began the infamous "prison ships" system the
British maintained in New York for the rest of the war, in which more American soldiers and

sailors died of neglect and disease than died in every battle of the entire war, combined.[70]

Howe then detached Sir Henry Clinton with 6,000 men to seize Newport, Rhode Island for the
British fleet, which was accomplished without encountering any major resistance.[71] Clinton
objected to this move, believing the force would have been better employed up the Delaware

River, where they might have inflicted irreparable damage on the retreating Americans.

New Jersey

General Lord Cornwallis continued to chase Washington's army through New Jersey, but Howe

ordered him to halt[73] and Washington escaped across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania
on December 7.[74] Howe refused to order a pursuit across the river, even though the outlook of
the Continental Army was bleak. "These are the times that try men's souls," wrote Thomas
Paine, who was with the army on the retreat.[75] The army had dwindled to fewer than 5,000
men fit for duty, and would be reduced to 1,400 after enlistments expired at the end of the year.

Congress moved inland and abandoned Philadelphia in despair, although popular resistance to
British occupation was growing in the countryside.[76]

Howe proceeded to divide his forces in New Jersey into small detachments that were vulnerable

to defeat in detail, with the weakest forces stationed the closest to Washington's army.[77]
Washington decided to take the offensive, stealthily crossing the Delaware on the night of
December 25–26, and capturing nearly 1,000 surprised and unfortified Hessians at the Battle of

Trenton.[78] Cornwallis marched to retake Trenton but was first repulsed and then
outmaneuvered by Washington, who successfully attacked the British rearguard at Princeton on

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January 3, 1777, taking around 200 prisoners.[79] Howe then conceded most of New Jersey to

Washington, in spite of Howe's massive numerical superiority over him. Washington entered
winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, having given a morale boost to the American cause.

Throughout the winter New Jersey militia continued to harass British and Hessian forces near
their three remaining posts along the Raritan River.[80] In April 1777 Washington was amazed
that Howe made no effort to attack his weak army.[81]

Campaigns of 1777–1778

"The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-
pounder.

Washington and Lafayette look over the troops at Valley Forge.

When the British began to plan operations for 1777, they had two main armies in North America:
an army in Quebec (later under the command of John Burgoyne), and Howe's army in New
York. In London, Lord George Germain approved a campaign for these armies to converge on
Albany, New York and divide the American colonies in two, but did not give any express orders
to Howe, who was developing his own plans. In November 1776 Howe requested large

reinforcements so he could launch attacks against Philadelphia, New England, and Albany.
These reinforcements were not granted so Howe modified his plan to launch an attack against
Philadelphia only. Germain gave his approval to this, believing that Philadelphia could be taken

in time for Howe to coordinate with the northern army. Howe, on the other hand, opted to send
his army to Philadelphia by sea via the Chesapeake Bay instead of taking shorter routes either
overland through New Jersey or through the Delaware Bay. This left him completely incapable

of assisting Burgoyne.[82]

The first of the 1777 campaigns was an expedition from Quebec led by General John Burgoyne.

The goal was to seize the Lake Champlain and Hudson River corridor, effectively isolating New
England from the rest of the American colonies. Burgoyne's invasion had two components: he

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would lead about 8,000 men along Lake Champlain towards Albany, New York, while a second

column of about 2,000 men, led by Barry St. Leger, would move down the Mohawk River Valley
and link up with Burgoyne in Albany.[83]

Burgoyne set off in June, and recaptured Fort Ticonderoga in early July. Thereafter, his march
was slowed by the Americans who knocked down trees in his path, and by his army's extensive

baggage train. A detachment sent out to seize supplies was decisively defeated in the Battle of
Bennington by American militia in August, depriving Burgoyne of nearly 1,000 men.

Meanwhile, St. Leger—more than half of his force Native Americans led by Sayenqueraghta—

had laid siege to Fort Stanwix. American militiamen and their Native American allies marched to
relieve the siege but were ambushed and scattered at the Battle of Oriskany. When a second
relief expedition approached, this time led by Benedict Arnold, St. Leger's Indian support

abandoned him, forcing him to break off the siege and return to Quebec.

Burgoyne's army had been reduced to about 6,000 men by the loss at Bennington and the need
to garrison Ticonderoga, and he was running short on supplies.[84] Despite these setbacks, he
determined to push on towards Albany. An American army of 8,000 men, officially commanded

by General Horatio Gates (but effectively being led by his subordinate Benedict Arnold), had
entrenched about 10 miles (16 km) south of Saratoga, New York. Burgoyne tried to outflank the
Americans but was checked at the first battle of Saratoga in September. Burgoyne's situation
was desperate, but he now hoped that help from Howe's army in New York City might be on the
way. It was not: Howe had instead sailed away on his expedition to capture Philadelphia.

American militiamen flocked to Gates' army, swelling his force to 11,000 by the beginning of

October. After being badly beaten at the second battle of Saratoga, Burgoyne surrendered on
October 17.

British General Clinton in New York City attempted a diversion in favor of Burgoyne in early
October, capturing two key forts but withdrawing after hearing of the surrender.

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Saratoga was the turning point of the war. Revolutionary confidence and determination,

suffering from Howe's successful occupation of Philadelphia, was renewed. What is more
important, the victory encouraged France to make an open alliance with the Americans, after

two years of semi-secret support. For the British, the war had now become much more
complicated.[85]

The Americans held the British prisoners taken at Saratoga until the end of the war, in direct
violation of the agreed surrender terms, which specified they would be repatriated immediately.

Pennsylvania

Howe began his campaign in June by making a series of maneuvers in New Jersey, which
failed to engage Washington's greatly inferior force.[86] He then loaded his troops onto

transports and slowly sailed to the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay, landing 15,000 troops
on August 25 at the head of the Elk River. Washington positioned his 11,000 men in a strong

position along the Brandywine River, between the British and Philadelphia, but Howe outflanked
and defeated him on September 11, 1777. French observers noted that Howe failed to follow up
on his victory, which could have destroyed Washington's army.[87]

The Continental Congress again abandoned Philadelphia, and on September 26, Howe finally
outmaneuvered Washington and marched into the city unopposed. A part of Howe's army was
then split off to reduce rebel forts blocking his communications up the Delaware River. Hoping
to bring about another Trenton-like victory while the British were divided, on October 4

Washington mounted a surprise assault against the British at Germantown. Howe had failed to
alert his troops there, despite being aware of the impending attack the previous day. The British

were in danger of a rout, but faulty American decisions resulted in Washington being repulsed
with heavy losses.[88]

The armies met at White Marsh in December, where after some skirmishing Howe decided to
retire, ignoring the vulnerability of Washington's rear, where an attack could have cut off

Washington from his baggage and provisions.[89] Washington and his army encamped at
Valley Forge in December 1777, about 20 miles (32 km) from Philadelphia, where they stayed

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for the next six months. Over the winter, 2,500 men (out of 10,000) died from disease and

exposure and the army was reduced to 4,000 effectives. During this time Howe's army,
comfortable in Philadelphia, made no effort to exploit the weakness of the American army.[90]

The next spring the army emerged from Valley Forge in good order, thanks in part to a training
program supervised by Baron von Steuben, who introduced the most modern Prussian methods
of organization and tactics.[91]

Historians speculate that the British "forfeited several chances for military victory in 1776–1777

..."[92] and "if General Howe had violated military tradition by advancing in December on the

Continental troops quartered [at Valley Forge], he might have readily overwhelmed them and
possibly ended the war."[93]

Howe submitted his resignation in October 1777; until it was accepted he spent his time in

Philadelphia preparing his arguments for an expected parliamentary inquiry. Although he had
twice as many men as Washington, the bitter memory of Bunker Hill made him highly reluctant
to attack entrenched American forces. General Clinton replaced Howe as British commander-in-

chief on May 24, 1778.

Second phase, 1778–1781

British policies

Following news of the surrender at Saratoga and concern over French intervention, the British
decided to completely accept the original demands made by the American Patriots. Parliament

repealed the remaining tax on tea and declared that no taxes would ever be imposed on

colonies without their consent (except for custom duties, the revenues of which would be
returned to the colonies). A Commission was formed to negotiate directly with the Continental
Congress for the first time. The Commission was empowered to suspend all the other

objectionable acts by Parliament passed since 1763, issue general pardons, and declare a
cessation of hostilities. The Commissioners arrived in America in June 1778 and offered to

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place the colonies in the condition of 1763 if they would return to the allegiance of the King.

Moreover, they agreed that no troops would be placed in the colonies without their consent. The
Congress refused to negotiate with the commission unless they first acknowledged American

independence or withdrew all troops. On October 3, 1778, the British published a proclamation
offering amnesty to any colonies or individuals who accepted their proposals within forty days,
implying serious consequences if they still refused. There was no positive reply.[101]

King George III gave up all hope of subduing America by more armies, while Britain had a

European war to fight. "It was a joke," he said, "to think of keeping Pennsylvania."[102] There

was no hope of recovering New England. But the King was still determined "never to
acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the
indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal".[103] His plan was to keep the

30,000 men garrisoned in New York, Rhode Island, Quebec, and Florida; other forces would
attack the French and Spanish in the West Indies. To punish the Americans the King planned to
destroy their coasting-trade, bombard their ports; sack and burn towns along the coast and turn
loose the Native Americans to attack civilians in frontier settlements. These operations, the King
felt, would inspire the Loyalists; would splinter the Congress; and "would keep the rebels
harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent
and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse" and they would beg to return
to his authority.[104] The plan meant destruction for the Loyalists and loyal Native Americans,
an indefinite prolongation of a costly war, and the risk of disaster as the French and Spanish
assembled an armada to invade the British Isles. The King hoped to re-subjugate the rebellious
colonies after dealing with the Americans' European allies.

Northern theater after Saratoga, 1778–1781

Portrait of Sir Henry Clinton, British Commander-in Chief in North America 1778–1782

French entry into the war had changed British strategy, and Clinton abandoned Philadelphia to

reinforce New York City, now vulnerable to French naval power. Washington shadowed Clinton
on his withdrawal through New Jersey and attacked him at Monmouth on June 28, 1778. The

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battle was tactically inconclusive but Clinton successfully disengaged and continued his retreat

to New York.[105] It was the last major battle in the north. Clinton's army went to New York City
in July, arriving just before a French fleet under Admiral d'Estaing arrived off the American

coast. Washington's army returned to White Plains, New York, north of New York City. Although
both armies were back where they had been two years earlier, the nature of the war had now
changed as the British had to withdraw troops from North America to counter the French threats

elsewhere.[106]

In August 1778 the Americans attempted to capture British-held Newport, Rhode Island with the

assistance of France, but the effort failed when the French withdrew their support. The war in
the north then bogged down into a stalemate, with neither side capable of attacking the other in
any decisive manner. The British instead attempted to wear out American resolve by launching

various raiding expeditions such as Tryon's raid against Connecticut in July 1779. In that year
the Americans won two morale-enhancing victories by capturing posts at Stony Point and
Paulus Hook, although the British quickly retook them. In October 1779 the British voluntarily
abandoned Newport and Stony Point in order to consolidate their forces.

During the winter of 1779–80 the American army suffered worse hardships than they had at

Valley Forge previously.[107] The Congress was ineffective, the Continental currency worthless,
and the supply system was fundamentally broken. Washington was finding it extremely difficult
to keep his army together, even without any major fighting against the British. In 1780 actual
mutinies broke out in the American camp. The Continental Army's strength dwindled to such an

extent that the British decided to mount two probing attacks against New Jersey in June 1780.
The New Jersey militia strongly rallied, however, and the British quickly returned to their bases.

In July 1780 the American cause received a boost when a 5,500 strong French expeditionary
force arrived at Newport, Rhode Island. Washington hoped to use this assistance to attack the

British at New York and end the war. Events elsewhere, however, would frustrate this.
Additional French reinforcements were prevented from arriving by a British blockade of French

ports, and the French troops at Newport quickly found themselves blockaded as well. Moreover,

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the French fleet refused to visit the American coast in 1780, having suffered significant damage

in actions in the West Indies.

Benedict Arnold, the American victor of Saratoga, grew increasingly disenchanted with struggle
and decided to defect. In September 1780 he attempted to surrender the key American fort at
West Point along the Hudson River to the British, but his plot was exposed. He escaped and

continued to fight under the British army. He wrote an open letter justifying his actions by
claiming he had only fought for a redress of grievances and since Britain had withdrawn those

grievances (see above) there was no reason to continue shedding blood, particularly in an

alliance with an ancient and tyrannical enemy like France. He led the last British attack in the
north, a devastating raid against New London in September 1781.

The British held Staten Island, Manhattan, and Long Island until peace was made in 1783.

These areas contained about 2% of the population of the Thirteen Colonies.

Northern and Western frontier

West of the Appalachian Mountains and along the border with Quebec, the American

Revolutionary War was an "Indian War". Most Native Americans supported the British. Like the
Iroquois Confederacy, tribes such as the Shawnee split into factions, and the Chickamauga split
off from the rest of the Cherokee over differences regarding peace with the Americans. The
British supplied their native allies with muskets, gunpowder and advice, while Loyalists led raids
against civilian settlements, especially in New York, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Joint Iroquois-

Loyalist attacks in the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania and at Cherry Valley in New York in
1778 provoked Washington to send the Sullivan Expedition into western New York during the

summer of 1779. There was little fighting as Sullivan systematically destroyed the Indians'
winter food supplies, forcing them to flee permanently to British bases in Quebec and the
Niagara Falls area.[108]

During the Illinois Campaign of 1778, the Virginia frontiersman George Rogers Clark attempted

to neutralize British influence among the Ohio valley tribes by capturing the colonial outposts of
Kaskaskia and Cahokia and Vincennes, in the Illinois Country. When General Henry Hamilton,

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the British commander at Detroit, retook Vincennes, Clark returned in a surprise march in

February 1779 and captured Hamilton.[109]

In March 1782, Pennsylvania militiamen killed about a hundred neutral Native Americans in the
Gnadenhütten massacre. In the last major encounters of the war, a force of 200 Kentucky militia
was defeated at the Battle of Blue Licks in August 1782.

Georgia and the Carolinas, 1778–1781

During the first three years of the American Revolutionary War, the primary military encounters

were in the north, although some attempts to organize Loyalists were defeated, a British attempt
at Charleston, South Carolina failed, and a variety of efforts to attack British forces in East
Florida failed. After French entry into the war, the British turned their attention to the southern

colonies, where they hoped to regain control by recruiting large numbers of Loyalists. This
southern strategy also had the advantage of keeping the Royal Navy closer to the Caribbean,

where the British needed to defend economically important possessions against the French and
Spanish.

On December 29, 1778, an expeditionary corps from Clinton's army in New York captured
Savannah, Georgia. An attempt by French and American forces to retake Savannah failed on
October 9, 1779. Clinton then besieged Charleston, capturing it and most of the southern
Continental Army on May 12, 1780. With relatively few casualties, Clinton had seized the
South's biggest city and seaport, providing a base for further conquest.[111]

The remnants of the southern Continental Army began to withdraw to North Carolina but were
pursued by Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, who defeated them at the Waxhaws on May 29,
1780. With these events, organized American military activity in the region collapsed, though the

war was carried on by partisans such as Francis Marion. Cornwallis took over British operations,
while Horatio Gates arrived to command the American effort. On August 16, 1780, Gates was
defeated at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina, setting the stage for Cornwallis to invade

North Carolina.[112] Georgia and South Carolina were thus both restored to Britain for the time
being.

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Cornwallis' efforts to advance into North Carolina were frustrated. A Loyalist wing of his army

was utterly defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, which temporarily
aborted his planned advance. He received reinforcements, but his light infantry under Tarleton
was decisively defeated by Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781. In

spite of this, Cornwallis decided to proceed, gambling that he would receive substantial Loyalist
support. General Nathanael Greene, who replaced General Gates, evaded contact with

Cornwallis while seeking reinforcements. By March, Greene's army had grown to the point

where he felt that he could face Cornwallis directly. In the key Battle of Guilford Court House,
Cornwallis drove Greene's much larger army off the battlefield, but in doing so suffered
casualties amounting to one-fourth of his army. Compounding this, far fewer Loyalists were

joining up than expected because the Patriots put heavy pressure on them and their families,
who would become hostages.[113] Cornwallis decided to retreat to coastal Wilmington, North
Carolina for resupply and reinforcement, leaving the interior of the Carolinas and Georgia open
to Greene. He then proceeded north into Virginia (see below).

American troops in conjunction with Patriot partisans then began the process of reclaiming

territory in South Carolina and Georgia. Despite British victories at Hobkirk's Hill and at the
Siege of Ninety-Six, by the middle of the year they had been forced to withdraw to the coastal
lowlands region of both colonies. The final battle (Battle of Eutaw Springs) in September 1781
was indecisive but by the end of the year the British held only Savannah and Charleston.

Virginia, 1781

Cornwallis proceeded from Wilmington north into Virginia, on the grounds that Virginia needed
to be subdued in order to hold the southern colonies. Earlier, in January 1781, a small British
raiding force under Benedict Arnold had landed there, and began moving through the
countryside, destroying supply depots, mills, and other economic targets. In February, General

Washington dispatched General Lafayette to counter Arnold, later also sending General
Anthony Wayne. Arnold was reinforced with additional troops from New York in March, and his

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army was joined with that of Cornwallis in May. Lafayette skirmished with Cornwallis, avoiding a

large-scale battle while gathering reinforcements.

Cornwallis' Virginia campaign was strongly opposed by his superior, General Clinton, who did
not believe such a large and disease-ridden area, with a hostile population, could be pacified
with the limited forces available. Clinton instead favored conducting operations further north in

the Chesapeake region (Maryland, Delaware, and southern Pennsylvania) where he believed
there was a strong Loyalist presence. Upon his arrival at Williamsburg in June, Cornwallis

received orders from Clinton to establish a fortified naval base and a request to send several

thousand troops to New York to counter a possible Franco-American attack. Following these
orders, he fortified Yorktown, and, shadowed by Lafayette, awaited the arrival of the Royal
Navy.[114]

The northern, southern, and naval theaters of the war converged in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia.
The French fleet became available for operations, which could either move against Yorktown or
New York. Washington still favored attacking New York, but the French decided to send the

fleet to their preferred target at Yorktown. Learning of the planned movement of the French fleet
in August, Washington began moving his army south to cooperate. The British fleet, not

realizing that the French had sent their entire fleet to America, dispatched an inadequate force
under Admiral Graves.

In early September, French naval forces defeated the British fleet at the Battle of the
Chesapeake, cutting off Cornwallis' escape. Cornwallis, still expecting to receive support, failed

to break out while he had the chance. When Washington's army arrived outside Yorktown,

Cornwallis prematurely abandoned his outer position, hastening his subsequent defeat. The
combined Franco-American force of 18,900 men began besieging Cornwallis in early October.
For several days, the French and Americans bombarded the British defenses, and then began

taking the outer redoubts. The British attempted to cobble together a relief expedition, but
encountered numerous delays. Cornwallis decided his position was becoming untenable and he

surrendered his entire army of over 7,000 men on October 19, 1781, the same day that the
British fleet at New York sailed for his relief.[115]

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Downfall of the North Ministry

News of the surrender at Yorktown arrived in Britain in November 1781. King George III took the

news calmly and delivered a defiant address pledging to continue the war, a majority of the
House of Commons endorsed it. In the succeeding months news arrived of other reverses,
however. The French and Spanish successfully took several West Indian islands and appeared

to be on the verge of completely expelling the British there. Minorca also surrendered to a
Franco-Spanish force on February 5, 1782 and Gibraltar seemed to be in danger of falling as

well. In light of this, Parliament on February 27, 1782 voted to cease all offensive operations in

America and seek peace. Threatened with votes of no confidence, on March 20 Lord North
resigned and his Tory government was replaced by the Whigs. Ironically, shortly after North
resigned the British won the Battle of the Saintes, putting an end to the French threat in the

West Indies, and they successfully relieved Gibraltar. Had the North government held out for a
few more months they would have been considerably strengthened and could have continued
the war in spite of Yorktown.

The new Whig administration accepted American independence as a basis for peace. There
were no further major military activities in North America, although the British still had 30,000

garrison troops occupying New York City, Charleston, and Savannah.[116] The war continued
elsewhere, including the siege of Gibraltar and naval operations in the East and West Indies,
until peace was agreed in 1783.

Naval war

When the war began, the British had overwhelming naval superiority over the American

colonists although their fleet was old and in poor condition, a situation that would be blamed on
Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty. During the first three years of the war, the Royal
Navy was primarily used to transport troops for land operations and to protect commercial
shipping. The American colonists had no ships of the line, and relied extensively on privateering

to harass British shipping. The privateers caused worry disproportionate to their material
success, although those operating out of French channel ports before and after France joined

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the war caused significant embarrassment to the Royal Navy and inflamed Anglo-French

relations. About 55,000 American sailors served aboard the privateers during the war.[117] The
American privateers had almost 1,700 ships, and they captured 2,283 enemy ships.[118] The

Continental Congress authorized the creation of a small Continental Navy in October 1775,
which was primarily used for commerce raiding. John Paul Jones became the first great
American naval hero, capturing HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American

military vessel in British waters.[119]

The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley

During the second period, the successive interventions of France, Spain, and the Netherlands
extended the naval war until it ranged from the West Indies to the Bay of Bengal. This second
period lasted from the summer of 1778 to the middle of 1783, and it included operations already

been in progress in America or for the protection of commerce, and naval campaigns on a great
scale carried out by the fleets of the maritime powers.

The Union of England and Scotland:

The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the
Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of

Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July
1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two
countries. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland—which at the
time were separate states with separate legislatures, but with the same monarch—were, in the

words of the Treaty, "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain".[2]

The two countries had shared a monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King

James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his double first cousin twice removed,
Queen Elizabeth I. Although described as a Union of Crowns, until 1707 there were in fact two

separate Crowns resting on the same head (as opposed to the implied creation of a single
Crown and a single Kingdom, exemplified by the later Kingdom of Great Britain). There had

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been three attempts in 1606, 1667, and 1689 to unite the two countries by Acts of Parliament,

but it was not until the early 18th century that both political establishments came to support the
idea, albeit for different reasons.

The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707. On this date, the Scottish Parliament and the English
Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster in

London, the home of the English Parliament.[3] Hence, the Acts are referred to as the Union of
the Parliaments. On the Union, the historian Simon Schama said "What began as a hostile

merger, would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world ... it was

one of the most astonishing transformations in European history.

Historical background

Previous attempts at union

England and Scotland were separate states for several centuries before eventual union, and
English attempts to take over Scotland by military force in the late 13th and early 14th centuries
were ultimately unsuccessful (see the Wars of Scottish Independence). The first attempts at

Union surrounded the foreseen unification[clarification needed] of the Royal lines of Scotland
and England. In pursuing the Scottish throne in the 1560s, Mary, Queen of Scots pledged
herself to a peaceful union between the two kingdoms.[5]

England and Scotland were ruled by the same king for the first time in 1603 when James VI of
Scotland also became the king of England. However they remained two separate states until 1

May 1707.

Early Stuart union

The first Union flag, created by James VI and I, symbolising the uniting of England and Scotland
under one Crown

The first attempt to unite the parliaments of England and Scotland was by Mary's son, King
James VI and I. On his accession to the English throne in 1603 King James announced his

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intention to unite his two realms so that he would not be "guilty of bigamy". James used his

Royal prerogative powers to take the style of 'King of Great Britain'[6] and to give an explicitly
British character to his court and person.[7] Whilst James assumed the creation of a full union

was a foregone conclusion, the Parliament of England was concerned that the formation of a
new state would deprive England of its ancient liberties, taking on the more absolutist
monarchical structure James had previously enjoyed in Scotland.[8] In the meantime, James

declared that Great Britain be viewed 'as presently united, and as one realm and kingdom, and

the subjects of both realms as one people'.[9]

The Scottish and English parliaments established a commission to negotiate a union,

formulating an instrument of union between the two countries. However, the idea of political
union was unpopular, and when James dropped his policy of a speedy union, the topic quietly

disappeared from the legislative agenda. When the House of Commons attempted to revive the
proposal in 1610, it was met with a more open hostility.[10]

Union during the interregnum

Main article:Scotland under the Commonwealth

Flag showing the 'perfected' union between England and Scotland

The Solemn League and Covenant 1643 sought a forced union of the Church of England into
the Church of Scotland, and although the covenant referred repeatedly to union between the
three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a political union was not spelled out.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, in which the Covenanters had fought for the King, Oliver

Cromwell occupied Scotland and began a process of creating a 'Godly Britannic' Union between

the former Kingdoms.[11] In 1651, the Parliament of England issued the Tender of Union
declaration supporting Scotland's incorporation into the Commonwealth and sent
Commissioners to Scotland with the express purpose of securing support for Union, which was

assented to by the Commissioners (Members of Parliament) in Scotland. On 12 April 1654,

Cromwell – styling himself Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland – enacted An

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Ordinance by the Protector for the Union of England and Scotland, which created 'one

Commonwealth and under one Government' to be known as the Commonwealth of England,

Scotland and Ireland.[12] The ordinance was ratified by the Second Protectorate Parliament, as

an Act of Union, on 26 June 1657.[13] One united Parliament sat in Westminster, with 30
representatives from Scotland and 30 from Ireland joining the existing members from England.
Whilst free trade was brought about amongst the new Commonwealth, the economic benefits

were generally not felt as a result of heavy taxation used to fund Cromwell's New Model

Army.[11]

This republican union was dissolved automatically with the restoration of King Charles II to the
thrones of England and Scotland. Scottish members expelled from the Commonwealth
Parliament petitioned unsuccessfully for a continuance of the union. Cromwell's union had

simultaneously raised interest in and suspicion of the concept of union and when Charles II
attempted to recreate the union and fulfil the work of his grandfather in 1669, negotiations
between Commissioners ground to a halt.[14]

Later attempts

An abortive scheme for union occurred in Scotland in 1670.[15]

Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the records of the Parliament of Scotland show much
discussion of possible union. William and Mary, whilst supportive of the idea, had no interest in
allowing it to delay their enthronement. Impetus for this incorporating union came almost entirely

from King William, who feared leaving Scotland open to a French invasion. In the 1690s, the
economic position of Scotland worsened, and relations between Scotland and England became

strained.[16] In the following decade, however, union again became a significant topic of
political debate.

Treaty and passage of the Acts of 1707

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Deeper political integration had been a key policy of Queen Anne from the time she acceded to

the throne in 1702. Under the aegis of the Queen and her ministers in both kingdoms, the
parliaments of England and Scotland agreed to participate in fresh negotiations for a union

treaty in 1705.

Both countries appointed 31 commissioners to conduct the negotiations. Most of the Scottish

commissioners favoured union, and about half were government ministers and other officials. At
the head of the list was Queensberry, and the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, the Earl of

Seafield.[17] The English commissioners included the Lord High Treasurer, the Earl of

Godolphin, the Lord Keeper, Baron Cowper, and a large number of Whigs who supported union.
Tories were not in favour of union and only one was represented among the commissioners.

Negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners took place between 16 April and

22 July 1706 at the Cockpit in London. Each side had its own particular concerns. Within a few
days, England gained a guarantee that the Hanoverian dynasty would succeed Queen Anne to
the Scottish crown, and Scotland received a guarantee of access to colonial markets, in the

hope that they would be placed on an equal footing in terms of trade.

After negotiations ended in July 1706, the acts had to be ratified by both Parliaments. In
Scotland, about 100 of the 227 members of the Parliament of Scotland were supportive of the
Court Party. For extra votes the pro-court side could rely on about 25 members of the
Squadrone Volante, led by the Marquess of Montrose and the Duke of Roxburghe. Opponents
of the court were generally known as the Country party, and included various factions and

individuals such as the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Belhaven and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who

spoke forcefully and passionately against the union. The Court party enjoyed significant funding
from England and the Treasury and included many who had accumulated debts following the
Darien Disaster.[19]

In Scotland, the Duke of Queensberry was largely responsible for the successful passage of the

Union act by the Scottish Parliament. In Scotland, he received much criticism from local
residents, but in England he was cheered for his action. He had received around half of the

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funding awarded by the Westminster treasury for himself. In April 1707, he travelled to London

to attend celebrations at the royal court, and was greeted by groups of noblemen and gentry
lined along the road. From Barnet, the route was lined with crowds of cheering people, and once

he reached London a huge crowd had formed. On 17 April, the Duke was gratefully received by
the Queen at Kensington Palace.

Political motivations

Portrait of Queen Anne in 1702, the year she became queen, from the school of John
Closterman

English perspective

The English purpose was to ensure that Scotland would not choose a monarch different from
the one on the English throne. The two countries had shared a king for much of the previous

century, but the English were concerned that an independent Scotland with a different king,
even if he were a Protestant, might make alliances against England. The English succession
was provided for by the English Act of Settlement 1701, which ensured that the monarch of

England would be a Protestant member of the House of Hanover. Until the Union of
Parliaments, the Scottish throne might be inherited by a different successor after Queen Anne:
the Scottish Act of Security 1704 granted parliament the right to choose a successor and
explicitly required a choice different from the English monarch unless the English were to grant
free trade and navigation. Many people in England were unhappy about the prospect, however.

English overseas possessions made England very wealthy in comparison to Scotland, a poor
country with few roads, very little industry and almost no Navy.[citation needed] This made

some view unification as a markedly unequal relationship.

Scottish perspective

In Scotland, some claimed that union would enable Scotland to recover from the financial

disaster wrought by the Darien scheme through English assistance and the lifting of measures

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put in place through the Alien Act to force the Scottish Parliament into compliance with the Act

of Settlement.[21]

The combined votes of the Court party with a majority of the Squadrone Volante were sufficient
to ensure the final passage of the treaty through the House.

Personal financial interests were also allegedly involved. Many Commissioners had invested
heavily in the Darien Scheme and they believed that they would receive compensation for their

losses; Article 15 granted £398,085 10s sterling to Scotland, a sum known as The Equivalent, to
offset future liability towards the English national debt. In essence it was also used as a means

of compensation for investors in the Company of Scotland's Darien Scheme, as 58.6% was
allocated to its shareholders and creditors.[22]

18thC French illustration of an opening of the Scottish Parliament

Even more direct bribery was also said to be a factor.[23] £20,000 (£240,000 Scots) was
dispatched to Scotland for distribution by the Earl of Glasgow. James Douglas, 2nd Duke of
Queensberry, the Queen's Commissioner in Parliament, received £12,325, more than 60% of

the funding. (Some contend that all of this money was properly accounted for as compensation
for loss of office, pensions and so forth not outwith the usual run of government. It is perhaps a
debate that will never be set to rest. However, modern research has shown that payments were
made to supporters of union that appear not to have been overdue salaries. At least four
payments were made to people who were not even members of the Scottish Parliament.)

Robert Burns referred to this:

We're bought and sold for English Gold,

Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation.

Some of the money was used to hire spies, such as Daniel Defoe; his first reports were of vivid
descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots rabble is the worst of its
kind," he reported, "for every Scot in favour there is 99 against". Years later Sir John Clerk of
Penicuik, originally a leading Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that,

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(Defoe) was a spy among us, but not known as such, otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would

pull him to pieces.

The Treaty could be considered unpopular in Scotland: Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, the
only member of the Scottish negotiating team against union, noted that "The whole nation
appears against the Union"[24] and even Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, an ardent pro-unionist and

Union negotiator, observed that the treaty was "contrary to the inclinations of at least three-
fourths of the Kingdom".[24] Public opinion against the Treaty as it passed through the Scottish

Parliament was voiced through petitions from shires, burghs, presbyteries and parishes. The

Convention of Royal Burghs also petitioned against the Union as proposed:

That it is our indispensable duty to signify to your grace that, as we are not against an
honourable and safe union with England far less can we expect to have the condition of the

people of Scotland, with relation to these great concerns, made better and improved without a
Scots Parliament.[25]

Not one petition in favour of an incorporating union was received by Parliament. On the day the
treaty was signed, the carilloner in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, rang the bells in the tune Why

should I be so sad on my wedding day?[26] Threats of widespread civil unrest resulted in

Parliament imposing martial law.

Irish perspective

Ireland, the third of the "sister kingdoms", was not included in the union. The effective

government of Ireland was in the hands of the 'Protestant Ascendancy', a minority elite (about
10% of the population)[citation needed]. The Roman Catholic majority were systematically
excluded from political and military discourse through a series of post-Cromwellian Penal Laws,

limiting their rights to property, education, and the franchise.

In July 1707 each House of the Parliament of Ireland passed a congratulatory address to Queen

Anne, praying that "May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your
crown, by a still more comprehensive Union".[27] The British government did not respond to the

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invitation and an equal union between Great Britain and Ireland was out of consideration until

the 1790s.

Ireland's benefits from the Union of 1707 were therefore few. Its preferential status in trade with
England now extended to Scotland. However, Ireland was left unequal and unrepresented in the
Parliament of Great Britain. The Kingdom of Ireland was to remain separate, and legally

subordinate to Great Britain until 1784. The union with Ireland finally came about on 1 January
1801.

Provisions of the Acts:

Royal heraldic badge of Queen Anne, depicting the Tudor rose and the Scottish thistle growing
out of the same stem.

Main article: Treaty of Union

The Treaty of Union, agreed between representatives of the Parliament of England and the
Parliament of Scotland in 1706, consisted of 25 articles, 15 of which were economic in nature. In
Scotland, each article was voted on separately and several clauses in articles were delegated to
specialised subcommittees. Article 1 of the treaty was based on the political principle of an
incorporating union and this was secured by a majority of 116 votes to 83 on 4 November 1706.

To minimise the opposition of the Church of Scotland, an Act was also passed to secure the
Presbyterian establishment of the Church, after which the Church stopped its open opposition,
although hostility remained at lower levels of the clergy. The treaty as a whole was finally ratified

on 16 January 1707 by a majority of 110 votes to 69.[28]

The two Acts incorporated provisions for Scotland to send representative peers from the

Peerage of Scotland to sit in the House of Lords. It guaranteed that the Church of Scotland
would remain the established church in Scotland, that the Court of Session would "remain in all
time coming within Scotland", and that Scots law would "remain in the same force as before".

Other provisions included the restatement of the Act of Settlement 1701 and the ban on Roman
Catholics from taking the throne. It also created a customs union and monetary union.

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The Act provided that any "laws and statutes" that were "contrary to or inconsistent with the

terms" of the Act would "cease and become void."

Soon after the Union, the Act 6 Anne c.40 (later infelicitously named the Union with Scotland
(Amendment) Act 1707) united the English and Scottish Privy Councils and decentralised
Scottish administration by appointing justices of the peace in each shire to carry out

administration. In effect it took the day-to-day government of Scotland out of the hands of
politicians and into those of the College of Justice.

Union of England and Ireland:

The Acts of Union 1800 (sometimes erroneously referred to as a single Act of Union 1801)

united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland (previously in personal union) to
create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland[2] with effect from 1 January 1801. Both

Acts, though since amended, still remain in force in the United Kingdom,[3] but have been
repealed in the Republic of Ireland.

Name:

Two acts with the same long title, 'An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland' were
passed in 1800; the short title of the act of the Irish Parliament act is 'Act of Union (Ireland)
1800', and that of the British Parliament is 'Union with Ireland Act 1800'. There was no Act of
Union of 1801.

Background

Before these Acts, Ireland had been in personal union with England since 1541, when the Irish

Parliament had passed the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, proclaiming King Henry VIII of England
to be King of Ireland. (Before then, since the 12th century, the King of England had been
overlord of the Lordship of Ireland, a papal possession.) Both Ireland and England had come in

personal union with Scotland with the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

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In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united into a single

kingdom: the Kingdom of Great Britain. Upon that union, each House of the Parliament of
Ireland passed a congratulatory address to Queen Anne, praying that, "May God put it in your

royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown, by a still more comprehensive
Union".[6] The Irish parliament at that time was subject to a number of restrictions that placed it
subservient to the Parliament of England (and following the union of England and Scotland, the

Parliament of Great Britain).

In the century that followed the union of England and Scotland, Ireland gained effective

legislative independence from Great Britain through the Constitution of 1782. However, access
to institutional power in Ireland was restricted to a small minority, the so-called Anglo-Irish of the
Protestant Ascendancy, and frustration at the lack of reform eventually led to a rebellion in

1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and seeking complete independence from Great
Britain. The rebellion was crushed with much bloodshed, and the subsequent drive for union
between Great Britain and Ireland that passed in 1800 was motivated at least in part by the
belief that the rebellion was caused as much by loyalist brutality as by the United Irishmen.

Passing the Acts

Each Act had to be passed in the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland.

After centuries of subordination to the English, and later, British Parliaments, the Parliament of
Ireland gained a large measure of independence by the Constitution of 1782. Many members of

the Irish Parliament jealously guarded its autonomy (notably Henry Grattan) and a motion for
union was rejected in 1799. However, a concerted campaign by the British government

overcame the reluctance of the Irish Parliament.

Only Anglicans were permitted to become members of the Parliament of Ireland, though the
great majority of the Irish population were Roman Catholic, with many Presbyterians in Ulster. In
1793 Roman Catholics regained the right to vote if they owned or rented property worth £2 p.a.

The Catholic hierarchy was strongly in favour of union, hoping for rapid emancipation – the right
to sit as MPs – which was however delayed until 1829.

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From the perspective of Great Britain, the union was required because of the uncertainty that

followed the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the French Revolution of 1789, which inspired the
rebels; if Ireland adopted Catholic Emancipation, willingly or not, a Roman Catholic parliament

could break away from Britain and ally with the French, while the same measure within a united
kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also the Irish and British parliaments, when creating a
regency during King George III's "madness", gave the Prince Regent different powers. These

considerations led Great Britain to decide to merge the two kingdoms and their parliaments.

The final passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was achieved with substantial majorities,

achieved in part according to contemporary documents through bribery, namely the awarding of
peerages and honours to critics to get their votes.[7] Whereas the first attempt had been
defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes against to 104 for, the second vote in

1800 produced a result of 158 to 115.[7]

Provisions

• The Acts of Union were two complementary Acts, namely:

• The Union with Ireland Act 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. 3 c. 67),[8] an Act of the Parliament of

Great Britain, and

• The Act of Union (Ireland) 1800 (40 Geo. 3 c. 38),[9] an Act of the Parliament of Ireland.
• They were passed on 2 July 1800 and 1 August 1800 respectively, and came into force
on 1 January 1801. They ratified eight articles which had been previously agreed by the
British and Irish Parliaments:

• Articles I–IV dealt with the political aspects of the Union. It created a united parliament.

• In the House of Lords, the existing members of the Parliament of Great Britain were
joined by, as Lords Spiritual, four bishops of the Church of Ireland, rotating among the
dioceses in each session and as Lords Temporal 28 representative peers elected for life

by the Peerage of Ireland.

• The House of Commons was to include the pre-union representation from Great Britain

and 100 members from Ireland: two members from each of the 32 counties and from the
two largest boroughs, and one from each of the next 31 boroughs and from Dublin

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 University. The other 84 Irish parliamentary boroughs were disfranchised; all were

pocket boroughs, whose patrons received £15,000 compensation for the loss of what
was considered their property.

• See also: United Kingdom general election, 1801

• Article V united the established Church of England and Church of Ireland into "one
Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called, The United Church of England and Ireland";

but also confirmed the independence of the Church of Scotland.

• Article VI created a customs union, with the exception that customs duties on certain
British and Irish goods passing between the two countries would remain for 10 years (a
consequence of having trade depressed by the ongoing war with revolutionary France).

• Article VII stated that Ireland would have to contribute two-seventeenths towards the
expenditure of the United Kingdom. The figure was a ratio of Irish to British foreign trade.

• Article VIII formalised the legal and judicial aspects of the Union.
• Part of the attraction of the Union for many Irish Catholics was the promise of Catholic
Emancipation, allowing Roman Catholic MPs, who had not been allowed in the Irish

Parliament. This was however blocked by King George III who argued that emancipating
Roman Catholics would breach his Coronation Oath, and was not realised until 1829.

The first parliament

In the first Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the members of the
House of Commons were not elected afresh. By royal proclamation authorised by the Act, all

the members of the last House of Commons from Great Britain took seats in the new House,
and from Ireland 100 members were chosen from the last Irish House of Commons; both

members from each of the 32 counties and from the two largest boroughs, and one each
(chosen by lot) from the next 31 boroughs and from Dublin University.

Union flag

The flag, created as a consequence of the union of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in
1800, still remains the flag of the United Kingdom. Called the Union Flag, it combined the flags

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of St George's Cross (which included Wales) and the St Andrew's Saltire of Scotland with the St

Patrick's Saltire to represent Ireland (it now represents Northern Ireland).

Old colonial system

Colonialism is the establishment of a colony in one territory by a political power from another
territory, and the subsequent maintenance, expansion, and exploitation of that colony. The term
is also used to describe a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the

colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous peoples.

The European colonial period was the era from the 16th century to the mid-20th century when
several European powers established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first the
countries followed mercantilism designed to strengthen the home economy at the expense of

rivals, so the colonies were usually allowed to trade only with the mother country. By the mid-
19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions

and introduced the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.

Activity that could be called colonialism has a long history starting with the pre-colonial African

empires which led to the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans who all built colonies in
antiquity. The word "metropole" comes from the Greek metropolis [Greek: "μητρόπολις"]—
"mother city". The word "colony" comes from the Latin colonia—"a place for agriculture".
Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese established military colonies south of
their original territory and absorbed the territory, in a process known as nam tiến.[10]

Modern colonialism started with the Age of Discovery. Portugal and Spain discovered new lands

across the oceans and built trading posts or conquered large extensions of land. For some
people, it is this building of colonies across oceans that differentiates colonialism from other
types of expansionism. These new lands were divided between the Portuguese Empire and
Spanish Empire, first by the papal bull Inter caetera and then by the Treaty of Tordesillas and
the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529).

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This period is also associated with the Commercial Revolution. The late Middle Ages saw

reforms in accountancy and banking in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. These ideas were
adopted and adapted in western Europe to the high risks and rewards associated with colonial

ventures.

The 17th century saw the creation of the French colonial empire and the Dutch Empire, as well

as the English overseas possessions, which later became the British Empire. It also saw the
establishment of a Danish colonial empire and some Swedish overseas colonies.

The spread of colonial empires was reduced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by the

American Revolutionary War and the Latin American wars of independence. However, many
new colonies were established after this time, including the German colonial empire and Belgian
colonial empire. In the late 19th century, many European powers were involved in the Scramble

for Africa.

The Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire and Austrian Empire existed at the same time as the
above empires, but did not expand over oceans. Rather, these empires expanded through the
more traditional route of conquest of neighbouring territories. There was, though, some Russian

colonization of the Americas across the Bering Strait. The Empire of Japan modelled itself on
European colonial empires. The United States of America gained overseas territories after the
Spanish–American War for which the term "American Empire" was coined.

Map of the British Empire (as of 1910). At its height, it was the largest empire in history.

After the First World War, the victorious allies divided up the German colonial empire and much
of the Ottoman Empire between themselves as League of Nations mandates. These territories
were divided into three classes according to how quickly it was deemed that they would be

ready for independence.[11]

The colonial system was the major cause of the Second World War. The war in the Pacific was

caused by Japan's efforts to create a colonial empire that sought to conquer the existing
empires held by the British, French, Dutch and the United States. The war in Europe and North

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Africa was caused partially by Germany and Italy's efforts to create colonial empires that sought

to conquer existing British, French and Russian colonial empires in these areas.

After World War II, decolonization progressed rapidly. This was caused by a number of reasons.
First, the Japanese victories in the Pacific War showed Indians, Chinese, and other subject
peoples that the colonial powers were not invincible. Second, many colonial powers were

significantly weakened by World War Two.

Dozens of independence movements and global political solidarity projects such as the Non-
Aligned Movement were instrumental in the decolonization efforts of former colonies. These

included significant wars of independence fought in Indonesia, Vietnam, Algeria, and Kenya.
Eventually, the European powers—pressured by the United States and Soviets—resigned
themselves to decolonization.

In 1962 the United Nations set up a Special Committee on Decolonization, often called the

Committee of 24, to encourage this process.

Numbers of European settlers in the colonies (1500–1914)

Millions of Irish left Ireland for Canada and U.S. following the Great Famine in the 1840s

By 1914, Europeans had migrated to the colonies in the millions. Some intended to remain in
the colonies as temporary settlers, mainly as military personnel or on business. Others went to
the colonies as immigrants. British people were by far the most numerous population to migrate

to the colonies: 2.5 million settled in Canada; 1.5 million in Australia; 750,000 in New Zealand;
450,000 in the Union of South Africa; and 200,000 in India. French citizens also migrated in

large numbers, mainly to the colonies in the north African Maghreb region: 1.3 million settled in

Algeria; 200,000 in Morocco; 100,000 in Tunisia; while only 20,000 migrated to French
Indochina. Dutch and German colonies saw relatively scarce European migration, since Dutch
and German colonial expansion focused on commercial goals rather than settlement. Portugal

sent 150,000 settlers to Angola, 80,000 to Mozambique, and 20,000 to Goa. During the Spanish
Empire, approximately 550,000 Spanish settlers migrated to Latin America.

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Colonialism and the history of thought

See also: Historiography of the British Empire

Precolonialism

A subdiscourse of colonialism explored by postcolonial theorists.[13] Helena Norberg-Hodge

has stated that, in order to do development studies, one has to first understand
precolonialism.[14][clarification needed] The concept of precolonialism has also been applied to

literary studies with respect to such works as Francis Bacon's New Atlantis.[15]

Universalism

The conquest of vast territories brings multitudes of diverse cultures under the central control of
the imperial authorities. From the time of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, this fact has been
addressed by empires adopting the concept of universalism, and applying it to their imperial

policies towards their subjects far from the imperial capitol. The capitol, the metropole, was the
source of ostensibly enlightened policies imposed throughout the distant colonies.

The empire that grew from Greek conquest, particularly by Alexander the Great, spurred the
spread of Greek language, religion, science and philosophy throughout the colonies. The

Greeks considered their own culture superior to all others. They referred to people speaking
foreign languages as barbarians, dismissing foreign languages as inferior mutterings that
sounded to Greek ears like "bar-bar".

Romans found efficiency in imposing a universalist policy towards their colonies in many

matters. Roman law was imposed on Roman citizens, as well as colonial subjects, throughout
the empire. Latin spread as the common language of government and trade, the lingua franca,

throughout the Empire. Romans also imposed peace between their diverse foreign subjects,
which they described in beneficial terms as the Pax Romana. The use of universal regulation by
the Romans marks the emergence of a European concept of universalism and internationalism.
Tolerance of other cultures and beliefs has always been secondary to the aims of empires,
however. The Roman Empire was tolerant of diverse cultures and religious practises, so long as

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these did not threaten Roman authority. Napoleon's foreign minister, Charles Maurice de

Talleyrand, once remarked: "Empire is the art of putting men in their place".[16]

Colonialism and geography

Settlers acted as the link between indigenous populations and the imperial hegemony, thus
bridging the geographical, ideological and commercial gap between the colonizers and
colonized. While the extent in which geography as an academic study is implicated in

colonialism is contentious, geographical tools such as cartography, shipbuilding, navigation,

mining and agricultural productivity were instrumental in European colonial expansion.

Colonizer's awareness of the Earth's surface and abundance of practical skills provided
colonizers with a knowledge that, in turn, created power.[17]

Anne Godlewska and Neil Smith argue that "empire was 'quintessentially a geographical
project.'"[18] Historical geographical theories such as environmental determinism legitimized

colonialism by positing the view that some parts of the world were underdeveloped, which
created notions of skewed evolution.[17] Geographers such as Ellen Churchill Semple and
Ellsworth Huntington put forward the notion that northern climates bred vigour and intelligence

as opposed to those indigenous to tropical climates (See The Tropics) viz a viz a combination of
environmental determinism and Social Darwinism in their approach.[19]

Political geographers also maintain that colonial behavior was reinforced by the physical
mapping of the world, therefore creating a visual separation between "them" and "us".

Geographers are primarily focused on the spaces of colonialism and imperialism; more
specifically, the material and symbolic appropriation of space enabling colonialism.[20]:5

Maps played an extensive role in colonialism, as Bassett would put it "by providing geographical

information in a convenient and standardized format, cartographers helped open West Africa to
European conquest, commerce, and colonization".[21] However, because the relationship
between colonialism and geography was not scientifically objective, cartography was often

manipulated during the colonial era. Social norms and values had an effect on the constructing
of maps. During colonialism map-makers used rhetoric in their formation of boundaries and in

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their art. The rhetoric favored the view of the conquering Europeans; this is evident in the fact

that any map created by a non-European was instantly regarded as inaccurate. Furthermore,
European cartographers were required to follow a set of rules which led to ethnocentrism;

portraying one's own ethnicity in the center of the map. As Harley would put it "The steps in
making a map - selection, omission, simplification, classification, the creation of hierarchies, and
'symbolization' - are all inherently rhetorical."

A common practice by the European cartographers of the time was to map unexplored areas as

"blank spaces". This influenced the colonial powers as it sparked competition amongst them to

explore and colonize these regions. Imperialists aggressively and passionately looked forward
to filling these spaces for the glory of their respective countries.[23] The Dictionary of Human
Geography notes that cartography was used to empty 'undiscovered' lands of their Indigenous

meaning and bring them into spatial existence via the imposition of "Western place-names and
borders, [therefore] priming ‘virgin’ (putatively empty land, ‘wilderness’) for colonization (thus
sexualizing colonial landscapes as domains of male penetration), reconfiguring alien space as
absolute, quantifiable and separable (as property)."[24]

David Livingstone stresses "that geography has meant different things at different times and in

different places" and that we should keep an open mind in regards to the relationship between
geography and colonialism instead of identifying boundaries.[18] Geography as a discipline was
not and is not an objective science, Painter and Jeffrey argue, rather it is based on assumptions
about the physical world.[17]

Colonialism and imperialism

A colony is a part of an empire and so colonialism is closely related to imperialism. Assumptions

are that colonialism and imperialism are interchangeable, however Robert J. C. Young suggests
that imperialism is the concept while colonialism is the practice. Colonialism is based on an

imperial outlook, thereby creating a consequential relationship. Through an empire, colonialism

is established and capitalism is expanded, on the other hand a capitalist economy naturally

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enforces an empire. In the next section Marxists make a case for this mutually reinforcing

relationship.

Marxist view of colonialism

Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism, enforcing exploitation and social change.
Marx thought that working within the global capitalist system, colonialism is closely associated
with uneven development. It is an "instrument of wholesale destruction, dependency and

systematic exploitation producing distorted economies, socio-psychological disorientation,

massive poverty and neocolonial dependency."[25] Colonies are constructed into modes of

production. The search for raw materials and the current search for new investment
opportunities is a result of inter-capitalist rivalry for capital accumulation. Lenin regarded
colonialism as the root cause of imperialism, as imperialism was distinguished by monopoly

capitalism via colonialism and as Lyal S. Sunga explains: "Vladimir Lenin advocated forcefully
the principle of self-determination of peoples in his "Theses on the Socialist Revolution and the
Right of Nations to Self-Determination" as an integral plank in the programme of socialist

internationalism" and he quotes Lenin who contended that "The right of nations to self-
determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to

free political separation from the oppressor nation. Specifically, this demand for political
democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for a referendum on
secession by the seceding nation."[26] Non Russian marxists within the RSFSR and later the
USSR, like Sultan Galiev and Vasyl Shakhrai, meanwhile, between 1918 and 1923 and then

after 1929, considered the Soviet Regime a renewed version of the Russian imperialism and
colonialism.

In his critique of colonialism in Africa, the Guyanese historian and political activist Walter
Rodney states:

"The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa

spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human
society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability

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to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one's will by any means available.... When

one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society that in itself is a
form of underdevelopment ... During the centuries of pre-colonial trade, some control over social

political and economic life was retained in Africa, in spite of the disadvantageous commerce
with Europeans. That little control over internal matters disappeared under colonialism.
Colonialism went much further than trade. It meant a tendency towards direct appropriation by

Europeans of the social institutions within Africa. Africans ceased to set indigenous cultural

goals and standards, and lost full command of training young members of the society. Those
were undoubtedly major steps backwards ... Colonialism was not merely a system of
exploitation, but one whose essential purpose was to repatriate the profits to the so-called

'mother country'. From an African view-point, that amounted to consistent expatriation of surplus
produced by African labour out of African resources. It meant the development of Europe as

part of the same dialectical process in which Africa was underdeveloped."

"Colonial Africa fell within that part of the international capitalist economy from which surplus
was drawn to feed the metropolitan sector. As seen earlier, exploitation of land and labour is
essential for human social advance, but only on the assumption that the product is made
available within the area where the exploitation takes place."

According to Lenin, the new imperialism emphasized the transition of capitalism from free trade
to a stage of monopoly capitalism to finance capital. He states it is, "connected with the
intensification of the struggle for the partition of the world". As free trade thrives on exports of

commodities, monopoly capitalism thrived on the export of capital amassed by profits from
banks and industry. This, to Lenin, was the highest stage of capitalism. He goes on to state that

this form of capitalism was doomed for war between the capitalists and the exploited nations
with the former inevitably losing. War is stated to be the consequence of imperialism. As a
continuation of this thought G.N. Uzoigwe states, "But it is now clear from more serious

investigations of African history in this period that imperialism was essentially economic in its

fundamental impulses." [29]

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Liberalism, capitalism and colonialism

Classical liberals were generally in abstract opposition to colonialism (as opposed to

colonization) and imperialism, including Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, Richard Cobden, John
Bright, Henry Richard, Herbert Spencer, H. R. Fox Bourne, Edward Morel, Josephine Butler, W.
J. Fox and William Ewart Gladstone.[30] Their philosophies found the colonial enterprise,

particularly mercantilism, in opposition to the principles of free trade and liberal policies.[31]
Adam Smith wrote in Wealth of Nations that Britain should grant independence to all of its

colonies and also argued that it would be economically beneficial for British people in the

average, although the merchants having mercantilist privileges would lose out.[30][32]

Scientific thought in colonialism, race and gender

The act of colonizing spread and synthesized social and political western ideas of a gender and
racial hierarchy to colonized areas, as well as elicited the further development of ideas about

the gender dichotomy and racial divisions in European society during the colonial
era.[33][34][35] Popular political practices of the time were to support colonialism rule by
legitimizing European male authority and female and non European inferiority through studies of

Craniology, Comparative Anatomy, and Phrenology.[34][35][36] Biologists, naturalists,

anthropologists, and ethnologists of the 19th century were focused on the study of colonized
indigenous women, as in the case of Georges Cuvier's study of Sarah Baartman.[35] Such
cases embraced a natural superiority and inferiority relationship between the races based on
European naturalists' observations; they gave rise to the perception that African women's

anatomy, and especially genitalia, resembled those of mandrills, baboons, and monkeys, thus

differentiating colonized Africans from what were viewed as the features of the evolutionarily
superior, and thus rightfully authoritarian, European woman.[35]

In addition to what would now be viewed as pseudo-scientific studies of race which supported
new racially hierarchical and evolutionary ideology of the time, new science-based ideology

about gender was also emerging in reaction to the colonial era of European history.[34] Female
inferiority across all cultures was emerging as an idea based in craniology that led scientists to

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argue human women's brain size, based on skull measurements, was minuscule and therefore

less developed and less evolutionarily advanced compared to men.[34] The influence that led to
such studies was the establishment of comparative anatomy of humans that developed in

response to European scientists' delving into the question of biological racial difference.

Thus Non Europeans and women faced invasive study by colonial powers in the interest of

scientific ideology and theory that encouraged the political institution of colonialism.[35] Such
studies of race and gender coincided with the era of colonialism and the introduction of foreign

cultures, appearances, and gender roles into the line of vision of European scholars.

Post-colonialism

Queen Victoria Street in the former British colony of Hong Kong

Post-colonialism (or post-colonial theory) can refer to a set of theories in philosophy and

literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. In this sense, postcolonial literature may
be considered a branch of postmodern literature concerned with the political and cultural
independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires. Many practitioners take

Edward Saïd's book Orientalism (1978) as the theory's founding work (although French theorists
such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon made similar claims decades before Said).

Saïd analyzed the works of Balzac, Baudelaire and Lautréamont arguing that they helped to
shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Writers of post-colonial fiction interact
with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar

story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story. Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak? (1998) gave its name to Subaltern Studies.

In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), Spivak argued that major works of European
metaphysics (such as those of Kant and Hegel) not only tend to exclude the subaltern from their
discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as fully human

subjects. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), famous for its explicit ethnocentrism,

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considers Western civilization as the most accomplished of all, while Kant also had some traces

of racialism in his work.

The French Revolution and Napoleonic

Wars
French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, a series of wars between 1792 and 1815 that

ranged France against shifting alliances of other European powers and that produced a brief

French hegemony over most of Europe. The revolutionary wars, which may for convenience be
held to have been concluded by 1801, were originally undertaken to defend and then to spread
the effects of the French Revolution. With Napoleon’s rise to absolute power, France’s aims in
war reverted to simple aggrandizement of influence and territory.

Monarchies at war with the French Republic

The overthrow of Louis XVI and the establishment of republican government placed France at
odds with the primarily monarchical and dynastic governments of the rest of Europe. In the

Declaration of Pillnitz (1791) Austria and Prussia issued a provocative general call to European
rulers to assist the French king reestablishing himself in power. France declared war in April
1792. On September 20, 1792, French forces under Charles-François Dumouriez and François-
Christophe Kellermann turned back an invading Prussian-Austrian force at Valmy, and by

November the French had occupied all of Belgium. Early in 1793 Austria, Prussia, Spain, the
United Provinces, and Great Britain formed the first of seven coalitions that would oppose

France over the next 23 years. In response to reverses at the hands of the First Coalition, the
Revolutionary government declared a levy en masse, by which all Frenchmen were placed at
the disposal of the army. By that means unprecedentedly large armies were raised and put in

the field during this period. Battles on the Continent in the mid-18th century typically had
involved armies of about 60,000 to 70,000 troops, but after 1800 Napoleon routinely

maneuvered armies of 250,000; and he invaded Russia in 1812 with some 600,000. (See map.)

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The rise of Napoleon

By early 1795 France had defeated the allies on every front and had pushed to Amsterdam, the

Rhine, and the Pyrenees; more importantly, Prussia had been forced out of the coalition and
had signed a separate peace that held until 1806. In May 1795 the United Provinces of the
Netherlands became the French-influenced Batavian Republic. In northern Italy, a strongly

positioned French army threatened Austrian-Sardinian positions, but its commander proved
reluctant to move. In March 1796 he was replaced by a more dynamic general, Napoleon

Bonaparte.

Napoleon executed a brilliant campaign of maneuver against Austrian and Sardinian forces in
Italy and in the resultant treaty of Campo Formio forced Austria to cede the Austrian
Netherlands (now Belgium and Luxembourg), which became the first territorial additions to the

French Republic, and to recognize the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics established by French
power in northern Italy.

Napoleon’s next campaign was a major failure. He sailed an army to Egypt in May 1798 with the
idea of conquering the Ottoman Empire. The defeat of a French naval squadron by Admiral

Horatio Nelson in the Battle of the Nile (August 1, 1798) left him without sufficient naval support,
however, and, after failing to take Acre in 1799, Napoleon withdrew to France. His army
continued to occupy Egypt until 1801. Meanwhile, other French forces had occupied new
territories and established republican regimes in Rome, Switzerland (the Helvetic Republic), and
the Italian Piedmont (the Parthenopean). As a result the Second Coalition formed, comprising

Britain, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Naples, Portugal, and Austria. The allies’ initial successes

were reversed by their inability to agree on strategy, however, and by the time Napoleon
became the first consul of France by the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire, year VIII (November 9,
1799), the danger of foreign intervention against the Revolution in France was over. A victory

over Austria at Marengo in 1800 and the consequent Treaty of Lunéville left France the
dominant power on the Continent. For two years thereafter only Great Britain, with its powerful

navy, remained to oppose Napoleon. Nelson’s smashing victory at Trafalgar (October 21, 1805)
ended a French threat to invade England. In 1805 a Third Coalition formed with Britain, Russia,

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and Austria. Napoleon won major victories at Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805 and at Jena, Auerstädt,

and Lübeck over the new coalition member Prussia in 1806. The resulting Treaty of Tilsit, in
which Prussia was halved at the Elbe and also lost part of Poland, and the Treaty of

Schönbrunn in 1809, following a brief Austrian uprising, left all of Europe from the English
Channel to the Russian border, with the exceptions of Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and Sicily,
either part of the French Empire, under the control of France, or allied to France by treaty.

In 1806, in an attempt to use French control of continental ports to blockade Britain indirectly,

Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree, by which ships passing to French-controlled ports after

calling at British ports were liable to seizure. The Continental System, as this policy was called,
was not successful. The general inhibition of European trade that ensued (for Britain responded
with a like policy of detaining ships bound for French ports) and the perceived favouritism in the

French government’s granting of licenses to French merchants for trade with Britain cost
Napoleon considerable political support. Meanwhile, though pressed at home, the British were
able to expand their colonial markets so as to emerge from the trade war more prosperous than
before.

The defeat of Napoleon

Napoleon’s military successes resulted from a strategy of moving armies rapidly and striking
quickly, sometimes by surprise, often so as to prevent the coordination of the forces opposing
him, which he was then able to defeat piecemeal. This strategy necessitated a thorough
knowledge of the terrain of the theatre of war, especially as quick movement precluded

adequate supplying of his armies without a large amount of requisitioning in the area of

operations. The answer to this strategy for Napoleon’s enemies was to maintain a threat while
avoiding engagements until coordination could be achieved; relying on strong lines of supply,
allied armies could await opportunity while Napoleon’s troops, chasing them, began to suffer

from overextension of their supply lines. This strategy was used first in the Peninsular
Campaign of 1811 by the duke of Wellington, who was able to open up Spain using supply lines

through Portugal. It was used most dramatically by the Russian generals M.B. Barclay de Tolly
and P.I. Bagration in their response to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812; they simply

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withdrew along parallel lines. Unable to win a decisive victory at Borodino on September 7, the

only full-scale engagement of the campaign, Napoleon was eventually forced to retreat. The
Russian armies then turned to pursuit; Napoleon was forced to march his army back along the

same route he had come, now depleted of forage, through the Russian winter in which
temperatures reached −30 °F (−35 °C). In this disastrous campaign, Napoleon lost 500,000
men, the faith of his allies, and the awe of his enemies.

A new coalition, formed in 1813, mustered armies that at last outnumbered those of France.

Napoleon’s allies fell away one by one, and by late 1813 he had been forced to withdraw west

of the Rhine. An invasion of France commenced early in 1814; Paris was reached in March, and
on April 6 Napoleon abdicated. His exile to the island of Elba lasted less than a year, however,
and in March 1815 he returned to France and rallied a new army. A seventh and final coalition

of Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria opposed him. The campaign was brief.
Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo on June 16–18, 1815, was again decided upon the issue of
his inability to surprise and to prevent the joining up of two armies invading France along
separate lines, in this case Wellington’s Dutch and English troops and Gebhard Leberecht von
Blücher’s Prussians. Napoleon abdicated on June 22, and the Bourbon monarchy was restored
in the person of Louis XVIII shortly thereafter.

The French Revolution Causes:

The causes of the French revolution can be attributed to several intertwining factors:

Cultural: The Enlightenment philosophy desacralized the authority of the King and the Church,

and promoted a new society based on "reason" instead of traditions.

Social: The emergence of an influential bourgeoisie which was formally part of the Third Estate
(commoners) but had evolved into a caste with its own agenda and aspired to political equality
with the clergy (First Estate) and the aristocracy (Second Estate).

Financial: France's debt, aggravated by French involvement in the American Revolution, led
Louis XVI to implement new taxations and to reduce privileges.

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Political: Louis XVI faced virulent opposition from provincial parlements which were the

spearheads of the privileged classes' resistance to royal reforms.

Economic: The deregulation of the grain market, advocated by liberal economists, resulted in an
increase in bread prices. In period of bad harvests, it would lead to food scarcity which would
prompt the masses to revolt.

All these factors created a revolutionary atmosphere and a tricky situation for Louis XVI. In order

to resolve the crisis, the king summoned the Estates-General in May 1789 and, as it came to an
impasse, the representatives of the Third Estates formed a National Assembly, against the

wishes of the king, signaling the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The Revolutionary Situation

The essence of the revolutionary situation which existed in France in the 1780s was the

bankruptcy of the King, and hence the State. This economic crisis was due to the rapidly
increasing costs of government and to the overwhelming costs incurred by fighting two major
wars: the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. These costs could not be

met from the usual sources of state revenue. Since the 1770s, several attempts by different
ministers to introduce financial stability had failed.[1] The taxation system was burdensome
upon the middle class and the more prosperous peasants, given that the nobles were largely
able to exempt themselves from it. As a result, there was "an insistent demand" for reform of
these abuses of privilege, for an equitable means of taxation and for improved government

processes.[2] David Thomson argued that the bourgeoisie and peasantry had "something to
lose, not merely something to gain" in their demands for a fairer society and this fear too was a

major factor in the revolutionary situation.[3]

Social inequality

The Third Estate (commoners) carrying the First (clergy) and Second Estate (nobility) on his

back.

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The population of France in the 1780s was about 26 million, of whom 21 million lived in

agriculture. Few of these owned enough land to support a family and most were forced to take
on extra work as poorly paid labourers on larger farms. There were regional differences but, by

and large, French peasants were generally better off than those in countries like Russia or
Poland. Even so, hunger was a daily problem which became critical in years of poor harvest and
the condition of most French peasants were poor.[4]

The fundamental issue of poverty was aggravated by social inequality as all peasants were

liable to pay taxes, from which the nobility could claim immunity, and feudal dues payable to a

local seigneur or lord. Similarly, the destination of tithes which the peasants were obliged to pay
to their local churches was a cause of grievance as it was known that the majority of parish
priests were poor and the contribution was being paid to an aristocratic, and usually absentee,

abbot.[5] The clergy numbered about 100,000 and yet they owned ten percent of the land. It
maintained a rigid hierarchy as abbots and bishops were all members of the nobility and canons
were all members of wealthy bourgeois families. As an institution, the Church was both rich and
powerful. As with the nobility, it paid no taxes and merely contributed a grant to the state every
five years, the amount of which was self-determined. The upper echelons of the clergy had
considerable influence over government policy.[5]

Dislike of the nobility was especially intense. Successive French kings and their ministers had
tried with limited success to suppress the power of the nobles but, in the last quarter of the 18th
century, "the aristocracy were beginning once again to tighten their hold on the machinery of

government"

Taxation:

Louis XVI, his ministers, and the widespread French nobility had become immensely unpopular.
This was a consequence of the fact that peasants and, to a lesser extent, the poor and those
aspiring to be bourgeoisie, were burdened with ruinously high taxes levied to support a wealthy

monarchy, along with aristocrats and their sumptuous, often gluttonous lifestyles.[21]

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Because of some political inertia at the head of the state since the reign of Louis XIV, but also

because of often approximately determined and unstable land boundaries, France used to raise
most of its tax revenue internally, with a notable deficit regarding external customs tariffs.[22]

Taxes on commerce consisted of internal tariffs among the regions of France. This set up an
arbitrary tax-barrier (sometimes, as in Paris, in physical form) at every regional boundary, and
these barriers prevented France from developing as a unified market. Collections of taxes, such

as the extremely unpopular salt tax, the gabelle, were contracted to private collectors ("tax

farmers"), who, like all farmers, preoccupied themselves with making their holdings grow. So,
they collected, quite legitimately, far more than required, remitted the tax to the State, and
pocketed the remainder. These unwieldy systems led to arbitrary and unequal collection of

France's consumption taxes. (See also Wall of the Farmers-General, Jean Chouan, Octroi,
Claude Nicolas Ledoux, and the Indian salt tax.)

Hôtel de la gabelle (House of the Salt Tax) in Bernay, Eure, Upper Normandy, built in 1750 by
Bréant and Ange-Jacques Gabriel.

Peasants and nobles alike were required to pay a tenth of their income or produce to the church
(the tithe). Peasants paid a land tax to the state (the taille),[23] a 5% property tax (the

vingtième). All paid a tax on the number of people in the family (capitation), depending on the
status of the taxpayer (from poor to prince). Further royal and seigneurial obligations might be
paid in several ways: in labor (the corvée), in kind, or, rarely, in coin. Peasants were also
obligated to their landlords for: rent in cash (the cens), a payment related to their amount of

annual production (the champart), and taxes on the use of the nobles' mills, wine-presses, and
bakeries (the banalités). In good times, the taxes were burdensome; in harsh times, they were

devastating. After a less-than-fulsome harvest, people would starve to death during the winter.

Tax collection was farmed out (privatized) to "fermiers", through a system of public bidding.[24]

Public officials bought their positions from the king, sometimes on an annual basis, sometimes
in perpetuity. Often an additional tax, called "paulette" was paid by the holders of an office to

upgrade their position to one that could be passed along as an inheritance. Naturally, holders of
these offices tried to reimburse themselves by milking taxpayers as hard as possible. For

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instance, in a civil lawsuit, judges required that both parties pay for the costs of the trial (called

the épices, the spices);[25] this, effectively, put justice out of the reach of all but the wealthy.

The system also exempted the nobles and the clergy from taxes (with the exception of a modest
quit-rent, an ad valorem tax on land). The tax burden, therefore, devolved to the peasants,
wage-earners, and the professional and business classes, also known as the third estate.

Further, people from less-privileged walks of life were blocked from acquiring even petty
positions of power in the regime. This caused further resentment.

Failure of reforms:

During the reigns of Louis XV (1715–1774) and Louis XVI (1774–1792), several ministers, most
notably Turgot and Necker, proposed revisions to the French tax system so as to include the

nobles as taxpayers, but these proposals were not adopted because of resistance from the
parlements (provincial courts of appeal). Members of these courts bought their positions from
the king, as well as the right to transfer their positions hereditarily through payment of an annual

fee, the paulette. Membership in such courts, or appointment to other public positions, often led
to elevation to the nobility (the so-called Nobles of the Robe, as distinguished from the nobility
of ancestral military origin, the Nobles of the Sword.) While these two categories of nobles were
often at odds, they both sought to retain their privileges.

Because the need to raise taxes placed the king at odds with the nobles and the upper

bourgeoisie, he appointed as his finance ministers, "rising men" (to use François Mignet's
insightful term), usually of non-noble origin. These commoners, Turgot, Chrétien de
Malesherbes, and Jacques Necker lobbied for reforms in taxation and other moves toward

moderation, such as Necker's attempts to reduce the lavishness of the king's court. Each one
failed. Instead, the "Parkinson's law" of bureaucratic overextended waste prevailed, to the
detriment of the gentry and other non-seigneurial classes.

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In contrast, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, appointed finance minister in 1783, restored lavish

spending reminiscent of the age of Louis XIV. By the time Calonne brought together the
Assembly of Notables on 22 February 1787 to address the financial situation, France had

reached a state of virtual bankruptcy; no one would lend the king money sufficient to meet the
expenses of the royal court and the government. According to Mignet, the loans amounted to
1.64 billion livres, and the annual deficit was 140 millions.

Calonne was succeeded by his chief critic, Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, archbishop

of Sens, but the fundamental situation was unchanged: the government had no credit. To

address this, the Assembly of Notables sanctioned "the establishment of provincial assemblies,
regulation of the corn trade, abolition of corvées, and a new stamp tax", but the assembly
dispersed on 25 May 1787 without actually installing a longer-term program with prospects for

success.

Deregulation and hunger

Main article: Deregulation

French bread

Before the Revolution

In Ancien Régime France, bread was the main source of food for poor peasants and the king
was required to ensure the food supply of his subjects, the king was affectionately nicknamed le

premier boulanger du royaume ("prime baker of the kingdom").[26] During this period, the role of
the royal police was far more involved than simply upholding the law. Police held responsibility

over many systems in society, even street sweeping, it also exercised a strict control over food

supply.[27] In order to maintain social order, the grain market was submitted to harsh rules to
ensure the quality of the bread and its availability at all time and for the entire population. Grain
merchants were viewed with suspicion, they were called "the most cruel enemies of the people"

because they were suspected to mix flour with other products (such as chalk or crushed bones)
or to hoard grains to raise artificially the prices of this vital commodity. The Ancien Régime

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favoured a "moral economy" where cupidity was moderated by strict regulations. The police

controlled the purity of the flour and made sure that no one would hide grains to drive up prices.
Food scarcity was common in the 18th century, but the grain police would forbid exportations

from regions facing bad harvests and would import grain from regions enjoying overproduction.
It could also force a merchant to dump the price of his flour (he was later compensated for his
loss in times of abundance).[28]

Deregulation of the Grain industry

Turgot's portrait.

During the Age of Enlightenment, the physiocrat school of economy emerged. The physiocrats,
or économistes as they called themselves, had a great impact on Turgot, Louis XVI's Controller-

General of Finances. Their opinion on what government economic policy should be was
summarized in the term Vincent de Gournay laid claim to: "laissez faire, laissez passer",

meaning leave it alone and let it pass, also known as the "invisible hand" notion. Turgot
passionately defended Gournay’s belief in "laissez-faire" economic principles in his writing
"Éloge de Gournay". [29] Accordingly, Turgot abolished police regulations and established free

trade in grain on 13 September 1774.[30]

Results of the revolution:

During the period before the spring harvest of 1775, the cereal reserves were exhausted while
new crops had not yet arrived. In spring 1775, famine arose in this new context: before Turgot's

edict, every region faced its own shortages, so that some would have suffered a genuine famine
while others would have been totally spared and supplied through stable prices; a royal
intervention would have been requested, and without a doubt obtained, to assure the supply of

the regions most affected. With liberalization, owners of grain started to speculate by storing
grain. They also tend to buy en masse in areas of good harvests to sell in areas of bad harvests
where profits could be greater, causing significant price increases and shortages all over and

affecting more people more quickly. Changes to grain and bread supply had serious
implications, and was met with disorder. This conflict was known as the Flour War of 1775.

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Reports from those that controlled the flow of grain stated there were problems with the grain

harvest which caused shortages and less grain availability. The price of grain also increased,
and became hard for some to afford. News of a grain shortage was met with skepticism and

frustration rose from higher prices.[31] Those in opposition of the reform rioted, and seized grain
that came in on shipments. They offered what they felt was the “just price” for it. This
demonstrated a way in which the people took some power back into their own hands. This

practice was known as “taxation populaire”, or popular taxation.[31]

While there were documented efforts to deal with the grain shortage problems, such as

increasing shipments from foreign countries, beliefs that the famine was intentionally
orchestrated by Louis XVI, through the "Pacte de Famine", emerged.[31] Turgot repressed the
riots and restored controls over the grain market. The idea of free trade of grain was discredited

and the economic experiment distanced the masses from the government in Versailles. The
Flour War can be seen as a prelude to the French Revolution.[32]

The fear of famine became an ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and

rumors of the "Pacte de Famine" to starve the poor were still rampant and readily believed.[33]
Mere rumors of food shortage led to the Réveillon riots in April 1789. Rumors of a plot aiming to

destroy wheat crops in order to starve the population provoked the Great Fear in the summer of
1789. The hunger and despair of the Parisian women was also the original impetus for the
Women's March on Versailles in October 1789, they wanted not just one meal but the
assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap.[34]

The two years prior to the revolution (1788–89) saw meager harvests and harsh winters,

possibly because of a strong El Niño cycle [35] caused by the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland.[36]
The Little Ice Age also affected farmers' choices of crops to plant; in other parts of Europe,
peasant farmers had adopted the potato as its staple crop. The potato had been introduced to

France during the 16th century and despite resistance had largely supplanted the turnip and
rutabaga in France.[37] Despite encouragement from individuals like Antoine Parmentier and

Louis XVI, grain was still a much more popular staple crop in France. This was partially because
potatoes were seen as more difficult to transport and store than grain.

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Transparency:

H. F. Helmolt argued that the issue was not so much the debt per se, but the way the debt was

refracted through the lens of Enlightenment principles and the increasing power of third-estate
creditors, that is, commoners who held the government's paper.

Properly speaking, the people ought to have been accustomed to the fact that the French
government did not fulfill its financial obligations, for since the time of Henry IV, that is, within

two centuries, it had failed to meet its obligations fifty-six times. In earlier days such
catastrophes had not been announced and publicly discussed. Now all France, which for two

generations had been worked upon by the party of rationalism, shared the outcry against the
financial situation.

The struggle with the parlements and nobles to enact reformist measures displayed the extent
of the disintegration of the Ancien Régime. In short order, Protestants regained their rights, and

Louis XVI was pressured to produce an annual disclosure of the state of his finances. He also
pledged to reconvene the Estates-General within five years. Despite the pretense that France
operated under an absolute monarchy, it became clear that the royal government could not

successfully implement the changes it desired without the consent of the nobility. The financial
crisis had become a political crisis as well, and the French Revolution loomed just beyond the
horizon.

Causes of Napoleonic Wars:

The Napoleonic Wars were caused by the French Revolution, the bankruptcy of France as a
nation under the monarchy, and the overthrow of the French aristocracy and royal family.
Named for French general and dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, the Napoleonic Wars involved

France's rise to power over much of western Europe from 1792 to 1815.

After the French Revolution, which began in 1789, France's new republic form of government

differed greatly from surrounding monarchies in Europe. Countries such as Prussia, Spain,
Austria and Great Britain formed coalitions, at the behest of the French aristocracy, that

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opposed the new French government. Steps were taken in 1792 to defend these monarchies

against the French rebels. In response, France had the ability to call up any man for military
service on a moment's notice.

General Napoleon Bonaparte took this power to new heights. He formed armies of 250,000 men
and marched against his enemies with unprecedented speed and precision. The impetus for

France's military maneuvers against other European countries revolved around spreading the
French Revolution and the overthrow of monarchies on the continent.

It took Europe more than two decades to finally defeat Napoleon. The emperor's boldness was

his undoing because he tried to invade Russia and spread his forces too thin. After escaping an
11-month exile in 1815, Napoleon tried to rally his forces before his final defeat at the Battle of
Waterloo in June 1815.

Britain and Napoleonic Wars

The British Army during the Napoleonic Wars experienced a time of rapid change. At the

beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, the army was a small, awkwardly

administered force of barely 40,000 men.[1] By the end of the period, the numbers had vastly
increased. At its peak, in 1813, the regular army contained over 250,000 men.[2] The British
infantry was "the only military force not to suffer a major reverse at the hands of Napoleonic
France.

Campaigns

The British Army fought on a number of fronts during the French Revolutionary Wars and
Napoleonic wars, with a brief pause from 1802 to 1803 (and from 1814 to 1815, after Bonaparte

abdicated for the first time).

French Revolutionary Wars

(Mysore, 1789–1792)

Main article: Third Anglo-Mysore War

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The Death of Colonel Moorhouse at the Storming of the Pettah Gate of Bangalore by Robert

Home.

The first major engagement involving the British army during the Revolutionary period was the
Third Anglo-Mysore War, between Kingdom of Mysore supported by France and led by Tipu
Sultan, and the British East India Company supported by its local allies. British regular infantry

and artillery regiments formed the core of the East India Company army serving under the
command of British general Lord Cornwallis. After some initial setbacks, Cornwallis was

ultimately victorious capturing the Mysorean capital city of Seringapatam and compelling

Mysore to make peace on terms favourable to Britain.

Toulon

Main article: Siege of Toulon

In 1793, French Royalists in Toulon surrendered their port and city to a British fleet under Vice
Admiral Samuel Hood. A land force of 18,000 of mixed nationalities, including 2,000 British
(mainly Royal Marines), gathered to protect Toulon against a French Republican counter-attack.

The commander of the British contingent, Lieutenant General Charles O'Hara, was captured in
a minor skirmish, by Captain Napoleon Bonaparte who inspired the besiegers of the port. After
the French captured vital forts which commanded the town and harbour, the British and their
allies evacuated the port.

British troops and ships seized the island of Corsica, turning it temporarily into the Anglo-

Corsican Kingdom. Relations between the British and Corsicans soured, and the island was
evacuated after Spain declared war on Britain, making it impossible for the Royal Navy to
maintain communications with the island.

(Flanders, 1793–1796)

Main article: Flanders Campaign

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In this theatre a British army under the command of the Duke of York formed part of an Allied

army with Hanoverian, Dutch, Hessian, Austrian and Prussian contingents, which faced the
French Republican Armée du Nord, the Armée des Ardennes and the Armée de la Moselle. The

Allies enjoyed several early victories, (including a largely British-fought battle at Lincelles[42]),
but were unable to advance beyond the French border fortresses and were eventually forced to
withdraw by a series of victorious French counter-offensives.

The Duke of York led British-allied forces through two ill-fated campaigns in the Netherlands.

The Allies then established a new front in southern Holland and Germany, but with poor co-

ordination and failing supplies were forced to continue their retreat through the arduous winter of
1794/5. By spring 1795 the British force had left Dutch territory entirely, and reached the port of
Bremen where they were evacuated. The campaign exposed many shortcomings in the British

army, especially in discipline and logistics, which had developed in the ten years of peacetime
neglect since the American Revolution.

West Indies, 1793–1798

The other major British effort in the early French Revolutionary Wars was mounted against the
French possessions in the West Indies. This was mainly for trade considerations; not only were
the French islands valuable for their plantations, but they were also used by French privateers
preying on British merchant ships.

The resulting five-year campaign crippled the whole British Army through disease, especially

yellow fever. Out of 89,000 soldiers and NCOs who served in the West Indies, 43,747 died of
yellow fever or other tropical diseases. Another 15,503 were discharged, no longer fit for
service, or deserted.[43] The islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and ports in Haiti were

captured in 1794 and 1795 by expeditionary forces under General Charles Grey, but the British
units were almost exterminated by disease. Negro and mulatto insurgent armies in Haiti which
had first welcomed the British as allies turned against them. Guadeloupe was recaptured in

1796 by Victor Hugues, who subsequently executed 865 French Royalists and other
prisoners.[44]

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Eight thousand reinforcements under Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Abercromby arrived in 1796,

and secured many French territories, and those of Spain and the Netherlands (which was now
titled the Batavian Republic and allied to France). However, the decimated British troops

evacuated Haiti, and Guadeloupe was never recaptured, becoming a major privateering base
and black market emporium.

Muizenberg and Ceylon 1795

Main articles: Battle of Muizenberg and Capture of Trincomalee (1795)

In 1795 a combined British army and Royal Navy force under the command of Major-General
James Craig and Admiral Elphinstone captured the Dutch Cape Colony. It remained in British
possession for seven years until the Peace of Amiens. At the same time another British force

captured the Dutch colony of Trincomalee, Ceylon, which remained in British possession until
1948.

Ireland 1798

A rebellion inspired by a secret society, the Society of United Irishmen, broke out in Ireland. The
British Army in Ireland consisted partly of regular troops but mostly of Protestant militia and Irish
Yeomanry units. The rebellion was marked by atrocities on both sides

After the rebellion had already failed, a French expedition under General Humbert landed in the
west of Ireland. After inflicting an embarrassing defeat on a British militia force at the Battle of

Castlebar, Humbert's outnumbered army was surrounded and forced to surrender.

Mysore, 1798–1799

This was the last war fought between the East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore.
British regular regiments again formed part of the East India Company army, this time under the

command of British general George Harris. The British forces defeated Mysore for the final time,
capturing Seringapatam and killing Tipu Sultan.

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Holland 1799

As part of the War of the Second Coalition, a joint Anglo-Russian force invaded the

Netherlands. Although the British troops captured the Dutch fleet, but after the defeat at
Castricum, the expedition was a failure and the British commander in chief, the Duke of York
negotiated a capitulation which allowed the British to sail away unmolested.

Egypt

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded Egypt, as a stepping stone to India, which was the

source of much of Britain's trade and wealth. He was stranded there when Vice Admiral Nelson
destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.

In alliance with the Ottoman Empire, Britain mounted an expedition to expel the French from
Egypt. After careful preparations and rehearsals in Turkish anchorages, a British force under Sir

Ralph Abercromby made a successful opposed landing at the Battle of Abukir (1801).
Abercromby was mortally wounded at the Battle of Alexandria, where the British troops
demonstrated the effectiveness of their musketry, improved discipline and growing experience.

The French capitulated and were evacuated from Egypt in British ships.

Peace of Amiens

After Britain's allies all signed treaties with France, Britain also signed the Treaty of Amiens,
under which Britain restored many captured territories to France and its allies. The "peace"

proved merely to be an interlude, with plotting and preparations for a renewal of war continuing
on both sides.

Napoleonic Wars

(Maratha, 1803–1805)

Main article: Second Anglo-Maratha War

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Shortly after the resumption of war on the continent, the East India Company once again

became involved in war with an Indian power, this time with the Maratha Empire, supported by
France. British regiments of infantry, artillery and cavalry once again formed the core of the

Company army, this time under the command of British generals Gerrard Lake and Arthur
Wellesley. Maratha forces were defeated decisively at Assaye and Delhi and further losses
eventually compelled them to make peace.

West Indies, 1804–1810

Main article: West Indies Campaign 1804–1810

When war resumed, Britain once again attacked the French possessions in the West Indies.
The French armies which had been sent to recover Haiti in 1803 had, like the British armies

earlier, been ravaged by disease, so only isolated garrisons opposed the British forces. In 1805,
as part of the manoeuvres which ultimately led to the Battle of Trafalgar, a French fleet carrying

6,500 troops briefly captured Dominica and other islands but subsequently withdrew.

In 1808, once the British were allied to Portugal and Spain, they were able to concentrate their

forces and capture the French possessions one by one; Cayenne and Martinique in 1809, and
Guadeloupe in 1810. Haiti was left to the insurgent armies.

Hanover 1805

In 1805 news arrived in London that Napoleon had broken up his invasion camp at Boulogne,

and was marching across Germany. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom William Pitt
immediately equipped an army of 15,000 men, and deployed it to Hanover under the command

of General William Cathcart, with the intention of linking up with another allied Russian army

and creating a diversion in favour of Austria, but Cathcart made no attempt to attack the flank of
the far larger French army. Cathcart established his headquarters at Bremen, seized Hanover,
fought a small battle at Munkaiser, and then peacefully waited for news. After the death of Pitt

and news of the Franco-Prussian agreement handing control of Hanover to Prussia, the ministry
recalled Cathcart's army from Germany.[45]

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Naples 1805

Main article: Anglo-Russian invasion of Naples

One of Britain's allies was Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, whose kingdom was important to
British interests in the Mediterranean. In 1805 British forces under the command of General
James Craig were part of an Anglo-Russian force intended to secure the Kingdom of Naples.
However, after a brief occupation the allied position became untenable with the news of the

disastrous Austrian defeat at the Battle of Ulm.

Sicily and the Mediterranean

In 1806, French troops invaded southern Italy, and British troops again went to aid the
defenders. A British army under the command of General John Stuart won a lopsided victory at
the Battle of Maida. For the rest of the war, British troops defended Sicily, forcing Ferdinand to

make liberal reforms. An allied force consisting mainly of Corsicans, Maltese and Sicilians was
driven from Capri in 1808. The next year, British troops occupied several Greek and Dalmatian
islands, although the French garrison on Corfu was too strong to be attacked. The British

retained their Greek islands until the end of the wars.

South Africa and the Plate

British troops storming the Cape of Good Hope.

The Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope was a vital port of call on the long sea voyage to
India. An expedition was sent to capture it in 1805. (It had first been captured in 1796, but was

returned under the Treaty of Amiens.) British troops under Lieutenant General Sir David Baird
won the Battle of Blaauwberg in January 1806, forcing the surrender of the colony.

Main article:British invasions of the Río de la Plata

The naval commander of the expedition, Admiral Home Riggs Popham then conceived the idea
of occupying the Spanish Plate River colonies. A detachment under Major General William Carr

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Beresford occupied Buenos Aires for six weeks but were expelled by Spanish troops and local

militias.

In 1807, General Auchmuty mounted a second invasion of the region, capturing Montevideo.
Lieutenant General Sir John Whitelocke was sent from Britain to take command in the region,
arriving at the same time as Major General Robert Craufurd, whose destination had been

changed several times by the government, and whose troops had been aboard ship for several
months.[46]

Whitelock launched a bungled attack on Buenos Aires on 5 July 1807, in which the British

troops suffered heavy casualties and were trapped in the city. Finally he capitulated, and the
troops returned ignominiously to Britain. Whitelock was court-martialled and cashiered.

Denmark

Main article: Battle of Copenhagen (1807)

In August 1807, an expedition was mounted to Copenhagen, to seize the Danish fleet to prevent
it falling into French hands. The expedition was led by General Lord Cathcart. A British land
force under the command of Arthur Wellesley routed a Danish militia force. After the city was
bombarded for several days, the Danes surrendered their fleet.

Alexandria

Main article: Alexandria expedition of 1807

In 1807 an army and navy expedition under the command of General Alexander Mackenzie

Fraser was dispatched with the objective of capturing the Egyptian city of Alexandria to secure a

base of operations to disrupt the Ottoman Empire. The people of Alexandria, being disaffected
towards Muhammad Ali of Egypt, opened the gates of the city to the British forces, allowing for

one of the easiest conquests of a city by the British forces during the Napoleonic Wars.
However, due to lack of supplies, and inconclusive operations against the Egyptian forces, the
Expedition was forced to re-embark and leave Alexandria.

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Walcheren

Main article: Walcheren Campaign

In 1809, Austria declared war on France. To provide a diversion, a British force consisting
mainly of the troops recently evacuated from Corunna was dispatched to capture the Dutch
ports of Flushing and Antwerp. There were numerous delays, and the Austrians had already
surrendered when the army sailed. The island of Walcheren, where they landed, was pestilential

and disease-ridden (mainly with malaria or "ague"). Although Flushing was captured, more than
one third of the soldiers died or were incapacitated before the army was withdrawn.

Indian Ocean

To clear nests of French privateers and raiders, the Army captured the French dependencies in
the Indian Ocean in the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811. With substantial contingents from

the East India Company, British troops also captured the Dutch colonies in the Far East in 1810
and 1811, with Java falling in 1811.

Peninsular War

In 1808, after Bonaparte overthrew the monarchs of Spain and Portugal, an expedition under Sir

Arthur Wellesley which was originally intended to attack the Spanish possessions in Central
America was diverted to Portugal. Wellesley won the Battle of Vimeiro while reinforcements
landed at nearby Maceira Bay.[48] Wellesley was superseded in turn by two superiors, Sir Harry

Burrard and Sir Hew Dalrymple, who delayed further attacks. Instead, they signed the
Convention of Sintra, by which the French evacuated Portugal (with all their loot) in British

ships. Although this secured the British hold on Lisbon, it resulted in the three generals' recall to

England, and command of the British troops devolved on Sir John Moore.[49]

In October, Moore led the army into Spain, reaching as far as Salamanca. In December, they
were reinforced by 10,000 troops from England under Sir David Baird.[49] Moore's army now
totalled 36,000, but his advance was cut short by the news that Napoleon had defeated the
Spanish and captured Madrid, and was approaching with an army of 200,000. Moore retreated

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to Corunna over mountain roads and through bitter winter weather.[49] French cavalry pursued

the British Army the length of the journey, and a Reserve Division was set to provide rearguard
protection for the British troops, which were engaged in much fighting.[49] About 4,000 troops

separated from the main force and marched to Vigo.[50] The French caught up with the main
army at Corunna, and in the ensuing Battle of Corunna in January 1809, Moore was killed; the
remnant of the army was evacuated to England.[49]

In 1809, Wellesley returned to Portugal with fresh forces, and defeated the French at the

Second Battle of Porto, driving them from the country. He again advanced into Spain and fought

the Battle of Talavera and the Battle of the Côa. He and the Spanish commanders were unable
to cooperate, and he retreated into Portugal, where he constructed the defensive Lines of
Torres Vedras which protected Lisbon, while he reorganised his Anglo-Portuguese Army into

divisions, most of which had two British and one Portuguese brigades.

The next year, when a large French army under Marshal André Masséna invaded Portugal,
Wellesley fought a delaying action at the Battle of Bussaco, before withdrawing behind the

impregnable Lines, leaving Massena's army to starve in front of them. After Massena withdrew,
there was fighting for most of 1811 on the frontiers of Portugal, as Wellesley attempted to

recover vital fortified towns. A British and Spanish force under Beresford fought the very bloody
Battle of Albuera, while Wellesley himself won the Battle of Sabugal in April, and the Battle of
Fuentes de Onoro in May.

Major British battles of the Peninsular War

In January 1812, Wellesley captured Ciudad Rodrigo after a surprise move. On 6 April, he then

stormed Badajoz, another strong fortress, which the British had failed to carry on an earlier
occasion. There was heavy fighting with very high casualties and Wellesley ordered a
withdrawal, but a diversionary attack had gained a foothold by escalade and the main attack
through the breaches was renewed. The fortress was taken, at great cost (over 5000 British

casualties), and for three days the army sacked and pillaged the town in undisciplined
revenge.[51]

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Soon after the assault on Badajoz, Wellesley (now raised to the peerage as Marquess

Wellington) marched into northern Spain. For a month the British and French armies marched
and counter-marched against each other around Salamanca. On 22 July, Wellington took

advantage of a momentary French dispersion and gained a complete victory at the Battle of
Salamanca.[51] After occupying Madrid, Wellington unsuccessfully besieged Burgos. In
October, the army to retreated Portugal. This "Winter Retreat" bore similarities to the earlier

retreat to Corunna, as it suffered from poor supplies, bitter weather and rearguard action.[52]

In spring 1813, Wellington resumed the offensive, leaving Portugal and marching northwards

through Spain, dropping the lines of communication to Lisbon and establishing new ones to the
Spanish ports on the Bay of Biscay. At the Battle of Vitoria the French armies were routed,[53]
disgorging an enormous quantity of loot, which caused the British troops to abandon the pursuit

and break ranks to plunder. Wellington's troops subsequently defeated French attempts to
relieve their remaining fortresses in Spain. During the autumn and winter, they forced the
French defensive lines in the Pyrenees and crossed into France, winning the Battle of Nivelle,
the Battle of Nive and the Battle of Orthez in February 1814.[53] In France, the discipline of
Wellington's British and Portuguese troops was far superior to that of the Spanish, and even
that of the French, thanks to plentiful supplies delivered by sea.

On 31 March 1814, allied armies entered Paris, and Napoleon abdicated on 6 April.[54] The
news was slow to reach Wellington, who fought the indecisive Battle of Toulouse on 10
April.[55]

Once peace agreements had finally been settled, the army left the Peninsula. The infantry

marched to Bordeaux for transportation to their new postings (several to North America). Many
Spanish wives and girlfriends were left behind, to general distress. The cavalry rode through
France to Boulogne and Calais.[56]

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Holland 1814

In 1814, the British government had sent a small force to Holland under Sir Thomas Graham to

capture the fortress of Bergen op Zoom. The attack, on 8 March 1814, failed and the British
were repelled, with heavy losses.[57]

War in North America

Main article: War of 1812

Although the United States of America was not allied to France, war broke out between America

and Britain ostensibly over issues of trade embargoes and impressment of American sailors into
the Royal Navy, both of which were directly or indirectly linked to the Napoleonic wars (the latter
of which was not even brought up during the Treaty of Ghent). For the first two years of the war,
a small number of British regular units formed the hard core around which the Canadian militia

rallied. Multiple US invasions north of the border were repulsed; such an example can be seen
at the Battle of Crysler's Farm in which battalions of 89th and 49th Regiments attacked and
routed a significantly larger American force making its way toward Montreal.

In 1814, larger numbers of British regulars became available after the abdication of Napoleon.
However, long and inadequate supply lines constrained the British war effort. In Chesapeake

Bay, a British force captured and burned Washington, but was repulsed at Baltimore. Neither
side could strike a decisive blow which would compel the other to cede favourable terms, and
the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Before news of it could reach the armies on the other side of

the Atlantic, a British force under Wellington's brother-in-law Sir Edward Pakenham was
defeated foolhardily attacking heavily fortified positions at the Battle of New Orleans.

Hundred Days

It appeared that war was finally over, and arrangements for the peace were discussed at the
Congress of Vienna. But on 26 February 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to
France, where he raised an army. By 20 March he had reached Paris.[58] The Allies assembled
another army and planned for a summer offensive.[59]

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The Waterloo Campaign

Basing themselves in Belgium, the Allies formed two armies, with the Duke of Wellington

commanding the Anglo-Allies, and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher commanding the Prussians.
Napoleon marched swiftly through France to meet them, and split his army to launch a two-
pronged attack. On 16 June 1815, Napoleon himself led men against Blücher at Ligny, while

Marshall Ney commanded an attack against Wellington's forward army at the Battle of Quatre
Bras. Wellington successfully held Quatre Bras, but the Prussians were not so successful at

Ligny, and were forced to retreat to Wavre. Hearing of Blücher's defeat on the morning of 17

June, Wellington ordered his army to withdraw on a parallel course to his ally; the British and
Belgians took position near the Belgian village of Waterloo.

On the morning of 18 June, one of the greatest ever feats of British arms began: The Battle of

Waterloo. The British, Dutch, Belgian, Nassau and German troops were posted on higher
ground south of Waterloo. There had been heavy rain overnight and Napoleon chose not to
attack until almost midday. The delay meant that the Prussians had a chance to march towards

the battle, but in the meantime, Wellington had to hold on. The French started their attack with
an artillery bombardment. The first French attacks were then directed against the Chateau of

Hougemont down from the main ridge. Here British and Nassau troops stubbornly defended the
Hougomont buildings all day; the action eventually engaging a whole French Corps which failed
to capture the Chateau. At half past one, the Anglo-Allied Army was assaulted by d'Erlon's
infantry attack on the British left wing but the French were forced back with heavy losses. Later

in the afternoon, British troops were amazed to see waves of cavalrymen heading towards
them. The British troops, as per standard drill, formed infantry squares (hollow box-formations

four ranks deep) after which the French cavalry was driven off. As the Prussian advance guard
began to arrive from the east, Napoleon sent French units to stabilise his right wing. At around
seven o'clock, Napoleon ordered his Old and Middle Guard to make a final assault on the by

now fragile Allied line. The attack was repulsed. At that point Wellington stood up and waved his

hat in the air to signal a general advance. His army rushed forward from the lines in a full
assault on the retreating French. Napoleon fled the scene.

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Later history

Following the conclusion of the wars, the army was reduced. At this time, infantry regiments

existed up to 104th Foot, but between 1817 and 1819, the regiments numbered 95th Foot up
were disbanded,[60] and by 1821 the army numbered only 101,000 combatants, 30% of which
were stationed in the colonies, especially India.[61] Over the following decades, various

regiments were added, removed or reformed to respond to military or colonial needs,[60] but it
never grew particularly large again, and the Empire became more reliant on local forces to

maintain defence and order.

Impact on Britain

The start of the 19th century was a time of hostility between France and England, marked by a

series of wars. Throughout this period, England feared a French invasion led by Napoleon. Ruth
Mather explores the impact of this fear on literature and on everyday life.

Following the brief and uneasy peace formalised in the Treaty of Amiens (1802), Britain

resumed war against Napoleonic France in May 1803; hostilities were to continue until the

British victory at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. The return to war required the resumption of the
mass enlistment of the previous ten years, especially as fears of a Napoleonic invasion once
again intensified. The Corsican general Napoleon, soon to become emperor, had made no
secret of his intentions of invading Britain, and in 1803 he massed his huge ‘Army of England’
on the shores of Calais, posing a visible threat to southern England.

Glamorising the military

Although fears of invasion were downplayed in satirical prints that mocked Napoleon’s size and

strength, for many men and women these fears were very real. Indeed, the public rallied behind
the British military, to the extent that the historian Linda Colley has argued that British identity
was forged in these years.[1] For men, this often involved training with the local volunteer

forces, which were established for protection in the event of a successful French landing. Some
women found an outlet for patriotic or charitable impulses in the campaign to make uniforms for

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the troops, while others found perhaps less noble enjoyment in the social whirl that surrounded

army camps and brought excitement to an otherwise dull and repetitive daily round. Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice captured the heady mix of danger and glamour that military men in

their dashing, brightly-coloured uniforms could bring to a sleepy market town, and this mood
was echoed in numerous popular ballads and in regular reports of soldiers’ elopements with
local girls. A fascination with military men also fuelled a market in commemorative goods,

especially of Nelson and Wellington, elaborate illustrated battle histories, toys and military-

influenced fashions. Previously, British culture had been suspicious of land armies, but the
glamorisation of soldiers helped to encourage enlistment at a time when it was very much
needed. This increased recruitment and enthusiasm for the military demonstrated the army’s

power both to the enemy and to discontents at home.

Poverty and unemployment

As well as increasing the size of the army and navy, the British government responded by
strengthening existing defences and building new ones along the south coast, notably the

Martello towers which can still be seen today. These reinforcements came at no small cost, and
taxes were again increased to fund the war effort. Many British men and women were left in

desperate misery due to high taxes, skyrocketing food prices, unemployment caused by
wartime trade restrictions, and the increased use of labour-saving machinery. Economic
struggles forced many men to sign up for the army. In the popular Lancashire ballad ‘Jone
O’Grinfelt’, the protagonist illustrates the choice between enlisting and starving: Jone tells his

wife he will ‘fight oather [either] Spanish or French’ before he spends another day cold and
hungry.

What the ballad does not mention is the fate of wives like Jone’s. Officially, army policy
permitted only six married men per company, with all others paid as single men. The Duke of

Wellington himself weighed in against the recruitment of married men, protesting that it would
‘leave their families to starve.’[3] Despite this, in miserable economic circumstances many

husbands and fathers clearly felt they did not have much choice, and their wives and children
were forced to rely on their own work or the support of the parish. Not all were willing to accept

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their situation passively, and the later years of the Napoleonic wars were characterised by

strikes, riots and Luddism in some depressed areas like Yorkshire and Lancashire, with the
militia brought in to put down internal dissent.

Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley (1849) is set during 1811 and 1812, and depicts the effects of
war on a Yorkshire cloth manufacturing community, in which the mill operatives have become

so desperately poor that they must consider emigration - even the owner of the mill is under
considerable pressure to marry a woman he does not love to secure his financial position.

Anti-war literature

Much anti-war art and literature focused on the struggles of ordinary people and the capacity of
war to impoverish and separate families. William Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814) , for

example, tells the tale of Margaret, whose husband is driven by poverty to enlist, leaving her
and their child to cope in straitened circumstances, in which she eventually goes mad with

wondering if he will ever return. Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s poem ‘Eighteen Hundred and Eleven’
likewise spoke of women suffering at the uncertainty of the fate of loved ones, and described in
apocalyptic terms the collapse of commerce and the spread of poverty and famine in all warring

nations. While many Britons felt hostility was justified to repulse Napoleon’s expansionist aims,
Barbauld and others questioned the morality of war, warning Britain that ‘Thou who hast shared
the guilt must share the woe’

After the war

After the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the threat of a French invasion receded. However,
Napoleon continued to be successful in his campaigns on the continent, and the continued
costs of a distant war left wearied even former enthusiasts. Hopes for a better life after the war

were frustrated, and maintenance of taxation and the flooding of the labour market led to
continued unrest among working people. This began to express itself in the formation of
organised political groups calling for better political representation. In 1819, the Female Reform

Society of Manchester denounced the ‘unjust, unnecessary, and destructive war, against the
liberties of France’, stating that it had ‘tended to raise landed property threefold above its value,

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and to load our beloved country with an insurmountable burden of Taxation’.[5] Although the

war had begun with the ostensible aim of protecting the liberties of the British people, many of
those people queried whether the corrupt aristocracy were the only ones to benefit.

Industrial and Agricultural Revolution:

The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from
about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand
production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes,

improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power, the development of

machine tools and the rise of the factory system. Textiles were the dominant industry of the
Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested; the textile

industry was also the first to use modern production methods.[1]:40

The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life
was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit
unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major impact of the Industrial
Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population began to increase
consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to
meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th centuries.[2][3][4] At approximately the same

time the Industrial Revolution was occurring, Britain was undergoing an agricultural revolution,
which also helped to improve living standards.

The Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom and most of the important technological

innovations were British. Mechanized textile production spread to continental Europe in the
early 19th century, with important centers in France. A major iron making center developed in
Belgium. Since then industrialisation has spread throughout the world.[1] The precise start and

end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic
and social changes.[5][6][7][8] GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial
Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy,[9] while the Industrial

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Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies.[10] Economic

historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important
event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants.[11]

The First Industrial Revolution evolved into the Second Industrial Revolution in the transition
years between 1840 and 1870, when technological and economic progress continued with the

increasing adoption of steam transport (steam-powered railways, boats and ships), the large-
scale manufacture of machine tools and the increasing use of machinery in steam-powered

factories.

Causes:

The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complicated and remain a topic for debate, with

some historians believing the Revolution was an outgrowth of social and institutional changes
brought by the end of feudalism in Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th century. As

national border controls became more effective, the spread of disease was lessened, thereby
preventing the epidemics common in previous times.[116] The percentage of children who lived
past infancy rose significantly, leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure movement and the

British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive,
forcing the surplus population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage
industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the newly developed
factories.[117] The colonial expansion of the 17th century with the accompanying development

of international trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also cited as
factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th century.[118]

Until the 1980s, it was universally believed by academic historians that technological innovation
was the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the key enabling technology was the invention
and improvement of the steam engine.[119] However, recent research into the Marketing Era
has challenged the traditional, supply-oriented interpretation of the Industrial Revolution.[120]

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Lewis Mumford has proposed that the Industrial Revolution had its origins in the Early Middle

Ages, much earlier than most estimates.[121] He explains that the model for standardised mass
production was the printing press and that "the archetypal model for the industrial era was the

clock". He also cites the monastic emphasis on order and time-keeping, as well as the fact that
medieval cities had at their centre a church with bell ringing at regular intervals as being
necessary precursors to a greater synchronisation necessary for later, more physical,

manifestations such as the steam engine.

The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an important driver of the

Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as
France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods
traded among them.[122] Internal tariffs were abolished by Henry VIII of England, they survived

in Russia till 1753, 1789 in France and 1839 in Spain.

Governments' grant of limited monopolies to inventors under a developing patent system (the
Statute of Monopolies in 1623) is considered an influential factor. The effects of patents, both

good and ill, on the development of industrialisation are clearly illustrated in the history of the
steam engine, the key enabling technology. In return for publicly revealing the workings of an

invention the patent system rewarded inventors such as James Watt by allowing them to
monopolise the production of the first steam engines, thereby rewarding inventors and
increasing the pace of technological development. However, monopolies bring with them their
own inefficiencies which may counterbalance, or even overbalance, the beneficial effects of

publicising ingenuity and rewarding inventors.[123] Watt's monopoly may have prevented other
inventors, such as Richard Trevithick, William Murdoch or Jonathan Hornblower, from

introducing improved steam engines, thereby retarding the industrial revolution by about 16
years.

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Causes in Europe

European 17th-century colonial expansion, international trade, and creation of financial markets

produced a new legal and financial environment, one which supported and enabled 18th-
century industrial growth.

One question of active interest to historians is why the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe
and not in other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly China, India, and the Middle

East, or at other times like in Classical Antiquity[126] or the Middle Ages.[127] Numerous factors
have been suggested, including education, technological changes[128] (see Scientific

Revolution in Europe), "modern" government, "modern" work attitudes, ecology, and

culture.[129] However, most historians contest the assertion that Europe and China were
roughly equal because modern estimates of per capita income on Western Europe in the late

18th century are of roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing power parity (and Britain had a per
capita income of nearly 2,000 dollars[130]) whereas China, by comparison, had only 450
dollars.

Some historians such as David Landes and Max Weber credit the different belief systems in

Asia and Europe with dictating where the revolution occurred.[1]:20–32 The religion and beliefs
of Europe were largely products of Judaeo-Christianity and Greek thought. Conversely, Chinese
society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism),
and Buddha (Buddhism), resulting in very different worldviews.[131] Other factors include the
considerable distance of China's coal deposits, though large, from its cities as well as the then

unnavigable Yellow River that connects these deposits to the sea.

Regarding India, the Marxist historian Rajani Palme Dutt said: "The capital to finance the
Industrial Revolution in India instead went into financing the Industrial Revolution in
Britain."[133] In contrast to China, India was split up into many competing kingdoms, with the
three major ones being the Marathas, Sikhs and the Mughals. In addition, the economy was

highly dependent on two sectors—agriculture of subsistence and cotton, and there appears to

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have been little technical innovation. It is believed that the vast amounts of wealth were largely

stored away in palace treasuries by totalitarian monarchs prior to the British take over.

Causes in Britain

As the Industrial Revolution developed British manufactured output surged ahead of other
economies. After the Industrial Revolution, it was overtaken later by the United States.

Great Britain provided the legal and cultural foundations that enabled entrepreneurs to pioneer

the industrial revolution.[134] Key factors fostering this environment were: (1) The period of

peace and stability which followed the unification of England and Scotland; (2) no trade barriers
between England and Scotland; (3) the rule of law (respecting the sanctity of contracts); (4) a
straightforward legal system which allowed the formation of joint-stock companies

(corporations); and (5) a free market (capitalism).[1]

Geographical and natural resource advantages of Great Britain were the fact that it had
extensive coast lines and many navigable rivers in an age where water was the easiest means
of transportation and having the highest quality coal in Europe.

There were two main values that really drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain. These values
were self-interest and an entrepreneurial spirit. Because of these interests, many industrial

advances were made that resulted in a huge increase in personal wealth. These advancements
also greatly benefitted the British society as a whole. Countries around the world started to
recognise the changes and advancements in Britain and use them as an example to begin their

own Industrial Revolutions.

The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns the massive lead that

Great Britain had over other countries. Some have stressed the importance of natural or
financial resources that Britain received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the
British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment.

However, it has been pointed out that slave trade and West Indian plantations provided only 5%
of the British national income during the years of the Industrial Revolution.[136] Even though

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slavery accounted for so little, Caribbean-based demand accounted for 12% of Britain's

industrial output.

Instead, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large merchant base may have allowed Britain
to produce and use emerging scientific and technological developments more effectively than
countries with stronger monarchies, particularly China and Russia. Britain emerged from the

Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation not ravaged by financial plunder and economic
collapse, and having the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European merchant fleets were

destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy[138]). Britain's extensive exporting cottage

industries also ensured markets were already available for many early forms of manufactured
goods. The conflict resulted in most British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the
devastating effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This was further aided

by Britain's geographical position—an island separated from the rest of mainland Europe.

Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the Industrial Revolution due to the
availability of key resources it possessed. It had a dense population for its small geographical

size. Enclosure of common land and the related agricultural revolution made a supply of this
labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence of natural resources in the North of

England, the English Midlands, South Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal,
iron, lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in excellent conditions for the
development and expansion of industry. Also, the damp, mild weather conditions of the North
West of England provided ideal conditions for the spinning of cotton, providing a natural starting

point for the birth of the textiles industry.

The stable political situation in Britain from around 1688, and British society's greater
receptiveness to change (compared with other European countries) can also be said to be
factors favouring the Industrial Revolution. Peasant resistance to industrialisation was largely

eliminated by the Enclosure movement, and the landed upper classes developed commercial
interests that made them pioneers in removing obstacles to the growth of capitalism.[139] (This

point is also made in Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State.)

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Britain's population grew 280% 1550–1820, while the rest of Western Europe grew 50–80%.

Seventy percent of European urbanisation happened in Britain 1750–1800. By 1800, only the
Netherlands was more urbanised than Britain. This was only possible because coal, coke,

imported cotton, brick and slate had replaced wood, charcoal, flax, peat and thatch. The latter
compete with land grown to feed people while mined materials do not. Yet more land would be
freed when chemical fertilisers replaced manure and horse's work was mechanised. A

workhorse needs 3 to 5 acres (1.21 to 2.02 ha) for fodder while even early steam engines

produced four times more mechanical energy.

In 1700, 5/6 of coal mined worldwide was in Britain, while the Netherlands had none; so despite
having Europe's best transport, most urbanised, well paid, literate people and lowest taxes, it
failed to industrialise. In the 18th century, it was the only European country whose cities and

population shrank. Without coal, Britain would have run out of suitable river sites for mills by the
1830s.[140]

Transfer of knowledge

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (ca. 1766). Informal philosophical societies spread

scientific advances.

Knowledge of innovation was spread by several means. Workers who were trained in the
technique might move to another employer or might be poached. A common method was for
someone to make a study tour, gathering information where he could. During the whole of the

Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European countries and America engaged in
study-touring; some nations, like Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians

to undertake it as a matter of state policy. In other countries, notably Britain and America, this
practice was carried out by individual manufacturers eager to improve their own methods. Study
tours were common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries. Records made by
industrialists and technicians of the period are an incomparable source of information about

their methods.

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Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of informal philosophical

societies, like the Lunar Society of Birmingham, in which members met to discuss 'natural
philosophy' (i.e. science) and often its application to manufacturing. The Lunar Society

flourished from 1765 to 1809, and it has been said of them, "They were, if you like, the
revolutionary committee of that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century revolutions, the
Industrial Revolution".[141] Other such societies published volumes of proceedings and

transactions. For example, the London-based Royal Society of Arts published an illustrated

volume of new inventions, as well as papers about them in its annual Transactions.

There were publications describing technology. Encyclopaedias such as Harris's Lexicon

Technicum (1704) and Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802–1819) contain much of value.
Cyclopaedia contains an enormous amount of information about the science and technology of

the first half of the Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated by fine engravings. Foreign printed
sources such as the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers and Diderot's Encyclopédie explained
foreign methods with fine engraved plates.

Periodical publications about manufacturing and technology began to appear in the last decade
of the 18th century, and many regularly included notice of the latest patents. Foreign

periodicals, such as the Annales des Mines, published accounts of travels made by French
engineers who observed British methods on study tours.

Protestant work ethic

Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of an entrepreneurial class
which believed in progress, technology and hard work.[142] The existence of this class is often

linked to the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status of the Baptists and
the dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers and Presbyterians that had flourished with
the English Civil War. Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed
establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of

1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the

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national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private

financial investment in industrial ventures.

Dissenters found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all public offices, as well as
education at England's only two universities at the time (although dissenters were still free to
study at Scotland's four universities). When the restoration of the monarchy took place and

membership in the official Anglican Church became mandatory due to the Test Act, they
thereupon became active in banking, manufacturing and education. The Unitarians, in

particular, were very involved in education, by running Dissenting Academies, where, in contrast

to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and schools such as Eton and Harrow, much
attention was given to mathematics and the sciences—areas of scholarship vital to the
development of manufacturing technologies.

Historians sometimes consider this social factor to be extremely important, along with the nature
of the national economies involved. While members of these sects were excluded from certain
circles of the government, they were considered fellow Protestants, to a limited extent, by many

in the middle class, such as traditional financiers or other businessmen. Given this relative
tolerance and the supply of capital, the natural outlet for the more enterprising members of

these sects would be to seek new opportunities in the technologies created in the wake of the
scientific revolution of the 17th century

Effects on Political and Social Life of Britain:

Social effects

Factory system

Prior to the Industrial Revolution most of the workforce was employed in agriculture, either as
self-employed farmers as land owners or tenants, or as landless agricultural laborers. By the

time of the Industrial Revolution the putting-out system whereby farmers and townspeople
produced goods in their homes, often described as cottage industry, was the standard. Typical

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putting out system goods included spinning and weaving. Merchant capitalist provided the raw

materials, typically paid workers by the piece, and were responsible for the sale of the goods.
Embezzlement of supplies by workers and poor quality were common problems. The logistical

effort in procuring and distributing raw materials and picking up finished goods were also
limitations of the putting out system.[63]

Some early spinning and weaving machinery, such as a 40 spindle jenny for about 6 pounds in
1792, was affordable for cottagers.[64] Later machinery such as spinning frames, spinning

mules and power looms were expensive (especially if water powered), giving rise to capitalist

ownership of factories. Many workers, who had nothing but their labor to sell, became factory
workers out of necessity.

The change in the social relationship of the factory worker compared to farmers and cottagers

was viewed unfavorably by Karl Marx, however, he recognized the increase in productivity
made possible by technology.[65]

Standards of living

The effects on living conditions the industrial revolution have been very controversial, and were
hotly debated by economic and social historians from the 1950s to the 1980s.[66] A series of
1950s essays by Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins later set the academic consensus
that the bulk of the population, that was at the bottom of the social ladder, suffered severe
reductions in their living standards.[66] During 1813–1913, there was a significant increase in

worker wages.[67][68][69]

Some economists, such as Robert E. Lucas, Jr., say that the real impact of the Industrial
Revolution was that "for the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary

people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic
behavior is mentioned by the classical economists, even as a theoretical possibility."[2] Others,
however, argue that while growth of the economy's overall productive powers was

unprecedented during the Industrial Revolution, living standards for the majority of the
population did not grow meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries, and that in many

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ways workers' living standards declined under early capitalism: for instance, studies have shown

that real wages in Britain only increased 15% between the 1780s and 1850s, and that life
expectancy in Britain did not begin to dramatically increase until the 1870s.[3][4]

Food and nutrition

Main article: British Agricultural Revolution

Chronic hunger and malnutrition were the norm for the majority of the population of the world

including Britain and France, until the late 19th century. Until about 1750, in large part due to

malnutrition, life expectancy in France was about 35 years, and only slightly higher in Britain.
The US population of the time was adequately fed, much taller on average and had life
expectancy of 45–50 years.[70]

In Britain and the Netherlands, food supply had been increasing and prices falling before the

Industrial Revolution due to better agricultural practices; however, population grew too, as noted
by Thomas Malthus.[1][47][71][72] Before the Industrial Revolution, advances in agriculture or
technology soon led to an increase in population, which again strained food and other

resources, limiting increases in per capita income. This condition is called the Malthusian trap,
and it was finally overcome by industrialisation.[47]

Transportation improvements, such as canals and improved roads, also lowered food costs.
Railroads were introduced near the end of the Industrial Revolution.

Housing

Over London by Rail Gustave Doré c. 1870. Shows the densely populated and polluted
environments created in the new industrial cities.

Living conditions during the Industrial Revolution varied from splendour for factory owners to

squalor for workers.

In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 Friedrich Engels described backstreet
sections of Manchester and other mill towns, where people lived in crude shanties and shacks,

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some not completely enclosed, some with dirt floors. These shantytowns had narrow walkways

between irregularly shaped lots and dwellings. There were no sanitary facilities. Population
density was extremely high. Eight to ten unrelated mill workers often shared a room, often with

no furniture, and slept on a pile of straw or sawdust.[73] Toilet facilities were shared if they
existed. Disease spread through a contaminated water supply. Also, people were at risk of
developing pathologies due to persistent dampness.

The famines that troubled rural areas did not happen in industrial areas. But urban people—

especially small children—died due to diseases spreading through the cramped living

conditions. Tuberculosis (spread in congested dwellings), lung diseases from the mines, cholera
from polluted water and typhoid were also common.

Not everyone lived in such poor conditions. The Industrial Revolution also created a middle

class of professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, who lived in much better conditions.

Conditions improved over the course of the 19th century due to new public health acts
regulating things such as sewage, hygiene and home construction. In the introduction of his
1892 edition, Engels notes that most of the conditions he wrote about in 1844 had been greatly

improved.

Clothing and consumer goods

Consumers benefited from falling prices for clothing and household articles such as cast iron
cooking utensils, and in the following decades, stoves for cooking and space heating.

Population increase

According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of England and Wales, which

had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, rose dramatically after 1740. The
population of England had more than doubled from 8.3 million in 1801 to 16.8 million in 1850
and, by 1901, had nearly doubled again to 30.5 million.[74] Improved conditions led to the
population of Britain increasing from 10 million to 40 million in the 1800s.[75][76] Europe's
population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[77]

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The Industrial Revolution was the first period in history during which there was a simultaneous

increase in population and in per capita income.[78]

Labour conditions

Social structure and working conditions

In terms of social structure, the Industrial Revolution witnessed the triumph of a middle class of
industrialists and businessmen over a landed class of nobility and gentry. Ordinary working

people found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and factories, but these

were often under strict working conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by
machines. As late as the year 1900, most industrial workers in the United States still worked a
10-hour day (12 hours in the steel industry), yet earned from 20% to 40% less than the

minimum deemed necessary for a decent life.[79] However, harsh working conditions were
prevalent long before the Industrial Revolution took place. Pre-industrial society was very static

and often cruel—child labour, dirty living conditions, and long working hours were just as
prevalent before the Industrial Revolution.[80]

Factories and urbanisation

Manchester, England ("Cottonopolis"), pictured in 1840, showing the mass of factory chimneys

Industrialisation led to the creation of the factory. Arguably the first highly mechanised was John
Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread

manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, since the silk
industry there was a closely guarded secret, the state of the industry there is unknown. Because

Lombe's factory was not successful and there was no follow through, the rise of the modern

factory dates to somewhat later when cotton spinning was mechanised.

The factory system contributed to the growth of urban areas, as large numbers of workers
migrated into the cities in search of work in the factories. Nowhere was this better illustrated
than the mills and associated industries of Manchester, nicknamed "Cottonopolis", and the
world's first industrial city.[81] Manchester experienced a six-times increase in its population

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between 1771 and 1831. Bradford grew by 50% every ten years between 1811 and 1851 and

by 1851 only 50% of the population of Bradford was actually born there.[82]

For much of the 19th century, production was done in small mills, which were typically water-
powered and built to serve local needs. Later, each factory would have its own steam engine
and a chimney to give an efficient draft through its boiler.

The transition to industrialisation was not without difficulty. For example, a group of English

workers known as Luddites formed to protest against industrialisation and sometimes

sabotaged factories.

In other industries the transition to factory production was not so divisive. Some industrialists
themselves tried to improve factory and living conditions for their workers. One of the earliest

such reformers was Robert Owen, known for his pioneering efforts in improving conditions for
workers at the New Lanark mills, and often regarded as one of the key thinkers of the early

socialist movement.

By 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at

one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods.
Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton (whose
Soho Manufactory was completed in 1766) were other prominent early industrialists, who
employed the factory system.

Child labour

Wheaton Glass Works, November 1909. Photographed by Lewis Hine.

The Industrial Revolution led to a population increase but the chances of surviving childhood did

not improve throughout the Industrial Revolution, although infant mortality rates were reduced
markedly.[84][85] There was still limited opportunity for education and children were expected to
work. Employers could pay a child less than an adult even though their productivity was
comparable; there was no need for strength to operate an industrial machine, and since the
industrial system was completely new, there were no experienced adult labourers. This made

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child labour the labour of choice for manufacturing in the early phases of the Industrial

Revolution between the 18th and 19th centuries. In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of
the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were described as children.[86]

Child labour existed before the Industrial Revolution but with the increase in population and
education it became more visible. Many children were forced to work in relatively bad conditions

for much lower pay than their elders,[87] 10–20% of an adult male's wage.[88] Children as
young as four were employed.[88] Beatings and long hours were common, with some child coal

miners and hurriers working from 4 am until 5 pm.[88] Conditions were dangerous, with some

children killed when they dozed off and fell into the path of the carts, while others died from gas
explosions.[88] Many children developed lung cancer and other diseases and died before the
age of 25.[88] Workhouses would sell orphans and abandoned children as "pauper

apprentices", working without wages for board and lodging.[88] Those who ran away would be
whipped and returned to their masters, with some masters shackling them to prevent
escape.[88] Children employed as mule scavengers by cotton mills would crawl under
machinery to pick up cotton, working 14 hours a day, six days a week. Some lost hands or
limbs, others were crushed under the machines, and some were decapitated.[88] Young girls
worked at match factories, where phosphorus fumes would cause many to develop phossy
jaw.[88] Children employed at glassworks were regularly burned and blinded, and those working
at potteries were vulnerable to poisonous clay dust.[88]

Reports were written detailing some of the abuses, particularly in the coal mines[89] and textile

factories,[90] and these helped to popularise the children's plight. The public outcry, especially
among the upper and middle classes, helped stir change in the young workers' welfare.

Politicians and the government tried to limit child labour by law but factory owners resisted;
some felt that they were aiding the poor by giving their children money to buy food to avoid

starvation, and others simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833 and 1844, the first general
laws against child labour, the Factory Acts, were passed in Britain: Children younger than nine

were not allowed to work, children were not permitted to work at night, and the work day of
youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the

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execution of the law, however, their scarcity made enforcement difficult.[88] About ten years

later, the employment of children and women in mining was forbidden. These laws decreased
the number of child labourers, however child labour remained in Europe and the United States

up to the 20th century.

Luddites

The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, 1848

The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft workers their jobs. The

movement started first with lace and hosiery workers near Nottingham and spread to other
areas of the textile industry owing to early industrialisation. Many weavers also found
themselves suddenly unemployed since they could no longer compete with machines which

only required relatively limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single
weaver. Many such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned their animosity towards

the machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and machinery. These
attackers became known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a folklore figure. The
first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811. The Luddites rapidly gained popularity,

and the British government took drastic measures, using the militia or army to protect industry.
Those rioters who were caught were tried and hanged, or transported for life.

Unrest continued in other sectors as they industrialised, such as with agricultural labourers in
the 1830s when large parts of southern Britain were affected by the Captain Swing

disturbances. Threshing machines were a particular target, and hayrick burning was a popular
activity. However, the riots led to the first formation of trade unions, and further pressure for

reform.

Organisation of labour

The Industrial Revolution concentrated labour into mills, factories and mines, thus facilitating the

organisation of combinations or trade unions to help advance the interests of working people.
The power of a union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labour and causing a

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consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union

demands at a cost to themselves or suffering the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers
were hard to replace, and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions

through this kind of bargaining.

The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action. Many strikes were painful

events for both sides, the unions and the management. In Britain, the Combination Act 1799
forbade workers to form any kind of trade union until its repeal in 1824. Even after this, unions

were still severely restricted.

In 1832, the Reform Act extended the vote in Britain but did not grant universal suffrage. That
year six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers to
protest against the gradual lowering of wages in the 1830s. They refused to work for less than

ten shillings a week, although by this time wages had been reduced to seven shillings a week
and were due to be further reduced to six. In 1834 James Frampton, a local landowner, wrote to
the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to complain about the union, invoking an obscure law from

1797 prohibiting people from swearing oaths to each other, which the members of the Friendly
Society had done. James Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, George's brother James

Loveless, George's brother in-law Thomas Standfield, and Thomas's son John Standfield were
arrested, found guilty, and transported to Australia. They became known as the Tolpuddle
Martyrs. In the 1830s and 1840s, the Chartist movement was the first large-scale organised
working class political movement which campaigned for political equality and social justice. Its

Charter of reforms received over three million signatures but was rejected by Parliament without
consideration.

Working people also formed friendly societies and co-operative societies as mutual support
groups against times of economic hardship. Enlightened industrialists, such as Robert Owen

also supported these organisations to improve the conditions of the working class.

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Unions slowly overcame the legal restrictions on the right to strike. In 1842, a general strike

involving cotton workers and colliers was organised through the Chartist movement which
stopped production across Great Britain.[92]

Eventually, effective political organisation for working people was achieved through the trades
unions who, after the extensions of the franchise in 1867 and 1885, began to support socialist

political parties that later merged to became the British Labour Party.

Other effects

The application of steam power to the industrial processes of printing supported a massive
expansion of newspaper and popular book publishing, which reinforced rising literacy and
demands for mass political participation.

During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The

percentage of the children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from
74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in 1810–1829.[84]

The growth of modern industry since the late 18th century led to massive urbanisation and the
rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought
huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. In 1800, only 3% of the

world's population lived in cities,[93] compared to nearly 50% today (the beginning of the 21st
century).[94] Manchester had a population of 10,000 in 1717, but by 1911 it had burgeoned to
2.3 million.

Party Politics

England has the oldest parliament in the world. The English parliament met for the first time at
the Palace of Westminster in the year 1265, but it took more than four centuries before the
concept of "political parties" gave a new dimension to political life in Britain.

Before the birth of political parties in the seventeenth century, the English parliament
consisted of aristocrats and wealthy men who formed alliances and majorities based on specific

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factors or loyalties. It was not until after the English Civil War, and parliamentary upheavals

during the Republican years of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (1649-1660), that the first
English political parties began to take shape. During the years from 1678 to 1681, and the

constitutional crisis known as the Exclusion Crisis, most members of the English parliament
formed into two "parties", named Whigs and Tories. The descendants of these two original
parties are the two parties that formed the coalition government under Prime Minister David

Cameron from 2010 to 2015.

Until the early 20th century, alone or in coalition with other groups, these two political parties

in turn formed successive British governments, based on the results of parliamentary elections.

Initially, the Whigs were the party of the liberal and reforming aristocracy. In contrast to the
Tories, the Whig Party attracted people more favorable to constitutional reforms, and in 1832

led the most significant modernization of the British Parliament, the Reform Act, which
rebalanced parliamentary constituencies, and greatly expanded the electoral base to the middle
classes. In the 1850's, the Whig Party became the most important element of a union of Whigs

and Radicals who took the name "Liberal Party". This centrist party continued until 1988, when it
merged with the new but smaller Social Democratic Party to form today's Liberal Democrats

. The word Tory designated early supporters of strong royal power; Tories were monarchists
and traditionalists, especially at the time of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the
eighteenth century, the Whigs dominated British politics, and the Tory party played a relatively
small role in the political life of the United Kingdom.

This changed in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, when the rise of reformism

and radicalism in Europe, which was to lead notably to the French Revolution (1789), gave a
new impetus to defenders of the status quo and conservatism. The Tories re-emerged as a
major force in British politics in 1770 - but this time as a modern party in favor of maintaining the
best traditions of Britain, but at the same time strongly supporting the new opportunities created

by the industrial revolution and imperial and commercial expansion. During the 19th century - as
today - the Tory party, which became the Conservative Party in 1834, was torn between its

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traditionalists and its reformers. Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative prime minister from 1874 to

1880, was one of the great reformers of the 19th century.

After the First World War, a new party came to power in the British Parliament, the Labour
Party. The first Labour MPs had been elected in 1900 as representatives of the Independent
Labour Party. The Labour Party formed a minority government in 1924, but it did not last.

Labour first formed a majority government in 1929. The rise of the Labour Party came however
at the expense of the other non-Conservative party, the Liberals, and Labour replaced the

Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives.

From 1929 to 2010, power alternated between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.

Following the general election of 2010, no single party emerged with an absolute majority of

MPs; so for the first time in living memory, a coalition government was formed, with the
Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats sharing power.

Stability of the political landscape

British prime ministersBritish prime ministers past and present. Left to Right Gordon Brown and
Tony Blair (Labour), John Major (Conservative), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat, deputy PM) and
David Cameron (Conservative, PM in 2014) As this historical overview shows, the British

political landscape in general is characterized by a remarkable stability. The British electoral

system, a system of "relative majority" (known as the " first past the post" system) 1, has not
changed for more than four centuries, and is favorable to large parties and stable governments.

It tends to prevent parties fragmenting into smaller factions or clans, and encourages consensus
positions around strong party leaders.

In a referendum in 2011, British voters reaffirmed their commitment to this historic electoral
system, rejecting a new system that would have introduced an element of proportional
representation.

Britain's three major parties are all now more than a century old, and the system makes it
very hard for new parties to get a foot on the ladder. The rise of the Labour Party in the early

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20th century was the result of major changes in society. Since then, no new party has

succeeded in establishing itself in England, and new parties that are created remain marginal in
terms of representation, or merge with larger ones. The situation is different in other parts of the

United Kingdom, where nationalist parties have broken into the political landscape, even to the
point of becoming the principal political party in Scotland.

The Political landscape in Britain today

Main British parties (excluding regionalist parties / nationalsts )

Right-wing or conservative parties

The Conservative Party

This is the British party of the right, including a broad range of traditional conservatives and
royalists, neo-liberals and social conservatives. For the last forty years, the party has been

deeply divided over issues of sovereignty and the role of Britain in the European Union. A
majority of party members are in favour of a revision of the terms of Britain's membership of the
European Union, and the holding of a referendum on a possible withdrawal. But other
Conservatives, including industrial and business leaders, are strongly pro-European. Recent
leaders have been beset by problems trying to reconcile the strongly opposing views of party

members on this issue.

The Conservative Party is made up of local Associations which play a major role in the

selection of candidates and the appointment of the party leader. The importance of this local
structure reflects the very old tradition of territorial representation in British politics, a tradition

dating back to the Middle Ages. However, "Central Office" often imposes candidates on local

associations to enable up-and-coming stars to enter parliament, as was the case with Margaret
Thatcher.

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UKIP - The UK Independence Party

A sovereignist party that wants Britain to withdraw from the European Union. The party has little

in the way of policies, apart from Europe-bashing, but is surprisingly popular with voters
disgruntled with the perceived failures of the main parties . In the 2015 election, UKIP obtained
just one member of Parliament, a sitting MP who had moved over from the conservatives. UKIP

has several members in the European Parliament.

BNP - British National Party

An extreme right-wing party , with nationalistic and xenophobic views. No members of

parliament

Parties of the centre

The Liberal Democrat party - the Liberal Democrats , or Lib Dems

A party of the centre, formed in 1988 by the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social

Democratic Party (SPD) , the latter being made up of dissidents from the Labour party. The Lib

Dems are thus a mixture of social conservatives and social democrats. The party is the most
pro-European of the major British parties, and until 2015 shared power with the Conservative

Party in the coalition government.

In the 2015 election, the Lib Dems lost most of their MPs. However, following the election of
left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to the head of the Labour party in September 2015, many are
predicting an unexpected revival in the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats as disaffected social

democrats abandon Labour.

The Greens - The Green Party

A centre-left party, in many ways rather middle-class, committed to the promotion of

environmental issues. One Member of Parliament (since 2010)

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The parties of the Left

The Labour Party

The Labour party covers virtually the whole spectrum of left wing politics in Britain. Until 2010,
since the time of Tony Blair, it had been dominated by the social-liberal centre-left (initially
known as New Labour): the collectivist "Old Labour" views were very much in a minority . From
2010 to 2015, under the leadership of Ed Miliband, it remained essentially a centre-left party;

but in September 2015, with the election to the leadership of a left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, the
Labour party has moved into a new period in its history. (see below)

The party is supported and funded by the British trade unions, but it is not controlled or
significantly influenced by them, and this influence was further reduced in 2015. Very weak

following the recession of the 1970s, the party was largely reformed later by Tony Blair, who
transformed it into a modern social democratic party.

The Labour Party is made up of local parties (Constituency Labour Parties), most British

trade unions and other associations. These structures send delegates to party conferences,

depending on the number of their members. Party Conferences define the general lines of party
policy, but conference decisions are not binding on the parliamentary party . Until 2014 Labour
party leaders were elected by three electoral colleges, individual members , Labour MPs, and
trade unions, each college representing a third of the final result. The last leader, Ed Miliband,
was elected by the weight of union vote, even though both Labour MPs and individual members

preferred his brother David Miliband. After his election, and to reassure not only the country but

also a large number of his constituents , Ed Miliband sought to emphasize his total
independence from the unions. In 2014, he announced plans to reduce the role of the unions
even further in the election of the party leader. A new electoral process was introduced,
whereby the leader is elected by paid up members of the party and anyone else who signs up
and pays to vote in the electoral process.

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 Following the party's defeat in the 2015 General Election, Miliband stepped down as leader of

the Labour Party. In September however, Party members and other electors chose as the new
leader of the labour Party a radical left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn – the most left-wing leader the

party has ever had. Corbyn's election has sparked a serious rift in the party, and within hours of
his election, eight members of the shadow cabinet had announced that they would not be part of
Corbyn's team. Others are expected to follow.

For Corbyn's supporters, his election marks a return by the Labour party to its core socialist

values; for his opponents, it has simply made the Labour Party unelectable for at least ten

years.... if not longer. Opinion polls persistently show that while Labour party militants may
favour a strong left-wing agenda, British voters as a whole do not.

Respect

The party of a populist left-wing Labour party dissident, George Galloway, who was its sole MP

until 2015.

The Communist Party of Great Britain

Very marginal, the party has only ever had two elected MPs. It was never a mass party, not
even when at its peak in the 1940's.

The 19th century was a time of sweeping political and social transformation in Britain. These
changes came about in response to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, as well

as from anti-government sentiment. During the 18th and 19th centuries, British monarchs such
as King George III and King George IV, as well as members of Parliament, were not widely

popular. Outside the parliamentary system, a number of political groups emerged to fight for

reforms and battle against political repression.

Radicals

In 1800 few Britons could vote. Political power was restricted to the wealthy. Those who
challenged this injustice were called radicals. Thomas Paine, an influential radical thinker, wrote

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a book called "The Rights of Man," which advocated that everyone should have a say in

government. Inspired by Paine's ideas and those of the French Revolution, British radicals
formed political groups. Fearing that they would start their own revolution, British authorities

began arresting them for treason and outlawing radical organizations. In 1819 violence erupted
when 60,000 people were brutally dispersed from a peaceful meeting in St. Peter's Fields,
Manchester. After a stampede by the British cavalry, 500 people were injured and 11 killed.

Dubbed the Peterloo Massacre (after Waterloo), the incident underscored the perceived tyranny

of the British government.

Chartists

The Peterloo Massacre intensified public support for electoral reform. In 1832 Parliament
passed the Reform Act, which marginally increased the number of eligible voters. The lower

classes, however, remained voiceless in government. Soon after Queen Victoria took the throne
in 1837, a group of working-class activists launched a campaign to achieve electoral and
parliamentary change in Britain. Called the Chartists, they took their name from the People’s

Charter, a proposal drafted by the radical William Lovett. Among the Chartists' demands were
universal male suffrage, voting by secret ballot and the abolition of property requirements for

parliamentary membership. Over two decades, Chartism grew to a mass movement. While the
Chartists were not immediately successful, many of their ideas were implemented in the Reform
Acts of 1867 and 1884. In due course, almost all the Chartist demands became law in Britain.

Suffragists

Throughout the 1800s, British women could not vote. Although the British parliament passed

three major reform acts expanding voting rights, no legislation had granted suffrage to women.
Queen Victoria did nothing to address this inequality and actually supported the status quo. In
1867 two members of Parliament, John Stuart Mill and Henry Fawcett, introduced a women's
suffrage bill, which failed to pass. Suffragists remained resolute, well-organized and dedicated

to the cause. They made little progress until the end of the century, when Millicent Fawcett,
Henry's wife, formed the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, an influential coalition

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of suffragist groups. The women's suffrage battle was finally won in the early 20th century, when

Parliament granted voting rights to women with laws enacted in 1918 and 1928.

Socialists

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 18th century, transforming the nation's
economy. Social issues such as child labor and appalling working conditions grew in public
awareness. These issues, along with support for the French Revolution, gave rise to socialism

in Britain. Robert Owen, a cotton mill owner in Scotland, is regarded as the father of British
socialism. After improving conditions at his mill, he crusaded against child labor before

attempting to create a utopian socialist community in the 1820s. Twenty years later, Karl Marx
published "The Communist Manifesto," and socialism gained traction throughout Europe. A
socialist organization called the First International held its initial meeting in London in 1864. In

1881 a socialist political party emerged in Britain called the Social Democratic Federation.
Socialists and workers' unions later joined forces to establish the Labour Party, which is now
one of Britain's largest political parties.

The Methodist Movement

Methodism, or the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of

Protestant Christianity which derive their inspiration from the life and teachings of John Wesley.
George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant leaders in the
movement. It originated as a revival within the 18th-century Church of England and became a

separate Church after Wesley's death. Because of vigorous missionary activity, the movement

spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond, today claiming
approximately 80 million adherents worldwide.[1]

Distinguishing Methodist doctrines include Christian perfection, an assurance of salvation,[2] the

priesthood of all believers, the primacy of scripture and works of piety. Methodism also
emphasises "social holiness", missionary zeal, charity, and service to the poor and
vulnerable.[3] These ideals are put into practice by the establishment of hospitals, universities,

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orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools to follow Jesus Christ's command to spread the Good

News and serve all people.[4] Most Methodists teach that Christ died for all of humanity, not just
for a limited group, and thus everyone is entitled to God's grace and protection; in theology, this

view is known as Arminianism.[5] It denies that God has pre-ordained an elect number of people
to eternal bliss while others are doomed to hell no matter what they do in life. However,
Whitefield and several others were considered Calvinistic Methodists.

The Methodist movement has a wide variety of forms of worship, ranging from high church to

low church in liturgical usage. Denominations that descend from the British Methodist tradition

tend toward a less formal worship style, while American Methodism—in particular the United
Methodist Church—is more liturgical.[6] Methodism is known for its rich musical tradition;
Charles Wesley was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church,[7]

and many other eminent hymn writers come from the Methodist tradition.

Early Methodists were drawn from all levels of society, including the aristocracy,[a] but the
Methodist preachers took the message to labourers and criminals who tended to be left outside

organized religion at that time. In Britain, the Methodist Church had a major effect in the early
decades of the making of the working class (1760–1820). In the United States it became the

religion of many slaves who later formed "black churches" in the Methodist tradition.

Contemporary Methodism

World Methodist Council at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina – a consultive body linking most

Methodist groups of the world. The headquarters contains a museum of Methodism and a small
park – the Susannah Wesley Herb Garden

Today, millions belong to Methodist churches, which are present on all populated

continents.[28] Although Methodism is declining in Great Britain and North America, it is growing
in other places; at a rapid pace in, for example, South Korea.[29] In these new places, it often
takes shapes that diverge from its roots. For example, the Arminian heritage is ignored or simply

unknown, and an exclusive, Neo-Calvinist emphasis is played up. Many such denominations
highlight Methodism's traditional emphasis upon holiness.

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Almost all Methodist denominations are members of a consultative body called the World

Methodist Council, which is headquartered at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, in the United
States.

Great Britain

Further information: Methodist Church of Great Britain

Methodist Central Hall Westminster, erected to mark the centenary of John Wesley's death.

The original body founded as a result of Wesley's work was later known as the Wesleyan

Methodist Church. Schisms within the original Church, and independent revivals, led to the
formation of a number of separate denominations calling themselves "Methodist". The largest of
these were the Primitive Methodist church, deriving from a revival at Mow Cop in Staffordshire,

the Bible Christians and the Methodist New Connexion. The original church became known as
the Wesleyan Methodist Church to distinguish it from these bodies. In 1907, a union of smaller
groups with the Methodist New Connexion and Bible Christian Church brought about the British
"United Methodist Church", then the three major streams of British Methodism united in 1932 to
form the current Methodist Church of Great Britain.[21] The Wesleyan Reform Union[30] and the

Independent Methodist Connexion[31] still remain separate. The Primitive Methodist Church
had branches in the USA which still continue.

British Methodists, in particular the Primitive Methodists, took a leading role in the temperance
movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Methodists saw alcoholic beverages, and

alcoholism, as the root of many social ills and tried to persuade people to abstain from

these.[32] Temperance appealed strongly to the Methodist doctrines of sanctification and

perfection. To this day, alcohol remains banned in Methodist premises,[33] however, the choice
to consume alcohol is now a personal decision for any member.[33]

Traditionally, Methodism was particularly prominent in Devon and Cornwall and, in its Calvinistic
form, in Wales,[citation needed] these regions were noted for their non-conformism and

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resistance to change in the established church.[citation needed] It was also very strong in the

old mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, where the Methodists stressed that the working
classes were equal to the upper classes in the eyes of God.[citation needed]

British Methodism does not have bishops; however, it has always been characterized by a
strong central organization, the Connexion, which holds an annual Conference (note that the

Church retains the 18th century spelling "connexion" for many purposes). The Connexion is
divided into Districts in the charge of the Chair (who may be male or female). Methodist districts

often correspond approximately, in geographical terms, to counties – as do Church of England

dioceses. The districts are divided into circuits governed by the Circuit Meeting and led and
administrated principally by a superintendent minister. Ministers are appointed to Circuits rather
than to individual churches, although some large inner-city churches, known as "Central Halls",

are designated as circuits in themselves – of these Westminster Central Hall, opposite

Westminster Abbey in central London, is the best known. Most circuits have fewer ministers
than churches, and the majority of services are led by lay local preachers, or by supernumerary
ministers (ministers who have retired, called supernumerary because they are not counted for
official purposes in the numbers of ministers for the circuit in which they are listed). The
superintendent and other ministers are assisted in the leadership and administration of the
Circuit by Circuit Stewards, lay people who may have particular skills who collectively with the
ministers form what is normally known as the Circuit Leadership Team.

The Methodist Council also helps to run a number of schools, including two leading Public

Schools in East Anglia: Culford School and The Leys. It helps to promote an all round education
with a strong Christian ethos.

Other Methodist denominations in Britain include: The Salvation Army, founded by Methodist
minister William Booth in 1865; the Free Methodist Church, a holiness church; and the Church

of the Nazarene.

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Ireland

Main article: Methodist Church in Ireland

The Irish Methodist Church operates across both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
on an all-Ireland basis. As of 2011 it is the fourth largest denomination in Northern Ireland, with
Methodists accounting for 3% of the population.[34]

Donegall Square East Methodist Church, Belfast

Eric Gallagher was the President of the Church in the 1970s, becoming a well-known figure in

Irish politics.[35] He was one of the group of Protestant churchmen who met with Provisional
IRA officers in Feakle, County Clare to try to broker peace. The meeting was unsuccessful due
to a Garda raid on the hotel.

France

In France, the Methodist movement was founded in the 1820s by Charles Cook near Nîmes and

Montpellier, for example in the village of Congénies in Languedoc with the most important

chapel of department built in 1869, where there had been a Quaker community since the 18th
century.[citation needed] Several sections of the Methodist Church joined the Reformed Church

of France in 1938. The Methodist Church exists today in France under various names. The
best-known is the "UEEM" (l'Union de l'Eglise Evangélique Méthodiste de France), the Union of
Evangelical Methodist Churches of France. It is the fruit of a fusion in 2005 between the

Methodist Church of France and the Union of Methodist Churches (in France). The UEEM is a
part of the world organization, the United Methodist Church.

Hungary

The first Methodist mission in Hungary was established in 1898 in Bácska, in a then mostly

German-speaking town of Verbász (since 1918 part of the Serbian province of Vojvodina). In
1905 a Methodist mission was established also in Budapest. In 1974 the Methodist church in
Hungary split over the question of interference by the communist state.

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Today, the Hungarian Methodist Church has 40 congregations in 11 districts.[36] The seceding

Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship also considers itself a Methodist church. It has 8 full
congregations and several mission groups, and runs a range of charitable organizations: hostels

and soup kitchens for the homeless, a non-denominational theological college,[37] a dozen
schools of various kinds, and four old people's homes. The Fellowship was granted official
church status by the state in 1981. Both Methodist churches lost official church status under

discriminatory legislation passed in 2011, limiting the number of recognized churches to 14.[38]

However, the list of recognized churches was lengthened to 32 at the end of February 2012.[39]
This gave recognition to the Hungarian Methodist Church and to two other Methodist-derived
denominations – the Salvation Army, which was banned in Hungary in 1949 but returned in

1990, and currently has four congregations, and the Church of the Nazarene, which entered
Hungary in 1996 – but not to the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship. The legislation has been

strongly criticized by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe as discriminatory.[40]

The Hungarian Methodist Church, the Salvation Army, and the Church of the Nazarene have
formed an association mainly for publishing purposes.[41] The Hungarian Evangelical
Fellowship also has a publishing arm.[42]

Italy

The Italian Methodist Church (Italian: Opera per le Chiese Metodiste in Italia;[43] Entity for
Methodist Churches in Italy) is a small Protestant community in Italy, with around 7,000
members.[44] Since 1975 it is in a formal covenant of partnership with the Waldensian Church,

with a total of 45,000 members.[44] Waldensians are a Protestant movement which started in

Lyon, France, in the late 1170s.

Italian Methodism has its origins in the Italian Free Church, British Wesleyan Methodist
Missionary Society, and the American Methodist Episcopal Mission. These movements flowered
in the second half of the nineteenth century in the new climate of political and religious freedom

that was established, with the end of the Papal States and unification of Italy in 1870.[45]

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Bertrand Tipple, pastor of the American Methodist Church in Rome, founded a college there.

Socialism

The difficulty of defining socialism is apparent to anyone who attempts to study this protean
doctrine, not least because what socialism is or is not is usually a matter of contentious debate.
However, there is a general consensus that the various schools of socialism share some
common features that can be summarized as follows. Socialism is above all concerned with the

relationship between the individual, state, and society. For the socialist, the individual is never
alone and thus must always define himself or herself in relation to others. Socialists believe that

a well-ordered society cannot exist without a state apparatus, not least because the state is
seen as the most effective vehicle for coordinating and administering to the needs of all.

Socialists' views on human nature distinguish them from their principal political rivals, the
liberals and conservatives. While the latter two groups tend to hold that all humans are

inherently self-interested and materialistic, socialists contend that these traits are products of
social conditioning under capitalism. On this view, individuals act selfishly and competitively, not
because it is in their nature do so, but rather because they are encouraged and rewarded for

such behavior. Socialists hold that the values and beliefs promoted in a socialist society would
enhance our capacity for acting cooperatively and collectively in pursuit of mutually reinforcing
material and spiritual goals.

Because they see material circumstances as being key to the well-being of individuals,

socialists stress the importance of the economic system that operates in every society. It was

their observations of the deleterious effects of industrial capitalism that caused socialist
reformers to call for the development of new economic structures based on a completely
different set of moral principles. The question of how the transition from capitalism to socialism
would occur has been answered in different ways by different socialist theorists. Robert Owen
(1771–1858), Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and other early socialist thinkers saw the need to

reform rather than destroy capitalism, while followers of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich
Engels (1820–1895) insisted that capitalism had to be completely overturned in order for society

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to advance to a state of socialism. Contemporary socialists do not envisage the transition from

capitalism to socialism as a sharp break, but as a process of economic reforms that takes into
account the role of market forces.

So far as is known the terms socialist and socialism first appeared in print in Italian in 1803, but
in a sense were entirely unconnected with any of their later meanings. No trace of the word

socialist appears again until 1827, when it was used in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine to
designate the followers of Robert Owen's cooperative doctrines. Across the English Channel,

socialisme was adopted by the Saint-Simonians—followers of the French philosopher and social

scientist Claude-Henri de Rouvroy (1760–1825), comte de Saint-Simon—during the 1830s to

describe their theory, and thereafter it was increasingly used to refer to those groups aiming at
some kind of new social order resting on an economic and social conception of human rights.

In these senses, socialism was used to distinguish the attitudes of those who laid stress on the
social elements in human relations from those who emphasized the claims of the individual. In
fact, to be a socialist was to be someone who promoted a social system in direct opposition to

the highly individualistic order being advocated by the proponents of laissez faire economics.

Liberalism

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy committed to limited government, the rule of law,
individual liberties, and free markets.

Classical Liberalism and the Notion of Freedom

Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideals of limited government,

constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals. These liberties include

freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets. Classical liberalism developed
over the course of the 1800s in the United States and Britain, and drew upon Enlightenment
sources (particularly John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith) from the 1700s and1800s.

It was an intellectual response to the Industrial Revolution and the problems associated with
urbanization.

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Core Principles: Human Nature, Government, and World Peace

Classical liberalism places a particular emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual, and

considers property rights an essential component of individual liberty. In nineteenth-century

political theory, this encouraged "laissez-faire" public policy that did not heavily interfere in
commerce or industry. Most classical liberals argued that humans were calculating, egoistic

creatures, motivated solely by pain and pleasure, and that they made decisions intended to
maximize pleasure and minimize pain, while in the absence of pain or pleasure, humans

became inert. Hence, classical liberals believed that individuals should be free to pursue their

self-interest without societal control or restraint. It determined that individuals should be free to
obtain work from the highest-paying employers. In a free market, labor and capital would
therefore receive the greatest possible reward, while production would be organized efficiently

to meet consumer demand. Classical liberals also saw poor urban conditions as inevitable, and
therefore opposed any income or wealth redistribution.

Classical liberals agreed with Adam Smith that government had only three essential functions:

protection against foreign invaders, protection of citizens from wrongs committed against them
by other citizens, and building and maintaining public institutions and public works that the

private sector could not profitably provide. Classical liberals extended protection of the country
to protection of overseas markets through armed intervention. Protection of individuals against
wrongs normally meant protection of private property. Public works included a stable currency,
standard weights and measures, support of roads, canals, harbors, and railways, and postal

and other communications services that facilitated urban and industrial development.

Additionally, classical liberals believed that unfettered commerce with other nations would
eventually eliminate war and imperial conflicts. Through peaceful, harmonious trade
relationships, established by private merchants and companies without government

interference, mutual national interest and prosperity would derive from commercial exchange
rather than imperial territorial acquisition (which liberals saw as the root of all wars). World

peace, for classical liberals, was a real possibility if national governments would allow
interdependent global commercial relationships to form

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Source:Boundless. “Classical Liberalism.” Boundless U.S. History. Boundless, 21 Jul. 2015.
Retrieved 26 Mar. 2016 from https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/textbooks/boundless-u-s-

history-textbook/slavery-freedom-and-the-struggle-for-empire-1750-1763-5/an-empire-of-
freedom-57/classical-liberalism-350-10445/

Colonization

What is 'the British Empire'?

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history. It was a product of the
European Age of Discovery in the late 15th century.

The 'first British Empire' included British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th
centuries. The 'second British Empire' included all colonies in Asia and Africa from the 18th

century until the early 20th century.

At its height in the late 19th and early 20th century, the British Empire had colonies on all
continents. The British colonies made up about a quarter of the world's population and area. As

the British Empire expanded, it brought with it European ideas and the English language to its

colonies.

Why did the British colonise?

The British began colonising mainly because of their need to trade, rather than the need for
military conquest. This is why they are known as a trade-based empire.

In the 16th century, England was a poor country. When they began colonising, it was not as

missionaries. When the English put to sea, it aimed to seek immediate profits.

The Industrial Revolution which took place in Europe in 17th century gave rise to the need for
raw materials. The British looked at Southeast Asia as a good target as they were rich in natural
resources. After some early colonies were established and become the sole markets to buy
English goods, the English realised the huge commercial potential of overseas acquisitions.
They consequently tried to expand their colonisation.

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The British Empire lasted very long because of three reasons. First, the British have good

command of the sea. Second, they were outstanding in international trading, and finally, the
British rule was flexible.

The First Empire:

In the late 16th century, Britain had many chartered companies. They were private companies
established by the crown. Having the exclusive right to do business in a certain area, these

companies became influential in politics. To expand their business and find buyers for their
products, these companies looked for trading posts in the other countries. When the

government in these countries was not strong enough, the English gradually took complete
control. This enable the British to built up colonies in India and the East Indies as well as
Hudson Bay.

The most popular chartered company known during the First Empire is the British East India

Company. This company was granted an English Royal Charter by Elizabeth title "Elizabeth I of
England" in 1600 to support trading in India.

In the 17th century, the British set up plantations to produce sugar and tobacco on the islands of
the Caribbean as well as in North America. These colonies attracted a large amount of
European settlers. The British needed labourers to work in these plantations, so they started to
trade slaves.

During this time, the common way the British traded with its colonies was that it would sell West

Indian molasses, sugar, English cloth, manufactured goods, American fish and timber to its
colonies. In exchange for these goods, the colonies would sell them African slaves, who the
British could use in their plantations. To secure its right and to increase its wealth, the British

government passed a law which allowed only British ships to trade with the colonies. This meant
that these colonies could only sell their products to England.

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In the early 18th century, chartered companies were reorganised. In India, from the 1740s to

1763, the British East India Company had a conflict with its French counterpart. The British
finally won. In 1763, the British established colonies in India and Canada. However, the British

met many difficulties when they tried to colonise America. The first British Empire ended with
the successful revolution of thirteen colonial states in America.

The Second Empire:

Realising the potential of the colonies, the British started to expand further, first by the voyages
of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and second, through new

conquests in India after 1763.

After the victories of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), the British had more colonies. These

included, Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, British
Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. Early in the 19th century, the British gradually abandoned many

strict regulations. It became a very strong country in the world, which allowed it to apply the
principle of free trade.

To improve the lives of many native inhabitants, the British government also abolished slave
trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. The British also built up regular civil service to create a more
efficient colonial administration. However, when these colonies became less dependent on the
British, they also developed a stronger national identity. Thus, they tried to liberalise themselves
from the British, who also encouraged these colonies to have a government of its own.

In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of
British North America." Durham suggested, that to retain its colonies, Britain should grant them
a large measure of internal self-government.

In 1867, the British gradually surrendered their direct governing powers. Australia and New
Zealand also became self-governing dominions. However, the British government still needed to

control India because of its relationship with the East India Company. To govern territories with

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large native populations, the British developed a system called the crown colony system. Such

colonies were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils from the native inhabitants.

In the later decades of the 19th century, other European countries competed for empire in which
the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings. These colonies included Nigeria, the Gold
Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, Egypt, Burma (Myanmar)

and Malaya. This forced the British to encourage a tie and solidarity between its colonies. In
1887, the British government issued the Imperial Conference, which was an attempt to

strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories.

Legacies:

The British left many legacies to its colonial countries. Although we still discuss the values of

these legacies, they should be listed as follows:

It brought significant changes to Southeast Asia. The British built more ports, railways and roads
to these countries.

The British colonisation changed the social and racial structure of the colonised countries.

The British colonisation led many local intellectuals to rise up to liberalise their country. It led to

the appearance of nationalism.

As a result of British colonisation, English became a popular language of the world and
continues to be dominant even today.

The British colonisation brought law, order and technology into India and changed them into a

modern state.

The modern technology from the British, which was aimed to serve their productions and

trading, was also introduced into the colonised countries thus enabling their modernisation and
development.

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Chartest Movement

Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in Britain which existed from 1838

to 1858. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest
movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the
Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and the South Wales Valleys. Support for the

movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, and 1848, when petitions signed by millions of
working people were presented to the House of Commons. The strategy employed was to use

the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated

to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on

constitutional methods to secure its aims, though there were some who became involved in
insurrectionary activities, notably in south Wales and Yorkshire.

The People's Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic:

A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment
for a crime.

The Secret Ballot – To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.

No Property Qualification for Members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return
the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.

Payment of Members, thus enabling an honest trades-man, working man, or other person, to

serve a constituency; when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.

Equal Constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of

electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones.

Annual Parliament Elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and
intimidation, since as the constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the
ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each

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ensuing twelvemonth; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to

defy and betray their constituents as now.

Chartism can be interpreted as a continuation of the 19th century fight against corruption and for
democracy in an industrial society, but attracted considerably more support than the radical
groups for economic reasons including wage cuts and unemployment.

Beginnings

Chartist riot

Chartism was launched in 1838 by a series of enormous meetings in Birmingham, Glasgow and
the north of England. A huge meeting was held on Kersal Moor, Kersal near Salford, Lancashire
on 24 September 1838 with speakers from all over the country. Speaking in favour of manhood
suffrage, Joseph Rayner Stephens declared that Chartism was a "knife and fork, a bread and

cheese question".[11] These words indicate the importance of economic factors in the launch of
Chartism. If, as the movement came together, there were different priorities amongst local
leaders, the Charter and the Star soon created a national, and largely united, campaign of

national protest. John Bates, an activist, recalled:

There were [radical] associations all over the county, but there was a great lack of cohesion.

One wanted the ballot, another manhood suffrage and so on ... The radicals were without unity
of aim and method, and there was but little hope of accomplishing anything. When, however,
the People's Charter was drawn up ... clearly defining the urgent demands of the working class,

we felt we had a real bond of union; and so transformed our Radical Association into local
Chartist centres.

The movement organised a National Convention in London in early 1839 to facilitate the
presentation of the first petition. Delegates used the term MC, Member of Convention, to identify
themselves; the convention undoubtedly saw itself as an alternative parliament.[12]:19 In June

1839, the petition, signed by 1.3 million working people, was presented to the House of
Commons, but MPs voted, by a large majority, not to hear the petitioners. At the Convention,

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there was talk of a general strike or "sacred month". In the West Riding of Yorkshire and in

south Wales, anger went even deeper, and underground preparations for a rising were
undoubtedly made.

Newport Rising

Dramatisation of the trial of the Chartists at Shire Hall, Monmouth, including background
information

Several outbreaks of violence ensued, leading to arrests and trials. One of the leaders of the

movement, John Frost, on trial for treason, claimed in his defence that he had toured his
territory of industrial Wales urging people not to break the law, although he was himself guilty of
using language that some might interpret as a call to arms. Dr William Price of Llantrisant—

more of a maverick than a mainstream Chartist—described Frost as putting "a sword in my

hand and a rope around my neck".[13] Hardly surprisingly, there are no surviving letters

outlining plans for insurrection, but physical force Chartists had undoubtedly started organising.
By early autumn men were being drilled and armed in south Wales, and also in the West Riding.
Secret cells were set up, covert meetings were held in the Chartist Caves at Llangynidr and

weapons were manufactured as the Chartists armed themselves. Behind closed doors and in
pub back rooms, plans were drawn up for a mass protest.

On the night of 3–4 November 1839 Frost led several thousand marchers through South Wales
to the Westgate Hotel, Newport, Monmouthshire, where there was a confrontation. It seems that

Frost and other local leaders were expecting to seize the town and trigger a national uprising.
The result of the Newport Rising was a disaster for Chartism. The hotel was occupied by armed

soldiers. A brief, violent, and bloody battle ensued. Shots were fired by both sides, although
most contemporaries agree that the soldiers holding the building had vastly superior firepower.
The Chartists were forced to retreat in disarray: more than twenty were killed, at least another
fifty wounded.[citation needed]

Testimonies exist from contemporaries, such as the Yorkshire Chartist Ben Wilson, that
Newport was to have been the signal for a national uprising. Despite this significant setback the

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movement remained remarkably buoyant, and remained so until late 1842. Whilst the majority of

Chartists, under the leadership of Feargus O'Connor, concentrated on petitioning for Frost,
Williams and William Jones to be pardoned, significant minorities in Sheffield and Bradford

planned their own risings in response. Samuel Holberry led an abortive rising in Sheffield on 12
January; and on 26 January Robert Peddie attempted similar action in Bradford. In both
Sheffield and Bradford spies had kept magistrates aware of the conspirators' plans, and these

attempted risings were easily quashed. Frost and two other Newport leaders, Jones and

Williams, were transported. Holberry and Peddie received long prison sentences with hard
labour; Holberry died in prison and became a Chartist martyr.[1]:135–8,152–7

1842

"1842 was the year in which more energy was hurled against the authorities than in any other of

the 19th century".[3]:295 In early May 1842, a second petition, of over three million signatures,
was submitted, and was yet again rejected by Parliament. The Northern Star commented on the
rejection:

Three and half millions have quietly, orderly, soberly, peaceably but firmly asked of their rulers

to do justice; and their rulers have turned a deaf ear to that protest. Three and a half millions of
people have asked permission to detail their wrongs, and enforce their claims for RIGHT, and
the 'House' has resolved they should not be heard! Three and a half millions of the slave-class
have holden out the olive branch of peace to the enfranchised and privileged classes and
sought for a firm and compact union, on the principle of EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW; and

the enfranchised and privileged have refused to enter into a treaty! The same class is to be a

slave class still. The mark and brand of inferiority is not to be removed. The assumption of
inferiority is still to be maintained. The people are not to be free.[12]:34

The depression of 1842 led to a wave of strikes, as workers responded to the wage cuts
imposed by employers. Calls for the implementation of the Charter were soon included

alongside demands for the restoration of wages to previous levels. Working people went on
strike in 14 English and 8 Scottish counties, principally in the Midlands, Lancashire, Cheshire,

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Yorkshire, and the Strathclyde region of Scotland. Typically, strikers resolved to cease work

until wages were increased "until the People's charter becomes the Law of the Land". How far
these strikes were directly Chartist in inspiration "was then, as now, a subject of much

controversy".[14] The Leeds Mercury headlined them "The Chartist Insurrection", but suspicion
also hung over the Anti-Corn Law League that manufacturers among its members deliberately
closed mills to stir-up unrest. At the time, these disputes were collectively known as the Plug

Plot as, in many cases, protesters removed the plugs from steam boilers powering industry to

prevent their use. Amongst historians writing in the 20th century, the term General Strike was
increasingly used.[15][16] Some modern historians prefer the description "strike wave".[1][12] In
contrast, Mick Jenkins in his The General Strike of 1842[15] offers a Marxist interpretation,

showing the strikes as highly organized with sophisticated political intentions. Unrest began in
the Potteries of Staffordshire in early August, spreading north to Cheshire and Lancashire

(where at Manchester a meeting of the Chartist national executive endorsed the strikes on the
16th). The strikes had begun spreading in Scotland and West Yorkshire from the 13th. There
were outbreaks of serious violence, including property destruction and the ambushing of police

convoys, in the Potteries and the West Riding. Though the government deployed soldiers to
suppress violence, it was the practical problems in sustaining an indefinite stoppage that
ultimately defeated the strikers. The drift back to work began on 19 August. Only Lancashire
and Cheshire were still strike-bound by September, the Manchester powerloom weavers being
the last to return to work on 26 September.[1]:223

The state hit back. Several Chartist leaders, including O'Connor, George Julian Harney, and
Thomas Cooper were arrested. During the late summer of 1842 hundreds were incarcerated –

in the Potteries alone 116 men and women went to prison. A smaller number, but still amounting
to many dozens – such as William Ellis, who was convicted on perjured evidence – were
transported. However, the government's most ambitious prosecution, personally led by the

Attorney General, of O'Connor and 57 others (including almost all Chartism's national executive)
failed: none were convicted of the serious charges, and those found guilty of minor offences

were never actually sentenced. Cooper alone of the national Chartist leadership was convicted

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(at a different trial), having spoken at strike meetings in the Potteries. He was to write a long,

and now unreadable[discuss], poem in prison called the Purgatory of Suicides.[citation needed]

Mid-Forties

Despite this second set of arrests, Chartist activity continued. Beginning in 1843, O'Connor
suggested that the land contained the solution to workers' problems. This idea evolved into the
Chartist Co-operative Land Company, later called the National Land Company. Workers would

buy shares in the company, and the company would use those funds to purchase estates that
would be subdivided into 2, 3, and 4 acre (8,000, 12,400 and 16,000 m²) lots. Between 1844

and 1848, five estates were purchased, subdivided, and built on, and then settled by lucky
shareholders, who were chosen by lot. Unfortunately for O'Connor, in 1848 a Select Committee
was appointed by Parliament to investigate the financial viability of the scheme, and it was

ordered that it be shut down. Cottages built by the Chartist Land Company are still standing and
inhabited today in Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire[17] and on the outskirts of
London. Rosedene, a Chartist cottage in Dodford, Worcestershire, is owned and maintained by

the National Trust, and is open to visitors by appointment.

Candidates embracing Chartism also stood on numerous occasions in general elections. There
were concerted campaigns in the election of 1841 and election of 1847, when O'Connor was
elected for Nottingham. Feargus became the only Chartist to be elected an MP; it was a
remarkable victory for the movement. More commonly, Chartist candidates participated in the
open meetings, called hustings, that were the first stage of an election. They frequently won the

show of hands at the hustings, but then withdrew from the poll to expose the deeply

undemocratic nature of the electoral system. This is what Harney did in a widely reported
challenge against Lord Palmerston in Tiverton, Devon in 1847. The last Chartist challenge at a
parliamentary poll took place at Ripon in 1859.[1]:178–83,279–86,339–40

1848 Petition

With O'Connor elected an MP and Europe swept by revolution, it was hardly surprising that
Chartism re-emerged as a powerful force in 1848. On 10 April 1848, a new Chartist Convention

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organised a mass meeting on Kennington Common, which would form a procession to present

a third petition to Parliament. The estimate of the number of attendees varies depending on the
sources (O'Connor said 300,000; the government, 15,000; The Observer newspaper suggested

50,000). Historians say 150,000.[19]:129–42 The authorities were well aware that the Chartists
had no intention of staging an uprising, but were still intent on a large-scale display of force to
counter the challenge. 100,000 special constables were recruited to bolster the police force.[20]

In any case, the meeting was peaceful. The military had threatened to intervene if working

people made any attempt to cross the Thames, and the petition was delivered to Parliament by
a small group of Chartist leaders. The Chartists declared that their petition was signed by 6
million people, but House of Commons clerks announced that it was a lesser figure of 1.9

million. In truth, the clerks could not have done their work in the time allocated to them; but their
figure was widely reported, along with some of the pseudonyms appended to the petition such

as "Punch" and "Sibthorp" (an ultra-Tory MP), and the credibility of Chartism was undermined.

After the defeat of April 1848, there was an increase rather than a decline in Chartist activity. In
Bingley, Yorkshire, a group of "physical force" Chartists led by Isaac Ickeringill were involved in
a huge fracas at the local magistrates' court and later were prosecuted for rescuing two of their
compatriots from the police.[21] The high-point of the Chartist threat to the establishment in
1848 came not in on 10 April but in June, when there was widespread drilling and arming in the
West Riding the devising of plots in London.[19]:116–22[22] The banning of public meetings,
and new legislation on sedition and treason (rushed through Parliament immediately after 10
April), drove a significant number of Chartists (including the black Londoner William Cuffay) into
the planning of insurrection. Cuffay was to be transported, dying in Australia.

O'Connor's egotism and vanity have been identified as causes in the failure of Chartism. This
was a common theme in histories of the movement until the 1970s.[23] However, since the
1980s, historians (notably Dorothy Thompson) have emphasised the indispensable contribution

O'Connor made to Chartism. Further, she argues that the causes of the movement's decline are

too complex to be blamed on one man.[3][24] Historians have recently shown interest in
Chartism after 1848. The final National Convention—attended by only a handful—was held in

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1858. Throughout the 1850s, there remained pockets of strong support for the Chartist cause in

places such as the Black Country.

Ernest Charles Jones became a leading figure in the National Charter Association during its
years of decline, together with George Julian Harney, and helped to give the Chartist movement
a clearer socialist direction.[26] Jones and Harney knew Karl Marx[27] and Friedrich Engels[28]

personally. Marx and Engels at the same time commented on the Chartist movement and
Jones' work in their letters and articles

Agricultural Revolution:

The British Agricultural Revolution was the unprecedented increase in agricultural production in
Britain due to increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th

centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over the century to 1770, and
thereafter productivity remained among the highest in the world. This increase in the food

supply contributed to the rapid growth of population in England and Wales, from 5.5 million in
1700 to over 9 million by 1801 though domestic production gave way increasingly to food
imports in the nineteenth century as population more than tripled to over 32 million.[1] The rise

in productivity accelerated the decline of the agricultural share of the labour force, adding to the
urban workforce on which industrialization depended: the Agricultural Revolution has therefore
been cited as a cause of the Industrial Revolution.[2]

One important element in this change was the move in crop rotation to turnips and clover in

place of fallow. Turnips can be grown in winter and are deep rooted, allowing them to gather
minerals unavailable to shallow rooted crops. Clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere into a

form of fertiliser. This permitted the intensive arable cultivation of light soils on enclosed farms
and provided fodder to support increased livestock numbers whose manure added further to soil
fertility.

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Causes:

The Agricultural Revolution that took place during the 18th century in Europe was caused by

four primary factors, which were the increased availability of and access to farmland, a warm
and stable climate for crop production, an increase in number of livestock and a more
voluminous crop yield. The Agricultural Revolution that swept through Europe during the 18th

and 19th centuries came many years after the first Agricultural Revolution recorded by
historians, which took place around 10,000 B.C. While the first revolution introduced a societal

change from nomadic lifestyles to stationary farms and villages, the second revolution occurred

because of an influx of new technologies that improved farming techniques and made farming
more efficient.

During the European Agricultural Revolution, societies continued to live stationary lifestyles, but

farming shifted from just sustaining families and communities to providing economic benefits
too. The climate around Europe gradually grew warmer during the later part of the 17th century
and early years of the 18th century, which in turn allowed for the introduction of new crops, and

more of them. Warmer temperatures also brought longer growing seasons, which in turn
allowed for production of more crops. Machines replaced human labor, minimizing costs for

farmers and expediting production, and crops were grown on larger scales, then harvested and
shipped for sale.

Effects on Political and Social Life of Britain

The British Agricultural Revolution was the cause of drastic changes in the lives of British
women. Before the Agricultural Revolution, women worked alongside their husbands in the

fields and were an active part of farming. The increased efficiency of the new machinery, along
with the fact that this new machinery was often heavier and difficult for a woman to wield, made
this unnecessary and impractical, and women were relegated to other roles in society. To
supplement the family's income, many went into cottage industries. Others became domestic

servants or were forced into professions such as prostitution. The new, limited roles of women,
dubbed by one historian as "this defamation of women workers", (Valenze) fueled prejudices of

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women only being fit to work in the home, and also effectively separated them from the new,

mechanized areas of work, leading to a divide in the pay between men and women.

INCREASE IN POPULATION:

The Agricultural Revolution in Britain proved to be a major turning point in history. The
population in 1750 reached the level of 5.7 million. This had happened before: in around 1300
and again in 1650. Each time, the appropriate agricultural infrastructure to support a population

this high was not present, and the population fell. However, by 1750, when the population
reached this level again, an onset in agricultural technology and new methodology allowed the

population growth to be sustained.

MORE DEMAND FOR GOODS:

The increase in population led to more demand from the people for goods such as clothing. A

new class of landless labourers, products of enclosure, provided the basis for cottage industry,
a stepping stone to the Industrial Revolution. To supply continually growing demand, shrewd
businessmen began to pioneer new technology to meet demand from the people. This led to the

first industrial factories. People who once were farmers moved to large cities to get jobs in the
factories. It should be noted that the British Agricultural Revolution not only made the population
increase possible, but also increased the yield per agricultural worker, meaning that a larger
percentage of the population could work in these new, post-Agricultural Revolution jobs.

Robert Peel and Returns of Torries:

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British statesman and

member of the Conservative Party, who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
(1834–1835 and 1841–1846) and twice served as Home Secretary (1822–1827 and 1828–
1830). He is regarded as the father of the modern British police and as one of the founders of

the modern Conservative Party.

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The son of wealthy textile manufacturer and politician Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, he was

educated at Bury Grammar School and Harrow School and earned a double first in classics and
mathematics from Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the House of Commons in 1809 under the

tutelage of his father and Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Peel was widely
seen as a "rising star" in the Conservative Party and served in various junior ministerial offices,
including Chief Secretary for Ireland (1812–1818) and Chairman of the Bullion Committee.

Peel entered the Cabinet for the first time as Home Secretary (1822–1827), where he reformed

and liberalised the criminal law and created the modern police force, leading to a new type of

officer known in tribute to him as "bobbies" and "peelers". He cut tariffs to stimulate business; to
replace the lost revenue he pushed through a 3% income tax. He played a central role in
making Free Trade a reality and set up a modern banking system. After the resignation of Prime

Minister The Earl of Liverpool, Peel resigned as Home Secretary but, after a brief period out of
office, he returned as Home Secretary under his political mentor the Duke of Wellington (1828–
1830), also serving as Leader of the House of Commons. Initially a supporter of legal
discrimination against Catholics, Peel eventually supported the repeal of the Test Act (1828)
and the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, claiming that "though emancipation was a great
danger, civil strife was a greater danger".

In 1830, the Whigs finally returned to power and Peel became a member of the Opposition for
the first time. After successive election defeats, leadership of the Conservative Party gradually
passed from Wellington to Peel and, when King William IV asked Wellington to become Prime

Minister in November 1834, he declined and Peel was selected instead, with Wellington serving
as caretaker until Peel took office. Peel then issued the Tamworth Manifesto, laying down the

principles upon which the modern British Conservative Party is based. His first ministry was a
minority government, dependent on Whig support and with Peel serving as his own Chancellor
of the Exchequer. After only four months, his government collapsed and he served as Leader of

the Opposition during the second government of The Viscount Melbourne (1835–1841). Peel

declined to become Prime Minister of another minority government again in May 1839,
prompting a political crisis. He finally became Prime Minister again, after the 1841 general

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election. His second government ruled for five years and its major legislation included the Mines

and Collieries Act 1842, the Income Tax Act 1842, the Factories Act 1844 and the Railway
Regulation Act 1844.

Peel's government was weakened by anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment following the
controversial Maynooth Grant of 1845 and, following the outbreak of the Great Irish Potato

Famine, his decision to join with Whigs and Radicals to repeal the Corn Laws led to his
resignation as Prime Minister in 1846. Peel remained an influential backbencher and leader of

the Peelite faction until his death in 1850. Peel often started from a traditional Tory position in

opposition to a measure, then reversed himself and became the leader in supporting liberal
legislation. This happened with the Test Act, Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Act, income tax
and, most notably, the repeal of the Corn Laws as the first two years of the Irish famine forced

this resolution because of the urgent need for new food supplies. Peel, a Conservative,
achieved repeal with the support of the Whigs in Parliament, overcoming the opposition of most
of his own party. Therefore, many critics said he was a traitor to the Tory cause, or "a Liberal
wolf in sheep's clothing" because his final position reflected liberal ideas.[2] Historian A.J.P.
Taylor says: "Peel was in the first rank of 19th century statesman. He carried Catholic
Emancipation; he repealed the Corn Laws; he created the modern Conservative Party on the
ruins of the old Toryism.

Internal Policies:

The ministry formed by Sir Robert Peel in September 1841 was more Liberal in its elements
than the Conservative party in Parliament; for the Duke of Wellington, who joined the Cabinet

without taking office, was fully alive to the necessity for making concessions which he regarded
as being in themselves undesirable. Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham had both been in the
past associated with Melbourne. A minor office was found for Gladstone, a young man for whom

a brilliant future was anticipated; but Benjamin Disraeli, in spite of the remarkable talents which
he had already displayed, was too little trusted, consequently he nursed a grudge against Peel
for refusing him the advancement to which he considered himself entitled. The bedchamber

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question, it should be remarked, was not revived. By the advice of Lord Melbourne the queen

had already deprived her house­hold of its partisan aspect by admitting some Opposition ladies,
and it was not possible to assert the claim that ladies should be changed with changing

ministries.

Peel had obtained a majority in the country not so much on the ground of positive objections to

the Government policy as because ministers had recently given a general impression of
feebleness and incompetence of endeavouring to face their difficulties by mere makeshifts.

When Parliament met at the beginning of 1842 the new ministers had plenty of problems to

solve. Chartism was again becoming active, trade was depressed, want was widespread,
Ireland was disturbed, rumours of disaster had come from India. The country at least hoped that
the financial ability with which Peel was credited would find some solution for the existing

problems so far, at least, as they sprang from economic causes. He was hardly committed to
anything more than the maintenance of the principle of the sliding scale, as against the fixed
duty on corn proposed by the Liberals. His first budget was, therefore, awaited with no little
anxiety.

Income Tax

A very large amount of Peel's support inside and outside the House came from the landed
interest, which was extremely averse from any tampering with the Corn Laws, which in their
eyes gave too little rather than too much protection to the agricultural body on whose prosperity
that of the nation depended. On the other hand, among the manufacturing class especially, the

Anti-Corn-Law League had been developing the conviction that the high price of corn was the

root cause of the general distress. Peel dealt with the Corn Law by providing a new sliding
scale, of which the primary object was to prevent violent fluctuations of price while ensuring a
tolerably remunerative minimum. With corn at fifty shillings a quarter or less there was to be a

twenty shilling duty on the foreign import. With corn at seventy-five shillings or more there was
to be no duty. Between these two points there was to be a graduated reduction of duty as the

price rose. A preference was also given, in the form of lower duties, to colonial as against
foreign corn. Amendments on the one side in favour of abolishing the duty, and of making it

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more stringent on the other, were defeated by overwhelming majorities, and the official Liberal

amendment in favour of a fixed duty fared not very much better. But there -were some who
believed that Peel already in the bottom of his heart was a convert to the views of the League,

though he was still trying to persuade himself that his convictions were unchanged.

The new sliding scale at any rate shelved the Corn Law question for a time. But the problem of

providing public revenue was serious. Year after year the Liberal budgets had ended in deficits,
which had not been removed by attempts to enlarge the revenue either by the increase or by

the diminution of duties. Some fresh source of taxation must be found or some old source again

called into play. In this fateful year Peel revived the Income Tax, which Pitt had introduced for
the purpose of the great war, but which had been swept aside, as justified only by war, soon
after the peace. Peel himself regarded it now only as an emergency tax which would cease to

be necessary when trade revived. He anticipated its disappearance in five years' time. Many
Chancellors of the Exchequer have indulged in similar anticipations and all have been doomed
to a similar disappointment. Not till the twentieth century did it come to be recognised in form as
well as in fact as a permanent source of revenue, though it has never been remitted since 1842.

One purpose of the income tax was to tide over a period during which the revenue was to suffer

immediate loss for the sake of future gain by the reduction of duties on imports. Out of twelve
hundred articles on which a duty was at this time levied nearly two-thirds were to have the
existing duty reduced; it was expected that after three years the return to the revenue would
become greater instead of smaller, but that in the meanwhile the loss would amount to not much

less than the receipts from the income tax, which was fixed at 7d. in the pound. The sugar duty
was retained unaltered. The Opposition were able to point to the inconsistency of reducing a

very large number of taxes for the benefit of the consumer with very little regard to the
producer's interest, coupled with the retention of the heavy taxes on corn and sugar, which put
money into the pockets of the landed interest, on whose political support the Government

depended, and of the wealthy planters whose influence was of great value to them. There was

also not a little grumbling on the part of the home producer of goods on which the duties were

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reduced. Peel, however, was strong enough to override the opposition both of opponents of the

Corn Law and of the advocates of higher protective tariffs.

The second Chartist Petition

The next budget of importance came three years later in 1845. Meanwhile, apart from Ireland,
which was a constant thorn in the side of every government, Chartism and legislation with
regard to labour had again compelled attention. In 1842 the second great Chartist petition was

presented demanding the "six points" and protesting against what it described as "class
legislation." It was evident enough that the petitioners expected by the acquisition of political

power, through the six points of the Charter, to be able to subvert the existing order of society in
the supposed interests of the working class; and it was this expectation on their part which more
than anything else inspired in the dominant classes a dread of any extension of popular power.

As before, the House refused to give the petitioners a hearing. The result was that later in the
same year there were serious Chartist riots which necessitated the intervention of the military;
but the Government measures were effective, and the Chartists themselves became more and

more definitely divided into Physical Force men and Moral Force men who relied upon
constitutional agitation in preference to the methods of violence.

The Collieries Bill

Althorp's Factory Act had been directed exclusively to the protection of children in textile
factories. Now public sentiment was horrified by the report of a commission on the conditions of

labour in the coalfields. An appalling state of things was revealed, in which large numbers of
women were engaged in hard underground labour for which they were totally unfitted, and

which could not but be ruinous not only to their own health, but to the physique of the next
generation. No less intolerable was the overextensive employment of quite young children in
similar occupations which to the present generation would be simply inconceivable. So intense
was the public feeling aroused that, when Lord Ashley introduced his Collieries Bill to exclude all

females and all boys under thirteen from underground work, it was carried in the House of
Commons without a division.

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The Act for the first time brought women as well as children within the scope of legislation.

Arguments for the protection of children, it was seen applied in principle to the protection of
women. They were not free agents, and could make no terms for themselves. The question of

their treatment affected not only themselves but that of the physical and mental degeneration of
the race. Accordingly, after two abortive attempts a new amending Factory Act was passed in
1844, which reduced the working hours of children to half-time in a day of fifteen hours in

factories, and restricted to twelve the working hours of women as well as of young persons.

Trade

The budget of 1845 showed a marked advance in the direction of Free Trade, of which there
had been some warning in the previous year. Export duties were to be abolished, as well as
duties on the import of four hundred and thirty articles of raw material. The very considerable

gain to the manufacturing interest did not make the budget satisfactory to. the high
Protectionists, and Disraeli denounced the Government as an "organised hypocrisy"; but the
support which Peel lost from his own party he recovered from members of the Opposition, and

the budget was carried by large majorities. At the same time a breach between the minister and
many of his Conservative followers was widened by his Irish policy; and Ireland was now to be

the decisive factor first in determining his complete conversion to the doctrines of the Anti-Corn-
Law League and then in putting an end to his administration.

Irish Problem:

Famine in Ireland

A tremendous visitation of the potato blight entirely ruined the potato crop in Ireland, and
brought not merely destitution but starvation in its train. In November Peel proposed to his
Cabinet the suspension, which every one knew must mean the abolition, of the duties on
imported corn, since the provision of cheap food had become an absolute necessity. All but a
section of the Cabinet was obdurate. Peel in the circumstances hesitated to introduce a
measure which involved an entire reversal of the principles he had maintained when he took

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office. The thing should be done by the Opposition, though with the support of himself and his

followers. He resigned, but Russell failed to form a ministry. Peel resumed office with a Free
Trade programme and with an opposition to that programme which was now confined to the

extreme Protectionists, led nominally by Lord George Bentinck but in fact by Benjamin Disraeli.
The duties on very nearly all raw materials were to be abolished, as well as on sundry articles of
manufacture. On many others they were to be-largely reduced. The corn duties were to

disappear in three years' time except for a fixed registration charge of one shilling. In the

interval, to soften the blow to the agricultural interest, there was to be a low sliding scale ranging
from ten shillings when wheat was at forty-eight shillings a quarter or less to four shillings when
it. was at fifty-four shillings or more. In May the Corn Bill passed its third reading in the House of

Commons; the Lords followed the lead of the Duke of Wellington and passed the third reading
on June 25th.

But on the same day a Coercion Bill for Ireland was defeated in the House of Commons by a
combination of Liberals who were opposed to the bill in principle and Protectionists who bad
clamoured for it but were determined to wreck the administration. They succeeded. But the Corn
Bill received the royal assent; Peel's task was done; he resigned, and Lord John Russell
accepted the task of forming a ministry.

Return of Torries:

The Tories were members of two political parties which existed, sequentially, in the Kingdom of
England, the Kingdom of Great Britain and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

from the 17th to the early 19th centuries.

The first Tories emerged in 1678 in England, when they opposed the Whig-supported Exclusion
Bill which set out to disinherit the heir presumptive James, Duke of York (who eventually
became James II of England and VII of Scotland). This party ceased to exist as an organised
political entity in the early 1760s, although it was used as a term of self-description by some

political writers. A few decades later, a new Tory party would rise to establish a hold on

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government between 1783 and 1830, with William Pitt the Younger followed by Robert

Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.[2]

The Earl of Liverpool was succeeded by fellow Tory Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,
whose term included the Catholic Emancipation, which occurred mostly due to the election of
Daniel O'Connell as a Catholic MP from Ireland. When the Whigs subsequently regained

control, the Representation of the People Act 1832 removed the rotten boroughs, many of which
were controlled by Tories. In the following general election, the Tory ranks were reduced to 180

MPs. Under the leadership of Robert Peel, the Tamworth Manifesto was issued, which began to

transform the Tories into the Conservative Party. However, Peel lost many of his supporters by
repealing the Corn Laws, causing the party to break apart.[3] One faction, led by the Earl of
Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, survived to become the modern Conservative Party, whose

members are commonly still referred to as Tories.

1678–1760

Tories

The first Tory party could trace its principles and politics, though not its organization, to the
English Civil War which divided England between the Royalist (or "Cavalier") supporters of King
Charles I and the supporters of the Long Parliament upon which the King had declared war.
This action resulted from this parliament not allowing him to levy taxes without yielding to its
terms. In the beginning of the Long Parliament (1641), the King's supporters were few in

number, and the Parliament pursued a course of reform of previous abuses. The increasing
radicalism of the Parliamentary majority, however, estranged many reformers even in the

Parliament itself, and drove them to make common cause with the King. The King's party thus
comprised a mixture of supporters of royal autocracy, and of those Parliamentarians who felt
that the Long Parliament had gone too far in attempting to gain executive power for itself and,
more especially, in undermining the episcopalian government of the Church of England, which

was felt to be a primary support of royal government. By the end of the 1640s, the radical

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Parliamentary programme had become clear: reduction of the King to a powerless figurehead,

and replacement of Anglican episcopacy with a form of Presbyterianism.

This prospective form of settlement was prevented by a coup d'état which shifted power from
Parliament itself to the Parliamentary New Model Army, controlled by Oliver Cromwell. The
Army had King Charles I executed, and for the next eleven years the British kingdoms operated

under military dictatorship. The Restoration of King Charles II produced a reaction in which the
King regained a large part of the power held by his father; however, Charles' ministers and

supporters in England accepted a substantial role for Parliament in the government of the

kingdoms. No subsequent British monarch would attempt to rule without Parliament, and after
the Glorious Revolution of 1688, political disputes would be resolved through elections and
parliamentary manoeuvring, rather than by an appeal to force.

Charles II also restored episcopacy in the Church of England. His first "Cavalier Parliament"
began as a strongly royalist body, and passed a series of acts re-establishing the Church by law
and strongly punishing dissent by both Roman Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants. These

acts did not reflect the King's personal views, and demonstrated the existence of a Royalist
ideology beyond mere subservience to the Court.

A series of disasters in the late 1660s and 1670s discredited Charles II's governments, and
powerful political interests (including some who had been identified with the Parliamentary side
in the Civil War) began to agitate for a greater role of Parliament in government, coupled with
more tolerance for Protestant dissenters. These interests would soon coalesce as the Whigs. As

direct attacks on the King were politically impossible and could lead to execution for treason,

opponents of the power of the Court framed their challenges as exposés of subversive and
sinister Catholic plots. Although the matter of these plots was fictitious, they reflected two
uncomfortable political realities: first, that Charles II had (somewhat insincerely) undertaken

measures to convert the kingdom to Catholicism (in a 1670 treaty with Louis XIV of France);
second, that his younger brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, had in fact

converted to Catholicism, an act that many Protestant Englishmen in the 1670s saw as only one
step below high treason.

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1678–1688

James, Duke of York painted in a Romanesque costume.

As a political term, Tory entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–81. The
Whigs (initially an insult — 'whiggamore,' a cattle driver,[4]) were those who supported the
exclusion of James, the Duke of York from the succession to thrones of Scotland and England &

Ireland (the 'Petitioners'), and the Tories (also an insult, derived from the Middle Irish word

tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí — outlaw, robber, from the Irish word tóir, meaning 'pursuit', since
outlaws were "pursued men".[5][6]) were those who opposed the Exclusion Bill (the Abhorrers).

The Whigs tried to link the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormonde, with the foremost
Irish Tory, Redmond O'Hanlon, in a supposed plot to murder Titus Oates. The Whig Bishop of

Meath, Henry Jones, offered O'Hanlon a pardon and a bribe if he would testify to Parliament
that Ormonde was plotting a French invasion. In December 1680 the government seized these
letters and the plan collapsed. In January 1681 the Whigs first began calling the supposed Irish

plotters Tories, and on 15 February 1681 is recorded the first complaint from an English Royalist
about the epithet Tory by the anti-Exclusion newspaper Heraclitus Ridens: "...they call me
scurvy names, Jesuit, Papish, Tory; and flap me over the mouth with their being the only True
Protestants".[7] Within a few months anti-Exclusionists were calling themselves Tories: a
northern Dissenter called Oliver Heywood recorded in October: "Ms. H. of Chesterfield told me a

gentleman was at their house and had a red Ribband in his hat, she askt him what it meant, he
said it signifyed that he was a Tory, whats that sd she, he ans. an Irish Rebel, - oh dreadful that

any in England dare espouse that interest. I hear further since that this is the distinction they
make instead of Cavalier and Roundhead, now they are called Torys and Wiggs".[8]

In a more general sense, the Tories represented the more conservative royalist supporters of
Charles II, who endorsed a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the power of Parliament,

and who saw in the Whig opponents of the Court a quasi-Republican tendency (similar to that
seen in the Long Parliament) to strip the monarchy of its essential prerogative powers and leave

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the Crown as a puppet entirely dependent upon Parliament. That the Exclusion Bill was the

central question upon which parties diverged, did not hinge upon an assessment of the personal
character of the Duke of York (though his conversion to Catholicism was the key factor that

made the Bill possible), but rather upon the power of Parliament to elect a monarch of its own
choosing, contrary to the established laws of succession. That the Parliament, with the consent
of the King, had such power was not at issue; rather, it was the wisdom of a policy of creating a

King whose sole title to the Crown was the will of Parliament, and who was essentially a

Parliamentary appointee.

On this original question, the Tories were, in the short run, entirely successful; the Parliaments
that brought in the Exclusion Bill were dissolved, Charles II was enabled to manage the
administration autocratically, and upon his death the Duke of York succeeded without difficulty.

The rebellion of Monmouth, the candidate of the radical Whigs to succeed Charles II, was easily
crushed and Monmouth himself executed. In the long run, however, Tory principles were to be
severely compromised.

Besides the support of a strong monarchy, the Tories also stood for the Church of England, as
established in Acts of Parliament following the restoration of Charles II — both as a body

governed by bishops, using the Book of Common Prayer, and subscribing to a specific doctrine,
and also as an exclusive body established by law, from which both Roman Catholics and
Nonconformists were excluded.

James II, however, during his reign fought for a broadly tolerant religious settlement under

which his co-religionists could prosper—a position anathema to conservative Anglicans. James'

attempts to use the government-controlled church to promote policies that undermined the
church's own unique status in the state, led some Tories to support the Glorious Revolution of
1688. The result was a King established solely by Parliamentary title, and subject to legal

controls established by Parliament, the principles that the Tories had originally "abhorred". The
Tories' sole consolation was that the monarchs chosen were close to the main line of

succession — William III was James II's nephew, and William's wife Mary was James's elder
daughter. The Act of Toleration 1689 also gave rights to Protestant dissenters that were hitherto

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unknown, while the elimination of a large number of bishops who refused to swear allegiance to

the new monarchs allowed the government to pack the episcopate with bishops with decidedly
Whiggish leanings. In both these respects the Tory platform had failed; however, the institutions

of monarchy and of a state Church survived.

1688–1714

Despite the failure of their founding principles, the Tories remained a powerful political party

during the reigns of the next two monarchs, particularly that of Queen Anne. During this time,
the Tories fiercely competed with the Whigs for power, and there were frequent Parliamentary

elections in which the two parties measured their strength.

Balanced ministries

William III saw that the Tories were generally more friendly to royal authority than the Whigs,

and he employed both groups in his government. His early ministry was largely Tory, but
gradually the government came to be dominated by the so-called Junto Whigs. This tight-knit
political grouping was opposed by the "Country Whigs", led by Robert Harley, who gradually

merged with the Tory opposition in the later 1690s.

Although William's successor Anne had considerable Tory sympathies and excluded the Junto

Whigs from power, after a brief and unsuccessful experiment with an exclusively Tory
government she generally continued William's policy of balancing the parties, supported by her
moderate Tory ministers, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Godolphin.

Opposition

However, the stresses of the War of the Spanish Succession (begun in 1701) led most of the

Tories to withdraw into opposition by 1708, so that Marlborough and Godolphin were heading
an administration dominated by the Junto Whigs. Anne herself grew increasingly uncomfortable
with this dependence on the Whigs, especially as her personal relationship with the Duchess of
Marlborough deteriorated. This situation also became increasingly uncomfortable to many of the
non-Junto Whigs, led by the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Shrewsbury, who began to

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intrigue with Robert Harley's Tories. In early 1710, the prosecution by the Whig government of

the ultra-Tory preacher Dr. Henry Sacheverell for sermons delivered the previous year, led to
the Sacheverell riots and brought the ministry into popular discredit. In the spring of 1710, Anne

dismissed Godolphin and the Junto ministers, replacing them with Tories.

Last Tory government

The new Tory ministry was dominated by Harley, Chancellor of the Exchequer (later Lord

Treasurer) and Viscount Bolingbroke, Secretary of State. They were backed by a strong
majority in the Parliament elected in 1710, rallying under the banner of "Church in Danger". This

Tory government negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which pulled Great Britain out of the
War of the Spanish Succession (to the dismay of Britain's allies, including Anne's eventual
successor, George, Elector of Hanover); the peace was enacted despite a Whig majority in the

House of Lords, which Anne defeated by creating new Tory peers.

In 1714, following a long disagreement between the ministers, Anne dismissed Harley; the arch-
Tory Bolingbroke became in effect Anne's chief minister, and Tory power seemed to be at its
zenith. However, Anne was extremely ill and died within a few days. Bolingbroke had not been

able to formulate any coherent plans for dealing with the succession; if he thought of
proclaiming the son of James II (the Pretender) as king, he made no moves to do so. The
Elector George succeeded to the throne entirely peacefully.

1714–1760: Proscription and the Whig supremacy

In accordance with the laws of the time, the Queen's government was replaced by a Council of
Regency until the new King should arrive from Hanover. Bolingbroke offered his services to the
King but was coldly rejected; George I brought in a government composed entirely of Whigs,

and the new Parliament, elected from January to May 1715, had a large Whig majority. In
December 1714 Lord Carnarvon wrote that "hardly one Tory is left in any place, though never so
mean a one".[9] The historian Eveline Cruickshanks stated that "What took place in 1715 was

not a change to an all-Whig ministry, it was a whole social revolution".[10] For the first time Tory
gentlemen could no longer employ their sons, as they traditionally had done, in public offices

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such as the Army, Navy, civil service and the Church. Tory officers in the Army had their

commissions taken away, Tory lawyers could not now become judges or K.C.s. The mostly Tory
lower Anglican clergy could no longer become bishops and Tory merchants were refused

government contracts or directorships in any major company.[11] This proscription lasted forty-
five years.[12] George Lyttelton wrote in his Letter to the Tories (1747):

We are kept out of all public employments of power and profit, and live like aliens and pilgrims in
the land of our nativity...no quality, no fortune, no eloquence, no learning, no wisdom, no probity

is of any use to any man of our unfortunate denomination, ecclesiastic or layman, lawyer or

soldier, peer or commoner, for obtaining the most deserved advancement in his profession, or
any favour of the Crown; whilst, to our additional and insupportable vexation, the bare merit of
hating us, and everything we love and hold sacred, daily advances dunces in the law and

church, cowards in our fleets and armies, republicans in the King's house, and idiots
everywhere.

The Whig government, backed by royal favour and controlling the levers of power, was able to

maintain a series of majorities through the infrequent elections of the next several decades (only
7 in the 46 years of the first two Georges, as opposed to 11 in the 26 years from the Revolution

to the death of Queen Anne). For much of the period, the Tories commanded a broad base of
support in rural England, but the relatively undemocratic nature of the franchise and the
maldistribution of the borough seats ensured that this popular appeal was never translated into
a Tory majority in Parliament. The Tories would have won every general election between 1715

and 1747 had the number of seats obtained corresponded to the number of votes cast.[13] The
Tories were therefore an effectively null factor in practical politics, a permanent minority in

Parliament and entirely excluded from government. The latter exclusion, and the rigid party
politics played by the Whigs, played a significant role in the cohesion of the Tories; the Whigs
offered few opportunities for Tories who switched sides, and as a party the Tories found no

possibilities for compromise with the Whigs.

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James Stuart was the Pretender during the Jacobite rising of 1715. Gaining some Tory support,

it was thus used to discredit them by the Whigs.

The proscription of the Tories alienated them from the Hanoverian regime and converted many
of them to Jacobitism.[14] Bolingbroke later wrote: "If milder measures had been pursued,
certain it is that the Tories had never universally embraced Jacobitism. The violence of the

Whigs forced them into the arms of the Pretender".[15] The French ambassador, d'Iberville, in
October 1714 noted that the number of Jacobites in the Tory party was increasing and in early

1715 he wrote that the Tories seemed to be "heading for civil war which they regard as their

only resort".[14] The previous Tory chief minister, Lord Oxford, was impeached and sent to the
Tower, with Bolingbroke and the Tory peer the Duke of Ormonde fleeing to France to join the
Pretender. A series of riots against the coronation of George I and the new Hanoverian-Whig

regime (in which the mob voiced their support for Jacobitism and local Tory parliamentary
candidates) led to the Whig government strengthening their power by passing the Riot Act,
suspending habeas corpus and increasing the army (including importing 6,000 Dutch
troops).[14]

Louis XIV had promised them arms but no troops, as France was exhausted by war, despite

Bolingbroke's claim that just one-tenth of the number of troops William of Orange brought with
him in 1688 would have sufficed.[15] However this promise of arms disappeared when Louis
died in September 1715 and the planned English rising in the West Country was going to be
abandoned until the Scots forced their hand by unilaterally raising the Pretender's standard.

One of Ormonde's agents betrayed the plans for an English rising and subsequently the
government arrested many Tory MPs, ex-MPs and peers.[16] The subsequent Jacobite

rebellion of 1715–16 resulted in failure. However Charles XII of Sweden was willing to aid the
English Tories by sending troops to put the Pretender on the throne, in conjunction with an
English rising. Lord Oxford, who had already in 1716 offered the Pretender his services,

directed the Swedish Plot from the Tower. In January 1717 the government discovered this plot

and won a vote of credit for defence measures against the projected invasion in the Commons

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against Tory opposition. Charles' death in 1718 ended hopes from that quarter and Ormonde's

planned Spanish invasion was destroyed by a storm at sea.[17]

During the Whig split of 1717 the Tories refused to back either side and adopted the same
stance to Lord Sunderland's overtures in 1720. In 1722 Sunderland advised the King of
admitting leading Tories into government in order to divide them and end their hopes of revenge

by looking for support from abroad. He also advised the King in Cabinet for elections to
Parliament free from government bribery, an idea Sir Robert Walpole opposed due to the

possibility of a Tory Parliament. The King was also opposed: "King George stared the Earl of

Sunderland in the face at the name of a Tory Parliament, for it seems nothing is so hideous and
frightful to him as a Tory".[18] The public outcry over the South Sea Bubble led the Tories to
believe that it would not be worthwhile raising funds for the general election as a Jacobite rising

would be successful considering the state of public opinion.[18]

Sunderland joined the Tories in the Atterbury Plot, in which the Pretender was to be put on the
throne. A rising was planned for each county, assisted by Irish and Spanish troops. However

Sunderland's death in April 1722 led to the government discovering the plot and it subsequently
collapsed.[19] When the Commons voted on the bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury,

nearly ninety per cent of Tory MPs voted against it.[20] Although the Whig Prime Minister
Walpole decided not to prosecute the Tories he knew were involved in the plot, the Tories were
demoralised and largely absented themselves from Parliament for a time.[21] Upon the
accession of George II in 1727 and the ensuing general election, the Tories were reduced to

128 MPs, their lowest total up to this point.[22]

The Tories were divided on whether to cooperate with the opposition Whigs, with those
agreeing consisting of the Hanoverian faction led by Sir William Wyndham and opposed by the
Jacobite faction headed by William Shippen.[22] Most Tories opposed voting with the opposition

Whigs until 1730, only reversing this stance when the Pretender sent a letter to the Tories
ordering them to "unite in the measures against the Government and even with those who

oppose it for different views than theirs".[23][24] For the next decade the Tories cooperated with
the opposition Whigs.[25] Public admission of Jacobitism was treason, so the Tories challenged

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the Hanoverian-Whig regime without specifically addressing it by developing a rhetoric

borrowed from the Whigs of the Exclusion Crisis; they denounced government corruption and
the high taxation needed to spend on foreign entanglements, opposed the growth of the Army

and "tyranny" and "arbitrary power".[26][27] In a speech on the Army estimates, Walpole
claimed that "No man of common prudence will profess himself openly a Jacobite; by so doing
he not only may injure his private fortune, but he must render himself less able to do any

effectual service to the cause he has embraced...Your right Jacobite, Sir, disguises his true

sentiments, he roars out for revolution principles; he pretends to be a great friend to liberty".[28]
He further claimed that a large Army was needed to defeat any possible Jacobite invasion.

In 1737 Frederick, Prince of Wales applied to Parliament for an increased allowance. The Tories
split, with 45 abstaining and the motion being defeated by 30 votes. Bolingbroke, still wanting to

dissociate the Tories from Jacobitism, denounced this as "the absurd behaviour of the Tories,
which no experience can cure".[25] In 1738 Frederick's attempts to reconcile with the Tories
broke down on Wyndham's insistence that he join the Tories in arguing for a reduced Army.[25]
With the outbreak of war against Spain in 1739, there was renewed plotting amongst Tories for
a Jacobite rising.[29] Wyndham's death in 1740 led to the breakdown of the coalition between
the Tories and opposition Whigs. An opposition Whig motion for Walpole's dismissal was
defeated by 290 to 106, with many Tories abstaining.[30] At the general election of 1741, there
were 136 Tories elected.[31]

The Tories resumed their cooperation with the opposition Whigs after receiving another letter

from the Pretender in September 1741, ordering them to "pursue vigorous and unanimous
measures in the next session of Parliament...They will probably have many occasions of greatly

distressing the present Government and ministry and perhaps find some who will concur with
them in that, though not out of goodwill to my cause...In such cases I hope my friends will make
no scruples in joining heartily with them for whatever their particular motives may be anything

that tends to the disadvantage of the present Government and to the bringing it into confusion

cannot be but of advantage to my cause".[32][33] As a result, 127 Tories joined the opposition
Whigs in successfully voting against Walpole's nominated chairman of the elections committee

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in December 1741.[32] The Tories voted against Walpole with the opposition Whigs in

subsequent divisions until Walpole was forced to resign in February 1742.[34] The Pretender
wrote to the Tories afterwards, declaring that "I cannot delay any longer expressing to you my

satisfaction at the late behaviour of my friends in Parliament, and I take it as a great mark of
their singular regard for what I wrote to you some months ago".[35]

In 1743 war broke out between Britain and France, as part of the larger War of the Austrian
Succession. Later that year Francis Sempill, the Pretender's representative at the French court,

carried a message from English Tories to the French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

(Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou) requesting French help in a Stuart restoration (including

10,000 French soldiers). It was signed by the Duke of Beaufort (one of the four richest people in
Britain), Lord Barrymore, Lord Orrery, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Sir John Hynde Cotton and Sir

Robert Abdy.[36] Amelot replied that the French government would need considerable proof of
English support for Jacobitism before it could act.[37]

James Butler, Louis XV's Master of Horse, toured England ostensibly for purchasing bloodstock

but in reality to gauge the health of Jacobitism in England, visiting leading Tories.[38] Before he
left for England the French king briefed him personally to assure the Tory leaders that all of their

demands would be met.[39] In November 1743 Amelot told Sempill officially that Louis XV was
resolved to restore the House of Stuart and was planning a French invasion headed by the
Pretender's son, Charles Edward Stuart.[40] The "Declaration of King James" (written by the
Tory leaders) was signed by the Pretender on 23 December and was to be published in the

event of a successful French landing.[41] However the Whig government was informed by a spy
of the intended French invasion and on 15 February 1744 King George told Parliament that a

French invasion was planned, helped by "disaffected persons from this country", and the House
of Commons passed a loyal address by 287 to 123.[42] The Tories' insistence for the House to
divide on this occasion seemed to the government a design by the Tories "to show the French

what numbers in the House they might depend on".[43] The Tories also opposed increasing the

armed forces, it being noted "that none of the leaders amongst the Tories, either on this

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occasion or that of the King's first message, showed the least sign of zeal or affection to the

Government".[43]

However, on 24 February a storm scattered the French invasion fleet and that same day arrests
of suspected Jacobites took place. The planned invasion was cancelled by the French
government.[44] Charles Stuart, who was still in France and determined to start a Jacobite

rising, looked to Scotland. However the English Tories would only support a rising in Scotland if
accompanied by a French invasion near London to aid the English Tories in their own rising.[45]

The English Tories repeatedly told the Jacobite court that only regular soldiers invading at the

same time as their rising could achieve a Stuart restoration.[46]

In December 1744 the Broadbottom Administration was formed, which included a handful of
Tories in minor offices. Some other Tories were offered places "but that serving for Jacobite

counties they could not hazard a new election and therefore decline the acceptance of
them".[47] One of the Tories who accepted office, Sir John Cotton, did not swear the oaths and
informed the French King that he still favoured a Jacobite French invasion and that the Tories in

office would try to make sure that more soldiers were sent from England to Flanders in order to
make it easier for an invasion.[47] After Lord Gower took office in this government, the Tories no

longer looked to him as their leader, as Lyttleton wrote: "...when it was discovered that Gower
was really a friend to the Hanover succession, the Tories discarded him for being their leader,
and adopted a determined Jacobite the Duke of Beaufort in his stead".[48] In June 1745 the
leaders of the Tories in the Commons (Wynn and Cotton) and Beaufort informed the Jacobite

court that "if the Prince [Charles] lands in present circumstances with ten battalions or even
smaller body of troops there will be no opposition".[49] The Tory leaders sent to France Robert

MacCarty with a request for 10,000 troops and 30,000 arms to be landed in England, where
they would join them upon arrival.[49]

However Charles travelled to Scotland in July without consulting the Tories or the French and
without a sizeable body of troops.[50] After his landing, Sempill wrote: "The City of London, Sir

John Hynde Cotton, Lord Barrymore, the Duke of Beaufort, and all the English cry loudly and
vehemently for a body of troops to be landed near London, as the most effectual means to

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support the Prince". They could not rise for the Prince without "a body of troops to support them"

but "would join the Prince if His Highness could force his way to them".[51] Throughout the
Jacobite rising of 1745, Charles could not establish contact with the English Tories.[52] In

December it was reported by a Captain Nagle who had visited a peer in London, that they were
all being monitored by the government but if Charles made his way to London or the French
invaded, they would declare for the Prince.[53] However Charles retreated from England and

the French never landed, so the English Tories did not feel safe in coming out for the Pretender.

After the collapse of the rising, Charles' captured secretary, John Murray of Broughton, informed
the government of the Tories' conspiracy with the Pretender. The government decided not to
prosecute them.[54] The trial of the Scottish rebel lords in London was boycotted by most Tory

peers.[55] After the Duke of Cumberland's brutal suppression of the Scots, English Tories
adopted the plaid as their symbol.

Eveline Cruickshanks in her study of the 1715-1754 Tory party for The History of Parliament,
claimed that "the available evidence leaves no doubt that up to 1745 the Tories were a
predominantly Jacobite party, engaged in attempts to restore the Stuarts by a rising with foreign
assistance".[57] Sir Lewis Namier noticed that for the reigns of George I and George II, Tory
family papers are non-existent.[58] As papers from before 1715 and after 1760 survive,
Cruickshanks contends that these families were hiding their Jacobite leanings by destroying
incriminating papers. A nineteenth century historian who had examined many collections such
as these, claimed that it was "the custom in Jacobite days to destroy all letters with any hint of
political or religious feeling in them".

Prince Frederick in 1747 invited the Tories "to unite and coalesce with him" and declared his

intention when he became King to "abolish...all distinction of party" and end the proscription of
Tories. A meeting of leading Tories (including Beaufort, Wynn and Cotton) accepted the
Prince's offer and replied assuring him of their support for his "wise and salutary purposes" but

did not pledge themselves to a coalition.[54] The 1747 general election resulted in only 115 Tory

MPs, their lowest figure up until this point.[54] After Jacobite riots in Oxford in 1748, the
government wanted to give the King the power to nominate the Chancellor of the University of

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Oxford, considered a hotbed of Jacobitism and Toryism. Thomas Carte wrote to the Pretender

that "the attempt against the university of Oxford brought them all up at once to town, which
nothing else would, and in their zeal on that account, they entered into a sort of coalition with

Prince Frederick's party to stand by the university of Oxford, to join in opposing all
unconstitutional points, but to be under no obligation to visit Prince Frederick's court, nor unite in
other points".

Victorian Era (1837-1901):

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837

until her death, on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined
sensibilities and national self-confidence for Britain.[1] Some scholars date the beginning of the

period in terms of sensibilities and political concerns to the passage of the Reform Act 1832.

Within the fields of social history and literature, Victorianism refers to the study of late-Victorian
attitudes and culture with a focus on the highly moralistic, straitlaced language and behaviour of
Victorian morality. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period.
The later half of the Victorian age roughly coincided with the first portion of the Belle Époque era
of continental Europe.

Culturally there was a transition away from the rationalism of the Georgian period and toward
romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and arts.[2] In international
relations the era was a long period of peace, known as the Pax Britannica, and economic,
colonial, and industrial consolidation, temporarily disrupted by the Crimean War in 1854. The

end of the period saw the Boer War. Domestically, the agenda was increasingly liberal with a
number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform, industrial reform and the widening of
the voting franchise.

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Two especially important figures in this period of British history are the prime ministers Benjamin

Disraeli and William Gladstone, whose contrasting views changed the course of history.
Disraeli, favoured by the queen, was a gregarious Tory. His rival Gladstone, a Liberal distrusted

by the Queen, served more terms and oversaw much of the overall legislative development of
the era.

The population of England and Wales almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in
1901.[3] Scotland's population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901.

Ireland's population however decreased sharply, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million

in 1901, mostly due to the Great Famine.[4] At the same time, around 15 million emigrants left
the United Kingdom in the Victorian era, settling mostly in the United States, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia.[5]

During the early part of the era, the House of Commons was headed by the two parties, the
Whigs and the Conservatives. From the late 1850s onwards, the Whigs became the Liberals.
These parties were led by many prominent statesmen including Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert

Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, William Ewart Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, and Lord
Salisbury. The unsolved problems relating to Irish Home Rule played a great part in politics in

the later Victorian era, particularly in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political
settlement.

Internal Reforms:

Technology and engineering

The railways changed communications and society dramatically

The Victorians were impressed by science and progress, and felt that they could improve
society in the same way as they were improving technology. Britain was the leading world
center for advanced engineering and technology. Its engineering firms were in worldwide

demand for designing and constructing railways.[32][33]

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A central development during the Victorian era was the improvement of communication. The

new railways all allowed goods, raw materials and people to be moved about, rapidly facilitating
trade and industry. The financing of railways became an important specialty of London's

financiers.[34] Trains became an important factor ordering society, with "railway time" being the
standard by which clocks were set throughout Britain, and with the complex railway system
setting the standard for technological advances and efficiency. Steam ships such as the SS

Great Britain and SS Great Western made international travel more common but also advanced

trade, so that in Britain it was not just the luxury goods of earlier times that were imported into
the country but essentials and raw materials such as corn and cotton from the United States
and meat and wool from Australia. One more important innovation in communications was the

Penny Black, the first postage stamp, which standardised postage to a flat price regardless of
distance sent.

Even later communication methods such as electric power, telegraph, and telephones, had an
impact. Photography was realised in 1839 by Louis Daguerre in France and William Fox Talbot
in Britain. By 1889, hand-held cameras were available.[35]

Suspension bridge between two brick built towers, over a wooded gorge, showing mud and

water at the bottom. In the distance are hills.

Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol

Similar sanitation reforms, prompted by the Public Health Acts 1848 and 1869, were made in

the crowded, dirty streets of the existing cities, and soap was the main product shown in the
relatively new phenomenon of advertising. A great engineering feat in the Victorian Era was the

sewage system in London. It was designed by Joseph Bazalgette in 1858. He proposed to build
82 mi (132 km) of sewer system linked with over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) of street sewers. Many
problems were encountered but the sewers were completed. After this, Bazalgette designed the
Thames Embankment which housed sewers, water pipes and the London Underground. During

the same period London's water supply network was expanded and improved, and a gas
network for lighting and heating was introduced in the 1880s.[36]

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The model town of Saltaire was founded, along with others, as a planned environment with

good sanitation and many civic, educational and recreational facilities, although it lacked a pub,
which was regarded as a focus of dissent. During the Victorian era, science grew into the

discipline it is today. In addition to the increasing professionalism of university science, many

Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to the study of natural history. This study of natural
history was most powerfully advanced by Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution first

published in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Crossing the Lagan Canal by the Ulster Railway near Moira, a sensible legacy of the Victorian

era.

Although initially developed in the early years of the 19th century, gas lighting became
widespread during the Victorian era in industry, homes, public buildings and the streets. The

invention of the incandescent gas mantle in the 1890s greatly improved light output and ensured
its survival as late as the 1960s. Hundreds of gasworks were constructed in cities and towns
across the country. In 1882, incandescent electric lights were introduced to London streets,

although it took many years before they were installed everywhere.

Railways

One of great achievements of the Industrial Revolution in Britain was the introduction and
advancement of railway systems, not only in the United Kingdom and the British Empire, but
across the world. British engineers and financiers design built and funded many major systems.

They retained an ownership share even while turning over management to locals; that
ownership was largely liquidated in 1914-1916 to pay for the World War. Railroads originated in

England because industrialists had already discovered the need for inexpensive transportation
to haul coal for the new steam engines, and to supply parts to specialized factories, and to take
products to market. The existing system of canals was inexpensive but was too slow and too
limited in geography.

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The engineers and businessmen needed to create and finance a railway system were available;

they knew how to invent, to build, and to finance a large complex system. The first quarter of the
19th century involved numerous experiments with locomotives and rail technology. By 1825

railways were commercially feasible, as demonstrated by George Stephenson (1791-1848)

when he built the Stockton and Darlington. On his first run, his locomotive pulled 38 freight and
passenger cars at speeds as high as 12 miles per hour. Stephenson went on to design many

more railways, and is best known for standardizing designs, such as the “standard gauge} of rail

spacing, at 4 feet 8 ½ inches.[38] Thomas Brassey (1805-70) was even more prominent,
operating construction crews that at one point in the 1840s totalled 75,000 men throughout
Europe, the British Empire, and Latin America.[39] Brassey took thousands of British engineers

and mechanics across the globe to build new lines. They invented and improved thousands of
mechanical devices, and developed the science of civil engineering to build roadways, tunnels

and bridges.

Britain had a superior financial system based in London that funded both the railways in Britain
and also in many other parts of the world, including the United States, up until 1914. The boom
years were 1836 and 1845-47, when Parliament authorized 8,000 miles of lines at a projected
cost of £200 million, which was about the same value as the country’s annual Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) at that time. A new railway needed a charter, which typically cost over £200,000
(about $1 million) to obtain from Parliament, but opposition could effectively prevent its
construction. The canal companies, unable or unwilling to upgrade their facilities to compete
with railways, used political power to try to stop them. The railways responded by purchasing
about a fourth of the canal system, in part to get the right of way, and in part to buy off critics.

Once a charter was obtained, there was little government regulation, as laissez faire and private
ownership had become accepted practices.

The different lines typically had exclusive territory, but given the compact size of Britain, this

meant that multiple competing lines could provide service between major cities. George Hudson

(1800-1871) became the “railway king” of Britain. He merged various independent lines and set
up a “Clearing House” in 1842 which rationalized interconnections by establishing uniform

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paperwork and standard methods for transferring passengers and freight between lines, and

rates when one system used freight cars owned by another. By 1850, rates had fallen to a
penny a ton mile for coal, at speeds of up to fifty miles an hour. Britain now had had the model

for the world in a well integrated, well-engineered system that allowed fast, cheap movement of
freight and people, and which could be replicated in other major nations.

The railways directly or indirectly employed tens of thousands of engineers, mechanics,

repairmen and technicians, as well as statisticians and financial planners. They developed new

and more efficient and less expensive techniques. Most important, they created a mindset of

how technology could be used in many different forms of business. Railways had a major
impact on industrialization. By lowering transportation costs, they reduced costs for all industries
moving supplies and finished goods, and they increased demand for the production of all the

inputs needed for the railroad system itself. By 1880, there were 13,500 locomotives which each
carried 97,800 passengers a year, or 31,500 tons of freight.[42]

India provides an example of the London-based financiers pouring money and expertise into a

very well built system designed for military reasons (after the Mutiny of 1857), and with the hope
that it would stimulate industry. The system was overbuilt and much too elaborate and

expensive for the small amount of freight traffic it carried. However, it did capture the
imagination of the Indians, who saw their railways as the symbol of an industrial modernity—but
one that was not realized until a century or so later.

The middle-class

Industrialisation brought with it a rapidly growing middle class whose increase in numbers had a

significant effect on the social strata itself: cultural norms, lifestyle, values and morality.
Identifiable characteristics came to define the middle class home and lifestyle. Previously, in
town and city, residential space was adjacent to or incorporated into the work site, virtually
occupying the same geographical space. The difference between private life and commerce

was a fluid one distinguished by an informal demarcation of function. In the Victorian era,
English family life increasingly became compartmentalised, the home a self-contained structure

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housing a nuclear family extended according to need and circumstance to include blood

relations. The concept of "privacy" became a hallmark of the middle class life. "... The English
home closed up and darkened over the decade (1850s), the cult of domesticity matched by a

cult of privacy." Bourgeois existence was a world of interior space, heavily curtained off and
wary of intrusion, and opened only by invitation for viewing on occasions such as parties or
teas. "The essential, unknowability of each individual, and society's collaboration in the

maintenance of a façade behind which lurked innumerable mysteries, were the themes which

preoccupied many mid-century novelists." [15]

Journalism:

There were four major factors that radically transformed newspapers in 19th century Britain.
First the government by the 1830s ended the very high taxes and lifted the severe legal

restraints. Second new machine, especially the rotary press, allowed printing of tens of
thousands of copies a day at lows cost. Third, the newspapers reached out to new readers in
multiple ways, including features, illustrations, and advertisements that enlarged the audience.

Finally The franchise was expanded from one or two percent of the men to a majority, and
newspapers became the primary means of political education.[16]

In 1817 Thomas Barnes became general editor of The Times; he was a political radical, a sharp
critic of parliamentary hypocrisy and a champion of freedom of the press.[17] Under Barnes and
his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights,
especially in politics and in the financial district (the City of London). It spoke for reform.[18] The

Times originated the practice of sending war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H.

Russell wrote immensely influential dispatches on the Crimean War of 1853-1856; for the first
time the public could read about the reality of warfare. Russell wrote one dispatch that
highlighted the surgeons' "humane barbarity" and the lack of ambulance care for wounded

troops. Shocked and outraged, the public reacted in a backlash that led to major reforms
especially in the provision of nursing, led by Florence Nightingale.[19]

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The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of non-conformist

businessmen. Its most famous editor, Charles Prestwich Scott, made the Guardian into a world-
famous newspaper in the 1890s. The Daily Telegraph in 1856 became the first penny

newspaper in London. It was funded by advertising revenue based on a large audience.

Leisure:

Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages continued to grow and

hours of work continued to decline. In urban areas, the nine hour workday became increasingly
the norm; the 1874 Factory Act limited the workweek to 56.5 hours, encouraging the movement

toward an eventual eight hour workday. Furthermore, a system of routine annual vacations
came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class.[20][21]
Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fares,

widespread banking holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular
activities on Sundays.

By the late Victorian era, the leisure industry had emerged in all cities. It provided scheduled
entertainment of suitable length at convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These included

sporting events, music halls, and popular theater. By 1880 football was no longer the preserve
of the social elite, as it attracted large working-class audiences. Average gate attendance was
5000 in 1905, rising to 23,000 in 1913. That amounted to 6 million paying customers with a
weekly turnover of £400,000. Sports by 1900 generated some three percent of the total gross
national product. Professional sports were the norm, although some new activities reached an

upscale amateur audience, such as lawn tennis and golf. Women were now allowed in some

sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics

Liberals

The Liberal Party was a liberal political party which was one of the two major parties in the
United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th century.[2]

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The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. By

the end of the nineteenth century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone.
Despite splitting over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to power in 1906 with a

landslide victory and introduced the welfare reforms that created a basic British welfare state. H.
H. Asquith was Liberal Prime Minister between 1908 and 1916, followed by David Lloyd George
whose premiership lasted until 1922 when the coalition the party had formed with the

Conservative Party in World War I came to an end.

By the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Tories' main rival.

The party went into decline and by the 1950s won no more than six seats at general elections.
Apart from notable by-election victories, the party's fortunes did not improve significantly until it
formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981.

At the 1983 General Election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but only 23 of the 650
seats it contested. At the 1987 General Election, its vote fell below 23% and the Liberal and
Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. A small Liberal Party
was formed in 1989 by party members opposed to the merger.

Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart

Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes and social planner William Beveridge.

Origins

Viscount Palmerston

The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the
reign of Charles II, and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing
the power of the Crown and increasing the power of Parliament. Although their motives in this

were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to
support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery
were Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor Earl Grey. After decades in

opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in
1832.

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The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about the Whigs' demise. The

admission of the middle classes to the franchise and to the House of Commons led eventually
to the development of a systematic middle class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although
for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's

retirement, the party was led first by Lord Melbourne, a fairly traditional Whig, and then by Lord
John Russell, the son of a Duke but a crusading radical, and by Lord Palmerston, a renegade

Irish Tory and essentially a conservative, although capable of radical gestures.

As early as 1839 Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality his party was a loose
coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals
were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had

gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty,
reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many of them were
Nonconformists), avoidance of war and foreign alliances (which were bad for business), and

above all free trade. For a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all
Liberals.

In 1841 the Liberals lost office to the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in
opposition was short, because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free
trade issue, and a faction known as the Peelites (but not Peel himself, who died soon after)
defected to the Liberal side. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston, and the Peelite

Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William

Ewart Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these
governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 and the
formation of Palmerston's second government.

The Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party, however, while it
was dominated by aristocrats, and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men",

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Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal

Party. This was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868.
After a brief Conservative government (during which the Second Reform Act was passed by

agreement between the parties) Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed
the first Liberal government. The establishment of the party as a national membership
organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877.

John Stuart Mill was a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868.

Foreign Policy:

Introduction

While Great Britain maintained her naval supremacy, the Channel afforded adequate protection
from foreign powers. During this time Britain's foreign policy could consist of, as Lord Salisbury

put it, 'floating lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid
collisions.' That this line of policy would become outmoded is in hindsight signified by the

Crimean War, which inaugurated just over a decade of events that shook Britain's confidence in

herself and the rest of the world's respect for her. The conditions that had allowed Britain to be
passive in her foreign affairs were eroded by a shift in the balance of economic power and by
the actions of other states. As the century wore on Britain came to need a more pro-active
foreign policy because her vital interests were increasingly threatened.

These interests maintained the same shape throughout the last half of the century, but the
means by which to secure them had to change with the times. British politicians remained

sceptical of foreign entanglement and large commitments abroad on the one hand, but on the
other took pride in the Empire and were willing to protect it and extend their control if they had
to. Gladstone may have lamented that Britain had become a 'government of Egypt' after Britain
intervened over the Suez canal, but the troops were not withdrawn for many decades. For a
great commercial Empire that considered itself the 'metropolis' of the world, a proper course in
foreign policy was to maintain the balance of power so as to maintain peace, and to encourage

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free trade throughout the globe. As in many other aspects the Victorian state took an essentially

laissez faire attitude to foreign policy and Empire, until world events demanded otherwise.

Formal vs. informal Empire

Two historians, Robinson and Gallagher, perceive continuity in Britain's imperial policy
throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, thus repudiating the claim that the mid-
Victorian era was a period of 'anti-imperialism'. They point out that even 'formal empire'

expanded between 1841 and 1851 (with the annexation of, among other territories, New
Zealand, the Gold Coast, Natal, and the Punjab). In their view, the basic aim of Victorian

imperialism was to integrate areas of the world into the expanding British economy. Usually this
took the form of 'informal empire', essentially ad hoc arrangements with the locals without formal
rule. Where this could be accomplished without formal annexation it was, but where more direct

political control was needed the Victorians were willing to go this far.

The difference between formal and informal empire is hence one of magnitude rather than
fundamental principle, but as the last quarter of the century saw a huge rise in formal empire we
can see that British perceptions of their imperial situation was changing. From 1874 to 1902,

4,750,000 square miles and 90 million people came under the control of the British Empire.
While still not being enthusiastic about annexation (the strategically important territory of Sudan,
for instance, was not annexed until 1898), the British ruling elite had pessimistically accepted
the need for it. The increase in the size of the British Empire was not a policy of strength from a
power with complete freedom of action, it was a defensive policy designed to stop Britain being

eclipsed by her rivals.

Decline in Europe

The first major difficulty the British encountered after 1850 was the Crimean War. Although they
were on the winning side, it was no secret that the war was won more by French arms and by
diplomacy than by the British army, which performed appallingly. Britain was traditionally very

nervous about standing armies, which it considered not only too expensive but detrimental to
liberty. Although the Crimean War provoked considerable concern about the state of the

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nation's armed forces, it also precluded Britain entering into such a venture again for some time.

The result was for a new affirmation of the fact Britain was an Asiatic power which did not need
to intervene in European affairs. The Continent could be kept peaceful by the balance of power

so long as too many powers did not have a great interest in overturning it.

This state of affairs began look shaky during the 1860s, when virtually every power was a

'revisionist' in that it sought changes to the geopolitical map. It was increasingly suspected that
Britain could not back up her words with action, and hence that what was her source of

domestic strength – liberalism and a laissez faire economy – was the source of her weakness in

Europe, i.e. her lack of a powerful military. Britain's prestige in Europe declined and she took
little part in the emergence of the new European map, which had a united Germany as its
centrepiece. The exception to this was Disraeli’s action over the Eastern Question (what would

happen when the Ottoman Empire collapsed) in 1875 – 8, where he threatened war with Russia
and after which the Berlin Congress of 1878 forced Russian concessions.

The decline of British power relative to the rest of the world was largely due to economic factors.

Throughout the 1860s Europe rapidly industrialised, and Britain continued to develop itself. But
after the 1873 depression set in and economic optimism became slightly harder for Victorians,

although to abandon the principles of laissez faire would have been unthinkable.

Reaction

As other powers became more assertive and began to extend their own imperial commitments,

Britain was forced to react to protect her own. The Suez Canal is a case in point. The canal was
completed in 1869 with French capital, and it was apparent that it would be very important for

Britain as a route to India. The joint Anglo-French control of Egypt's finances that was
established in the 1870s, the lease of Cyprus from Turkey in 1878, and finally the occupation of
Egypt in 1882 were all entered into so as to secure British control of this important route to
India.

This was consistent with previous British policy, as control of South Africa had been important to
protect the flank of shipping going around the Cape to India. Britain had needed to take action in

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Egypt for fear that another power would move in and take exclusive control. This was not to say

that Britain wanted to control Egypt entirely herself, as Gladstone repeatedly tried to get other
powers involved in the enterprise and eventually succeeded. However, it is telling that

Gladstone, who had been so critical of Disraeli's more aggressive foreign policy, had seen the
occupation of Egypt (initially meant to be short) as a necessity and that he had been willing to
risk destabilising the Ottoman Empire in doing it. This shows that when something so

fundamental as Indian trade was threatened, Britain would happily intervene and establish

formal control – providing the adversary was sufficiently weak.

The scramble for Africa was not directly or solely occasioned by the British occupation of Egypt,
but rather by their bilateral agreement over the Congo with the Portuguese. The Berlin West
Africa Congress was convened in 1884 – 5 and laid the foundations for formal European control

of Africa, an object militarily achievable but until now not considered politically necessary.
However, as soon as one power extended formal influence in Africa, the others felt compelled to
follow suit to prevent the decline of their influence and prestige. Britain was no longer the only
expansive society in Europe and could not afford to be left behind in the scramble, although the
free trade clauses of the Berlin treaty made it slightly irrelevant exactly which bits of Africa came
within her sphere of influence.

However, the exact definition of British interests had certainly changed, and the logic of why can
be traced back to the growing assertiveness of other Imperial powers and Britain's relative
weakness to them. The continued occupation of Egypt and the Congo treaty with Portugal had

been occasioned by concern over the influence of other powers (in the case of the Congo,
France), which had in turn occasioned the West Africa conference, which had then in turn led to

the expansion of British formal control over Africa. That this was considered undesirable in
China shows how important the spatial element was in determining imperial policy – Lord
Salisbury repeated with approval Disraeli’s words that 'in Asia there is room for all of us', which

made sense before people started to fear that a scramble for China would follow the scramble

for Africa. Different regions of the globe demanded different policies depending on the possibility
of challenges from other great powers.

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Solution: alliance in Europe?

Since Canning's time Britain had been militarily disengaging from the European balance of
power and hence had avoided entering into mutual defence treaties with any Continental power.
The balance of power, it was felt, was fine for autocratic and underdeveloped Continentals, but
not something Britain need engage in herself directly: it also attracted unfavourable

comparisons to the Holy Alliance of reactionary monarchies from liberals.

However, throughout the 1890s there was increasing demand in Britain from the 'new
imperialists' to combine a policy of aggressive Empire-building with alliance with another
European power. Although Bismarck put out diplomatic feelers and then-fashionable racial

theories indicated that Brit and Teuton were natural allies, Lord Salisbury rejected them.
Although the accession of William II to the German throne in 1890 would eventually see the rise

of Anglo-German enmity, this process was slow. By 1900 British interests had still not been
redefined as lying with France and Russia against Germany, although the German Naval Laws
and emergent German Weltpolitick surely had made this change inevitable eventually. Russia

was still the enemy because of her ambitions in the Balkans and supposed designs on
Constantinople. But a German navy powerful enough to challenge the Royal Navy, backed by
the powerful German army, appeared to be a threat of the sort Britain had not faced for a very
long time.

Conclusion:

For almost all of the nineteenth century, Britain had essentially the same interests. However,
she operated in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable environment. A.J.P. Taylor has

stressed the fact that British foreign policy could be proactive rather than been dictated to her by
her neighbours, unlike most nations's, for so long as geography and the Royal Navy could keep
enemies off Britain's shores. Her naval pre-eminence secured her control of large parts of the

world through informal means, and allowed ties that were economic rather than political to be
sufficient. As the century wore on Britain's position began to be eroded were it mattered to her

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most, which was not on the Continent but in Africa and the Orient. Lacking any real power to

determine events in Europe, Britain focused on securing her vital interests in Africa and India.

The importance of India to the British is amply illustrated by the preoccupation with the Russian
menace, and the interest shown in Egypt after the constructions of the Suez Canal. As the world
changed, the exact specifics of British interests changed. For so long as her economic

dominance could be maintained and the rest of the world left to its own affairs safe in the
knowledge they would not be detrimental to the British interest, Britain did not need an

extensive formal Empire nor need to become entangled in the balance of power on the

Continent. The massive growth of the British Empire in the last quarter of the nineteenth century
was seen as new means to a traditional end, but showed that British foreign policy was
increasingly dictated by the world situation she found herself in. The global status quo was

becoming less sanguine for British interests, and hence she was forced to take more measures
to change it than ever before.

Sources:

This is incomplete, as I've lost my list. A fuller one pending...

John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, 'The imperialism of free trade', The Economic History
Review (1953)

Oliver MacDonagh, 'The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade', The Economic History Review (1962)

D. C. M. Platt, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations', The Economic History
Review (1968)

Disraeli, Gladstone, Problems in Ireland

Victorian politics were characterized by the contest between two great party leaders, William
Gladstone of the Liberal Party and Benjamin Disraeli of the Conservative Party. Gladstone
came from a Liverpool merchant family, went to school at Eton and Oxford—two of England's
most prestigious schools—and moved effortlessly into government. Originally a Conservative,

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he broke with the main body of the party when he supported the repeal of the Corn Laws. In

1859 he joined the Liberal Party, ultimately becoming its leader.

Disraeli's background was quite different. His father was a Jewish intellectual who broke with his
synagogue following an argument and baptized his children into the Church of England. The
fact that Disraeli was a member of the Church of England made him eligible to serve in

Parliament. Disraeli did not receive an elite education and supported himself first as a novelist.
He, too, entered the Conservative Party, but he supported the Corn Laws and remained in the

Conservative mainstream, twice serving as chancellor of the Exchequer, the minister in charge

of finances. Disraeli introduced the Reform Bill of 1867, which gained the Conservatives the
support of the urban middle classes when it extended the vote to them. He briefly became prime
minister in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. Disraeli identified the Conservatives with the

monarchy, the church, the landed interests, and the strengthening of the British Empire.
Nevertheless, he supported important elements of social reform legislation.

Gladstone outlasted his rival and served as prime minister on four separate occasions (1868-

1874, 1880-1885, 1886, and 1892-1894). He advocated free trade and was gradually converted
to parliamentary and social reform. Gladstone's government eliminated the remaining laws that

discriminated against dissenting Protestants and implemented reforms that awarded civil
service jobs on the basis of merit.

Gladstone's greatest efforts, however, were devoted to solving the problem of governing
Ireland. Agitation for an independent Ireland had existed for centuries. It increased following the

famine of 1845, which reshaped Irish society. Between 1845 and 1847 the Irish population was

reduced by 25 percent through famine and emigration. Most families who remained faced
financial ruin.

Although the famine was a natural disaster, the Irish blamed the British for creating the
conditions that caused it. They condemned the British government for failing to respond

adequately to the crisis. They also condemned absentee English landlords who evicted their
impoverished tenants when they could no longer afford to pay rent. Many of these landlords

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lived in England and had grown rich collecting rents. They rarely saw their Irish properties and

remained unaware of the problems affecting their tenants. Many Irish grew to despise absentee
landlords, especially after evictions left thousands of starving tenants homeless.

Gladstone was sympathetic to many Irish grievances. He passed acts that removed the
Protestant Church of Ireland as the nation's official church and that protected tenants from being

evicted by landlords. In the 1880s Gladstone attempted further reforms, especially to protect
impoverished tenants. However, he had little support even within his own party.

Irish leaders considered Gladstone's actions inadequate and demanded nothing less than the

creation of a free Irish state. In 1867 Irish nationalists formed a secret society, the Fenians, to
overthrow British rule and establish an independent Ireland. Irish resistance, led by Irish
nationalist politician Charles Stuart Parnell, intensified with boycotts of English residents,

businesses, and institutions. Violence against British officials also increased.

In 1886 Gladstone realized that no amount of piecemeal reform would succeed. In an about-
face that shocked his party, he offered a home rule bill to establish a free Irish state. It was
defeated, and the Liberal Party split between those who supported home rule for Ireland and

those who wished Ireland to remain under British rule. In his final ministry, at the age of 83,
Gladstone again introduced a home rule measure in Parliament and fought it successfully
through the House of Commons, only to have it overwhelmingly defeated by the House of
Lords. The failure to secure a form of home rule for Ireland left Britain with one of its most bitter
legacies. Violent conflict would soon follow between British troops and those seeking

independence for Ireland. Although most of Ireland gained its independence in 1921, violence

continued to be a problem in the six northern counties of Ireland, where the Protestant majority
voted to remain a part of the United Kingdom. The conflict escalated in the latter half of the 20th
century.

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Great Britain and Free Trade:

The argument about the limits of free trade or protectionism rages throughout the world to this

day. Following the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, free trade became one of the most
distinctive defining features of the British state, and of British economic, social, and political life.
While the United States, much of the British Empire, and the leading European Powers turned

towards protectionism before 1914, Britain alone held to a policy which had seemingly
guaranteed power and prosperity. This book explains the political history of this tenacious

loyalty. While the Tariff Reform opponents of free trade have been much studied, this book

provides an account, based on a wide range of printed and archival sources, which explains the
primacy of free trade in 19th- and early-20th century Britain. It also shows that by the centenary
of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1946, although British free traders lamented the death of

Liberal England, they heralded, under American leadership, the rebirth of the liberal
international order.

The growth of the British Empire was due in large part to the ongoing competition for resources

and markets which existed over a period of centuries between England and her Continental
rivals, Spain, France, and Holland. During the reign of Elizabeth I, England set up trading
companies in Turkey, Russia, and the East Indies, explored the coast of North America, and
established colonies there. In the early seventeenth century those colonies were expanded and
the systematic colonization of Ulster in Ireland got underway.

The first British Empire was a mercantile one. Under both the Stuarts and Cromwell, the
mercantilist outlines of further colonization and Empire-building became more and more

apparent. Until the early nineteenth century, the primary purpose of Imperialist policies was to
facilitate the acquisition of as much foreign territory as possible, both as a source of raw
materials and in order to provide real or potential markets for British manufactures. The

mercantilists advocated in theory, and sought in practice, trade monopolies which would insure
that Britain's exports would exceed its imports. A profitable balance of trade, it was believed,
would provide the wealth necessary to maintain and expand the empire. After ultimately

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successful wars with the Dutch, the French, and the Spanish in the seventeenth century, Britain

managed to acquire most of the eastern coast of North America, the St. Lawrence basin in
Canada, territories in the Carribean, stations in Africa for the acquisition of slaves, and important

interests in India. The loss in the late eighteenth century of the American colonies was not offset
by the discovery of Australia, which served, after 1788, as a penal colony (convicts like
Magwitch, in Dickens's Great Expectations, were transported there). However, the loss

influenced the so-called "swing to the East" (the acquisition of trading and strategic bases along

the trade routes between India and the Far East). In 1773 the British government was obliged to
take over for the financially troubled East India Company, which had been in India since 1600,
and by the end of the century Britain's control over India extended into neighboring Afghanistan

and Burma. With the end, in 1815, of the Napoleonic Wars, the last of the great imperial wars
which had dominated the eighteenth century, Britain found itself in an extraordinarily powerful

position, though a complicated one. It acquired Dutch South Africa, for example, but found its
interests threatened in India by the southern and eastern expansion of the Russians. (The
protection of India from the Russians, both by land and by sea, would be a major concern of

Victorian foreign policy). At this time, however, the empires of Britain's traditional rivals had
been lost or severely diminished in size, and its imperial position was unchallenged. In addition,
it had become the leading industrial nation of Europe, and more and more of the world came
under the domination of British commercial, financial, and naval power.

This state of affairs, however, was complex and far from stable. The old mercantile Empire was
weakened during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by a number of factors: by
the abolition in 1807 of slavery in Britain itself, a movement led by the Evangelicals ; by the

freeing in 1833 of slaves held elsewhere in the Empire; by the adoption, after a radical change
in economic perspective (due in large part to the influence of Adam Smith's The Wealth of
Nations), of Free Trade, which minimized the influence of the old oligarchical and monopolistic

trading corporations; and by various colonial movements for greater political and commercial
independence. The Victorians, then, inherited both the remnants of the old mercantile empire

and the more recently acquired commercial network in the East, neither of which they were sure

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they wanted, since Smith maintained that "under the present system of management Great

Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies.

During the Victorian Era, however, the acquisition of territory and of further trading concessions
continued (promoted by strategic considerations and aided or justified by philanthropic
motivations), reaching its peak when Victoria , at Disraeli's instigation, had herself crowned

Empress of India in 1876. Advocates of Disraeli's imperialist foreign policies justified them by
invoking a paternalistic and racist theory (founded in part upon popular but erroneous

generalizations derived from Darwin's theory of evolution) which saw Imperialism as a

manifestation of what Kipling would refer to as "the white man's burden." The implication, of
course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise —
of Britain itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with

British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized). The truth of this doctrine was
accepted naively by some, and hypocritically by others, but it served in any case to legitimize
Britain's acquisition of portions of central Africa and her domination, in concert with other
European powers, of China.

At the height of the Empire, however, growing nationalist movements in various colonies

presaged its dissolution. The process accelerated after World War I, although in the immediate
post-war period the Empire actually increased in size as Britain became the "trustee" of former
German and Turkish territories (Egypt, for example) in Africa and the Middle East. The English-
speaking colonies, Canada and Australia, had already acquired dominion status in 1907, and in

1931 Britain and the self-governing dominions — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, and the Irish Free State — agreed to form the "Commonwealth of Nations." The

Dominions came to the aid of Britain during World War II, but Britain's losses to the Japanese in
the Far East made it clear that it no longer possessed the resources to maintain the old order of
things. The Americans were in any case ready, and indeed anxious, to replace British influence

in many areas of the world.

Britain's hold on India had gradually loosened. India achieved qualified self-government in 1935
and independence in 1947. Ireland, which had at last won dominion status in 1921 after a brutal

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guerrilla war, achieved independence in 1949, although the northern province of Ulster

remained (as it is today) a part of Great Britain. The process of decolonization in Africa and Asia
accelerated during the late 1950s. Today, any affinities which remain between former portions

of the Empire are primarily linguistic or cultural rather than political.

Edwardian Era (1901-1910)

The Edwardian era or Edwardian period in Great Britain is the period covering the reign of King
Edward VII, 1901 to 1910, and is sometimes extended beyond Edward's death to include the

four years leading up to World War I.

The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victorian era. Edward was

the leader of a fashionable elite that set a style influenced by the art and fashions of Continental
Europe—perhaps because of the King's fondness for travel. The era was marked by significant

shifts in politics as sections of society that had been largely excluded from wielding power in the
past, such as common labourers and women, became increasingly politicised.

Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian Era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats
and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun really
never set on the British flag'"

Domestic and Foreign Policies (1901-1910):

Queen Victoria was succeeded by her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who ascended the
throne as Edward VII. In his coronation oath, he expressed his full determination to rule "as a
constitutional sovereign in the strictest sense of the word "; and "to work," he said, "as long as

there is breath in my body, for the good and amelioration of my people." On August 9, 1902, he

was crowned as King of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India, and Sovereign of the
Dominion beyond the Seas. On January 1, 1903, at a durbar held in Delhi, he was formally

proclaimed Emperor of India. The Victorian Era had ended, and a period of British history,

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commensurate with the new century and characterized by new problems and new issues, had

begun.

The most striking feature of King Edward's reign lay, no doubt, in the remarkable change which
took place in Great Britain's foreign policy. In consequence of that change the international
political position and importance of this country were greatly altered. Foreign statesmen used to

think that London lay outside the main currents of international policy. Bismarck declared that
England was no longer an active factor in the affairs of continental Europe, and that he left her

out of account in his political calculations. His immediate successors and some non-German

statesmen showed by their actions that they shared Bismarck's opinion. England was pretty
generally thought to be of secondary importance on the chessboard of European diplomacy.
The London embassies were sinecures where second-rate diplomats grew grey in attending to

routine work.

Since 1901 Great Britain's political influence has mightily increased, and London occupies now
a position in the political world comparable with that which Berlin occupied at the time when

Bismarck was at the zenith of his power. Since 1901 London has risen from political obscurity to
pre-eminence. It has become the meeting-place of monarchs, and it is as much the political

centre of Europe and the diplomatic capital of the world as it was in the time of Chatham and of
Pitt. History, which used to be made at Vienna, at St. Petersburg, or at Constantinople, is now
being made at London. The London embassy has become the most important embassy of
foreign States.

To the majority of Englishmen international politics were 'foreign affairs.' In the words of Lord

Beaconsfield, "the very phrase "Foreign Affairs" makes an Englishman convinced that they are
subjects with which he has no concern." Englishmen grew up nourished on party politics, and
party politics continued to be their daily bread to the end of their lives. Foreign politics lay out of

the beaten track of party politics, and therefore did not attract the general attention which they
deserved. Besides, owing to the British party system, which brought successful orators and

political wire-pullers to the front, and which gave the highest positions in the Government, not to
administrative and executive ability, but to debating skill and party influence, statesmen were, as

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a rule, eminent party politicians who had neither felt the need nor had the leisure to study

foreign affairs with the thoroughness which is required for diplomacy.

Through the conclusion of the Triple Entente with France and Russia, Britain need no longer
simultaneously look after the defence of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, after the defence of
Central Africa, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea. Britain was able to concentrate her naval

forces in home waters. British naval budgets would be much heavier were Britain compelled still
to assert naval supremacy at the same time in the Mediterranean and in the North Sea. The

entente enabled Britain to save many millions on naval expenditure. They have enabled Britain

to save many more millions on barren Asiatic and African expeditions designed to checkmate
the advance of France and Russia.

The Russo-Japanese war of 1904 had left Russia militarily, financially, and morally exhausted.

The country was in revolt, all bonds of discipline had been dissolved, the army had become
dispirited and unreliable, there was mutiny in the fleet. Towards the end of the war Russia could
not have given an-v effective assistance to France had the latter been attacked. The balance of

power in Europe had temporarily disappeared. The danger arose that Germany might feel
tempted to make use of her opportunity by taking another slice of France and make the re-

establishment of the balance of power impossible. The Morocco crisis, which broke out
immediately after Russia's great defeat, showed that Germany had at all events the desire to
profit from the breakdown of the balance of power. Very likely England's support saved France
from a disastrous war.

An Anglo-French Entente could not possibly endure if England should remain opposed or

hostile to France's ally, a fact which led to a complete reversal of England's policy towards
Russia and of Russia's policy towards England at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Russian
and British diplomats effected a reconciliation and rapprochement between the two Powers,

notwithstanding the century-old hostility and distrust which had prevailed between them. The
improvement in Anglo-Russian relations and the subsequent entente found its formal

expression in the Anglo-Russian agreements regarding Persia, Afghanistan, and Thibet which
were signed on 31 August 1907, and the entente was sealed by the subsequent meeting of the

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two monarchs at Reval. Many well-meaning Englishmen opposed the Anglo-Russian entente,

the conclusion of the Anglo-Russian agreements, and the King's visit to Reval because they
were dissatisfied with the internal state of Russia and the character of its government.

South Africa

In South Africa after the treaty of 1902 British supremacy was no longer in question.
Nevertheless the war appeared to have been only the culminating phase of a long period of

racial antagonism. A very large proportion of the British in those regions were still naturally
suspicious of the Dutch, and were strongly opposed to any early extension to them of real

political power. In the view of Unionists at home, and of the former High Commissioner, Lord
Milner, it was only by slow and tentative steps that it would become safe to place the Dutch
colonies on an equality with the British. With the Liberals however it had become an axiom, a

cardinal article of belief, that among the white races restrictions upon political liberty are a
disintegrating factor; that the loyalty of a people was to be won not by a cautious distrust but by
a generous confidence, bestowed even at a considerable risk.

The Liberals were no sooner in power than they resolved to take the risks in South Africa, and

to bestow on the states with a mainly Boer population the full status of colonies with responsible
government - it had not yet presented itself to the mind of any one that there was anything
derogatory in the name of "Colony." Lord Milner's place had before this been taken by a
prominent Unionist, Lord Selborne, who was nevertheless prepared loyally to give effect to. the
policy of the new Government. In spite of warning protests from the Opposition leaders, who

declined to share the responsibility, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman took the risks, and

conceded responsible self-government to the Boers who had so recently been engaged in a
desperate struggle against the might of the Empire into which they were now incorporated.

Whether the act was recklessly rash or courageously magnanimous, it was justified by the
event, at least so far as the experience of seven years can justify the formation of a definite

conclusion on the subject. It was not misinterpreted like the retrocession of 1881, and it
converted a people with an emphatically hostile tradition into loyal citizens of the British Empire.

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How far antagonistic elements had been harmonised was seen when the South African

dominions, after prolonged deliberation, formulated a scheme for the federation of the Union of
South Africa - like the Canadian and Australian groups - which was sanctioned by the imperial

parliament in 1909.

India

In India the vigorous vice-royalty of Lord Curzon continued to be productive of much

con­troversy. Suspicions that Tibet was entering into dangerous relations with Russia led to
demands for a treaty with that mysterious state, whose conduct necessitated a military

expedition which was completely successful in achieving its objects. Native sentiment was
greatly excited by the partition of the province of Bengal. The reasons for the excitement caused
are not easily intelligible to any one who has not an intimate knowledge of Indian affairs. But the

effect was to set on foot an agitation, not among the Mohammedans but among the Hindus of
Bengal, which provided the Indian government with very grave problems of administration for at
least five years to come. Lord Curzon's retirement, however, was brought about not by this but

by very serious friction between the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener, in
which the Unionist Government supported the latter.

Lord Curzon's place was taken by Lord Minto, who, like Lord Selborne in Africa, found- himself
able to work in admirable harmony with Mr. John Morley, who became Secretary of State for
India when the Liberals came into power. The agitation among the Hindus became so active,
and the language of the native press so seditious, that there were loud outcries for severe

repressive measures. Strong measures were, in fact, taken by Lord Minto and Mr Morley, of a

character much more drastic and arbitrary than could be dreamed of in dealing with the Press in
England. They were accordingly condemned by all those persons who declined to recognise
any warrant for applying different governmental principles in India and in England; while they

were condemned with equal vehemence by another school as far too lenient, and a virtual
encouragement of sedition. The Indian Government, however, went on its way undisturbed by

the attacks of either wing, and again its conduct appears to have been justified by the results.

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Europe

During the reign of King Edward VII a remarkable change took place the relations between the

United Kingdom and the European Powers. Almost unanimously Europe had accepted as
undoubted facts the wildest of fabrications concerning the doings of the British in South Africa.
Largely owing to the genial personality of the king himself, there was now a general

disappearance of the prevalent sentiment of hostility. Hitherto the two Powers with whom the
dangers of collision had been most serious were Russia; and France. Almost throughout the

nineteenth century antagonism between the British Empire and Russia had been a dominating

factor in politics, while ever since the British occupation of Egypt there had been perpetual
friction between British and French.

At an early stage of the great war between Russia and Japan, the extraordinary behaviour of a

Russian squadron, bound for the Far East, in firing upon an innocent British fishing fleet,
seemed almost to have made war inevitable. But the war was avoided, perhaps because of an
unmistakable demonstration of the efficiency of the British Navy. The terrible disasters of the

Russian struggle with Japan did much to dissipate the belief in Russian military power. The
attitude of the two empires to each other became less suspicious, and there was a new

inclination on both sides to attain the adjust­ment of clashing interests in a spirit of goodwill. This
took shape in the most marked manner when an agreement was arrived at as to the treat­ment
of Persia, which on the whole had the ap'proval of both parties in England.

France

A visit of the king to Paris had an extraordinary effect in dissipating a popular French impression

that British sentiment was actively hostile. An agreement with regard to Morocco and Egypt
removed the most serious among the remaining causes of friction, and a spirit of warm
friendship grew up between the two countries. Unhappily it has to be admitted that a less cordial
spirit was engendered with another of the great Powers. The sudden determination of Germany

in 1905 to develop a powerful navy aroused British alarm and suspicion; while the increasing
goodwill between Britain, France, and Russia developed among the Germans a belief that the

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British were pursuing a deliberate policy of isolating Germany with presumably sinister

intentions.

The result was that each nation urged forward naval programmes manifestly with an eye to the
suspected aggressive intentions of the other, while to each it appeared that the motive of the
other was not self-defence but aggression. In well-informed quarters the idea that the German

Emperor desired a war of aggression for the purpose of breaking up the British Empire was
never credited; but in both countries a portion of the Press persistently maintained an

inflammatory tone which greatly increased the difficulty of attaining a mutual understanding.

The Origins of Labor Party:

Queen Victoria died in 1901 and her son Edward VII became king, inaugurating the Edwardian

Era, which was characterised by great and ostentatious displays of wealth in contrast to the
sombre Victorian Era. With the advent of the 20th century, things such as motion pictures,

automobiles, and aeroplanes were coming into use. The new century was characterised by a
feeling of great optimism. The social reforms of the last century continued into the 20th with the
Labour Party being formed in 1900. Edward died in 1910, to be succeeded by George V, who

reigned 1910–36. Scandal-free, hard working and popular, George V was the British monarch
who, with Queen Mary, established the modern pattern of exemplary conduct for British royalty,
based on middle-class values and virtues. He understood the overseas Empire better than any
of his prime ministers and used his exceptional memory for figures and details, whether of

uniforms, politics, or relations, to good effect in reaching out in conversation with his
subjects.[90]

The era was prosperous but political crises were escalating out of control. Dangerfield (1935)
identified the "strange death of liberal England" as the multiple crisis that hit simultaneously in
1910–1914 with serious social and political instability arising from the Irish crisis, labor unrest,
the women's suffrage movements, and partisan and constitutional struggles in Parliament. At

one point it even seemed the Army might refuse orders dealing with Northern Ireland.[91] No

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solution appeared in sight when the unexpected outbreak of the Great War in 1914 put domestic

issues on hold.

McKibben argues that the political party system of the Edwardian era was in delicate balance on
the eve of the war in 1914. The Liberals were in power with a progressive alliance of Labour
and, off and on, Irish Nationalists. The coalition was committed to free trade (as opposed to the

high tariffs the Conservatives sought), free collective bargaining for trades unions (which
Conservatives opposed), an active social policy that was forging the welfare state, and

constitutional reform to reduce the power of the House of Lords. The coalition lacked a long-

term plan, because it was cobbled together from leftovers from the 1890s. The sociological
basis was non-Anglican religion and non-English ethnicity rather than the emerging class
conflict emphasized by Labour.

Introduction:

The last quarter of the nineteenth century in Britain was marked by a growing critique of laissez-
faire capitalism and an upsurge of interest in socialist ideas. The British socialist movement
grew particularly strong in the period between the 1880s and 1914 and included Christian and

libertarian socialists, Fabians, and Marxists. The Fabian Society, established in London in 1884,
aimed to promote a moral reconstruction of British society according to socialist principles and
level the gulf between the rich and the poor. Fabians, unlike Marxists, advocated a gradual,
non-revolutionary transition to socialism based on humanist foundations.

Origin of the Name

The Fabian Society took its name, suggested by one of its founding members, Frank Podmore,
from the Roman General, Quintus Fabius Cunctator, who avoided a frontal attack on Hannibal’s

army in the third century B.C., but used delaying tactics. Likewise, the Fabian Society preferred
not to support a revolutionary transformation, but was committed to promoting evolutionary
socialism in Britain.

The Fellowship of the New Life

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The direct predecessor of the Fabian Society was The Fellowship of the New Life, a utopian

association, founded in London in 1883 by the Scottish-American scholar Thomas Davidson

(1840-1900), as an intellectual discussion and study group dedicated to developing models of

moral regeneration. The members of the Fellowship were ethical socialists, imbued with
idealism, who wanted to achieve social change through the inculcation of ideas that would
upgrade individual people and, eventually, society. They included the poet and homosexual

emancipationist Edward Carpenter, journalist William Clarke, sexologist Havelock Ellis and his

future wife Edith Lees, a women's rights activist; bank clerk Hubert Bland and his wife Edith
Nesbith, the future author of books for children; social reformer and defender of animal rights
Henry Stephens Salt; Ramsey McDonald, and invoice clerk in a warehouse and the future

Labour prime minister; and two clerks at London Stock Exchange: Edward Pease and Frank
Podmore.

The establishment of the Fabian Society

On January 4, 1884 at 17 Osnaburgh Street, a splinter group, which put social reform before

moral regeneration, broke away from the Fellowship and formed the Fabian Society for the
purpose of reconstructing British society on a non-competitive basis in order to secure its

general welfare and happiness. The founding members included Edward Pease, Edith Nesbith,
Hubert Bland, and Frank Podmore. Nine months later George Bernard Shaw became one of its
most active members, and in May 1885, he invited two young Colonial Office clerks, Sidney
Webb and Sydney Olivier to join the Society. Some other early notable members included

Beatrice Potter (later Webb), Edward Carpenter, Eleanor Marx (Karl Marx's eldest daughter),
Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, and briefly, Herbert George Wells (from 1903 to 1908). From

1890, the Society had a paid secretary, Pease, who managed daily business until 1913. In
1891, the Society began to publish a monthly journal, Fabian News, with Bland and Pease as
editors.

Until 1886, the Fabian Society, which consisted mostly of middle-class intellectuals of different

political and social orientations, followed a strategy proposed by Shaw. However, the Society
was not unanimous in its opinions. “In the late 1880s and early 1890s there were important

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struggles between the anarchists and state socialists within the Society, and between the

reformists within the Society and the revolutionaries outside it — principally those of the Social
Democratic Federation and the Socialist League.” (Blazeer 50) A number of rank-and-file

members of the Society began to think about forming an independent party. Soon two contrary
political viewpoints emerged among the early Fabians: some wanted to create a new
independent labour party, while others, including Sidney Webb, wanted to propagate socialism

among the Liberals (Bevir, 1996: 187-88).

In the 1890s the Society continued its strategy of small steps towards socialism, which was to

come by ballots, not revolution. It favoured municipal ownership of some utilities. The early
Fabians believed that the control of municipal management was an important step towards
socialist reforms. The membership of the Fabian Society steadily increased, from 31 in 1884 to

116 in 1886, and 2000 in 1908 (Milburn 321). In the early 1890s, the Fabian Society established
its new branches in Bradford, Bristol, Manchester and Sheffield. The Fabian Societies
elsewhere in the United Kingdom reached the peak membership of about 1500 in 1892, and
then followed a steady decline, and a significant revival by 1913 (McBriar 165).

The activities of the early Fabian Society were mostly limited to fortnightly meetings with a

leading speaker, public lectures, and publications of Fabian Tracts. In 1892, Sidney Webb and
five other Fabians were elected to the London County Council, where they tried to propagate
the ideas of 'municipal socialism', which called for the public ownership of urban utilities and
tramlines, better wages for city workers, improved free public education and vocational training.

Early Fabians were also very active in various educational boards in London. For example,
Sidney Webb was Chairman of the Technical Education Committee of the London City Council,

Graham Wallas was Chairman of the School Management Committee of the London School
Board, and another Fabian, the Rev. Stewart Headlam was Chairman of the Evening Classes
Committee of the School Board (Mc Briar 202).

The early Fabians hoped that the Liberal Party would implement social reforms. By 1892,

English liberalism had sufficiently been permeated with Fabian ideas. At the same time the
Society began to attract socialists and labour leaders, such as Heir Kardie, Will Crooks, and

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Ben Tillett. In Manchester Robert Blatchford (1851-1943) established a local Fabian Society and

edited a socialist weekly, The Clarion, which gained a large working-class readership. In 1893,
he published a utopian socialist tract, Merrie England, which sold over two million copies in

Britain only. In the last years of the 19th century, many provincial members of the Fabian
Society supported the newly established Independent Labour Party, and in 1900, the Fabians
helped establish the Labour Representative Committee, which became the Labour Party in

1906.

Inspirations

Early Fabian economic theory was developed in great measure under the influence of John
Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848), and his famous essay On Liberty (1859)
helped shape the basic tenets of Fabian socialism. Another significant influence was the

American economist Henry George (1839-1897). Emulating George, the Fabians stated that
both land and capital were unearned increments for landlords and capitalists. The doctrines of
Frederic Harrison's (1831-1923) positivism also contributed to the Fabian theory of socialism.

Besides, the early Fabians derived inspiration from diverse writers, poets, thinkers, scientists
and politicians including William Langland, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph

Waldo Emerson, Robert Owen, Auguste Comte, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Disraeli, William
Gladstone, William Morris, as well as Christian Socialists.

A Manifesto

On September 5, 1884, Shaw contributed the second important Fabian Tract, titled A Manifesto,
which presented opinions, later known as 'principles of Fabianism'. The most important

'principles' are be summarised below:

Land and capital have created the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites
and no dinners at one extreme and large dinners and no appetites at the other. Nationalisation
of land is a public duty. Capitalism has ceased to encourage invention and to distribute its

benefits in the fairest way attainable. Under the existing system of the national industry,
competition has the effect of rendering adulteration, dishonest dealing, and inhumanity

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compulsory. The Public Revenue should be levied by a direct Tax. The State should compete

with private individuals — especially with parents — in providing happy homes for children, so
that every child may have a refuge from the tyranny or neglect of its natural custodians. The

sexes should enjoy equal political rights. The State should secure a free, liberal education for
everybody. The established Government has no more right to call itself the State than the
smoke of London has to call itself the weather.

Programme

In 1887, the Fabian Society published its programme, known as “The Basis,” which proposed

“the use of the existing institutions, party and parliamentary machinery for the realization of
social reforms.” These reforms, which can be described as Fabian socialism, aimed at “ the
elimination of privately owned land and the establishment of community ownership of the means

of production.” (Milburn 320) The instruments to achieve these goals were democratic
government control, municipalisation and nationalisation. The Fabian Society rejected the
Marxian theory of the class struggle and postulated that the transition from capitalism to

socialism would never be carried by force.

The objectives of the Fabian Society were socialist, but its methods were not revolutionary; they
were evolutionary and reformist. Instead of 'class consciousness', Fabians emphasised
unbiased analysis of concrete social situations based on verifiable data. They generally
advocated collectivist state socialism.

Fabian Tracts

The Fabian Society disseminated its ideas in lectures, public debates, and tracts. The most
important early tract was Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by George Bernard Shaw and

published in 1889. It contained eight lectures, delivered in 1888 in the workingmen's clubs and
political associations of London by seven influential members of the Fabian Society: Shaw,
Sidney Webb, William Clarke, Sydney Oliver, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, and Hubert Bland.

They set forth the ideology and programme of the Society in hope that they would gradually
prompt the Liberal party to adopt and implement in English law. The authors dealt almost wholly

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with English conditions and problems. The tract sold 46,000 copies prior to World War One and

became the blueprint for socialist legislation. It was also published in the USA and other
countries and translated into several languages.

The first part of the book contains a critique of the existing social institutions in England. In the
second part the organisation of property and industry under the socialist state is described.

William Clarke outlined the growth of industrial production till it culminated in monopoly
capitalism and annihilated free competition. Sidney Webb explained why the laissez faire

system had to be abandoned in the economy and the state was forced to introduce a policy of

interference in a number of industries, particularly in the factories and mines. Wallas and Annie
Besant sketched the future socialist state.

Over one hundred tracts were published in the years between 1884 and 1901. They dealt

mostly with electoral reform, industrial relations, local government, poverty, social reform (such
as education, health and pensions), socialism and women’s issues. Most of the ideas of the
Fabian Society were published by its individual members under their own names. The early

Fabians argued that land and capital must be nationalised from landlords and capitalists
because they were their unearned increment, which must be returned to society.

Permeation

In its early stage, the Fabian Society adopted a policy of 'permeation', which involved infiltrating
existing institutions, parties and Parliament by its members and supporters in order to carry out

social and economic reforms. Fabians managed to permeate their ideology to many people who
were not socialists but thought of reforms. Their principal objective was nationalisation of the

industries.

The object of the Fabian Society is to persuade the English people to make their political
constitution thoroughly democratic and so to socialize their industries as to make the livelihood
of the people entirely independent of private Capitalism. [Fabian Tract No. 70, 3]

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The leading Fabians proposed different strategies of permeation. They considered the Liberals

to be more open to Fabian influence than the Conservatives. Therefore, for some time they
supported the Liberal government, but when they realised that it did not intend to introduce

social reforms, they published in 1893 a pamphlet, To Your Tents, O Israel, in which they called
for the creation of a truly working-class party. When the Independent Labour party was formed
in that year, the Fabian Society supported it.

The strategy of “permeation” was used successfully by Fabians, who participated in elections to

various governing bodies, such as the London County Council and the House of Commons.

They called for the spread of municipal socialism, which was manifested in social reforms
undertaken by local governments, such as development of water and gas supply, slum
clearances, and sanitation. Besides, they advocated the eight-hour working day, public

education, and the establishment of universal suffrage. As a result, the Fabian Society pressed
successfully on the Liberal-dominated Progressive Party in the London County Council in the
1890s. In 1899, the Fabian Society participated in the formation of a local government
Information Bureau.

Early Fabians and the Empire

Until the Boer War, in 1899, the Fabian Society had paid little or no attention to the imperial rule.
The Society was mostly concerned with domestic issues, such as national ownership, free
education, and improvement of the life of the poor classes. A major split occurred in the Society
over its response to the Boer War, leading to the resignation of Emmeline Pankhurst, William

Clarke, and J. Ramsay MacDonald, at that time a member of the Fabian Executive Committee

and the future leader of the Labour Party. In 1899, a group of Fabian rank-and-file members, led
by the future guild-socialist, S. G. Hobson, and supported by a few members, unsuccessfully
attempted to get the Fabian Executive to issue a statement of opposition to the war against the

Boers.

However, it was in 1900 that the Society finally published a tract drafted by George Bernard
Shaw, Fabianism and the Empire, which became the most significant statement of the Society's

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imperial policy. Shaw supported imperial expansion because, as he claimed, the world evolved

toward big and powerful states. The Fabians criticised Liberals, but supported British imperial
policy as a means of disseminating enlightened principles of governance throughout the world.

The early Fabian socialists wanted to reform Britain's imperial rule and turn the British Empire
into what was later called by the Webbs the Socialist Commonwealth. They spoke in favour of
'public-spirited' or 'social' imperialism. Hubert Bland defended British imperial policy arguing that

“England was the only country fit to pioneer the blessings of civilisation.” (Porter 109) Shaw

presented the view that small nations, like the Boer Republic, were anachronistic in the new
world of the twentieth century. (Semmel 61) Eventually, the Fabians accepted the opinion that
Britain must defend and maintain her empire in the most efficient way.

The British Empire, wisely governed, is invincible. The British Empire, handled as we handled

Ireland and the American colonies, and as we may handle South Africa if we are not careful, will
fall to pieces without the firing of a foreign shot. [Fabianism and Empire, 15]

The early Fabians belieed that the Empire could be efficiently managed by intelligent and wise

experts, such as those who attended the Coefficients dining club meetings, organised by
Beatrice Webb and her husband in 1902, to bring together the most influential decision- and

opinion-makers Britain. The early Fabians thus dreamt of creating the socialist heaven under
the British imperial flag. They were also concerned about the rearing of an 'imperial race' to help
balance the threat imposed by emerging German imperialism.

The London School of Economics

One of the greatest achievements of the early Fabians was the foundation of the London School

of Economics in 1894. It was a successful attempt to contest with ancient universities of Oxford
and Cambridge. The decision to create an educational establishment that would investigate the
social and economic problems of late Victorian Britain and propagate the ideas of the Fabian
Society was made by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw at

a breakfast party at the Webbs' summer house (Borough Farm) near Milford, Surrey, on 4
August 1894.

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In 1895, the Fabian Society received a large grant from Henry Hunt Hutchison, a Derby solicitor,

which helped them accomplish this project. Soon the London School of Economics and Political
Science (LSE) developed rapidly through private grants and donations. It became an important

centre of influence of Fabian socialism. In 1900, the LSE merged with the University of London,
and in 1903, the LSE opened the first department of sociology and social economics in Britain.

Accomplishments

The early Fabians accomplished quite a lot in the way of social reform, education, and public
administration. Fabian tracts became sources of inspiration for public legislation in Britain in the

first half of the 20th century. The Webbs argued convincingly that poverty is preventable and
can be reduced through adequate and effective social services and public control. The early
Fabians tried to set English socialism on a unique road. They helped to shape the ideological

basis of the Labour Party and lay the foundations of modern social welfare policy.

Sidney Webb, contributed significantly to the preparation of the Education Act of 1902, which
handed over the control of local schools to borough or city councils. Over time, the education
system in Britain emulated many Fabian ideas. Another important success of the early Fabians

was their contribution to the implementation of the municipal reform, which was to produce, as
they believed 'municipal socialism' (Clarkson 468).

Fallacies and Aberrations

Although the Fabian Society could boast of accomplishments in social reform in the final decade

of the Victorian era, the Society was not immune to fallacies which bore on its later image. The
early Fabians believed erroneously in the quick breakdown of capitalism and the emergence of
a socialism based on state control, strict bureaucratic social planning and management for

public welfare. Fabian socialism was by no means democratic. The Webbs, who were the
leading theoreticians of Fabianism, proposed a model of a professionally administered society.
They believed that in the socialist commonwealth political parties would disappear, and

politicians would be replaced by highly skilled and benevolent 'experts' and salaried middle-
class civil bureaucrats who would care for the general welfare of the rather ignorant and passive

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lower-class masses. The early Fabians believed naively that social problems could be solved

through scientific investigation, state-regulated planning and administrative measures as well as

the benevolence of enlightened middle-class elites.

Another serious flaw in the image of the Fabian Society was caused by its support of the
pseudo-science of eugenics. In the early 1900s a few prominent members of the Society,

including Sidney and Beatrice Webb, as well as Shaw and Wells, advocated the ideal of a
scientifically planned socialist society and supported a eugenic approach to social policy.

Devised by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton (1822-1911), eugenics aimed to replace

natural selection with a planned and deliberate selection of human species. In tune with
degeneration theory, which gained popularity at the turn of the nineteenth century, Sidney Webb
lamented in his pamphlet The Decline in the Birth Rate (1907) that Britain is gradually falling to

the Irish Roman Catholics and the Jews because the upper classes were reluctant to procreate.

In Great Britain at this moment, when half, or perhaps two-thirds, of all the married people are
regulating their families, children are being freely born to the Irish Catholics and the Polish,

Russian and German Jews, on the one hand, and to the thriftless and irresponsible — largely
the casual laborers and the other denizens of the one-roomed tenements of our great cities —

on the other. [16-17]

The Webbs, Shaw and Wells fervently supported eugenics. Beatrice Webb declared that
eugenics is “the most important question of all” while her husband remarked that “no eugenicist
can be a laissez-faire individualist" (Brignell), Shaw, who was briefly a lecturer for the Eugenic

Education Society, wrote that “nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization from the

fate that has overtaken all previous civilisations” (Benson 85). Likewise, George Herbert Wells
advocated “sterilisation of failures” (Ray 216).

Conclusion:

The Fabian Society became the pre-eminent intellectual society in the United Kingdom in the

Edwardian era, but its roots are in the late Victorian period. Fabianism was one of the more
interesting strands of British socialism which emerged in the late Victorian era. The early

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Fabians were opposed to the revolutionary theory of Karl Marx, who propagated the necessity

of a class war. Their purpose was to advance the socialist cause by reformist, rather than
revolutionary, means. Fabianism sought to reconcile the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy

Bentham and John Stuart Mill with the values of liberty, democracy, economic progress and
social justice. They even tried to revive both Benjamin Disraeli's Tory socialism and William
Gladstone's liberalism, and hoped for the realisation of a socialist state and the new

organisation of industry in Britain through permeation of their ideas to the country's intellectual

and political elites. As history has shown, Fabianism failed to destroy capitalism in Britain and
elsewhere, but the Fabian Society, in spite of its obvious failures and aberrations, should be
remembered as a most successful agent of social reform in late Victorian Britain. Some of its

ideas helped develop modern education, the modern welfare system as a countermeasure to
laissez-faire, municipal reforms, national insurance, public health care, tariff reform, employers'

liability, minimum wages, workmen's compensation, and even the global economy in the
twentieth century.

Britain:
Great Britain, also known as Britain Listeni/ˈbrɪ.tən/, is an island in the North Atlantic off the
north-west coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi), it is the
largest island in Europe and the ninth-largest in the world.[5][note 1] In 2011 the island had a

population of about 61 million people, making it the third-most populous island in the world, after
Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan.[7][8] It accounts for the majority of the British Isles
archipelago, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands,[9] including the island of Ireland

to its west.

The island is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constituting most

of its territory:[10] most of England, Scotland, and Wales are on the island, with their respective
capital cities, London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff. Politically, the term Great Britain usually extends
to include surrounding islands that form part of England, Scotland, and Wales.[13] The island is
dominated by an oceanic climate with quite narrow temperature differences between seasons.

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A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the Union of Scotland and England (which

already comprised the present-day countries of England and Wales) in 1707. More than a
hundred years before, in 1603, King James VI, King of Scots, had inherited the throne of

England, but it was not until 1707 that the Parliaments of the two countries agreed to form a
unified state. In 1801, Great Britain united with the neighbouring Kingdom of Ireland, forming the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which was renamed the United Kingdom of Great

Britain and Northern Ireland after the Irish Free State seceded in 1922.

World War I and its Aftermath:

Burdensome reparations imposed after World War I, coupled with a general inflationary period
in Europe in the 1920s—another direct result of a materially catastrophic war—caused spiraling
hyperinflation of the German Reichsmark by 1923. This hyperinflationary period combined with

the effects of the Great Depression (beginning in 1929) to seriously undermine the stability of
the German economy, wiping out the personal savings of the middle class and spurring massive
unemployment.

Such economic chaos did much to increase social unrest, destabilizing the fragile Weimar

Republic. Efforts of the western European powers to marginalize Germany undermined and
isolated its democratic leaders and underscored the need to restore German prestige through
remilitarization and expansion.

The social and economic upheaval that followed World War I powerfully destabilized Germany's

fledgling democracy and gave rise to many radical right wing parties in Weimar Germany.

Particularly detrimental in connection with the harsh provisions of Versailles was the rampant
conviction among many in the general population that Germany had been "stabbed in the back"
by the "November criminals"—those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and
broker the peace which Germans had so desperately wanted, but which had ended so
disastrously in the Versailles Treaty.

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Many Germans forgot that they had applauded the fall of the Kaiser, had initially welcomed

parliamentary democratic reform, and had rejoiced at the armistice. They recalled only that the
German Left—Socialists, Communists, and Jews, in common imagination—had surrendered

German honor to a disgraceful peace when no foreign armies had even set foot on German soil.
This Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend) was initiated and fanned by retired German
wartime military leaders, who, well aware in 1918 that Germany could no longer wage war, had

advised the Kaiser to sue for peace. It helped to further discredit German socialist and liberal

circles who felt most committed to maintain Germany's fragile democratic experiment.

Vernunftsrepublikaner ("republicans by reason"), individuals like the historian Friedrich

Meinecke and Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann, had at first resisted democratic
reform. They now felt compelled to support the Weimar Republic as the least worst alternative.

They tried to steer their compatriots away from polarization to the radical Left and Right. The
promises of the German nationalist Right to revise the Versailles Treaty through force if
necessary increasingly gained inroads in respectable circles. Meanwhile the specter of an
imminent Communist threat, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and of short-lived
Communist revolutions or coups in Hungary (Bela Kun) and in Germany itself (e.g., the
Sparticist Uprising), shifted German political sentiment decidedly toward right-wing causes.

Agitators from the political left served heavy prison sentences for inspiring political unrest. On
the other hand, radical rightwing activists like Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi Party had attempted to
depose the government of Bavaria and commence a "national revolution" in the November 1923

Beer Hall Putsch, served only nine months of a five year prison sentence for treason—which
was a capital offense. During the prison sentence he wrote his political manifesto, Mein Kampf

(My Struggle).

The difficulties imposed by social and economic unrest in the wake of World War I and its

onerous peace terms and the raw fear of the potential for a Communist takeover in the German
middle classes worked to undermine pluralistic democratic solutions in Weimar Germany. They

also increased public longing for more authoritarian direction, a kind of leadership which
German voters ultimately and unfortunately found in Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party.

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Similar conditions benefited rightwing authoritarian and totalitarian systems in eastern Europe

as well, beginning with the losers of World War I, and eventually raised levels of tolerance for
and acquiescence in violent antisemitism and discrimination against national minorities

throughout the region.

Finally, the destruction and catastrophic loss of life during World War I led to what can best be

described as a cultural despair in many former combatant nations. Disillusionment with

international and national politics and a sense of distrust in political leaders and government

officials permeated the consciousness of a public which had witnessed the ravages of a

devastating four-year conflict. Most European countries had lost virtually a generation of their
young men. While some writers like German author Ernst Jünger glorified the violence of war
and the conflict's national context in his 1920 work Storm of Steel (Stahlgewittern), it was the

vivid and realistic account of trench warfare portrayed in Erich Maria Remarque's 1929
masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) which captured the
experience of frontline troops and expressed the alienation of the "lost generation" who returned
from war and found themselves unable to adapt to peacetime and tragically misunderstood by a
home front population who had not seen the horrors of war firsthand.

In some circles this detachment and disillusionment with politics and conflict fostered an
increase in pacifist sentiment. In the United States public opinion favored a return to
isolationism; such popular sentiment was at the root of the US Senate's refusal to ratify the
Versailles Treaty and approve US membership in President Wilson's own proposed League of

Nations. For a generation of Germans, this social alienation and political disillusionment was
captured in German author Hans Fallada's Little Man, What Now? (Kleiner Mann, was nun?),

the story of a German "everyman," caught up in the turmoil of economic crisis and
unemployment, and equally vulnerable to the siren songs of the radical political Left and Right.
Fallada's 1932 novel accurately portrayed the Germany of his time: a country immersed in

economic and social unrest and polarized at the opposite ends of its political spectrum. Many of

the causes of this disorder had their roots World War I and its aftermath; and the path which
Germany took would lead to a still more destructive war in the years to come.

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Causes

World War 1 occurred between July 1914 and November 11, 1918. By the end of the war, over

17 million people would be killed including over 100,000 American troops. The reason why war
erupted is actually much more complicated than a simple list of causes. While there was a chain
of events that directly led to the fighting, the actual root causes are much deeper and part of

continued debate and discussion. This list is an overview of the most popular reasons that are
cited as the root causes of World War 1.

German prisoners of war in Russia, during World War I, 1918. - FPG/Archive Photos/Getty

Images

FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images

1. Mutual Defense Alliances

Over time, countries throughout Europe made mutual defense agreements that would pull them
into battle. These treaties meant that if one country was attacked, allied countries were bound to
defend them. Before World War 1, the following alliances existed:

• Russia and Serbia

• Germany and Austria-Hungary

• France and Russia
• Britain and France and Belgium

• Japan and Britain

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia got involved to defend Serbia. Germany seeing

Russia mobilizing, declared war on Russia. France was then drawn in against Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Germany attacked France through Belgium pulling Britain into war. Then
Japan entered the war. Later, Italy and the United States would enter on the side of the allies.

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Imperialism is when a country increases their power and wealth by bringing additional territories

under their control. Before World War 1, Africa and parts of Asia were points of contention
amongst the European countries. This was especially true because of the raw materials these

areas could provide. The increasing competition and desire for greater empires led to an
increase in confrontation that helped push the world into World War I.

3. Militarism

As the world entered the 20th century, an arms race had begun. By 1914, Germany had the
greatest increase in military buildup. Great Britain and Germany both greatly increased their

navies in this time period. Further, in Germany and Russia particularly, the military
establishment began to have a greater influence on public policy. This increase in militarism
helped push the countries involved into war.

4. Nationalism

Much of the origin of the war was based on the desire of the Slavic peoples in Bosnia and
Herzegovina to no longer be part of Austria Hungary but instead be part of Serbia. In this way,

nationalism led directly to the War. But in a more general way, the nationalism of the various
countries throughout Europe contributed not only to the beginning but the extension of the war
in Europe. Each country tried to prove their dominance and power.

5. Immediate Cause: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

The immediate cause of World War I that made the aforementioned items come into play
(alliances, imperialism, militarism, nationalism) was the assassination of Archduke Franz

Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. In June 1914, a Serbian-nationalist terrorist group called the

Black Hand sent groups to assassinate the Archduke. Their first attempt failed when a driver
avoided a grenade thrown at their car. However, later that day a Serbian nationalist named
Gavrilo Princip assassinated him and his wife while they were in Sarajevo, Bosnia which was

part of Austria-Hungary. This was in protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region.
Serbia wanted to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This assassination led to Austria-Hungary

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declaring war on Serbia. When Russia began to mobilize due to its alliance with Serbia,

Germany declared war on Russia. Thus began the expansion of the war to include all those
involved in the mutual defense alliances.

The War to End All Wars

World War I saw a change in warfare, from the hand-to-hand style of older wars to the inclusion
of weapons that used technology and removed the individual from close combat. The war had

extremely high casualties over 15 million dead and 20 million injured. The face of warfare would
never be the same again.

Britain and Peace settlement

The Paris Peace Conference, also known as Versailles Peace Conference, was the meeting of
the Allied victors, following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated

Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved
diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. The major decisions were the creation

of the League of Nations; the five peace treaties with defeated enemies, including the Treaty of

Versailles with Germany; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as
"mandates," chiefly to Britain and France; reparations imposed on Germany, and the drawing of
new national boundaries (sometimes with plebiscites) to better reflect the forces of nationalism.
The main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt
for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her allies." This provision proved humiliating for

Germany and set the stage for very high reparations Germany was supposed to pay (it paid

only a small portion before reparations ended in 1931).

The "Big Four" were the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Lloyd George; President
of the United States, Woodrow Wilson; the Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau; and
the Prime Minister of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met together informally 145 times
and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by the others.

Overview and direct results

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For more details on this topic, see List of participants to Paris Peace Conference, 1919.

The conference opened on 18 January 1919. Delegates from 27 nations were assigned to 52

commissions, which held 1,646 sessions to prepare reports, with the help of many experts, on
topics ranging from prisoners of war, to undersea cables, to international aviation, to
responsibility for the war. Key recommendations were folded into the Treaty of Versailles with

Germany, which had 15 chapters and 440 clauses, as well as treaties for the other defeated
nations. The five major powers (France, Britain, Italy, the U.S. and Japan) controlled the

Conference. In practice Japan played a small role and the "Big Four" leaders were the dominant

figures at the conference. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major
decisions, which in turn were ratified by the others.[1] The open meetings of all the delegations
approved the decisions made by the Big Four. The conference came to an end on 21 January

1920 with the inaugural General Assembly of the League of Nations.

Five major peace treaties were prepared at the Paris Peace Conference (with, in parentheses,
the affected countries):

• the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919, (Germany)

• the Treaty of Saint-Germain, 10 September 1919, (Austria)

• the Treaty of Neuilly, 27 November 1919, (Bulgaria)
• the Treaty of Trianon, 4 June 1920, (Hungary)
• the Treaty of Sèvres, 10 August 1920; subsequently revised by the Treaty of Lausanne,
24 July 1923, (Ottoman Empire/Republic of Turkey).

The major decisions were the creation of the League of Nations; the five peace treaties with

defeated enemies, including the Treaty of Versailles with Germany; the awarding of German
and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates," chiefly to Britain and France; reparations
imposed on Germany, and the drawing of new national boundaries (sometimes with plebiscites)
to better reflect the forces of nationalism. The main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with

Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her
allies." This provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for very high

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reparations Germany was supposed to pay (it paid only a small portion before reparations

ended in 1931).

As the conference's decisions were ennacted unilaterally, and largely on the whims of the Big
Four, for its duration Paris was effectively the center of a world government, which deliberated
over and implemented the sweeping changes to the political geography of Europe. Most

famously, the Treaty of Versailles itself weakened Germany's military and placed full blame for
the war and costly reparations on its shoulders – the humiliation and resentment in Germany is

sometimes considered as one of the causes of Nazi success and indirectly a cause of World

War II. The League of Nations proved controversial in the United States as critics said it
subverted the powers of Congress to declare war; the U.S. Senate did not ratify any of the
peace treaties and the U.S. never joined the League – instead, the Harding administration

concluded new treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Republican Germany was not
invited to attend. Representatives of White Russia but not Communist Russia were present.
Numerous other nations did send delegations in order to appeal for various unsuccessful
additions to the treaties, ranging from independence for the countries of the South Caucasus to
Japan's unsuccessful demand for racial equality amongst the other Great Powers.

Mandates

A central issue of the Conference was the disposition of the overseas colonies of Germany.
(Austria did not have colonies and the Ottoman Empire presented a separate issue.)[4][5]

The British dominions wanted their reward for their sacrifice. Australia wanted New Guinea,
New Zealand wanted Samoa, and South Africa wanted South West Africa (modern Namibia).

Wilson wanted the League of Nations to administer all the German colonies until such time as
they were ready for independence. Lloyd George realized he needed to support his dominions,
and he proposed a compromise that there be three types of mandates. Mandates for the
Turkish provinces were one category; they would be divided up between Britain and France.

The second category, comprising New Guinea, Samoa, and South West Africa, were located so
close to responsible supervisors that the mandates could hardly be given to anyone except

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Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Finally, the African colonies would need the careful

supervision as "Class B" mandates that could only be provided by experienced colonial powers
Britain, France, and Belgium; Italy and Portugal received small bits of territory. Wilson and the

others finally went along with the solution.[6] The dominions received "Class C Mandates" to the
colonies they wanted. Japan obtained mandates over German possessions north of the
equator.[7][8][9]

Wilson wanted no mandates for the United States; his top advisor Colonel House was deeply

involved in awarding the others.[10] Wilson was especially offended by Australian demands. He

and Hughes had some memorable clashes, with the most famous being:

Wilson: "But after all, you speak for only five million people." Hughes: "I represent sixty
thousand dead." (The much larger United States had suffered 50,000 deaths.)[11]

American approach

"The Big Four" made all the major decisions at the Paris Peace Conference (from left to right,
David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of

France, Woodrow Wilson of the U.S.)

Prior to Wilson's arrival in Europe in December 1918, no American president had ever visited

Europe while in office.[12] Wilson's Fourteen Points, of a year earlier, had helped win the hearts
and minds of many as the war ended; these included Americans and Europeans generally, as
well as Germany, its allies and the former subjects of the Ottoman Empire specifically. Wilson's

diplomacy and his Fourteen Points had essentially established the conditions for the armistices
that had brought an end to World War I. Wilson felt it was his duty and obligation to the people
of the world to be a prominent figure at the peace negotiations. High hopes and expectations

were placed on him to deliver what he had promised for the post-war era. In doing so, Wilson
ultimately began to lead the foreign policy of the United States toward interventionism, a move
strongly resisted in some domestic circles.

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Once Wilson arrived, however, he found "rivalries, and conflicting claims previously

submerged".[13] He worked mostly trying to sway the direction that the French (Georges
Clemenceau) and British (Lloyd George) delegations were taking towards Germany and its

allies in Europe, as well as the former Ottoman lands in the Middle East. Wilson's attempts to
gain acceptance of his Fourteen Points ultimately failed, after France and Britain refused to
adopt some specific points and its core principles.

In Europe, several of his Fourteen Points conflicted with the other powers. The United States

did not encourage or believe that the responsibility for the war that Article 231 placed on

Germany was fair or warranted.[14] It would not be until 1921 that the United States finally
signed separate peace treaties with Germany, Austria and Hungary.

In the Middle East, negotiations were complicated by competing aims, claims, and the new

mandate system. The United States hoped to establish a more liberal and diplomatic world, as
stated in the Fourteen Points, where democracy, sovereignty, liberty and self-determination
would be respected.[citation needed] France and Britain, on the other hand, already controlled

empires, wielded power over their subjects around the world, and still aspired to be dominant
colonial powers.

In light of the previously secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, and following the adoption of the
mandate system on the Arab province of the former Ottoman lands, the conference heard
statements from competing Zionist and Arab claimants. President Woodrow Wilson then
recommended an international commission of inquiry to ascertain the wishes of the local

inhabitants. The Commission idea, first accepted by Great Britain and France, was later

rejected. Eventually it became the purely American King–Crane Commission, which toured all
Syria and Palestine during the summer of 1919, taking statements and sampling opinion.[13] Its
report, presented to President Wilson, was kept secret from the public until The New York

Times broke the story in December 1922.[15] A pro-Zionist joint resolution on Palestine was
passed by Congress in September 1922.[16]

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France and Britain tried to appease the American President by consenting to the establishment

of his League of Nations. However, because isolationist sentiment was strong and some of the
articles in the League's charter conflicted with the United States Constitution, the United States

never did ratify the Treaty of Versailles nor join the League of Nations,[17] which President
Wilson had helped create, to further peace through diplomacy rather than war and conditions
which can breed it.

Under President Warren Harding the United States signed separate treaties with Germany,[18]

Austria,[19] and Hungary[20] in 1921.

British approach

The British Air Section at the Conference

Maintenance of the British Empire's unity, holdings and interests were an overarching concern

for the British delegates to the conference, but it entered the conference with the more specific
goals of:

• Ensuring the security of France

• Removing the threat of the German High Seas Fleet
• Settling territorial contentions

• Supporting the League of Nations

• with that order of priority.

The Racial Equality Proposal put forth by the Japanese did not directly conflict with any of these
core British interests. However, as the conference progressed the full implications of the Racial

Equality Proposal, regarding immigration to the British Dominions (with Australia taking

particular exception), would become a major point of contention within the delegation.

Ultimately, Britain did not see the Racial Equality proposal as being one of the fundamental
aims of the conference. The delegation was therefore willing to sacrifice this proposal in order to
placate the Australian delegation and thus help satisfy its overarching aim of preserving the
unity of the British Empire.[21]

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Although Britain reluctantly consented to the attendance of separate Dominion delegations, the

British did manage to rebuff attempts by the envoys of the newly proclaimed Irish Republic to
put its case to the Conference for self-determination, diplomatic recognition and membership of

the proposed League of Nations. The Irish envoys' final "Demand for Recognition" in a letter to
Clemenceau, the Chairman, was not answered.[22] Britain had planned to legislate for two Irish
Home Rule states (without Dominion status), and did so in 1920. In 1919 Irish nationalists were

unpopular with the Allies because of the Conscription Crisis of 1918.

David Lloyd George commented that he did "not do badly" at the peace conference,

"considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon." This was a reference to the
very idealistic views of Wilson on the one hand and the stark realism of Clemenceau, who was
determined to see Germany punished.[23]

Dominion representation

The Australian delegation. At the center is Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes

The Dominion governments were not originally given separate invitations to the conference, but

rather were expected to send representatives as part of the British delegation.[24]

Convinced that Canada had become a nation on the battlefields of Europe, its Prime Minister,

Sir Robert Borden, demanded that it have a separate seat at the conference. This was initially
opposed not only by Britain but also by the United States, which saw a dominion delegation as
an extra British vote. Borden responded by pointing out that since Canada had lost nearly

60,000 men, a far larger proportion of its men compared to the 50,000 American losses, at least
had the right to the representation of a "minor" power. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd
George, eventually relented, and convinced the reluctant Americans to accept the presence of

delegations from Canada, India, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa. They
also received their own seats in the League of Nations.[25]

Canada, although it too had sacrificed nearly 60,000 men in the war, asked for neither
reparations nor mandates.[26]

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The Australian delegation, led by the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, fought hard for its

demands: reparations, annexation of German New Guinea and rejection of the Japanese racial
equality proposal. Hughes said that he had no objection to the equality proposal provided it was

stated in unambiguous terms that it did not confer any right to enter Australia. Hughes was
concerned by the rise of Japan. Within months of the declaration of the War in 1914; Japan,
Australia and New Zealand seized all German possessions in the Far East and Pacific. Though

Japan occupied German possessions with the blessings of the British, Hughes was alarmed by

this policy.[27]

French approach

The French Prime Minister, George Clemenceau, controlled his delegation and his chief goal
was to weaken Germany militarily, strategically and economically.[28][29] Having personally

witnessed two German attacks on French soil in the last forty years, he was adamant that
Germany should not be permitted to attack France again. In particular, Clemenceau sought an
American and British guarantee of French security in the event of another German attack.

Clemenceau also expressed skepticism and frustration with Wilson's Fourteen Points: "Mr.
Wilson bores me with his fourteen points", complained Clemenceau. "Why, God Almighty has

only ten!" Wilson won a few points by signing a mutual defense treaty with France, but back in
Washington he did not present it to the Senate for ratification and it never took effect.[30]

Another alternative French policy was to seek a rapprochement with Germany. In May 1919 the
diplomat René Massigli was sent on several secret missions to Berlin. During his visits Massigli

offered on behalf of his government to revise the territorial and economic clauses of the

upcoming peace treaty.[31] Massigli spoke of the desirability of "practical, verbal discussions"
between French and German officials that would lead to a "collaboration Franco-allemande".[31]
Furthermore, Massagli told the Germans that the French thought of the "Anglo-Saxon powers",

namely the United States and British Empire, to be the major threat to France in the post-war
world. He argued that both France and Germany had a joint interest in opposing "Anglo-Saxon

domination" of the world and warned that the "deepening of opposition" between the French and
the Germans "would lead to the ruin of both countries, to the advantage of the Anglo-Saxon

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powers".[32] The Germans rejected the French offers because they considered the French

overtures to be a trap to trick them into accepting the Versailles treaty "as is" and because the
German foreign minister, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau thought that the United States

was more likely to reduce the severity of the peace terms than France.[32] In the final event it
proved to be Lloyd George who pushed for more favourable terms for Germany.

Italian approach

In 1914 Italy remained neutral despite its alliance with Germany and Austria. In 1915 it joined
the Allies. It was motivated by gaining the territories promised by the Allies in the secret Treaty

of London: the Trentino, the Tyrol as far as Brenner, Trieste and Istria, most of the Dalmatian
coast except Fiume, Valona and a protectorate over Albania, Antalya in Turkey and a possibly
colonies in Africa or Asia.

The Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando tried therefore to get full implementation of

the Treaty of London, as agreed by France and Great Britain before the war. He had popular
support, for the loss of 700,000 soldiers and a budget deficit of 12,000,000,000 Lire during the
war made the Italian government and people feel entitled to all these territories and even more

not mentioned in the Treaty of London: the city of Fiume, which many Italians believed should
be annexed to Italy because of the Italian population.[33]

In the meetings of the "Big Four", in which Orlando's powers of diplomacy were inhibited by his
lack of English, the others were only willing to offer Trentino to the Brenner, the Dalmatian port

of Zara and some of the Dalmatian islands. All other territories were promised to other nations
and the great powers were worried about Italy's imperial ambitions. Even though Italy did get

most of its demands, Orlando was refused Fiume, most of Dalmatia and any colonial gain and
he left the conference in a rage.[34]

There was a general disappointment in Italy, which the nationalist and fascist parties used to
build the idea that Italy was betrayed by the Allies and refused what was due. This led to the

general rise of Italian fascism.

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Greek approach

PM Eleftherios Venizelos took part in the Paris Peace Conference as Greece's chief

representative. President Woodrow Wilson was said to have placed Venizelos first in point of
personal ability among all delegates gathered in Paris to settle the terms of Peace.[35]

Venizelos proposed the Greek expansion in Thrace and Asia Minor (lands of the defeated
Kingdom of Bulgaria and Ottoman Empire), Northern Epirus, Imvros and Tenedos, aiming to the

realization of Megali Idea. He also reached an agreement with the Italians on the cession of the
Dodecanese (Venizelos–Tittoni agreement). For the Greeks of Pontus he proposed a common

Pontic-Armenian State.

As a liberal politician, Venizelos was strong supporter of the Fourteen Points and League of

Nations.

Japanese approach

Japanese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference 1919.

The Empire of Japan sent a large delegation headed by Marquess Saionji Kinmochi (former
Prime Minister). It was originally one of the "big five" but relinquished that role because of its

slight interest in European affairs. Instead it focused on two demands: the inclusion of their
racial equality proposal in the League's Covenant and Japanese territorial claims with respect to
former German colonies, namely Shantung (including Kiaochow) and the Pacific islands north of

the Equator (the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, the Mariana Islands, and the Carolines). Makino
was de facto chief while Saionji's role was symbolic and limited by his ill health. The Japanese

delegation became unhappy after receiving only one-half of the rights of Germany, and walked

out of the conference.[36]

Racial equality proposal

Japan proposed the inclusion of a "racial equality clause" in the Covenant of the League of
Nations on 13 February as an amendment to Article 21.[37] It read:

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The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting

Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the
League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact,

on account of their race or nationality.

Because he knew that Great Britain was critical to the decision, President Wilson, as

Conference chairman, ruled that a unanimous vote was required. On 11 April 1919 the
commission held a final session and the proposal received a majority of votes, but Great Britain

and Australia opposed it. The Australians had lobbied the British to defend Australia's White

Australia policy. The defeat of the proposal influenced Japan's turn from cooperation with West
toward more nationalistic policies.[38]

Territorial claims

The Japanese claim to Shantung was disputed by the Chinese. In 1914 at the outset of World

War I Japan had seized the territory granted to Germany in 1897. They also seized the German
islands in the Pacific north of the equator. In 1917, Japan had made secret agreements with
Britain, France and Italy that guaranteed their annexation of these territories. With Britain, there

was a mutual agreement, Japan also agreeing to support British annexation of the Pacific
islands south of the equator. Despite a generally pro-Chinese view on behalf of the American
delegation, Article 156 of the Treaty of Versailles transferred German concessions in Jiaozhou,
China to Japan rather than returning sovereign authority to China. The leader of the Chinese
delegation, Lou Tseng-Tsiang, demanded that a reservation be inserted before he would sign

the treaty. The reservation was denied, and the treaty was signed by all the delegations except

that of China. Chinese outrage over this provision led to demonstrations known as the May
Fourth Movement. The Pacific islands north of the equator became a class C mandate
administered by Japan.[39]

Chinese approach

The Chinese delegation was led by Lou Tseng-Tsiang, accompanied by Wellington Koo and
Cao Rulin. Before the Western powers, Koo demanded that Germany's concessions on

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Shandong be returned to China. He further called for an end to imperialist institutions such as

extraterritoriality, legation guards, and foreign lease holds. Despite American support and the
ostensible spirit of self-determination, the Western powers refused his claims, transferring the

German concessions to Japan instead. This sparked widespread student protests in China on 4
May, later known as the May Fourth Movement, eventually pressuring the government into
refusing to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Thus the Chinese delegation at the Paris Peace

Conference was the only one not to sign the treaty at the signing ceremony.

Effects of War on Britain

Britain after the war

Vast crowds gathered in London's Trafalgar Square to celebrate the victorious end of the First

World War on 11 November 1918. However, the joyous mood was short-lived. Post-war Britain,
as many contemporary observers noted, did not seem like a country that had just experienced a

great military triumph. Various political, economic and social problems ensured that the return to
peacetime conditions was not a soft landing.

Party politics

The Glossary - opens new windowRepresentation of the People Act (June 1918) gave the vote
for the first time to all men over the age of 21 (subject to a six-month residency qualification)
and to women over the age of 30. As a result, it almost trebled the franchise in Britain, from 7.7

million to 21.4 million. Historians have long debated the relative impact of this and the war itself
on the dramatic reconfiguration of party politics after 1918.

The Liberal Party - divided between supporters of the Lloyd George coalition that regained

power in the Glossary - opens new window'coupon election' (December 1918) and supporters of
the former prime minister Glossary - opens new windowAsquith - went into steep electoral
decline during the 1920s and never recovered. Its status as Britain's 'second' party of

government was taken by the Labour Party, a development confirmed when the first-ever

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Labour government - a coalition led by Glossary - opens new windowRamsay MacDonald - took

office in January 1924.

Amid these radical changes, the success of the Conservative Party, which dominated
government during the inter-war years, constituted the major remaining link to the pre-war
British political map.

The economy:

During the First World War, Britain incurred debts equivalent to 136% of its gross national

product, and its major creditor, the USA, began to emerge as the world's strongest economy.

Although Spotlights on historydemobilisation was relatively unproblematic, the end of the war
did not witness a swift return to pre-war 'normality' for the British economy. More British than
German workers were involved in strikes in 1919. Unemployment in 1921 reached its highest

point (11.3%) since records had begun. Staple wartime industries - such as coal, ship-building
and steel - contracted. Working women were forced to cede their jobs to returning soldiers.

Swingeing cuts in public spending were introduced in 1922 to ward off inflation. The ambitious
reform programme drawn up by the minister of Glossary - opens new windowreconstruction,
Glossary - opens new windowChristopher Addison, in February 1918 - which included major

public housing and health schemes - was sacrificed on the altar of deflation and debt-servicing.
Nonetheless, though successive governments failed to create a 'land fit for heroes', living
standards and productivity levels in inter-war Britain generally improved.

How was post-war British society different from the society that had entered the First World War

in August 1914? It was indubitably more democratic. Previously under-represented groups such

as women and, in particular, the working class became better organised and more powerful
during the war. This, in turn, encouraged the growth of less deferential attitudes, as did the
cross-class experiences of the trenches. There had been a disproportionately high percentage

of casualties among the landed classes, and the strict class hierarchy of Edwardian Britain
disappeared for good in the immediate post-war years.

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Yet, though the working class became a more powerful political force, it shrank numerically.

Growing numbers of the working population in inter-war Britain were employed in 'white collar'
jobs. The First World War thus marked an important staging post on the road to 'modern' British

society.

Ear, grief, sorrow: these are the overriding emotions of war. For men, women, and children

confined to the home front between 1914 and 1918, exhilarating surges of patriotic energies and
the evaporation of many restraints were fleeting thrills when set against the loss of loved ones.

Children woke to find that their fathers had left for distant battlefields while they slept. Three

hundred thousand never saw their fathers again; 160,000 wives received the dreaded telegram
informing them that their husbands had been killed. Countless others discovered the meaning of
suffering.

When Phyllis Kelly first heard that her lover Eric Appleby had been seriously wounded, she
immediately put pen to paper. "My own darling Englishman", she wrote from Dublin on October
28 1915, "I wonder why I'm writing this, which you may never see - oh God, perhaps even now

you have gone far away from your Lady - I wonder when another telegram will come; this
knowing nothing is terrible, I don't know what to do. I simply have sat and shivered with such an

awful clutching fear at my heart ... Oh my love, my love, what shall I do - but I must be brave
and believe all will be well - dear one, surely God won't take you from me now. It will be the end
of everything that matters ... you are all the world and life to me." The letter was never posted:
Eric was already dead.

The "awful clutching fear" that sapped morale presented the British government with the

formidable task of rallying not only the troops but the entire nation to the war effort. Loyalty was
not guaranteed. The Independent Labour Party, No Conscription Fellowship, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, Union of Democratic Control and the Women's International League opposed

the war. In "Red Clydeside", there were anti-war demonstrations, industrial action in essential
industries, rent strikes, and even cries for a Marxist revolution. Irish republicans went ahead with

an armed rising at Easter, 1916. After a week, they were crushed and their blood sacrifice

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denounced as pro-German but, on the Irish home front, support for Sinn Féin and resistance to

the war began growing.

Curfews and censorship

From the declaration of war, the authorities realised that they had to act decisively. They passed
the Defence of the Realm Act (Dora), which, after many amendments, gave the government
unprecedented powers to intervene in people's lives. They were empowered to take over any

factory or workshop. Curfews and censorship were imposed. Severe restrictions on movement
were introduced. Discussing military matters in public became a serious offence. Almost anyone

could be arrested for "causing alarm". In the interests of the work ethic, British summer time
commenced, opening hours for pubs were cut, and beer was watered down. Women who were
suspected of having venereal disease could be stopped by the police and subjected to a

gynaecological examination. A woman with VD could be prosecuted for having sexual

intercourse with a serviceman. It did not matter that he could have been her husband, and may
have given her the disease in the first place.

Suspicion of outsiders was high. Dora and the Aliens Restriction Act severely curtailed the civil

liberties of non-British-born subjects (even naturalised citizens who had resided in the UK for
decades). They were required to register, obtain permits if they intended to travel more than five
miles, and were prohibited from entering certain areas. More than 32,000 were held in
internment camps or repatriated. Most notably after the sinking of the Lusitania by a German
submarine in May 1915, anti-German sentiment erupted into riots in Liverpool, Manchester,

Salford, Sheffield, Rotherham, Newcastle, South Wales, London and elsewhere.

In Liverpool, 200 businesses were destroyed. In London, of the 21 Metropolitan police districts,
only two were free from riots. It was, as the Daily Record observed, "not an uplifting spectacle to
see this country descending to trivial and hysterical methods of vengeance". More typically, DH
Lawrence admitted: "When I read of the Lusitania ... I am mad with rage myself. I would like to

kill a million Germans - two million." Ironically, Lawrence's German-born wife and his opposition

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to militarism placed him on the wrong side of Dora. He was accused of spying and forced out of

his cottage in St Ives.

Spy fever

It would not have helped Lawrence that he was widely believed to have lax morals. Spy fever
was only rivalled by concerns about women's sexual fervour. Indeed, in the summer of 1918,
the two fears bonded. Noel Pemberton Billing, MP for East Hertfordshire and publisher of right-

wing newspapers, claimed to have a copy of a blacklist of 47,000 traitors and spies in high
places in Britain. Many were, he insisted, inflamed by the "cult of the clitoris", betraying the

"sacred secrets of state" in "lesbian ecstasy". Heterosexual passions were also said to have
been kindled by wartime excitements. Freed from the masculine governance of fathers,
husbands and brothers, women were accused of khaki fever. As Private GJ Dodd, a member of

the British West Indian Regiment, enthused while on leave in Seaford (East Sussex): "Plenty of
girls. They love the boys in khaki. They detest walking with civilians. They love the darkies!"

The newly established Women Police Volunteers, Women Police Service and Women Patrol
Committee did not share his enthusiasm. Female breadwinning was thought to have helped

sponsor women's licentiousness and consumerism. As poet Madeline Ida Bedford expressed it,
parodying the accents of munitions workers:

• Earning high wages?

• Yus, Five quid a week.

• A woman, too, mind you

• I call it dim sweet.

• I spends the whole racket

• On good times and clothes.
• I've bracelets and jewellery,
• Rings envied by friends;

• A sergeant to swank with,

• And something to lend.

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Jobs in the civil service, factories, docklands and arsenals, tramways, Post Office and farms

were feminised. In July 1914, 3.2 million women were employed in industry; this had jumped to
4.8 million by April 1918. Some 40% of these women were married (compared with only 14%

prior to the war). Many encountered hostility from male workers who were worried about
competition and the deskilling of their jobs. "Dilution", or the breaking down of complex jobs into
simpler tasks, was introduced to solve the problem of the shortage of skilled male workers

without threatening male wages.

Munitions work elicited particular anxieties. In Women at Munitions Making, Mary Gabrielle

Collins maintained that women's hands: "Should minister unto the flame of life, / Their fingers
guide/ The rosy teat, swelling with milk, To the eager mouth of the suckling babe." Instead, she
lamented, their hands were being "coarsened" in the factories and: "Their thoughts ... Are

bruised against the law, / "Kill, kill."

Givers of life were being trained to take it. In the words of a woman writing for the magazine of a
projectile factory: "the fact that I am using my life's energy to destroy human souls gets on my

nerves". She was proud that she was "doing what I can to bring this horrible affair to an end. But
once the war is over, never in creation will I do the same thing again".

Propagandists attempted to reconcile women's dual roles as life-givers and manufacturers of

death-dealing weapons. Thus, in Our Girls: Their Work for the War (1916), Hall Caine adopted
the language of trashy romances, pointing out that munitions workers had learned to show a
"proper respect" for their machine's "impetuous organisms". By learning their machine's

"whims", munitions women speedily "wooed and won this new kind of male monster". Making

bombs was as "perfectly natural" to women as making love.

The effect of widening employment opportunities for women was ambiguous. On the one hand,
women were admitted into industry under strict conditions, including the fact that they did not
actually replace the men but were allowed to perform only certain tasks. Feminist lobbying for

equal wages never succeeded: women were paid about half of what men earned. In munitions
factories, they risked dying in explosions or suffering TNT poisoning. After the war was over,

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they were expected to return to traditional roles. The pervasive theme of feminine self-sacrifice

meant that they lacked the economic and political power after the war to transform their world.

Purpose and emancipation

On the other hand, many women revelled in a new sense of purpose and emancipation. As
Naomi Loughnan admitted in 1917, she was "sick of frivolling" and "wanted to do something big
and hard, because of our boys and of England". Factories offered better conditions, higher

wages, more interesting work and greater freedoms than domestic service had done. Female
factory workers challenged the gender order: they were earning much more than previously

(three times more in some cases), were able to demonstrate their ability to carry out skilled work
in areas previously barred to them, and were allowed greater leeway in the way they comported
themselves publicly.

As trade union leader Mary Macarthur concluded in 1918: "No longer are we told that 'the hand
that rocks the cradle rules the world'. Today it is the hand that drills the shell that determines the

destiny of the world; and those who did not hesitate to refuse the rights of citizenship to the
mothers of men are ready and anxious to concede these rights to the makers of machine guns."

Macarthur believed that women's war work would make female suffrage politically unavoidable.
The suffragettes (members of the Women's Social and Political Union, the more militant wing of
the suffrage movement), who a few months before had been torching churches and cricket

pavilions, became patriotic war workers. Although a sizeable minority of the more moderate
members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies ("suffragists") joined the peace
movement, most also threw themselves into the war effort in an attempt to link their demands

for citizenship with service during a national emergency.

Vote granted

By June 1917, a combination of admiration for women's war work, judicious lobbying by
suffragists and debates about re-enfranchising men who were serving in the armed services

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abroad convinced parliament to pass the Representation of the People's Bill by 385 votes to 55.

This gave the vote to an additional 5 million men and nearly 9 million women. Crucially,
however, the vote was granted only to women over 30 years old who were householders, wives

of householders, occupiers of property of an annual value of not less than £5, or university
graduates. Ironically, the young women who had toiled in war industries or in the Land Army did
not gain the vote on the same terms as their male counterparts until 1928.

The effect of the war on working-class standards of living was more encouraging. Civilians had

a relatively low chance of being killed in enemy raids. Only 1,300 civilians were killed when

Zeppelins rained bombs on London in 1915 and Gotha Giant bombers followed in 1917 (a
single raid during the second world war would have a resulted in a similar number of deaths).
Full employment, rationing (which was introduced in the last year of the war), rent control, rising

bacon imports and increased consumption of milk and eggs, and improved social provision
meant that working-class families were better off. Indeed, on average working-class incomes
doubled between 1914 and 1920 and, in the aftermath of war when price levels dropped, this
war-enhanced wage level was successfully defended.

In contrast to the improved life expectancy of working-class men who had been old enough to

evade war service, servicemen and servicewomen returning from the front-lines were physically
devastated. Writing in 1917 about Brighton, pacifist Caroline Playne admitted to being full of
"sickness and horror" at the "sights of hundreds of men on crutches going about in groups."
More than 41,000 men had their limbs amputated during the war; 272,000 suffered injuries in

the legs or arms that did not require amputation; 60,500 were wounded in the head or eyes; and
89,000 sustained other serious damage to their bodies.

The home front eventually welcomed back men and women whose war service abroad had left
scars, both visible and invisible, which were often difficult to speak about. As Vera Brittain put it

in her memoir, Testament of Youth (1933), the war had erected a "barrier of indescribable
experience between men and the women they loved". Brittain's brother, fiancé and two close

male friends were killed in the war, but she rightly observed that "the war kills other things

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besides physical life". Phyllis Kelly, who mourned the death of her beloved Eric, would have

agreed.

League of Nations

The League of Nations (abbreviated as LN in English, La Société des Nations [la sɔsjete de
nɑsjɔ̃] abbreviated as SDN or SdN in French) was an intergovernmental organisation founded
on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War.

It was the first international organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world
peace.[1] Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through

collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and
arbitration.[2] Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment
of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war,

and protection of minorities in Europe.[3] At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23
February 1935, it had 58 members.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the
preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great

Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when
needed. However, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League
members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War,
when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito

Mussolini responded that "the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all
when eagles fall out."[4]

After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League
ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany
withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, and others. The onset of the Second
World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any

future world war. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations (UN) replaced it after the

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end of the Second World War on 20 April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and

organisations founded by the League.

Origins

Background..

The 1864 Geneva Convention, one of the earliest formulations of international law.

The concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as far back as 1795, when
Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch[5] outlined the idea of a league of

nations to control conflict and promote peace between states.[6] Kant argued for the
establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the
hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes
foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide.[7]

International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that
developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the status
quo between European states and so avoid war.[8][9] This period also saw the development of

international law, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian
relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing
rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes.[10][11]

The forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, was formed by the
peace activists William Randal Cremer and Frédéric Passy in 1889. The organisation was

international in scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had
parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments
to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were held to help

governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure consisted of a council
headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.[12]

At the start of the 20th century, two power blocs emerged from alliances between the European
Great Powers. It was these alliances that, at the start of the First World War in 1914, drew all

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the major European powers into the conflict. This was the first major war in Europe between

industrialised countries, and the first time in Western Europe that the results of industrialisation
(for example, mass production) had been dedicated to war. The result of this industrialised

warfare, which provided modern weapons, coupled with outdated 19th century strategies, led to
an unprecedented casualty level: eight and a half million soldiers killed, an estimated 21 million
wounded, and approximately 10 million civilian deaths.[13][14]

By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had a profound impact, affecting

the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical

damage.[15] Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as
"the war to end all wars",[16][17] and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The
causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and

the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy
was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through
disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war,
and penalties that made war unattractive.[18]

Initial proposals

Lord Bryce, one of the earliest advocates for a League of Nations.

At the start of the First World War the first schemes for international organisation to prevent
future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in the United Kingdom and

the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term
"League of Nations" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord

Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as
the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union.[19] The group became steadily more
influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then governing Liberal Party. In
Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his "League of Peace" as being essentially

an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early
twentieth century had brought about war and thus could write that, "the impossibility of war, I

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believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and

controlled by public opinion." The ‘Proposals’ of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in
England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international

movement.[20]

In 1915, a similar body was set up in the United States by a group of like-minded individuals,

including William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace and was substantially
based on the proposals of the Bryce Group.[21] It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict

resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. However, none of these

early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian
Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body
to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a "Council" of states, necessarily the

Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent
secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.[22]

The British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter

in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally
appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the

Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst.[19] The
recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a
"Conference of Allied States" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending
states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's

results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.[23]

Jan Smuts helped to draft the Covenant of the League of Nations.

The French also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June of that year; they
advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an "international army"
to enforce its decisions.[23]

The American President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward House to draft a US plan which
reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918),

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as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work, and Wilson's

own first draft, proposed the termination of "unethical" state behavior, including forms of
espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include

severe measures, such as "blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or
intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary..."[23]

The two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations[24] were Lord
Robert Cecil (a lawyer and diplomat) and Jan Smuts (a Commonwealth statesman). Smuts'

proposals included the creation of a Council of the great powers as permanent members and a

non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a Mandate
system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the
administrative side, and proposed annual Council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the

Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the
League's administrative duties.[23]

Establishment

The official opening of the League of Nations, 15 November 1920

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil, and Smuts all put forward their draft
proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst-Miller draft was finally
produced as a basis for the Covenant.[25] After more negotiation and compromise, the

delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (French: Société des
Nations, German: Völkerbund) on 25 January 1919.[26] The final Covenant of the League of
Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the

Treaty of Versailles. On 28 June 1919,[27][28] 44 states signed the Covenant, including 31

states which had taken part in the war on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the
conflict.

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The League would be made up of a General Assembly (representing all member states), an

Executive Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent secretariat.
Member states were expected to "respect and preserve as against external aggression" the

territorial integrity of other members and to disarm "to the lowest point consistent with domestic
safety." All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before
going to war.[19] The Executive Council would create a Permanent Court of International

Justice to make judgments on the disputes.

Despite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the

Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919,[29] the United States did not join. Opposition in the Senate,
particularly from two Republican politicians, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Borah, and
especially in regard to Article X of the Covenant, ensured that the United States would not ratify

the agreement.[30][31]

The League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the
Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force.[32] On 1

November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where
the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920.

Resolving territorial disputes

The aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position
of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions

were handled by the victorious Allied powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The
Allies tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the

early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war.
The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris
Peace treaties.[90]

As the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the

centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League
and non-members. The United States and Russia, for example, increasingly worked with the

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League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the

League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries
attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's

machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.[91]

Åland Islands

Main article: Åland crisis

Åland is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and

Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the Åland Islands,
along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the
Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the Ålanders

wished to rejoin Sweden.[92] However, the Finnish government considered the islands to be a
part of their new nation, as the Russians had included Åland in the Grand Duchy of Finland,

formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war.
The British government referred the problem to the League's Council, but Finland would not let
the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small

panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral
commission was created.[92] In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands
were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including
demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European
international agreement concluded directly through the League.[93]

Upper Silesia

The Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been

unable to resolve the territorial dispute.[94] After the First World War, Poland laid claim to Upper
Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite
in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland.

Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first
two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6

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percent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the

conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in
1921.[95]

On 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a
commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the

situation.[96] The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and
Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should

decide the details of the interaction between the two areas – for example, whether goods should

pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependency of the two
areas.[97] In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention
between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which

most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of
the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in
May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both
countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World
War.[96]

Albania

The frontiers of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they
were left for the League to decide; however, they had not yet been determined by September
1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops held military operations in the south of

Albania. Yugoslavian forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the

northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various
powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania
should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured

Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.[98]

The borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General
Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 24 August 1923 while

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marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito

Mussolini was incensed, and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five
days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government

pay Italy fifty million lire in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved
that the crime was committed by Greeks.[99]

Mussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the
island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League's covenant, so Greece appealed to the

League to deal with the situation. The Allies, however, agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that

the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was
the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League Council examined the dispute,
but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision.

The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty
million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered.[100]
Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.[101]

Memel

The port city of Memel (now Klaipėda) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German
population, was under provisional Allied control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of

Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international
city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been
decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the

Allies failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of
Nations. In December 1923, the League Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The
commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The

Klaipėda Convention was approved by the League Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the
Allied powers and Lithuania.[102] In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the

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Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war.

The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.

Hatay

With League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given
autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of

Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with

French consent in mid-1939.[103]

Mosul

The League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over
control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been

awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its
foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the
province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with
Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the
people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they

would pick Iraq.[104] In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq,
under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure
the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the

recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey
had accepted League of Nations' arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, it rejected the
decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of

International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be
accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that
mostly followed the decision of the League Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was

agreed, however, that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the
mandate would end upon its admittance.[105][106]

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Vilnius

After the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon

became immersed in territorial disputes.[107] During the Polish–Soviet War, Lithuania signed
the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This
agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (Lithuanian: Vilnius, Polish: Wilno), the

old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population.[108] This heightened tension
between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish–Lithuanian

War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwałki Agreement establishing a

cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations.[107] On 9 October 1920, General
Lucjan Żeligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwałki
Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.[107]

After a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League Council called for Poland's withdrawal
from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the
city with more Polish troops.[109] This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius

should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw
and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. However, the plan was met

with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union, which opposed any international
force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite.[110] After
unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania,
Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After

Lithuania took over the Klaipėda Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between
Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923.[111] Lithuanian

authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland
until 1927.[112] It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic
relations with Poland and thus de facto accepted the borders.[113]

Colombia and Peru

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There were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th

century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salomón-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to
resolve them.[114] As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was

ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River.[115] On 1
September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land
as a result organised an armed takeover of Leticia.[116] At first, the Peruvian government did

not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis Sánchez Cerro decided to resist

a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict
between the two nations.[117] After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments
accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases

before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933,
provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations

proceeded.[118] In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of
Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the
area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-

aggression.

Saar

Saar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under
League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of

League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the

referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 percent of voters supported becoming part of Germany,
which was quickly approved by the League Council.[120][121]

Other conflicts

In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between

and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium
and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the

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period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the

Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless
refugees.[122]

Greece and Bulgaria

After an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting
began between the two countries.[123] Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops

invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance,
and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region,

trusting the League to settle the dispute.[124] The League condemned the Greek invasion, and
called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.[123]

Liberia

Following accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber

plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the
League to launch an investigation.[125] The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the

League, the United States, and Liberia.[126] In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence
of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of
contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which
generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and
his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for

American help in social reforms.

Mukden Incident

Chinese delegate addresses the League of Nations concerning the Manchurian Crisis in 1932.

The Mukden Incident, also known as the "Manchurian Incident" or the "Far Eastern Crisis", was
one of the League's major setbacks and acted as the catalyst for Japan's withdrawal from the
organisation. Under the terms of an agreed lease, the Japanese government had the right to
station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route

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between the two countries, in the Chinese region of Manchuria.[128] In September 1931, a

section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army[129][130] as a
pretext for an invasion of Manchuria.[129][131] The Japanese army claimed that Chinese

soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to the civilian
government's orders[130]) occupied the entire region of Manchuria. They renamed the area
Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Pu Yi, the former emperor

of China, as its executive head.[132] This new entity was recognised only by the governments

of Italy and Nazi Germany; the rest of the world still considered Manchuria legally part of China.
In 1932, Japanese air and sea forces bombarded the Chinese city of Shanghai, sparking the
January 28 Incident.[133]

The League of Nations agreed to a request for help from the Chinese government, but the long

voyage by ship delayed League officials. When they arrived, they were confronted with Chinese
assertions that the Japanese had invaded unlawfully, while the Japanese claimed they were
acting to keep peace in the area. Despite Japan's high standing in the League, the subsequent
Lytton Report declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be returned to the
Chinese. Before the report could be voted on by the Assembly, Japan announced its intention to
push further into China. The report passed 42–1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting
against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League.[134]

According to the Covenant, the League should have responded by enacting economic sanctions
or declaring war; it did neither. The threat of economic sanctions would have been almost

useless because the United States, a non–League member, could continue trade with Japan.
The League could have assembled an army, but major powers like Britain and France were too

preoccupied with their own affairs, such as keeping control of their extensive colonies,
especially after the turmoil of the First World War.[135] Japan was therefore left in control of
Manchuria until the Soviet Union's Red Army took over the area and returned it to China at the

end of the Second World War.[136]

Chaco War

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The League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran

Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River,
which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean,[137] and there

was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of
petroleum.[138] Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in
1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio López at Lake

Pitiantuta.[139] Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action

when the Pan-American Conference offered to mediate instead. The war was a disaster for both
sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and
36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million.[140] It also

brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated
on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by

the 1938 truce.[141

Italian invasion of Abyssinia

Emperor Haile Selassie escaping Ethiopia via Jerusalem

In October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia
(Ethiopia).[142] Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering
bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water
supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities.[142][143]
The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in

May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee.[144]

The League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in
November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil
or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain).[145] As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime
Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to

withstand an Italian attack.[146] In October 1935, the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt,

invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to

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both sides, but extended a further "moral embargo" to the belligerent Italians, including other

trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with
limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels.[147]

The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point Italy had already gained
control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.[148]

The Hoare–Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary
Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by

proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was

prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French
public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval
were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the

two men.[149] In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing
the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly,
appealing for its help in protecting his country.[150]

The Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its
members;[151] one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain

and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.[152]

Spanish Civil War

On 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'état, leading to a prolonged armed

conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the
Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish

Army).[153] Julio Álvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the
League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political
independence. The League members, however, would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War
nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini continued to aid

General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic.

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In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic

move.[154]

Second Sino-Japanese War

Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War

Following a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a
full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative,

Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were

sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai,
a city with a substantial number of foreigners.[155] However, the League was unable to provide
any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty

Conference.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression (1929-39) was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the
history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, the Great Depression began
soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and
wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment
dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing
companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its nadir, some 13 to

15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed.
Though the relief and reform measures put into place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped

lessen the worst effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the economy would not fully turn
around until after 1939, when World War II kicked American industry into high gear.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS: THE STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1929

The American economy entered an ordinary recession during the summer of 1929, as
consumer spending dropped and unsold goods began to pile up, slowing production. At the
same time, stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year had reached levels that

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could not be justified by anticipated future earnings. On October 24, 1929, the stock market

bubble finally burst, as investors began dumping shares en masse. A record 12.9 million shares
were traded that day, known as “Black Thursday.” Five days later, on “Black Tuesday” some 16

million shares were traded after another wave of panic swept Wall Street. Millions of shares
ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks “on margin” (with borrowed
money) were wiped out completely.

As consumer confidence vanished in the wake of the stock market crash, the downturn in

spending and investment led factories and other businesses to slow down production and

construction and begin firing their workers. For those who were lucky enough to remain
employed, wages fell and buying power decreased. Many Americans forced to buy on credit fell
into debt, and the number of foreclosures and repossessions climbed steadily. The adherence

to the gold standard, which joined countries around the world in a fixed currency exchange,
helped spread the Depression from the United States throughout the world, especially in
Europe.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION DEEPENS: BANK RUNS AND THE HOOVER ADMINISTRATION

Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run
its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million
Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931.
Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens
and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns

and cities. Farmers (who had been struggling with their own economic depression for much of

the 1920s due to drought and falling food prices) couldn’t afford to harvest their crops, and were
forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved.

In the fall of 1930, the first of four waves of banking panics began, as large numbers of investors
lost confidence in the solvency of their banks and demanded deposits in cash, forcing banks to

liquidate loans in order to supplement their insufficient cash reserves on hand. Bank runs swept
the United States again in the spring and fall of 1931 and the fall of 1932, and by early 1933

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thousands of banks had closed their doors. In the face of this dire situation, Hoover’s

administration tried supporting failing banks and other institutions with government loans; the
idea was that the banks in turn would loan to businesses, which would be able to hire back their

employees.

FDR ADDRESSES THE GREAT DEPRESSION WITH THE NEW DEAL

Hoover, a Republican who had formerly served as U.S. secretary of commerce, believed that

government should not directly intervene in the economy, and that it did not have the
responsibility to create jobs or provide economic relief for its citizens. In 1932, however, with the

country mired in the depths of the Great Depression and some 13-15 million people (or more
than 20 percent of the U.S. population at the time) unemployed, Democrat Franklin D.
Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election. By Inauguration Day (March

4, 1933), every U.S. state had ordered all remaining banks to close at the end of the fourth
wave of banking panics, and the U.S. Treasury didn’t have enough cash to pay all government
workers. Nonetheless, FDR (as he was known) projected a calm energy and optimism,

famously declaring that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Roosevelt took immediate action to address the country’s economic woes, first announcing a
four-day “bank holiday” during which all banks would close so that Congress could pass reform
legislation and reopen those banks determined to be sound. He also began addressing the
public directly over the radio in a series of talks, and these so-called “fireside chats” went a long
way towards restoring public confidence. During Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office, his

administration passed legislation that aimed to stabilize industrial and agricultural production,

create jobs and stimulate recovery. In addition, Roosevelt sought to reform the financial system,
creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect depositors’ accounts and
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent

abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION: HARD ROAD TO RECOVERY

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Among the programs and institutions of the New Deal that aided in recovery from the Great

Depression were the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built dams and hydroelectric
projects to control flooding and provide electric power to the impoverished Tennessee Valley

region of the South, and the Works Project Administration (WPA), a permanent jobs program
that employed 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943. After showing early signs of recovery
beginning in the spring of 1933, the economy continued to improve throughout the next three

years, during which real GDP (adjusted for inflation) grew at an average rate of 9 percent per

year. A sharp recession hit in 1937, caused in part by the Federal Reserve’s decision to
increase its requirements for money in reserve. Though the economy began improving again in
1938, this second severe contraction reversed many of the gains in production and employment

and prolonged the effects of the Great Depression through the end of the decade.

Depression-era hardships had fueled the rise of extremist political movements in various
European countries, most notably that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany. German
aggression led war to break out in Europe in 1939, and the WPA turned its attention to
strengthening the military infrastructure of the United States, even as the country maintained its
neutrality. With Roosevelt’s decision to support Britain and France in the struggle against
Germany and the other Axis Powers, defense manufacturing geared up, producing more and
more private sector jobs. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to an
American declaration of war, and the nation’s factories went back in full production mode. This
expanding industrial production, as well as widespread conscription beginning in 1942, reduced
the unemployment rate to below its pre-Depression level.

When the Great Depression began, the United States was the only industrialized country in the

world without some form of unemployment insurance or social security. In 1935, Congress
passed the Social Security Act, which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment,
disability and pensions for old age

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Appeasement and Rearmament

British foreign policy under Stanley Baldwin had been characterised by confusion and drift, as

was shown by the government's handling of both the Abyssinian Crisis and the German re-
occupation of the Rhineland. Mussolini was alienated from the allied cause but Hitler was only
further encouraged in his policy of confronting the allies directly on the remaining terms of the

Treaty of Versailles. Neville Chamberlain was not a man to allow matters to drift and he head
decided that on becoming prime Minister he would follow a more positive policy. Simply stated

Chamberlain hoped to prevent a future war in Europe b y removing the legitimate grievances of

the Germans by peaceful negotiations. Chamberlain was a businessman and he belived that UK
PLC could do business with Germany AG. The name given to this policy was appeasement and
it was a controverial policy then and has remained one ever since. Its fiercest critis was Winston

Churchill and he used the first volume of his post war history of the Second World war to
demolish Chamberlain's reputation. He, and other critics, argued that the correct policy was to
stand firm and call Hitler's bluff, even if this meant war. Since the late 1960s there has been
considerable revision of this view. So what lay behind Chamberlain's policy?

Chamberlain's policy was not simply that Britain should give in to Hitler. In fact Chamberlian
followed a two track policy of appeasement and rearmament, though he hoped that the former
would make the latter unnecessary. He appointed the energetic Leslie Hore-Belisha to the war
Office to speed up the modernisation of the army. He rejected Anthony Eden's idea that you had
no contact with the dictators until you were ready to fight them. This risked war when you were

least prepared for it. Chamberlain had no sympathy with the League of Nations since while the

organisation was prepared to debate action he believed that the burden of any action would fall
on Britain. Therefore Britain must act independently. The following seven factors help to explain
Chamberlain's attitude and why he followed the policy of appeasement.

Fear of Communism - Chamberlain saw Communism as a greater threat to the British Empire
than Nazism. Communism destroyed the established order, caused famines and Red Terrors,
and was for export. Nazism was aggressive but limited and left capitalism untouched unless the

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companies were Jewish. There was enough latent anti-semitism in Britain in the 1930s for this

not to raise too many eyebrows. From 1936 onwards Stalin talked of forming a common front
with the democracies against the Fascist dictators but the Comintern still agitated for world

revolution. Given these ambiguities Chamberlain felt that he could not trust the USSR. Also the
countries of eastern Europe, especially Poland and Rumania, were unwilling to receive Soviet
help fearing that once the Red Army was in their countries they would not leave. Fear of

revolution was a strong motive in Conservative circles in the interwar period and many believed

that war and revolution went hand in hand, as it had done in many places in 1917-18. Better to
avoid war and prevent revolution.

Military Unpreparedness - From 1919 onwards the British army and the RAF were deliberately
run down by governments anxious to keep government spending as low as possible. Both

forces had become little more than imperial police forces with the army helping to maintain order
in Ireland and Pa;estine and the RAF dropping bombs on the "mad Mullah" in the Middle East.
The Royal Navy had been seriously diminished by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and
she had to face new more modern navies from Italy and Japan. In particular there was a
profound fear of the bomber which was expected to cause very heavy casualties from the
moment the war broke out. Chamberlain commented on the vulnerability of London, as his
plane flew up the line of the Thames on his way back from the Munich Conferenmce in
September 1938. Rearmament had started in 1934 but the pace was slow due to the need to
allay popular distrust of large armaments and also to prevent a serious financial crisis caused by
excessive public spending.

World Power or European Power? - Britain was not just a European power but a world power

with an Empire that stretched from Gibralter all round the world to Hong Kong and back.
Germany was not the only potential threat to Imperial stability. In the Mediterranean Mussolini
was building up a modern navy and apparently an equally modern and efficient army. In the far

east the Japanese had invaded and seized manchuria from China in 1931 and in 1937 they

renewed their onslaught on China by bombing Shanghai and raping Nanking. This seemed to
pose a much more serous threat to India than the vague threat from Hitler. In any case

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Chamberlain argued there was no vital British interest at stake in Eastern Europe. These really

were quarrels "in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing". Since Britain
did not have the strength to take on all these potential aggressors it made sense to Chamberlain

to negotiate rather than fight.

Attitude of The Dominions - Australian, New Zealand, South African and Canadian troops had

all contributed greatly to britain's war effort in the First World War. Gallipoli and Vimy Ridge
were only two areas where Imperial War Graves provided eloquent and moving testimony to the

sacrifices of the Dominions. These countries were, by 1936, more apt to be isolationist and in

the case of South Africa there was a certain sympathy with the rascist philosophy of the Nazis.
Australia and New Zealand were more concerned with the future behaviour of Japan than they
were of Germany. Who was to rule Teschen was of little concern to someone in Alice Springs.

Canada sheltered behind the isolationism of the USA. In 1937 the Canadian prime Minister,
mackenzie King, visited Berlin and reported back to his fellow Imperial Prime Ministers that the
German leader meant no harm to the Empire.

Lack of Reliable Allies - It had taken the combined forces of the British Empire, France and her
Empire, Russia and the USA four bloody and destructive years to bring Germany to the point of

surrender. In 1937 Chamberlain saw little hope of renewing this allied force. Russia was now
Communist and of doubtful help. France was sliding more and more into an undeclared civil
war. In February 1934 there had been serious riots on the streets of paris and from then
onwards there had been grave political instability in France. Right wing paramilitary groups such

as Action Francaise and the more sinister Cagoulards were determined to undermine French
democracy and prevent another war. When Socialists and Communists formed a Popular front

Government in 1936 there were many French conservatives who boldly announced that Hitler
was preferrable to the leadership of the French socialist Leon Blum. The French army were
defeatist in attitude preferring to shelter behind the Maginot Line than further develop the ideas

of Colonel De Gaulle on modern tank warfare. To defeat Hitler vthe UK neede a strong

continental arm. This was something the French could not provide. After 1918 the Americans
withdrew into isolationism and would have nothing to do with European affairs except utter fine

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sounding platitudes (the Kellog-Briand Pact). Such actions irritated Chamberlain since they

offered the maximum of distraction with the minimum of support. How to react to the USAwas
one of the factors that caused Chamberlain's breach with Anthony Eden and the latter's

replacement by Lord Halifax

Popular Opinion - In the absence of opinion polls it is difficult to establish exactly what the

British people felt about war but certainly the popular reaction to Munich, responses to the
League of Nations Peace ballot of 1935, and the result of the Fulham By Election, all seem to

indicate popular suspicion of rearmament and war. The Labour party criticised the government

for its policy of appeasement but was not prepared to support rearmament to give British
opposition teeth.

Sympathy with Hitler and Mussolini - There was an undercurrent of synpathy towards boith the

dictators in certain social circles in Britain. There were a number of groups dedicated to
improving Anglo-German relations, such as the Anglo-German Fellowship and The Link. There
was a widely held belief that Germany had been harshly treated by the Treaty of Versailles and

that it was now time to make amends. Hitler had restored German respectability, he was a
former First World war soldier who had on many occasions spoken of his hatred of further wars,

and he was securely anti Communist. Likewise Mussolini was seen by many as a patriotic
Italian who had brought much neede stability to Italy and made the trains run on time. Also he
might be a useful bulwark to Hitler if he could be worked round to the Franco-British camp.
Chamberlain was in secret cporrespondence with Mussolini through his siter in law, Mrs Ida

Chamberlain and this was the second factor in the rupture with Eden.

In the end Chamberlain could not prevent Hitler's aggressiveness reaching too far. Hitler's
invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia was the turning point. There was no possible legitimate
reason for the German action. There were no German minorities, it had never been part of

Germany and Hitler had said that the Sudetenland was his last territorial claim in Europe. Public
opinion swung against Hitler, so too did the Dominions. In the cabinet, the Foreign Secretary

now spoke out against further appeasement. Guarantees were issued to Poland and others but
the key one was Poland.

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On September 1st 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and at 11.15am on the 3rd Chamberlain

announced that "a state of war" now existed between Britain and Germany.

Britain, World War II and its Aftermath:

The outbreak of war in Europe substantially changed the way in which the Federal Reserve

System was expected to operate as the nation’s central bank in a period during which US

participation in the conflict was imminent. The most important challenge for the System was to
deal with the possibility of very large fiscal deficits due to increased war expenditures. Even
before the period of active US participation in the conflict, the expansion of the defense program

and the decision to help finance allies’ purchases of war material from the United States (under
the so-called lend-lease program) significantly increased US government financing needs. After

the decision to actively participate in the conflict, the US government substantially increased its
expenditures, confirming previous expectations. Despite the fact that the Treasury relied more
heavily on taxation than in World War I and despite increased tax revenue from the substantial
expansion of industrial production, the active participation in the war resulted in a sharp
increase in the federal deficit.

Perhaps the most important actions performed by the System during the war were to control
government bond prices to promote stable financial markets and (even more critical) to help
reduce the interest rates on financing the extraordinarily large fiscal deficits associated with
active participation in the war. In 1939, shortly before the beginning of the conflict in Europe, the

System made some open-market purchases to influence the yields on short-term government
bonds. The goal was to promote stability in short-term funding markets and prevent market
disorder in the face of uncertainty at the outset of the war. Once the United States formally

entered the conflict, the system made a firm commitment to support government bond prices. In
April 1942, the Federal Open Market Committee announced that it would maintain the annual
rate on Treasury bills at three-eighths of 1 percent by buying or selling any amount of Treasury

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bills offered or demanded at that rate. For longer-maturity government securities, the System

also established a maximum yield (or a minimum price) by standing ready to buy whatever
amount of these securities was necessary to prevent their yields from rising above the

maximum yield. Such a commitment to maintain low yields (high prices) of government bills and
bonds necessarily resulted in the purchase of a significant volume of government securities,
producing a substantial expansion of the System’s balance sheet and, in particular, of the

monetary base. Indeed, the monetary base increased by 149 percent from August 1939 to

August 1948.

An additional factor contributing to the increase in the monetary base, and as an immediate
consequence of the outbreak of war in Europe, was the acceleration of gold inflows as Britain
and other allies paid for war materials and other supplies produced domestically by shipping

gold to the United States. These two factors resulted in a vigorous expansion of the monetary
base and the money supply. As a result, inflation rose significantly during the period. This
happened despite price and wage controls and consumer credit controls (and despite an
increased willingness of the nonbank public to hold a significant fraction of their wealth in the
form of monetary assets as reflected by the marked decline in the velocity of money observed
during the war).1

Most economists at the time believed that as soon as the war ended the economy would likely
fall into recession and the unemployment rate would rise substantially, partly because of the
experience of previous wars (and the previous decade of the Great Depression) and partly

because of the widespread Keynesian view that fiscal stimulus was the most effective means of
boosting domestic economic activity, and such stimulus was about to decline with the end of the

war. This belief, combined with the decision to continue to hold down Treasury financing costs,
certainly contributed to the continuation of the government bond support program for much
longer than what would be consistent with price stability. The inability of Federal Reserve

officials to persuade the Treasury to let the System abandon the government bond support

program (in view of other policy considerations such as price stability) clearly demonstrated that
the Federal Reserve System was effectively under Treasury control. As economist Allan Meltzer

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notes in his book, Chairman Marriner Eccles described his work in wartime as “a routine

administrative job…[T]he Federal Reserve merely executed Treasury decisions” (Meltzer 2003,
579).

Given its inability to control growth of the monetary base through open-market operations or the
discount window, under the constraints of the program to support government bond prices, the

System used other tools to try to control private sector spending and curb inflation. The System
imposed direct controls on consumer credit (through regulation W) by introducing minimum

down payments and maximum maturities on consumer credit extended through installment

loans. Because the reallocation of resources to military production restricted the supply of
consumer durable goods, the controls imposed on consumer credit aimed to restrict the demand
for these goods in an effort to reduce the pressure on prices. Another major action taken during

the period was the increase in the reserve requirements of commercial banks in 1941. However,
this measure, which was intended to restrain credit growth and the expansion of bank liabilities,
had only a minor effect on the money supply and the trend in the price level.

The end of the war did not mean that the System was automatically freed from Treasury
influence. Six years would go by before monetary policy was revived as a major instrument to

influence aggregate spending and prices. In March 1951, the System’s policy independence
from the Treasury was accomplished with the formal agreement between the Treasury and the
System known as the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord

Causes

World War Two began in September 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Germany
following Germany's invasion of Poland.

Although the outbreak of war was triggered by Germany's invasion of Poland, the causes of the
war are more complex.

Treaty of Versailles

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In 1919, Lloyd George of England, Orlando of Italy, Clemenceau of France and Woodrow

Wilson from the US met to discuss how Germany was to be made to pay for the damage world
war one had caused.

• Woodrow Wilson wanted a treaty based on his 14-point plan which he believed would
bring peace to Europe.

• Georges Clemenceau wanted revenge. He wanted to be sure that Germany could never
start another war again

• Lloyd George personally agreed with Wilson but knew that the British public agreed with

Clemenceau. He tried to find a compromise between Wilson and Clemenceau.

• Germany had been expecting a treaty based on Wilson's 14 points and were not happy
with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. However, they had no choice but to sign the

document.

The main terms of the Treaty of Versailles were:

War Guilt Clause - Germany should accept the blame for starting World War One

Reparations - Germany had to pay 6,600 million pounds for the damage caused by the war

Disarmament - Germany was only allowed to have a small army and six naval ships. No tanks,

no airforce and no submarines were allowed. The Rhineland area was to be de-militarised.

Territorial Clauses - Land was taken away from Germany and given to other countries.

Anschluss (union with Austria) was forbidden.

The German people were very unhappy about the treaty and thought that it was too harsh.
Germany could not afford to pay the money and during the 1920s the people in Germany were

very poor. There were not many jobs and the price of food and basic goods was high. People
were dissatisfied with the government and voted to power a man who promised to rip up the
Treaty of Versailles. His name was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler's Actions

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Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Almost immediately he began

secretly building up Germany's army and weapons. In 1934 he increased the size of the army,
began building warships and created a German airforce. Compulsory military service was also

introduced.

Although Britain and France were aware of Hitler's actions, they were also concerned about the

rise of Communism and believed that a stronger Germany might help to prevent the spread of
Communism to the West.

In 1936 Hitler ordered German troops to enter the Rhineland. At this point the German army

was not very strong and could have been easily defeated. Yet neither France nor Britain was
prepared to start another war.

Hitler also made two important alliances during 1936. The first was called the Rome-Berlin Axis
Pact and allied Hitler's Germany with Mussolini's Italy. The second was called the Anti-Comitern

Pact and allied Germany with Japan.

Hitler's next step was to begin taking back the land that had been taken away from Germany. In

March 1938, German troops marched into Austria. The Austrian leader was forced to hold a
vote asking the people whether they wanted to be part of Germany.

The results of the vote were fixed and showed that 99% of Austrian people wanted Anschluss
(union with Germany). The Austrian leader asked Britain, France and Italy for aid. Hitler
promised that Anschluss was the end of his expansionist aims and not wanting to risk war, the

other countries did nothing.

Hitler did not keep his word and six months later demanded that the Sudetenland region of

Czechoslovakia be handed over to Germany.

Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Britain, met with Hitler three times during September
1938 to try to reach an agreement that would prevent war. The Munich Agreement stated that
Hitler could have the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia provided that he promised not to
invade the rest of Czechoslovakia.

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Hitler was not a man of his word and in March 1939 invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. Despite

calls for help from the Czechoslovak government, neither Britain nor France was prepared to
take military action against Hitler. However, some action was now necessary and believing that

Poland would be Hitler's next target, both Britain and France promised that they would take
military action against Hitler if he invaded Poland. Chamberlain believed that, faced with the
prospect of war against Britain and France, Hitler would stop his aggression. Chamberlain was

wrong. German troops invaded Poland on 1st September 1939.

Failure of Appeasement

Appeasement means giving in to someone provided their demands are seen as reasonable.
During the 1930s, many politicians in both Britain and France came to see that the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles had placed restrictions on Germany that were unfair. Hitler's actions were

seen as understandable and justifiable.

When Germany began re-arming in 1934, many politicians felt that Germany had a right to re-
arm in order to protect herself. It was also argued that a stronger Germany would prevent the
spread of Communism to the west.

In 1936, Hitler argued that because France had signed a new treaty with Russia, Germany was
under threat from both countries and it was essential to German security that troops were
stationed in the Rhineland. France was not strong enough to fight Germany without British help
and Britain was not prepared to go to war at this point. Furthermore, many believed that since

the Rhineland was a part of Germany it was reasonable that German troops should be stationed
there.

In May 1937, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister of Britain. He believed that the Treaty

of Versailles had treated Germany badly and that there were a number of issues associated
with the Treaty that needed to be put right. He felt that giving in to Hitler's demands would
prevent another war.

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This policy, adopted by Chamberlain's government became known as the policy of
Appeasement.

The most notable example of appeasement was the Munich Agreement of September 1938.

The Munich Agreement, signed by the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Italy, agreed
that the Sudetenland would be returned to Germany and that no further territorial claims would
be made by Germany. The Czech government was not invited to the conference and protested

about the loss of the Sudetenland. They felt that they had been betrayed by both Britain and
France with whom alliances had been made. However, the Munich Agreement was generally

viewed as a triumph and an excellent example of securing peace through negotiation rather
than war.

This famous picture shows Chamberlain returning from Munich with the paper signed by Hitler
declaring 'Peace in our time.'

When Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, he broke the terms of the
Munich Agreement. Although it was realised that the policy of appeasement had failed,

Chamberlain was still not prepared to take the country to war over "..a quarrel in a far-away
country between people of whom we know nothing." Instead, he made a guarantee to come to
Poland's aid if Hitler invaded Poland.

Failure of the League of Nations

The League of Nations was an international organisation set up in 1919 to help keep world
peace. It was intended that all countries would be members of the League and that if there were

disputes between countries they could be settled by negotiation rather than by force. If this

failed then countries would stop trading with the aggressive country and if that failed then
countries would use their armies to fight.

In theory the League of Nations was a good idea and did have some early successes. But
ultimately it was a failure.

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The whole world was hit by a depression in the late 1920s. A depression is when a country's

economy falls. Trade is reduced, businesses lose income, prices fall and unemployment rises.

In 1931, Japan was hit badly by the depression. People lost faith in the government and turned
to the army to find a solution. The army invaded Manchuria in China, an area rich in minerals
and resources. China appealed to the League for help. The Japanese government were told to

order the army to leave Manchuria immediately. However, the army took no notice of the
government and continued its conquest of Manchuria.

The League then called for countries to stop trading with Japan but because of the depression

many countries did not want to risk losing trade and did not agree to the request. The League
then made a further call for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan's response was to
leave the League of Nations.

In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia. The Abyssinians did not have the strength to

withstand an attack by Italy and appealed to the League of Nations for help.

The League condemned the attack and called on member states to impose trade restrictions

with Italy. However, the trade restrictions were not carried out because they would have little
effect. Italy would be able to trade with non-member states, particularly America. Furthermore,
Britain and France did not want to risk Italy making an attack on them.

In order to stop Italy's aggression, the leaders of Britain and France held a meeting and decided
that Italy could have two areas of land in Abyssinia provided that there were no further attacks

on the African country. Although Mussolini accepted the plan, there was a public outcry in
Britain and the plan was dropped.

The main reasons for the failure of the League of Nations can be summarised into the following
points:

Not all countries joined the League

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Although the idea for the League of Nations had come from Woodrow Wilson, there was a

change of government in the United States before the signing of the treaty and the new
Republican government refused to join. As a punishment for having started World War One,

Germany was not allowed to join and Russia was also excluded due to a growing fear of
Communism. Other countries decided not to join and some joined but later left.

The League had no power.

The main weapon of the League was to ask member countries to stop trading with an
aggressive country. However, this did not work because countries could still trade with non-

member countries. When the world was hit by depression in the late 1920s countries were
reluctant to lose trading partners to other non-member countries.

The League had no army

Soldiers were to be supplied by member countries. However, countries were reluctant to get
involved and risk provoking an aggressive country into taking direct action against them and
failed to provide troops.

Unable to act quickly

The Council of the League of Nations only met four times a year and decisions had to be agreed
by all nations. When countries called for the League to intervene, the League had to set up an
emergency meeting, hold discussions and gain the agreement of all members. This process

meant that the League could not act quickly to stop an act of aggression.

Events:

When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, France and Britain declared war on Germany.
After conquering Poland, Germany attacked France. France fell in June 1940, and soon the
Nazis overran most of the rest of Europe and North Africa. Only Britain, led by Winston
Churchill, was not defeated.

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Battle of Midway

Following the attack on Peal Harbor, Japanese armies rolled over Southeast Asia, the
Philippines, and the East Indies. The war in the Pacific was fought on land, at sea, and in the
air. The turning point in the war in the Pacific came in June, 1942 at the Battle of Midway. In a
four day battle fought between aircraft based on giant aircraft carriers, the U.S. destroyed

hundreds of Japanese planes and regained control of the Pacific. The Japanese continued to
fight on, however, even after the war in Europe ended.

Stalingrad

On June 22, 1941, four million troops poured over the Russian border. Within one month, over
two and half million Russians had been killed, wounded or captured. The Germans made

tremendous advances into Russia – into portions of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad.

And then winter hit. The Germans were caught in summer uniforms, and it was a bitter, cold
winter that year.

Stalin, using sheer force of numbers, threw another two million soldiers at the Germans.

In the spring of the next year (1943), another German offensive was launched especially around
the approaches to Stalingrad. What followed can only be described as a nine-month titanic
battle, with the result that the German Sixth Army in Russia was almost completely destroyed.
That was the beginning of the end for Germany, but it would take three more years of desperate

fighting, and millions and millions of people dead before it was all over.

D-Day

On D-Day, June 6, 1944 , General Dwight Eisenhower led U.S. and Allied troops in an invasion
of Normandy, France. The armies fought their way through France and Belgium and into
Germany while Russian troops fought from the east. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Japanese fought on even after the war in Europe ended. Truman decided to use the newly
developed atomic bomb to end the war quickly and prevent more U.S. casualties. The Enola
Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, killing about 78,000
people and injuring 100,000 more. On August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki,

Japan, killing another 40,000 people.

Anti-semitism

In part, the Nazi party gained popularity by disseminating anti-Jewish propaganda. Millions
bought Hitler's book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which called for the removal of Jews from
Germany.

With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, the party ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book
burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews by
blood and ordered the total separation of "Aryans" and "non-Aryans." On November 9, 1938, the
Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of Jewish-owned stores throughout
Germany and Austria (Kristallnacht).

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by
the Nazi regime. The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that

Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "unworthy of life."
During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived

"racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles,
Russians, and others).

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In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. By 1945, close to two out of

every three European Jews had been killed as part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi policy to
murder the Jews of Europe.

Churchill,

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA (30 November
1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United

Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the
British Army, a historian, a writer (as Winston S. Churchill), and an artist. He won the Nobel

Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

Churchill was born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the Spencer family.

His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of
the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer,

he saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second Boer War. He gained
fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.

At the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the
First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord
of the Admiralty as part of Asquith's Liberal government. During the war, he continued as First
Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from
government. He then briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as commander

of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government under Lloyd George

as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, then Secretary of
State for the Colonies. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government of 1924–1929, controversially returning the
pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating
deflationary pressure on the UK economy.

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Out of office and politically "in the wilderness" during the 1930s because of his opposition to

increased home rule for India and his resistance to the 1936 abdication of Edward VIII, Churchill
took the lead in warning about Nazi Germany and in campaigning for rearmament. At the

outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.
Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime
Minister. His speeches and radio broadcasts helped inspire British resistance, especially during

the difficult days of 1940-1 when the British Commonwealth and Empire stood almost alone in

its active opposition to Adolf Hitler. He led Britain as Prime Minister until victory over Nazi
Germany had been secured.

After the Conservative Party lost the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition to the
Labour Government. He publicly warned of an "Iron Curtain" of Soviet influence in Europe and

promoted European unity. After winning the 1951 election, Churchill again became Prime
Minister. His second term was preoccupied by foreign affairs, including the Malayan
Emergency, Mau Mau Uprising, Korean War, and a UK-backed coup d'état in Iran. Domestically
his government laid great emphasis on house-building. Churchill suffered a serious stroke in
1953 and retired as Prime Minister in 1955, although he remained a Member of Parliament until
1964. Upon his death aged ninety in 1965, Elizabeth II granted him the honour of a state
funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of world statesmen in history.[1] Named the
Greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll, Churchill is widely regarded as being among the most
influential people in British history, consistently ranking well in opinion polls of Prime Ministers of
the United Kingdom.

Military service

After Churchill left Harrow in 1893, he applied to attend the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
He tried three times before passing the entrance exam; he applied to be trained for the cavalry

rather than the infantry because the required grade was lower and he was not required to learn
mathematics, which he disliked. He graduated eighth out of a class of 150 in December

1894,[35] and although he could now have transferred to an infantry regiment as his father had
wished, chose to remain with the cavalry and was commissioned as a cornet (second

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lieutenant) in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars on 20 February 1895.[12] In 1941, he received the

honour of being appointed Regimental Colonel of the 4th Hussars, an honour which was
increased after the Second World War when he was appointed as Colonel-in-Chief; this

privilege is usually reserved for members of the royal family.

Churchill's pay as a second lieutenant in the 4th Hussars was £300 annually. However, he

believed that he needed at least a further £500 (equivalent to £55,000 in 2012 terms)[36] to
support a style of life equal to that of other officers of the regiment. His mother provided an

allowance of £400 per year, but this was repeatedly overspent. According to biographer Roy

Jenkins, this is one reason why he took an interest in war correspondence.[37] He did not intend
to follow a conventional career of promotion through army ranks, but rather to seek out all
possible chances of military action, using his mother's and family influence in high society to

arrange postings to active campaigns. His writings brought him to the attention of the public,
and earned him significant additional income. He acted as a war correspondent for several
London newspapers[38] and wrote his own books about the campaigns.

Cuba

In 1895, during the Cuban War of Independence, Churchill, and fellow officer Reginald Barnes,
travelled to Cuba to observe the Spanish fight the Cuban guerrillas; he had obtained a
commission to write about the conflict from the Daily Graphic. He came under fire on his twenty-
first birthday,[12] the first of about 50 times during his life, and the Spanish awarded him his first
medal.[39]:17 Churchill had fond memories of Cuba as a "... large, rich, beautiful island ...".[40]

While there, he soon acquired a taste for Havana cigars, which he would smoke for the rest of

his life. While in New York, he stayed at the home of Bourke Cockran, an admirer of his mother.
Bourke was an established American politician, and a member of the House of Representatives.
He greatly influenced Churchill, both in his approach to oratory and politics, and encouraging a

love of America.[41]

He soon received word that his nanny, Mrs Everest, was dying; he then returned to England and
stayed with her for a week until she died. He wrote in his journal, "She was my favourite friend."

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In My Early Life he wrote: "She had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole

of the twenty years I had lived."[42]

India

In early October 1896, he was transferred to Bombay, British India. He was considered one of
the best polo players in his regiment and led his team to many prestigious tournament
victories.[43]

Churchill came to Bangalore in 1896 as a young army officer, before leaving three years later

for the North West Frontier to fight in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. In his book, 'My Early Life',
he describes Bangalore as a city with excellent weather, and his allotted house as ‘a
magnificent pink and white stucco palace in the middle of a large and beautiful garden' with

servants, dhobi (to wash clothes), gardener, watchman and a water-carrier. It was in Bangalore
he met Pamela Plowden, daughter of a civil servant; she became his first love.[44]

In 1897, Churchill attempted to travel to both report on and, if necessary, fight in the Greco-
Turkish War, but this conflict effectively ended before he could arrive. Later, while preparing for

a leave in England, he heard that three brigades of the British Army were going to fight against
a Pashtun tribe in the North West Frontier of India and he asked his superior officer if he could
join the fight.[45] He fought under the command of General Jeffery, the commander of the
second brigade operating in Malakand, in the Frontier region of British India. Jeffery sent him
with fifteen scouts to explore the Mamund Valley; while on reconnaissance, they encountered

an enemy tribe, dismounted from their horses and opened fire. After an hour of shooting, their
reinforcements, the 35th Sikhs arrived, the firing gradually ceased and the brigade and the

Sikhs marched on. Hundreds of tribesmen then ambushed them and opened fire, forcing them
to retreat. As they were retreating, four men were carrying an injured officer, but the fierceness
of the fight forced them to leave him behind. The man who was left behind was slashed to death
before Churchill's eyes; afterwards he wrote of the killer, "I forgot everything else at this moment

except a desire to kill this man."[46] However, the Sikhs' numbers were being depleted, so the
next commanding officer told Churchill to get the rest of the men to safety.

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Before he left, he asked for a note so that he would not be charged with desertion.[47] He

received the note, quickly signed, headed up the hill and alerted the other brigade, whereupon
they then engaged the army. The fighting in the region dragged on for another two weeks before

the dead could be recovered. He wrote in his journal: "Whether it was worth it I cannot
tell."[46][48] An account of the Siege of Malakand was published in December 1900 as The
Story of the Malakand Field Force. He received £600 for his account. During the campaign, he

also wrote articles for the newspapers The Pioneer and The Daily Telegraph.[49] His account of

the battle was one of his first published stories, for which he received £5 per column from The
Daily Telegraph.[50]

Sudan

Churchill was transferred to Egypt in 1898. He visited Luxor before joining an attachment of the

21st Lancers serving in the Sudan under the command of General Herbert Kitchener. During
this time he encountered two military officers with whom he would work during the First World
War: Douglas Haig, then a captain, and David Beatty, then a gunboat lieutenant.[51] While in

the Sudan, he participated in what has been described as the last meaningful British cavalry
charge, at the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898.[52] He also worked as a war

correspondent for the Morning Post. By October 1898, he had returned to Britain and begun his
two-volume work, The River War, an account of the conquest of the Sudan which was published
the following year. Churchill resigned from the British Army effective from 5 May 1899.

Oldham

He soon had his first opportunity to begin a Parliamentary career, when he was invited by

Robert Ascroft to be the second Conservative Party candidate in Ascroft's Oldham constituency.
Ascroft's sudden death caused a double by-election and Churchill was one of the candidates. In
the midst of a national trend against the Conservatives, both seats were lost; however, Churchill
impressed by his vigorous campaigning.

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South Africa

Having failed at Oldham, Churchill looked about for some other opportunity to advance his

career. On 12 October 1899, the Second Boer War between Britain and the Boer Republics
broke out and he obtained a commission to act as war correspondent for The Morning Post with
a salary of £250 per month. He rushed to sail on the same ship as the newly appointed British

commander, Sir Redvers Buller. After some weeks in exposed areas, he accompanied a
scouting expedition in an armoured train, leading to his capture and imprisonment in a POW

camp in Pretoria (converted school building for Pretoria High School for Girls). His actions

during the ambush of the train led to speculation that he would be awarded the Victoria Cross,
Britain's highest award to members of the armed forces for gallantry in the face of the enemy,
but this was not possible, as he was a civilian.[12]

He escaped from the prison camp and, with the assistance of an English mine manager,
travelled almost 300 miles (480 km) to safety in Portuguese East Africa.[54] His escape made
him a minor national hero for a time in Britain though, instead of returning home, he rejoined

General Buller's army on its march to relieve the British at the Siege of Ladysmith and take
Pretoria.[55] This time, although continuing as a war correspondent, he gained a commission in

the South African Light Horse. He was among the first British troops into Ladysmith and
Pretoria. He and his cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, were able to get ahead of the rest of the
troops in Pretoria, where they demanded and received the surrender of 52 Boer prison camp
guards.[56]

In 1900, Churchill returned to England on the RMS Dunottar Castle, the same ship on which he

had set sail for South Africa eight months earlier.[53] The same year he published London to
Ladysmith and a second volume of Boer war experiences, Ian Hamilton's March.[57]

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Territorial Service and advancement

In 1900, he retired from the regular army, and in 1902 joined the Imperial Yeomanry, where he

was commissioned as a Captain in the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars on 4 January

1902.[58] In that same year, he was initiated into Freemasonry at Studholme Lodge #1591,
London, and raised to the Third Degree on 25 March 1902.[59][60] In April 1905, he was

promoted to Major and appointed to command of the Henley Squadron of the Queen's Own
Oxfordshire Hussars.[61] In September 1916, he transferred to the territorial reserves of

officers, where he remained until retiring in 1924, at the age of fifty.[61]

Western Front

Winston Churchill commanding the 6th Battalion, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, 1916. Archibald

Sinclair sits to the left

After his resignation from the government in 1915, Churchill rejoined the British Army,
attempting to obtain an appointment as brigade commander, but settling for command of a
battalion. After spending some time as a Major with the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards, he

was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, commanding the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers (part of
the 9th (Scottish) Division), on 1 January 1916. Correspondence with his wife shows that his
intent in taking up active service was to rehabilitate his reputation, but this was balanced by the
serious risk of being killed. During his period of command, his battalion was stationed at
Ploegsteert but did not take part in any set battle. Although he disapproved strongly of the mass

slaughter involved in many Western Front actions, he exposed himself to danger by making
excursions to the front line or into No Man's Land

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War Conferences

(Wartime Conferences, 1941–1945)

The first involvement of the United States in the wartime conferences between the Allied nations
opposing the Axis powers actually occurred before the nation formally entered World War II. In
August 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met
secretly and devised an eight-point statement of war aims known as the Atlantic Charter, which

included a pledge that the Allies would not accept territorial changes resulting from the war in
Europe. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the wartime conferences focused on

establishing a second front.

At Casablanca in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to fight until the Axis powers

surrendered unconditionally.

In a November 1943 meeting in Egypt with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt and
Churchill agreed to a pre-eminent role for China in postwar Asia.

The next major wartime conference included Roosevelt, Churchill, and the leader of the Soviet
Union, Joseph Stalin. Meeting at Tehran following the Cairo Conference, the “Big Three”
secured confirmation on the launching of the cross-channel invasion and a promise from Stalin
that the Soviet Union would eventually enter the war against Japan.

In 1944, conferences at Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks created the framework for

international cooperation in the postwar world.

In February 1945, the “Big Three” met at the former Russian czar’s summer palace in the

Crimea. Yalta was the most important and by far the most controversial of the wartime
meetings. Recognizing the strong position that the Soviet Army possessed on the ground,
Churchill and an ailing Roosevelt agreed to a number of compromises with Stalin that allowed
Soviet hegemony to remain in Poland and other Eastern European countries, granted territorial
concessions to the Soviet Union, and outlined punitive measures against Germany, including an

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occupation and reparations in principle. Stalin did guarantee that the Soviet Union would

declare war on Japan within six months.

The last meeting of the “Big Three” occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension that
would erupt into the cold war was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the
revelation of the existence of the atomic bomb to the Allies, neither President Harry Truman,

Roosevelt’s successor, nor Clement Atlee, who mid-way through the conference replaced
Churchill, could come to agreement with Stalin on any but the most minor issues. The most

significant agreement was the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration to Japan demanding an

immediate and unconditional surrenderand threatening Japan with destruction if they did not
comply. With the Axis forces defeated, the wartime alliance soon devolved into suspicion and
bitterness on both sides.

The Casablanca Conference, 1943

The Casablanca Conference was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the city of Casablanca, Morocco that took place from
January 14–24, 1943. While Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin received an invitation, he was unable

to attend because the Red Army was engaged in a major offensive against the German army at
the time. The most notable developments at the Conference were the finalization of Allied
strategic plans against the Axis powers in 1943, and the promulgation of the policy of
“unconditional surrender.”

The Casablanca Conference took place just two months after the Anglo-American landings in
French North Africa in November 1942. At this meeting, Roosevelt and Churchill focused on

coordinating Allied military strategy against the Axis powers over the course of the coming year.
They resolved to concentrate their efforts against Germany in the hopes of drawing German
forces away from the Eastern Front, and to increase shipments of supplies to the Soviet Union.
While they would begin concentrating forces in England in preparation for an eventual landing in

northern France, they decided that first they would concentrate their efforts in the Mediterranean
by launching an invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland designed to knock Italy out of the

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war. They also agreed to strengthen their strategic bombing campaign against Germany.

Finally, the leaders agreed on a military effort to eject Japan from Papua New Guinea and to
open up new supply lines to China through Japanese-occupied Burma.

On the final day of the Conference, President Roosevelt announced that he and Churchill had
decided that the only way to ensure postwar peace was to adopt a policy of unconditional

surrender. The President clearly stated, however, that the policy of unconditional surrender did
not entail the destruction of the populations of the Axis powers but rather, “the destruction of the

philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other

people.”

The policy of demanding unconditional surrender was an outgrowth of Allied war aims, most
notably the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, which called for an end to wars of aggression and

the promotion of disarmament and collective security. Roosevelt wanted to avoid the situation
that had followed the First World War, when large segments of German society supported the
position, so deftly exploited by the Nazi party, that Germany had not been defeated militarily, but

rather, had been “stabbed in the back” by liberals, pacifists, socialists, communists, and Jews.
Roosevelt also wished to make it clear that neither the United States nor Great Britain would

seek a separate peace with the Axis powers.

The Tehran Conference, 1943

The Tehran Conference was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran,
between November 28 and December 1, 1943.

During the Conference, the three leaders coordinated their military strategy against Germany

and Japan and made a number of important decisions concerning the post World War II era.
The most notable achievements of the Conference focused on the next phases of the war
against the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin engaged in

discussions concerning the terms under which the British and Americans finally committed to
launching Operation Overlord, an invasion of northern France, to be executed by May of 1944.

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The Soviets, who had long been pushing the Allies to open a second front, agreed to launch

another major offensive on the Eastern Front that would divert German troops away from the
Allied campaign in northern France. Stalin also agreed in principle that the Soviet Union would

declare war against Japan following an Allied victory over Germany. In exchange for a Soviet
declaration of war against Japan, Roosevelt conceded to Stalin’s demands for the Kurile Islands
and the southern half of Sakhalin, and access to the ice-free ports of Dairen (Dalian) and Port

Arthur (Lüshun Port) located on the Liaodong Peninsula in northern China. The exact details

concerning this deal were not finalized, however, until the Yalta Conference of 1945.

At Tehran, the three Allied leaders also discussed important issues concerning the fate of
Eastern Europe and Germany in the postwar period. Stalin pressed for a revision of Poland’s
eastern border with the Soviet Union to match the line set by British Foreign Secretary Lord

Curzon in 1920. In order to compensate Poland for the resulting loss of territory, the three
leaders agreed to move the German-Polish border to the Oder and Neisse rivers. This decision
was not formally ratified, however, until the Potsdam Conference of 1945. During these
negotiations Roosevelt also secured from Stalin his assurance that the Republics of Lithuania,
Latvia, and Estonia would be reincorporated into the Soviet Union only after the citizens of each
republic voted on the question in a referendum. Stalin stressed, however, that the matter would
have to be resolved “in accordance with the Soviet constitution,” and that he would not consent
to any international control over the elections. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin also broached the
question of the possible postwar partition of Germany into Allied zones of occupation and
agreed to have the European Advisory Commission “carefully study the question of
dismemberment” before any final decision was taken.

Broader international cooperation also became a central theme of the negotiations at Tehran.
Roosevelt and Stalin privately discussed the composition of the United Nations. During the
Moscow Conference of the Foreign Ministers in October and November of 1943, the United

States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union had signed a four-power declaration whose fourth

point called for the creation of a “general international organization” designed to promote
“international peace and security.” At Tehran, Roosevelt outlined for Stalin his vision of the

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proposed organization in which the future United Nations would be dominated by “four

policemen” (the United States, Britain, China, and Soviet Union) who “would have the power to
deal immediately with any threat to the peace and any sudden emergency which requires

action.”

Finally, the three leaders issued a “Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran.” Within it,

they thanked the Iranian Government for its assistance in the war against Germany and
promised to provide it with economic assistance both during and after the war. Most importantly,

the U.S., British, and Soviet Governments stated that they all shared a “desire for the

maintenance of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Iran.”

Roosevelt secured many of his objectives during the Conference. The Soviet Union had
committed to joining the war against Japan and expressed support for Roosevelt’s plans for the

United Nations. Most importantly, Roosevelt believed that he had won Stalin’s confidence by
proving that the United States was willing to negotiate directly with the Soviet Union and, most
importantly, by guaranteeing the opening of the second front in France by the spring of 1944.

However, Stalin also gained tentative concessions on Eastern Europe that would be confirmed
during the later wartime conferences.

Bretton Woods-GATT, 1941–1947

During and immediately after the Second World War, the United States, the United Kingdom,
and other allied nations engaged in a series of negotiations to establish the rules for the postwar

international economy. The result was the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank at the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and the signing of the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade at an international conference in Geneva in October 1947.

The lessons drawn by U.S. policymakers from the interwar period informed their approach to the
postwar global economy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and officials such as Secretary of
State Cordell Hull were adherents of the Wilsonian belief that free trade promoted not just

prosperity, but also peace. The experience of the 1930s certainly suggested as much. The
policies adopted by governments to combat the Great Depression—high tariffs, competitive

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currency devaluations, discriminatory trading blocs—helped destabilize the international

environment without improving the economic situation. This experience led leaders throughout
the anti-Axis United Nations alliance to conclude that economic cooperation was the only way to

achieve both peace and prosperity, at home and abroad.

This vision was articulated in the Atlantic Charter, issued by Roosevelt and British Prime

Minister Winston Churchill at the conclusion of the August 1941 Atlantic Conference. The
Charter’s fourth point committed the United States and the United Kingdom “to further the

enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the

trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity,”
while its fifth point expressed their commitment to “the fullest collaboration between all nations
in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic

advancement and social security.” The two countries elaborated upon these principles in Article
VII of their February 1942 agreement on lend-lease aid. In that article, the United Kingdom
agreed that in return for U.S. lend-lease assistance, it would cooperate with the United States in
devising measures to expand “production, employment, and the exchange and consumption of
goods,” to eliminate “all forms of discriminatory treatment in international commerce,” to reduce
barriers to trade, and generally to achieve the goals laid out in the Atlantic Charter.

By early 1942, U.S. and British officials began preparing proposals that would foster economic
stability and prosperity in the postwar world. Harry Dexter White, Special Assistant to the U.S.
Secretary of the Treasury, and John Maynard Keynes, an advisor to the British Treasury, each

drafted plans creating organizations that would provide financial assistance to countries
experiencing short-term balance of payments deficits; this assistance was meant to ensure that

such countries did not adopt protectionist or predatory economic policies to improve their
balance of payments position. While both plans envisioned a world of fixed exchange rates,
believed to be more conducive to the expansion of international trade than floating exchange

rates, they differed in several significant respects. As a result, from 1942 until 1944, bilateral

and multilateral meetings of allied financial experts were held in order to settle upon a common
approach. Agreement was finally reached at the July 1944 United Nations Monetary and

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Financial Conference, a gathering of delegates from 44 nations that met in Bretton Woods, New

Hampshire. The two major accomplishments of the Bretton Woods conference were the
creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction

and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank. The IMF was charged with
overseeing a system of fixed exchange rates centered on the U.S. dollar and gold, serving as a
forum for consultation and cooperation and a provider of short-term financial assistance to

countries experiencing temporary deficits in their balance of payments. The IBRD was

responsible for providing financial assistance for the reconstruction of war-ravaged nations and
the economic development of less developed countries. In July 1945, Congress passed the
Bretton Woods Agreements Act, authorizing U.S. entry into the IMF and World Bank, and the

two organizations officially came into existence five months later. The fixed exchange rate
system established at Bretton Woods endured for the better part of three decades; only after the

exchange crises of August 1971, when President Richard M. Nixon suspended the dollar’s
convertibility into gold, and February/March 1973 did floating exchange rates become the norm
for the major industrialized democracies.

Agreement on international trade proved more difficult to achieve. One of the most contentious
issues was the system of preferential tariffs established among the members of the British
Commonwealth in 1932, whereby trade within the Commonwealth was subject to lower tariffs
than trade between the Commonwealth nations and the rest of the world. U.S. officials such as
Cordell Hull opposed imperial preferences on both ideological and practical grounds—the
United Kingdom and Canada, both members of the system, were the United States’ two largest
trading partners—and called for their abolition; however, many U.K. and other Commonwealth

officials favored keeping the preferences, at least until the United States agreed to reduce the
high Smoot-Hawley tariffs set in 1930. After more than four years of negotiations on this and
other issues—such as the rules that would govern tariff negotiations and the structure of a

proposed new organization to oversee international trade—agreement was finally reached in

1947. Twenty-three nations meeting in Geneva from April to October 1947 concluded the first

postwar round of tariff negotiations, leading to reductions in tariffs and imperial preferences, as
well as a draft charter for a new institution, the International Trade Organization (ITO).

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Participants also signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), designed not only

to implement the agreed tariff cuts but to serve as an interim codification of the rules governing
commercial relations among its signatories until the ITO was created. In November 1947, the

United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment convened in Havana to consider the
draft ITO charter; four months of negotiations later, the representatives of 53 countries signed
the finished charter in March 1948. However, strong opposition in the U.S. Congress meant that

the ITO never came into existence. Instead, it was the GATT that governed postwar

international trade relations for almost fifty years. Under the GATT’s aegis, eight rounds of trade
negotiations resulted in significant tariff reductions among its members before it was
superseded by the World Trade Organization in 1995.

The Yalta Conference, 1945

The Yalta Conference took place in a Russian resort town in the Crimea from February 4–11,
1945, during World War Two. At Yalta, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions

regarding the future progress of the war and the postwar world.

The Allied leaders came to Yalta knowing that an Allied victory in Europe was practically
inevitable but less convinced that the Pacific war was nearing an end. Recognizing that a victory
over Japan might require a protracted fight, the United States and Great Britain saw a major
strategic advantage to Soviet participation in the Pacific theater. At Yalta, Roosevelt and
Churchill discussed with Stalin the conditions under which the Soviet Union would enter the war

against Japan and all three agreed that, in exchange for potentially crucial Soviet participation in

the Pacific theater, the Soviets would be granted a sphere of influence in Manchuria following
Japan’s surrender. This included the southern portion of Sakhalin, a lease at Port Arthur (now
Lüshunkou), a share in the operation of the Manchurian railroads, and the Kurile Islands. This

agreement was the major concrete accomplishment of the Yalta Conference.

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The Allied leaders also discussed the future of Germany, Eastern Europe and the United

Nations. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed not only to include France in the postwar
governing of Germany, but also that Germany should assume some, but not all, responsibility

for reparations following the war. The Americans and the British generally agreed that future
governments of the Eastern European nations bordering the Soviet Union should be “friendly” to
the Soviet regime while the Soviets pledged to allow free elections in all territories liberated from

Nazi Germany. Negotiators also released a declaration on Poland, providing for the inclusion of

Communists in the postwar national government. In discussions regarding the future of the
United Nations, all parties agreed to an American plan concerning voting procedures in the
Security Council, which had been expanded to five permanent members following the inclusion

of France. Each of these permanent members was to hold a veto on decisions before the
Security Council.

Initial reaction to the Yalta agreements was celebratory. Roosevelt and many other Americans
viewed it as proof that the spirit of U.S.-Soviet wartime cooperation would carry over into the
postwar period. This sentiment, however, was short lived. With the death of Franklin D.
Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman became the thirty-third president of the United
States. By the end of April, the new administration clashed with the Soviets over their influence
in Eastern Europe, and over the United Nations. Alarmed at the perceived lack of cooperation
on the part of the Soviets, many Americans began to criticize Roosevelt’s handling of the Yalta
negotiations. To this day, many of Roosevelt’s most vehement detractors accuse him of
“handing over” Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia to the Soviet Union at Yalta despite the fact
that the Soviets did make many substantial concessions.

The Potsdam Conference, 1945

The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced

on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in
Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War

II. After the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt had agreed to meet following the surrender of Germany to determine the postwar

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borders in Europe. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the Allied leaders agreed to

meet over the summer at Potsdam to continue the discussions that had begun at Yalta.
Although the Allies remained committed to fighting a joint war in the Pacific, the lack of a

common enemy in Europe led to difficulties reaching consensus concerning postwar

reconstruction on the European continent.

The major issue at Potsdam was the question of how to handle Germany. At Yalta, the Soviets
had pressed for heavy postwar reparations from Germany, half of which would go to the Soviet

Union. While Roosevelt had acceded to such demands, Truman and his Secretary of State,

James Byrnes, were determined to mitigate the treatment of Germany by allowing the
occupying nations to exact reparations only from their own zone of occupation. Truman and
Byrnes encouraged this position because they wanted to avoid a repetition of the situation

created by the Treaty of Versailles, which had exacted high reparations payments from
Germany following World War One. Many experts agreed that the harsh reparations imposed by
the Versailles Treaty had handicapped the German economy and fueled the rise of the Nazis.

Despite numerous disagreements, the Allied leaders did manage to conclude some agreements
at Potsdam. For example, the negotiators confirmed the status of a demilitarized and disarmed

Germany under four zones of Allied occupation. According to the Protocol of the Conference,
there was to be “a complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany”; all aspects of
German industry that could be utilized for military purposes were to be dismantled; all German
military and paramilitary forces were to be eliminated; and the production of all military hardware

in Germany was forbidden. Furthermore, German society was to be remade along democratic
lines by repeal of all discriminatory laws from the Nazi era and by the arrest and trial of those

Germans deemed to be “war criminals.” The German educational and judicial systems were to
be purged of any authoritarian influences, and democratic political parties would be encouraged
to participate in the administration of Germany at the local and state level. The reconstitution of

a national German Government was, however, postponed indefinitely, and the Allied Control

Commission (which was comprised of four occupying powers, the United States, Britain,
France, and the Soviet Union) would run the country during the interregnum.

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One of the most controversial matters addressed at the Potsdam Conference dealt with the

revision of the German-Soviet-Polish borders and the expulsion of several million Germans from
the disputed territories. In exchange for the territory it lost to the Soviet Union following the

readjustment of the Soviet-Polish border, Poland received a large swath of German territory and
began to deport the German residents of the territories in question, as did other nations that
were host to large German minority populations. The negotiators at Potsdam were well-aware of

the situation, and even though the British and Americans feared that a mass exodus of

Germans into the western occupation zones would destabilize them, they took no action other
than to declare that “any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane
manner” and to request that the Poles, Czechoslovaks and Hungarians temporarily suspend

additional deportations.

In addition to settling matters related to Germany and Poland, the Potsdam negotiators
approved the formation of a Council of Foreign Ministers that would act on behalf of the United
States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China to draft peace treaties with Germany’s former
allies. Conference participants also agreed to revise the 1936 Montreux Convention, which gave
Turkey sole control over the Turkish Straits. Furthermore, the United States, Great Britain, and
China released the “Potsdam Declaration,” which threatened Japan with “prompt and utter
destruction” if it did not immediately surrender (the Soviet Union did not sign the declaration
because it had yet to declare war on Japan).

The Potsdam Conference is perhaps best known for President Truman’s July 24, 1945

conversation with Stalin, during which time the President informed the Soviet leader that the
United States had successfully detonated the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. Historians

have often interpreted Truman’s somewhat firm stance during negotiations to the U.S.
negotiating team’s belief that U.S. nuclear capability would enhance its bargaining power. Stalin,
however, was already well-informed about the U.S. nuclear program thanks to the Soviet

intelligence network; so he also held firm in his positions. This situation made negotiations

challenging. The leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, who, despite

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their differences, had remained allies throughout the war, never met again collectively to discuss

cooperation in postwar reconstruction.

The Formation of the United Nations, 1945

On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in
Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter,
pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace.

At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Foreign

Secretary Anthony Eden agreed to draft a declaration that included a call for “a general
international organization, based on the principle sovereign equality of all nations.” An agreed
declaration was issued after a Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow in October 1943. When

President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, in
November 1943, he proposed an international organization comprising an assembly of all

member states and a 10-member executive committee to discuss social and economic issues.
The United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and China would enforce peace as “the four
policemen.” Meanwhile Allied representatives founded a set of task-oriented organizations: the

Food and Agricultural Organization (May 1943), the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration (November 1943), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (April 1944), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (July 1944), and
the International Civil Aviation Organization (November 1944).

U.S., British, Soviet, and Chinese representatives met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in
August and September 1944 to draft the charter of a postwar international organization based

on the principle of collective security. They recommended a General Assembly of all member
states and a Security Council consisting of the Big Four plus six members chosen by the
Assembly. Voting procedures and the veto power of permanent members of the Security
Council were finalized at the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Roosevelt and Stalin agreed that

the veto would not prevent discussions by the Security Council. Roosevelt agreed to General

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Assembly membership for Ukraine and Byelorussia while reserving the right, which was never

exercised, to seek two more votes for the United States.

Representatives of 50 nations met in San Francisco April-June 1945 to complete the Charter of
the United Nations. In addition to the General Assembly of all member states and a Security
Council of 5 permanent and 6 non-permanent members, the Charter provided for an 18-member

Economic and Social Council, an International Court of Justice, a Trusteeship Council to

oversee certain colonial territories, and a Secretariat under a Secretary General. The Roosevelt

administration strove to avoid Woodrow Wilson’s mistakes in selling the League of Nations to

the Senate. It sought bipartisan support and in September 1943 the Republican Party endorsed
U.S. participation in a postwar international organization, after which both houses of Congress
overwhelmingly endorsed participation. Roosevelt also sought to convince the public that an

international organization was the best means to prevent future wars. The Senate approved the
UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. The United Nations came into existence on
October 24, 1945, after 29 nations had ratified the Charter.

Creation of U.N.O:

April 25, 1945, the United Nations Conference on International Organization began in San
Francisco. In addition to governments, a number of non-government organizations, including
Rotary International and Lions Clubs International received invitations to assist in the drafting of
a charter. After working for two months, the fifty nations represented at the conference signed

the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June. Poland, which was unable to send a
representative to the conference due to political instability, signed the charter on 15 October

1945. The charter stated that before it would come into effect, it must be ratified by the
Governments of the Republic of China, France, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. This occurred on 24 October 1945, and the

United Nations was officially formed.

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The date each founding member state deposited their ratification of the UN Charter is as

follows:[11]

• USA – 8 Aug 1945

• France – 31 Aug 1945
• Dominican Rep. – 4 Sep 1945

• Nicaragua – 6 Sep 1945

• New Zealand – 19 Sep 1945

• Brazil – 21 Sep 1945

• Argentina – 24 Sep 1945

• El Salvador – 26 Sep 1945
• Haiti – 27 Sep 1945

• China – 28 Sep 1945

• Turkey – 28 Sep 1945
• Denmark – 9 October 1945
• Chile – 11 Oct 1945
• Philippines – 11 Oct 1945
• Paraguay – 12 Oct 1945
• Cuba – 15 Oct 1945
• Lebanon – 15 Oct 1945
• Iran – 16 Oct 1945
• Luxembourg – 17 Oct 1945
• Saudi Arabia – 18 Oct 1945

• Czechoslovakia – 19 Oct 1945

• Syria – 19 Oct 1945
• Yugoslavia – 19 Oct 1945

• UK – 20 Oct 1945
• Egypt – 22 Oct 1945

• Byelorussia – 24 Oct 1945

• Poland – 24 Oct 1945

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 • Ukraine – 24 Oct 1945

• USSR – 24 Oct 1945 (note - the United Nations is established on this date)
• Greece – 25 Oct 1945

• India – 30 Oct 1945

• Peru – 31 Oct 1945
• Australia – 1 Nov 1945

• Costa Rica – 2 Nov 1945

• Liberia – 2 Nov 1945

• Colombia – 5 Nov 1945
• Mexico – 7 Nov 1945

• South Africa – 7 Nov 1945

• Canada – 9 Nov 1945

• Ethiopia – 13 Nov 1945

• Panama – 13 Nov 1945
• Bolivia – 14 Nov 1945

• Venezuela – 15 Nov 1945

• Honduras – 17 Nov 1945
• Guatemala – 21 Nov 1945
• Norway – 27 Nov 1945
• Netherlands – 10 Dec 1945
• Uruguay – 18 Dec 1945

• Ecuador – 21 Dec 1945

• Iraq – 21 Dec 1945

• Belgium – 27 Dec 1945

The first meeting of the General Assembly was held in Westminster Central Hall, London, on 10

January 1946. The Security Council met for the first time a week later in Church House,
Westminster.[13] The League of Nations formally dissolved itself on 18 April 1946 and

transferred its mission to the United Nations.

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Activities

The United Nations has achieved considerable prominence in the social arena, fostering human

rights, economic development, decolonization, health and education, for example, and
interesting itself in refugees and trade.

The leaders of the UN had high hopes that it would act to prevent conflicts between nations and
make future wars impossible. Those hopes have obviously not fully come to pass. From about

1947 until 1991 the division of the world into hostile camps during the Cold War made
agreement on peacekeeping matters extremely difficult. Following the end of the Cold War,

renewed calls arose for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace and co-
operation, as several dozen active military conflicts continued to rage across the globe. The
breakup of the Soviet Union has also left the United States in a unique position of global

dominance, creating a variety of new problems for the UN (See the United States and the
United Nations).

Facilities

Huge complex of skyscrapers and other large buildings interlaced with trees and gardens. The
surrounding area as far as the horizon is filled with trees and large rivers. In the foreground a
crane and small building site show that a new construction is underway.

UN building in Vienna

In December 1945, the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, by unanimous votes,
requested that the UN make its headquarters in the United States. The UN accepted this

suggestion and, after considering sites in the Black Hills, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Navy

Island and what would become the World Trade Center site, constructed the United Nations
headquarters building in New York City in 1949 and 1950 beside the East River on land
purchased with an $8.5 million donation from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The UN headquarters

officially opened on January 9, 1951, although construction was not formally completed until
October 9, 1952.

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Under special agreement with the United States, the UN enjoys certain diplomatic privileges and

immunities, but generally the laws of New York City, New York State, and the United States
apply.

While the principal headquarters of the UN remain in New York City, major agencies base
themselves in Geneva, The Hague, Vienna, Nairobi and elsewhere.

Structure and associated organizations

The basic constitutional makeup of the United Nations has changed little, though vastly

increased membership has altered the functioning of some elements. The UN as a whole has
generated a rich assortment of non-governmental organizations and special bodies over the
years: some with a regional focus, some specific to the various peacekeeping missions, and

others of global scope and importance. Other bodies (such as the International Labour
Organization) formed prior to the establishment of the United Nations and only subsequently

became associated with it.

Milestones:

In October 2015 over 350 landmarks in 60 countries were lit in blue to commemorate the 70th
anniversary of the world body

Effects of war:

Though Hitler and many of his close conspirators committed suicide, most high-ranking officials
in Germany did not escape justice so easily. When the concentration camps throughout Europe

were liberated, the world was shocked to see what horrors lay within. Around twelve million

people had been murdered in total (half of them Jews) and this number did not include those
who had been used for medical experimentation or tortured by the camp guards. Here the Allies
were faced with a dilemma: since genocide had never been publicly recognized before, there
were no formal laws against such mass murder. Instead, the Nuremberg Trials (November
1945), during which Hitler's remaining officials were declared guilty of war crimes and crimes
against humanity, set a standard to judge others who would commit genocide in the future.

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The United Nations

Another result of World War II was the formation of the United Nations (UN). After the first world

war, the Allies had created the League of Nations (LoF), whose purpose was to keep peace and
stability in Europe. This was the first global organization in history, but it had several problems,
which led to World War II. When they created the United Nations on October 24, 1945, the

Allies made sure to improve the UN, especially by splitting the power among five major
countries (United Kingdom, France, United States, China, and USSR) instead of just two or

three, as in the League of Nations.

New Superpowers

However, though the UN had five major powers, there were only two countries that were

economically powerful after World War II. The war severely injured the natural resource supply
and the economy of the Western European countries, especially Britain, France, and Germany.

These countries had previously dominated the world's trade market, and now two new countries
who had been relatively unharmed during the war took their places -- the Soviet Union (USSR)
and the United States. The USSR had only been damaged on its western side; the east was

completely unharmed. The U.S. had only sent its armies over to Europe; none of the fighting
had taken place on American soil. The war actually boosted the American economy, ending the
Great Depression and allowing the U.S. to become a superpower in the post-war global market.

Women's Rights

The war also resulted in a major victory for women's rights advocates. During the war, the
government of every country drafted men to serve in the army. Since men had held most of the
jobs at this time, the military draft left behind a vacuum in factories, offices, and farms. This

vacuum was filled by women, many of whom had never worked before. As the war progressed,
these women developed their self-confidence and gained a strong sense of independence. By
the time the fighting ended and the men returned, the women refused to give up their jobs;

many of them enjoyed making their own living and not having to depend on their husbands or
brothers or sons for money. The government was forced to allow women to work and to

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increase equality in pay (though pay is not completely equal even today). Women continue to

fight for complete equality, but World War II helped them considerably on their way.

Germany was totally defeated, and the Nazi regime brought down. Its leaders were tried for
crimes against humanity at Nuremberg, the former site of Nazi propaganda triumphs. Hitler
escaped trial and execution by committing suicide in his Berlin bunker at the end of the war.

German cities were in ruins from a massive bombing campaign.

Germany was divided into 4 zones of occupation by the victorious powers, pending a more
permanent political settlement.

Japan also was in ruins from extensive bombing. Prominent military leaders were tried and
convicted of war crimes, but the emperor was allowed to retain his position. Japan was

temporarily placed under U.S. military rule.

England was devastated by the war, having experienced extensive bombing during the 1940
blitz by the Germans. The economy depended for recovery upon aid from the United States.
England rapidly phased out most of its remaining imperial holdings in the years immediately

following the war.

France had not experienced the enormous human losses sustained in the First World War,

but would have to recover from the effects of Nazi occupation. Retribution was taken upon
collaborators. Like England, France would be compelled to dismantle its colonial empire in the
years following the war. This was a particularly traumatic and drawn out process for the French,

in Algeria and in Vietnam where they fought prolonged and bitter wars in an attempt to maintain
their colonial control.

England and France no longer held a status of power comparable either to the United States
or the Soviet Union.

The Russian people had suffered immeasurably during the war, and western Russia was
devastated by the land warfare which was primarily on Russian territory. But, in the process of
defeating the Germans, the Russians had built a large and powerful army, which occupied most

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of Eastern Europe at the end of the war. The great resources and population of Russia assured

that the Soviet Union would be, along with the United

States, one of two super-powers.

The United States economy was greatly stimulated by the war, even more so than in World
War I. The depression was brought decisively to an end, and new industrial complexes were
built all over the United States. Spared the physical destruction of war, the U.S. economy

dominated the world economy. After 4 years of military buildup, the U.S. had also become the
leading military power. The position of the United States as world leader was now more obvious

than ever.

WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON THE NON-EUROPEAN WORLD?

The struggle for national independence of non-European peoples was greatly enhanced and

stimulated by the war. The weakness of England and France, the two major European imperial
powers, provided opportunities. The stage was set for the collapse of European empires in the 3
decades following the war.

New technology, developed during the war to fight disease, would, when applied to the non-
European world, result in sharply lower mortality rates and soaring population growth.

WHAT EFFECTS DID THE WAR HAVE UPON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY?

Enormous technological progress was made during the war. The English developed radar which
would be the forerunner of television. Progress in electronics and computers, made during the

war,and provided a foundation for further development which fundamentally transformed the
postwar world.

The development of the atomic bomb by European and American scientists during the war,

not only transformed the nature of potential future wars, it marked the beginning of the nuclear
power industry.

WHAT POLITICAL CHANGES OCCURRED IN REGARD TO THE PROSPECT OF

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FUTURE WARS?

World War II had appeared to pose an unprecedented threat to human civilization and gave

impetus to the renewal of Wilson's vision of an international organization to keep the peace.
Organizing efforts were begun even while the war was on. In June, 1945, 51 nations were
represented at the founding conference in San Francisco. In October, 1945,

The United Nations was officially established. Unlike the League of Nations, the UN had the full

support and leadership of the United States. The Soviet Union and all the most significant
nations of the world were members.

In 1944, representatives of the major economic powers met to create an International

Monetary Fund and to agree upon a regime of international tariff regulation known as GATT.

There was a determination to avoid the mistakes of the interwar years which had exacerbated
the Great Depression.

The world community was thought to be entering a new era of international cooperation.

Reforms of Labour Government:

The outcome of the 1945 election was more than a sensation. It was a political earthquake.

Less than 12 weeks earlier, Winston Churchill had announced the unconditional surrender of
Nazi Germany. Churchill wanted his wartime coalition to continue until Japan too had been

defeated, but was not unduly dismayed when his Labour ministers insisted that the country be
offered a choice. The prime minister called the election for early July, confident that the British

people would back the greatest hero of the hour. Of all Churchill's colossal misjudgments, that

was probably the most egregious.

The voters wanted an end to wartime austerity, and no return to prewar economic depression.
They wanted change. Three years earlier, in the darkest days of the war, they had been offered
a tantalising glimpse of how things could be in the bright dawn of victory. The economist William

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Beveridge had synthesised the bravest visions of all important government departments into a

single breathtaking view of the future.

The 1942 Beveridge Report spelled out a system of social insurance, covering every citizen
regardless of income. It offered nothing less than a cradle-to-grave welfare state.

That was the great promise dangled before the British electorate in 1945. Though Churchill had
presided over the planning for radical social reform, though he was a genuine hero of the

masses - and though, ironically enough, the Tory manifesto pledges were not all that different
from Labour's - the people did not trust him to deliver the brave new world of Beveridge.

There were other factors too. The Labour party had held office only twice before, in 1924 and in
1929-31, but during the war years its leadership had acquired both experience and trust. It now

looked like a party of government.

Labour's promise to take over the commanding heights of the economy via nationalisation were
anathema to committed Tories, but after nearly six years of wartime state direction of the
economy it did not seem nearly so radical as it had before the war - or indeed as it seems now.

Then there was the military vote. Britain had millions of men and women in uniform in 1945,
scattered over Europe, the far east, and elsewhere. They, more than any other section of the

electorate, yearned for change and for a better civilian life. The military vote was
overwhelmingly pro-Labour.

Many students of the 1945 election believe that a key role was played by the Daily Mirror, then
the biggest selling paper in Britain, and easily the most popular among the armed forces. On VE

(Victory in Europe) Day, the Mirror published an immensely powerful cartoon by the brilliant

Philip Zec. It showed a battered, bandaged Allied soldier holding out to the reader a slip of
paper marked Victory and Peace in Europe. Under the drawing was the caption "Here you are!
Don't lose it again."

The same cartoon was published on the Mirror's front page on the morning of the most
remarkable general election of the 20th century. But when the result was announced on July 26

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- three weeks after polling day to allow military postal votes to be counted - it was clear that

postwar politics had changed utterly.

With 47.7% of the vote, Labour secured a staggering 393 seats in the House of Commons. The
Conservatives, with 39.7%, won just 210 seats. The Liberal party, which had governed the
country less than quarter of a century earlier, was reduced to 9% of the vote, and just 12 seats.

The new prime minister was Churchill's deputy in the war time coalition, Clement Attlee.

On the first day of the new parliament, the massed ranks of Labour members bawled out the
socialist anthem, the Red Flag. Tories everywhere were scandalised. (There is a splendid

apocryphal story of a lady in a grand London hotel who was overheard exclaiming "Labour in
power? The country will never stand for it!")

But stand for it they did, over the next six momentous years.

Clement Attlee

The new prime minister was not obviously cut out for the job. Painfully shy and reserved to the
point of coldness, he had the appearance - and often the style - of a bank clerk. Churchill
described him, cruelly, as "a sheep in sheep's clothing".

The son of a City solicitor, he was educated at Haileybury College - which specialised in turning
out administrators for the British Raj - and at University College, Oxford. Attlee was so far from
being a passionate ideologue that his wife Violet once casually observed: "Clem was never

really a socialist, were you, darling? Well, not a rabid one."

Yet this essentially herbivorous exterior cloaked a steely determination, and a deepseated
devotion to social justice first developed during his voluntary work in London's East End before

the first world war. After distinguished service in that war, Attlee entered parliament in 1922, and
served in the first two Labour governments. In 1931, he declined to join Ramsey Macdonald's
national coalition, preferring to stay with the rump opposition. He became Labour leader in
1935.

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Though many on the left opposed Labour participation in Churchill's wartime coalition (at least

during the early years when Hitler was allied with the Soviet Union under Stalin), Attlee
responded to the national crisis by guiding his party into the national government. He became

Lord Privy Seal and, from 1942, deputy prime minister. He was 62 when he entered Downing
Street.

Attlee's team

The great tide of new Labour MPs who entered the Commons in 1945 included some eager
youngsters who were to make their mark on the party, and indeed the country. They included

Denis Healey (who made an impassioned maiden speech urging world socialist revolution),
Harold Wilson, Michael Foot, and James Callaghan. But the men Attlee leaned on were of
course of Labour's old guard. His principal props were Ernest Bevin, a pragmatic trade unionist

who had made his mark during the war as an energetic labour minister, Labour stalwart Hugh
Dalton, and Stafford Cripps, an aloof intellectual (Churchilll once remarked of him: "There but for
the grace of God, goes God.").

The Attlee-Bevin alliance was particularly important in protecting the administration from some

of its own hotter blooded members, who shared the young Healey's enthusiasm for revolution.
Their most potent figurehead was Aneurin Bevan, a fiery orator from the Welsh valleys, who
constantly urged the government to embrace radical reforms, and bitterly resisted any
suggestion of pragmatic trimming of policy. Bevan eventually was to deal the Attlee
administration a hammer blow, when he resigned over the reintroduction of NHS prescription

charges. For six years, though, his was the voice of radical Labour.

Nationalisation

"The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it." The stark sentence is buried in the
party's 1945 election manifesto, which promised that Labour would take control of the economy
and in particular of the manufacturing industry. The manifesto pledged nationalisation of the

Bank of England, the fuel and power industries, inland transport, and iron and steel. And with a
majority of more than 150, the party could not be denied.

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One by one the key industries of the postwar economy tumbled into the public sector, where

they were subject to elaborate planning controls. For the most part the takeovers were highly
popular; none more so than the nationalisation of the coalmines. Pit owners still employed a

million men, many of them in dire and dangerous conditions. The new national coal board was
seen as much as a humanitarian institution as an economic one.

Other nationalisation operations were regarded more cynically. No sooner had British Railways
taken over the old regional semi-private networks than jokes began to circulate about unreliable,

crowded trains, crumbling stations and that old standby of British comedy, the buffet sandwich.

After the initial euphoria of nationalisation, it wasn't long before doubts began to emerge. The
state industries were smothered by bureaucracy and the demands of Labour's economic gurus,
both amateur and professional. Their bolder ideas were often subsumed in the delicate balance

between principle and pragmatism.

It became clear that the lumbering machinery of economic planning could not deliver what the
voters had demanded and Labour had promised: full employment, secure jobs with fair wages,
an end to wartime rationing and - above all perhaps - decent homes for all.

It has sometimes been argued that the Attlee government's main disadvantage was that Britain
had been on the winning side in the war. British cities and industries had been bashed around
by German air raids, but had not suffered the wholesale destruction which allowed the
renascent German economy to start from a clean sheet. More importantly, British economic

class structures - and bitter enmities - survived the war unscathed, in contrast to those countries
which had been traumatised by invasion and occupation (none more so than Germany) into

rethinking their economic cultures.

But there were other obstacles in the path of Labour's would-be revolutionaries. The country, to
put it brutally, was broke. It had poured its wealth into the war effort and in 1945 was groaning
under a mountain of debt. It had pawned many of its most valuable assets, including a huge

slice of overseas investments, to service that debt.

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And even when the war was finally over, the victorious, impoverished British maintained vast

numbers of men and resources tied up in an empire on which the sun was about to set. In
Europe, Britain paid for a huge army of occupation in Germany. The dawn of the nuclear age,

and British pride, demanded handsome investment in the new terrible weapons which would
keep us allegedly a first class power. The disarmament, which some in the Labour party craved,
proved illusory as - in Churchill's words again - an iron curtain descended across Europe, and

the cold war began.

Speaking of cold, even the weather seemed at times to conspire against Labour. The winter of

1946-47 was one of the most severe ever recorded, causing widespread misery and disruption.
One of the few truly cheering aspects of life was the imminent arrival of the Beveridge reforms.

The welfare state

The Attlee government is rightly seen as one of the great reformist administrations of the 20th

century. It is a pleasant irony that the impetus for the more durable reforms came from outside
the party.

The 1944 Education Act, which had introduced the concept of selection at 11 and compulsory
free secondary education for all, was based on the work of a Tory, Richard Austin 'Rab' Butler,
who went on to conquer all but the tallest peak of British politics.

The introduction of the welfare state rested very largely on the work of two Liberal economists:
John Maynard Keynes, who argued the virtues of full employment and state stimulation of the

economy, and William Beveridge.

Beveridge's ideas were culled from every nook and cranny of Whitehall. His formidable task was

to put together a coherent plan for postwar social reconstruction. What he came up with
extended hugely the framework of national insurance first put in place before the first world war
by David Lloyd George. Every British citizen would be covered, regardless of income or lack of

it. Those who lacked jobs and homes would be helped. Those who were sick, would be cured.

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The birth of the National Health Service in July 1948 remains Labour's greatest monument. It

was achieved only after two years of bitter resistance by the medical establishment, with
consultants threatening strike action and the British Medical Association pouring out gloomy

warnings about bureaucracy and expense.

Alas, those warnings proved to have more than a grain of truth, and the government was forced

to retreat from its first grand vision of free, comprehensive health care for all. In the beginning,
everything was provided: hospital accommodation, GP cover, medicine, dental care, and even

spectacles. But with Britain showing few signs of economic take off, the budgetary burden was

enormous. In 1951, chancellor of the exchequer Hugh Gaitskell was obliged to reintroduce
charges for NHS false teeth and glasses. Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson and junior minister
John Freeman stormed out of government, and Attlee's goose was cooked.

Foreign policy

Attlee's government took office in a world changing at bewildering speed. The war had forged
new alliances, the greatest and most nebulous of all the United Nations. The USA and the
USSR were undisputed superpowers; Britain and France deluded themselves that they were

too.

In the far east, the embers of nationalism had been stirred into flame by the brutal advance and
subsequent stubborn retreat of Japan. Britain's ignominious surrender of Singapore in 1941 had
sent a clear signal to Asia that the daysof European imperialism were numbered.

With hindsight it was a blessing for Britain, as well as for its vast numbers of subjects around the
world, that Winston Churchill lost the 1945 election. The old warrior was, at heart, a Victorian
romantic, hopelessly in thrall to the so called romance of empire. His antipathy to India's

independence struggle, in particular, was well established.

Attlee, on the other hand, recognised that the British Raj was doomed. He had been to

Haileybury College, after all, and had paid an official visit to India in 1929. Even if the prime
minister had harboured any illusions about Britain's duty to its 300m Indian subjects, he was

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constantly reminded by Washington that the US would not tolerate the continuance of empire.

Wisely, he bowed to the inevitable, and prepared for withdrawal.

But even as it bade farewell, Britain was to visit two disasters on the subcontinent. One was
Attlee's appointment of Lord Mountbatten as the last Viceroy. Conceited, impatient, and
breathtakingly arrogant, he took to the grandeur and the raw power of the job with unholy relish.

Mountbatten decided that independence would come on August 1947, on the second

anniversary of the day he had accepted the surrender of the Japanese in south-east Asia.
Nothing was to stand in the way of this vainglory - not even the unresolved issue of Muslim

demands for a separate state, and the gathering storm clouds of communal violence.

In a few summer weeks, colonial servants scribbled lines across the map of the mighty

subcontinent, carving East and West Pakistan out of Mother India, and sparking a bloodbath so
frightful that no one to this day knows exactly how many millions died. The holocaust even

consumed Mahatma Gandhi, the father of free India and of freedom movements everywhere,
who was assassinated months after independence. Thus ended 300 years of history, and 90
years of Raj. King George VI would be the last British monarch to style himself emperor of India.

There was another colonial retreat, in a way just as disgraceful, on the extreme west of Asia.
For just over a quarter of a century British administrators had tried, and on the whole failed, to
make sense of their League of Nations (later United Nations) mandate to rule Palestine. They
tried partition, appeasement, manipulation and bald coercion. Nothing helped assuage the

bloody friction between the rising tide of Jewish immigrants and the native Palestinians.

The end of the second world war brought new waves of refugees from Nazi tyranny to the
shores of the holy land, and the conflict became more unholy than ever. Washington was

adamant that nothing should stand in the way of the establishment of Israel and when the
mandate finally dribbled into the sands of history in May 1948, the new state was born, fighting
for its life.

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Elsewhere, of course, Britain's imperial might remained intact. The Union flag still flew over

huge tracts of Africa, whole archipelagos in the Caribbean and Pacific, jewels of Asia like
Singapore and Hong Kong. But there was another much greater reality: British adherence to,

and even dependence on, the patronage of the United States. We tagged along with
Washington in the occupation of Germany and the establishment of Nato; we acquiesced in the
new division of Europe between east and west; we willingly did our bit in the great airlift which

saved west Berlin from the Soviet blockade of the late 1940s, and we sent our troops to South

Korea to fight for the United Nations - under US direction - against China and the North.

At the insistence of Attlee and the Labour right, we developed our very own nuclear weapons
and insisted that they kept us independent. In reality, the north Atlantic connection was the only
one which ultimately mattered.

Conclusion:

It is tempting to think of the Attlee years as an anti-climax. After the clamour of victory, the
peace was a drab disappointment. And after all the fervent promises of a new dawn, British life
remained to a large extent grey and grim. At times, food restrictions were even tighter than

during the war - bread was rationed for the first time. Class enmities flourished; social and
economic inequalities remained palpable. Here and there were little pockets of a new prosperity:
television broadcasts were resumed, the first Morris Minors appeared, and British designers
were working on the world's first commercial jet, the De Havilland Comet. But of that great
universal prosperity which seemed to glow from the 1945 manifestos, there was little sign.

And yet, and yet... Britain in the Attlee years changed more than under any other government,

before or since. The welfare reforms, and to a lesser extent the great experiment of state control
of industry, had a profound effect on the way the people saw themselves and their country. And
what they saw, on the whole, was pleasing.

In 1950, after five exhausting years, it was inevitable that the great electoral tide of 1945 would

be turned. But in the general election of that year the Labour vote dipped less than 2%, and it
was only the vagaries of the first past the post system that saw the Tories gain 88 seats.

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Still, Attlee remained in power, at the head of an increasingly fractious government rent by

ideological divisions, and fatally wounded by the illness and withdrawal from public life of men
like Cripps and Bevin. When the NHS prescription charge issue finally ripped the party apart,

the prime minister was obliged to go to the country again in 1951.

Even then, Labour retained the faith of the people, gaining its highest ever share of the vote:

48.8%. Indeed, it was the closest any party came in the 20th century to achieving a popular
majority mandate, but it was still not enough. The key turned out to be the Liberal vote, which

suddenly evaporated, leaving the party with just 2.5% support and six MPs. The Conservatives

ended up with fewer votes than Labour, but 26 more MPs. Winston Churchill was back in
Downing Street.

Great Britain and Cold War:

Churchill observed to John Wheeler-Bennett late in 1943 that he realised at Teheran for the first
time what a small nation the United Kingdom was. 'There I sat with the great Russian bear on
one side of me, with paws outstretched, and on the other side the great American buffalo', he
said, 'and between the two sat the poor English donkey who was the only one... who knew the
right way home.' However, neither the Prime Minister nor most of his fellow countrymen would
immediately abandon Britain's previous embodiment as an imperial lion. At Yalta early in 1945,

Churchill was disturbed when Roosevelt informed him that he was going to meet three Arab
kings on his return journey to Washington; this seemed like unwonted infiltration into an
exclusively British sphere of influence, certainly not the right way home for an American

president.

As pressure for the dismemberment of the British Empire increased across the Atlantic, where
the process had of course begun in 1776, some spokesmen for the beleaguered mother country

losing her children could counter only with tetchy complaints about how the first-born had
emulated and even surpassed its parent in colonial policies towards the Red Indians and other
subject peoples. At the same time, the circumstance that Great Britain had been proud and

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confident concerning its long-lasting world role while the United States was somewhat surprised

and embarrassed about its recent rise to superpower, gave Churchill and others less well-
known a voice among the English-speaking peoples considerably louder than physical strength

alone would have merited. Still more a roar than a bray, the great man's speech of March 5th,
1946 – the 'iron curtain' speech – has often been considered the starting point in the Cold War.

Churchill gave the speech at Fulton, Missouri, and a further association with that state was the
first positive action to follow almost exactly a year later, the Truman Doctrine enunciated on

March 12th, 1947 by one of Missouri's most famous sons. It is doubly appropriate, therefore,

that the first book under review, The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947
should be published by the University of Missouri Press, which has found a worthy analyst of a
comparatively neglected aspect of the Cold War's provenance in Terry H. Anderson, whose

able exposition we have so far been following. Not the least of this American historian's
achievements has been to cull from the archives some sensible views expressed before the
onset of the conflict which, if more widely adopted, might have averted it. For example, during
the spring of 1945 the undersecretary of the northern department of the Foreign Office,
Christopher F.A. Warner, put forward to Waldemar J. Gallman, State Department Minister at the
American Embassy in London, the argument that it was wrong to make democracy the issue in
eastern Europe and the Balkans because those areas had never enjoyed free and fair elections
and 'nothing can be gained from insisting on the impossible'. The recognition by the various
powers of each other's interests in the various areas of eastern and western Europe would lead
eventually to understanding. However, not only were American officials suspicious of traditional
concepts such as 'spheres of interest' and 'balance of power', they were also caught up by 1947

in a crusade against communism which was encouraged by many British spokesmen, including
the forceful foreign secretary Ernest Bevin (who would not listen to an appeal to find 'a genuine
middle way' from such Labour colleagues as James Callaghan and Michael Foot), Then, as

Anderson judiciously concludes, 'Indeed, the British had advocated a larger American role in
world affairs, but they had gained more than they had bargained for'.

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In the estimation of Roy Douglas, British author of the second work to be noticed here, From

War to Cold War, 1942-48, had the Allied response to Soviet encroachment in eastern Europe
been more immediate and resolute as the Second World War was coming to an end, the course

of post-war history might well have folIowed a different path. Like others less scholarly than
himself, Douglas favours the analogy between what happened after 1945 and the course of pre-
war events leading up to the Munich agreement (a subject that he has written on at length

elsewhere). He reinforces it with many references in the body of his book and also in the

epigraphs to several chapters, where quotations from the Munich period are juxtaposed with
others from that of the early Cold War. However, this analogy has a serious weakness in its
application to the Soviet Union, which was of course excluded from the Munich agreement of

1938, and only then moved on from its policy of collective security to the bilateral Nazi-Soviet
Pact of 1939.

Soviet analysts may be forgiven for complaining that here as well as elsewhere the later
reputation of the agreement has been directed against the Soviet Union even more than the
notorious piece of paper itself. This is not to argue that Soviet actions in the years following
1945 did not make their full contribution to the arrival of the Cold War, nor that Douglas has not
produced a better than average history of the years 1942 to 1948, with some stimulating re-
assessment. For example, in his final paragraph he puts the East-West conflict in a North-South
perspective that could well have been drawn at greater length, especially since if and when the
haves of the capitalist and communist camps destroy each other, the have-nots of the Third
World may yet have the last laugh.

- See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/paul-dukes/united-states-great-britain-and-cold-war-

1944-1947#sthash.Jz85cs0E.dpuf

Creation of Common Wealth

The Commonwealth has been described as an organism which could evolve, but could not have

been constructed from a blueprint. This distinguishes it from the United Nations, built around its

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charter in the conscious endeavour to establish universally-recognised standards for

international conduct.

Unlike other international official organisations, the character of the Commonwealth is less
markedly that of an alliance or contractual arrangement then it is a family. Many Commonwealth
presidents and prime ministers, and its Head, Queen Elizabeth II, have drawn attention to this

feeling of family. Like a family, the Commonwealth exists because its members feel they have a
natural connection of long standing. Its work for development has been possible because the

Commonwealth connection was already there.

Members see the connection as natural because they have a shared past, a common language
and, despite their differences, an enhanced capacity to trust one another. They have used this
link to strengthen each other’s development, and to work in partnership to advance global

agreement over crucial issues such as trade, debt, gender equality, the environment, the threat
of terrorism and the international financial system.

A product of history and foresight

The Commonwealth of today was by no means an inevitable development. It came about

through the powerful bonds which developed among leaders and people, notably during the
decolonising process and in the early years of the Commonwealth’s evolution as an association
of sovereign states. The consequences of changes led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Kwame
Nkrumah are best known, but there are several such turning points.

Dominion Status

In the early nineteenth century, British imperial policy began to soften under pressure for greater

self-determination, initially mainly from the British-descended populations of the most advanced
colonies. Canada was first to obtain self-government (in the 1840s) and also the first to become
a dominion (1867). Dominion status, which allowed self-government and extensive

independence in foreign affairs, fundamentally changed the relationship between colony and

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imperial power. It was perhaps in this spirit that British politician Lord Rosebery, visiting

Adelaide in Australia in 1884, called the empire ‘a Commonwealth of nations’.

Australia achieved dominion status when its states united as the Commonwealth of Australia in
1901. New Zealand followed in 1907, South Africa in 1910, and the Irish Free State in 1921.
The five dominions and India had their own representation in the League of Nations, the

forerunner of the UN.

Great Britain and the dominions were characterised in the Balfour Report of 1926 as
‘autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one

to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common
allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of
Nations’.

The Statute of Westminster, passed by the UK parliament in 1931, gave legal recognition to the

de facto independence of the dominions. The parliaments of Canada, South Africa and the Irish
Free State swiftly passed legislation enacting the statute. Australia adopted it in 1942 and New
Zealand in 1947. Newfoundland relinquished its dominion status and was incorporated into

Canada in 1949.

Republican Membership

At the same time, the struggle for self-government in India (then also including Bangladesh and
Pakistan) was growing. India and Pakistan achieved independence – as dominions and

members of the Commonwealth – in 1947, and Sri Lanka followed in 1948.

These events marked a change in direction for the Commonwealth, as these were the first

countries where the pressure for independence came from the indigenous populations rather
than communities descended mainly from British settlers. This laid the groundwork for the
evolution of a multiracial Commonwealth.

Then the Commonwealth faced a constitutional crisis. It was assumed that the association’s
principal bond would be that all members would have the monarch of the United Kingdom as

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head of state. India’s constituent assembly decided to adopt a republican form of government,

yet wished to remain within the Commonwealth. At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Meeting
of 1949, it was agreed that India might remain a member as a republic but accepting the

monarch ‘as the symbol of the free association of independent member nations and as such
Head of the Commonwealth’.

This development opened the way for other countries which adopted republican constitutions (or
had a national monarch) to become Commonwealth members. At the start of 2006, 37 of the 53

members did not have Queen Elizabeth II as titular head of state, but all accepted her as Head

of the Commonwealth.

The Queen is also head of state in 16 Commonwealth countries, all of them fully independent.
She is head of each of these states individually. Excluding the UK, the countries of which the

Queen is sovereign are now formally known as realms (though the term is, in practice, virtually
obsolete) and the Queen is represented by a governor-general who carries out the formal
offices of head of state.

Wind of Change

The Gold Coast, in West Africa, became independent as the Republic of Ghana and joined the
Commonwealth in 1957, the first majority-ruled African country to join. This marked the start of a
new development, what UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan called ‘the wind of change
sweeping through Africa’. Over the next two decades, the UK’s rule ended in many parts of

Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Commonwealth membership
expanded rapidly.

Malaya (later incorporated into Malaysia) also achieved independence in 1957, followed by

Nigeria and Cyprus (1960), Sierra Leone and Tanzania (1961), Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago,
and Uganda (1962), and so on. The vast majority of countries coming to independence chose to
join the Commonwealth. With South Africa’s readmission after the elections of 1994,

membership rose to 51 countries. Cameroon, independent since 1960, joined in October 1995
and Mozambique, which had long expressed a desire to join the association and had been

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connected with it throughout the long Southern African struggle for racial equality, was admitted

to membership in November 1995.

A few countries did not join. Myanmar (then Burma, independent 1947) chose not to join, and
Ireland withdrew in 1949. A number of mainly Middle Eastern countries – former UK
dependencies, mandates, protectorates or protected states – elected not to join the

Commonwealth on independence. Maldives became independent in 1965 but did not join the
association until 1982. Samoa (formerly a UN Trust Territory administered by New Zealand)

became independent in 1962, but did not join until 1970.

Three countries left the Commonwealth and then rejoined. Pakistan left in 1972, after other
members recognised the new state of Bangladesh (previously part of Pakistan), but was
welcomed back into the association in 1989 when the democratically-elected government

applied to rejoin.

South Africa’s membership lapsed in 1961. Having become a republic it was required to make a
formal reapplication for membership. The Commonwealth’s resistance to the apartheid policies
of the government of the time made it clear that this would not be granted and so South Africa

withdrew. Following the democratic elections of 1994, South Africa, too, was welcomed back
into the association, and rejoined on 1 June 1994.

Fiji Islands ceased to be a member in 1987: following a military coup and the declaration of a
republic, Fiji Islands allowed its membership to lapse when it too received little encouragement

from other members to reapply. Ten years later and after embarking on a process of
constitutional reform, the country once again became a member in October 1997.

Nigeria, a member of the Commonwealth since independence in 1960 and an active participant

in many important initiatives, was suspended from membership in November 1995 when Heads
of Government decided it had violated the principles of the 1991 Harare Declaration. The
suspension was initially for two years. The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group monitored

developments in Nigeria (and The Gambia and Sierra Leone) from 1995. In mid-1998, with the
accession of a new head of state, Nigeria embarked on a transition programme towards a

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civilian democracy. After completing its electoral timetable in early 1999, its suspension from the

Commonwealth was lifted with the swearing in on 29 May 1999 of a democratically elected
civilian president.

Three members, Fiji Islands, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, have each in recent years been
suspended from the councils of the association, pending restoration of democracy in

accordance with the constitution. Fiji Islands’ suspension was lifted in December 2001.
Following the CHOGM Statement on Zimbabwe in December 2003, the Government of

Zimbabwe withdrew from the Commonwealth. Pakistan’s suspension was lifted in May 2004.

Expanding Commonwealth Role

While the Commonwealth’s membership has evolved, its functions have evolved in parallel. In

1965, the Commonwealth Secretariat was set up in London, providing the association with its
own administrative capacity to service consultation and other forms of co-operation. The

Commonwealth Foundation was also established by Commonwealth leaders in 1965 and

started operations the following year, initially to link members of the professions, and
subsequently also to support non-governmental organisations and promote Commonwealth

culture and arts, and latterly, civil society. Then in 1988 the Commonwealth of Learning was
established to encourage development and sharing of open learning and distance education
knowledge, resources and technology.

In 1971, the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation was launched, establishing the

Commonwealth as a channel through which member countries could assist each other in their
development. The CFTC was from the start envisaged not as a capital fund, but as a mutual

scheme for the exchange of skills. Member countries contribute to it, on a voluntary basis, and
may draw on its resources, according to need. The CFTC was an early pioneer of technical
cooperation among developing countries, since its finance enables experienced specialists from
developing countries to offer their skills to other countries, one or two steps behind them in that

area of development. In part through its work in technical cooperation, the Commonwealth

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developed particular skills in assisting countries in such areas as the advancement of women,

protection of the environment and participation of young people in development.

The Commonwealth role in international politics grew from the 1960s. The association became
one of the major centres of global pressure against racism, particularly in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe),
South Africa and Namibia – countries with a Commonwealth connection.

It has also made an important contribution to global debates on international economic issues,

notably through its expert group reports on subjects such as the world financial and trading
systems, and the debt of developing countries. These reports were prepared by groups of

specialists from rich and poor countries in different parts of the world, and represented a
consensus between North and South on the way to make progress in these global debates.

Especially since the adoption of the Harare Commonwealth Declaration by Heads of

Government in October 1991, the Commonwealth has attached considerable importance to the

promotion of democracy. The four main ways in which the Commonwealth Secretariat has
helped has been by observing elections, providing democracy experts on request, organising
workshops and producing publications. Since 1991, Commonwealth Secretaries-General have

constituted some 47 observer groups and 11 expert teams to be present at elections and make
recommendations for the future. In the 13-month period between June 2002 and June 2003
alone, the Secretariat sent 13 democracy experts to six countries; it has also organised a major
series of workshops with attendant publications, for chief election officers, leaders of political
parties and civil society. And since 1995, the Commonwealth has had a self-disciplinary

mechanism, through the Millbrook Programme and the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group,

to deal with ‘serious or persistent violations’ of the principles contained in the Harare
Declaration.

The Commonwealth has also embarked on a programme of assisting member countries in

economic development through, for example, reform of the public sector, encouragement of the

growth of the private sector, and promotion of trade and investment – through the setting up of a

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Commonwealth Business Council, the Commonwealth Private Investment Initiative, and the

Trade and Investment Access Facility.

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/; French: Organisation du traité de
l'Atlantique Nord; OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military
alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization

constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense
in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren,

Brussels, Belgium, where the Supreme Allied Commander also resides. Belgium is one of the
28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia,
joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace

program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The

combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70 percent of the global
total.[4] Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to 2 percent of GDP.[5]

NATO was little more than a political association until the Korean War galvanized the

organization's member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the
direction of two US supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with
nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship
between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over

the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to
the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of France

from NATO's military structure in 1966 for 30 years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the
organization was drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military
interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and later Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the

organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined
the alliance in 1999 and 2004.

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Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, requiring member states to come to the aid of any member

state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only time after the 11 September
2001 attacks,[6] after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF.

The organization has operated a range of additional roles since then, including sending trainers
to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations[7] and in 2011 enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya
in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. The less potent Article 4, which

merely invokes consultation among NATO members, has been invoked five times: by Turkey in

2003 over the Iraq War; twice in 2012 by Turkey over the Syrian Civil War, after the downing of
an unarmed Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet, and after a mortar was fired at Turkey from
Syria;[8] in 2014 by Poland, following the Russian intervention in Crimea;[9] and again by

Turkey in 2015 after threats by the Islamic State to its territorial integrity.

History:

Beginnings

Eleven men in suits stand around a large desk at which another man is signing a document.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 1949 and was ratified by
the United States that August.

The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg,
France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. The
treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Union's

Defence Organization in September 1948.[11] However, participation of the United States was
thought necessary both to counter the military power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of
nationalist militarism, so talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately resulting in

the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington, D.C. on 4 April 1949. It included the
five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark
and Iceland.[12] The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the

organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans
down."[13] Popular support for the Treaty was not unanimous, and some Icelanders participated

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in a pro-neutrality, anti-membership riot in March 1949. The creation of NATO can be seen as

the primary institutional consequence of a school of thought called Atlanticism which stressed
the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation.[14]

The members agreed that an armed attack against any one of them in Europe or North America
would be considered an attack against them all. Consequently, they agreed that, if an armed

attack occurred, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence,
would assist the member being attacked, taking such action as it deemed necessary, including

the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. The

treaty does not require members to respond with military action against an aggressor. Although
obliged to respond, they maintain the freedom to choose the method by which they do so. This
differs from Article IV of the Treaty of Brussels, which clearly states that the response will be

military in nature. It is nonetheless assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member
militarily. The treaty was later clarified to include both the member's territory and their "vessels,
forces or aircraft" above the Tropic of Cancer, including some Overseas departments of France.

The creation of NATO brought about some standardization of allied military terminology,
procedures, and technology, which in many cases meant European countries adopting US

practices. The roughly 1300 Standardization Agreements (STANAG) codified many of the
common practices that NATO has achieved. Hence, the 7.62×51mm NATO rifle cartridge was
introduced in the 1950s as a standard firearm cartridge among many NATO countries. Fabrique
Nationale de Herstal's FAL, which used 7.62 NATO cartridge, was adopted by 75 countries,

including many outside of NATO.[16] Also, aircraft marshalling signals were standardized, so
that any NATO aircraft could land at any NATO base. Other standards such as the NATO

phonetic alphabet have made their way beyond NATO into civilian use.

Cold War

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 was crucial for NATO as it raised the apparent

threat of all Communist countries working together, and forced the alliance to develop concrete
military plans.[17] Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was formed to direct

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forces in Europe, and began work under Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower in

January 1951.[18] In September 1950, the NATO Military Committee called for an ambitious
buildup of conventional forces to meet the Soviets, subsequently reaffirming this position at the

February 1952 meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Lisbon. The Lisbon conference, seeking
to provide the forces necessary for NATO's Long-Term Defence Plan, called for an expansion to
ninety-six divisions. However this requirement was dropped the following year to roughly thirty-

five divisions with heavier use to be made of nuclear weapons. At this time, NATO could call on

about fifteen ready divisions in Central Europe, and another ten in Italy and Scandinavia.[19][20]
Also at Lisbon, the post of Secretary General of NATO as the organization's chief civilian was
created, and Lord Ismay was eventually appointed to the post.[21]

In September 1952, the first major NATO maritime exercises began; Exercise Mainbrace

brought together 200 ships and over 50,000 personnel to practice the defence of Denmark and
Norway.[22] Other major exercises that followed included Exercise Grand Slam and Exercise
Longstep, naval and amphibious exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, Italic Weld, a combined
air-naval-ground exercise in northern Italy, Grand Repulse, involving the British Army on the
Rhine (BAOR), the Netherlands Corps and Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE), Monte
Carlo, a simulated atomic air-ground exercise involving the Central Army Group, and Weldfast,
a combined amphibious landing exercise in the Mediterranean Sea involving American, British,
Greek, Italian and Turkish naval forces.[23]

Greece and Turkey also joined the alliance in 1952, forcing a series of controversial

negotiations, in which the United States and Britain were the primary disputants, over how to
bring the two countries into the military command structure.[18] While this overt military

preparation was going on, covert stay-behind arrangements initially made by the Western
European Union to continue resistance after a successful Soviet invasion, including Operation
Gladio, were transferred to NATO control. Ultimately unofficial bonds began to grow between

NATO's armed forces, such as the NATO Tiger Association and competitions such as the

Canadian Army Trophy for tank gunnery.[24][25]

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In 1954, the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe.[26]

The NATO countries, fearing that the Soviet Union's motive was to weaken the alliance,
ultimately rejected this proposal.

On 17 December 1954, the North Atlantic Council approved MC 48, a key document in the
evolution of NATO nuclear thought. MC 48 emphasized that NATO would have to use atomic

weapons from the outset of a war with the Soviet Union whether or not the Soviets chose to use
them first. This gave SACEUR the same prerogatives for automatic use of nuclear weapons as

existed for the commander-in-chief of the US Strategic Air Command.

The incorporation of West Germany into the organization on 9 May 1955 was described as "a
decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Affairs Minister
of Norway at the time.[27] A major reason for Germany's entry into the alliance was that without

German manpower, it would have been impossible to field enough conventional forces to resist
a Soviet invasion.[28] One of its immediate results was the creation of the Warsaw Pact, which
was signed on 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria,

Romania, Albania, and East Germany, as a formal response to this event, thereby delineating
the two opposing sides of the Cold War.

Three major exercises were held concurrently in the northern autumn of 1957. Operation
Counter Punch, Operation Strikeback, and Operation Deep Water were the most ambitious
military undertaking for the alliance to date, involving more than 250,000 men, 300 ships, and
1,500 aircraft operating from Norway to Turkey.[29]

French withdrawal

NATO's unity was breached early in its history with a crisis occurring during Charles de Gaulle's

presidency of France.[30] De Gaulle protested against the USA's strong role in the organization
and what he perceived as a special relationship between it and the United Kingdom. In a
memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on

17 September 1958, he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France
on an equal footing with the US and the UK.[31]

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Considering the response to be unsatisfactory, de Gaulle began constructing an independent

defence force for his country. He wanted to give France, in the event of an East German
incursion into West Germany, the option of coming to a separate peace with the Eastern bloc

instead of being drawn into a larger NATO–Warsaw Pact war.[32] In February 1959, France
withdrew its Mediterranean Fleet from NATO command,[33] and later banned the stationing of
foreign nuclear weapons on French soil. This caused the United States to transfer two hundred

military aircraft out of France and return control of the air force bases that had operated in

France since 1950 to the French by 1967.

Though France showed solidarity with the rest of NATO during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962,
de Gaulle continued his pursuit of an independent defence by removing France's Atlantic and
Channel fleets from NATO command.[34] In 1966, all French armed forces were removed from

NATO's integrated military command, and all non-French NATO troops were asked to leave
France. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk was later quoted as asking de Gaulle whether his
order included "the bodies of American soldiers in France's cemeteries?"[35] This withdrawal
forced the relocation of SHAPE from Rocquencourt, near Paris, to Casteau, north of Mons,
Belgium, by 16 October 1967.[36] France remained a member of the alliance, and committed to
the defence of Europe from possible Warsaw Pact attack with its own forces stationed in the
Federal Republic of Germany throughout the Cold War. A series of secret accords between US
and French officials, the Lemnitzer–Ailleret Agreements, detailed how French forces would
dovetail back into NATO's command structure should East-West hostilities break out.[37]

Détente and escalation

Détente led to many high level meetings between leaders from both NATO and the Warsaw
Pact.

During most of the Cold War, NATO's watch against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact did not
actually lead to direct military action. On 1 July 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

opened for signature: NATO argued that its nuclear sharing arrangements did not breach the
treaty as US forces controlled the weapons until a decision was made to go to war, at which

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point the treaty would no longer be controlling. Few states knew of the NATO nuclear sharing

arrangements at that time, and they were not challenged. In May 1978, NATO countries
officially defined two complementary aims of the Alliance, to maintain security and pursue

détente. This was supposed to mean matching defences at the level rendered necessary by the
Warsaw Pact's offensive capabilities without spurring a further arms race.[38]

On 12 December 1979, in light of a build-up of Warsaw Pact nuclear capabilities in Europe,

ministers approved the deployment of US GLCM cruise missiles and Pershing II theatre nuclear

weapons in Europe. The new warheads were also meant to strengthen the western negotiating

position regarding nuclear disarmament. This policy was called the Dual Track policy.[39]
Similarly, in 1983–84, responding to the stationing of Warsaw Pact SS-20 medium-range
missiles in Europe, NATO deployed modern Pershing II missiles tasked to hit military targets

such as tank formations in the event of war.[40] This action led to peace movement protests
throughout Western Europe, and support for the deployment wavered as many doubted whether
the push for deployment could be sustained.

The membership of the organization at this time remained largely static. In 1974, as a
consequence of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Greece withdrew its forces from NATO's

military command structure but, with Turkish cooperation, were readmitted in 1980. The
Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina did not result in NATO involvement
because article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that collective self-defense is only
applicable to attacks on member state territories north of the Tropic of Cancer.[41] On 30 May

1982, NATO gained a new member when, following a referendum, the newly democratic Spain
joined the alliance. At the peak of the Cold War, 16 member nations maintained an approximate

strength of 5,252,800 active military, including as many as 435,000 forward deployed US forces,
under a command structure that reached a peak of 78 headquarters, organized into four
echelons.[42]

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After the Cold War

The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 removed the de facto

main adversary of NATO and caused a strategic re-evaluation of NATO's purpose, nature,
tasks, and their focus on the continent of Europe. This shift started with the 1990 signing in
Paris of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe between NATO and the Soviet

Union, which mandated specific military reductions across the continent that continued after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.[43] At that time, European countries

accounted for 34 percent of NATO's military spending; by 2012, this had fallen to 21

percent.[44] NATO also began a gradual expansion to include newly autonomous Central and
Eastern European nations, and extended its activities into political and humanitarian situations
that had not formerly been NATO concerns.

Two men in suits sit signing documents at a large table in front of their country's flags. Two
others stand outside watching them.

Reforms made under Mikhail Gorbachev led to the end of the Warsaw Pact.

The first post-Cold War expansion of NATO came with German reunification on 3 October 1990,
when the former East Germany became part of the Federal Republic of Germany and the
alliance. This had been agreed in the Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure Soviet
approval of a united Germany remaining in NATO, it was agreed that foreign troops and nuclear
weapons would not be stationed in the east, and there are diverging views on whether

negotiators gave commitments regarding further NATO expansion east.[45] Jack Matlock,
American ambassador to the Soviet Union during its final years, said that the West gave a "clear

commitment" not to expand, and declassified documents indicate that Soviet negotiators were
given the impression that NATO membership was off the table for countries such as
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or Poland.[46] In 1996, Gorbachev wrote in his Memoirs, that "during
the negotiations on the unification of Germany they gave assurances that NATO would not

extend its zone of operation to the east,"[47] and repeated this view in an interview in 2008.[48]
According to Robert Zoellick, a State Department official involved in the Two Plus Four

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negotiating process, this appears to be a misperception, and no formal commitment regarding

enlargement was made.[49]

As part of post-Cold War restructuring, NATO's military structure was cut back and reorganized,
with new forces such as the Headquarters Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps
established. The changes brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union on the military

balance in Europe were recognized in the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
Treaty, which was signed in 1999. The policies of French President Nicolas Sarkozy resulted in

a major reform of France's military position, culminating with the return to full membership on 4

April 2009, which also included France rejoining the NATO Military Command Structure, while
maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent.[37][50]

Enlargement and reform

The NATO flag being raised in a ceremony marking Croatia's joining of the alliance in 2009.

Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its
neighbors were set up, like the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue initiative and

the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 1998, the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council was
established. On 8 July 1997, three former communist countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
and Poland, were invited to join NATO, which each did in 1999. Membership went on expanding
with the accession of seven more Central and Eastern European countries to NATO: Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. They were first invited to start

talks of membership during the 2002 Prague summit, and joined NATO on 29 March 2004,
shortly before the 2004 Istanbul summit. In Istanbul, NATO launched the Istanbul Cooperation

Initiative with four Persian Gulf nations.[51]

New NATO structures were also formed while old ones were abolished. In 1997, NATO reached

agreement on a significant downsizing of its command structure from 65 headquarters to just

20.[52] The NATO Response Force (NRF) was launched at the 2002 Prague summit on 21

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November, the first summit in a former Comecon country. On 19 June 2003, a further

restructuring of the NATO military commands began as the Headquarters of the Supreme Allied
Commander, Atlantic were abolished and a new command, Allied Command Transformation

(ACT), was established in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, and the Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) became the Headquarters of Allied Command Operations
(ACO). ACT is responsible for driving transformation (future capabilities) in NATO, whilst ACO is

responsible for current operations.[53] In March 2004, NATO's Baltic Air Policing began, which

supported the sovereignty of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia by providing fighters to react to any
unwanted aerial intrusions. Four fighters are based in Lithuania, provided in rotation by virtually
all the NATO states.[54]

The 2006 Riga summit was held in Riga, Latvia, and highlighted the issue of energy security. It

was the first NATO summit to be held in a country that had been part of the Soviet Union. At the
April 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania, NATO agreed to the accession of Croatia and
Albania and both countries joined NATO in April 2009. Ukraine and Georgia were also told that
they could eventually become members.[55] The issue of Georgian and Ukrainian membership
in NATO prompted harsh criticism from Russia, as did NATO plans for a missile defence
system. Studies for this system began in 2002, with negotiations centered on anti-ballistic
missiles being stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic. Though NATO leaders gave
assurances that the system was not targeting Russia, both presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry
Medvedev criticized it as a threat.[56]

In 2009, US President Barack Obama proposed using the ship-based Aegis Combat System,
though this plan still includes stations being built in Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Romania, and

Poland.[57] NATO will also maintain the "status quo" in its nuclear deterrent in Europe by
upgrading the targeting capabilities of the "tactical" B61 nuclear bombs stationed there and
deploying them on the stealthier Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.[58][59] Following the 2014

Crimean crisis, NATO committed to forming a new "spearhead" force of 5,000 troops at bases in

Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria

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Decolonization of the British Empire

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)

Though Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of
the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had
dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United
States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power.[175] Britain was left

essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $US 4.33
billion loan (US$56 billion in 2012) from the United States,[176] the last instalment of which was

repaid in 2006.[177] At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies
of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of
the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European

colonialism. In practice, however, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism,

and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep
Communist expansion in check.[178] The "wind of change" ultimately meant that the British

Empire's days were numbered, and on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful
disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were available to
transfer power to. This was in contrast to other European powers such as France and
Portugal,[179] which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires
intact. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell
from 700 million to five million, three million of whom were in Hong Kong.[180]

Initial disengagement

About 14.5 million lost their homes as a result of the partition of India in 1947.

The pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by
Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: that of Indian
independence.[181] India's two major political parties—the Indian National Congress and the
Muslim League—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to

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how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the

League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-
majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led

Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk
of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily
brought forward the date to 15 August 1947.[182] The borders drawn by the British to broadly

partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly

independent states of India and Pakistan.[183] Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from
India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost
hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj,

and Sri Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join.[184]

The British Mandate of Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority,
presented the British with a similar problem to that of India.[185] The matter was complicated by
large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust,
while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the
problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its
military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter
to the United Nations to solve.[186] The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to
partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.

Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements
in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of

the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin.[187] The fact that the guerrillas were
primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was
supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had

been quelled, independence would be granted.[187] The Malayan Emergency, as it was called,

began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant
independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of

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the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but

in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the
Malay and Chinese populations.[188] Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888,

declined to join the union[189] and maintained its status until independence in 1984.

Suez and its aftermath

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's decision to invade Egypt during the Suez Crisis ended his

political career and revealed Britain's weakness as an imperial power.

In 1951, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston
Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power
relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain

to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. However,
Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that

had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would
withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by
1955, with independence to follow.[190] Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.

In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden,
who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an
Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and
retake the canal.[191] Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack of

consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion.[192] Another of Eisenhower's

concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene

on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves
of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency.[193] Though the
invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives,[194] UN intervention and US pressure
forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.[195][196]

The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's
decline on the world stage, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least

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the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.[197][198][199] The events at Suez

wounded British national pride, leading one MP to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo"[200] and
another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite".[201] Margaret Thatcher

later described the mindset she believed had befallen the British political establishment as
"Suez syndrome", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the
Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.[202]

While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not

collapse.[203] Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957),

Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval,[204] as
the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the
United States.[200] Britain maintained a military presence in the Middle East for another

decade. In January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold
Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British troops would be
withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East,
and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore.[205] The British withdrew from Aden in 1967,
Bahrain in 1971, and Maldives in 1976.[206]

Wind of change

British decolonisation in Africa. By the end of the 1960s, all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe)
and the South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia) had achieved recognised
independence.

Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the

wind of change blowing through this continent".[207] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind
of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation
proceeded rapidly.[208] To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the
1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number during

the 1960s.[209]

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Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all

granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa
was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau

Uprising. In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority
resulted in a civil war that lasted until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which set the
terms for recognised independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.[210]

In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended in (1960) an independent

Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean

islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964, though
the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.[211]

Most of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and

1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an
attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed
following the loss of its two largest members.[212] Barbados achieved independence in 1966

and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the 1970s and 1980s,[212] but Anguilla
and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on

the path to independence.[213] The British Virgin Islands,[214] Cayman Islands and Montserrat
opted to retain ties with Britain,[215] while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's
last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in
1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with

Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.[216]

British territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970
and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political
conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly

administered as a condominium with France.[217] Fiji, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Papua
New Guinea chose to become Commonwealth realms.

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End of empire

The Hong Kong Convention Centre hosted the ceremony for the Transfer of sovereignty over

Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, symbolically marking the "end of Empire".

In 1980, Rhodesia, Britain's last African colony, became the independent nation of Zimbabwe.
The New Hebrides achieved independence (as Vanuatu) in 1980, with Belize following suit in
1981. The passage of the British Nationality Act 1981, which reclassified the remaining Crown

colonies as "British Dependent Territories" (renamed British Overseas Territories in 2002)[218]

meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts (and the acquisition in 1955 of an

uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean, Rockall), the process of decolonisation that had begun
after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its
remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting

on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.[220] Britain's ultimately
successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War was viewed
by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world

power.[221] The same year, the Canadian government severed its last legal link with Britain by
patriating the Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British

parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution.[18]
Similarly, the Constitution Act 1986 reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its
constitutional link with Britain, and the Australia Act 1986 severed the constitutional link between
Britain and the Australian states.[222]

In September 1982, Prime minister Margaret Thatcher travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the

Chinese government on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory,
Hong Kong.[223] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself had
been ceded to Britain in perpetuity, but the vast majority of the colony was constituted by the

New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in
1997.[224][225] Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold

Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was
rejected by China.[226] A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint

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Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic

of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years.[227] The handover ceremony in 1997
marked for many,[16] including Charles, Prince of Wales,[17] who was in attendance, "the end

of Empire"

Internal Policies

Even after the repeal of the Stamp Act, many colonists still had grievances with British colonial

policies. For example, the Mutiny (or Quartering) Act of 1765 required colonial assemblies to
house and supply British soldiers. Many colonists objected to the presence of a "standing army"

in the colonies. Many also objected to being required to provide housing and supplies, which
looked like another attempt to tax them without their consent, even though disguised. Several
colonial assemblies refused to vote the mandated supplies. The British then disbanded the New

York assembly in 1767 to make an example of it. Many non-New Yorkers resented this action,
seeing rightly that their own assembly could also be shut down.

The Stamp Act had led Americans to ask fundamental questions about the relationship between
their local, colonial, legislatures, which were elected bodies, and the British Parliament, in which

Americans had no elected representation. Many colonists began to assert that only an elected
legislative body held legitimate powers of taxation. The British countered that, even in England,
many people could not vote for delegates to Parliament but all English subjects enjoyed "virtual
representation" in a Parliament that considered the interests of everyone when formulating

policy. Americans found "virtual representation" distasteful, in part because they had elected
their domestic legislators for more than a century.

In 1767, Parliament also enacted the Townshend Duties, taxes on paper, paints, glass, and tea,
goods imported into the colonies from Britain. Since these taxes were levied on imports, the
British thought of them as "external" taxes rather than internal taxes such as the Stamp tax. The
colonists failed to understand the difference between external and internal taxes. In principle,

most Americans admitted a British right to impose duties intended to regulate colonial trade;
after 1765, however,they denied Parliament's power to tax for the purpose of raising funds or

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raising a revenue. Again, they saw the purpose of the Townshend Duties as raising revenue in

America without the taxpayers' consent.

The British also established a board of customs commissioners, whose purpose was to stop
colonial smuggling and the rampant corruption of local officials who were often complicit in such
illegal trade. The board was quite effective, particularly in Boston, its seat. Little wonder then

that Boston merchants were angry about the new controls and helped organize a boycott of
goods subject to the Townshend Duties. In 1768, Philadelphia and New York joined the boycott.

As the boycott spread, harrassment of customs commissioners grew apace, especially in

Boston.

As a result, the British posted four regiments of troops in Boston. The presence of British regular
troops was a constant reminder of the colonists' subservience to the crown. Since they were

poorly paid, the troops took jobs in their off-duty hours, thus competing with the city's working
class for jobs. The two groups often clashed in the streets. In March 1770, just when Parliament
decided to repeal the Townshend Duties (on everything except tea) but before word of the

repeal reached the colonies, the troops and Boston workers again clashed. This time, however,
five Bostonians were killed and another dozen or so were wounded. Almost certainly the

"Boston Massacre," as colonists called the episode, was the result of confusion and panic by all
involved. Even so, local leaders quickly publicized the incident as a symbol of British oppression
and brutality.

Overall, American revolutionaries viewed English actions from 1767-1772 with suspicion. They

read in British policy a systematic conspiracy against their liberties. As the colonists saw it, tax

revenues fed corrupt British officials who used monies they coerced from the colonies to line
their pockets, hire additional tax collectors, and pay mercenaries to come to America and
complete the process of "enslaving" colonists.

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Thatcherism to Cameroun EEC:
The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation which aimed to bring
about economic integration between its member states. It was created by the Treaty of Rome of
1957.[1] Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated

and renamed as the European Community (EC). In 2009 the EC's institutions were absorbed
into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist.

The Community's initial aim was to bring about economic integration, including a common

market and customs union, among its six founding members: Belgium, France, Italy,

Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. It gained a common set of institutions along
with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Atomic Energy

Community (EURATOM) as one of the European Communities under the 1965 Merger Treaty

(Treaty of Brussels). In 1993, a complete single market was achieved, known as the internal
market, which allowed for the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people within the
EEC. In 1994, the internal market was formalised by the EEA agreement. This agreement also

extended the internal market to include most of the member states of the European Free Trade
Association, forming the European Economic Area covering 15 countries.

Upon the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, the EEC was renamed the European

Community to reflect that it covered a wider range than economic policy. This was also when
the three European Communities, including the EC, were collectively made to constitute the first
of the three pillars of the European Union, which the treaty also founded. The EC existed in this

form until it was abolished by the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, which incorporated the EC's institutions
into the EU's wider framework and provided that the EU would "replace and succeed the
European Community".

The EEC was also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking countries and
sometimes referred to as the European Community even before it was officially renamed as
such in 1993.

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Background:

In 1951, the Treaty of Paris was signed, creating the European Coal and Steel Community

(ECSC). This was an international community based on supranationalism and international law,
designed to help the economy of Europe and prevent future war by integrating its members.

In the aim of creating a federal Europe two further communities were proposed: a European
Defence Community and a European Political Community. While the treaty for the latter was

being drawn up by the Common Assembly, the ECSC parliamentary chamber, the proposed
defence community was rejected by the French Parliament. ECSC President Jean Monnet, a

leading figure behind the communities, resigned from the High Authority in protest and began
work on alternative communities, based on economic integration rather than political
integration.[2] After the Messina Conference in 1955, Paul Henri Spaak was given the task to

prepare a report on the idea of a customs union. The so-called Spaak Report of the Spaak
Committee formed the cornerstone of the intergovernmental negotiations at Val Duchesse
castle in 1956.[3] Together with the Ohlin Report the Spaak Report would provide the basis for

the Treaty of Rome.

In 1956, Paul Henri Spaak led the Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and
Euratom at the Val Duchesse castle, which prepared for the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The
conference led to the signature, on 25 March 1957, of the Treaty of Rome establishing a
European Economic Community.

Creation and early years

The resulting communities were the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European
Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM or sometimes EAEC). These were markedly less

supranational than the previous communities,[citation needed] due to protests from some
countries that their sovereignty was being infringed (however there would still be concerns with
the behaviour of the Hallstein Commission). The first formal meeting of the Hallstein

Commission, was held on 16 January 1958 at the Chateau de Val-Duchesse. The EEC (direct
ancestor of the modern Community) was to create a customs union while Euratom would

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promote co-operation in the nuclear power sphere. The EEC rapidly became the most important

of these and expanded its activities. One of the first important accomplishments of the EEC was
the establishment (1962) of common price levels for agricultural products. In 1968, internal

tariffs (tariffs on trade between member nations) were removed on certain products.

Another crisis was triggered in regard to proposals for the financing of the Common Agricultural

Policy, which came into force in 1962. The transitional period whereby decisions were made by
unanimity had come to an end, and majority-voting in the Council had taken effect. Then-French

President Charles de Gaulle's opposition to supranationalism and fear of the other members

challenging the CAP led to an "empty chair policy" whereby French representatives were
withdrawn from the European institutions until the French veto was reinstated. Eventually, a
compromise was reached with the Luxembourg compromise on 29 January 1966 whereby a

gentlemen's agreement permitted members to use a veto on areas of national interest.[4][5]

On 1 July 1967 when the Merger Treaty came into operation, combining the institutions of the
ECSC and Euratom into that of the EEC, they already shared a Parliamentary Assembly and

Courts. Collectively they were known as the European Communities. The Communities still had
independent personalities although were increasingly integrated. Future treaties granted the

community new powers beyond simple economic matters which had achieved a high level of
integration. As it got closer to the goal of political integration and a peaceful and united Europe,
what Mikhail Gorbachev described as a Common European Home.

Enlargement and elections

French President Charles de Gaulle vetoed British membership, held back the development of

Parliament's powers and was at the centre of the 'empty chair crisis' of 1965

The 1960s saw the first attempts at enlargement. In 1961, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and the
United Kingdom applied to join the three Communities. However, President Charles de Gaulle
saw British membership as a Trojan horse for U.S. influence and vetoed membership, and the

applications of all four countries were suspended.

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The four countries resubmitted their applications on 11 May 1967 and with Georges Pompidou

succeeding Charles de Gaulle as French president in 1969, the veto was lifted. Negotiations
began in 1970 under the pro-European government of Edward Heath, who had to deal with

disagreements relating to the Common Agricultural Policy and the UK's relationship with the
Commonwealth of Nations. Nevertheless, two years later the accession treaties were signed so
that Denmark, Ireland and the UK joined the Community from 1 January 1973. The Norwegian

people had finally rejected membership in a referendum on 25 September 1972.

The Treaties of Rome had stated that the European Parliament must be directly elected,

however this required the Council to agree on a common voting system first. The Council
procrastinated on the issue and the Parliament remained appointed,[6] French President
Charles de Gaulle was particularly active in blocking the development of the Parliament, with it

only being granted Budgetary powers following his resignation.

Parliament pressured for agreement and on 20 September 1976 the Council agreed part of the
necessary instruments for election, deferring details on electoral systems which remain varied to

this day.[6] During the tenure of President Jenkins, in June 1979, the elections were held in all
the then-members (see European Parliament election, 1979).[7] The new Parliament,

galvanised by direct election and new powers, started working full-time and became more active
than the previous assemblies.[6]

Shortly after its election, Parliament became the first Community institution to propose that the
Community adopt the flag of Europe.[8] The European Council agreed to this and adopted the

Symbols of Europe as those of the Community in 1984.[9] The European Council, or European

summit, had developed since the 1960s as an informal meeting of the Council at the level of
heads of state. It had originated from then-French President Charles de Gaulle's resentment at
the domination of supranational institutions (e.g. the Commission) over the integration process.

It was mentioned in the treaties for the first time in the Single European Act (see below).[10]

Towards Maastricht

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Greece applied to join the community on 12 June 1975, following the restoration of democracy,

and joined on 1 January 1981.[11] Following on from Greece, and after their own democratic
restoration, Spain and Portugal applied to the communities in 1977 and joined together on 1

January 1986.[12] In 1987 Turkey formally applied to join the Community and began the longest
application process for any country.

With the prospect of further enlargement, and a desire to increase areas of co-operation, the
Single European Act was signed by the foreign ministers on the 17 and 28 February 1986 in

Luxembourg and the Hague respectively. In a single document it dealt with reform of

institutions, extension of powers, foreign policy cooperation and the single market. It came into
force on 1 July 1987.[13] The act was followed by work on what would be the Maastricht Treaty,
which was agreed on 10 December 1991, signed the following year and coming into force on 1

November 1993 establishing the European Union.

European Community

The EU absorbed the European Communities as one of its three pillars. The EEC's areas of
activities were enlarged and were renamed the European Community, continuing to follow the

supranational structure of the EEC. The EEC institutions became those of the EU, however the
Court, Parliament and Commission had only limited input in the new pillars, as they worked on a
more intergovernmental system than the European Communities. This was reflected in the
names of the institutions, the Council was formally the "Council of the European Union" while
the Commission was formally the "Commission of the European Communities".

However, after the Treaty of Maastricht, Parliament gained a much bigger role. Maastricht

brought in the codecision procedure, which gave it equal legislative power with the Council on
Community matters. Hence, with the greater powers of the supranational institutions and the
operation of Qualified Majority Voting in the Council, the Community pillar could be described as
a far more federal method of decision making.

The Treaty of Amsterdam transferred responsibility for free movement of persons (e.g., visas,
illegal immigration, asylum) from the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) pillar to the European

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Community (JHA was renamed Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC) as

a result).[14] Both Amsterdam and the Treaty of Nice also extended codecision procedure to
nearly all policy areas, giving Parliament equal power to the Council in the Community.

In 2002, the Treaty of Paris which established the ECSC expired, having reached its 50-year
limit (as the first treaty, it was the only one with a limit). No attempt was made to renew its

mandate; instead, the Treaty of Nice transferred certain of its elements to the Treaty of Rome
and hence its work continued as part of the EC area of the European Community's remit.

After the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 the pillar structure ceased to exist. The

European Community, together with its legal personality, was absorbed into the newly
consolidated European Union which merged in the other two pillars (however Euratom remained
distinct). This was originally proposed under the European Constitution but that treaty failed

ratification in 2005.

Foreign Policy

The diplomatic foreign relations of the United Kingdom are implemented by the Foreign and

Commonwealth Office. The Prime Minister and numerous other agencies play a role in setting
policy, and many institutions and businesses have a voice and a role. Great Britain was the
world's foremost power during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Until the Suez crisis of
1956, the country was considered a 'superpower'. After 1956 however, with the loss of the
empire, its dominant role in global affairs was gradually diminished. Nevertheless, the United

Kingdom remains a major power and a permanent member of the United Nations Security

Council, a Member state of the European Union, and a founding member of the G7, G8, G20,
NATO, OECD, WTO, Council of Europe, OSCE, and the Commonwealth of Nations, which is a
legacy of the British Empire.

History

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Further information: Timeline of British diplomatic history, International relations of the Great

Powers (1814–1919) and Diplomatic history of World War II § Britain

British foreign relations since 1600 have focused on achieving a balance of power, with no
country controlling the continent of Europe. The chief enemy, from the Hundred Years' War until
the defeat of Napoleon (1337-1815) was France, a larger country with a more powerful army.

The British were generally successful in their many wars, with the notable exception of the
American War of Independence (1775–1783), when Britain, without any major allies, was

defeated by the colonials who had the support of France, the Netherlands and Spain. A

favoured diplomatic strategy was subsidising the armies of continental allies, such as Prussia,
thereby turning London's enormous financial power to military advantage. Britain relied heavily
on its Royal Navy for security, seeking to keep it the most powerful fleet afloat with a full

complement of bases across the globe. Historians agree that Lord Salisbury as foreign minister
and prime minister in the late 19th century was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs.
He had a superb grasp of the issues, and proved:

a patient, pragmatic practitioner, with a keen understanding of Britain's historic interests....He

oversaw the partition of Africa, the emergence of Germany and the United States as imperial

powers, and the transfer of British attention from the Dardanelles to Suez without provoking a
serious confrontation of the great powers.

The British built up a very large worldwide British Empire, which peaked in size in the 1920-40
era and in wealth around 1900, then began to shrink until by the 1970s almost nothing was left

but a "Commonwealth of Nations" that had little to do.[2] Britain finally turned its attention to the

continent, joining the European Union.

After 1900 Britain ended its "splendid isolation" by developing friendly relations with the United
States and Japan (1902). Even more important—by forming the Triple Entente with France
(1904) and Russia (1907), thus forging the anti-German alliance that fought the First World War

(1914-1918). The "Special Relationship" with the U.S. endured; it played a pivotal role in the
Second World War and the Cold War, and is in effect today.

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Recent history:

Further information: History of the United Kingdom (1945–present)

After 1945 Britain systematically reduced its overseas commitments. Practically all the colonies
became independent. Britain reduced its involvements in the Middle east, with the humiliating
Suez Crisis of 1956 marking the end of its status as a superpower. However Britain did forge
close military ties with the United States, France, and traditional foes such as Germany, in the

NATO military alliance. After years of debate (and rebuffs), Britain joined the Common Market in
1973; it is now the European Union.[4] However it did not merge financially, and kept the pound

separate from the Euro, which kept it partly isolated from the EU financial crisis of 2011.[5]
Since 2014, debate has been underway over whether Britain should reduce or cut its ties with
the EU, with an in/out referendum set for 23rd June, 2016.[6][7]

The UK is currently establishing air and naval facilities in the Persian Gulf, located in the UAE

and Bahrain.[8][9][10] A presence in Oman is also being considered.[11]

Foreign policy

Foreign policy initiatives of UK governments since the 1990s have included military intervention
in conflicts and for peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance programmes and increased aid

spending, support for establishment of the International criminal court, debt relief for developing
countries, prioritisation of initiatives to address climate change, and promotion of free trade.[12]

Lunn et al. (2008) argue:

Three key motifs of Tony Blair’s 10-year premiership were an activist philosophy of
'interventionism', maintaining a strong alliance with the US and a commitment to placing Britain

at the heart of Europe. While the 'special relationship' and the question of Britain’s role in
Europe have been central to British foreign policy since the Second World War...interventionism
was a genuinely new element.[13]

In 2013, the government of David Cameron described its approach to foreign policy by saying:

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For any given foreign policy issue, the UK potentially has a range of options for delivering

impact in our national interest. ... [W]e have a complex network of alliances and partnerships
through which we can work.... These include – besides the EU – the UN and groupings within it,

such as the five permanent members of the Security Council (the “P5”); NATO; the
Commonwealth; the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; the G8 and G20
groups of leading industrialised nations; and so on.[14]

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 highlighted a range of foreign policy initiatives

of the UK government.

The UK has varied relationships with the countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations
which originated from the British Empire. Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is the head of the
Commonwealth and is head of state of 16 of its 53 member states. Those that retain the Queen

as head of state are called Commonwealth realms. Over time several countries have been
suspended from the Commonwealth for various reasons. Zimbabwe was suspended because of
the authoritarian rule of its President[28] and so too was Pakistan, but it has since returned.

Countries which become republics are still eligible for membership of the Commonwealth so
long as they are deemed democratic. Commonwealth nations such as Malaysia enjoyed no

export duties in trade with the UK before the UK concentrated its economic relationship with EU
member states.

The UK was once a dominant colonial power in many countries on the continent of Africa and its
multinationals remain large investors in sub-Saharan Africa. Nowadays the UK, as a leading

member of the Commonwealth of Nations, seeks to influence Africa through its foreign policies.

Current UK disputes are with Zimbabwe over human rights violations. Tony Blair set up the
Africa Commission and urged rich countries to cease demanding developing countries repay
their large debts. Relationships with developed (often former dominion) nations are strong with

numerous cultural, social and political links, mass inter-migration trade links as well as calls for
Commonwealth free trade.

Australia

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Main article: Australia–United Kingdom relations

Australia–United Kingdom relations are close, marked by shared history, culture, institutions and

language, extensive people-to-people links, aligned security interests, and vibrant trade and
investment cooperation. The long-standing relationship between the United Kingdom and
Australia formally began in 1901 when the six British Crown colonies in Australia federated, and

the Commonwealth of Australia was formed as a Dominion of the British Empire. Australia
fought alongside Britain in World War I, notably at Gallipoli, and again in World War II. Andrew

Fisher, Australian prime minister from 1914 to 1916, declared that Australia would defend the

United Kingdom "to the last man and the last shilling." Until 1949, the United Kingdom and
Australia shared a common nationality code. The final constitutional ties between United
Kingdom and Australia ended in 1986 with the passing of the Australia Act 1986. Currently,

roughly 1/4 of the Australian population was born in the UK, giving strong mutual relations.
Furthermore, investment and trade between the two countries, is still important.

Barbados

Main article: Barbados–United Kingdom relations

The two countries are related through common history, the Commonwealth of Nations and their
sharing of the same Head of State, Queen Elizabeth II as their Monarch. As one of the first
English colonies, the initial permanent European settlement took place in the early seventeenth
century by English settlers. Barbados thereafter remained as a territory of the United Kingdom

until it negotiated independence in 1966. In recent years, increasing numbers of British

nationals have purchased secondary homes in Barbados,[29] and the islands ranked as the

Caribbean regions' fourth largest export market of the United Kingdom.[30] The British High
Commission was established in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1966 and there is also a Barbadian
High Commission in London.

Brunei

Main article: Brunei–United Kingdom relations

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In 1888, Brunei became a British protectorate, gaining its independence from British rule less

than 100 years later in 1984.

The UK and Brunei have a long-standing and strong bilateral relationship, particularly on
defence co-operation, trade and education. The UK continues to play a strong role in developing
Brunei’s oil and gas sector, and the Brunei Investment Agency is a significant investor in the

UK, with their largest overseas operations in the City of London. The UK remains the destination
of choice for Bruneian students, with about 1,220 of them enrolled in higher education in the UK

in 2006-07.

The United Kingdom has a high commission in Bandar Seri Begawan, and Brunei has a high
commission in London. Both countries are full members of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Canada

Main article: Canada–United Kingdom relations

London and Ottawa enjoy cooperative and intimate contact; the two countries are related
through history, the Commonwealth of Nations, and their sharing of the same Head of State and
monarch.[31] Both countries fought together in both World Wars, the Korean War, and more
recently cooperate in the coalition in the War in Afghanistan. Both are founding members of

NATO, and also belong to the G7 (and the G8). Winston Churchill said Canada was the
"linchpin of the English-speaking world", as it connects two other anglophone countries: the US
and the UK. These three countries were the first to share the knowledge of the atom bomb with

each other, as all three worked on the Manhattan Project together. Despite this shared history,
the UK and Canada have grown apart economically. The UK was Canada's largest trade
partner is the 19th and early 20th centuries, but is now well down the list. The two nations now

find themselves in separate trade blocs, the EU for the UK and NAFTA for Canada. However
relations are still strong, with large migration between the two countries, as well as Canada
having the highest favourable public opinion of the UK in the world.

Cyprus

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Main article: Cyprus–United Kingdom relations

The UK maintains two sovereign area military bases on the island of Cyprus. The UK is also a

signatory to a treaty with Greece and Turkey concerning the independence of Cyprus, the
Treaty of Guarantee, which maintains that Britain is a "guarantor power" of the island's
independence.[32]

Both countries are members of the European Union.

India

Main article: India–United Kingdom relations

India has a high commission in London and two consulates-general in Birmingham and
Edinburgh.[33] The United Kingdom has a high commission in New Delhi and three deputy high
commissions in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.[34] Although the Sterling Area no longer exists

and the Commonwealth is much more an informal forum, India and the UK still have many
enduring links. This is in part due to the significant number of people of Indian origin living in the
UK. The Asian population in the UK results in steady travel and communication between the two
countries. The British Raj allowed for both cultures to imbibe tremendously from the other. The
English language and cricket are perhaps the two most evident British exports, whilst in the UK

food from the Indian subcontinent are very popular.[35] The United Kingdom's favourite food is
often reported to be Indian cuisine, although no official study reports this.[35]

Economically the relationship between Britain and India is also strong. India is the second
largest investor in Britain after the US,[36][37] this being demonstrated by Tata Motors'

ownership of British-based Jaguar Land Rover. Britain is also one of the largest investors in
India.[38]

Ireland

Main article: Ireland–United Kingdom relations

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This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding

citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December
2008)

Despite a long history of conflict from English Tudor plantation in Ireland to the Irish War of
independence, the UK presently works closely with the government of the Republic of Ireland in

areas concerning the peace process in Northern Ireland as well as on many security issues. In
1949 the Irish Houses of Parliament passed the Republic of Ireland Act, making the Republic of

Ireland officially fully independent; the country withdrew from the Commonwealth. Under the

Ireland Act 1949 Irish citizens are treated as though they are Commonwealth citizens and not
aliens for the purposes of law. Until 1998, the Republic of Ireland claimed Northern Ireland, but
this was rescinded under the Belfast Agreement through an amendment of the Irish

Constitution, which now states an aspiration to peaceful unity. There is an ongoing dispute that
also involves Denmark and Iceland, over the status of the ocean floor surrounding Rockall.
However, this is for the most part a trivial issue that rarely makes it onto British-Irish meeting
agendas.[26]

Both countries are members of the European Union.

Malaysia

The Yang di-Pertuan Agong in a carriage with Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on the
state visit to London, 1974.

Main article: Malaysia–United Kingdom relations

The United Kingdom has a high commission in Kuala Lumpur, and Malaysia has a high

commission in London. Both countries are full members of the Commonwealth of Nations. Both
the UK and Malaysia are part of the Five Powers Defence Arrangements. Malaysia is a strong
partner of Britain in the Far East. Britain has made numerous military sacrifices in guaranteeing

a stable independent Malaysia, for example the Malaysian Emergency and the protection of the
country during high tensions with Indonesia-Konfrontasi.

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The Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdul Halim of Kedah paid a state visit to the United

Kingdom in July 1974.[39] The Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak paid a state
visit to the United Kingdom in November 1993.[39] HM Queen Elizabeth II of the United

Kingdom paid state visits to Malaysia in October 1989, and in September 1998.[40]

Malta

Main article: Malta–United Kingdom relations

In the 1950s and 1960s, serious consideration was given in both countries to the idea of a

political union between the United Kingdom and Malta. However, this plan for "Integration with
Britain" foundered, and Malta gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1964. British
Monarch Queen Elizabeth II remained Queen of Malta until the country became a Republic in

1974. There is a small Maltese community in the United Kingdom. In addition, the British
overseas territory of Gibraltar has been influenced by significant 18th and 19th Century

immigration from Malta (see "History of the Maltese in Gibraltar").

Both countries are members of the European Union.

Nauru

Main article: Nauru–United Kingdom relations

Nauru was part of the British Western Pacific Territories from September 1914 and June
1921.[41] The British Government had ceased to exercise any direct role in the governance of
Nauru by 1968, when the island achieved its independence. The Nauruan government

maintains an Hon. Consul, Martin W I Weston. The British High Commission in Suva is
responsible for the United Kingdom's bilateral relations with Nauru.[42]

New Zealand

Main article: New Zealand–United Kingdom relations

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Up to about the 1960s, New Zealand also had extremely close economic relations with the

United Kingdom, especially considering the distance at which trade took place. As an example,
in 1955, Britain took 65.3 percent of New Zealand's exports, and only during the following

decades did this dominant position begin to decline as the United Kingdom oriented itself more
towards the European Union, with the share of exports going to Britain having fallen to only 6.2
percent in 2000.[43] Historically, some industries, such as dairying, a major economic factor in

the former colony, had even more dominant trade links, with 80-100% of all cheese and butter

exports going to Britain from around 1890 to 1940.[44] This strong bond also supported the
mutual feelings for each other in other areas.

Nigeri

Main article: Nigeria–United Kingdom relations

Nigeria, formerly a colony, gained independence from Britain in 1960.[45] Large numbers of

Nigerians have since emigrated to Britain. The British government played an important role in
resolving the Nigerian Civil War. Trade and investment between the two countries are strong,
many British multinational companies are active in Nigeria, especially Shell in oil and gas

production.

Pakistan

Main article: Pakistan–United Kingdom relations

Pakistan before partition was part of Indian Empire from 1 November 1858 to 13 August 1947.
Both UK and Pakistan are active members of the Commonwealth of Nations. Favourable

opinion of Britain is much lower in Pakistan, relative to many other Commonwealth countries,

this is because the UK is seen as an ally of the US. However, large numbers of Pakistanis live,
work and study in the UK and the British government has refused to support US infringements
into northern Pakistan during the Afghanistan War, thinking it wrong to violate Pakistani

sovereignty as so.

Papua New Guinea

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Main article: Papua New Guinea–United Kingdom relations

Papua New Guinea and the United Kingdom share Queen Elizabeth as their head of state. They

have had relations since 1975 when Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia
(then still a British Dominion).

Singapore

Main article: Singapore–United Kingdom relations

Singapore and the United Kingdom share a friendly relationship since Singapore became

independent from the United Kingdom in 1959. Singapore retained the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council as the final court of appeal up till 1989 (fully abolished in 1994) due to political
reasons.

Thatcherism

Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), the United Kingdom’s first and thus far only female prime

minister, served from 1979 until 1990. During her time in office, she reduced the influence of

trade unions, privatized certain industries, scaled back public benefits and changed the terms of
political debate, much like her friend and ideological ally, U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Nicknamed the “Iron Lady,” she opposed Soviet communism and fought a war to maintain
control of the Falkland Islands. The longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century,
Thatcher was eventually pressured into resigning by members of her own Conservative Party.

MARGARET THATCHER: THE EARLY YEARS

Margaret Hilda Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher, was born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, a

small town in Lincolnshire, England. Her parents, Alfred and Beatrice, were middle-class
shopkeepers and devout Methodists. Alfred was also a politician, serving as a town council
member for 16 years before becoming an alderman in 1943 and mayor of Grantham from 1945
to 1946.

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Did You Know?

In 2007 Margaret Thatcher became the first living ex-prime minister in British history to be

honored with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. It stands opposite a statue of Winston
Churchill in the lobby of the House of Commons.

Thatcher matriculated at Oxford University in 1943, during the height of World War II. While
there she studied chemistry and joined the Oxford Union Conservative Association, becoming

president of the organization in 1946. After graduation she worked as a research chemist, but
her real interest was politics. In 1950 she ran for parliament in the Labour-dominated

constituency of Dartford, using the slogan “Vote Right to Keep What’s Left.” She lost that year
and again in 1951, but received more votes than previous Conservative Party candidates.

MARGARET THATCHER ENTERS PARLIAMENT

In December 1951 Margaret married Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman. Less than two
years later she gave birth to twins, Carol and Mark. Meanwhile, she was studying for the bar

exams, which she passed in early 1954. She then spent the next few years practicing law and

looking for a winnable constituency.

Thatcher ran for parliament once more in 1959—this time in the Conservative-dominated
constituency of Finchley—and easily won the seat. The first bill she introduced affirmed the right
of the media to cover local government meetings. Speaking about the bill in her maiden speech,

she focused not on freedom of the press but instead on the need to limit wasteful government
expenditures—a common theme throughout her political career.

By 1961 Thatcher had accepted an invitation to become parliamentary undersecretary in the

Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. She then steadily moved up the ministerial ranks,
becoming secretary of state for education and science when the Conservatives retook power in
1970. The following year she was demonized by her Labour Party opponents as “Thatcher the

milk snatcher” when she eliminated a free milk program for schoolchildren. Nonetheless, she

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was able to keep her job, and in 1975, with the Conservatives back in the opposition, she

defeated former Prime Minister Edward Heath to take over leadership of the party.

MARGARET THATCHER AS PRIME MINISTER

Thatcher was now one of the most powerful women in the world. She rejected the economic
theories of John Maynard Keynes, who advocated deficit spending during periods of high
unemployment, instead preferring the monetarist approach of Chicago economist Milton

Friedman. At her first conference speech, she chastised the Labour Party on economic grounds,
saying, “A man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the

state as servant and not as master—these are the British inheritance.” Soon after, she attacked
the Soviet Union as “bent on world dominance.” A Soviet army newspaper responded by calling
her “the Iron Lady,” a nickname she immediately embraced.

The Conservatives, helped out by a “winter of discontent” in which numerous unions went on

strike, won the 1979 election, and Thatcher became prime minister. During her first term, the
government lowered direct taxes while increasing taxes on spending, sold off public housing,
put in austerity measures and made other reforms, even as rising inflation and unemployment

caused Thatcher’s popularity to temporarily wane. In April 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland
Islands, a sparsely populated British colony located 300 miles from Argentina and 8,000 miles
from the United Kingdom. Thatcher dispatched troops to the area. On May 2, a British
submarine controversially sank an Argentine cruiser that was outside of an official exclusion
zone, killing over 300 people on board. Later in the month, British troops landed near San

Carlos Bay in East Falkland and, despite persistent air attacks, were able to capture the capital

of Port Stanley and end the fighting.

The war and an improving economy propelled Thatcher to a second term in 1983. This time
around, her government took on the trade unions, requiring them to hold a secret ballot before
any work stoppage and refusing to make any concessions during a yearlong miners’ strike. In

what became a key part of her legacy, Thatcher also privatized British Telecom, British Gas,
British Airways, Rolls-Royce and a number of other state-owned companies.

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On the foreign policy front, Thatcher often found herself allied with U.S. President Ronald

Reagan, whom she later described as “the supreme architect of the West’s Cold War victory.”
Her relationship with her own continent’s leaders was more complicated, particularly since she

believed the Europe Union should be a free-trade area rather than a political endeavor. “That
such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever
embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era,”

she wrote in her 2002 book “Statecraft.” In Asia, meanwhile, she negotiated the eventual

transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese. In Africa she had a mixed record, facilitating the end of
white minority rule in Zimbabwe but opposing sanctions against apartheid South Africa.

MARGARET THATCHER’S FALL FROM POWER:

After Thatcher was elected to a third term in 1987, her government lowered income tax rates to

a postwar low. It also pushed through an unpopular “community charge” that was met with
street protests and high levels of nonpayment. On November 14, 1990, former Defense Minister
Michael Heseltine challenged her for leadership of the party, partly due to differences of opinion

on the European Union. Thatcher won the first ballot but by too small of a margin for outright
victory. That night, her cabinet members visited her one by one and urged her to resign. She

officially stepped down on November 28 after helping to assure that John Major and not
Heseltine would replace her.

Thatcher remained in parliament until 1992, at which time she entered the largely ceremonial
House of Lords and began to write her memoirs. Though she stopped appearing in public after

suffering a series of small strokes in the early 2000s, her influence remained strong. In fact,

many of her free market policies have since been adopted, not only by Conservatives, but also
by Labour Party leaders like Tony Blair. In 2011, the former prime minister was the subject of an
award-winning (and controversial) biographical film, “The Iron Lady,” which depicted her political

rise and fall. Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, 2013, at the age of 87

Internal Policy:

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Thatcher's legacy

The extent to which one can say 'Thatcherism' has a continuing influence on British political and

economic life is unclear. In 2002, Peter Mandelson, a member of parliament belonging to the
British Labour Party closely associated with Tony Blair, famously declared that "we are all
Thatcherites now."[50]

In reference to modern British political culture, it could be said that a "post-Thatcherite

consensus" exists, especially in regards to economic policy. In the 1980s, the now defunct
Social Democratic Party adhered to a "tough and tender" approach in which Thatcherite reforms

were coupled with extra welfare provision. Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party from 1983–
1992, initiated Labour's rightward shift across the political spectrum by largely concurring with
the economic policies of the Thatcher governments. The New Labour governments of Tony Blair

and Gordon Brown were described as "neo-Thatcherite" by some, since many of their economic
policies mimicked those of Thatcher.[51]

Most of the major British political parties today accept the anti-trade union legislation,
privatisations and general free market approach to government that Thatcher's governments

installed. No major political party in the UK, at present, is committed to reversing the Thatcher
government's reforms of the economy. Although in the aftermath of the Great Recession of
2007–2012, the former Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, had indicated he would support
stricter financial regulation[52] and industry focused policy,[53] in a move to a more mixed
economy. In 2011, Miliband declared his support for Thatcher's reductions in income tax on top

earners, her legislation to change the rules on the closed shop and strikes before ballots, as

well as her introduction of Right to Buy, claiming Labour had been wrong to oppose these
reforms at the time.[54]

Moreover, the UK's comparative macroeconomic performance has improved since the
implementation of Thatcherite economic policies. Since Thatcher resigned as British Prime

Minister in 1990, UK economic growth was on average higher than the other large EU
economies (i.e. Germany, France and Italy). Additionally, since the beginning of the 2000s, the

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UK has also possessed lower unemployment, by comparison with the other big EU economies.

Such an enhancement in relative macroeconomic performance is perhaps another reason for

the apparent "Blatcherite" economic consensus, which has been present in modern UK politics

for a number of years.[citation needed]

Tony Blair wrote in his 2010 autobiography A Journey that "Britain needed the industrial and

economic reforms of the Thatcher period". He described Thatcher's efforts as "ideological,

sometimes unnecessarily so" while also stating that "much of what she wanted to do in the

1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change.

Society and culture

Perhaps the only undisputed facts of Margaret Thatcher's premiership are that she first entered

10 Downing Street as prime minister on 4 May 1979 and departed with a tear in her eye on 28
November 1990.

Everything in between: how she changed Britain, what actually changed, and especially what it

means for us today, has been the subject of an intermittent war of words throughout the two

decades since her resignation – and it is a war that has intensified in the days since her death.

It's only by trawling through the historical reference – from census data to coal board records,
from the World Bank to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and from more than 30 years of social
research – that even the basic facts about the nation reshaped during the Thatcher era take

form.

What they show of Britain's new landscape is telling – but, of course, what will always be a
matter for argument is how much would have happened with any prime minister, and how much
was down to the Lady.

For millions of Britain's better-off working class – the famed C2s targeted by political strategists
and tabloid owners alike – the most direct impact of Thatcherism was on levels of home

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ownership: Thatcher's dream of a nation of owner-occupiers was perhaps one of her most fully

realised.

Figures from the 1981 and 1991 UK censuses show the scale of this change. In 1981, two years
into Thatcher's premiership, England and Wales had 10.2 million owner-occupiers. A mere
decade later, their ranks had swelled to 13.4 million.

Thatcher certainly didn't invent the ideal of home ownership, but she did an astonishing amount

to boost it – and far more than any government since. Twenty years later, the 2011 census,
reporting on a Britain with a population six million higher than in Thatcher's time, recorded that

the number of owner-occupiers had only ticked up to 14.9m households.

Many of the new Thatcher-era first-time buyers gained their ownership through the right to buy

scheme, giving council tenants the right, for the first time, to buy their homes at a hefty discount
– about which Thatcher had initial reservations, due to her instinctive thrift.

In England alone, more than 970,000 local authority-owned houses were sold through the
scheme during Thatcher's premiership, more than have been sold in the two decades since.

Such changes clearly came with a cost, and one of the most direct costs was the gradual
decrease in the amount of social housing – and the resultant long waits on housing lists today –

from a country with a growing population and atomising households (the number of people per
household in the UK is slowly but steadily falling, as more of us live alone).

In 1981, England and Wales had 5.4m households in social housing. By 1991, this had dropped
by 900,000 to 4.5m. In the post-Thatcher years, this gradual drop-off has endured, with 4.1m

households living in social housing at the last census.

That was only the most direct effect. In addition, many of the first people to buy their council
homes through right to buy almost immediately started to struggle with their mortgages.

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As a result of the Thatcher government's decision to target and control inflation – seen by many

people then and now as a necessary move – interest rates (and therefore mortgage
repayments) never fell below about 7.4% during Thatcher's premiership, and peaked at 17%.

This is a figure unimaginable to many of today's younger adults: interest rates have not been
above 6% since the turn of the millennium.

For some families these pressures were very real: James and Maureen Patterson were among

the first families to buy their council home, and were visited by Thatcher as they did so. In the
following years, their marriage disintegrated, apparently in part due to financial pressure on

making the mortgage repayments.

Thatcher's housing policies had one other long-term legacy, hailed by some and cursed by

others: house prices rocketed during and after her tenure. According to figures from the
Department for Communities and Local Government, the average selling price of a house in

1979 was £19,925. By 1990, this had tripled, to £59,785. Over the next two decades, it
multiplied again, reaching £251,634 by 2010.

The economy has been subject to the whims of the housing market ever since Thatcher: the
housing crash and negative equity of the early 1990s were hardly unrelated to the
accompanying recession, while the consumer boom of the early 2000s was fuelled by housing
debt – as was the subsequent, interminable, bust.

In this, the coalition government came in to power tacking, tacitly, away from Thatcher, with a

vow to rebalance the economy away from such housing-fuelled booms, of which the housewife-
frugality-espousing Thatcher may not have approved but nonetheless helped fuel.

But unlike the Lady, George Osborne proved for turning, and plans to revitalise the economy
with his help-to-buy policy. The echoes of Thatcher are surely not accidental.

The argument over the wider impact of Thatcherism on Britain's economy makes disagreements
over housing policy look trivial.

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Looking only at the core measure of economic performance – GDP growth – Thatcher's

performance was slightly better than that of her predecessor, James Callaghan, but slightly
worse than under Tony Blair, with average growth over her tenure standing at around 2.3% a

year.

This kind of generalisation hides every argument that matters, though. Thatcher made changes

to the UK's tax system, some changes to welfare, and many to the nature of British jobs, both
through privatisation and economic liberalisation – not least in her battle with the unions.

Perhaps the best look at what Thatcherism meant for British families comes from a series of

measures calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which calculated household incomes
after tax (and any income from benefits), and put them into monetary amounts relative to 2010-
11 prices, stripping out the effects of inflation.

These figures show families got richer. The median household – the household right in the

middle, where half are richer, half are poorer – earned the equivalent of £270.74 a week in
1979. By 1990, this had increased by 26% to £341.58.

But, as you would expect, these gains were nowhere near evenly distributed, and the poorest
got the least. A family in the bottom 10% had a weekly income of £151.58 as Thatcher came
into power. Eleven years later as she left Downing Street, the family had just £158.57 – a mere
4.6% more. Such stagnation for the poorest families was not inevitable: though inequality
remained high in the post-Thatcher era, by 2011 that income had risen to £215.86.

The richest families – the top 10% – did far better, with their incomes increasing from the
equivalent of £472.98 in 1979 to £694.83 in 1990. The good times for high-rollers continued
post-Thatcher, with 2011 incomes of £845.54 a week.

The IFS figures are stark on the dispersion of British society in income terms through the
Thatcher era, and this had a knock-on effect on poverty as it is typically measured.

The common international standard for poverty is a relative one: a family earning less than 60%
of the median income, meaning its members are excluded from many aspects of a nation's life.

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By this measure, though, a family in poverty in 1990 may be richer than one not in poverty in

1979.

It is perhaps illustrative to note that in 1981 3.7m households lacked (or had to share) either an
inside toilet or bath. By 1991, only 259,000 did.

Still, the poverty figures don't look good: the number of children in poverty almost doubled under
Thatcher, from 1.7 million in 1979 to 3.3 million in 1990. Pensioner poverty in the same period

increased too, from 3.1 million to 4.1 million. Those numbers rise still further if housing costs are
factored in.

The headline poverty figures have both since fallen back from those levels – particularly
pensioner poverty. In today's Britain, 2 million pensioners live below the poverty line – half the

1990 figure – while child poverty has dropped more modesty to 2.3 million.

Incomes, of course, only tell a small part of the story when it comes to Thatcher and the
workforce – not to mention the shape of the economy.

Thatcher is perhaps most associated with the death of Britain's mining industry. There is no
doubt that the figures show the number of miners collapsed under Thatcher and afterwards: in
1980, the UK had 230,000 coal miners. By 1990, only 57,000 remained. By 2004, the figure was

below 6,000.

But what may be missed is that even more mining jobs were lost before Thatcher ever came

into power. Over the course of the 1960s and 70s, more than 300,000 coal mining jobs
disappeared, while around a million vanished between 1920 and 1980.

Thatcher was the coal industry's most visible foe, but not the one who lost it the most jobs. The

root of residual anger at Thatcher lies, perhaps, in that Thatcher was the first post-war prime
minister to cut such jobs without finding or creating replacement roles

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That isn't to say that manufacturing and mining communities didn't feel devastating change –

from which some have not recovered to this day. By the World Bank's measures, industry
(including manufacturing) fell from contributing 40% of the UK's GDP in 1979 to just 34% in

1990 – and has since fallen more dramatically still to just under 22%.

Such trends weren't confined to the UK, however: industry in the United States fell from 33% to

27% during the Thatcher era, and to about 20% today. Even Germany went in a similar direction
– though to a lesser extent – from 42% in 1979 to 28% now.

The consequences of deindustrialisation hit huge swaths of the UK, particularly Wales and

northern England, hard. Unemployment soared from 5.3% in 1979 – a level high enough for the
Conservatives' "Labour isn't Working" poster to go down in the annals of great election adverts –
to peak at 11.9% in 1984. In 1990, the year of Thatcher's departure, it stood slightly higher than

when her era began, at 6.9%.

This, though, hides the plight of millions of Britons who would never work again – those who
were listed as ill, rather than unemployed.

In 1981, 772,000 people classed themselves as being out of the labour force because they were
"permanently sick". A decade later, this figure had risen to 1.6 million. In numerous towns
across the country, the increases were markedly higher – with those signed off sick tripling or
even quadrupling in a decade. Twenty years later, in the 2011 census, the figure remained
largely unchanged, despite the UK's growing population: 1.7 million people were classed as

long-term sick or disabled.

The issue around the welfare bill for supporting people with disabilities, chosen as a priority by
the current coalition, owes its genesis far more to Thatcher than to either John Major or New

Labour.

Elsewhere in the workforce, Thatcherism did what might be expected. It was certainly bad for

union membership, which fell from 13.2 million in 1979 to 9.8 million in 1990 – and has since
fallen further, to less than 7.4 million.

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Overall, strikes were busted too, through the use of laws that unions still condemn today: in

1979, 6m working days were lost to strikes. This peaked at a massive 29.5m in 1983, but fell to
less than 2m in the year Thatcher was ousted. By 2010, whether thanks to diminished union

power or improved industrial relations, fewer than 400,000 working days were lost to industrial
action.

The Thatcher period was modestly good for women in the workforce, with full-time female hourly
wages rising from 72% of those of men to 76% (they have continued their slow rise and are

presently at 82% of men's wages).

Thatcher also leaves an unclear legacy when it comes to public spending. When she entered
office, public spending made up 44.6% of GDP. After initially rising, this was sharply cut to
39.1% of GDP by the time of her departure. Since then, that trend has been more than

reversed: in 2012, public spending accounted for 46.2% of GDP.

Whether you like or loathe the results, it's hard to disagree that Thatcher won her economic
battles. But economic liberalism was only part of Thatcher's brand of politics. At the core of her
ideology was a social conservatism, accompanied by promotion of "traditional moral values".

Care should be taken before forcing Thatcher into the mould of the US Republican party's
fringes on social issues: she voted in favour of decriminalising homosexuality and abortion.
However, she was no friend to the gay rights movement, complaining to the 1987 Tory
conference that "children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being

taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay".

Such attitudes, enshrined in law through section 28, seemed to chime with the public at the
time. The British Social Attitudes survey showed the proportion of the UK population who

believed same-sex relations were "always wrong" was 50% in 1983, rising – fuelled perhaps by
the emergence of Aids – to 58% in 1990.

But since then, the culture wars have moved in exactly the opposite direction. Today, only 20%
of the British public answer the question in such a way.

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Attitudes to marriage and divorce hardly stayed conservative during Thatcher's tenure, either.

The number of weddings fell from 369,000 in 1979 to 331,000 in 1990, while divorces rose from
119,000 a year to 153,000 over the same time. The proportion of the public objecting to

premarital sex dropped too, from 28% in 1983, to 22% in 1990, to just 12% today.

It seems that Thatcher also never really had the public believing in the ideological shifts she was

making in Britain. When pollsters asked Britons in 1989 whether they would prefer a "mostly
socialist" or "mainly capitalist" society, they favoured the former by a margin of 47% to 39%.

A society "which emphasises the social and collective provision of welfare" was favoured over

one "where the individual is encouraged to look after himself" by a wider margin still: 54% to
40%.

Thatcher may not have changed the majority of minds during her tenure: but in the long run, the
changed Britain she helped build may have continued that work. When Ipsos MORI asked that

same question on welfare in 2009, the welfare option lost out narrowly to individualism, by 47%
to 49% (with the margin of error, too close to call).

The evidence suggests Thatcher's children, and those who came after, have grown up more
individualistic and less supportive of state institutions than their forebears. On those issues, she
may well have had the last laugh.

The legacy of Thatcher's social conservatism is modest: Britain is, by and large, a nation
marrying less, more accepting of homosexuality, and more accepting of people of other races (if

not of immigration). Her cultural legacy is greater. In 2013, almost no one argues about what
John Major did or didn't do for the country – while the mere mention of Thatcher's name can
induce either exhortations of adoration or paroxysms of utter disgust.

But it's the economic changes during Thatcher's premiership, continued in large part by her
successors, that have really shaped Britain ever since.

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The rise of the property market and liberalisation of the financial sector shaped the economic

booms of the late 1990s and most of the 2000s, and lay at the heart of the bust which followed.
The unions remain weaker, and the utilities remain privatised.

Today's levels of economic inequality are roughly the same as those when Thatcher departed.
The number of people classed as long-term sick, and relying consequently on the state's

support, remains the same.

Whether defined against her or not, the challenges faced by the coalition government – and the
circumstances that brought them to be – almost all had their roots in the government of

Thatcher. And that legacy affects millions of people every day.

Foreign Policy

Foreign policy of Margaret Thatcher is known for "having helped the U.S. stare down and defeat

the Soviet Union".[1] As Thatcher pointed out herself "The United States and Britain have
together been the greatest alliance in defence of liberty and justice".[2] At her first days as a

Prime Minister of UK she criticised the Western societies (thus referring not only to British voters

and citizens) for their "self-questioning" that has gone too far that it causes paralysis, and that
action should substitute introspection at the beginning of a 'dangerous decade' that challenges
Western security and way of life, among other international problems she points the "immediate
threat from the Soviet Union" which is "military rather than ideological" at the end of the 70s.[3]
These words are a cornerstone to Margaret Tatcher's later foreign policy as a Prime Minister of

United Kingdom. Together with Ronald Reagan they made an enduring effort to bring freedom

to people in the Eastern Bloc and under communist regimes that will refuse them primal human
rights like freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of travel, etc.[4] This effort will later
result in the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism as well, and the dissolution of Soviet Union

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Falkland War

The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas), also known as the Falklands Conflict,

Falklands Crisis, and the Guerra del Atlántico Sur (Spanish for "South Atlantic War"), was a ten-
week war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over two British overseas territories in the
South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It

began on Friday, 2 April 1982, when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands (and,
the following day, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) in an attempt to establish the

sovereignty it had claimed over them. On 5 April, the British government dispatched a naval

task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on
the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14 June
1982, returning the islands to British control. In total, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255

British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders died during the hostilities.

The conflict was a major episode in the protracted confrontation over the territories' sovereignty.
Argentina asserted (and maintains) that the islands are Argentine territory,[6] and the Argentine

government thus characterised its military action as the reclamation of its own territory. The
British government regarded the action as an invasion of a territory that had been a Crown
colony since 1841. Falkland Islanders, who have inhabited the islands since the early 19th
century, are predominantly descendants of British settlers, and favour British sovereignty.
Neither state, however, officially declared war (both sides did declare the Islands areas a war
zone and officially recognised that a state of war existed between them) and hostilities were

almost exclusively limited to the territories under dispute and the area of the South Atlantic

where they lie.

The conflict has had a strong impact in both countries and has been the subject of various
books, articles, films, and songs. Patriotic sentiment ran high in Argentina, but the outcome

prompted large protests against the ruling military government, hastening its downfall. In the
United Kingdom, the Conservative Party government, bolstered by the successful outcome, was

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re-elected the following year. The cultural and political weight of the conflict has had less effect

in Britain than in Argentina, where it remains a continued topic for discussion.[7]

Relations between the United Kingdom and Argentina were restored in 1989 following a
meeting in Madrid, Spain, at which the two countries' governments issued a joint statement.[8]
No change in either country's position regarding the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands was

made explicit. In 1994, Argentina's claim to the territories was added to its constitution.

Lead-up to the conflict

In the period leading up to the war – and, in particular, following the transfer of power between
the military dictators General Jorge Rafael Videla and General Roberto Eduardo Viola late in
March 1981 – Argentina had been in the midst of a devastating economic stagnation and large-

scale civil unrest against the military junta that had been governing the country since 1976.[13]
In December 1981 there was a further change in the Argentine military regime bringing to office

a new junta headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri (acting president), Brigadier Basilio Lami
Dozo and Admiral Jorge Anaya. Anaya was the main architect and supporter of a military
solution for the long-standing claim over the islands,[14] calculating that the United Kingdom

would never respond militarily.[15]

By opting for military action, the Galtieri government hoped to mobilise the long-standing
patriotic feelings of Argentines towards the islands, and thus divert public attention from the
country's chronic economic problems and the regime's ongoing human rights violations.[16]

Such action would also bolster its dwindling legitimacy. The newspaper La Prensa speculated in
a step-by-step plan beginning with cutting off supplies to the Islands, ending in direct actions

late in 1982, if the UN talks were fruitless.[17]

The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March when a
group of Argentine scrap metal merchants (actually infiltrated by Argentine marines) raised the
Argentine flag at South Georgia, an act that would later be seen as the first offensive action in

the war. The Royal Navy ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance was dispatched from Stanley to
South Georgia in response, subsequently leading to the invasion of South Georgia by Argentine

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forces on 3 April. The Argentine military junta, suspecting that the UK would reinforce its South

Atlantic Forces,[18] ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands to be brought forward to 2 April.

Britain was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands,
despite repeated warnings by Royal Navy captain Nicholas Barker and others. Barker believed
that Defence Secretary John Nott's 1981 review (in which Nott described plans to withdraw the

Endurance, Britain's only naval presence in the South Atlantic) sent a signal to the Argentines
that Britain was unwilling, and would soon be unable, to defend its territories and subjects in the

Falklands.[19][20]

Argentine invasion:

On 2 April 1982, Argentine forces mounted amphibious landings off the Falkland Islands,

following the civilian occupation of South Georgia on 19 March, before the Falklands War
began. The invasion was met with a nominal defence organised by the Falkland Islands'

Governor Sir Rex Hunt, giving command to Major Mike Norman of the Royal Marines. The
events of the invasion included the landing of Lieutenant Commander Guillermo Sanchez-
Sabarots' Amphibious Commandos Group, the attack on Moody Brook barracks, the

engagement between the troops of Hugo Santillan and Bill Trollope at Stanley, and the final
engagement and surrender at Government House.

Initial British response

Further information: British naval forces in the Falklands War, British ground forces in the

Falklands War and British air services in the Falklands War

The cover of Newsweek magazine, 19 April 1982, depicts HMS Hermes, flagship of the British

Task Force. The title references the 1980 Star Wars sequel.

Word of the invasion first reached Britain from Argentine sources.[21] A Ministry of Defence
operative in London had a short telex conversation with Governor Hunt's telex operator, who
confirmed that Argentines were on the island and in control.[21][22] Later that day, BBC
journalist Laurie Margolis spoke with an islander at Goose Green via amateur radio, who

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confirmed the presence of a large Argentine fleet and that Argentine forces had taken control of

the island.[21][23] Operation Corporate was the codename given to the British military
operations in the Falklands War. The commander of task force operations was Admiral Sir John

Fieldhouse. Operations lasted from 1 April 1982 to 20 June 1982.[24] The British undertook a
series of military operations as a means of recapturing the Falklands from Argentine occupation.
The British government had taken action prior to the 2 April invasion. In response to events on

South Georgia, the submarines HMS Splendid and HMS Spartan were ordered to sail south on

29 March, whilst the stores ship Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Fort Austin was dispatched from
the Western Mediterranean to support HMS Endurance.[25] Lord Carrington had wished to send
a third submarine, but the decision was deferred due to concerns about the impact on

operational commitments.[25] Coincidentally, on 26 March, the submarine HMS Superb left

Gibraltar and it was assumed in the press it was heading south. There has since been

speculation that the effect of those reports was to panic the Argentine junta into invading the
Falklands before nuclear submarines could be deployed.[25]

The following day, during a crisis meeting headed by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the
Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, advised them that "Britain could and should
send a task force if the islands are invaded". On 1 April, Leach sent orders to a Royal Navy
force carrying out exercises in the Mediterranean to prepare to sail south. Following the invasion
on 2 April, after an emergency meeting of the cabinet, approval was given to form a task force
to retake the islands. This was backed in an emergency session of the House of Commons the
next day.[26]

On 6 April, the British Government set up a War Cabinet to provide day-to-day political oversight

of the campaign.[3] This was the critical instrument of crisis management for the British with its
remit being to "keep under review political and military developments relating to the South
Atlantic, and to report as necessary to the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee". Until it

was dissolved on 12 August, the War Cabinet met at least daily. Although Margaret Thatcher is

described as dominating the War Cabinet, Lawrence Freedman notes in the Official History of

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the Falklands Campaign that she did not ignore opposition or fail to consult others. However,

once a decision was reached she "did not look back".[3]

Position of third party countries

On the evening of 3 April, the United Kingdom's United Nations ambassador Sir Anthony
Parsons put a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council. The resolution, which
condemned the hostilities and demanded the immediate Argentine withdrawal from the Islands,

was adopted by the council the following day as United Nations Security Council Resolution
502, which passed with ten votes in support, one against (Panama) and four abstentions

(China, the Soviet Union, Poland and Spain).[26][27][28] The UK received further political
support from the Commonwealth of Nations and the European Economic Community. The EEC
also provided economic support by imposing economic sanctions on Argentina. Argentina itself

was politically backed by a majority of countries in Latin America and some members of the
Non-Aligned Movement.[citation needed] On 20 May 1982, the Prime Minister of New Zealand,
Rob Muldoon, announced that he would make HMNZS Canterbury, a Leander-class frigate,

available for use where the British thought fit to release a Royal Navy vessel for the
Falklands.[29]

The war was an unexpected event in a world strained by the Cold War and the North–South
divide. The response of some countries was the effort to mediate the crisis and later as the war
began, the support (or criticism) based in terms of anti-colonialism, political solidarity, historical
relationships or realpolitik.

The United States was concerned by the prospect of Argentina turning to the Soviet Union for

support,[30] and initially tried to mediate an end to the conflict. However, when Argentina
refused the US peace overtures, US Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that the
United States would prohibit arms sales to Argentina and provide material support for British
operations. Both Houses of the US Congress passed resolutions supporting the US action

siding with the United Kingdom.[31]

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The US provided the United Kingdom with military equipment ranging from submarine detectors

to the latest missiles.[32][33][34][35] President Ronald Reagan approved the Royal Navy's
request to borrow the Sea Harrier-capable amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) if the

British lost an aircraft carrier. The United States Navy developed a plan to help the British man
the ship with American military contractors, likely retired sailors with knowledge of the Iwo
Jima's systems.[36] France provided dissimilar aircraft training so Harrier pilots could train

against the French aircraft used by Argentina.[37] French and British intelligence also worked to

prevent Argentina from obtaining more Exocet missiles on the international market,[38] while at
the same time Peru attempted to purchase 12 missiles for Argentina, in a failed secret
operation.[39][40] Chile gave support to Britain in the form of intelligence about the Argentine

military and early warning intelligence on Argentine air movements.[41][42] Throughout the war,
Argentina was afraid of a Chilean military intervention in Patagonia and kept some of her best

mountain regiments away from the Falklands near the Chilean border as a precaution.[43]

In recent years, it has become known that a listening post located in Fauske, Norway was vital
in giving the British intelligence information regarding Argentine fleet locations. The listening
post was designated Fauske II by Norway. The information was "stolen" from Soviet spy
satellites, which were the only space assets that covered the South Atlantic.[44] Western
powers such as the United States and the UK did not have their own satellite presence in this
area at the time. A high ranking British military source claimed that the intelligence the British
got from the Fauske II post as "Incredibly vital":

When the war broke out, we had almost no intelligence information from this area. It was here
we got help from the Norwegians, who gave us a stream of information about the Argentinian

warships positions. The information came to us all the time and straight to our war headquarters
at Northwood. The information was continuously updated and told us exactly where the
Argentinian ships were.[44][45]

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While France overtly backed the United Kingdom, a French technical team remained in

Argentina throughout the war. French government sources have said that the French team was
engaged in intelligence-gathering; however, it simultaneously provided direct material support to

the Argentines, identifying and fixing faults in Exocet missile launchers.[46] According to the
book Operation Israel, advisers from Israel Aerospace Industries were already in Argentina and
continued their work during the conflict. The book also claims that Israel sold weapons and drop

tanks in a secret operation in Peru.[47][48] Peru also openly sent "Mirages, pilots and missiles"

to Argentina during the war.[49] Peru had earlier transferred ten Hercules transport planes to
Argentina soon after the British Task Force had set sail in April 1982.[50] Nick van der Bijl
records that, after the Argentine defeat at Goose Green, Venezuela and Guatemala offered to

send paratroops to the Falklands.[51] Through Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi, Argentina
received 20 launchers and 60 SA-7 missiles, as well as machine guns, mortars and mines; all in

all, the load of four trips of two Boeing 707s of the AAF, refuelled in Recife with the knowledge
and consent of the Brazilian government.[52] Some of these clandestine logistics operations
were mounted by the Soviet Union.

John Major and his Policies

Sir John Major, KG, CH, PC (born 29 March 1943) is a British Conservative Party politician who
was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990
to 1997. He was Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Thatcher
Government and was the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon from 1979 to 2001.

Within weeks of becoming Prime Minister, Major presided over British participation in the Gulf

War in March 1991 and negotiated the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991.[1] He went on to
lead the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive election victory, winning the most votes in British
electoral history with over 14 million in the 1992 general election, with a reduced majority in the

House of Commons. Shortly after this, the Major Government became responsible for the
United Kingdom's exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after Black Wednesday on

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16 September 1992. This event led to a loss of confidence in Conservative economic policies

and from thereon in he was never able to achieve a lead in the opinion polls again.

Despite the eventual revival of economic growth amongst other successes such as the
beginnings of the Northern Ireland peace process, by the mid-1990s the Conservatives were
embroiled in ongoing sleaze scandals involving various MPs, including Cabinet Ministers.

Criticism of Major's leadership reached such a pitch that he chose to resign as leader in June
1995, challenging his critics to either back him or challenge him; he was duly challenged by

John Redwood but was easily re-elected. By this time, the Labour Party had moved to the

centre-left under the leadership of Tony Blair and a large number of by-election defeats
eventually deprived the Government of its majority. Major went on to lose the 1997 general
election in one of the largest electoral defeats since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

After defeat, Major resigned as Conservative Leader and was succeeded by William Hague. He
went on to retire from active politics, leaving the House of Commons at the 2001 general
election. Major is the oldest living former British Prime Minister.

Major was interested in politics from an early age. Encouraged by fellow Conservative Derek

Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton Market. He stood as a candidate for
Lambeth London Borough Council at the age of 21 in 1964, and was elected in the
Conservative landslide in 1968. While on the Council he was Chairman of the Housing
Committee, being responsible for overseeing the building of several large council housing
estates. He lost his seat in 1971.

Early political career:

Major was an active Young Conservative, and according to his biographer Anthony Seldon

brought "youthful exuberance" to the Tories in Brixton, but was often in trouble with the
professional agent Marion Standing.[10] Also according to Seldon, the formative political
influence on Major was Jean Kierans, a divorcée 13 years his elder, who became his political

mentor and his lover, too. Seldon writes "She... made Major smarten his appearance, groomed

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him politically, and made him more ambitious and worldly." Their relationship lasted from 1963

to sometime after 1968.

Major stood for election to Parliament in St Pancras North in both United Kingdom general
elections in 1974, but was unsuccessful each time. In November 1976, Major was selected to
be the candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Huntingdonshire. He won the seat in the

1979 general election.[10] Following boundary changes, Major became the MP for the newly
formed seat of Huntingdon in 1983, and retained the seat in 1987, 1992 and 1997. He retired

from Parliament in 2001.

He was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1981, becoming an assistant whip in

1983. He was later made Under-Secretary of State for Social Security in 1985, before being
promoted to become Minister of State in the same department in 1986, first attracting national

media attention over cold weather payments to the elderly in January 1987, when Britain was in
the depths of a severe winter.

Cabinet Minister:

Following the 1987 election, Major was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the
Treasury. Two years later, in a surprise July 1989 reshuffle, Major succeeded Geoffrey Howe as
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The rapid promotion surprised many,
due to Major's relative lack of experience in the Cabinet. Just three months later, in October
1989, Major was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer after the sudden resignation of Nigel

Lawson. This meant that, despite only being in the Cabinet for little over two years, Major had
gone from the most junior position in the Cabinet to holding two of the Great Offices of State.

As Chancellor, Major presented only one Budget, the first to be televised live, in early 1990. He

publicised it as a budget for savings and announced the Tax-Exempt Special Savings Account
(TESSA), arguing that measures were required to address the marked fall in the household
savings ratio that had been apparent during the previous financial year. In June 1990, Major

suggested that the proposed Single European Currency should be a "hard currency", competing
against existing national currencies; this idea was not in the end adopted. In October 1990,

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Major and Douglas Hurd, Major's successor as Foreign Secretary, persuaded Thatcher to

support British entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a move which she had resisted for
many years, and which had played a part in the resignation of Nigel Lawson.

After Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party in
November 1990, Major and Douglas Hurd were the proposer and seconder on her nomination

papers for the leadership ballot. After Thatcher was unable to win enough support to prevent a
second ballot, she announced her resignation as Prime Minister and Conservative Leader.

Major subsequently announced on 22 November that he would stand in the second ballot. Major

had been at home in Huntingdon recovering from a wisdom tooth operation during the first
leadership ballot. Thatcher's nomination papers for the second ballot were sent to him by car for
him to sign – it later emerged that he had signed both Thatcher's papers and a set of papers for

his own candidacy in case she withdrew.

Unlike in the first ballot, a candidate only required a simple majority of Conservative MPs to win,
in this case 187 of 375 MPs. The ballot was held on the afternoon of 27 November; although

Major fell two votes short of the required winning margin, he polled far enough ahead of both
Douglas Hurd and Michael Heseltine to secure immediate concessions from them. With no

remaining challengers, Major was formally named Leader of the Conservative Party that
evening and was duly appointed Prime Minister the following day.

Final years in Parliament:

Although many Conservative MPs wanted Major to resign as leader immediately, there was a
movement among the grassroots of the party, encouraged by his political allies, to have him

stay on as leader until autumn. Viscount Cranborne, his Chief of Staff during the election, and
the Chief Whip, Alastair Goodlad, both pleaded with him to stay on. They argued that remaining
as leader for a few months would give the party time to come to terms with the scale of defeat
before electing a successor.[45] Major refused, saying: "It would be terrible, because I would be

presiding with no authority over a number of candidates fighting for the crown. It would merely
prolong the agony."

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Major served as Leader of the Opposition for seven weeks whilst the leadership election to

replace him was underway. He formed a temporary Shadow Cabinet, but with seven of his
Cabinet Ministers having lost their seats at the election, and with few senior MPs left to replace

them, several MPs had to hold multiple briefs.[44] Major himself served as Shadow Foreign
Secretary, and the office of Shadow Scotland Secretary was left vacant until after the 2001
general election as the party had no MPs from Scotland.[44] Major's resignation as

Conservative Leader formally took effect on 19 June 1997 after the election of William Hague.

His Resignation Honours were announced in August 1997.

Major remained active in Parliament after his resignation, regularly attending and contributing in
debates. He stood down from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, having
announced his retirement live on BBC One's breakfast television show with David Frost in

October 2000.

Summary:

Major's mild-mannered style and moderate political stance made him theoretically well-placed to
act as a conciliatory leader of his party. In spite of this, conflict raged within the Parliamentary

Conservative Party, particularly over the extent of Britain's integration with the European Union.
Major never succeeded in reconciling the "Euro-rebels" among his MPs to his European policy,
who although relatively few in number – in spite of the fact that their views were much more
widely supported amongst Conservative activists and voters – wielded great influence because
of his small majority, and episodes such as the Maastricht Rebellion inflicted serious political

damage on him and his government. The additional bitterness on the right wing of the

Conservative Party at the manner in which Margaret Thatcher had been removed from office did
not make Major's task any easier. A series of scandals among leading Conservative MPs also
did Major and his government no favours. His task became even more difficult after the well-

received election of Tony Blair as Labour Leader in July 1994.

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Major defended his government in his memoirs, focusing particularly on how under him the

British economy had recovered from the recession of 1990–1992. He wrote that, "During my
premiership interest rates fell from 14% to 6%; unemployment was at 1.75 million when I took

office, and at 1.6 million and falling upon my departure; and the government's annual borrowing
rose from £0.5 billion to nearly £46 billion at its peak before falling to £1 billion".

The former Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that, "He was a fairly competent
Chairman of Housing on Lambeth Council. Every time he gets up now I keep thinking, 'What on

earth is Councillor Major doing?' I can't believe he's here and sometimes I think he can't

either."[49] Paddy Ashdown, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats during Major's term of office,
once described him in the House of Commons as a "decent and honourable man". Few
observers doubted that he was an honest man, or that he made sincere and sometimes

successful attempts to improve life in Britain and to unite his deeply divided party. He was also
perceived as a weak and ineffectual figure, and his approval ratings for most of his time in office
were low, particularly after "Black Wednesday" in September 1992.[50] Conversely on
occasions he attracted criticism for pursuing schemes favoured by the right of his party, notably
the privatisation of British Rail,[51] and for closing down most of the coal industry in advance of
privatisation.

European Common Market and the Great Britain

On March 25, 1957, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg

sign a treaty in Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), also known as
the Common Market. The EEC, which came into operation in January 1958, was a major step in

Europe’s movement toward economic and political union.

By 1950, it was apparent that centuries of Western European world supremacy was at an end.
The national markets of Europe, isolated from each other by archaic trade laws, were no match
for the giant market enjoyed by the United States. And looming over Europe from the east was

the Soviet Union, whose communist leaders commanded vast territory and economic resources
under a single system. Many European leaders also feared the resumption of conflict between

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traditional European antagonists such as France and Germany, which would only diminish the

European economies further.

As a means of improving Europe’s economic climate and preventing war, some influential
statesman and political theorists suggested economic integration. The first major step in this
direction was taken in 1951, when France and West Germany formed the European Coal and

Steel Community (ECSC), integrating their coal and steel industries. French leaders proposed
the organization primarily as a means of monitoring German industry, and West German

leaders immediately agreed, to allay fears of German militarization. To supervise the ECSC,

several supranational bodies were established, including an executive authority, a council of

ministers, an advisory assembly, and a court of justice to settle disputes. Italy and the three
nations of the Benelux Economic Union–Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg–soon

joined. The groundwork for the EEC was laid.

On March 25, 1957, representatives of six European nations signed two treaties in Rome. One
created the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for the common and peaceful

development of Europe’s nuclear resources. The other created the EEC. In the Common
Market, trade barriers between member nations were gradually eliminated, and common

policies regarding transportation, agriculture, and economic relations with nonmember countries
were implemented. Eventually, labor and capital were permitted to move freely within the
boundaries of the community. The EEC, the ECSC, and Euratom were served by a single
council of ministers, representative assembly, and court of justice. In 1967, the three

organizations were fully merged as the European Community (EC).

Britain and other European nations initially declined to join the Common Market and established
the weaker European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960 as an alternative. By the early
1960s, however, the Common Market nations showed signs of significant economic growth, and

Britain changed its mind. Because of its close ties to the United States, however, French
President Charles de Gaulle twice vetoed British admission, and Britain did not join the EC until

January 1973, when Ireland and Denmark also became EC members. Greece joined in 1981,

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Portugal and Spain in 1986, and the former East Germany as part of reunified Germany in

1990.

In early 1990s, the European Community became the basis for the European Union (EU), which
was established in 1993 following ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. The treaty called for a
strengthened European parliament, the creation of a central European bank and common

currency, and a common defense policy. In addition to a single European common market,
member states would also participate in a larger common market, called the European

Economic Area. Austria, Finland, and Sweden became members of the EU in 1995. As of early

2007, there were twenty-seven member states in total, and further growth was expected.

Formation of EU

The following visionary leaders inspired the creation of the European Union we live in today.
Without their energy and motivation we would not be living in the sphere of peace and stability

that we take for granted. From resistance fighters to lawyers, the founding fathers were a
diverse group of people who held the same ideals: a peaceful, united and prosperous Europe.
Beyond the founding fathers described below, many others have worked tirelessly towards and

inspired the European project. This section on the founding fathers is therefore a work in
progress.

A peaceful Europe – the beginnings of cooperation

The European Union is set up with the aim of ending the frequent and bloody wars between
neighbours, which culminated in the Second World War. As of 1950, the European Coal and

Steel Community begins to unite European countries economically and politically in order to
secure lasting peace. The six founders are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and
the Netherlands. The 1950s are dominated by a cold war between east and west. Protests in
Hungary against the Communist regime are put down by Soviet tanks in 1956; while the
following year, 1957, the Soviet Union takes the lead in the space race, when it launches the

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first man-made space satellite, Sputnik 1. Also in 1957, the Treaty of Rome creates the

European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘Common Market’.

(1960 – 1969)

The ‘Swinging Sixties’ – a period of economic growth

The 1960s sees the emergence of 'youth culture’, with groups such as The Beatles attracting
huge crowds of teenage fans wherever they appear, helping to stimulate a cultural revolution

and widening the generation gap. It is a good period for the economy, helped by the fact that EU

countries stop charging custom duties when they trade with each other. They also agree joint
control over food production, so that everybody now has enough to eat - and soon there is even
surplus agricultural produce. May 1968 becomes famous for student riots in Paris, and many

changes in society and behaviour become associated with the so-called ‘68 generation’.

(1970 – 1979)

A growing Community – the first Enlargement

Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom join the European Union on 1 January 1973, raising
the number of member states to nine. The short, yet brutal, Arab-Israeli war of October 1973

result in an energy crisis and economic problems in Europe. The last right-wing dictatorships in
Europe come to an end with the overthrow of the Salazar regime in Portugal in 1974 and the
death of General Franco of Spain in 1975. The EU regional policy starts to transfer huge sums

to create jobs and infrastructure in poorer areas. The European Parliament increases its
influence in EU affairs and in 1979 all citizens can, for the first time, elect their members directly.

(1980 – 1989)

The changing face of Europe - the fall of the Berlin Wall

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The Polish trade union, Solidarność, and its leader Lech Walesa, become household names

across Europe and the world following the Gdansk shipyard strikes in the summer of 1980. In
1981, Greece becomes the 10th member of the EU and Spain and Portugal follow five years

later. In 1986 the Single European Act is signed. This is a treaty which provides the basis for a
vast six-year programme aimed at sorting out the problems with the free-flow of trade across EU
borders and thus creates the ‘Single Market’. There is major political upheaval when, on 9

November 1989, the Berlin Wall is pulled down and the border between East and West

Germany is opened for the first time in 28 years, this leads to the reunification of Germany when
both East and West Germany are united in October 1990.

(1990 – 1999)

A Europe without frontiers

With the collapse of communism across central and eastern Europe, Europeans become closer

neighbours. In 1993 the Single Market is completed with the 'four freedoms' of: movement of
goods, services, people and money. The 1990s is also the decade of two treaties, the
‘Maastricht’ Treaty on European Union in 1993 and the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. People

are concerned about how to protect the environment and also how Europeans can act together
when it comes to security and defence matters. In 1995 the EU gains three more new members,
Austria, Finland and Sweden. A small village in Luxembourg gives its name to the ‘Schengen’
agreements that gradually allow people to travel without having their passports checked at the
borders. Millions of young people study in other countries with EU support. Communication is

made easier as more and more people start using mobile phones and the internet.

(2000 – 2009)

The euro is the new currency for many Europeans. 11 September 2001 becomes synonymous
with the 'War on Terror' after hijacked airliners are flown into buildings in New York and
Washington. EU countries begin to work much more closely together to fight crime. The political

divisions between east and west Europe are finally declared healed when no fewer than 10 new
countries join the EU in 2004, followed by two more in 2007. A financial crisis hits the global

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economy in September 2008, leading to closer economic cooperation between EU countries.

The Treaty of Lisbon is ratified by all EU countries before entering into force on 1 December
2009. It provides the EU with modern institutions and more efficient working methods.

(2010 – Today)

A decade of opportunities and challenges

The new decade starts with a severe economic crisis, but also with the hope that investments in

new green and climate-friendly technologies and closer European cooperation will bring lasting

growth and welfare.

Tony Blair “New Labour” Economic Crunch,

Tony Blair became the leader of the Labour Party after 1994's leadership election,[1] and coined
the term "New Labour" in that October's party conference.[4] Blair pursued a "Third Way"

philosophy that sought to use the public and private sectors to stimulate economic growth and
abandon Labour's commitment to nationalisation.[48] Blair's approach to government included a
greater reliance on the media, using that to set the national policy agenda, rather than
Westminster. He spent considerable resources maintaining a good public image, which
sometimes took priority over the cabinet. Blair adopted a centrist political agenda in which
cabinet ministers took managerial roles in their departments; strategic vision was to be
addressed by the Prime Minister.[49] Ideologically, Blair believed that individuals could only

flourish in a strong society, and this was not possible in the midst of unemployment.

Relationship with Labour Party

Blair's apparent refusal to set a date for his departure was criticised by the British press and
Members of Parliament. It has been reported that a number of cabinet ministers believed that
Blair's timely departure from office would be required to be able to win a fourth election.[150]
Some ministers viewed Blair's announcement of policy initiatives in September 2006 as an
attempt to draw attention away from these issues.[150]

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Gordon Brown

After the death of John Smith in 1994, Blair and his close colleague Gordon Brown (they shared

an office at the House of Commons)[40] were both seen as possible candidates for the party
leadership. They agreed not to stand against each other, it is said, as part of a supposed Blair–
Brown pact. Brown, who considered himself the senior of the two, understood that Blair would

give way to him: opinion polls soon indicated, however, that Blair appeared to enjoy greater
support among voters.[151] Their relationship in power became so turbulent that (it was

reported) the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, often had to act as "marriage guidance

counsellor".[152]

During the 2010 election campaign Blair publicly endorsed Gordon Brown's leadership, praising
the way he had handled the financial crisis

War on Terror:

Military intervention and the War on Terror

In his first six years in office Blair ordered British troops into battle five times, more than any
other prime minister in British history. This included Iraq in both 1998 and 2003, Kosovo (1999),
Sierra Leone (2000) and Afghanistan (2001).[60]

The Kosovo War, which Blair had advocated on moral grounds, was initially a failure when it
relied solely on air strikes; the threat of a ground offensive convinced Serbia's Slobodan

Milošević to withdraw. Blair had been a major advocate for a ground offensive, which Bill Clinton
was reluctant to do, and ordered that 50,000 soldiers – most of the available British Army –

should be made ready for action.[61] The following year, the limited Operation Palliser in Sierra

Leone swiftly swung the tide against the rebel forces; before deployment, the United Nations
Mission in Sierra Leone had been on the verge of collapse.[62] Palliser had been intended as
an evacuation mission but Brigadier David Richards was able to convince Blair to allow him to

expand the role; at the time, Richards' action was not known and Blair was assumed to be
behind it.[63]

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Blair ordered Operation Barras, a highly successful SAS/Parachute Regiment strike to rescue

hostages from a Sierra Leone rebel group.[64] Historian Andrew Marr has argued that the
success of ground attacks, real and threatened, over air strikes alone was influential on how

Blair planned the Iraq War, and that the success of the first three wars Blair fought "played to his
sense of himself as a moral war leader".[65] When asked in 2010 if the success of Palliser may
have "embolden[ed] British politicians" to think of military action as a policy option, General Sir

David Richards admitted there "might be something in that".[63]

Tony Blair and George W. Bush shake hands after their press conference in the East Room of

the White House on 12 November 2004.

From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of
George W. Bush, participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was particularly controversial, as it attracted widespread public opposition
and 139 of Blair's MPs opposed it.[66]

As a result, he faced criticism over the policy itself and the circumstances of the decision.
Alastair Campbell described Blair's statement that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond

doubt" as his "assessment of the assessment that was given to him."[67] In 2009, Blair stated
that he would have supported removing Saddam Hussein from power even in the face of proof
that he had no such weapons.[68] Playwright Harold Pinter and former Malaysian Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohammad accused Blair of war crimes.[69][70]

Testifying before the Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010, Blair said Saddam was a "monster and I
believe he threatened not just the region but the world."[71] Blair said that British and American

attitude towards Saddam Hussein had "changed dramatically" after 11 September attacks. Blair
denied that he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he had thought Saddam had
no weapons of mass destruction. He said he believed the world was safer as a result of the
invasion.[72] He said there was "no real difference between wanting regime change and

wanting Iraq to disarm: regime change was US policy because Iraq was in breach of its UN
obligations."[73] In an October 2015 CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, Blair apologised for his

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'mistakes' over Iraq War and admitted there were 'elements of truth' to the view that the invasion

helped promote the rise of ISIS.

Foreign policy

Jacques Chirac, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi during the G8 Summit in
Évian, June 2003

Blair built his foreign policy on basic principles (close ties with US and EU) and added a new

activist philosophy of "interventionism". In 2001 Britain joined the US in the global war on

terror.[113]

Blair forged friendships with several European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi of Italy,[114]
Angela Merkel of Germany[115] and later Nicolas Sarkozy of France.[116]

Along with enjoying a close relationship with Bill Clinton, Blair formed a strong political alliance

with George W. Bush, particularly in the area of foreign policy. For his part, Bush lauded Blair
and the UK. In his post-9/11 speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend
than Great Britain".[117]

The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of Britons

angry at American influence.[118] Blair argued it was in Britain's interest to "protect and
strengthen the bond" with the United States regardless of who is in the White House.[119]

However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to

discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of

the UK government and Prime Minister with the US White House and President.[120] A
revealing conversation between Bush and Blair, with the former addressing the latter as "Yo [or

Yeah], Blair" was recorded when they did not know a microphone was live at the G8 summit in
Saint Petersburg in 2006.

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In May 2007, before his resignation, it was speculated that Blair would be offered a knighthood

in the Order of the Thistle, owing to his Scottish connections (rather than the Order of the
Garter, which is usually offered to former Prime Ministers).[226] Blair reportedly indicated that

he does not want the traditional knighthood or peerage bestowed on former prime
ministers.[227]

On 22 May 2008, Blair received an honorary law doctorate from Queen's University Belfast,
alongside former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, for distinction in public service and roles in the

Northern Ireland peace process.

On 13 January 2009, Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President
George W. Bush.[229] Bush stated that Blair was given the award "in recognition of exemplary
achievement and to convey the utmost esteem of the American people"[230] and cited Blair's

support for the War on Terror and his role in achieving peace in Northern Ireland as two reasons
for justifying his being presented with the award.[231]

On 16 February 2009, Blair was awarded the Dan David Prize by Tel Aviv University for
"exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and

forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict". He was awarded the prize in May 2009.[232][233]

On 13 September 2010, Blair was awarded the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution
Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[234] It was presented by former President Bill Clinton,
and is awarded annually to men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the

blessings of liberty to people around the globe.[234]

On 8 July 2010, Blair was awarded the Order of Freedom by the President of Kosovo, Fatmir
Limaj.[235] As Blair is credited as being instrumental in ending the conflict in Kosovo, some

boys born in that country following the war have been given the name Toni or Tonibler.

Policies

In 2001, Blair said, "We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social
justice as partners and not as opposites".

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Blair rarely applies such labels to himself, but he promised before the 1997 election that New

Labour would govern "from the radical centre", and according to one lifelong Labour Party
member, has always described himself as a social democrat.[94] However, at least one left-
wing commentator has said that Blair is to the right of centre.[95] A YouGov opinion poll in 2005

found that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, place Blair
on the right of the political spectrum.[96] The Financial Times on the other hand has argued that

Blair is not conservative, but instead a populist.[97]

Critics and admirers tend to agree that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to
occupy the centre ground and appeal to voters across the political spectrum, to the extent that
he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional Labour Party values. Some left-wing critics

have argued that Blair has overseen the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to
the right, and that very little now remains of a Labour Left.[98]

There is some evidence that Blair's long term dominance of the centre forced his Conservative
opponents to shift a long distance to the left to challenge his hegemony there.[99] Leading

Conservatives of the post-New Labour era hold Blair in high regard: George Osborne describes
him as "the master"; Michael Gove once exclaimed, "I can't hold it back any more—I love Tony";
while David Cameron reportedly maintains Blair as an informal adviser.

During his time as prime minister, Blair raised taxes; introduced a National Minimum Wage and

some new employment rights (while keeping Margaret Thatcher's trade union reforms[102]);
introduced significant constitutional reforms; promoted new rights for gay people in the Civil

Partnership Act 2004; and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. He
introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced
student tuition fees; sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments, and introduced
tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation. Under Blair's government the amount of new

legislation increased[103] which attracted criticism.[104]

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Blair increased police powers by adding to the number of arrestable offences, compulsory DNA

recording and the use of dispersal orders.[105] He did not reverse the privatisation of the
railways enacted by his predecessor John Major and instead strengthened regulation (by

creating the Office of Rail Regulation) and limited fare rises to inflation +1%.[106][107][108]

Environmental record

Blair has criticised other governments for not doing enough to solve global climate change. In a

1997 visit to the United States, he made a comment on "great industrialised nations" that fail to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Again in 2003, Blair went before the United States Congress

and said that climate change "cannot be ignored", insisting "we need to go beyond even
Kyoto."[109] Blair and his party promised a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide.[110] The Labour
Party also claimed that by 2010 10% of the energy would come from renewable resources;

however, it only reached 7% by that point.[111]

In 2000, Blair "flagged up" 100 million euros for green policies and urged environmentalists and
businesses to work together.[112]

Foreign policy

Jacques Chirac, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi during the G8 Summit in

Évian, June 2003

Blair built his foreign policy on basic principles (close ties with US and EU) and added a new

activist philosophy of "interventionism". In 2001 Britain joined the US in the global war on
terror.[113]

Blair forged friendships with several European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi of Italy,[114]

Angela Merkel of Germany[115] and later Nicolas Sarkozy of France.[116]

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Blair meets with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, March 2005.

Along with enjoying a close relationship with Bill Clinton, Blair formed a strong political alliance

with George W. Bush, particularly in the area of foreign policy. For his part, Bush lauded Blair
and the UK. In his post-9/11 speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend
than Great Britain".[117]

The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of Britons

angry at American influence.[118] Blair argued it was in Britain's interest to "protect and
strengthen the bond" with the United States regardless of who is in the White House.[119]

However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to

discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of

the UK government and Prime Minister with the US White House and President.[120] A
revealing conversation between Bush and Blair, with the former addressing the latter as "Yo [or

Yeah], Blair" was recorded when they did not know a microphone was live at the G8 summit in
Saint Petersburg in 2006.[121]

Middle East policy and links with Israel

Blair showed a deep feeling for Israel, born in part from his faith.[122] Blair has been a longtime

member of the pro-Israel lobby group Labour Friends of Israel.[123]

In 1994, Blair forged close ties with Michael Levy, a leader of the Jewish Leadership

Council.[124] Levy ran the Labour Leader's Office Fund to finance Blair's campaign before the
1997 election and raised £12 million towards Labour’s landslide victory, Levy was rewarded with

a peerage, and in 2002, Blair appointed Lord Levy as his personal envoy to the Middle East.

Levy praised Blair for his "solid and committed support of the State of Israel".[125] Tam Dalyell,
while Father of the House of Commons, suggested in 2003 that Blair's foreign policy decisions
were unduly influenced by a 'cabal' of Jewish advisers, including Levy, Peter Mandelson and

Jack Straw (the last two are not Jewish but have some Jewish ancestry).[126]

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Blair, on coming to office, had been "cool towards the right-wing Netanyahu government".[127]

During his first visit to Israel, Blair thought the Israelis bugged him in his car.[128] After the
election in 1999 of Ehud Barak, with whom Blair forged a close relationship, he became much

more sympathetic to Israel.[127] From 2001, Blair built up a relationship [clarification needed]
with Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, and responded positively to Arafat, whom he had met
thirteen times since becoming prime minister and regarded as essential to future

negotiations.[127] In 2004, 50 former diplomats, including ambassadors to Baghdad and Tel

Aviv, stated they had 'watched with deepening concern' at Britain following the US into war in
Iraq in 2003. They criticised Blair's support for the road map for peace which included the
retaining of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.[129]

In 2006 Blair was criticised for his failure to immediately call for a ceasefire in the 2006 Israel-

Lebanon conflict. The Observer newspaper claimed that at a cabinet meeting before Blair left for
a summit with Bush on 28 July 2006, a significant number of ministers pressured Blair to
publicly criticise Israel over the scale of deaths and destruction in Lebanon.[130] Blair was
criticised for his solid stance alongside US President George W. Bush on Middle East
policy.[131]

Syria and Libya

A Freedom of Information request by The Sunday Times in 2012 revealed that Blair's
government considered knighting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The documents showed
Blair was willing to appear alongside Assad at a joint press conference even though the Syrians

would probably have settled for a farewell handshake for the cameras; British officials sought to

manipulate the media to portray Assad in a favourable light; and Blair's aides tried to help
Assad's "photogenic" wife boost her profile. The newspaper noted:

The Arab leader was granted audiences with the Queen and the Prince of Wales, lunch with
Blair at Downing Street, a platform in parliament and many other privileges. . . . The red carpet

treatment he and his entourage received is embarrassing given the bloodbath that has since

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taken place under his rule in Syria. . . . The courtship has parallels with Blair's friendly relations

with Muammar Gaddafi.[132]

Blair had been on friendly terms with Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, when sanctions
imposed on the country were lifted by the USA and the UK.[133][134]

Even after the Libyan Civil War in 2011, he said he had no regrets about his close relationship
with the late Libyan leader.[135] During Blair's premiership, MI6 rendered Abdel Hakim Belhaj to

the Gaddafi regime in 2004, though Blair later claimed he had "no recollection" of the incident.

Global Financial Crisis 2008 and the Great Britain

9 August 2007

BNP Paribas freeze three of their funds, indicating that they have no way of valuing the complex
assets inside them known as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), or packages of sub-prime

loans. It is the first major bank to acknowledge the risk of exposure to sub-prime mortgage
markets. Adam Applegarth (right), Northern Rock's chief executive, later says that it was "the
day the world changed"

Larry Elliott, economics editor, said: "As far as the financial markets are concerned, August 9

2007 has all the resonance of August 4 1914. It marks the cut-off point between 'an Edwardian
summer' of prosperity and tranquillity and the trench warfare of the credit crunch – the failed
banks, the petrified markets, the property markets blown to pieces by a shortage of credit"

14 September 2007

British bank Northern Rock has borrowed large sums of money to fund mortgages for

customers, and needs to pay off its debt by reselling (or "securitising") those mortgages in the
international capital markets. But now that demand for securitised mortgages has fallen,
Northern Rock faces a liquidity crisis and it needs a loan from the British government. This
sparks fears that the bank will shortly go bankrupt – prompting customers to queue round the
block to withdraw their savings. It is the first run on a British bank for 150 years

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A member of the court of the Bank of England, who asked not to be named

"At about 6.30pm, we were told there would be a meeting of court. Instead of coming to the

bank, where we would be photographed coming in the front door, we were all to meet outside
the McDonald's in Liverpool Street where we would be picked up in a people-carrier with
darkened windows and driven in through the back of the bank. There were two problems with

this. Firstly, Robert Peston had already broken the story about Northern Rock. Secondly, there
were two McDonald's outside Liverpool Street. Half of us were outside one, and the rest of us

were outside the other"

24 January 2008

Analysts announce the largest single-year drop in US home sales in a quarter of a century

Sandra Michel, a nurse, nearly lost her home in 2008 – until Boston Community Capital stepped

in. "The house cost $312,000 and we borrowed the whole amount. Then in 2008 my husband
lost his job. It became hard to keep up with the mortgage payments. We were a couple of
payments off. We asked them about modifying the loan, but they didn't want to work out

anything with us"

17 February 2008

After the failure of two private takeover bids, Alistair Darling nationalises Northern Rock in what
he claims will be a temporary measure. It will be nearly four years before it returns to the private

sector

14 March 2008

The investment bank Bear Stearns is bought out by JP Morgan. It is the biggest casualty of the
crisis so far.

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6 May 2008

Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary from 2006 to 2009, in an interview with the Wall Street

Journal: "I do believe that the worst is likely to be behind us"

7 September 2008

The US government bails out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – two huge firms that had
guaranteed thousands of sub-prime mortgages

Larry Elliott, Guardian economics editor, writing in the aftermath

"Hank Paulson, secretary of the US treasury, did not take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into

public ownership because he has become a born-again socialist: he acted because he feared a
systemic global financial crisis that would prompt the biggest depression since the 1930s . This
is the biggest rescue operation since the credit crunch began – but it probably won't be the last"

15 September 2008

Heavily exposed to the sub-prime mortgage market, the American bank Lehman Brothers files
for bankruptcy, prompting worldwide financial panic

Dick Fuld, the final chairman and CEO of the bank, was the focus of protesters' anger when he
testified before the US House of Representatives about the effects of the collapse of Lehman

Brothers.

17 September 2008

The UK's largest mortgage lenders, HBOS, is rescued by Lloyds TSB after a huge drop in its

share price

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, at the time

"I am very angry that we can have a situation where a bank can be forced into a merger by
basically a bunch of short-selling spivs and speculators in the financial markets. All financial
regulators have got to wake up to where we are at the present moment"

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21 September 2008

US investment banks are pummelled on the stock markets and Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan

Chase change their status to banking holding companies, marking the end of the investment
banking model dominant during the noughties

25-29 September 2008

Two more American banks collapse – Washington Mutual and Wachovia

30 September 2008

Shortly after becoming the first European country to slide into recession, Ireland's government

promises to underwrite the entire Irish banking system – a pledge that they were ultimately
unable to uphold

October 2008

After days of wrangling in Congress, Hank Paulson pushes through the Troubled Asset Relief
Program (Tarp), which at that point bought or insured toxic sub-prime mortgage securities from
the major banks

David Buik, market strategist, and consultant at Cantor Index

"We might have been critical of Hank Paulson. But with Tarp, he took a decision. And that has
to be right. Markets cope very well with good news. They cope even better with bad news. They
do not cope with uncertainty"

7-8 October 2008

Iceland's three biggest commercial banks – Glitnir, Kaupthing, and Landsbanki – collapse. To

protect the deposits of their many British customers, Gordon Brown uses anti-terror legislation
to freeze the assets of the banks' UK subsidiaries

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8 October 2008

Amid the worst ever week for the Dow Jones, eight central banks including the Bank of England,

the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve cut their interest rates by 0.5% in a
coordinated attempt to ease the pressure on borrowers

13 October 2008

To avert the collapse of the UK banking sector, the British government bails out several banks,

including the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, and HBOS. The deal is thrashed out over the

weekend, and well into the small hours of Monday morning

Paul Myners, City minister 2008-10

"RBS, HBOS and Lloyds were experiencing a professional bank run, where the markets were
no longer willing to fund the UK banks. That's why we stepped in. We will never appreciate how

close we came to a collapse of the banking system

7 November 2008

Figures show that 240,000 Americans lost their jobs in the last month

12 November 2008

After criticism from high-profile economists, Hank Paulson announces drastic changes to Tarp.
He cancels the acquisition of toxic assets, and decides instead to give banks cash injections

Charles Ferguson, director, Inside Job, an Oscar-winning documentary about the banking crisis

"It was totally clear nobody knew what they were doing. Hank Paulson would change his plans

and his public statements on approximately a daily basis. It also became clear that they were

not going to punish people or change the nature of the system."

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14 November 2008

The G20 meets for the first time since Lehman's went under, in a meeting that was compared in

significance to the Bretton Woods summit in 1944

10 December 2008

"We not only saved the world …" In a slip of the tongue at PMQs, Gordon Brown reveals how
highly he rates his role during the financial crisis.

2 April 2009

The G20 agrees on a global stimulus package worth $5tn

27 August 2009

Adair Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, calls some banking activity
"socially useless"

10 October 2009

George Papandreou's socialist government is elected in Greece. Just over a week later, he
reveals that the hole in Greece's finances are double what was previously feared

27 April 2010

Greek debt is downgraded to junk

2 May 2010

In a move that signals the start of the Eurozone crisis, Greece is bailed out for the first time,
after Eurozone finance ministers agree loans worth €110bn. This intensifies the austerity

programme in the country, and sends hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets

28 November 2010

European ministers agree a bailout for Ireland worth €85bn

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5 May 2011

The ECB bails out Portugal

21 July 2011

Having failed to get its house in order, Greece is bailed out for a second time

5 August 2011

S&P downgrades US sovereign debt

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank at last Thursday's press conference.

Photo: AP/Michael Probst

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank. Photo: AP/Michael Probst

12 February 2012

Greece passes its most severe austerity package yet

12 March 2012

The number of unemployed Europeans reaches its highest ever level

12 June 2012

The level of Spanish borrowing reaches a record high

26 July 2012

Unexpectedly, ECB president Mario Draghi, above, gives his strongest defence yet of the Euro,
prompting markets to rally

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David Cameron:

David William Donald Cameron (/ˈkæmᵊrən/; born 9 October 1966) is a British politician, who is

currently serving as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as well as the Leader of the
Conservative Party, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Witney.[1]

Cameron studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Brasenose College, Oxford.
Cameron then joined the Conservative Research Department, and became special adviser, first

to Norman Lamont and then to Michael Howard. Cameron was Director of Corporate Affairs at
Carlton Communications for seven years.

Cameron first stood for Parliament in Stafford in 1997, and ran on a Eurosceptic platform,
breaking with his party's then-policy by opposing British membership of the single European

currency, and was defeated by a swing close to the national average.

Cameron was first elected to Parliament in the 2001 general election for the Oxfordshire
constituency of Witney. Cameron was promoted to the Opposition front bench two years later,
and rose rapidly to become head of Policy Co-ordination during the 2005 general election

campaign. With a public image of a youthful, moderate candidate who would appeal to young
voters, Cameron won the Conservative leadership election in 2005.[2]

Following the election of a hung parliament in the 2010 general election, Cameron became
Prime Minister as the leader of a coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.[3]
The 43-year-old Cameron became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812,

beating the record previously set by Tony Blair in May 1997.

Cameron was re-elected as Prime Minister in the 2015 general election, with the Conservatives

winning a surprise parliamentary majority for the first time since 1992, despite consistent
predictions of a second hung parliament.[4] Cameron is the first Prime Minister to be re-elected
immediately after serving a full term with an increased popular vote share since Lord Salisbury

in 1900, and the only Prime Minister other than Margaret Thatcher to be re-elected immediately
after a full term, with a greater share of the seats.[5][6]

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Cameron's premiership has been marked by the ongoing effects of the late-2000s financial

crisis leading to a large deficit in government finances, which his government has emphasised
the need to reduce through austerity measures. Cameron's administration introduced large-

scale changes to welfare, immigration policy, education and healthcare, by introducing the
Welfare Reform Act of 2012, the Education Act of 2011, the Health and Social Care Act of 2012
and a range of immigration reforms from 2010 onwards, culminating in the Immigration Act of

2014.[7]

In 2011, Cameron became the first British Prime Minister to 'veto' a European Union (EU)

treaty.[8] Cameron's government introduced a nationwide referendum on voting reform in 2011,

and agreed to a Scottish independence referendum in September 2014 (which resulted in a 'No'
to independence majority). David Cameron is the first Conservative Party leader to set out the

case for same-sex marriage in the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.

Cameron's government met the United Nations target of spending at least 0.7% of GNI on aid to
developing countries. In 2013, Cameron promised an 'In/Out' referendum on the UK's

membership regarding the EU before the end of 2017, after a period of renegotiation, if the
Conservatives were to gain a majority in the 2015 general election; the referendum was

legislated following their victory.

Policies and views:

Self-description of views

Cameron describes himself as a "modern compassionate conservative" and has spoken of a

need for a new style of politics, saying that he was "fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of
Westminster".[130] He has stated that he is "certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know

whether that makes me a Thatcherite."[131] He has also claimed to be a "liberal Conservative",

and "not a deeply ideological person."[132] As Leader of the Opposition, Cameron stated that
he did not intend to oppose the government as a matter of course, and would offer his support

in areas of agreement. He has urged politicians to concentrate more on improving people's

happiness and "general well-being", instead of focusing solely on "financial wealth".[133] There

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have been claims that he described himself to journalists at a dinner during the leadership

contest as the "heir to Blair".[134]

Shortly after becoming Conservative leader, Cameron gave a speech to the 2006 Conservative
Conference in Bournemouth in which he described the National Health Service as "one of the
20th Century's greatest achievements". He went on to say, "Tony Blair explained his priorities in

three words: education, education, education. I can do it in three letters: N.H.S." He also talked
about his severely disabled son, concluding "So, for me, it is not just a question of saying the

NHS is safe in my hands – of course it will be. My family is so often in the hands of the NHS, so

I want them to be safe there."[135]

Cameron talks with U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 25
May 2011

Cameron has stated that he believes in "spreading freedom and democracy, and supporting

humanitarian intervention" in cases such as the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. However, he says
he is not a neo-conservative because, as a conservative, he recognizes "the complexities of
human nature, and will always be skeptical of grand schemes to remake the world."[136] He

supports multilateralism stating "a country may act alone – but it cannot always succeed alone."
He believes multilateralism can take the form of acting through "NATO, the UN, the G8, the EU
and other institutions", or through international alliances.[137] Cameron has also said that "If the
West is to help other countries, we must do so from a position of genuine moral authority" and
"we must strive above all for legitimacy in what we do."[137]

He believes that British Muslims have a duty to integrate into British culture, but noted in an

article published in 2007 that the Muslim community finds aspects such as high divorce rates
and drug use uninspiring, and that "Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that it is
mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other
way around."[138] In 2010 he appointed the first Muslim member of the British cabinet,

Baroness Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, as a minister without portfolio, and in 2012 made her a

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special minister of state in foreign affairs. She resigned however in August 2014 over the

government's handling of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.

Whilst urging members of his party to support the Coalition's proposals for same-sex marriage,
Cameron said that he backed gay marriage not in spite of his conservatism but because he is a
conservative, and claimed it was about equality.[139] In 2012, Cameron publicly apologised for

Thatcher-era policies on homosexuality, specifically the introduction of the controversial Section

28 laws in the 1980s, which he described as "a mistake",[140] though he had previously voted

against Section 28's full repeal.

Comments on other parties and politicians

Cameron criticised Gordon Brown (when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer) for being "an

analogue politician in a digital age" and referred to him as "the roadblock to reform".[141] He
has also said that John Prescott "clearly looks a fool" in light of allegations of ministerial

misconduct.[142] During a speech to the Ethnic Media Conference on 29 November 2006,

Cameron also described Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, as an "ageing far left politician"
in reference to Livingstone's views on multiculturalism.

As Prime Minister, he reacted to press reports that Brown could be the next head of the
International Monetary Fund by hinting that he may block the appointment, citing the huge
national debt that Brown left the country with as a reason for Brown not being suitable for the
role.[144]

In April 2006, Cameron accused the UK Independence Party of being "fruitcakes, loonies and
closet racists, mostly,"[145] leading UKIP MEP Nigel Farage (who became leader in September
of that year) to demand an apology for the remarks. Right-wing Conservative MP Bob Spink,

who later defected to UKIP, also criticised the remarks,[146] as did The Daily Telegraph.

Cameron was seen encouraging Conservative MPs to join the standing ovation given to Tony

Blair at the end of his last Prime Minister's Question Time; he had paid tribute to the "huge

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efforts" Blair had made and said Blair had "considerable achievements to his credit, whether it is

peace in Northern Ireland or his work in the developing world, which will endure".[148]

In 2006, Cameron made a speech in which he described extremist Islamic organisations and
the British National Party as "mirror images" to each other, both preaching "creeds of pure
hatred".[149] Cameron is listed as being a supporter of Unite Against Fascism.[150]

Cameron in late 2009 urged the Lib Dems to join the Conservatives in a new "national

movement" saying there was "barely a cigarette paper" between them on a large number of
issues. The invitation was rejected at the time by the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who

said that the Conservatives were totally different from his party and that the Lib Dems were the
true "progressives" in UK politics.[151] Upon winning a second term as Prime Minister after the
Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, Cameron said he was "proud to lead the first coalition

government in 70 years" and offered particular thanks to Clegg for his role in it.[152]

In September 2015, after the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, Cameron called the
party a "threat" to British national and economic security, on the basis of Corbyn's defence and
fiscal policies.

Reforms under Cameroun:

Allegations of social elitism

Cameron speaking at a Conservative reception in 2008

While Leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron has been accused of reliance on "old-boy

networks",[154] and conversely attacked by his party for the imposition of selective shortlists of

women and ethnic minority prospective parliamentary candidates.[114]

Two of most Cameron's senior appointments, that of George Osborne as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and Boris Johnson as Conservative Party candidate for Mayor of London have been
former members of the Bullingdon Club. Michael Gove conceded it was "ridiculous" how many
fellow Cabinet ministers were old-Etonians, though he placed the blame on the failings of the

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state education system rather than Cameron[155] However, Michael Mosbacher, co-founder of

Standpoint, says that Cameron's Cabinet has the lowest number of Etonians of any past
Conservative government: "David Cameron's government is the least patrician, least wealthy

and least public-school-educated — indeed the least Etonian — Conservative-led government

this country has ever seen".[156]

Poverty

In 2006 Cameron described poverty as a "moral disgrace"[157] and promised to tackle relative
poverty.[158] In 2007 Cameron promised, "We can make British poverty history, and we will

make British poverty history". Also in 2007 he stated "Ending child poverty is central to
improving child well-being".[159] in 2015 Polly Toynbee questioned Cameron's commitment to
tackling poverty, contrasting his earlier statements agreeing that "poverty is relative" with

proposals to change the government's poverty measure, and saying that cuts in child tax credits
would increase child poverty among low-paid working families.[160]

Food banks

The rapid growth in the use of food banks under David Cameron became one of the major
criticisms of his administration, and a recurring theme at Question Time.[161][162] Cameron
praised volunteers providing donated food as "part of what I call the Big Society", to which Ed
Miliband responded that he "never thought the Big Society was about feeding hungry children in
Britain"[163]

In February 2014, 27 Anglican bishops together with leading Methodists and Quakers wrote an
open letter to Cameron blaming government policy for a rise in the use of food banks. The letter
claimed that "over half of people using food banks have been put in that situation by cutbacks to

and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions"[164] The
government responded that delays in benefit processing had been reduced, with the proportion
of benefits paid on time rising from 88–89% under Labour, to 96–97% in 2014.[165] Cameron

said that the rise in food bank usage was due to the government encouraging Jobcentres and

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local authorities to promote them, and noted an OECD report which appeared to show a fall in

the proportion of Britons struggling to buy food.[166]

Expenses

During the MPs expenses scandal in 2009, Cameron said he would lead Conservatives in
repaying "excessive" expenses and threatened to expel MPs that refused after the expense
claims of several members of his shadow cabinet had been questioned:

We have to acknowledge just how bad this is, the public are really angry and we have to start by

saying, 'Look, this system that we have, that we used, that we operated, that we took part in – it
was wrong and we are sorry about that'.

Cameron is in favour of self-determination for Gibraltarians, 10 September 2013

One day later, The Daily Telegraph published figures showing over five years he had claimed

£82,450 on his second home allowance.[168] Cameron repaid £680 claimed for repairs to his
constituency home.[169] Although he was not accused of breaking any rules, Cameron was
placed on the defensive over mortgage interest expense claims covering his constituency home,
after a report in the Mail on Sunday suggested he could have reduced the mortgage interest bill
by putting an additional £75000 of his own money towards purchasing the home in Witney

instead of paying off an earlier mortgage on his London home.[170] Cameron said that doing
things differently would not have saved the taxpayer any money, as he was paying more on
mortgage interest than he was able to reclaim as expenses anyway[170] He also spoke out in

favour of laws giving voters the power to "recall" or "sack" MPs accused of wrongdoing.[170] He
subsequently faced criticism for his handling of the expenses row surrounding Culture Secretary
Maria Miller, when he rejected calls from fellow Conservative MPs to sack her from the front

bench in 2014.[171]

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Raising teaching standards

At the launch of the Conservative Party's education manifesto in January 2010, Cameron

declared an admiration for the "brazenly elite" approach to education of countries such as
Singapore and South Korea and expressed a desire to "elevate the status of teaching in our
country".[172] He suggested the adoption of more stringent criteria for entry to teaching and

offered repayment of the loans of maths and science graduates obtaining first or 2.1 degrees
from "good" universities.[173]

Wes Streeting, then president of the National Union of Students, said "The message that the

Conservatives are sending to the majority of students is that if you didn't go to a university
attended by members of the Shadow Cabinet, they don't believe you're worth as much."[174]
Chris Keates, head of teaching union NASUWT, responded to the manifesto as a whole by

saying that teachers would be left "shocked, dismayed and demoralised" and warned of the
potential for strikes as a result.[175]

Transport

Commenting on rail fare increases in January 2015, Cameron said "We’ve made sure that rail
fares cannot go up by more than inflation. So the rail fare increase this year, as last year, is
linked to inflation, and I think that’s right. In previous years it’s gone up by more than inflation.
But, of course, what you’re seeing on our railways is a £38bn investment project. And that
money is coming, of course, from taxpayers, from the government, and from farepayers as

well.” He described the policies of his government as “the biggest investment in our roads since
the 1970s, but in our railways since Victorian times”.[176]

European Union

David Cameron supports the United Kingdom staying in the European Union, which it joined in
1973. Following a renegotiation of the terms of the UK's membership of the EU, he called a

referendum on membership of the European Union to be held on 23 June 2016.[177]

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South Africa

In April 2009, The Independent reported that in 1989, while Nelson Mandela remained

imprisoned under the apartheid régime, David Cameron had accepted a trip to South Africa paid
for by an anti-sanctions lobby firm. A spokesperson for Cameron responded by saying that the
Conservative Party was at that time opposed to sanctions against South Africa and that his trip

was a fact-finding mission. However, the newspaper reported that Cameron's then superior at
Conservative Research Department called the trip "jolly", saying that "it was all terribly relaxed,

just a little treat, a perk of the job. The Botha regime was attempting to make itself look less

horrible, but I don't regard it as having been of the faintest political consequence." Cameron
distanced himself from his party's history of opposing sanctions against the regime. He was
criticised by Labour MP Peter Hain, himself an anti-apartheid campaigner.[178]

Iraq war

In an interview on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in 2006, Cameron said that he supported
the decision of the then Labour Government to go to war in Iraq, and said that he thought
supporters should "see it through".[179] He also supported a motion brought by the SNP and

Plaid Cymru in 2006 calling for an inquiry into the government's conduct of the Iraq war. In
2011, he oversaw the withdrawal of British soldiers from Iraq. He has repeatedly called for the
Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war to conclude and publish its findings, saying “People want to
know the truth" [180]

Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague speaking to NATO Secretary General Anders
Fogh Rasmussen at the London Conference on Libya, 29 March 2011

Libya–United Kingdom relations soured in 2011 with the outbreak of the Libyan Civil War.

Cameron condemned the "appalling and unacceptable" violence used against anti-Gaddafi
protesters.[181] After weeks of lobbying by the UK and its allies, on 17 March 2011 the United
Nations Security Council approved a no-fly zone to prevent government forces loyal to

Muammar Gaddafi from carrying out air attacks on anti-Gaddafi rebels.[182] Two days later the
UK and the United States fired more than 110 Tomahawk missiles at targets in Libya.[183]

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Cameron has said he is "proud" of the role United Kingdom played in the overthrow of Gaddafi's

government.[184] Cameron also stated that UK had played a "very important role",[185] adding
that "a lot of people said that Tripoli was completely different to Benghazi and that the two don't
get on – they were wrong. … People who said 'this is all going to be an enormous swamp of

Islamists and extremists' – they were wrong."[186]

In March 2016, with two main rival factions based in Tripoli and Benghazi continuing to fight, an
Independent editorial noted that "there can be no question that Libya is broken. There are three

nominal governments, none of which holds much authority. The economy is flatlining. Refugees
flood to the Mediterranean. And Isis has put down roots in Sirte and, increasingly,
Tripoli."[187][188] It was at this time that U.S. President Barack Obama accused Cameron of

allowing Libya to sink into a "mess", though in private the American leader bluntly describes
post-intervention Libya as a "shit show".[189]

Military intervention in Iraq and Syria

In August 2013, Cameron lost a motion in favour of bombing Syrian armed forces in response to
the Ghouta chemical attack, becoming the first prime minister to suffer such a foreign-policy
defeat since 1782.[190] In September 2014, MPs passed a motion in favour of British planes
joining, at the request of the Iraqi government, a bombing campaign against Islamic State (IS)
targets in Iraq;[191] the motion explicitly expressed parliament's disapproval of UK military

action in Syria.[192] Cameron promised that, before expanding UK air strikes to include IS units
in Syria, he would seek parliamentary approval.[193]

In July 2015, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Reprieve revealed that, without the

knowledge of UK parliamentarians, RAF pilots had, in fact, been bombing targets in Syria, and
that Cameron knew of this.[194][195] The prime minister, along with Defence Secretary Michael
Fallon, faced strong criticism, including from Tory MPs, for not informing the Commons about

this deployment; the Ministry of Defence said that the pilots concerned were "embedded" with
foreign military forces, and so were "effectively" operating as such, while Fallon denied that MPs

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had been, as he put it, "kept in the dark".[196][197][198] The Reprieve FoI request also revealed

that British drone pilots had been embedded, almost continuously, with American forces at
Creech Air Force Base since 2008. These drone operators, who were "a gift of services",

meaning the UK still paid their salaries and covered their expenses, had been carrying out
operations that included reconnaissance in Syria to assist American strikes against IS.[199]

Fallon said that it was "illogical" for the UK not to bomb ISIL in Syria as the organisation does
not "differentiate between Syria and Iraq" and is "organised and directed and administered from

Syria".[200] Following the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015, for which Islamic State

claimed responsibility, Cameron began pushing for a strategy for the Royal Air Force to bomb
Syria in retaliation.[201] Cameron set out his case for military intervention to Parliament on 26
November, telling MPs that it was the only way to guarantee Britain's safety and would be part

of a "comprehensive" strategy to defeat IS.[202] On 3 December 2015 MPs voted 397–223 in

favour of launching air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. The vote for military action was
supported by all but seven members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, as well as 66
Labour MPs who backed the government in defiance of their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who had
expressed his opposition to air strikes.[203]

Falkland Islands

In 2013, in response to Argentina's calls for negotiations over the Falkland Islands' sovereignty,
a referendum was called asking Falkland Islanders whether they supported the continuation of
their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom. With a turnout of 91.94%, an

overwhelming 99.8% voted to remain a British territory with only three votes against.[204]

In light of this Cameron said:

We believe in the Falkland islanders' right to self-determination. They had a referendum. They
couldn’t have been more clear about wanting to remain with our country and we should protect
and defend them.[205]

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India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Cameron at the Wembley Stadium, 13 November

2015

Cameron has been a strong advocate of increased ties between India and the United Kingdom;
describing Indian – British relations as the "New Special Relationship" in 2010.[206][207]

In October 2012, as Narendra Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK rescinded its boycott of

the then Gujarat state Chief Minister over religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 that left more than

2,000 dead,[208] and in November 2013, Cameron commented that he was "open" to meeting
Modi.[209]

Modi was later elected as Prime Minister in a landslide majority, leading to Cameron calling
Modi and congratulating him on the "election success",[210] one of the first Western leaders to

do.[211]

Sri Lanka

Cameron reiterated calls for an independent investigation into the alleged war crimes during the
final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War.[212] "There needs to be proper inquiries into what

happened at the end of the war, there needs to be proper human rights, democracy for the
Tamil minority in that country" Cameron stated.[213][214] He stated that, if this investigation was
not completed by March 2014, he would press for an independent international

inquiry.[215][216][217] This followed a visit to Jaffna, a war-ravaged town in the northern part of
Sri Lanka; Cameron was the first foreign leader to visit Jaffna since the island once colonised by

Britain became independent in 1948.[218][219] Cameron was mobbed by demonstrators, mostly

women, seeking his assistance in tracing missing relatives.[220][221]

Turkey and Israel

In a speech in Ankara in July 2010, Cameron stated unequivocally his support for Turkey's
accession to the EU, citing economic, security and political considerations, and claimed that

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those who opposed Turkish membership were driven by "protectionism, narrow nationalism or

prejudice".[222][223] In that speech, he was also critical of Israeli action during the Gaza flotilla
raid and its Gaza policy, and repeated his opinion that Israel had turned Gaza into a "prison

camp",[222] having previously referred to Gaza as "a giant open prison".[224] These views were
met with mixed reactions.[225][226][227] The Cameron government does not formally
recognized the Armenian massacres in Turkey as a "genocide".[228]

At the end of May 2011, Cameron stepped down as patron of the Jewish National

Fund,[229][230] becoming the first British prime minister not to be patron of the charity in the

110 years of its existence.[231]

Cameron with Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2013

In a speech in 2011 Cameron said: "You have a Prime Minister whose commitment and
determination to work for peace in Israel is deep and strong. Britain will continue to push for

peace, but will always stand up for Israel against those who wish her harm". He said he wanted
to reaffirm his "unshakable" belief in Israel within the same message.[232] He also voiced his
opposition to the Goldstone Report, claiming it had been biased against Israel and not enough

blame had been placed on Hamas.

In March 2014, during his first visit to Israel as Prime Minister, Cameron addressed Israel's
Knesset in Jerusalem, where he offered his full support for peace efforts between Israelis and
Palestinians, hoping a two-state solution might be achieved.[233] He also made clear his

rejection of trade or academic boycotts against Israel,[234] acknowledged Israel's right to

defend its citizens as "a right enshrined in international law," and made note of the Balfour

Declaration of 1917, as "the moment when the State of Israel went from a dream to a plan,
Britain has played a proud and vital role in helping to secure Israel as a homeland for the Jewish
people."[233] During his two-day visit, he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.[235] Senior Foreign Office minister

Baronness Warsi resigned over the Cameron government's decision not to condemn Israel for

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the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, saying that the government’s "approach and language during the

current crisis in Gaza is morally indefensible."[236]

Saudi Arabia

Cameron supports Britain's close relationship with Saudi Arabia.[237] In January 2015,
Cameron travelled to the Saudi capital Riyadh to pay his respects following the death of the
nation’s King Abdullah.

According to Wikileaks, Cameron initiated a secret deal with Saudi Arabia ensuring both were

elected onto the U.N. Human Rights Council.[238] Cameron's government announced "firm
political support" for the 2015 Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen against the Shi'a
Houthis,[239] re-supplying the Saudi military with weapons.[240][241] Cameron has been

criticized for participating in Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.[242]

LGBT rights

Back in 2010 David Cameron was given a score of 36% in favour of lesbian, gay and bisexual
equality by Stonewall.[243] Prior to 2005, David Cameron was opposed to gay rights, calling it a
"fringe agenda" and attacking the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair for "moving heaven and earth
to allow the promotion of homosexuality in our schools" by repealing the anti-gay Section 28 of

the Local Government Act 1988.[244] Cameron is also recorded by Hansard as having voted
against same-sex adoption rights in 2002, but he denies this, claiming he abstained from the
three line whip imposed on him by his party. In 2008, he wanted lesbians who receive IVF

treatment to be required to name a father figure, which received condemnation from LGBT
equality groups.[244] However, Cameron supported commitment for gay couples in a 2005
speech, and in October 2011 urged Conservative MPs to support gay marriage.[245]

In November 2012, Cameron and Nick Clegg agreed to fast-track legislation for introducing
same-sex marriage.[246] Cameron stated that he wanted to give religious groups the ability to

host gay marriage ceremonies, and that he did not want to exclude gay people from a "great
institution".[247] In 2013, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 became law despite

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opposition from more than half of his fellow Conservative MPs, including Cabinet ministers

Owen Paterson and David Jones.[248] He also subsequently appointed two women who had
voted against same-sex marriage as ministers in the Government Equalities Office, Nicky

Morgan and Caroline Dinenage following the 2015 general election.[249]

In August 2013, he rejected calls by Stephen Fry and others to strip Russia from hosting the

2014 Winter Olympics due to its anti-gay laws.[250] Cameron did not attend the games but
denied it was a boycott in protest at Russia's laws, having previously raised the issue of gay

rights in the country with Vladimir Putin.[251]

Immigration

Cameron said immigration from outside the EU should be subject to annual limits. He said: "... in

the last decade we have had an immigration policy that's completely lax. The pressure it puts on
our public services and communities is too great."[252] In 2015, The Independent reported,

"The Conservatives have failed spectacularly to deliver their pledge to reduce net migration to
less than 100,000 a year. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced a net flow of
298,000 migrants to the UK in the 12 months to last September – up from 210,000 in the

previous year, and equal to the population of a city like Nottingham."[253]

Allegations of recreational drug use

During the leadership election, allegations were made that Cameron had used cannabis and
cocaine recreationally before becoming an MP.[254] Pressed on this point during the BBC

television programme Question Time, Cameron expressed the view that everybody was allowed
to "err and stray" in their past.[255] During his 2005 Conservative leadership campaign he
addressed the question of drug consumption by remarking that "I did lots of things before I

came into politics which I shouldn't have done. We all did."[255]

Defence cuts

Cameron visits British troops in Afghanistan, 3 October 2014

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In 2014, Cameron dismissed warnings that his cuts to the UK defence budget had left it less

than a "first class-player in terms of defence" and no longer a "full partner" to the United
States.[256]

In the July 2015 budget Chancellor George Osborne announced that the UK defence spending
would meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP.[257]

Criticism of use of statutory instruments

In January 2016, The Independent said there had been an increase of over 50% in the use of

statutory instruments since 2010. Lord Jopling deplored the behaviour which he called an abuse
whilst Baroness Smith of Basildon asked whether it was the start of "constitutional
Gerrymandering.

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