2. REFORMS
• The need to reform the law in order to improve social conditions.
• It had been started by early radicals, and encouraged by the American War
of Independence, and by the French Revolution.
THE YEARS OF POWER AND DANGER

3. WORKERS REVOLT
• Working together for the first time, unions, workers and radicals put forward a People's Charter in
1838. The Charter demanded rights that are now accepted by everyone: the vote for all adults; the
right for a man without property of his own to be an MP; voting in secret, payment for MPs and an
election every year.

4. THE RAILWAY
• Industrialists had built the railways to transport goods, not people , in order to bring down
the cost of transport.
• In 1851 the government made the railway companies provide passenger trains which
stopped at all stations.

5. THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES
• The middle class grew more quickly than ever before and included greater differences of wealth,
social position and kinds of work. It included those who worked in the professions, such as the
Church, the law, medicine, the civil service, the diplomatic service, merchant banking and the
army and the navy.

6. • The two parties. Tory (or Conservative as it became officially known) and Liberal, developed greater
party organisation and order.
• Social improvement and political reform acted on each other throughout the century to change the
face of the nation almost beyond recognition.
POLITICS

7. QUEEN, MONARCHY AND EMPIRE
• She came to the throne in 1837 and reigned until her death in 1901.
• Britain's empire had first been built on trade and the need to defend this
against rival European countries. After the loss of the American colonies in
1783, the idea of creating new colonies remained unpopular until the 1830s.
• In South Africa Britain found th at dealing with other European settlers present ed
new prob lems. The Dutch settlers, the Boers, fought two wars against the British
at the end of the century, proving again. as the Crimean War had done. the weakn
esses of the British army. The Boers were defeated only with great difficulty.

8. WALES, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
• WALES: Its population grew from half a million in 1800 to over two million by 1900 partly because the
average expectation of life doubled from thirty to sixty.
• SCOTLAND: There were coal mines and factories producing steel and iron, as well as the centre of
the British shipbuilding industry on the River Clyde.
• IRELAND: The struggle for Irish freedom from English rule became a struggle between Catholic and
Protestant.

9. THE END OF AN AGE
SOCIALAND ECONOMIC IMPROVEMENTS
• Between 1875 and 1914 the condition of the poor in most of Britain greatly
improved as prices fell by 40 percent and real wages doubled.
• Life at home was made more comfortable.

10. • The most important idea of the nineteenth century was that everyone had the right to personal
freedom, which was the basis of capitalism.
• British self-confidence was built not only upon power but also upon the rapid scientific advances
being made at the time. For instance, in 1857 Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species.
CHANGES IN THINKING

11. THE STORM CLOUDS OF WAR
The danger of war with Germany had been clear from the beginning of the century, and it was this
which had brought France and Britain together. Britain was particularly frightened of Germany's
modern navy, which seemed a good deal stronger than its own.

12. EXTENSION OF SLAVERY
• Slavery, which up to now had received little public attention, began to assume much greater
importance as a national issue.
• The Industrial Revolution, which made textile manufacturing a large scale operation, vastly increased
the demand for raw cotton.
• Sugar cane, another labor-intensive crop, also contributed to slavery’s extension in the South.

13. THE WOMEN´S RIGHTS
Social reforms brought many women to a realization of their own
unequal position in society. From colonial times, unmarried
women had enjoyed many of the same legal rights as men,
although custom required that they marry early. With matrimony,
women virtually lost their separate identities in the eyes of the
law.

14. LINCOLN, DOUGLAS, AND BROWN
• Abraham Lincoln had long regarded slavery as an evil. As early as 1854 in a
widely publicized speech, he declared that all national legislation should be
framed on the principle that slavery was to be restricted and eventually
abolished.