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Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (VII of Scotland and II of Ireland) in 1688 by a union of Parliamentarians with an invading army led by the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange), who as a result ascended the English throne as William III of England. The expression "Glorious Revolution" was first used by John Hampden in late 1689, and is an expression that is still used by the Westminster Parliament.
The Glorious Revolution is also sometimes called the Bloodless Revolution. However, it was not completely bloodless. In England there were two significant clashes between the two armies, plus anti-Catholic riots in several towns. There were also three major battles in Ireland and serious fighting in Scotland. The revolution also led to the collapse of the Dominion of New England and the overthrow of Maryland's government.
The Revolution is closely tied in with the events of the War of the Grand Alliance on mainland Europe, and may be seen as the last successful invasion of England. It can be argued that James's overthrow began modern English parliamentary democracy: never since has the monarch held absolute power, and the Bill of Rights has become one of the most important documents in the political history of Britain. The deposition of the Roman Catholic James II ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England, and also led to limited toleration for nonconformist Protestants—it would be some time before they had full political rights. For Catholics, however, it was disastrous both socially and politically. Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over 100 years afterwards. They were also denied commissions in the British army and the monarch was forbidden to be Catholic or marry a Catholic, thus ensuring the Protestant succession.
The invasion marked the final defeat of England in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century. However, the personal union, the common market and the merging of the English and Dutch navies shifted the dominance in world trade from the Dutch to the British.

Background

During his three-year reign, King James II became directly involved in the political battles in England between Catholicism and Protestantism on the one hand, and on the other, between the divine right of the Crown and the political rights of Parliament. James's greatest political problem was his Catholicism, which left him alienated from both parties in Parliament. The low church Whigs had failed in their attempt to exclude James from the throne between 1679 and 1681, and James's supporters were the High Church Anglican Tories. When James inherited the throne in 1685, he had much support in the 'Loyal Parliament', which was composed mostly of Tories. His Catholicism was a concern to many, but that he had no son, and his daughters were Protestants, was a "saving grace". James's attempt to relax the penal laws alienated his natural supporters, however, because the Tories viewed this as tantamount to disestablishment of the Church of England. Abandoning the Tories, James looked to form a 'King's party' as a counterweight to the Anglican Tories, so in 1687 James supported the policy of religious toleration and issued the Declaration of Indulgence. By allying himself with the Catholics, Dissenters, and nonconformists, James hoped to build a coalition that would advance Catholic emancipation.
In 1686, James coerced the Court of the King's Bench into deciding that the King could dispense with religious restrictions of the Test Act. James ordered the removal of Henry Compton, the anti-Catholic Bishop of London, and dismissed the Protestant fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford and replaced them with Catholics.
James also created a large standing army and employed Catholics in positions of power in the army. To his opponents in Parliament this seemed like a prelude to arbitrary rule, so James prorogued Parliament without gaining Parliament's consent. At this time, the English regiments of the army were encamped at Hounslow, near the capital. The army in Ireland was purged of Protestants who were replaced with Catholics, and by 1688 James had more than 34,000 men under arms in his three kingdoms.
In April 1688, James re-issued the Declaration of Indulgence and ordered all clergymen to read it in their churches. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, and six other bishops (see the Seven Bishops) wrote to James asking him to reconsider his policies, they were arrested on charges of seditious libel, but at trial they were acquitted to the cheers of the London crowd.
Matters came to a head in 1688, when James fathered a son; until then, the throne would have passed to his daughter, Mary, a Protestant. The prospect of a Catholic dynasty in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland was now likely. Some leaders of the Tory Party united with members of the opposition Whigs and set out to solve the crisis.

James II
King of England, Scotland and Ireland, Duke of Normandy.

Conspiracy

In 1686, a group of conspirators met at Charborough House in Dorset to plan the overthrow of "the tyrant race of Stuarts". In June 1688, a further conspiracy was launched at Old Whittington, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, to depose James and replace him with his daughter Mary and her husband, William Henry of Orange — both Protestants and both grandchildren of Charles I of England. Before the birth of James's son on June 10 (Julian calendar), Mary had been the heir to the throne and William was third in line. James however had only wanted to treat them as possible heirs on condition that they accepted his pro-Catholic position, which they had been unwilling to do for fear that French influence would become too great. William was also stadtholder of the main provinces of the Dutch Republic, then in the preliminary stages of joining the War of the Grand Alliance against France. He had already acquired the reputation of being the main champion in Europe of the Protestant cause against Catholicism and French absolutism; it seems that he saw an opportunity for fulfilling his principal goal: crushing the power of France. It is still a matter of controversy whether the initiative for the conspiracy was taken by the English or by the stadtholder and his wife. William had been trying to influence English politics for well over a year, letting Grand Pensionary Gaspar Fagel publish an open letter to the English people in November 1687 deploring the religious policy of James, which action had generally been interpreted as a covert bid for kingship. On December 18 the Duke of Norfolk warned James of a conspiracy on the side of his son-in-law. After his envoy Everhard van Weede Dijkvelt in April 1687 had approached the main Whig and Tory leaders William had maintained a close secret correspondence with them, using as a contact Frederik van Nassau. In it he had not committed himself to any definite action, but an understanding had been reached that if William should, for whatever reason, ascend, he would in accordance with his anti-absolutist reputation restrain the use of Royal power; in return William desired a full employment of English military resources against France. It has been suggested that the crisis caused by the prospect of a new Catholic heir made William decide to invade the next summer as early as November 1687, but this is disputed. It is certain however that in April 1688, when France and England concluded a naval agreement that stipulated that the French would finance an English squadron in The Channel, he seriously began to prepare for a military intervention and seek political and financial support for such an undertaking.

William III
King of England, Scotland and Ireland,
stadtholder of Guelders, Holland, Zealand,
Utrecht and Overijssel.

Revolution or Invasion?

Historically the events of 1688 have been called a "revolution" but since an intensified historical interest due to the third centennial of the event, it has become popular to portray the "glorious revolution" as a Dutch invasion of Britain.[10] The "Glorious Revolution" fulfills the criteria for revolution, being an internal change of constitution; and also the criteria for invasion, because it involved the landing of large numbers of foreign troops. The events were unusual because the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and English Bill of Rights meant that the apparently invading monarchs, who were legitimate heirs to the throne, were prepared to be governed by the English Parliament. It is difficult to classify the entire proceedings of 1687–89 but it can be seen that the events occurred in three phases: conspiracy, invasion by Dutch forces and "Glorious Revolution". It has been argued that the invasion aspect had been downplayed as a result of a combination of British pride and successful Dutch propaganda, trying to depict the course of events as a largely internal English affair.

Planning for an invasion

William and Mary laid careful plans over a number of months for an invasion, which they hoped to execute in September. Their first concern was to avoid any impression of foreign conquest, and so in April, they asked for a formal invitation to be issued by a group of worthies. Only after the Prince of Wales had been born, however, and many suspected he was suppositious, did the Immortal Seven (who consisted of one bishop and six nobles) decide to comply, with the letter reaching William on June 30 (Julian calendar). It should be emphasized that this was not an invitation to become king, but rather to "save the Protestant religion" and that the "seven" were not fully aware this would probably lead to a war with France. Also, William's confidante Hans Willem Bentinck launched a propaganda campaign in England, presenting William as being, in fact, a true Stuart but one blessedly free from the, according to the pamphlets, usual Stuart vices of cryptocatholicism, absolutism, and debauchery. Much of the later "spontaneous" support for William had been carefully organised by him and his agents.
In May, William sent an envoy, Johann von Görtz, to Vienna to secretly ensure the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I. Learning that William promised not to persecute the Catholics in England, the emperor approved, promising in turn to make peace with the Ottoman Empire to free his forces for a campaign in the West; on September 4 1688 he would join an alliance with the Republic against France. The Duke of Hanover, Ernest Augustus and the Elector of Saxony, John George III, assured William that they would remain neutral.
The next concern was to assemble a powerful invasion force — contrary to the wishes of the English conspirators, who predicted that a token force would be sufficient. William, financed by the city of Amsterdam after secret and difficult negotiations by Bentinck with the hesitant Amsterdam burgomasters during June, hired 400 transports; also Bentinck negotiated contracts for 13,616 German mercenaries from Brandenburg, Würtemberg, Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) and Celle, to man Dutch border fortresses in order to free an equal number of Dutch elite mercenary troops for use against England. Further financial support was obtained from the most disparate sources: the Jewish banker Francisco Lopes Suasso lent two million guilders; when asked what security he desired, Suasso answered: "If you are victorious, you will surely repay me; if not, the loss is mine". Even Pope Innocent XI, an inveterate enemy of Louis XIV of France, provided a loan to William, though a relation with the invasion has been denied. Total costs were seven million guilders, four million of which would ultimately be paid for by a state loan. In the summer the Dutch navy was expanded to 9000 sailors on the pretext of fighting the Dunkirkers.
In August, it became clear that William had surprisingly strong support within the English army, a situation brought about by James himself. In January 1688 he had forbidden any of his subjects to serve the Dutch and had demanded that the Republic dissolve its mercenary Scottish and English regiments. When this was refused, he asked that at least those willing would be released from their martial oath to be free to return to Britain. To this William consented as it would purify his army from Jacobite elements. In total 104 officers and 44 soldiers returned. The officers were enlisted within the British armies and so favoured that the established officer corps began to fear for its position. On August 14 Lord Churchill wrote to William: "I owe it to God and my country to put my honour into the hands of Your Highness". Nothing comparable happened within the Royal Navy, however.
Still, William had great trouble convincing the Dutch ruling elite, the regents, that such an expensive expedition was really necessary. Also he personally feared that the French might attack the Republic through Flanders, when its army was tied up in England. By early September he was on the brink of cancelling the entire expedition, when French policy played into his hand. On September 9 (Gregorian calendar) the French envoy Jean Antoine de Mesmes, the Comte d'Avaux, handed two letters from the French king, who had known of the invasion plans since May, to the States-General of the Netherlands. In the first they were warned not to attack James. In the second they were urged not to interfere with the French policy in Germany. James hurriedly distanced himself from the first message, trying to convince the States that there was no secret Anglo-French alliance against them. This however had precisely the opposite effect; many members became extremely suspicious. The second message proved that the main French effort was directed to the east, not the north, so there was no immediate danger of a French invasion for the Republic itself.
From September 22, Louis XIV, after having waged a tariff war against the Republic for over a year, seized all Dutch ships present in French ports, seeming to prove that real war with France was imminent, though Louis had meant it to be a mere warning. On September 26 the powerful city council of Amsterdam decided to officially support the invasion. On September 27 Louis crossed the Rhine into Germany and William began to move his army from the eastern borders to the coast. On September 29 the States of Holland gathering in secret session and fearing a French-English alliance, approved the operation, agreeing to make the English "useful to their friends and allies, and especially to this state". They accepted William's argument that a preventive strike was necessary to avoid a repeat of the events of 1672, when England and France had jointly attacked the Republic, "an attempt to bring this state to its ultimate ruin and subjugation, as soon as they find the occasion". The States ordered a Dutch fleet of 53 warships to escort the troop transports. This fleet was in fact commanded by Lieutenant-Admiral Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Vice-Admiral Philips van Almonde but in consideration for English sensitivities on October 6 placed under nominal command of Rear-Admiral Arthur Herbert, the very messenger who, disguised as a common sailor, had brought the invitation to William in The Hague. Though William was himself Admiral-General of the Republic he abstained from operational command, sailing conspicuously on the yacht Den Briel, accompanied by Lieutenant-Admiral Willem Bastiaensz Schepers, the Rotterdam shipping magnate who had organised the transport fleet. The States-General allowed the core regiments of the Dutch field army to participate under command of Marshall Frederick Schomberg.

William's landing

The Dutch preparations, though carried out with great speed, could not remain secret. The English envoy Ignatius White, the Marquess d'Albeville, warned his country: an absolute conquest is intended under the specious and ordinary pretences of religion, liberty, property and a free Parliament.... Louis XIV threatened the Dutch with an immediate declaration of war, should they carry out their plans. Embarkations, started on September 22 (Gregorian calendar), had been completed on October 8 and the expedition was that day openly approved by the States of Holland; the same day James issued a proclamation to the English nation that it should prepare for a Dutch invasion to ward off conquest. On October 10 William issued the Declaration of The Hague (actually written by Fagel), of which 60,000 copies of the English translation by Gilbert Burnet were after the landing distributed in England, in which he assured that his only aim was to maintain the Protestant religion, install a free parliament and investigate the legitimacy of the Prince of Wales. He would respect James's position. On October 14 he responded to the allegations by James in a second declaration, denying any intention to become king or conquer England. Whether he had any at that moment is still controversial.
The swiftness of the embarkations surprised all foreign observers. Louis had in fact delayed his threats against the Dutch until early September because he assumed it then would be too late in the season to set the expedition in motion anyway, if their reaction proved negative; typically such an enterprise would take at least some months. Being ready after the first week of October would normally have meant that the Dutch could have profited from the last spell of good weather, as the autumn storms tend to begin in the third week of that month. This year they came early however. For three weeks the invasion fleet was prevented by adverse southwesterly gales from departing from the naval port of Hellevoetsluis and Catholics all over the Netherlands and the British kingdoms held prayer sessions that this "popish wind" might endure. However, by late October it became the famous "Protestant Wind" by turning to the east, allowing a departure on October 28. It had originally been intended that the Dutch navy defeat the English first to free the way for the transport fleet but because it was now so late in the season and conditions onboard deteriorated rapidly, it was decided to sail in convoy. Hardly had the fleet reached open sea when the wind changed again to the southwest forcing most ships to return to port, becoming a favourable easterly only on November 9.
First the fleet, reassembled on November 11, four times larger than the Spanish Armada and having about 5,000 horses and 50,000 men aboard including 20,000 sailors and supply train, sailed north in the direction of Harwich where Bentinck had a landing site prepared. It was forced south however when the wind turned to the north and sailed in an enormous square formation, 25 ships deep, into the English Channel on November 13, saluting Dover Castle and Calais simultaneously to show off its size. The English navy positioned in the Thames estuary saw the Dutch pass twice but was unable to intercept, first because of the strong easterly wind, the second time due to an unfavourable tide. Landing with a large army in Torbay near Brixham, Devon on November 5 (Julian calendar (November 15 Gregorian calendar), 1688, William was greeted with much show of popular support (this was Bentinck's alternative landing site), and some local men joined his army. His personal disembarkation was delayed somewhat to make it coincide with Bonfire Night, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. The banner of Den Briel proclaimed: "For Liberty and the Protestant Religion" above the motto of the House of Orange, Je maintiendrai ("I will maintain").
William's army totalled approximately 15,000–18,000 on foot and 3,660 cavalry. It was composed mainly of 14,352 regular Dutch mercenary troops (many of them actually Scots, Scandinavians, Germans and Swiss), and about 5,000 English and Scottish volunteers with a substantial Huguenot element in the cavalry and Guards as well as two hundred blacks from plantations in the American colony of Surinam. Many of the mercenaries were Catholic. On November 7 (November 17 Gregorian calendar), the wind turned southwest, preventing the pursuing English fleet commanded by George Legge from attacking the landing site. The French fleet was at the time concentrated in the Mediterranean, to assist a possible attack on the Papal State. Louis delayed his declaration of war until November 26 (Gregorian calendar), hoping at first that their involvement in a protracted English civil war would keep the Dutch from interfering with his German campaign. The Dutch call their fleet action the Glorieuze Overtocht, the "Glorious Crossing".
William considered his veteran army to be sufficient in size to defeat any forces (all rather inexperienced) James could throw against him, but it had been decided to avoid the hazards of battle and maintain a defensive attitude in the hope James's position might collapse by itself; thus he landed far away from James's army, expecting that his English allies would take the initiative in acting against James while he ensured his own protection against potential attacks. William was prepared to wait; he had paid his troops in advance for a three-month campaign. A slow advance, apart from being necessitated by heavy rainfall anyway, had the added benefit of not over-extending the supply lines; the Dutch troops were under strict orders not even to forage, for fear that this would degenerate into plundering which would alienate the population. On November 9 William took Exeter after the magistrates had fled the city, entering on a white palfrey, with the two hundred blacks forming a guard of honour, dressed in white, with turbans and feathers. In the South support from the local gentry was disappointingly limited, but from November 12, in the North, many nobles began to declare for William, as they had promised, often by a public reading of the Declaration. In Yorkshire, printer John White started to print the same document for a more widespread distribution. However, in the first weeks most people carefully avoided taking sides; as a whole the nation neither rallied behind its king, nor welcomed William, but passively awaited the outcome of events. In general, the mood was one of confusion, mutual distrust and depression.

The collapse of James' regime

James refused a French offer to send an expeditionary force, fearing that it would cost him domestic support. He tried to bring the Tories to his side by making concessions but failed because he still refused to endorse the Test Act. His forward forces had gathered at Salisbury, and James went to join them on 19 November (Julian calendar) with his main force, having a total strength of about 19,000. Amid anti-Catholic rioting in London, it rapidly became apparent that the troops were not eager to fight, and the loyalty of many of James' commanders was doubtful; he had been informed of the conspiracy within the army as early as September, but for unknown reasons had refused to arrest the officers involved. Some have argued, however, that if James had been more resolute, the army would have fought and fought well. The first blood was shed at about this time in a skirmish at Wincanton, Somerset, where Royalist troops retreated after defeating a small party of scouts; the total body count on both sides came to about fifteen. In Salisbury, after hearing that some officers had deserted, among them Lord Cornbury, a worried James was overcome by a serious nose-bleed that he interpreted as an evil omen indicating that he should order his army to retreat, which the supreme army commander, the Earl of Feversham, also advised on 23 November. The next day, Lord Churchill of Eyemouth, one of James' chief commanders, deserted to William. On 26 November, James's own daughter, Princess Anne, who doubted the authenticity of her new brother, did the same. Both were serious losses. James returned to London that same day.
After Plymouth surrendered to him on 18 November, William began to advance on 21 November. By 24 November, William's forces were at Salisbury; three days later they had reached Hungerford, where the following day they met with the King's Commissioners to negotiate. James offered free elections and a general amnesty for the rebels. In reality, by that point James was simply playing for time, having already decided to flee the country. He feared that his English enemies would insist on his execution and that William would give in to their demands. Convinced that his army was unreliable, he sent orders to disband it. On 10 December, the two sides fought a second engagement with the Battle of Reading, a defeat for the King's men. In December, there was anti-Catholic rioting in Bristol, Bury St. Edmunds, Hereford, York, Cambridge, and Shropshire. On 9 December, a Protestant mob stormed Dover Castle, where the Catholic Sir Edward Hales was Governor, and seized it. On December 8 William met at last with James's representatives; he agreed to James's proposals but also demanded that all Catholics would be immediately dismissed from state functions and that England would pay for the Dutch military expenses. He received no reply, however.
In the night of 9–10 December, the Queen and the Prince of Wales fled for France. The next day saw James's attempt to escape, the king dropping The Great Seal in the Thames along the way, as no lawful Parliament could be summoned without it. However, he was captured on 11 December by fishermen in Faversham opposite Sheerness, the town on the Isle of Sheppey. On the same day, 27 Lords Spiritual and Temporal, forming a provisional government, decided to ask William to restore order but at the same time asked the king to return to London to reach an agreement with his son-in-law. On the night of the 11th there were riots and lootings of the houses of Catholics and several foreign embassies of Catholic countries in London. The following night a mass panic gripped London during what was later termed the Irish Night. False rumours of an impending Irish army attack on London circulated in the capital, and a mob of over 100,000 assembled, ready to defend the city.
Upon returning to London on 16 December, James was welcomed by cheering crowds. He took heart at this and attempted to recommence government, even presiding over a meeting of the Privy Council. He sent Lord Feversham to William to arrange for a personal meeting to continue negotiations. Now for the first time it became evident that William had no longer any desire to keep James in power in England. He was extremely dismayed by the arrival of Lord Feversham. He refused the suggestion that he simply arrest James because this would violate his own declarations and burden his relationship with his wife. In the end it was decided that he should exploit James's fears; the three original commissioners were sent back to James with the message that William felt he could no longer guarantee the king's wellbeing and that James for his own safety had better leave London for Ham. William at the same time ordered all English troops to depart from the capital, while his forces entered on 17 December; no local forces were allowed within a twenty mile radius until the spring of 1690. Already the English navy had declared for William. James, by his own choice, went under Dutch protective guard to Rochester in Kent on December 18 (Julian calendar), just as William entered London, cheered by crowds dressed in orange ribbons or waving, lavishly distributed, oranges. The Dutch officers had been ordered that "if he [James] wanted to leave, they should not prevent him, but allow him to gently slip through". James then left for France on 23 December after having received a request from his wife to join her, even though his followers urged him to stay. The lax guard on James and the decision to allow him so near the coast indicate that William may have hoped that a successful flight would avoid the difficulty of deciding what to do with him, especially with the memory of the execution of Charles I still strong. By fleeing, James ultimately helped resolve the awkward question whether he was still the legal king or not, having created according to many a situation of interregnum.

William and Mary made joint monarchs

On December 28, William took over the provisional government by appointment of the peers of the realm, as was the legal right of the latter in circumstances when the King was incapacitated, and, on the advice of his Whig allies, summoned an assembly of all the surviving MPs of Charles II's reign, thus bypassing the Tories of the Loyal Parliament of 1685. This assembly called for a chosen Convention, elected on January 5, which convened on January 22. The name "Convention" was chosen because only the King could call a Parliament, though as William had been appointed de facto regent by the peers the Convention was, strictly speaking, a legal Parliament. Although James had fled the country, he still had many followers, and William feared that the king might return, relegating William to the role of a mere regent, a solution that was unacceptable to him. On December 30, William (in a conversation with the Marquess of Halifax) threatened not to stay in England "if King James came again" and determined to go back to the Netherlands "if they went about to make him Regent".
The Convention Parliament was very divided on the issue. The radical Whigs in the Lower House proposed to elect William as a king (meaning that his power would be derived from the people); the moderates wanted an acclamation of William and Mary together; the Tories wanted to make him regent or only acclaim Mary as Queen. The Lower House resolved that the throne was vacant as a result of James's desertion, amounting to abdication; the Lords voted that either James was still King or Mary already Queen, but that the Throne of England couldn't possibly be "vacant". Mary, however, opposed this position, and William made it known to the Tory leaders at this point that they could either accept him as king or deal with the Whigs without his military presence, for then he would leave for the Republic. Confronted with this choice, the Tory majority of Lords decided on February 6 that the throne was vacant after all. Generally there was a great fear that the situation might deteriorate into a civil war.
William and Mary were offered the throne as joint rulers, an arrangement which they accepted. On February 13, 1689 (Old Style), February 23 (Gregorian calendar) Mary II and William III jointly acceded to the throne of England. A commission had on February 2 formulated 23 Heads of Grievances which were renamed the Declaration of Rights; these were read aloud before William and Mary accepted the throne. They were crowned on April 11, swearing an oath to uphold the laws made by Parliament. Although their succession to the English throne was relatively peaceful, much blood would be shed before William's authority was accepted in Ireland and Scotland.
In Scotland there had been no serious support for the rebellion, but when James fled for France, most members of the Scottish Privy Council went to London to offer their services to William; on January 7 they asked William to take over the responsibilities of government. On March 14 a Convention convened in Edinburgh, dominated by the Presbyterians because the episcopalians continued to support James. There was nevertheless a strong Jacobite faction, but a letter by James received on March 16, in which he threatened to punish all who rebelled against him, resulted in his followers leaving the Convention, which then on April 4 decided that the throne of Scotland was vacant. The Convention formulated the Claim of Right and the Articles of Grievances. On May 11 William and Mary accepted the Crown of Scotland; after their acceptance, the Claim and the Articles were read aloud, leading to an immediate debate over whether or not an endorsement of these documents was implicit in that acceptance.

Jacobite uprisings

James had cultivated support on the fringes of his Three Kingdoms — in Catholic Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. Supporters of James, known as Jacobites, were prepared to resist what they saw as an illegal coup by force of arms. The first Jacobite rebellion, an uprising in support of James in Scotland, took place in 1689. It was led by John Graham of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount of Dundee, known as "Bonnie Dundee", who raised an army from Highland clans. In Ireland, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell led local Catholics, who had been discriminated against by previous English monarchs, in the conquest of all the fortified places in the kingdom except Derry, and so held the Kingdom for James. James himself landed in Ireland with 6,000 French troops to try to regain the throne in the Williamite war in Ireland. The war raged from 1689–91. James fled Ireland following a humiliating defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, but Jacobite resistance was not ended until after the battle of Aughrim in 1691, when over half of their army was killed or taken prisoner. The Irish Jacobites surrendered under the conditions of the Treaty of Limerick on 3 October 1691. England stayed relatively calm throughout, although some English Jacobites fought on James's side in Ireland. Despite the Jacobite victory at the Battle of Killiecrankie, the uprising in the Scottish Highlands was quelled due to death of its leader, Claverhouse, and Williamite victories at Dunkeld and Cromdale. Many, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, continued to see the Stuarts as the legitimate monarchs of the Three Kingdoms, and there were further Jacobite rebellions in Scotland during the years 1715, 1719 and 1745

Anglo-Dutch Alliance

Though he had carefully avoided making it public, William's main motive in organizing the expedition had been the opportunity to bring England into an alliance against France. On December 9, 1688 he had already asked the States-General to send a delegation of three to negotiate the conditions. On February 18 (Julian calendar) he asked the Convention to support the Republic in its war against France, but it refused, only consenting to pay ₤600,000 for the continued presence of the Dutch army in England. On March 9 (Gregorian calendar) the States-General responded to Louis's earlier declaration of war by declaring war on France in return. On April 19 (Julian calendar) the Dutch delegation signed a naval treaty with England. It stipulated that the combined Anglo-Dutch fleet would always be commanded by an Englishman, even when of lower rank; also it specified that the two parties would contribute in the ratio of five English vessels against three Dutch vessels, meaning in practice that the Dutch navy would in future remain smaller than the English. The Navigation Acts were not repealed. On May 18 the new Parliament allowed William to declare war on France. On September 9 1689 (Gregorian calendar), William as King of England joined the League of Augsburg against France.
Having England as an ally meant that the military situation of the Republic was strongly improved; but this very fact induced William to be uncompromising in his position towards France. This policy led to a large number of very expensive campaigns which were largely paid for with Dutch funds. In 1712 the Republic was financially exhausted; it withdrew from international politics and was forced to let its fleet deteriorate, making England the dominant maritime power of the world. The Dutch economy, already burdened by the high national debt and concommitant high taxation, suffered from the other European states' protectionist policies, which its weakened fleet was no longer able to resist. To make matters worse, the main Dutch trading and banking houses moved much of their activity from Amsterdam to London after 1688. Between 1688 and 1720, world trade dominance shifted from the Republic to England.

Legacy

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is considered by some as being one of the most important events in the long evolution of the respective powers of Parliament and the Crown in England. With the passage of the Bill of Rights, it stamped out once and for all any possibility of a Catholic monarchy, and ended moves towards absolute monarchy in the British kingdoms by circumscribing the monarch's powers. These powers were greatly restricted; he or she could no longer suspend laws, levy taxes, make royal appointments, or maintain a standing army during peacetime without Parliament's permission — to this day the Army is known as the "British Army" not the "Royal Army" as it is Parliament's Army and not that of the King. Since 1689, government under a system of constitutional monarchy in England, and later the United Kingdom, has been uninterrupted. Since then, Parliament's power has steadily increased while the Crown's has steadily declined. Unlike in the English civil war of the mid-seventeenth century, the "Glorious Revolution" did not involve the masses of ordinary people in England (the majority of the bloodshed occurred in Ireland). This fact has led many historians to suggest that in England at least the events more closely resemble a coup d'état than a social revolution.
Prior to his arrival in England, the new king William III of England was not Anglican, but rather was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. Consequently, as a Calvinist and Presbyterian he was now in the unenviable position of being the head of the Church of England, while technically being a Nonconformist. This was, however, not his main motive for promoting religious toleration. More important in that respect was the need to keep happy his Catholic allies in the coming struggle with Louis XIV. Though he had promised legal toleration for Catholics in his Declaration of October, 1688, he was ultimately unsuccessful in this respect, due to opposition by the Tories in the new Parliament. The Revolution led to the Act of Toleration of 1689, which granted toleration to Nonconformist Protestants, but not to Catholics. The Williamite victory in Ireland is still commemorated by the Orange Order for preserving British and Protestant dominance in the country.
Lord Macaulay's account of the Revolution in "The History of England from the Accession of James the Second" exemplifies its semi-mystical significance to later generations.

Source

[HipHopRocK]

Kingdom of Great Britain

This article is about the historical kingdom, before the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland. For the modern state, see United Kingdom.The Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a country in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801. It was created by the merger of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, under the Acts of Union 1707, to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of Great Britain. A single parliament and government, based in Westminster, controlled the new kingdom. The kingdoms had shared the same monarch since James VI, King of Scots became King of England in 1603 following the death of Queen Elizabeth I.
The Kingdom of Great Britain was superseded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, when the Kingdom of Ireland was merged with it with the enactment of the Act of Union 1800 following the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Political structure

The kingdoms of England and Scotland were separate states from the 9th century but came into personal union in 1603 when James VI of Scotland succeeded his cousin Elizabeth I as James I of England. Though remaining separate states, this Union of the Crowns meant that the whole of the island of Great Britain was ruled by a single monarch with two titles (King of England and King of Scots), and two parliaments, except during the Interregnum and during the joint reign of William and Mary. This changed with the Acts of Union in 1707, from when the monarch of Great Britain ruled by the power of a single unified Crown of Great Britain and of a single unified parliament. The succession to the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland was determined by the English Act of Settlement, rather than the Scottish equivalent, the Act of Security as this was part of the terms agreed in the 1706 Treaty of Union and put into effect with the two Acts of Union the following year. The adoption of the Act of Settlement required that the heir to the English throne be a Protestant descendant of Sophia of Hanover, effecting the future Hanoverian succession.
Legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. As with the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Parliament of Great Britain included three elements: the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Crown-in-Parliament. England and Scotland were given seats in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons of the new parliament. Although Scotland's representation in both houses was smaller than its population indicated it should have been, representation in parliament was at that time based not on population but on taxation, and Scotland was given a greater number of seats than its share of taxation warranted. Under the terms of the union, Scotland sent 16 representative peers to the Lords and elected 45 members to the Commons, with the rest being sent from England and Wales.

Name

Occasionally, the Kingdom of Great Britain is given the alternative name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, which is often shortened to United Kingdom. There is substantial debate over whether the latter name is acceptable. The Treaty of Union refers to the United Kingdom of Great Britain in several places: it is argued that the word "United" is only an adjective, and not part of the style, citing the subsequent Acts of Union themselves, which explicitly state the name of the new state: that England and Scotland were "united into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain".
The name "United Kingdom" is sometimes preferred for purposes of continuity, particularly in the military and colonial spheres. At the time of the Act of Union 1800, which unambiguously styled the new state as the "United Kingdom", the British were embroiled in the Great French War and the British Empire possessed many colonies in the Americas, India, and Australia. Some who would otherwise prefer the term "Kingdom of Great Britain" thus use "United Kingdom" to avoid using two different names for a single military and colonial power, which may confuse the discussion.

Britain in the 18th century

Further information: British Empire, Georgian era, and History of the United Kingdom
England and the Netherlands entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict - waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance - left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget on the costly land war in Europe. The 18th century would see England (after 1707, Britain) rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, and France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage.
The death of Charles II of Spain on Nov. 1, 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for Britain and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession. The conflict, which France and Spain were to lose, lasted until 1714. At the concluding peace Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendents' right to the French throne. Spain lost its empire in Europe, and though it kept its empire in the Americas and the Philippines, it was irreversibly weakened as a power. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca. Gibraltar, which is still a British overseas territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean.
Deeper political integration of Britain had been a key policy of Queen Anne (reigned 1702–14), the last Stuart monarch of England and Scotland and the only Stuart monarch of the Kingdom of Great Britain). Under the aegis of the Queen and her advisors a Treaty of Union was drawn up, and negotiations between England and Scotland began in earnest in 1706. The Acts of Union received royal assent in 1707, uniting the separate Parliaments and crowns of England and Scotland and forming the Kingdom of Great Britain. Anne became formally the first occupant of the unified British throne and in line with Article 22 of the Treaty of Union, Scotland sent 45 MPs to the new parliament of Great Britain.

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after
the Battle of Plassey, by Francis Hayman (c. 1762)

The Seven Years' War, which began in 1754, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for Britain and its empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.
During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's ability to tax American colonists without their consent. Disagreement turned to violence and in 1775 the American Revolutionary War began. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States and with economical and naval assistance from France, would go on to win the war in 1783.
The loss of the United States, at the time Britain's most populous colony, is seen by historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.
During its first century of operation, the focus of the British East India Company had been trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the British East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the French and their Indian allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force of the Indian Army, 80% of which was composed of native Indian sepoys.
In 1770, James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788.
At the threshold to the 19th century, Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened invasion of Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun. The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones that Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over the French fleet at Trafalgar in 1805.

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Royal coat of arms

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United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927. It was formed by the merger of the Kingdom of Great Britain (itself having been a merger of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland) and the Kingdom of Ireland, with Ireland being governed directly from Westminster through its Dublin Castle administration.
Following Irish independence on 6 December 1922, when the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty came into effect, the name continued in official use until it was changed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act of 1927. The part of the island of Ireland that remained seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922 was succeeded by the state of Ireland in 1937.

Terms of the Union

Under the terms of the Act of Union, the separate Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were abolished, and replaced by a united Parliament of the United Kingdom. The new House of Commons consisted of all Members of Great Britain's 18th Parliament and 100 Irish MPs co-opted in a special election in 1801. The new House of Lords consisted of all members of Great Britain's House of Lords, and 4 Lords Spiritual and 28 Lords Temporal from the Irish House of Lords. The new Parliament met in the Palace of Westminster, formerly the home of the Parliament of Great Britain and, until 1707, the Parliament of England.
Part of the trade-off for Irish Catholics was to be the granting of Catholic Emancipation, which had been fiercely resisted by the all-Anglican Irish Parliament. However, this was blocked by King George III who argued that emancipating Roman Catholics would breach his Coronation Oath to act as protector of Protestantism.

George III, the first king of
the new United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom

The merger was initially seen favourably in Ireland, given that the old Irish parliament was seen as hostile to the majority Catholic population, some of whose members had only been given the vote as late as 1794 and who were legally debarred from election to the body. The Roman Catholic hierarchy endorsed the Union. However, King George III's decision to block Catholic Emancipation fatally undermined the appeal of the Union. Leaders like Henry Grattan, who sat in the new parliament, having been leading members of the old one, were bitterly critical.
The eventual achievement of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, following a campaign by Daniel O'Connell, MP for County Clare, who had won election to Westminster and who could not for religious beliefs take the Oath of Supremacy, removed the main negative that had undermined the appeal of the old parliament, the exclusion of Catholics. From 1829 on a demand grew again for a native Irish parliament separate from Westminster. However, his campaign to repeal the Act of Union ultimately failed.
Aspects of the United Kingdom met with popularity in Ireland during the 122-year union. Hundreds of thousands flocked to Dublin for the visits of Queen Victoria in 1900, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1903 and 1907 and King George V and Queen Mary in 1911. About 210,000 Irishmen fought in Irish regiments of the United Kingdom and Allied armies in World War I, at a time when Ireland was the only home nation where conscription was not in force.

Sackville Street in Dublin in the United Kingdom,
c. 1908,

Irish home rule

Later leaders, such as Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell, the first leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, campaigned for a version of all-Ireland self-government called home rule within the United Kingdom, which was nearly achieved in the 1880s under the (British) ministry of William Ewart Gladstone who introduced two Irish Home Rule Bills. However, the measures were defeated in Parliament, and following the ascension of the Conservatives to the majority, the issue was buried as long as that party was in power.
With the return to power of the Liberals in 1910 supported by the Irish Party under John Redmond who now held the balance of power in the Commons, the veto power of the Lords was removed under the Parliament Act 1911 and a Home Rule Bill introduced in 1912 passed Parliament as the Third Home Rule Act in 1914, but was temporarily suspended for the duration of World War I. However the constant delaying of Home Rule and the opposition of the Orange Order in Ulster created the frustration that eventually led to political violence and the 1916 Easter Rising. The European situation changed the political climate such that in the 1918 general election, the Irish Party lost most of its seats to the new Sinn Féin party.

Breakdown of the Union

In 1919, Sinn Féin MPs elected to Westminster formed a unilaterally independent Irish parliament in Dublin, the first Dáil Éireann with an executive under the President of Dáil Éireann, Éamon de Valera. A War of Independence was fought between 1919 and 1921. The island of Ireland was partitioned on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 into two distinct autonomous United Kingdom regions, the short-lived Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland.[3] On 6 December 1922, a year after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, the entire island of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and formed a new Dominion, the Irish Free State. However, as was widely expected, Northern Ireland almost immediately exercised its right under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, to opt out of the Irish Free State and back into the United Kingdom. With that, the Irish border became an international frontier.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland continued in name until 1927 when it was renamed as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927.

The new boundaries.In 1922, twenty-six
Irish counties left the United Kingdom
and six counties remained.

Legacy

Despite increasing political independence from each other from 1922 and complete political independence since 1949, the union left the two countries intertwined with each other in many respects. Ireland used the Irish pound from 1928 until 2001 when the euro replaced it. Until it joined the ERM in 1979, the Irish pound was directly linked to the pound sterling. Decimalisation of both currencies occurred simultaneously on Decimal Day in 1971. Coins of equivalent value had the same dimensions and size until the introduction of the British twenty pence coin in 1982, the first new coin to be issued since the break with sterling. British coinage, therefore, although technically not legal tender in the Republic of Ireland was in wide circulation and usually acceptable as payment, and vice versa. The new British twenty pence coin and later British one pound coin were the notable exceptions to this, as there was initially no equivalent Irish coin value, and when subsequently, Irish coins of these values were introduced, their designs differed significantly, thereby not allowing for 'stealth' passing of the coins in change.
Irish citizens in the UK have a status almost equivalent to British citizens. They can vote in all elections and even stand for Parliament. As well as this, some people born in the Republic of Ireland before 1949, but after 3 March 1922, are British subjects. British citizens have similar rights to Irish citizens in the Republic of Ireland and can vote in all elections apart from presidential elections and referendums. Under the nationality law of the Republic of Ireland, people from Northern Ireland can have Irish, and therefore dual, nationality.

A passport from the Realm:
common citizenship continued until 1935.

List of monarchs

Until 1927, part of the monarch's royal title included the words King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1927, the words United Kingdom were dropped from the royal title so that the monarch was instead styled as King of Great Britain, Ireland...[and other places]. The words United Kingdom were restored to the monarch's title in 1953 with the reference to Ireland replaced with a reference to Northern Ireland.

• George III (1801–1820) (monarch from 1760)
• George IV (1820–1830)
• William IV (1830–1837)
• Victoria (1837–1901)
• Edward VII (1901–1910)
• George V (1910–1922) (title used until 1927)

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United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or less accurately Britain) is a constitutional monarchy located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom is a unitary state consisting of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is governed by a parliamentary system with its seat of government in London, the capital, but with three devolved national administrations in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland respectively. The head of state of the United Kingdom is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned as monarch since 1952. The Channel Island bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man are Crown Dependencies and not part of the UK. The UK has fourteen overseas territories, all remnants of the British Empire, which at its height in 1922 encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, the largest empire in history. British influence can continue to be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. Queen Elizabeth II remains the head of the Commonwealth of Nations and head of state of each of the Commonwealth realms.
The UK is a developed country, with the fifth (nominal GDP) or sixth (PPP) largest economy in the world. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless remains a major power with strong economic, cultural, military and political influence. It is a nuclear power and has the second or third highest defence spending in the world. It is a Member State of the European Union, holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the G8, NATO, OECD, World Trade Organization and the Commonwealth of Nations.

History of the United Kingdom

The history of the United Kingdom as a unified sovereign state begins with the political union between the kingdoms of England (which included Wales) and Scotland on 1 May 1707. This event was the result of the Treaty of Union that was agreed on 22 July 1706, and then ratified by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland each passing an Act of Union. Prior to this, the kingdoms of England and Scotland had been separate states though in personal union since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland succeeded his cousin Elizabeth I as James I of England. The 1707 Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain, which shared a single constitutional monarch and a single parliament at Westminster. On the new kingdom, 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." A further Act of Union in 1800 added the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Prior to 1707, the history of the British Isles spans Celtic tribes, Roman invasion with Britain south of the Forth broadly incorporated into the Roman Empire; thereafter invasion by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries; invasions by the Vikings in the 9th century, through to the Norman conquest of England in 1066; the development of the separate states of England and Scotland from the 9th century, and competition and cooperation between those states. The British Isles faced no further successful military incursion after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, allowing England and Scotland to each develop political, administrative and cultural institutions including representative governance, law systems, and distinguished contributions to the arts and sciences, upon which the United Kingdom was built.
The early years of the United Kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings which ended with defeat at Culloden in 1746. Later, victory in the Seven Years' War, in 1763, led to the dominance of the British Empire which was the foremost global power for over a century and grew to become the largest empire in history. By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. and as a result, the culture of the United Kingdom, and its industrial, political and linguistic legacy, is widespread.
In 1922, the territory of what is now the Republic of Ireland gained independence, leaving Northern Ireland as a continuing part of the United Kingdom. As a result, in 1927 the United Kingdom changed its formal title to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", usually shortened to the "United Kingdom", the "UK" or "Britain". Following World War II, in which the UK was an allied power, most of the territories of the British Empire became independent. Many went on to join the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Some have retained the British monarch as their head of state to become independent Commonwealth realms. In its capacity as a great power, and as a leading member of the United Nations, European Union and NATO, the United Kingdom remains a strong economic, cultural, military and political influence in the 21st century.

18th century

Birth of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707, as a result of the political union of the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland. The terms of the union had been agreed in the Treaty of Union that was negotiated the previous year and then ratified by the parliaments of Scotland and England each approving Acts of Union.
Though previously separate states, England and Scotland had shared monarchs since 1603 when James VI of Scotland become James I of England on the death of the childless Elizabeth I, an event known as the Union of the Crowns. The Treaty of Union enabled the two kingdoms to be combined into a single, united kingdom with the two parliaments merging into a single parliament of Great Britain. Queen Anne, (reigned 1702–14), who had favoured deeper political integration between the two kingdoms, became the first monarch of the united kingdom of Great Britain.
Though now a united kingdom, certain aspects of the former independent kingdoms remained separate in line with the terms in the Treaty of Union. Scottish and English law remained separate, as did the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Anglican Church of England, as well as the separate systems of education.

British Empire

The Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for Britain and its empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.
During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's ability to tax American colonists without their consent. Disagreement turned to violence and in 1775 the American Revolutionary War began. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States and with economic and naval assistance from France, would go on to win the war in 1783.
The loss of the United States, at the time Britain's most populous colony, is seen by historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.
During its first century of operation, the focus of the British East India Company had been trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the British East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the French and their Indian allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force of the Indian Army, 80% of which was composed of native Indian sepoys.
In 1770, James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788.
At the threshold to the 19th century, Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened invasion of Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun.

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey,
by Francis Hayman (c. 1762).

19th century

Ireland joins with the Act of Union (1800)

The second stage in the development of the United Kingdom took effect on 1 January 1801, when the Kingdom of Great Britain merged with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Events that culminated in the union with Ireland had spanned the previous several centuries. Invasions from England by the ruling Normans from 1170 led to centuries of strife in Ireland and successive Kings of England sought both to conquer and pillage Ireland, imposing their rule by force throughout the entire island. In the early 17th century, large-scale settlement by Protestant settlers from both Scotland and England began, especially in the province of Ulster, seeing the displacement of many of the native Roman Catholics Irish inhabitants of this part of Ireland. Since the time of the first Norman invaders from England, Ireland has been subject to control and regulation, firstly by England then latterly by Great Britain.
After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irish Roman Catholics were barred from voting or attending the Irish Parliament. The new English Protestant ruling class was known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Towards the end of the 18th century the entirely Protestant Irish Parliament attained a greater degree of independence from the British Parliament than it had previously held. Under the Penal Laws no Irish Catholic could sit in the Parliament of Ireland, even though some 90% of Ireland's population was native Irish Catholic when the first of these bans was introduced in 1691. This ban was followed by others in 1703 and 1709 as part of a comprehensive system disadvantaging the Catholic community, and to a lesser extent Protestant dissenters. In 1798, many members of this dissenter tradition made common cause with Catholics in a rebellion inspired and led by the Society of United Irishmen. It was staged with the aim of creating a fully independent Ireland as a state with a republican constitution. Despite assistance from France the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was put down by British forces.
Possibly influenced by the War of American Independence (1775–1783), a united force of Irish volunteers used their influence to campaign for greater independence for the Irish Parliament. This was granted in 1782, giving free trade and legislative independence to Ireland. However, the French revolution had encouraged the increasing calls for moderate constitutional reform. The Society of United Irishmen, made up of Presbyterians from Belfast and both Anglicans and Catholics in Dublin, campaigned for an end to British domination. Their leader Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–98) worked with the Catholic Convention of 1792 which demanded an end to the penal laws. Failing to win the support of the British government, he travelled to Paris, encouraging a number of French naval forces to land in Ireland to help with the planned insurrections. These were slaughtered by government forces, but these rebellions convinced the British under Prime Minister William Pitt that the only solution was to end Irish independence once and for all.
The legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was completed under the Act of Union 1800, changing the country's name to "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". The Act was passed in the British and therefore unrepresentative Irish Parliament 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. Under the terms of the merger, the separate Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were abolished, and replaced by a united Parliament of the United Kingdom. Ireland thus became part of an extended United Kingdom. Ireland sent around 100 MPs to the House of Commons at Westminster and 28 peers to the House of Lords, elected from among their number by the Irish peers themselves (Catholics were not permitted peerage). Part of the trade-off for Irish Catholics was to be the granting of Catholic Emancipation, which had been fiercely resisted by the all-Anglican Irish Parliament. However, this was blocked by King George III who argued that emancipating Roman Catholics would breach his Coronation Oath. The Roman Catholic hierarchy had endorsed the Union. However the decision to block Catholic Emancipation fatally undermined the appeal of the Union.

Napoleonic wars

Hostilities between Great Britain and France recommenced on 18 May 1803. The Coalition war-aims changed over the course of the conflict: a general desire to restore the French monarchy became closely linked to the struggle to stop Bonaparte.
The series of naval and colonial conflicts, including a large number of minor naval actions, resembled those of the French Revolutionary Wars and the preceding centuries of European warfare. Conflicts in the Caribbean, and in particular the seizure of colonial bases and islands throughout the wars, could potentially have some effect upon the European conflict. The Napoleonic conflict had reached the point at which subsequent historians could talk of a "world war". Only the Seven Years' War offered a precedent for widespread conflict on such a scale.
In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System. This policy aimed to eliminate the threat of the United Kingdom by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. The United Kingdom's army remained a minimal threat to France; the UK maintained a standing army of just 220,000 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, whereas France's strength peaked at over 1,500,000 — in addition to the armies of numerous allies and several hundred thousand national guardsmen that Napoleon could draft into the military if necessary. The Royal Navy, however, effectively disrupted France's extra-continental trade — both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions — but could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe although the dominance of the Royal Navy dispelled any threat of an invasion by Napolean from across the channel. In addition France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the United Kingdom. However, the United Kingdom possessed the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade to its pocessions from its rapidly new expanding Empire. That sufficed to ensure that France could never consolidate its control over Europe in peace or threaten British colonies outside the continent thanks to Britain's naval supremacy. However, many in the French government believed that cutting the United Kingdom off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it. Though the French designed the Continental System to achieve this, it never succeeded in its objective. The final defeat of Napolean at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 by a coalition of British and European nations left Britain as Europe and the world's foremost global power.

Ireland and the move to Home Rule

Part of the agreement which led to the 1800 Act of Union stipulated that the Penal Laws in Ireland were to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation granted. However King George III blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the Anglican Church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O'Connell, and the death of George III, led to the concession of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament. O'Connell then mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the Repeal of the Act of Union.
When potato blight hit the island in 1846, much of the rural population was left without food because cash crops were being exported to pay rents.[16][17] Unfortunately, British politicians such as the Prime Minister Robert Peel were at this time wedded to the economic policy of laissez-faire, which argued against state intervention of any sort. While enormous sums were raised by private individuals and charities (American Indians sent supplies, while Queen Victoria personally gave the present-day equivalent € 70,000) British government inaction (or at least inadequate action) caused the problem to become a catastrophe. The class of cottiers or farm labourers was virtually wiped out in what became known in Britain as 'The Irish Potato Famine' and in Ireland as the Great Hunger.
Most Irish people elected as their MPs Liberals and Conservatives who belonged to the main British political parties (note: the poor didn't have a vote at that time). A significant minority also elected Unionists, who championed the cause of the maintenance of the Act of Union. A former Tory barrister turned nationalist campaigner, Isaac Butt, established a new moderate nationalist movement, the Home Rule League, in the 1870s. After Butt's death the Home Rule Movement, or the Irish Parliamentary Party as it had become known, was turned into a major political force under the guidance of William Shaw and in particular a radical young Protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell. The Irish Parliamentary Party dominated Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed. Parnell's movement proved to be a broad church, from conservative landowners to the Land League which was campaigning for fundamental reform of Irish landholding, where most farms were held on rental from large aristocratic estates.
Parnell's movement campaigned for 'Home Rule', by which they meant that Ireland would govern itself as a region within the United Kingdom, in contrast to O'Connell who wanted complete independence subject to a shared monarch and Crown. Two Home Rule Bills (1886 and 1893) were introduced by Liberal Prime Minister Gladstone, but neither became law, mainly due to opposition from the House of Lords. The issue divided Ireland, for a significant minority (largely though by no means exclusively based in Ulster) , opposed Home Rule, fearing that a Catholic-Nationalist parliament in Dublin would discriminate against them and would also impose tariffs on industry; while most of Ireland was primarily agricultural, six counties in Ulster were the location of heavy industry and would be affected by any tariff barriers imposed.

Source

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History of the United Kingdom

20th century

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom from 1900–1945: Marquess of Salisbury, Arthur Balfour, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Henry Asquith, David Lloyd George, Andrew Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill.

World War I

Partition of Ireland

The 19th and early 20th century saw the rise of Irish Nationalism especially among the Catholic population. Daniel O'Connell led a successful unarmed campaign for Catholic Emancipation. A subsequent campaign for Repeal of the Act of Union failed. Later in the century Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for self government within the Union or "Home Rule".
In 1912, a further Home Rule bill passed the House of Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords, as was the bill of 1893, but by this time the House of Lords had lost its veto on legislation and could only delay the bill by two years - until 1914. During these two years the threat of civil war hung over Ireland with the creation of the Unionist Ulster Volunteers and their nationalist counterparts, the Irish Volunteers. These two groups armed themselves by importing rifles and ammunition and carried out drills openly. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 put the crisis on the political backburner for the duration of the war. The Unionist and Nationalist volunteer forces joined the British army in their thousands and suffered crippling losses in the trenches.
A unilaterally declared "Irish Republic" was proclaimed in Dublin in 1916 during the Easter Rising. The uprising was quelled after six days of fighting and most of its leaders were court-martialled and executed swiftly by British forces. This led to a major increase in support in Ireland for the uprising, and in the declaration of independence was ratified by Dáil Éireann, the self-declared Republic's parliament in 1919. An Anglo-Irish War was fought between Crown forces and the Army of the Irish Republic between January 1919 and June 1921.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, negotiated between teams representing the British and Irish Republic's governments, and ratified by three parliaments,4 established the Irish Free State, which was initially a British Empire Dominion in the same vein as Canada or South Africa, but subsequently left the British Commonwealth and became a republic after World War II, without constitutional ties with the United Kingdom. Six northern, predominantly Protestant, Irish counties (Northern Ireland) have remained part of the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland continued in name until 1927 when it was renamed as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927. Despite increasing political independence from each other from 1922, and complete political independence since 1949, the union left the two countries intertwined with each other in many respects. Ireland used the Irish Pound from 1928 until 2001 when it was replaced by the Euro. Until it joined the ERM in 1979, the Irish pound was directly linked to the Pound Sterling. Decimalisation of both currencies occurred simultaneously on Decimal Day in 1971. Irish Citizens in the UK have a status almost equivalent to British Citizens. They can vote in all elections and even stand for parliament. British Citizens have similar rights to Irish Citizens in the Republic of Ireland and can vote in all elections apart from presidential elections and referendums. People from Northern Ireland can have dual nationality by applying for an Irish passport in addition to, or instead of a British one.
Northern Ireland was created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, enacted by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland parliament in 1921. Faced with divergent demands from Irish nationalists and Unionists over the future of the island of Ireland (the former wanted an all-Irish home rule parliament to govern the entire island, the latter no home rule at all) , and the fear of civil war between both groups, the British Government under David Lloyd George passed the Act, creating two home rule Irelands, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Southern Ireland never came into being as a real state and was superseded by the Irish Free State in 1922. That state is now known as the Republic of Ireland.
Having been given self government in 1920 (even though they never sought it, and some like Sir Edward Carson were bitterly opposed) the Northern Ireland government under successive prime ministers from Sir James Craig (later Lord Craigavon) presided over discrimination against the nationalist/ Roman Catholic minority. Northern Ireland became, in the words of Nobel Peace Prize joint-winner, Ulster Unionist Leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble, a "cold place for Catholics." Some local council boundaries were gerrymandered, usually to the advantage of Protestants. Voting arrangements for local elections which gave commercial companies votes and minimum income regulations also caused resentment.

Great Depression

Background

The Great Depression of 1929–32 broke out at a time when Britain was still far from having recovered from the effects of the First World War. Economist Lee Ohanain showed that economic output fell by 25% between 1918 and 1921 and did not recover until the end of the Great Depression, arguing that the United Kingdom suffered a twenty-year great depression beginning in 1918. Relative to the rest of the world, economic output declined mildly in the U.K. between 1929 and 1933.
A major cause of financial instability, which preceded and accompanied the Great Depression, was the debt that many European countries had accumulated to pay for their involvement in World War I. This debt destabilised many European economies as they tried to rebuild during the 1920s.
Britain had largely avoided this trap by financing her war effort largely through sales of foreign assets. Britain had a net loss of £300 million of foreign investments, less than two years' investment on a pre-1914 average. The largest material loss during the war was in the British Merchant Navy, which lost 40 percent of its merchant fleet to the U-boat attacks (but this was replaced soon after the war). Along with loss of assets through enemy action, such divestiture reduced British investments abroad by around 20% by 1918.
The resulting loss of foreign exchange earnings left the British economy more dependent upon exports, and more vulnerable to any downturn in world markets. But the war had permanently eroded Britain's trading position in world markets through disruptions to trade and losses of shipping. Overseas customers for British produce had been lost, especially for traditional exports such as textiles, steel and coal.
The 1920s saw the development of new industries such as the motor industry and the electrical goods industry, but British products in these fields were not usually sufficiently advanced to compete in world markets against foreign competitors possessing more up-to-date plants, and so British products largely served the domestic market.
The traditional industries which formed the bedrock of Britain's export trade (such as coalmining, shipbuilding and steel) were heavily concentrated in certain areas of Britain, such as the North of England, South Wales and central Scotland, while the newer industries were heavily concentrated in southern and central England.
Altogether, British industrial output during the 1920s ran at about 80-100%, and exports at about 80% of their pre-war levels, so there was little chance of Britain being able to amass enough capital to restore her overseas investment position.

The Gold Standard & the General Strike

From about 1921, Britain had started a slow economic recovery from the war and the subsequent slump. But in April 1925 the Conservative Chancellor, Winston Churchill, on advice from the Bank of England, restored the Pound Sterling to the gold standard at its prewar exchange rate of 4.86 US dollars. This made the pound convertible to its value in gold, but at a level that made British exports more expensive on world markets. The economic recovery was immediately slowed. To offset the effects of the high exchange rate, the export industries tried to cut costs by lowering workers' wages, provoking the General Strike of May 1926.
The industrial areas spent the rest of the 1920s in recession, and these industries received little investment or modernisation. Throughout the 1920s unemployment stayed at a steady one million.

Economic Crisis and the Labour government 1929-1931

In May 1929 a minority Labour government headed by Ramsay MacDonald came to office with Liberal support. This was only the second time a Labour government had been in office (they had briefly been in office in 1924), and few of the government's members had any deep knowledge of economics or experience of running the economy. MacDonald's Labour Party was not radical in economic thinking, and was wedded to the orthodoxy of Victorian classical economics with its emphasis on maintaining a balanced budget at any cost.
In October 1929 the Stock Market Crash in New York heralded the Great Depression. The ensuing American economic collapse shook the world: World trade contracted, prices fell and governments faced financial crisis as the supply of American credit dried up. Many countries adopted an emergency response to the crisis by erecting trade barriers and tariffs, which worsened the crisis by further hindering global trade.
The effects on the industrial areas of Britain were immediate and devastating, as demand for British products collapsed. By the end of 1930 unemployment had more than doubled from 1 million to 2.5 million (20% of the insured workforce), and exports had fallen in value by 50%. Government revenues contracted as national income fell, while the cost of assisting the jobless rose. The industrial areas were hardest hit, along with the coal mining districts. London and the south-east of England were hurt less. In 1933, 30% of Glaswegians were unemployed due to the severe decline in heavy industry.
Under pressure from its Liberal allies as well as the Conservative opposition, the Labour government appointed a committee to review the state of public finances. The May Report of July 1931 urged public sector wage cuts and large cuts in public spending (notably in benefit payments to the unemployed) to avoid incurring a budget deficit. This proposal proved deeply unpopular within the Labour Party and among its main supporters, the trade unions, which along with several government ministers refused to support any such measures. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, insisted that the Report's recommendations be adopted to avoid incurring a budget deficit. In a memorandum in January 1930, one junior government minister, Oswald Mosley, proposed that the government should take control of banking and exports, as well as increase pensions to boost purchasing power. When his ideas were turned down, he resigned. He soon left Labour to form the New Party, and later the British Union of Fascists.

The National Government

The dispute over spending and wage cuts split the Labour government: as it turned out, beyond recovery. The resulting political deadlock caused investors to take fright, and a flight of capital and gold further de-stabilised the economy. In response, MacDonald, on the urging of King George V, decided to form a "National Government" with the Conservatives and the Liberals. On 24 August MacDonald submitted the resignation of his ministers and led his senior colleagues in forming the new National Government. MacDonald and his supporters were expelled from the Labour Party and adopted the label "National Labour". The Labour Party and some Liberals, led by David Lloyd George, went into opposition. The Labour Party denounced MacDonald as a "traitor" and a "rat" for what they saw as his betrayal.
Soon after this, a General Election was called. The election resulted in a Conservative landslide victory, with the now leaderless Labour Party winning only 46 seats in Parliament. After the 1931 election the national government became Conservative-dominated, although MacDonald continued as Prime Minister until 1935.

Emergency measures

In an effort to balance the budget and restore confidence in the pound, on the 10 September 1931 with Phillip Snowden still as Chancellor, the new national government issued an emergency budget, which immediately instituted a round of draconian cuts in public spending and wages. Public sector wages and unemployment pay were cut by 10%, and income tax was raised from 4s 6d to 5s in the pound (from 22.5% to 25%). The pay cuts did not go down well however and resulted in a Mutiny in the Royal Navy.
These measures were deflationary and merely reduced purchasing power in the economy, worsening the situation, and by the end of 1931 unemployment had reached nearly 3 million. The measures were also unsuccessful at defending the gold standard, which the National Government had ostensibly been created to defend.
Because of the gold standard there was nothing to stop a flight of gold. At first the government tried to stop the flight by introducing punitive interest rates. However panic among international investors following the Mutiny, put renewed pressure on the pound, and on 21 September 1931 the government was finally forced to abandon the gold standard, and immediately the exchange rate of the pound fell by 25%, from $4.86 to $3.40. This eased the pressure on exporters, and laid the ground for a gradual economic recovery.
Also, in 1932 following the Ottawa Agreement Neville Chamberlain who had become Chancellor after the 1931 election, introduced tariffs on imports at a rate of 10% on all imports except those from the countries of the British Empire. The introduction of tariffs caused a a split in the Liberal Party, some of whom, along with Phillip Snowden withdrew support for the National Government.

Britain in the 1930s: a nation divided

Although the overall picture for the British economy in the 1930s was bleak, the effects of the depression were uneven. Some parts of the country, and some industries, fared better than others. Some parts of the country such as the South Wales Valleys, experienced mass unemployment and poverty, while some areas in the Home Counties did not.

The South and the Midlands

Although in London and the south east of England unemployment was initially as high as 13.5%, the later 1930s were a prosperous time in these areas, as a suburban house-building boom was fuelled by the low interest rates which followed the abolition of the gold standard, and as London's growing population buoyed the economy of the Home Counties.
The south was also the home of new developing industries such as the electrical industry, which prospered from the large-scale electrification of housing and industry. Mass production methods brought new products such as electrical cookers, washing machines and radios into the reach of the middle classes, and the industries which produced these prospered. Nearly half of all new factories that opened in Britain between 1932 and 1937 were in the Greater London area.
Another industry that prospered during the 1930s was the British motor industry. For cities that had a developed motor industry such as Birmingham, Coventry and Oxford, the 1930s were also a boom time. Manufacturers such as Austin, Morris and Ford dominated the motor industry during the 1930s, and the number of cars on British roads doubled within the decade. British Agriculture also flourished in the 1930s.

The North and other industrial areas

The North of England however was a quite different matter. The north was the home to most of Britain's traditional heavy industries such as coal mining in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, shipbuilding on Tyneside, steel in Sheffield and textiles in Lancashire which were heavily export orientated. The north bore the brunt of the depression, and the '30s were the most difficult time in living memory for people in these areas. The north was hit so hard in the Great Depression because of the structural decline in British industry. Staple industries such as coal, steel and shipbuilding were smaller, less modern and efficient and over-staffed compared to continental rivals.
In the north east (including Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Newcastle-upon-Tyne) this was especially so. The north east was traditionally a major centre of the shipbuilding industry. The Depression caused a collapse in demand for ships. Between 1929 and 1932 ship production declined by 90%, and this in turn affected all the supply industries such as steel and coal. In some towns and cities in the north east, unemployment reached as high as 70%. Among the worst affected towns was Jarrow, where unemployment led to the famous Jarrow March, in which unemployed workers marched 300 miles to London to protest against unemployment.
The north west, a traditional centre of the textile industries, was also hard hit, with places such as Manchester and Lancashire suffering a slump. South Wales, a centre of the coalmining and steel industries, was also devastated by the depression where towns such as Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea had unemployment rates reaching above 25% at certain times. The industrial belt of central Scotland, also a major shipbuilding centre in Glasgow, was also hard hit by the slump.
In these areas millions of unemployed and their families were left destitute, and queueing at soup kitchens became a way of life. A government report in the mid 1930s estimated that around 25% of the UK's population existed on a subsistence diet, often with signs of child malnutrition such as scurvy, rickets and tuberculosis. In his book The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell described life for the unemployed in northern England during the depression: "Several hundred men risk their lives and several hundred women scrabble in the mud for hours... searching eagerly for tiny chips of coal in slagheaps so they could heat their own homes. For them, this arduously-gained 'free' coal was more important almost than food."

The welfare state during the 1930s

In the 1920s and 1930s Britain had a relatively advanced welfare system compared to many of the industrialised countries. In 1911 a compulsory national unemployment and health insurance scheme had been put in place by the Liberal government of Herbert Henry Asquith. This scheme had been funded through contributions from the government, the employers and the workers. At first the scheme only applied to certain trades but, in 1920, it was expanded to include most manual workers.
However, the scheme only paid out according to the level of contributions made rather than according to need, and was only payable for 15 weeks. Anyone unemployed for longer than that had to rely on poor law relief paid by their local authority. In effect, millions of workers who had been too poorly paid to make contributions, or who had been unemployed long term, were left destitute by the scheme. With the mass unemployment of the 1930s, contributions to the insurance scheme dried up, resulting in a funding crisis.
In August 1931, the 1911 scheme was replaced by a fully government-funded unemployment benefit system. This system, for the first time, paid out according to need rather than the level of contributions. This unemployment benefit was subject to a strict means test, and anyone applying for unemployment pay had to have an inspection by a government official to make sure that they had no hidden earnings or savings, undisclosed source(s) of income or other means of support. For many poor people this was a humiliating experience and was much resented.

Slow recovery

Following Britain's withdrawal from the gold standard and the devaluation of the pound, interest rates were reduced from 6% to 2%. As a result, British exports became more competitive on world markets than those of countries that remained on the gold standard. This led to a modest economic recovery, and a fall in unemployment from 1933 onwards. Although exports were still a fraction of their pre-depression levels, they recovered slightly.
Unemployment began a modest fall in 1934 and fell further in 1935 and 1936, but the rise in employment levels occurred mostly in the south, where lower interest rates had spurred the house building boom, which in turn spurred a recovery in domestic industry. The North and Wales remained severely depressed for most of the decade. In severely depressed parts of the country, the government enacted a number of policies to stimulate growth and reduce unemployment, including road building, loans to shipyards, and tariffs on steel imports. These policies helped but were not, however, on a sufficiently large scale to make a huge impact on the unemployment levels.

Rearmament and recovery

From 1936 onwards the National Government followed a policy of mass rearmament in the face of the rise of Nazi Germany. This provided the economic stimulus that finally ended the depression. By 1937 unemployment had fallen to 1.5 million, from where it fell even further. The mobilisation of manpower following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 finally ended unemployment.

Consequences of the Great Depression

Following the end of World War II, the majority of the British people, and particularly the working class and returning servicemen and women, did not want a return to pre-war Conservative economic policies, which they blamed for the hardship of the 1930s, and there was a mood for widespread social change. At the 1945 general election, to the surprise of many observers, Winston Churchill was defeated by the Labour Party headed by Clement Attlee.
The Labour government presided over the foundation of a comprehensive 'cradle-to-grave' welfare state, and founded a universal, tax funded National Health Service, which gave treatment according to need rather than ability to pay. The Labour government also enacted Keynesian economic policies, to stimulate the economy to create full employment. These policies became known as the "post-war consensus", and were accepted by all major political parties. This post-war consensus lasted until the late 1970s when it came under attack from the Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher.

Historic evaluation

The events of the 1930s, and the response of the Labour and National governments to the depression, have generated much historical controversy.
In the decades immediately following World War II most historical opinion was critical of the governments of the period. Certain historians, such as Robert Skidelsky in his Politicians and the Slump, compared the orthodox policies of the Labour and National governments unfavourably with the more radical proto-Keynesian measures advocated by Lloyd George and Oswald Mosley, and the more interventionist and Keynesian responses in other economies: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States, the Labour government in New Zealand, and the Social Democratic government in Sweden. Since the 1970s opinion has become less uniformly hostile. In the preface to the 1994 edition Skidelsky argues that recent experience of currency crises and capital flight make it hard to be so critical of the politicians who wanted to achieve stability by cutting labour costs and defending the value of the currency.

World War II and rebuilding

The United Kingdom, along with the British Empire's crown colonies, especially British India, declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939, after the German invasion of Poland. Hostilities with Japan began in 1941, after it attacked British colonies in Asia. The Axis powers were defeated by the Allies in 1945.
The end of the Second World War saw a landslide General Election victory for Clement Atlee and the Labour Party. They were elected on a manifesto of greater social justice with left wing policies such as the creation of a National Health Service, an expansion of the provision of council housing and nationalisation of the major industries. The UK at the time was poor, relying heavily on loans from the United States of America (which were finally paid off in February 2007) to rebuild its damaged infrastructure. Rationing and conscription dragged on into the post war years, and the country suffered one of the worst winters on record. Nevertheless, morale was boosted by events such as the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and the Festival of Britain.
As the country headed into the 1950s, rebuilding continued and a number of immigrants from the remaining British Empire were invited to help the rebuilding effort. As the 1950s wore on, the UK had lost its place as a superpower and could no longer maintain its large Empire. This led to decolonization, and a withdrawal from almost all of its colonies by 1970. Events such as the Suez Crisis showed that the UK's status had fallen in the world. The 1950s and 1960s were, however, relatively prosperous times after the Second World War, and saw the beginning of a modernization of the UK, with the construction of its first motorways for example, and also during the 1960s a great cultural movement began which expanded across the world.

Empire to Commonwealth

Britain's control over its Empire loosened during the interwar period. Nationalism became stronger in other parts of the empire, particularly in India and in Egypt.
Between 1867 and 1910, the UK had granted Australia, Canada, and New Zealand "Dominion" status (near complete autonomy within the Empire). They became charter members of the British Commonwealth of Nations (known as the Commonwealth of Nations since 1949) , an informal but closely-knit association that succeeded the British Empire. Beginning with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, the remainder of the British Empire was almost completely dismantled. Today, most of Britain's former colonies belong to the Commonwealth, almost all of them as independent members. There are, however, 13 former British colonies — including Bermuda, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, and others — which have elected to continue their political links with London and are known as British Overseas Territories.
Although often marked by economic and political nationalism, the Commonwealth offers the United Kingdom a voice in matters concerning many developing countries, and is a forum for those countries to raise concerns. Notable non-members of the Commonwealth are Ireland, the United States and the former middle-eastern colonies and protectorates. In addition, the Commonwealth helps preserve many institutions deriving from British experience and models, such as Westminster-style parliamentary democracy, in those countries.

From The Troubles to the Belfast Agreement

In the 1960s, moderate unionist Prime Minister Terence O'Neill (later Lord O'Neill of the Maine) tried to reform the system, but was met with opposition from extreme Protestant leaders like the Rev. Ian Paisley. The increasing pressures from nationalists for reform and from extreme unionists for No surrender led to the appearance of the civil rights movement under figures like John Hume, Austin Currie and others. Clashes between marchers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary led to increased communal strife. The Army was deployed in 1969 by British Home Secretary James Callaghan to protect nationalists from attack, and was, at first, warmly welcomed. Relationships deteriorated, however, and the emergence of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) , a breakaway from the increasingly Marxist Official IRA, and a campaign of violence by loyalist terror groups like the Ulster Defence Association and others, brought Northern Ireland to the brink of Civil War. The killing by the Army of thirteen unarmed civilians in 1972 in Derry ("Bloody Sunday") inflamed the situation further and turned northern nationalists against the British Army. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, extremists on both sides carried out a series of brutal mass murders, often on innocent civilians. Among the most notorious outrages were the McGurk's Bar bombing and the bombings in Enniskillen and Omagh.
Some British politicians, notably former British Labour minister Tony Benn advocated British withdrawal from Ireland, but this policy was opposed by successive British and Irish governments, who called their prediction of the possible results of British withdrawal the Doomsday Scenario, with widespread communal strife, followed by the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children as refugees to their community's 'side' of the province; nationalists fleeing to western Northern Ireland, unionists fleeing to eastern Northern Ireland. The worst fear was of a civil war which would engulf not just Northern Ireland, but the neighbouring Republic of Ireland and Scotland both of whom had major links with either or both communities. Later, the feared possible impact of British Withdrawal came to be called the Balkanisation of Northern Ireland after the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and the chaos it unleashed.
In the early 1970s, the Parliament of Northern Ireland was prorogued after the province's Unionist Government under the premiership of Brian Faulkner refused to agree to the British Government demand that it hand over the powers of law and order, and Direct Rule was introduced from London starting on 24 March 1972. New systems of governments were tried and failed, including power-sharing under Sunningdale, Rolling Devolution and the Anglo-Irish Agreement. By the 1990s, the failure of the IRA campaign to win mass public support or achieve its aim by British Withdrawal, and in particular the public relations disaster that was the Enniskillen, along with the replacement of the traditional Republican leadership of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh by Gerry Adams, saw a move away from armed conflict to political engagement. These changes were followed the appearance of new leaders in Dublin Albert Reynolds, London John Major and in unionism David Trimble. Contacts initiatively been Adams and John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, broadened out into all party negotiations, that in 1998 produced the 'Good Friday Agreement' which was approved by a majority of both communities in Northern Ireland and by the people of the Republic of Ireland, where the constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann was amended to replace a claim it allegedly made to the territory of Northern Ireland with a recognition of Northern Ireland's right to exist, while also acknowledging the nationalist desire for a united Ireland.
Under the Good Friday Agreement, properly known as the Belfast Agreement, a new Northern Ireland Assembly was elected to form a Northern Irish parliament. Every party that reaches a specific level of support is entitled to name a member of its party to government and claim a ministry. Ulster Unionist party leader David Trimble became First Minister of Northern Ireland. The Deputy Leader of the SDLP, Seamus Mallon, became Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, though he was subsequently replaced by his party's new leader, Mark Durkan. The Ulster Unionists, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Féin and Democratic Unionist Party each had ministers by right in the power-sharing assembly. The Assembly and its Executive were later suspended over unionist threats over the alleged delay in the Provisional IRA implementing its agreement to decommission its weaponry, and also the alleged discovery or an IRA spy-ring operating in the heart of the civil service (though this later turned out to be false due to the fact that Denis Donaldson, the person in possession of the incriminating files which pointed to an IRA spy-ring actually worked for the British intelligence).

Growth of modern Britain (late 20th century)


After the relative prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, through the 1970s the UK began integration to the European Economic Community but experienced extreme industrial strife and stagflation following a global economic downturn. As well as this the conflict with the IRA reached its peak in Northern Ireland in a period known as the Troubles. A strict modernization of its economy began under the controversial leader Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, which saw a time of record unemployment as deindustrialization saw the end of much of the country's manufacturing industries but also a time of economic boom as stock markets became liberated and state owned industries became privatised. However the miners' strike of 1984-1985 saw the end of the UK's coal mining, thanks to the discovery of North Sea gas which brought in substantial oil revenues to aid the new economic boom. This was also the time that the IRA took the issue of Northern Ireland to Great Britain, maintaining a prolonged bombing campaign on the island.
After the economic boom of the 1980s a brief but severe recession occurred between 1991 and 1992 following the economic chaos of Black Wednesday under the John Major government. However the rest of the 1990s saw the beginning of a period of continuous economic growth that lasted over 16 years and was greatly expanded under the New Labour government of Tony Blair following his landslide election victory in 1997.

Devolution for Scotland and Wales

On 11 September 1997, (on the 700th anniversary of the Scottish victory over the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge), a referendum was held on establishing a devolved Scottish Parliament. This resulted in an overwhelming 'yes' vote both to establishing the parliament and granting it limited tax varying powers. Two weeks later, a referendum in Wales on establishing a Welsh Assembly for was also approved but with a very narrow majority. The first elections were held, and these bodies began to operate, in 1999. The creation of these bodies has widened the differences between the Countries of the United Kingdom, especially in areas like healthcare. It has also brought to the fore the so-called West Lothian question which is a complaint that devolution for Scotland and Wales but not England has created a situation where all the MPs in the UK parliament can vote on matters affecting England alone but on those same matters Scotland and Wales can make their own decisions.

21st century

In the 2001 General Election, the Labour Party won a second successive victory and the country's economic expansion continued greatly despite the effects of the September 11th attacks in the United States. Following these attacks, the United States began the War on Terror beginning with a conflict in Afghanistan aided by British troops. Despite huge anti-war marches held in London and Glasgow, Blair gave strong support also to the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. Forty-six thousand British troops, one-third of the total strength of the British Army (land forces), were deployed to assist with the invasion of Iraq and thereafter British armed forces were responsible for security in southern Iraq in the run-up to the Iraqi elections of January 2005.
The Labour Party won the Thursday 5 May 2005 general election and a third consecutive term in office. However the effects of the War on Terror following 9/11 increased the threat of international terrorists plotting attacks against the UK. On Thursday 7 July 2005, a series of four bomb explosions struck London's public transport system during the morning rush-hour. All four incidents were suicide bombings that killed 52 commutors in addition to the 4 bombers.
2007 saw the conclusion of the premiership of Tony Blair, followed by the premiership of Gordon Brown (from 27 June 2007). 2007 also saw an election victory for the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) in the May elections. They formed a minority government with plans to hold a referendum before 2011 to seek a mandate "to negotiate with the Government of the United Kingdom to achieve independence for Scotland." Most opinion polls show minority support for independence, though support varies depending on the nature of the question. The response of the unionist parties has been to call for the establishment of a Commission to examine further devolution of powers, a position that has the support of the Prime Minister.
In the wake of the economic crisis of 2008, the United Kingdom is now in a real threat of entering a prolonged and deep recession towards the end of 2008 following the collapse of the housing market and rising oil prices which has increased fuel bills in households. The announcement in November 2008 that the economy shrank for the first time since late 1992 brought an end to 16 years of continuous economic growth which was stronger than any other European nation.

Social history

Chartism is thought to have originated from the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, which gave the vote to the majority of the (male) middle classes, but not to the 'working class'. Many people made speeches on the 'betrayal' of the working class and the 'sacrificing' of their 'interests' by the 'misconduct' of the government. In 1838, six members of Parliament and six workingmen formed a committee, which then published the People's Charter.
Victorian attitudes and ideals continued into the first years of the 20th century, and what really changed society was the start of World War I. The army was traditionally never a large employer in the nation, and the regular army stood at 247,432 at the start of the war. By 1918, there were about five million people in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force, newly formed from the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) , was about the same size of the pre-war army. The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation", and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism of the home front.
The social reforms of the last century continued into the 20th with the Labour Party being formed in 1900. Labour did not achieve major success until the 1922 general election. David Lloyd George said after the First World War that "the nation was now in a molten state", and his Housing Act 1919 would lead to affordable council housing which allowed people to move out of Victorian inner-city slums. The slums, though, remained for several more years, with trams being electrified long before many houses. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave women householders the vote, but it would not be until 1928 that equal suffrage was achieved.

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