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A Review of British History thru an American Lens

10/3/2021

Part 2: Rule Britannia (1820 – 1910)

Written by: Ben Clark

As an American who has spent plenty of free time studying US history, beginning to study British history can be an intimidating task - there's just so much there compared to what we're used to. My solution is to divide and conquer, and use the monarchy timeline. This Part 2 essay extends from the death of King George III to death of King Edward VII – 90 years of rich British history, and includes the famed Victorian Era. What I condense to just a few pages is presented in books that take 500 pages to describe. This is, admittedly, a look from 30,000 feet, but from time to time I zoom in to treetop level for a more detailed review.

During this era that I have sub-titled Rule Britannia, Europeans were incomparably successful at sending ships across oceans; on Round Trips. It’s true that some of the voyagers did not make it back, but over time the success rate steadily increased. Advances in ship building skills and navigation in Europe, combined with geographically precise maps, outpaced the rest of the globe by a huge measure. During the same time, the Europeans became most efficient at operating joint-stock companies and managing empires of unprecedented extension and degree of activity than anyone else. We have all heard the old cliché, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” The same could have been said about the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch empires during their glory days.

By comparison, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lacked a single written language out of the thousands to tongues spoken in the vast area. They had no mathematical or musical notations, and inventions were scare to non-existent. The Sub-Saharan Africans had never seen a mechanical clock nor wheel until the European appeared. There were no roads, no law codes except the “Law of the Jungle”. Headhunting and cannibalism was practiced by many primitive African tribes, especially in the Congo. While it is fashionable today to condemn European Colonialism, SSA was clearly 500 years behind the Europeans BEFORE the first colony was established… Why?

Alfred Crosby in his 1997 book, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600, attempts to sum up this shocking intellectual gap with a practical recipe: Europe’s (the West) distinctive, and unmatched, accomplishment was to bring mathematics and measurement together and to hold them to the task of making sense of … reality. The Europeans increasingly shifted away from mysticism, superstitions and astrology for decision making. This shift made modern science, technology, and business practice possible, and was the driving force behind waves of innovation that swept over Europe. Due to an enlightened British government, the rule of law, respect for private property, and their unique form of free-market capitalism, the British proved to be the best at riding these early “long waves” of innovation to grow the largest, most profitable economy in the entire world.

We begin Part 2 Rule Britannia with the continuation of
the House of Hanover

George IV (1820- 1830) ruled as Prince Regent after 1811 when his father, George III, feel seriously ill. He had a messy private life (he was a bigamist) and few accomplishments. His only daughter died young.

William IV (1830- 1837) was third son of George III. He served in the Royal Navy and fathered ten illegitimate children before taking the crown. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Law received Royal Assent. Around 800,000 slaves were freed in British colonies – mostly in the Caribbean. The British government compensated the slave owners with a cash payment. The transatlantic slave trade was already outlawed by Britain (1807) and the US (1800), but illegal slave smuggling on foreign flag ships continued due to the high profits. William married Adelaide of Sax-Coburg in 1818 and fathered two daughters. Unfortunately the girls died young, so the king died heirless.

Victoria (1837-1901) was the only child of Edward, fourth son of George III, and Duchess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. She had an unhappy, very isolated childhood, and never knew her father who died when she was only 8 months old. Her mother, the Duchess, devised a complex set of house rules to keep her daughter “safe”. She had to sleep in her mother’s bedroom, and was home schooled with no playmates. Her only friend was a dog. Many years after she became Queen, she was asked by a writer when she actually knew she would become the next Queen. Victoria related the story how her governess, against the Duchess’s rules, had slipped a chart of the House of Hanover family tree into her lesson book. The twelve year old girl studied the chart and traced all the various connections to King George III, her grandfather. It took a while – George and Queen Charlotte had 15 children. Then she worked out the biggest surprise of her young life: not one of her many uncles had sired a single legitimate heir. She understood, at a young age, the British system of male-preference primogeniture. “I see I am nearer to the throne than I thought”, she told herself. Six years later at the age of 18 she became the Queen of the British Empire in June 1837.

Long live the (new) Queen

In 1840 she married Albert of Saxe-Coburg. They had a very happy marriage and the queen gave birth to 9 children. Her kingdom thrived. It was her fairy tale come true. Industrial Revolution continues at a faster pace with multiple British invention and discoveries. English textile mills, steam engines and steel mills were the economic wonders of the business world. The Queen took her first train ride in 1842 on Great Western Railway (GWR) and was thrilled by the soaring cathedral-like train stations, railway tunnels and massive bridges that were the engineering marvel of the world.

Rain, Steam and Speed by Turner – The GWR

Like her grandfather, King George III, Victoria’s reign oversaw big H-istory. During her rule the British Empire increased in size and British world power reached its zenith. In 1845 two important events shaped British-America relations: the Irish Potato Famine and the election of James K. Polk as the 11th President of the United States. The Irish famine lasted four years and triggered a mass migration. As many as one million people left Ireland. Many of them made it to America to start a new life. At the same time America was booming and expanding, so the US government welcomed immigrants. The new Irish settlers found work and cheap land, and quickly assimilated in America. The Irish immigration of the 1840’s is still one of best examples of successful immigration policy in American history.

The British Parliament soon realized in 1845 that they were dealing with America at its most aggressive since 1776. President Polk doubled down on the American claim to the Oregon Country – a giant territory stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide between the 42nd and 54th latitudes. The British claim was based on past expeditions up the Columbia River basin, and they considered the Oregon Country part of their Canadian possessions. Polk based the American claim on the Lewis and Clark expedition which had followed the Snake River to the Pacific in 1805.

Soon after Polk took office he ordered the State Department to open negotiations on the Oregon Country with their British counterparts. The Americans offered to split the territory at the 49th latitude, following a projection of the existing border with Canada. The British rejected the offer and countered with an unacceptable offer. The talks stalled. Polk called a special session and addressed Congress. He insisted the American claim was “clear and unquestionable”, but stopped short of claiming the entire territory or threatening war. The Congress passed a resolution to notify England that the joint occupancy of the Oregon Country would end in one year. The risk of war was in the air.

Neither side desired war. The outstanding British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, weighed his options, and counseled with his staff members well-informed about American politics. The British sized up Polk – he was born in a log cabin in rural Tennessee, one of ten children. He went from a subsistence farmer to President on merit, high intelligence and an iron will. Polk was not the type of man to bluff and would be a formidable opponent in war. Also a hostile American Navy roaming the globe and attacking English shipping would be a nightmare for the critical British trading business. Aberdeen made a decision; a war over the Oregon Country was not worth the risk. In June 1846 a treaty was signed by both parties recognizing the 49th latitude as the new border. Congress promptly approved the treaty. The land rights of the indigenous Indians were not a factor.

Always wary of a too strong rival, the British Parliament and monarchy watched with mild alarm as Polk next turned his attention to annexing Texas and waging a victorious war with Mexico resulting in enormous American territorial gains. Polk was a one term President but in four years his forceful policies made the US a continental power. America had fulfilled her “Manifest Destiny”. The British did not offer their congratulations.

On May 1, 1851 the Great Exhibition opened at Hyde Park, London in the gigantic Crystal Palace – a sparkling new iron and glass structure filled with attractions from all over the world. The theme was “Works of Industry”. Queen Victoria was especially impressed with the exhibits from America: the first typewriter, the newfangled Singer sewing machine, and mechanical farm equipment. An automated envelope maker was a big hit with Queen Victoria, as it folded paper with the dexterity of delicate fingers. On a return visit to the Exhibit a few weeks later, Queen Victoria was accompanied by the Duke of Wellington, and she asked him for his opinion about ridding the Crystal Palace of a bothersome flock of sparrows. The elderly Duke replied, “Hawks, madam. Sparrow hawks.” It worked.

The Great Exhibition was the pet project of Prince Albert. He guided the project from inception to the finish line in an astonishing fast track timeline of only nine months. The exhibition was an immense success. Millions of paying customers visited the Crystal Palace, easily paying for the project and funding a large surplus that Albert and Victoria used for more civic projects. It was a triumph in showmanship and certainly raised the national spirit.

Crystal Palace interior

The rapid advances in the Industrial Revolution were unfortunately not matched in some other fields. People died often and early in the Victoria Era from a host of killers diseases. Measles, scarlet fever, and smallpox were responsible for the appalling infant mortality rates of 33% of kids under age 5. In some poor neighborhoods, the rate was >50%. Not only the poor people died young. Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert would die in 1861 of typhoid fever – the dreaded disease spread by foul water proving once again the perils of living in an age of poor health care together with meager, or nonexistent, water sanitation standards. He was only age 42. Victoria was devastated and was never really the same lady after Albert’s death. She soldiered on without her husband; the solemn, widowed Queen in the black frock.

The next Anglo-American issue that raised political emotions was the American Civil War (1861-1865). PM Lord Palmerston steered a neutral policy and skillfully managed a couple of minor yet thorny events (the Trent affair and Alabama affair) to keep the British out of the hostilities. The American war, in particular the blockade of Southern ports by the Union Navy, caused quick and negative economic impacts on England. The South provided the bulk of the raw cotton used in the huge British textile industry. The cotton shortage triggered mass unemployment in the urban manufacturing centers. A world-wide scramble for cotton began in earnest. Civil War historian Shelby Foote writes, “Approximately two million [British] people were without means of self-support as a result of the [wartime] cotton famine – the overall economic picture was far from gloomy. [British] munitions manufacturers were profiting handsomely from the quarrel, several cotton mills switched to linen or wool, and the British merchant marine was prospering as never before augmented by over seven hundred American ships transferred to the Union Jack to avoid rebel privateering.”

Many in Parliament and especially in the House of Lords supported the Confederacy. This was not due to any sympathy for slavery, but because many of the upper class British viewed Abe Lincoln and his Yankee armies as the strongest force favoring militant democracy since the French Terror of 1793. Palmerston feared that a hostile, victorious North, armed to the teeth, posed a potential direct threat to British interests in Canada. The English ruling class would have been delighted to see an America nicely divided into hostile states, but the Lords were not willing to go to war again in America. British war hawks had recently had their belly full of war in India (1857-1858) putting down a major rebellion, costing thousands of lives and a huge treasure. Besides it was a long standing British policy not to interfere in foreign conflicts – unless absolutely necessary: the Confederate envoy in London was snubbed and ignored.

Lord Palmerston’s conservative foreign policy is best summed up by one of his most famous quotes, “We [England] have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” In the current age of TV sound bites, the phrase would be shortened to: “England First”. The threat of a militant American faded when the US quickly demilitarized at the conclusion of the Civil War. Anglo-American relations for the rest of the nineteenth century were cordial; business and trade boomed. Soon the British were casting a wary eye on the expansionist Russian Czar as his army pushed into Central Asia and ever closer to India, a prize British colony. Tashkent was taken and soon Samarkand also fell to the Russians. The Russian advance triggered the “Great Game”; a cold war with spies, counter spies and more spies along the Silk Road.

Back in Europe, two traditional and hereditary rivals, France and Prussia, once again began to beat the war drums. In July 1870 France declared war on Prussia, and armies mobilized. England wisely decided to remain neutral in the conflict although public opinion was in favor of Prussia. The war was soon over in January 1871 following a major German victory at Sedan and the capture of French emperor, Napoleon III. The various German states united with Prussia and created the First German Reich under the leadership by the Prussian House of Hohenzollern. British leadership was shocked by the quick defeat of France, the formation of a united Germany, and aggressive German demands at the peace treaty meetings. England insisted on the balance of power approach to the peace treaty and helped temper the German demands.

Historian Byron Farwell writes, “There was not a single year in Queen Victoria’s long reign, from 1837 to 1901, when her soldiers were not fighting and dying [and killing] somewhere in the world [other than Europe].” It is beyond the scope of this article to address all the scrapes and wars of the Victorian Era, besides it is easy for those interested in Victorian Wars to find several excellent history books on the subject.

I have selected one particular Victorian era clash that I consider illustrative, and many modern historians consider to be “decisive”; the battle of Tel El Kebir, Egypt in 1882. A quick review of the backstory is revealing. Since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the British considered the canal a vitally important lifeline to India and other parts of her vast realm. With 80% of her merchant ships passing thru the Suez, the British Embassy in Cairo kept a wary eye on Egypt from the sidelines. Egypt was under the nominal rule by the Ottoman Sultan, but the Egyptian Khedive Ismail and his son Tewfik held power in Cairo. Both men were totally inept and corrupt rulers that squandered the substantial canal fees. Egypt went bankrupt. A military coup, led by Colonel Arabi, ousted the Khedive in September 1881. The colonel proved to be a popular and charismatic leader. He was also very hostile to foreigners. Arabi’s men were careful not to shed French or English blood, but sent them packing home. The London big shots decided that Arabi needed to be taught some proper manners and respect. The British sent the Royal Navy to blast up Arabi’s forts around Alexandria. Rather than surrender, Arabi redoubled his resistance, and the rebel army grew to over 60,000 troops. The British War Ministry decided that troops would have to be committed to tame Arabi, and selected Sir Garnet Wolseley to command the expedition. The French declined to join an invasion of Egypt.

General Wolseley was the victor in many a colonial war, fighting Burmese, Indians, Ashantis, Zulus and Sudanese. He was clearly one of the best battlefield commanders of the era, and was head and shoulders above the rest of the British officer corps in the areas of planning, strategy, logistics, and staffing. Wolseley quickly assembled his handpicked core group of proven and trusted officers. This was no easy task – since the British army was infested with vain aristocrats clamoring for a command in the expedition. On their best days, they were mere Peacock Parade Ground soldiers, and were quickly shunned by Wolseley which created much bitterness and anger in several high born officers. Back biting and sniping at Wolseley was a favorite sport in many London Officer Clubs.

General Garnet Wolseley circa 1874

The Wolseley “Ring” went to work with extraordinary efficiency assembling the largest expedition force in British history: sixty-one ships loaded with 41,000 tons of supplies, 20,000 combat troops with artillery and horses, and another 21,000 sailors and support troops. To deceive the Egyptians, elaborate plans were prepared for an attack at Aboukir Bay in the Nile delta. Huge wall maps of the bay in an unsecured war department conference room were shown “in confidence” to newspaper reporters. Only Wolseley and a few senior navy and army officers knew the real plan. July 1882 the British invasion fleet set sail for Egypt, paused for a provisioning stop at Malta, and arrived off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt on August 20.

After darkness fell, the main British fleet headed for the real target – the Suez Canal. Several Royal Navy vessels remained offshore Alexandria, and demonstrated in Aboukir Bay, successfully keeping almost 40,000 Egyptian troops guarding the Nile delta and away from the Suez Canal. The landings at Port Said and Ismailia were a complete success – the canal was captured with scarcely a shot. In classic Wolseley fashion, a landing party secured the canal telegraph office before the alarm was sent to Cairo. Next a flying column of 2,000 men dashed inland to capture the critical fresh water source at Abu al Mahattah then swept ahead of the main force capturing supplies, ammunition, cannons, and in general creating chaos. The main army moved west with light resistance until halting at the Egyptian main line of defense on a ridge at a whistle stop on the Ismailia-Cairo railway named Tel el Kebir.

Wolseley scouted the Egyptian defensive line for a weakness. He found none. Arabi’s 25,000 man army had dug a four mile long trench connecting strong points for seventy cannons with a clear field of overlapping fire for hundreds of yards. Wolseley probed the Egyptian defense and waited. On August 28 a daring British night patrol discovered that the Egyptians did not man the advance outposts at night. Wolseley called a staff meeting to discuss a night attack. His senior officers were hesitant. A night attack was against British military doctrine and the God of War himself, Wellington, had frowned upon large scale operations at night. Wolseley reminded his staff that in 1759 General Wolfe surprised the French at Quebec with a daring night maneuver on the St. Lawrence River guided by a Royal Navy navigator using his sextant, compass and an accurate map. Wolseley decided to steal a night march on the Egyptians and get close enough to rush their lines at daybreak. He sent an order to the Royal Navy commander to dispatch navigators to his base at Kassassin. That night Wolseley walked outside his tent and looked at a Full Moon; he would wait for the New Moon in two weeks. A lesser man would have jumped the gun.

On the night of September 12, 1882 the British army donned their battle kit, and quietly as possible marched out of their base. Wolseley estimated about six hours to cover the five miles to Tel El Kebir, and get into attack position. It was pitch black dark, there were no landmarks; the three columns followed the navigators. The operation was completed with little trouble. At the first break of daylight, the British found themselves about two hundred yards from the enemy trenches. Bugles called and thousands of Highlanders roared. The British line charged forward, and were into the trenches before the Egyptians could bring their big guns to bear. The Egyptians rallied and fought bravely; often hand-to-hand. The fighting was intense in the center, but on both flanks the British prevailed. Faced with a double envelopment, and no reserves, Colonel Arabi called for a retreat. Not surprisingly, it soon turned into a rout as the Egyptians abandoned every artillery piece. Wolseley turned loose his cavalry to finish them off. It was a bloody mess.

The following day Wolseley entered Cairo and accepted Arabi’s surrender. Wolseley telegraphed the War Office, “The war in Egypt is over. Send no more troops from England.” Military historian Paul Davis writes, “British victory [at Tel El Kebir] placed the British in de facto control of both Egypt and the Suez Canal, and led to British influence throughout the Middle East until 1956.” Back in London, Garnet Wolseley was showered with medals and awards. He deserved every one for his resourcefulness, steady nerves, and wits.

Throughout Victoria's reign, the gradual establishment of a modern constitutional monarchy in Britain continued. Reforms of the voting system increased the power of the House of Commons at the expense of the House of Lords and the monarch. In 1867, Walter Bagehot wrote that the monarch only retained "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn". Social reforms followed liberal political power with response to public demands for public schools, abolition of child labor, and safer factory working conditions. “The Communist Manifesto” written by Marx and Engle in 1848 (and then quickly forgotten) was suddenly very popular in the 1880’s during the social reforms. As Victoria's monarchy became more symbolic than political, she placed a strong emphasis on morality and family values, with which the burgeoning middle classes could identify. Unfortunately her elder son and heir apparent, Albert Edward, rejected her values and would often blunder into sex scandals.

House of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha

Edward VII (1901-1910) was the elder son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was related to royalty throughout Europe, and traveled often during his 60 years of being heir apparent to the British throne. He made a grand tour of America and Canada in 1860 soon after being named Prince of Wales. The New York press loved him for his good humor and confidence. Nicknamed “Bertie” he gained a reputation as a playboy prince which soured relations with his mother and father. He often visited Paris and almost single-handed reversed centuries of anti-British prejudice with his fluent, confident French and cheerful attitude. The French people went from jeering to cheering for the portly, bearded English royal. Over time he adopted an anti-German bias so common among the French, who were scheming for revanche due to the humiliation of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Bertie’s anti-German attitude was compounded by a strong dislike of his nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was a strange mindset for a man who had German parents, dozens of German relatives, and who spoke English with a German accent. And was an about-face for the House of Hanover history of pro-German policy since George I in 1714. Modern historians, puzzled by this odd king, speculate on Edward’s role in Europe stumbling toward the Great War.

The German Kaiser certainly blamed Uncle Edward for war. Wilhelm was enraged by Edward’s support of British naval build up in Europe and especially his part in securing the Triple Entente, the alliance between Britain, France, and Russia which essentially surrounded Germany by land and sea. At a VIP dinner in 1907 Berlin, before three hundred guests the Kaiser went on a rant denouncing his Uncle Edward, “He is Satan. You cannot imagine what a Satan he is.” The wave of anti-German foreign policies and propaganda fed the paranoia of the German Kaiser, who was not the most stable ruler in Europe.

Historian R. K. Ensor dismisses the notion that the King exerted important influence on British foreign policy, and posits that Edward instead spent his time in reckless pursuit of self-indulgence and indiscreet sex scandals. Ensor could be correct, but it is difficult to make a solid case because, by royal decree, all of Edward’s personal papers were burned upon his death.

The two British statesmen who cannot dodge blame for the Triple Entente and the ensuing tragedy of 1914 were Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary 1905-1916) and his predecessor Lansdowne (FS 1900-1905). The two were responsible for the abandonment of conservative foreign policy principles of “Balance of Power” and enlightened self-interest practiced since Pitt, Castlereagh and Liverpool.

Anglo-American relations were cordial during Edward’s reign. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, 26th President (1901-1909) was most aggressive in the Caribbean and Panama. He was determined to oversee a canal constructed in Panama to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1903 Roosevelt obtained a treaty with the new Panama government ceding the “US owned Canal Zone” for construction of the American design. Work began immediately. To secure the future canal, Teddy invoked the Monroe Doctrine to prevent the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean, and denied European powers the right of intervention in Latin America. The Caribbean and Panama were to be squarely in the “sphere of influence” of the United States.

In the past, England had defied the Monroe Doctrine, but in 1901 a clear realization of rising American power put some dangerous teeth into the old Doctrine. England complied and peacefully sailed its Caribbean Sea fleet to the home base at Scapa Flow in the North Sea. In 1902 former PM Salisbury wrote, “It is sad, but I am afraid America is bound to forge ahead and nothing can restore the equality between us.”

The German Kaiser saw this redeployment as a naval build up in the North Sea; hence, yet another threat to Germany. The fact that the redeployment simplified logistics and saved money made perfect sense, but the neurotic German Emperor saw it as a threat.

While the Kaiser rattled his saber, and Edward prowled the fleshpots of Paris, the Scientific Revolution surged ahead with several groundbreaking discoveries and inventions. Albert Einstein, a German born physicist working as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland published four technical papers in 1905 which stunned the scientific world. His work outlined the theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced the theory of relativity, and demonstrated mass-energy equivalence (e=mc2). Shortly before in 1903, the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina achieved powered, controlled flight in the Wright Flyer. Long distance telephone use rapidly expands with the invention of the vacuum diode in 1904. Bakelite was invented in 1907 and launched new field of synthetic polymer chemistry. Steady improvements in steel making processes greatly increased toughness and tensile strength of steel. Techniques were invented to tune the final steel for desired properties such as ductility and corrosion resistance. In 1908 the Ford Motor Company began mass-production of steel body cars (the Model T).

The technical advances were not limited to peaceful uses; modern weaponry of the early 1900’s included reliable, portable, high-caliber machine guns, quick firing artillery delivering high explosive (HE), large-caliber shells, and smokeless gunpowder (cordite). During Edward’s reign a full scale war using modern weapons broke out in Asia – the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). The British were shocked to learn of the destruction of both the Russian Pacific and Baltic fleets by the Japanese Imperial Navy. On land, despite heavy casualties, the Japanese managed to capture the key Russian base at Port Arthur on the Liao-Tung Peninsula in Manchuria. American President Theodore Roosevelt mediated a peace treaty to end the war. The British never again considered Russia a threat to her interests in India.

The European powers sent a gaggle of military observers and war correspondents to witness the Russo-Japanese war, and capture some military lessons. Shockingly they all failed to comprehend the most critical lesson of the land war: Huge increases in firepower, together with barbed wire, shifted the battlefield balance overwhelmingly to entrenched and fortified defensive positions. The “gallant” offensive doctrine of all major European powers was obsolete, but they clung tenaciously to the hopelessly optimistic fantasy that “Courage and cunning” by the offense would prevail. It took the tragic slaughter of 1914 -18 WWI for the lesson to finally sink into the military mind.

The philistine but stylish King Edward ruled over a nation in the grip of a liberal renaissance as best symbolized by the Fabian Society led by middle-class socialists including several avant-garde intellectuals, suffragettes and artists. The Fabians started off slow, but by the end of Edward’s reign they had collected thousands of members some of whom were elected to parliament. The resulting Labour Party gave the socialists a measure of respectability in their fight for women’s rights and a more democratic government. The old world of Traditional England was beginning to crack.

King Edward’s funeral in 1910 was a magnificent event. One of Bertie’s unofficial titles was “Uncle of Europe”, so the assemblage of royal mourners was unprecedented. Barbara Tuchman’s 1962 best-seller The Guns of August begins with a description of the funeral procession, and is some of the most colorful and beautiful prose ever found in a history book. Consider this from Chapter 1, page 1, Tuchman writes:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

English Literature

Popular Victorian-era fiction
The three Brontë sisters (Emily, Charlotte and Anne) were upright, passionate, and virginal Romantics. They used male pseudonyms to get published. Anne never married, neither did Emily, they both died young, and when Charlotte finally married, she soon became pregnant and died with her unborn child. Their most popular novels are listed below. Also there are modern film adaptations of each as well, sometimes more than one.

Emily – Wuthering Heights; Charlotte – Jane Eyre; Anne – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) had a remarkable command of the English language and could turn a phrase better than most. A few examples from some of my favorite Dickens novels:

A Tale of Two Cities “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done…”

Great Expectations “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching…I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”

A Christmas Carol “there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor.” And “You will be visited by the ghosts of Christmas past.”
David Copperfield “Trifles make the sum of life.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is most famous for his creation of the Sherlock Holmes, the eccentric British private detective residing at 221B Baker Street, London. Doyle published 60 Sherlock Holmes tales in the form of short stories and novels beginning with A Study in Scarlet (1887).

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is most famous for Treasure Island (1883) and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). For the more macabre taste try The Body Snatcher (1884).

Essential Non-fiction Victorian Era

Henry Stanley, Through the Dark Continent (1899) is an exciting first-hand account of his 1870s trip to discover the source of the Nile River. In this remarkable journey Stanley and his men travelled through regions hitherto unexplored by Europeans. They survived through some of the most inhospitable, disease ridden jungles and withstood vicious cannibal attacks.

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859) – scientific treatise on the theory of evolution.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) - well written assertion of English individual rights.

Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (1851) the bible for crusading liberals it provides detailed descriptions of the unfortunate London lower class work force.

Harriet Martineau, Household Education (1848) – a feminist protest on the lack of education and opportunity for women in the Victorian male dominated society.

Author’s note – Full bibliography will be included at end of Part 3.

Part 1: The rise of England to World Power (1485-1820)

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