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Coalition]] (1799–1801), William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) provided strong leadership in London. Britain occupied most of the French and Dutch overseas possessions, the Netherlands having become a satellite state of France in 1796. After a short peace, in May 1803, war was declared again. Napoleon's plans to invade Britain failed, chiefly due to the inferiority of his navy. In 1805 Lord Nelson's fleet decisively defeated the French and Spanish at Trafalgar, ending any hopes Napoleon had to wrest control of the oceans away from the British.

The British Army remained a minimal threat to France; it maintained a standing strength of just 220,000 men at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, whereas France's armies exceeded a million men—in addition to the armies of numerous allies and several hundred thousand national guardsmen that Napoleon could draft into the French armies when they were needed. Although the Royal Navy effectively disrupted France's extra-continental trade—both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions—it could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of Britain.

In 1806, Napoleon set up the Continental System to end British trade with French-controlled territories. However Britain had great industrial capacity and mastery of the seas. It built up economic strength through trade and the Continental System was largely ineffective. As Napoleon realized that extensive trade was going through Spain and Russia, he invaded those two countries. He tied down his forces in Spain, and lost very badly in Russia in 1812. The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent. The Duke of Wellington and his army of British and Portuguese gradually pushed the French out of Spain, and in early 1814, as Napoleon was being driven back in the east by the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians, Wellington invaded southern France. After Napoleon's surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned, but when he escaped back into France in 1815, the British and their allies had to fight him again. The armies of Wellington and Blucher defeated Napoleon once and for all at Waterloo.

Simultaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, trade disputes and British impressment of American sailors led to the War of 1812 with the United States. A central event in American history, it was little noticed in Britain, where all attention was focused on the struggle with France. The British could devote few resources to the conflict until the fall of Napoleon in 1814. American frigates also inflicted a series of embarrassing defeats on the British navy, which was short on manpower due to the conflict in Europe. The Duke of Wellington argued that an outright victory over the U.S. was impossible because the Americans controlled the western Great Lakes and had destroyed the power of Britain's Indian allies. A full-scale British invasion was defeated in upstate New York. Peace was agreed to at the end of 1814, but unaware of this, Andrew Jackson won a great victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 (news took several weeks to cross the Atlantic before the advent of steam ships). The Treaty of Ghent subsequently ended the war with no territorial changes. It was the last war between Britain and the United States.

George IV and William IV

Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars a very different country than it had been in 1793. As industrialisation progressed, society changed, becoming more urban and less rural. The postwar period saw an economic slump, and poor harvests and inflation caused widespread social unrest. Europe after 1815 was on guard against a return of Jacobinism, and even liberal Britain saw the passage of the Six Acts in 1819, which proscribed radical activities. By the end of the 1820s, along with a general economic recovery, many of these repressive laws were repealed and in 1828 new legislation guaranteed the civil rights of religious dissenters.

A weak ruler as regent (1811–1820) and king (1820–1830), George IV let his ministers take full charge of government affairs, playing a far lesser role than his father, George III. His governments, with little help from the king, presided over victory in the Napoleonic Wars, negotiated the peace settlement, and attempted to deal with the social and economic malaise that followed. His brother William IV ruled (1830–37), but was little involved in politics. His reign saw several reforms: the poor law was updated, child labour was restricted, slavery was abolished in nearly all the British Empire, and, most important, the Reform Act 1832 refashioned the British electoral system.

There were no major wars until the Crimean War (1853–1856). While Prussia, Austria, and Russia, as absolute monarchies, tried to suppress liberalism wherever it might occur, the British came to terms with new ideas. Britain intervened in Portugal in 1826 to defend a constitutional government there and recognising the independence of Spain's American colonies in 1824. British merchants and financiers, and later railway builders, played major roles in the economies of most Latin American nations.

Whig reforms of the 1830s

The Whig Party recovered its strength and unity by supporting moral reforms, especially the reform of the electoral system, the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the Catholics. Catholic emancipation was secured in the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland.

The Whigs became champions of Parliamentary reform. They made Lord Grey prime minister 1830–1834, and the Reform Act of 1832 became their signature measure. It broadened the franchise and ended the system of "rotten borough" and "pocket boroughs" (where elections were controlled by powerful families), and instead redistributed power on the basis of population. It added 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000 in England and Wales. The main effect of the act was to weaken the power of the landed gentry, and enlarge the power of the professional and business middle-class, which now for the first time had a significant voice in Parliament. However, the great majority of manual workers, clerks, and farmers did not have enough property to qualify to vote. The aristocracy continued to dominate the government, the Army and Royal Navy, and high society. After parliamentary investigations demonstrated the horrors of child labour, limited reforms were passed in 1833.

Chartism emerged after the 1832 Reform Bill failed to give the vote to the working class. Activists denounced the "betrayal" of the working classes and the "sacrificing" of their "interests" by the "misconduct" of the government. In 1838, Chartists issued the People's Charter demanding manhood suffrage, equal sized election districts, voting by ballots, payment of Members of Parliament (so that poor men could serve), annual Parliaments, and abolition of property requirements. The ruling class saw the movement as dangerous, so the Chartists were unable to force serious constitutional debate. Historians see Chartism as both a continuation of the 18th century fight against corruption and as a new stage in demands for democracy in an industrial society. In 1832 Parliament abolished slavery in the Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The government purchased the slaves for £20,000,000 (the money went to rich plantation owners who mostly lived in England), and freed the slaves, especially those in the Caribbean sugar islands.

Leadership

Prime Ministers of the period included: William Pitt the Younger, Lord Grenville, Duke of Portland, Spencer Perceval, Lord Liverpool, George Canning, Lord Goderich, Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peel.

Victorian era

The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's rule between 1837 and 1901 which signified the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire. Scholars debate whether the Victorian period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and political concerns that have come to be associated with the Victorians—actually begins with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The era was preceded by the Regency era and succeeded by the Edwardian period. Victoria became queen in 1837 at age 18. Her long reign saw Britain reach the zenith of its economic and political power, with the introduction of steam ships, railroads, photography, and the telegraph. Britain again remained mostly inactive in Continental politics.

Free trade imperialism

The Great London Exhibitio m cxkmc njklcndoidmom n of 1851 clearly demonstrated Britain's dominance in engineering and industry; that lasted until the rise of the United States and Germany in the 1890s. Using the imperial tools of free trade and financial investment, it exerted major influence on many countries outside Europe, especially in Latin America and Asia. Thus Britain had both a formal Empire based on British rule as well as an informal one based on the British pound.

Russia, France and the Ottoman Empire

One nagging fear was the possible collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was well understood that a collapse of that country would set off a scramble for its territory and possibly plunge Britain into war. To head that off Britain sought to keep the Russians from occupying Constantinople and taking over the Bosporous Strait, as well as from threatening India via Afghanistan. In 1853, Britain and France intervened in the Crimean War against Russia. Despite mediocre generalship, they managed to capture the Russian port of Sevastopol, compelling Tsar Nicholas I to ask for peace. It was a frustrating war with very high casualty rates—the iconic hero was Florence Nightingale.

The next Russo-Ottoman war in 1877 led to another European intervention, although this time at the negotiating table. The Congress of Berlin blocked Russia from imposing the harsh Treaty of San Stefano on the Ottoman Empire. Despite its alliance with the French in the Crimean War, Britain viewed the Second Empire of Napoleon III with some distrust, especially as the emperor constructed ironclad warships and began returning France to a more active foreign policy.

American Civil War

During ITV News |language=en |archive-date=2022-07-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707190455/https://www.itv.com/news/2022-07-06/timeline-of-how-each-crisis-unfolded-under-boris-johnson |url-status=live }}</ref> He was replaced as Prime Minister by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss 5 September, three days before the accession of King Charles III on the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Periods

• Prehistoric Britain (Prehistory–AD 43)
  • Prehistoric Scotland
  • Prehistoric Wales
• Roman Britain (44–407)
• Sub-Roman Britain (407–597)
• Britain in the Middle Ages (597–1485)
  • Anglo-Saxon England (597–1066)
  • Scotland in the Early Middle Ages (400–900)
  • Scotland in the High Middle Ages (900–1286)
  • Norman Conquest (1066)
  • Scotland in the Late Middle Ages (1286–1513)
    • Wars of Scottish Independence (1296–1357)
  • Wales in the Middle Ages (411-1542)
• Early modern Britain
  • Tudor period (1485–1603)
    • Tudor conquest of Ireland
    • English Renaissance
    • Elizabethan era (1558–1603)
  • First British Empire (1583–1783)
  • Jacobean era (1567–1625)
  • Union of the Crowns (1603)
  • Caroline era (1625–1642)
  • English Civil War (1642–1651)
  • English Interregnum (1651–1660)
  • Restoration (1660)
  • Glorious Revolution (1688)
  • Scottish Enlightenment
  • Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800)
  • Second British Empire (1783–1815)
  • Georgian era
• History of the United Kingdom (1801–)
  • United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922)
    • Britain's Imperial Century (1815–1914)
    • Regency (1811–1820)
    • Victorian era (1837–1901)
    • Edwardian period (1901–1910)
    • Britain in World War I (1914–1918)
    • Coalition Government 1916–1922
    • Irish War of Independence (1919-1921)
  • United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1922–)
    • Britain in World War II (1939–1945)
    • History of the United Kingdom (1945–present)

• History of the Republic of Ireland (1922–)
  • Irish civil war

Timeline history of the British Isles

Geographic

• History of England (Timeline)
  • History of Cornwall
  • History of London
• History of Scotland
• History of Wales
• History of Ireland
  • History of Northern Ireland
  • History of the Republic of Ireland (Timeline)
• History of the Isle of Man
• History of Jersey

States

• England in the Middle Ages
• Kingdom of England (to 1707)
• Kingdom of Scotland (to 1707)
• Kingdom of Ireland (1541–1801)
• Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1801)
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1927)
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1927 – )
• Isle of Man (unrecorded date to present)

Supranational

• British Empire
• Commonwealth of Nations
• European Union

See also

• Timeline of the British Army
• Timeline of British diplomatic history
• British military history
• List of British monarchs
  • British monarchs' family tree
• Economic history of the United Kingdom
• History of British society
• Outline of the History of the British Isles

References

1. Wilson, P. W. (1930). William Pitt The Younger.
2. Knight, Roger (2014). Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815.
3. Adkins, Roy (2006). Nelson's Trafalgar: The Battle That Changed the World.
4. Bell, David A. (2007). The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It.
5. Thompson, J. M. (1951). Napoleon Bonaparte: His rise and fall. pp. 235–240.
6. Foster, R.E. (2014). Wellington and Waterloo: The Duke, the Battle and Posterity 1815-2015.
7. Black, Jeremy (2009). The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon.
8. Woodward (1938).
9. Hilton, Boyd (2008). A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783-1846. New Oxford History of England.
10. Baker, Kenneth (2005). "George IV: a Sketch". History Today. 55 (10): 30–36.
11. Brock, Michael (2004). "William IV (1765–1837". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29451. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
12. Black, Jeremy (2008). A military history of Britain: from 1775 to the present. pp. 74–77.
13. Kaufmann, William W. (1967). British policy and the independence of Latin America, 1804–1828.
14. Kaufman, Will; Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl, eds. (2004). Britain and the Americas: culture, politics, and history. pp. 465–468.
15. ^ Woodward (1938), pp. 325–330
16. Chase, Malcolm (2007). Chartism: A New History.
17. Woodward (1938), pp. 354–357.
18. McCord, Norman; Purdue, Bill (2007). British History, 1815-1914 (2nd ed.).
19. Semmel, Bernard (1970). "Chapter 1". The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism. Cambridge University Press.
20. McLean, David (1976). "Finance and "Informal Empire" before the First World War". Economic History Review. 29 (2): 291–305. doi:10.2307/2594316. JSTOR 2594316.
21. Golicz, Roman (2003). "The Russians Shall Not Have Constantinople". History Today. 53 (9): 39–45.
22. Figes, Orlando (2012). The Crimean War: A History.
23. McDonald, Lynn (2010). "Florence Nightingale a hundred years on: Who she was and what she was not". Women's History Review. 19 (5): 721–740. doi:10.1080/09612025.2010.509934. PMID 21344737. S2CID 9229671.
24. Millman, Richard (1979). Britain and the Eastern Question 1875–1878.
25. Chamberlain, Muriel E. (1989). Pax Britannica?: British Foreign Policy 1789-1914.

Works cited

• Woodward, E. L. (1938). The Age of Reform, 1815–1870.

Further reading

• Schama, Simon. A History of Britain. BBC.
  • —— (2000). At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC – 1603 AD. Vol. 1. ISBN 0-7868-6675-6.
  • —— (2001). The Wars of the British 1603-1776. Vol. 2. ISBN 0-563-48718-6.
  • —— (2003). The Fate of Empire 1776–2000. Vol. 3. ISBN 0-563-48719-4.
  • —— (2002). The Complete Collection (video).
• The British Isles: A History of Four Nations by Hugh Kearney, Cambridge University Press 2nd edition 2006, ISBN 978-0-521-84600-4
• The Isles, A History by Norman Davies, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-513442-7
• Shortened History of England by G. M. Trevelyan Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-023323-7
• This Sceptred Isle: 55BC-1901 by Christopher Lee Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-026133-8 (originally a radio series )
• The Reduced History of Britain by Chas Newkey-Burden
• The Great Heritage: a History of Britain for Canadians by Richard S. Lambert, House of Grant, 1964 (and earlier editions and/or printings)

External links

• British History
• World History Database
• The most comprehensive sites on British History
• Encyclopedia of British History
• 1000 years of British history
• British History Online
• Homepage of the BBC History website
• British History Interactive Timeline
• Rutgers University Libraries - American and British History
• British History at about.com
• English History and Heritage guide - History of England
• The British History Site with rss feed#
• Mytimemachine.co.uk
• The British History Podcast
• The History Files

v t e History of the British Isles
Overview	United Kingdom England Isle of Wight Isles of Scilly Scotland Shetland Orkney Inner Hebrides Outer Hebrides Wales Anglesey Northern Ireland Ireland Isle of Man (Mann) Channel Islands Jersey Guernsey
Prehistoric period	Prehistoric Britain Prehistoric England Prehistoric Scotland Prehistoric Shetland Prehistoric Orkney Prehistoric Wales Prehistoric Ireland Prehistoric Mann
Classical period	Roman Britain Roman Scotland Roman Wales Protohistoric Ireland, Roman Ireland End of Roman rule Sub-Roman Britain
Medieval period	Medieval England Early medieval England High medieval England Late medieval England Medieval Scotland Early medieval Scotland High medieval Scotland Late medieval Scotland Medieval Wales Early medieval Wales High medieval Wales Late medieval Wales Medieval Ireland Early medieval Ireland High medieval Ireland Late medieval Ireland Medieval Mann
Early modern period	Early modern Britain Early modern England Early modern Scotland Early modern Wales Early modern Ireland Early modern Mann
Late modern period	United Kingdom (since 1707) Victorian period Edwardian period First World War Interwar period Second World War World Wars (Wales) Post-war period (political history) Post-war period (social history) Late modern Ireland Late modern Mann
Related	House of Plantagenet House of Lancaster House of York Monarchs

• History of the British Isles
• History of the United Kingdom by topic