Taught by Patrick N. Allitt Emory University Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
Darwin. Gladstone. Disraeli. Dickens. Meet the pioneering, paradoxical Britons of the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901):
Through peaceful and gradual change they built one of the world's first industrial democracies—in a class-bound society with a powerful landed aristocracy and a negative view of business. They gloried in a globe-spanning and relatively humanely run empire—even as it distracted them from underlying economic weaknesses that presaged Britain's 20th-century decline. They were intensely sentimental—yet ignored extreme squalor and hardship in their midst. They became history's first campaigners against slavery and pursued a host of reformist, often religiously inspired causes with zeal and vision—yet tolerated child labor and the Opium War. They were quick to exploit new technologies, including the steam engine, cast-iron construction, and gas lighting—yet lost their economic leadership to Germany and America. The Victorians created the cityscape of modern Britain—visible today except for what was destroyed by bombing in World War II—while consciously trying to re-create earlier styles. They faced rapid and sweeping scientific, historical, and technological shifts—yet avoided massive upheavals that tore at other European and Atlantic societies in their day. And in their trademark style, the Victorians even reformed cricket, turning it from a riotous diversion for hard drinkers and gamblers into a byword for flannel-clad decency and goodhearted fair play that crossed class lines and brought together the best features of democracy and aristocracy
Course Lecture Titles The Victorian Paradox Victoria's Early Reign—1837-1861 The Industrial Revolution—1750-1830 Railways and Steamships Parliamentary Reform and Chartism The Upper- and Middle-Class Woman The Working-Class Woman The State Church and Evangelical Revival The Oxford Movement and Catholicism Work and Working-Class Life Poverty and the "Hungry Forties" Ireland, Famine, and Robert Peel Scotland and Wales Progress and Optimism China and the Opium War The Crimean War—1854-1856 The Indian Mutiny—1857 Victorian Britain and the American Civil War The British in Africa—1840-1880 Victorian Literature I Art and Music Science Medicine and Public Health Architecture Education Trade Unions and the Labour Party Crime and Punishment Gladstone and Disraeli—1865-1881 Ireland and Home Rule Democracy and Its Discontents The British in Africa—1880-1901 Later Victorian Literature Leisure Domestic Servants Victoria After Albert—1861-1901 The Victorian Legacy