The History of England

from Celts through 20th century

Posts Tagged ‘people’

The British Empire

Category: 19th century

The growth of the British Empire was due in large part to the ongoing competition for resources and mar­kets which existed over a period of centuries between England and other European countries — Spain, France, and Holland. During the reign of Elizabeth I, England set up trading companies in Turkey, Russia, and the East Indies, […]

Consequences of the American Revolution

Category: 18th century

Long accustomed to a considerable degree of self-government and freed, after 1763, from the French danger, American colonists resented any attempts to make them pay a share of the cost of imperial defence in the form of assorted taxes and duties. They also resented British attempts to treat colonial legislatures as secondary to the government […]

Child Labour

Category: 18th century

Most workers lived in desperate poverty, just bare­ly surviving on the wages they earned. In cities, they paid high prices for both food and housing.

The State of the Poor

Category: 18th century

If Britain’s economy was to continue to expand, the country would have to seek the markets abroad, while holding down living standards at home in order to keep production costs low. The duty of the poor was clear: it was not their business to spend more. They were just more. A detailed and properly documented […]

The Rise of the Middle Class

Category: 18th century

With the industrialization, the British middle class grew larger and more influential as the number of financiers, factory owners and capitalist farmers in­creased. The upper class still possessed the land and titles, but the industrial middle class had the money. During the whole of the 18th century, the landed aris­tocracy, which largely controlled Parliament, firm­ly […]

Population Growth

Category: 18th century


The New Regime

Category: 18th century

William III had to do much to secure his hold, not only upon England but upon Scotland and Ireland. In 1689 James II landed in Ireland, where he had an army ready to hand, and was easily able to stir up a national rising of the native Catholics against the Protestant “garrison”. In July 1690 […]

Industrial Revolution

Category: 18th century

In 1700 there was only a scatter of industries. Woolen manufacture, the most important, was depen­dent on the rural population spinning and weaving in their own homes. The word spinster is still used for an unmarried woman. Cloth was greatly valued.

Population in the 18th Century

Category: 18th century

According to the first accurate estimation made in 1688, the population of England and Wales was about 5,500,000. Scotland had about a million and Ireland perhaps two million. Most part of the English popula­tion lived south of a line from Worcester to the Wash, and a quarter of the total was in and around London, […]

The Decades of Conflict

Category: 18th century

Walpole thought it important to avoid foreign wars, and during his administration Great Britain was kept out of war, and even the relations with France re­mained cordial. That made some people in the Parlia­ment accuse him of pro-French foreign policy. In the late 1730′s, however, a war party emerged in Parlia­ment. Its members wanted to […]