The Eighteenth Century
• George I. – 1715 defeated Jacobits (James’s III. supporters)
- Robert Walpole – 1st Prime Minister – “cabinet”
- 1697 Bank of England
- 1733 France & Spain alliance
- Lord Chatman – 1756 war with France’s trade – 1759 Quebec, Montreal, India (Bengal, Madras)
• George III. – 1763 made peace with France (money)
- John Wilkes (free speech) – imprisoned, tried at court, freed
- 1773 “the Boston Teaparty”
- 1775 – 1783 war in America
- Industrial Revolution – mass production, coal & steel, Watt, Wilkinson, Stephenson, cotton, china goods, transport – 1799 Luddites (workers breaking machines)
- John Wesley’s Methodism
- 1802 Factory Act (child labour work 12 hours a day)
- 1793 war after France invaded the Low Countries (Napoleon Bonaparte)
+ Admiral Horatio Nelson – Copenhagen, 1805 Trafalgar
+ Wellington 1805 in Portugal
+ 1814 Napoleon surrendered
+ 1815 N.B. assembled an army in France
+ June 1815 final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo

The Nineteenth Century
- 1838 Britain promised to protect Belgium – “balance of power”
- 1815 people lost their jobs + landowning farmers suffered from cheap imported corn
- 1829 Peel established a regular police force in London
- 1830 riot of starving farmworkers
- 1834 new poor law – workhouses
- 1832 Lords accepted the Reform Bill (decreased power of Lords, spread voters rights)> three main parties: Tories (parliament should represent property), Whigs (Lord Grey) and Radicals (parl. should represent people)
- since 1824 – unions
- 1834 Tolpuddle Martyrs (6 farmworkers from Dorset promised loyalty to Union – judged)
- 1838 Chartists (unions + workers + radicals)> People’s Charter 1828 & 1829 Catholics & Nonconformists could enter government service and parliament
- Whigs became Liberals
- 1872 first secret voting
- 1844 Co-operative Movement by Chartists and Unionists (self-help among members (shops))
- 1869 Trade Union Congress established parliamentary committee> later: the Labour Party
- 1867 free and compulsory education
- /+ Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg (†1864 – Queen refused to be seen in public – 1868 Queen’s book)/
- British “areas of interest” – colonial wars – China 1839 (opium wars), Afghanistan 1839 – 42 (Russia), India (Indian Mutiny (rebellion)), Ottoman Empire 1845 (Russia), Egypt 1882, Sudan 1884, Africa (areas (the Boers)), Crimean wars> settlers (Commonwealth)
- 1907 new Liberal’s government improved social conditions – “Welfare State”
• George V. – 1911 Parliament Act (Lords could not prevent financial acts, 2 years delay for legislation)
- 1914 “chain of events” – start of the WWI.