United Kingdom

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The Second British Empire

The first British Empire was the creation of explorers and traders and was based on an economic relationship between colonies and the mother country. The second British Empire was the creation of bureaucrats and generals and was based on a political relationship known as imperialism. Imperialism involved an effort to rule native peoples by importing British institutions and values, intervening in local affairs, and maintaining a strong military presence. The shift in goals and methods was gradual. The most important colonies of the first empire had developed in sparsely populated regions where native populations were brutally cast aside to establish British colonies. The second empire involved the domination of colonial peoples.

British naval power enabled Britain to control a far-flung empire, especially after the development of steam-powered warships. Geographical emphasis shifted from the west to the east; the most important dominions were located in the South Pacific, South Asia, and Africa. India was the centerpiece of the British Empire. British rule in India began with the expulsion of the French from Bengal in 1757 and grew as the British used military conquest to gain direct control over areas of India. Wars in Afghanistan and the Punjab in the 1840s led to British annexation of the northern Muslim provinces. The British created a unified India out of hundreds of separate kingdoms and principalities. The conquest of the eastern territory of Burma (now Myanmar) began in the 1820s and ended following the second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852.

Successive governors-general attempted to bring to the Indian subcontinent what they regarded as Britain’s superior system of law and social relations. They governed through a vast civil service transplanted mainly from Britain. Although the British made significant inroads against the extremes of poverty and disease that existed in India, they generally viewed Indian society as less cultured than their own and treated the indigenous population with contempt. Inevitably a clash of cultures took place. In 1857 there was a mutiny by sepoys (Indian troops in the British military), who sought to protect their social and religious traditions. The sepoys seized garrisons and killed British officers and civilians. British relief forces repeated the process in reverse, and the Sepoy Rebellion left a legacy of mutual hostility.

British expansion into Africa was fueled by the race for colonies in which all of the European powers participated during the decades that followed the 1880s. British traders had long been present on the western coast of Africa, where they dominated the Atlantic slave trade. With the abolition of slavery after 1833, interest in Africa shifted to the east, where the British drove the French from Egypt. In 1882 the British gained control of the Suez Canal, a vital link between Britain’s eastern and western empires.

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British explorers such as David Livingstone helped open the interior of Africa to Europeans, while entrepreneurs such as Cecil Rhodes exploited its vast mineral wealth. Rhodes acquired one of the great fortunes of the second empire by gaining control of African diamonds and gold. He dreamed of unifying the eastern side of the continent by establishing a railroad from Cape Town in the south to Cairo in the north, passing only through British controlled territory. Rhodes’s efforts helped trigger the Boer War (1899-1902), in which British troops fought Dutch colonists for possession of some of the richest gold and diamond mining areas of southern Africa. The Scramble for Africa created conflicts between the European powers, and Rhodes’s scheme faltered because of the powerful German presence in eastern Africa.

Seeking to expand the opportunity for trade along the Chinese coast, the British acquired the island of Hong Kong in southern China following the first Opium War (1839-1842) with China. The war broke out when Chinese officials in the port of Guangzhou seized the opium shipments that merchants were illegally importing into China. The British responded by sending a naval force and occupying Hong Kong in 1841.

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The Early 20th Century

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Edwardian Society

The beginning of the 20th century seemed to release a pent-up spirit of change that had been corseted by the conservative Victorian era. In towns the classes mixed more freely, and women enjoyed greater freedom of movement as they discarded bulky and constrictive clothing and took to traveling by bicycle. When Victoria died in 1901, her son Edward VII ascended the throne. The Edwardian period (1901-1910) was the final age of aristocratic excess. The nobility’s lavish spending, carefree lifestyle, and personal behavior that flaunted the morals of the times were chronicled in weekly magazines such as Punch, Vanity Fair, and the Tattler, which were now copiously illustrated by photographs of garden and shooting parties.

Commuter railroads and motorized buses made possible the growth of the suburbs, where the middle classes could build large houses on spacious grounds. In the suburbs, they could isolate their children from crime and social problems, and yet still pursue their urban businesses and professions.

The problems of the working classes and of the poor had persisted despite half a century of social reform. The economy had run in cycles of boom and bust for decades, and each upturn left working-class families slightly more behind. The value of pay for workers declined throughout the period, and not until 1913 did wages buy as much as they had in 1901. A host of social programs to alleviate poor living conditions had a limited impact. The poor constituted nearly one-third of the population, and many of them were destitute.

Reform movements had begun as charitable organizations, many of them sponsored by churches. During the early 20th century, however, these movements changed their focus to reordering society. Socialist movements flourished not only among industrial workers, but also in the universities and among middle-class intellectuals. One of the most important was the London Fabian Society, led by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The Fabians championed social scientific study of the conditions of workers and the poor in the belief that government would adopt legislative remedies once it was properly informed. Members of the Fabian Society included novelist H. G. Wells and Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who attacked private property in his play Major Barbara (1905) and class distinctions in Pygmalion (1913).

The government introduced free school meals in 1906, and pensions for the elderly came two years later. In 1909 politician David Lloyd George, a Welsh socialist, introduced what became known as “the people’s budget.” The budget raised taxes on the wealthy to fund extensive social programs for the poor. The House of Lords opposed the budget, setting off a constitutional crisis that was resolved only when George V (1910-1936) threatened to create more than 250 new peers who would vote for the budget. The passage of the budget also allowed for the most far-reaching of all welfare proposals: the introduction of a scheme of national insurance that provided both health-care and unemployment insurance to every family living below the poverty line.

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Political Movements

Even such far-reaching social legislation fell short of what many believed was necessary to create a more just society. Two of the problems that had bedeviled Gladstone—trade union strikes and Irish home rule—became more severe, while a third, the movement for women’s emancipation (see Women's Rights), sprang to the fore. In a sense, all three were political movements.

During the early 1900s strikes in the coal mines, on the railways, and on the London docks paralyzed the economy and showed the power of a unified labor movement. Government attempts to break the unions not only failed, they instilled greater resolve in those who were arrested, locked out of their jobs, or denied employment because of their union activities. The Labour Party was created to gain representation in Parliament for workers; the result was the election in 1906 of 29 Labour members, who entered into a coalition with the Liberals. The Liberal government responded by passing the Trade Union Act of 1913, which allowed union dues (fees paid by union members) to be used for political purposes.

At the same time, all of the Irish members of Parliament stood for home rule and threatened to withdraw their support from the Liberal government if home rule was not granted. The situation in Ireland had deteriorated since the failure of home rule in 1893. Irish citizens were divided into two camps: Irish republicans supported independence for Ireland, while British unionists supported continued union with Britain. Tension continued to escalate between the two groups and eventually led to the Irish Revolution (1912-1922). The revolution began in 1912 as Irish on both sides of the issue armed themselves for war after the introduction of the third home rule bill in Parliament.

Following the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) in Europe, Britain faced the possibility of simultaneously fighting a European war while dealing with a potential civil war in Ireland. To defuse the situation, Parliament finally passed home rule for Ireland in 1914. However, it suspended the enactment of home rule until after hostilities ended in Europe.

The issue of women’s suffrage was perhaps the most difficult for members of Parliament to handle. Led by the formidable Emmeline Pankhurst, the suffrage movement was the first time an organization used civil disobedience as a political weapon. Woman suffrage activists defiantly broke laws to call attention to their struggle. They set mailboxes alight, broke glass windows, obstructed traffic, and went on hunger strikes when jailed. London police, who had waded into mobs of strikers with clubs flying, were unwilling to use similar tactics against middle-class women. The suffrage movement, along with violence in Ireland and clashes between strikers and strikebreakers, threatened the government with the prospect of anarchy in 1914.

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World War I

Domestic matters declined in significance with the outbreak of one of the most violent wars in Britain’s history, World War I. The scramble for colonial possessions around the globe inevitably led to conflicts among the European powers and to incidents that diplomacy could not easily solve. Hoping to discourage hostilities, groups of nations formed alliances, which eventually led to the establishment of two opposing camps of nations. Britain signed an accord known as the Triple Entente with France and Russia to meet the growing threat of a German military buildup. Germany established its own system of alliances, the Triple Alliance, with Austria-Hungary and Italy.

The war began unexpectedly. In 1914 a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Serbia, a small nation in southeastern Europe, was struggling to maintain its independence from its powerful neighbor, Austria-Hungary. The assassination led to conflict between Austria-Hungary, which threatened to retaliate against Serbia, and Russia, which had promised to protect the Serbs from aggression. Nations throughout Europe began preparing their armies for military action to honor their diplomatic alliances. France backed the Russians. Germany supported its Austrian ally and declared war on France. Britain wavered until German armies marched through neutral Belgium to attack France. Total war ensued, with Europe’s major powers pulled into the conflict by the series of diplomatic alliances they had formed.

The war changed British society like no event since the Industrial Revolution. The warring Conservative and Liberal parties formed a coalition government that included Labour representation. The unions pledged an end to labor unrest. Even the suffragettes called off their campaign of civil disobedience.

Lloyd George, who was minister of war and then prime minister, was the outstanding figure in the government. A constant innovator, he expanded the use of machine guns and tanks and introduced the mortar, one of the most effective weapons in the trench warfare that ensued. He also backed the convoy system, in which military and merchant ships traveled in large groups to discourage attacks by deadly German U-boats (submarines), which sank British cargo ships at will.

The government fixed wages, took control of the munitions industry, ordered farmers to increase grain cultivation, and ultimately rationed food. It introduced a military draft in 1916 for men aged 18 to 41. More than 6 million British men became members of the armed forces. Women streamed into the industrial labor force, replacing men who were serving in the military. In 1918, before the war was over, women were given the vote in a bill for universal suffrage.

The war lasted longer than anyone had predicted. The fighting was more gruesome and the weapons more destructive. Fighting along the border between France and Germany soon became mired in a bloody stalemate as armies dug defensive trenches and fortified their positions against attack. Trench warfare was both terrifying and demoralizing. Infantry soldiers lived in unsanitary conditions in muddy trenches that stretched from the English Channel to the Swiss border.

Troops made massive suicidal charges across open terrain against fixed enemy defensive positions that were lined with barbed wire and defended with machine guns. In the first Battle of the Somme, in 1916, there were nearly 60,000 British casualties on the first day alone. In 1917, at Passendale in Belgium, the number of British killed or wounded reached the staggering total of some 250,000 (see Battle of Ypres). Overall, the war cost Britain roughly 3 million casualties and resulted in large numbers of veterans with disabilities who returned to live in every corner of the British Isles.

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Irish Independence

Despite the promise of home rule, the situation in Ireland exploded during the war. In 1916 the Easter Rebellion caused a profound change in Britain’s relations with the Irish. While thousands of Irish participated in the British war effort, pro-independence activists saw the war as an opportunity to win total freedom. On Easter Sunday in 1916 an armed uprising took place in Dublin. Although the British brutally suppressed the Easter Rebellion, it accelerated the pace of the Irish Revolution.

In 1918 Irish representatives to Parliament refused to take their seats and instead declared an independent Irish Free State. They formed their own Parliament, the Dáil Éireann (Gaelic for “Assembly of Ireland”), with Irish independence activist Eamon de Valera as its leader. The British government refused to recognize the rebel government, but the Irish republicans had the support of the people, especially during the following years of guerrilla warfare. Armed independence groups merged to create the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which launched attacks against members of British security forces and Protestant Irish police. By 1921 southwestern Ireland was under British martial law.

The British government realized that the revolution could not be put down without considerable casualties. In 1922 both sides accepted a bill establishing the independent Irish Free State. The Irish Free State became an independent nation, but it remained part of the British Empire and its members were required to swear allegiance to the British monarchy. Under this arrangement the six northern Irish counties, which were predominantly Protestant, continued to be part of Britain. Some members of the Irish Republican Army never recognized this provision and conflict continued into the early 21st century. For a history of Ireland after its independence from Britain, see Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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