Last Name: AOKI
First Name: Tsutomu
Enrollment Number: 9851401
Year of Entry: 1998
Number of Words: 2055
United Title: "The Victorian Age"
Essay Title: "The upheaval of middle class"Summary of the economic and political changes in Britain during the Victorian Age, refered to the New Encyclopaedia Britannica volume 29 with my consideration and conclusions.
1. Introduction
Literally, the Victorian Age is the era of the Queen Victoria’s reign over England from 1837 to 1901. But it generally refers to the period from 1840 to 70, so-called the golden age of the British Empire, when the country had been the conqueror of the world economy. And this era is often mentioned of the relations between the characteristic life-styles and the social structure. But it is also important to consider what this era bears as the heritage to the economic and social conditions of the world today. I believe that it is very important to think of the beginning of free trade system in this era, in order to deepen our understanding of today’s furious storm of the globalization. The Victorian Age can tell us some important reality underlying in our civilization.
2. Summarization of history; the middle-class upheaval (1830s~1840s)
[The Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartist Movement.]
As the economic skies darkened after 1836, there were two most disgruntled groups in the society: the industrial workers and their employers. Each group developed the new forms of organization and each turned from local to national extra-parliamentary action groups. Among these organizations, the two most important were the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League. While the Chartists drew on multiplicity of working-class grievance and extended working-class consciousness as it grew, the Anti-Corn Law League, founded in Manchester in 1839 as a national organization, was the spearhead of middle-class energies. And the latter enjoyed the advantage not only of abundant funds but also of a single-issued political program -- repealing of the restrictive Corn Laws.
The Chartist movement took its name from the People Charter published in London in May 1838. The charter contained six points; all of them were political demands and all with radical pedigree: annual parliaments; universal male suffrage; the ballot; no property qualification for the members of the Parliament; payment demands that would have been supported by the 18th century radicals. There was a century old fierce social discontent behind these political demands at this time. In the provinces a main source of grievance was the new Poor Law of 1834, and in Lancashire and Yorkshire discontent focused on long working hours in the factories. Earlier localized agitation around such grievance was subsumed in the Charter because of its commitment to national political action. In addition, the efforts to create effective trade unions failed because they could not maintain their strength at a time when economic conditions were worsening and, more fundamentally, because employers then were far stronger than workers.
The Chartists also failed to secure any of the six points when they submitted petitions to the Parliament in 1839, 1842, and 1848. Problems of organization, local differences, disagreements about tactics, disputes over leadership, and an improvement in economic conditions –- first between 1844 and 1864, then after 1848 and after –- made the details of its story complicated.
The middle-class Anti-Corn Law League, led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, attempted to secure the repeal of the duties on imported grain, which were believed to raise the price of food for the workingmen and benefit only for the landowning classes. The league also had difficulties of its own, particularly at the beginning. But it employed every device of propaganda, including the use of new media of communication such as the penny post, which was introduced in 1840. The formula of the league was a simple one. It was designed to secure working-class support as well as from middle class. The repeal of the Corn Laws was said to settle the two great issues that Britain faced in the “hungry forties.” It would secure, as the League said, the prosperity of industry and guaranteeing the livelihood of the poor, of which the only barrier to salvation was the landlord. Most Chartists were not quite convinced by this logic, but, in the landed Parliament, a few Anti-Corn Leaguers, led by Codben, told Peel firmly that he would be “a criminal and a poltroon” if he did not repeal what they regarded as an immoral as well as an economically restrictive piece of legislation.
[Peel and the Peelite heritage.]
Between 1832 and 1841 Robert Peel had built up a disciplined party, most members of which accepted 1832 as a fait accompli. He himself, though brought up as a Tory, was a child of the Lancashire cotton industry and accepted industrialization as beneficial as well as inevitable. Being afraid of violence, he sought to discover practical solutions to the complex issues of the industrializing society with a strong sense of public duty. From the start Peel attached top priority to financial reform. Beginning with his budget of 1842, he set about simplifying and reducing tariff restrictions on trade, and in the same year he reintroduced income tax. In 1844 his Bank Charter Act laid the foundations of a sound national banking and credit system centred on the Bank of England. Financially, in 1846 he repealed the Corn Laws.
In this sequence of changes Peel kept many of his followers away, and repeal brought all the conflicts within his party to a head. A substantial section of the squirarchy rebelled, roused by Benjamin Disraeli. During the crisis Peel regarded his sense of duty to his sovereign and to the posterity as his guiding voice. He put obedience to his own conscience first and his obligation to his party second. It was the failure of the Irish potato crop in 1845-46 and the threat of famine in Ireland that helped Peel sway to repeal the Corn Laws.
3. The meaning of Anti-Corn League’s win.
Behind the industrialization and the urbanization, middle-class had got strong economic power and had become to play the important role in politics and economics in this era. And it became much more apparent by Anti-Corn League’s win.
Peel’s decision, to repeal the Corn Laws, which he made from his sense of duty to create public welfare for the whole of the society, determined the empire more open for free trade. Thus the middle class got able to acquire more stable and cheaper labour source easily than before. It was also enabled to accelerate the expansion of their business through the international free trade system. However, the working class was still left in the harsh exploitation by employers. Especially cotton textiles remained the dominant new industry with as friendly wind as was unprecedented. There were 1,800 cotton factories in 1851. Raw cotton imports had increased from 101 million pounds in 1815 to 751 million pounds in 1851, and exports of manufactured cotton piece goods from 253 million yards in 1815 to 1,543,000,000 yards in 1851. And the new technology reached its peak in the age of the railway and steamship. In this oddly prosperous era, which was experienced even in such occasion as The Great Exhibition of 1851, the nation state proved itself as the main stream; the so-called the golden age of the British Empire showed up. And Britain became the workshop of the world, which bore the main influence on the industrialization of other nations by its economic and technological supremacy.
Meanwhile the free trade of agricultural products blurred “feudalism” by much cheaper grain, it damaged national agriculture and reduced the landlord class’ income. But there were aspects of the social structure that encouraged social action. And it was convenient for the British Empire to precede the mercantilism not only to restrain national rebellions caused by famine and depression but also to recover stable taxation. Therefore the bourgeoisie began to take place of the conventional aristocracy and change political structure by controlling people to support them. They did even aggressively attempted to assimilate themselves with the upper class.
4. Consequences of the social convulsion
My considerations to the question: “What was caused by the leap of middle class?” could be summarized by focusing on the three major social changes.
The first is the rapid rise of population and the equally rapid urbanization of them. At the first (defective) census of 1801, the population of England and Wales was about nine millions and that of Scotland about 1.5 million. By 1851 the comparable figures rose to 18 millions and three millions, respectively. At its peak between 1811 and 1821, the population growth rate for Britain as a whole was 17 percent for the decade. The most major reason for this change should be attributed to the repeal of the Corn Law. It could have enabled people to get foods from overseas, but it certainly disabled the national foundation of agriculture. It was this that also enabled to accelerate urbanization and industrialization. It was true that the first Public Health Act of 1848 was passed. However, in 1899 the research by C. Booth and B. S. Rawntree reported that one third of the population still lived in slums in urban regions in poverty. And still, the population of cities were steadily swelling. It went without saying that the fear expressed so eloquently by Thomas Malthus in the previous century that population would overturn subsistence were there in reality. Many people had to work in factories for food. It meant that if the products of the factories ceased, or became difficult to be exchanged with food from overseas, many poor people could have immediately lost all the means to get food from the nation of their own. In other words, it forced the glorious Empire to the hidden risky edge where there was no other way than to expand its industry for its sustaining; to keep selling all the more products to other nations or colonies. We know this was the typical vicious cycle all industrialized nation states have been suffering now in the twenties century.
The second is the lopsided and excessive investment to particular industries. Indeed, national income at constant prices increased nearly threefold between 1801 and 1851, substantially more than the increase in population; and the share of manufacturing, mining, and building in the national accounts of wealth increased sharply as compared with the share of the others, typically agriculture. In 1801 agriculture accounted for 34 percent, and manufacturing, mining, and building for 28 percent. The comparable figures for 1851 were 21 percent and 40 percent. It was apparently a kind of bubble economy because as I wrote before, the international trade depended too much on the other nations agricultural products. This was the awesome tragedy to the increased British population, especially to many poor people who had no means to buy any food when its price began to leap up. Together with it, Britain’s lopsided economic structure also created the trigger of world recession by linking each other state and colony too tight.
The third is that the Empire was to forced to inevitably expand to the outer part of the world. The fact that it became to have many colonies all around the world was actually the token of its vulnerability, not of its strength. Above all my considerations could be integrated in this final conclusion. In the new dimension of world economy, having to keep selling their products have become to mean not acquiring of wealth but keeping the value of their products with credit manipulation. It required to concentrate plenty of gold and treasuries from international trades and colonies. Of course their substantial prosperity seemed as if to prove its wealth. However, the already swelled up power of international economy could no longer be controlled by one nation alone. Therefore the large customs union formed by the world economic powers could not evade to crush headlong against their competitors for keeping their own economic expansion. Then the collapse of the economy not only meant political crisis but also drove people to the fear of famine. Thus had the first World War become inevitable, causing tragically many casualties to death who fought for nothing else than to protect their nations’ economic profits.
In conclusion, it could be said that “the legacy of the Glorious Victorian age” was in fact the one of great regrets about the industrialization.