Era victoriană

Victoria, the daughter of the duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, was born in 1819. She inherited the throne of Great Britain at the age of eighteen, upon the death of her uncle William IV in 1837, and reigned until 1901, bestowing her name upon her age. She married her mother's nephew, Albert (1819-1861), prince of Saxe-Coburg -Gotha, in 1840, and until his death he remained the focal point of her life (she bore him nine children). Albert replaced Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister who had served her as her first personal and political tutor and instructor, as Victoria's chief advisor. Albert was moralistic, conscientious and progressive, if rather priggish, sanctimonious, and intellectually shallow, and with Victoria initiated various reforms and innovations -- he organized the Great Exhibition of 1851, which were responsible for a great deal of the popularity later enjoyed by the British monarchy. (In contrast to the Great Exhibition, housed in the Crystal Palace and viewed by proud Victorians as a monument to their own cultural and technological achievements, however, we may recall that the government over which Victoria and Albert presided had, in the midst of the potato famine of 1845, continued to permit the export of grain and cattle from Ireland to England while over a million Irish peasants starved to death).

After Albert's death in 1861 a desolate Victoria remained in self-imposed seclusion for ten years. Her genuine but obsessive mourning, which would occupy her for the rest of her life, played an important role in the evolution of what would become the Victorian mentality. Thereafter she lived at Windsor or Balmoral, travelling abroad once a year, but making few public appearances in Britain itself. Although she maintained a careful policy of official political neutrality, she did not get on at all well with Gladstone. Eventually, however, she succumbed to the flattery of Disrael and permitted him (in an act which was both symbolic and theatrical) to have her crowned Empress of India in 1876. (As Punch noted at the time, "one good turn deserves another", and Victoria reciprocated by making Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield).

Great Britain during Victorias reign was not just a powerful island nation. It was the centre of a global empire that fostered British contact with a wide variety of other cultures, through the exchange was usually an uneven one. By the end of the nineteenth century, nearly one-quarter of the earths land surface was part of the British Empire, and more than 400 million people were governed from Great Britain, however nominally. An incomplete list of British colonies in 1901 would include: Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Egypt, India, Ireland, Kenya, Malta, Nigeria, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa etc.

During her reign, the prestige of the individual Member of Parliament was high, and the fragmentation of parties after 1846 allowed an even more considerable independence of the MPs. Parliamentary strategies could often be influenced by groups of members supporting particular economic interests, such as the railways, but their interference was not even half as feared as government interference. The age can be equally viewed as a democratic revolution, involving on the one hand the extension of the suffrage, and on the other, the identification of new democratic issues, under the direct influence of the French Revolution. Thus, through the Mines Act and Factory Acts the employment of children and women underground was prohibited and the 10-hour workday was established. She tended as a rule to take an active dislike of British politicians who criticized the conduct of the conservative regimes of Europe, many of which were, after all, run by her relatives. By 1870 her popularity was at its lowest ebb (at the time the monarchy cost the nation £400,000 per annum, and many wondered whether the largely symbolic institution was worth the expense), but it increased steadily thereafter until her death. Her golden jubilee in 1887 was a Grand National celebration, as was her diamond jubilee in 1897 (by then, employing the imperial "we", she had long been Kipling's "Widow of Windsor", mother of the Empire). Royal popularity, though affected by rumours during the Crimean War that the royal couple favoured the Russians, increased steadily throughout the latter part of her reign Jubilees were held in 1887 and 1897 to celebrate the 50th and 60th years of the longest English reign.