Our Heritage

Outbreak of the American Civil War

The Union fought the Confederates over the issue of slavery and the Southern states’ threats to secede. War lasted four bitter, bloody years, and featured the assassination of President Lincoln. Lancashire cotton workers suffered widespread unemployment with loss of cotton supplies. In 1865, the South surrendered, and slavery was abolished.

Find out more: J. M. McPherson Battle Cry of Freedom: The American Civil War

Disraeli Enacts the Second Reform Bill in Britain

Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli pushed through Parliament a surprisingly radical reform of the House of Commons. The Bill was designed to outflank his Liberal rival, William Gladstone and win new supporters. All male householders would be enfranchised. The electorate more than doubled. Now, politicians felt obliged to ‘educate our masters’, for many new voters were barely literate.

Find out more: C. Hibbert: Disraeli: A Personal History.

The Franco Prussian War and the Siege of Paris

In 1870 an over-confident Napoleon III made war on Prussia; the French were badly defeated with Napoleon driven into exile; Paris was besieged and succumbed to a working-class Commune. Bismarck, Prussian President, used the war to effect the unification of all German states under Kaiser Wilhelm I in a ceremony at Versailles. The Commune fell in 1871 and the French Third Republic emerged.

Find out more: A. Horne: The Fall of Paris

Britain Purchases the Suez Canal

Prime Minister Disraeli pulled off a major diplomatic coup by securing Britain’s ownership of the Suez Canal. It secured a key passage to India and protecting it would shape Britain’s Mediterranean strategy for a century. Controlling Cyprus, expansion into Sudan, First World War campaigns in the Near East, gaining a mandate for Palestine, and fighting at El Alamein all followed on from this portentous purchase.

Find out more: D. Judd: The Victorian Empire

War Against the Zulus in East Africa

Britain sought control over the powerful independent African Zulu kingdom led by formidable Cetshwayo. A British force invaded in January and was surprised and massacred at Isandlwana, with perhaps 16,000 casualties. A small British garrison at Rorkes Drift heroically held out against a Zulu army, inspiring much subsequent Imperial myth. Another British invasion in July duly crushed Zulu resistance. Cetshwayo was captured and became a Victorian celebrity. In 1888 Zululand was annexed by Britain.

Find out more: J. Morris: Heaven’s Command

Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill Splinters the Liberal Party

Prime Minister William Gladstone was determined on radical reform of Britain’s fraught relationship with Ireland. Restructuring land tenure and disestablishing the Irish Protestant church had not ended Irish violence. He believed only an Irish Parliament would do that. Many of his Whig and Radical supporters disagreed, seeing this as surrender to violence, and the first step in dissolving Empire. The great Victorian Liberal party was divided and largely powerless for the next twenty years.

Find out more: R. Jenkins Gladstone

Birmingham Becomes a city

By 1889 Birmingham had a population of more than 400,000, was the metal manufacturing centre of an expanding British Empire (‘the Second City of Empire’) and had won the reputation as ‘the best governed city in the world.’ Its elevation from town to city status confirmed its importance at a time when the country looked to Birmingham for political initiative.

Find out more: A. Briggs. The History of Birmingham, volume II

The Boer War

Britain’s first major war for over 40 years was fought against the Boers to establish British control over South Africa. A fever of popular jingoism fuelled expectations of a swift, complete victory. Instead, a year of humiliating defeats – until the relief of Mafeking – was followed by months of attritional war against Boer guerrilla fighters before an eventual Pyrrhic victory.

Find out more: T. Pakenham The Boer War

Queen Victoria Dies

In her 64-year reign, Victoria had presided over a golden age for her country, which established itself as a financial, manufacturing and industrial super-power. These years had seen Britain extend her Empire round the world, while Victoria’s navy ruled the oceans, policing the slave trade and protecting far-flung trading stations. Her son Edward VII’s reign would see the first threatening clouds appear on the horizon.

Find out more: C Hibbert: Queen Victoria – A Personal History

Political Crisis in Britain

Chancellor Lloyd George’s radical and controversial ‘People’s Budget’ (graduated taxation, land taxes and consumer taxes) to pay for eight Dreadnoughts and Old Age Pensions provoked a rebellion in the Lords, and was rejected. In 1910 two General Elections were fought over limitation of the Lords’ powers. In between them, King Edward VII died. In 1911, the Parliament Act was passed neutering the Lords and confirming the primacy of the Commons.

Find out more: J. Grigg: Lloyd George – the People’s Champion

World War Breaks Out

For years two great power blocs, Britain, France and Russia v Germany, Austria and Italy had built up arms. Germany’s posturing and ambition since 1900 suggested she might start a war, but it was the declining power Austria, fearing loss of authority in the Balkans to Serbia and Russia, which provoked it, after the assassination of her Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. Germany went to war to support her; France and Britain, to support Russia. It would be a four-year blood bath with the death of millions.

Find out more: N. Stone: World War One

The Battle of the Somme

The British assault on German lines along the Somme on July 1st was the most disastrous single day in British warfare, with 60,000 casualties. Misconceived and badly planned, the battle saw inexperienced, enthusiastic ‘Pals’ in Kitchener’s new army, mown down – as they advanced into No Man’s Land – by well-fortified machine gun positions. It was the death in Britain of the idea of war as a noble, honourable adventure.

Find out more: M. Middlebrook: The First Day of the Somme

Revolution in Russia

Defeat in war, bread shortages and a loss of faith in Tsar Nicholas II’s leadership led to two revolutions in St Petersburg in 1917. Firstly, a constitutional one led by Kerensky and then, with the arrival of Lenin from Switzerland, a violent Bolshevik revolution involving the execution of the Romanov family, the slaughtering of the wealthy, withdrawal from the World War, and the export of Communism around the world. It was the most consequential revolution of the twentieth century.

Find out more: J. Reed: Ten Days that Shook the World

The First World War Ends

The failure of German General Ludendorff’s last desperate assault in March allowed the Allies to regroup. In August 1918, having at last learnt the value of coordinated artillery, infantry and tank attacks on multiple points along the Western Front, the British army won its greatest victory of the war at Amiens. Steadily the Germans were driven back; by November they had surrendered as Allied troops advanced on Germany and Berliners rioted for lack of food.

Find out more: D. Stevenson: With Our Backs to the Wall

The Treaty of Versailles

Delegates at the Peace Conference met amidst cries of vengeance against the defeated Germans; ‘Hang the Kaiser!’ The American President Wilson, Lloyd George and French PM Clemenceau were the foremost players. After the destruction of so much French territory and industry, Clemenceau demanded reparations from Germany, which also lost territory and most of its armed forces. Austria suffered the dismemberment of its Empire; new states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created based on Wilson’s principle of national self-determination.

Find out more: M. Macmillan: Peacemakers

French Occupation of the Ruhr

A major international crisis blew up in 1923 because of German reparations’ defaults. French and Belgian troops occupied the demilitarised Rhineland, created as a buffer zone between Germany and its neighbours at Versailles. The occupation impacted on the German economy, creating hyper-inflation where, by November, $1 = 4,210,500,000,000 marks. The Dawes Plan in 1924 stabilised the currency and ended the occupation.

Find out more: A.J.P. Taylor: The Origins of the Second World War

The Wall Street Crash

Across nine years since 1920 the DOW Jones index of stocks and shares had risen ten-fold, the result of feverish speculation by many ordinary Americans. Some corruption scandals, and selling off by wise investors anticipating a downturn, then led to a wider loss of confidence. On October 24, 1929, ‘Black Thursday’, the market lost 11% of its value; over the next months, the sell off became an avalanche. By 193,2 the Dow Jones had lost 89% of its value; banks and businesses had closed. Unemployment rocketed. And the panic spread round the Western world.

Find out more: D. Reynolds: Empire and Liberty: a New History of America

Labour Government Collapse

America’s crash was repeated in Europe, where several major banks collapsed. The Labour Government of Ramsay Macdonald faced severe economic pressures with government spending outstripping its income. By August 1931, bankers lending it money were insisting on severe spending cuts to unemployment benefit and public servants’ salaries, before further loans. Most Labour Cabinet members refused to enact these and left office. Macdonald continued as Prime Minister, supported by his Conservative opponents in a National Government.

Find out more: M. Pugh: Speak for Britain – a New History of the Labour Party

The Outbreak of World War II

The Munich Agreement had not sated Hitler’s thirst for conquest. After Anschluss in 1938 (uniting Austria with Germany), he took Prague and Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Now he turned attention to Poland; to which Neville Chamberlain extended a guarantee of British assistance. France followed. In September 1939, emboldened by his pact with Russia in August, Hitler called Britain’s bluff and invaded Poland, bringing France and Britain into the war.

Find out more: A. Roberts: The Storm of War

Britain Stands Alone

On May 10, 1940, the Phoney War ended. Hitler launched a sudden and devastating blitzkrieg on Belgium and France. The same day, Neville Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill assumed the role for which he believed himself destined. Thoughts of peace were dispelled; despite disasters like Dunkirk (end of May) the war would now be prosecuted to the end, even if – as in the summer of 1940 – Britain was alone.

Find out more: W. Churchill: The Gathering Storm