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The Victorian era was one of good and bad where empires fell and rose as senseless wars were fought, people dominated, and advancements of culture and technology were made throughout. The Victorian era is called the Victorian era because England was currently being ruled over by Queen Victoria. The British Empire reached its greatest size under her reign. The greatest country she conquered was India, it was known as the jewel of the British Empire because it brought England so many natural resources, and effects of Victorian rule can still be seen today. Many other countries were colonized including Australia and other African countries, this spurred much racial hatred among England and its colonies and eventually led to the demise of the empire as wars broke out and independence was gained, although this was not always the best path for some countries.
During the Victorian era countries reached their greatest peaks because of England but they also fell in their fight against the empire to gain freedom. Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India and ruled over successfully throughout her reign. Queen Victoria also dealt with many rebellions throughout her time. India was seized because of the rebellion of Indian soldiers in the army as they refused to bite the end off of a bullet, a customary tradition, because the new bullets were covered with lard and it would be sacrilege, they were charged with mutiny and it gave England a reason to take over India. many rebellions took place like the chartist movement, which gave universal suffrage and new electoral reform throughout England. England also saw itself in wars overseas like the Crimean war where the only good thing that resulted was Florence Nightingale and her more humane treatment of patients and sterilization of hospitals1. England also colonized many countries throughout Africa. Their biggest problem occurred in South Africa during the Boer War. The Afrikaans settled most of South Africa and built it on the backs of tribal slaves. England then colonized South Africa and from 18-10 the Boer’s fought the British for ownership of the land. South Africa became England’s biggest source for gold and diamonds and to keep their claim to South Africa they had to stage one of the most expensive wars between the Napoleonic Wars and World War One. The British sent 500,000 men into South Africa to fight, easily outnumbering the Boers who only had 88,000 men. The British refused the Uitlander political rights and this caused an up rise. The war also had an economic shadow to it because most of the worlds monetary system was very dependant on gold and so the more gold the British could mine from South Africa the more the British economy grew. At the end of the war the Boers were forced to sign a treaty because they had been losing so many battles and men.
Racism was a very big issue between citizens of England and citizens of the empire. Phrenology is the idea that that the structure of the skull, especially the jaw formation and facial angles, revealed the position of various races on the evolutionary scale. Debates concerning monogenism, one creation of mankind, or polygenism, several creations for mankind were always argued as the absurd idea of judging a person based on the shape of their face, surround racial hatred for years. The idea of phrenology came about before Darwinism.
“I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland]…I don’t believe they are our fault…. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much….”
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Charles Kingsley wrote about his disgust for the entire Irish people in a letter to his wife. Soon after the idea of phrenology came Darwinism, they idea that one species had evolved more than another and that these people less evolved were inferior. This was the spur of most of today’s racial hatred even though Darwin retracted all his theories upon his deathbed. Benthanism or utilitarianism was an ideology invented by Jeremy Bentham. It was the beliefs of most of the middle-class Victorians molded into a philosophy, it was used to justify the lifestyles of the people. Its basic idea was “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. This was taken from Joseph Priestly in the late eighteenth century. The phrase means self-pleasure is the driving force for all actions by man and that this was crucial to existence and living a good life. Jerry Benthams followers were also called Philosophic Radicals. They followed a very romantic movement, as was the trend with the gothic revival. Benthams way of supporting his ideas and providing self pleasure for all was a representative legislative. He believed, that when his plan was completed parliament would be a mirror image of Benthanism. This became true when many new laws were passed that followed the structure of Benthanism. Although the idea of Benthanism was corrupt it did set up many schools and other public services in England and helped the government grow. Racial prejudice was felt all over the empire, it was directed from England to its neighbors in Ireland and all the way across the empire to India and Australia.
Toward the end of the Victorian era England saw a switchback to romanticism called the gothic revival, and it affected religion, lifestyle, and art. People begun to drift away from the church and form their own sects, especially with the abundance of new philosophies. Benthanism was probably a spur from the gothic revival. People begun to adapt to new art and architecture. Christopher Wren was an architect that added gothic design to churches, many of which can be seen today in churches like Westminster Abbey. The revival also brought about great writers such as Charles Dickens who published chapters for the newspapers and later were made into books. Dickens invented what was known as comic literature, and he “knows how human beings express themselves”. Theatre had reached an entirely new level with more realistic plays die to the increase in technology and the introduction of women to the stage whereas previously men had acted out all of the women’s roles.
The effects of colonization affected everyone in the empire. It created jobs for thousands in the mining industry but all the money went back to England making it the most prosperous and wealthiest nation in the world. Countries saw what the British were doing and decided that they wanted their freedom and wanted the wealth that was going to Britain. The problem with colonies gaining independence was that once they were granted freedom, they were cut off from Britain and therefore no longer had any money to support them or continue all the mining the British had started. This is one of many reasons that countries like India are third world. India was once an extremely wealthy country because of the spice trade.4 Countries from all over would pass through creating general trade and resource trade. After independence in 147 India has been through an extremely slow progression.5 Some countries have survived the post independence struggle like Australia, which was once a penal colony. Aborigines originally inhabited Australia and when the first settlers came in they treated the Aborigines like scum and forced them off their land to build what is Australia today. The racial hatred spread by the effects of colonization was devastating on many different peoples.
The Victorian period also gave way to new needs of technology. In England new factories were being built as the world saw the start of the industrial revolution. With the biggest empire in the world England adopted new ideas from various cultures to blend them into the inventions that resulted because of the industrial revolution. New transportation methods came about, as sailboats were made unnecessary and steamships cut the travel time in half, the world saw an amazing acceleration in trading time. The railroad also came about in places where it was not suitable for a horse and carriage. Cecil Rhodes, an African, had a dream of completing what would have been one of the longest railroads in history. He wanted to lay a railroad track from South Africa all the way up to Egypt an unimaginable distance in his time. Unfortunately the railroad was never completed and only stretched from Zimbabwe to Zambia. The Industrial Revolution also led to some of the worst working conditions in history. Children were forced to work from three in the morning to ten at night and received fifteen minutes for breakfast, fifteen minutes for drinking, and thirty minutes for dinner. 6 These are the working conditions as described for a ten year old girl working in a cotton mill. The Industrial Revolution brought many changes in lifestyle as well. The conditions of the average worker living in England were one of terrible and inhumane working conditions. Workers were forced to work fifteen-hour days with limited breaks and meager wages. Factories developed a scheme that enabled them to get all their money back that they spent in wages. The factory owner would develop housing near the factories because there was no developed transportation to commute people from one city to another. The owner also owned the local grocery store where bread and vegetables were sold at almost double the regular price. Factory owners became the wealthiest people in England and new social classes emerged because of it as social standing was now based on a persons income not their name.
Sports was a major aspect of the Victorian era, with two national sports being founded there, football and rugby. “sports mirror social tensions, divisions, and values.”7 The Football Association was founded in 186 and it was the governing body on professional football at the time. The Rugby Football Union was founded later in 1871 at like The Footbal Association it was the governing body for Rugby. The sports that were played were completely impartial and anyone from any class could play. It was probably the only thing that the working class got to be better at than the rich because nine years out of ten working class teams won the F.A Cup. Most of the modern clubs today originated in the 1800’s from sunday school and chapel teams. It was a social sport for the masses. In 101 Crystal Palace stadium was filled with 111,000 sport hungry fans.
“The astonishing increase in the numbers that play and watch others play the great English games is largely due to the dull monotony of life in our large towns; it is the absolute necessity of some change, some interest outside the daily work which has long ceased to be interesting, that causes the huge crowds at the weekly football matches.8
In the early days of the two sports they were purely for recreation but because people had to take time off of work to play they began losing money. In both sports players wanted compensation but only The Football Association agreed to compensate players for the time they lost when they were playing. The Rugby Football Association however were very reluctant to pay players as they said it would take away from the pure spirit of the game and until 185 rugby players were not played which resulted in football becoming a far more popular sport.
“Since football became popular with all classes there have been less wrenching off of knockers and boxing of the watch, and fewer free fights’ in the streets.”
People were able to take the stress and aggression from the workplace and channel it into the game. It was the biggest escapism and created something for people to talk about on Monday. It created a sensible form of nationalism where people didn’t go to war except on the football pitch.
Medicine had taken no drastic turn in the Victorian era but a few simple strides created the medical world we have today. Towards the end of the Victorian Era some bacteria’s were being discovered but it was not until approximately forty years later that any cures were actually found. Traditional remedies and herbal medicines were used in place of antibiotics and most treatments were narcotics used to relieve pain. The rich began to live longer than the poor because they did not work manual labor. The profession of medicine became more and more professionalised. Although doctors with no real qualifications still practiced medicine. Medical workers trained from a professional who was already practicing. Apothecaries had to fulfill a five-year apprenticeship and this had to include six months hospital work. Paying pupils were like butlers to the doctor they read for him, filled prescriptions, and performed other errands. Physicians were like the nobles of the medical profession because they were the only doctors who had medical degrees. They would have dinner with the rich whereas an apothecary might eat dinner with the servants. Doctors were taught in schools that ninety percent of medicine involves comforting patients until “nature take it’s course”10 When a patient was wounded he usually died from infection or loss of blood. Later methods discovered cauterization but patients would usually die from shock. In the Victorian era chloroform was discovered so that the patient could be put to sleep so the amputation and cauterization could take place. Florence nightingale greatly improved nursing in hospitals after she came back from the Crimean war and her methods were adapted throughout England and the world.11
Women had very little rights in this time even though the reigning monarch was a queen. Governesses played an extremely important role in a women’s life, as they are commonly the heroines in books of the time.1 The governess wasn’t a teacher of education but rather a social teacher. They would teach young girls how to act proper and be a good wife. One intense method of teaching strapping a backboard onto a woman’s back to teach her to stand erect. The women of this time were not treated well and men often preferred women who were ignorant and innocent. They were taught fashion and social behavior as the only people that could afford this was the aristocracy. Women were often forced into marriage to increase wealth or social standing of a family. The major problems with the demand for ignorant women was that they were not taught in the ways of the world and therefore often spent all the families money that was given to her and did not know anything about childbirth or childbearing and was forced to learn from experiences both physical and emotional. Nursing was the first professional career that opened up for women. In a time when the only decent jobs for women were kitchen maids, more and more women were trying to earn a nurses position.
In a time of Benthanism and electoral reforms it is hard to understand why an evolutionary thinker like Darwin was seen as crazy and insane because of his ideas of evolution. Only certain groups of people accepted Darwin but others were still stuck in the mindset that god created everything on earth. Darwin’s theory that life was survival of the fittest from his book, Origin of the Species, was warped into Darwinism, a platform for racial hatred and class structure. Darwinism focused on the idea that the rich white aristocrat was better than an African farmer because the aristocrat was more evolved because he had more money. Darwin became accepted later by the masses because his theories cam about in a time when people wanted a religion to suit their lifestyle and for the rich, white male Darwinism was perfect. Darwin was not afraid to reject the church and develop his own theories about existence unlike some of his predessors like Copernicus who never spoke out, because of his fear of the church. End Notes
1“Victorian Art and Architecture,” http//www.britainexpress.com/history/victorian_art_and_architecture.htm.
“Racism and anti Irish prejudice in Victorian England,” http//landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/race/racism.html. 1
Geoffry Tillotson, A View of Victorian Literature (Oxford 178) 56.
4“Victorian Art and Architechture,”
5Ibid
6Clarice Swisher, Victorian England (San Diego GreenHaven Press, 000) 115-166
7William Baker, Sports in the Western World 181-18.
8Baker 181-18
Ibid
10Swisher
11Ibid
1Ibid
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