Western Europe at the End of the 19th Century

World History: 1750 - Present

BRITAINWestern Europe

Britain• In the early 1800s, only 5% of British

citizens had the right to vote

• Catholics and Protestants that were not members of the Church of England could not vote or hold office

Britain• There were two main political parties

in Britain: Whig and Tory

• The Whig Party largely represented middle-class and business interests

Britain• The Tory Party represented nobles,

landowners, and agricultural interests

• The people of Britain pressured the two parties to pass the Reform Act of 1832

Britain• The Reform Act of 1832 gave all

landowners the right to vote

• It also took away religious restrictions

Britain• Some British citizens demanded

more reform

• The reformers were known as Chartists, because they created the People’s Charter

Britain• The People’s Charter called for

universal male suffrage and a secret ballot

• The Chartists tried 3 times to get their Charter passed, but each time it was rejected by the British parliament

Britain• In 1837, Britain crowned a new ruler:

Queen Victoria

• Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901

• Her reign was known as the Victorian Age

Britain• The Victorian Age was characterized

by respectability and formality

• It was not isolated to Britain, because the influence of Queen Victoria spread across the world

• Why?

Britain• Britain was the largest empire in the

world and had over 300 million subjects

Britain• Change came to Britain’s political

parties in the 1860s

• Under the leadership of Benjamin Disraeli, the Tories became the Conservative Party

Britain• The Whigs, led by William

Gladstone, became the Liberal Party

• Between 1868 and 1880, Gladstone and Disraeli alternated as Prime Minister

Britain• The Conservative Party worked to

give industrial workers the right to vote

• The Liberal Party countered by giving farm-workers the right to vote

Britain• By the end of the 19th Century

(1800s), Britain had transformed from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy

Britain• Parliamentary Democracy: a form

of government in which a prime minister and his cabinet are voted on by the legislature

IRELANDWestern Europe

Ireland• The British had begun conquering

Ireland in the 1100s

• By the 1600s, British and Scottish settlers had colonized all of Ireland and owned the best farmland

Ireland• The Irish people resented the English

settlers, especially absentee landlords

• Absentee landlords: owners of large estates that lived elsewhere

Ireland• Most Irish peasants lived in poverty,

while paying high rents to landlords living in England

• Absentee landlords could evict tenants at will

• British laws forbade to teaching and speaking of the Irish language

Ireland• Most Irish were Catholic, but were

forced to pay tithes to support the Church of England

• Also, Catholics could not vote or hold office

Ireland• Resistance and rebellion were

common, but were always defeated

• In 1829, the British Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, which allowed Catholic landowners to vote and hold office

Ireland• Also, most Irish crops were exported

out of the country

• The potato was the main source of food for most Irish people

Ireland• In 1845, a disease struck the potato

crops in Ireland, destroying most of the potatoes

• British landowners continued to ship the other crops out of the country, leaving little for the Irish

Ireland• The famine lasted almost four years

• In that time, almost 1 million men, women, and children died of starvation and disease

Ireland• Many more Irish citizens immigrated

to America and Canada

• Irish resentment toward the British grew deeper

Ireland• In the 1870s, Charles Stewart

Parnell, an Irish nationalist, began fighting for home rule

• Home rule: rule in which the people of a country rule domestic issues, while another country rules foreign matters

Ireland• In 1914, the British Parliament

passed a home rule bill for the Irish

• Parliament delayed putting the new law into effect when World War I broke out later that year

Ireland• It was not until 1921, that the

southern counties of Ireland finally became independent

FRANCEWestern Europe

France• France’s history is littered with

scandals

• One of the most divisive scandals began in 1894

France• In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish,

high-ranking army officer, was accused of spying for Germany

• During his military trial, neither Dreyfus or his attorney were allowed to see the evidence against him

France• This injustice was rooted in anti-

Semitism

• Anti-Semitism: hatred against the Jewish people

France• Dreyfus was hated by many of the

military elite because he was the first Jew to become a high ranking officer

France• He proclaimed his innocence, but

was convicted and condemned to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a French penal colony off the coast of South America

France• Two years later, in 1896, new

evidence pointed to another officer, Ferdinand Esterhazy, as the spy

• Still, the army refused to grant Dreyfus a new trial

France• This scandal, known as the Dreyfus

Affair, scarred France for decades

• Royalists and Church officials charged Dreyfus supporters with undermining France

France• Dreyfusards, supporters of Dreyfus,

screamed of injustice, but were often met with public and political anger

• Those who wrote against the army were charged with libel and some were forced into exile

France• Libel: the knowing publication of

false and damaging statements

• The Dreyfus case reflected anti-Semitic feelings across Europe

France• The Dreyfus Affair and other

injustices against Jewish people stirred nationalist feelings

• Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish journalist living in France, called for a separate Jewish state

France• This movement, which called for a

Jewish state to be built in Palestine, was known as Zionism

• In 1897, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland

THE END