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Kingdom of Great Britain

The Kingdom of Great Britain (officially Great Britain)[b] was a sovereign country in Western Europe from 1 May 1707[3] to the end of 31 December 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the kingdoms of England (which included Wales) and Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but distinct legal systems – English law and Scots law – remained in use.

Great Britain
1707–1801
Anthem: God Save the King (1745–1800)
Royal coat of arms in Scotland:
Great Britain in 1789; administered territories and personal union in light green
CapitalLondon
51°30′N 0°7′W / 51.500°N 0.117°W / 51.500; -0.117
Official languagesEnglish, Law French[a]
Recognised regional languages
Religion
Protestantism (Church of England,[1] Church of Scotland)
Demonym(s)British
GovernmentUnitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Monarch 
• 1707–1714[a]
Anne
• 1714–1727
George I
• 1727–1760
George II
• 1760–1800[b]
George III
Prime Minister (select) 
• 1721–1742
Robert Walpole (first)
• 1783–1800
William Pitt the Younger (last of GB)
LegislatureParliament of Great Britain
House of Lords
House of Commons
Historical eraEarly modern
22 July 1706
1 May 1707
1 January 1801
CurrencyPound sterling
Today part ofUnited Kingdom
  1. ^ Monarch of England and Scotland from 1702 to 1707.
  2. ^ Continued as monarch of the United Kingdom until 1820.

The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the 1603 "Union of the Crowns" when James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland. Since James's reign, who had been the first to refer to himself as "king of Great Britain", a political union between the two mainland British kingdoms had been repeatedly attempted and aborted by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714) did not produce a clear Protestant heir and endangered the line of succession, with the laws of succession differing in the two kingdoms and threatening a return to the throne of Scotland of the Roman Catholic House of Stuart, exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The resulting kingdom was in legislative and personal union with the Kingdom of Ireland from its inception, but the Parliament of Great Britain resisted early attempts to incorporate Ireland in the political union. The early years of the newly united kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings, particularly the Jacobite rising of 1715. The relative incapacity or ineptitude of the Hanoverian kings resulted in a growth in the powers of Parliament and a new role, that of "prime minister", emerged in the heyday of Robert Walpole. The "South Sea Bubble" economic crisis was brought on by the failure of the South Sea Company, an early joint-stock company. The campaigns of Jacobitism ended in defeat for the Stuarts' cause in 1746.

The Hanoverian line of monarchs gave their names to the Georgian era and the term "Georgian" is typically used in the contexts of social and political history for Georgian architecture. The term "Augustan literature" is often used for Augustan drama, Augustan poetry and Augustan prose in the period 1700–1740s. The term "Augustan" refers to the acknowledgement of the influence of classical Latin from the ancient Roman Republic.[4]

Victory in the Seven Years' War led to the dominance of the British Empire, which was to become the foremost global power for over a century. Great Britain dominated the Indian subcontinent through the trading and military expansion of the East India Company in colonial India. In wars against France, it gained control of both Upper and Lower Canada, and until suffering defeat in the American War of Independence, it also had dominion over the Thirteen Colonies. From 1787, Britain began the colonisation of New South Wales with the departure of the First Fleet in the process of penal transportation to Australia. Britain was a leading belligerent in the French Revolutionary Wars.

Great Britain was merged into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 January 1801, with the Acts of Union 1800, enacted by Great Britain and Ireland, under George III, to merge with it the Kingdom of Ireland.

Etymology

The name Britain descends from the Latin name for the island of Great Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons via the Old French Bretaigne (whence also Modern French Bretagne) and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474.[5]

The use of the word "Great" before "Britain" originates in the French language, which uses Bretagne for both Britain and Brittany. French therefore distinguishes between the two by calling Britain la Grande Bretagne, a distinction which was transferred into English.[6]

The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain",[7] and as such "Great Britain" was the official name of the state, as well as being used in titles such as "Parliament of Great Britain".[b][8] The websites of the Scottish Parliament, the BBC, and others, including the Historical Association, refer to the state created on 1 May 1707 as the United Kingdom of Great Britain.[9] Both the Acts and the Treaty describe the country as "One Kingdom" and a "United Kingdom", leading some publications to treat the state as the "United Kingdom".[10] The term United Kingdom was sometimes used during the 18th century to describe the state.[11]

Political structure

The kingdoms of England and Scotland, both in existence from the 9th century (with England incorporating Wales in the 16th century), were separate states until 1707. However, they had come into a personal union in 1603, when James VI of Scotland became king of England under the name of James I. This Union of the Crowns under the House of Stuart meant that the whole of the island of Great Britain was now ruled by a single monarch, who by virtue of holding the English crown also ruled over the Kingdom of Ireland. Each of the three kingdoms maintained its own parliament and laws. Various smaller islands were in the king's domain, including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

This disposition changed dramatically when the Acts of Union 1707 came into force, with a single unified Crown of Great Britain and a single unified parliament.[12] Ireland remained formally separate, with its own parliament, until the Acts of Union 1800 took effect. The Union of 1707 provided for a Protestant-only succession to the throne in accordance with the English Act of Settlement of 1701; rather than Scotland's Act of Security of 1704 and the Act anent Peace and War 1703, which ceased to have effect by the Repeal of Certain Scotch Acts 1707. The Act of Settlement required that the heir to the English throne be a descendant of the Electress Sophia of Hanover and not a Roman Catholic; this brought about the Hanoverian succession of George I of Great Britain in 1714.

Legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland.[13] In practice, it was a continuation of the English parliament, sitting at the same location in Westminster, expanded to include representation from Scotland. As with the former Parliament of England and the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Parliament of Great Britain was formally constituted of three elements: the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Crown. The right of the English peers to sit in the House of Lords remained unchanged, while the disproportionately large number of Scottish peers were permitted to send only sixteen representative peers, elected from amongst their number for the life of each parliament. Similarly, the members of the former English House of Commons continued as members of the British House of Commons, but as a reflection of the relative tax bases of the two countries the number of Scottish representatives was fixed at 45. Newly created peers in the Peerage of Great Britain, and their successors, had the right to sit in the Lords.[14]

Despite the end of a separate parliament for Scotland, it retained its own laws and system of courts, as also its own established Presbyterian Church and control over its own schools. The social structure was highly hierarchical, and the same ruling class remained in control after 1707.[15] Scotland continued to have its own universities, and with its intellectual community, especially in Edinburgh, the Scottish Enlightenment had a major impact on British, American, and European thinking.[16]

Role of Ireland

As a result of Poynings' Law of 1495, the Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the Parliament of England, and after 1707 to the Parliament of Great Britain. The Westminster parliament's Declaratory Act 1719 (also called the Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719) noted that the Irish House of Lords had recently "assumed to themselves a Power and Jurisdiction to examine, correct and amend" judgements of the Irish courts and declared that as the Kingdom of Ireland was subordinate to and dependent upon the crown of Great Britain, the King, through the Parliament of Great Britain, had "full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the Kingdom and people of Ireland".[17] The Act was repealed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782.[18] The same year, the Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom. However, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which sought to end the subordination and dependency of the country on the British crown and to establish a republic, was one of the factors that led to the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.[19]

Merging of Scottish and English Parliaments

 
Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714

The deeper political integration of her kingdoms was a key policy of Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch of England and Scotland and the first monarch of Great Britain. A Treaty of Union was agreed in 1706, following negotiations between representatives of the parliaments of England and Scotland, and each parliament then passed separate Acts of Union to ratify it. The Acts came into effect on 1 May 1707, uniting the separate Parliaments and uniting the two kingdoms into a kingdom called Great Britain. Anne became the first monarch to occupy the unified British throne, and in line with Article 22 of the Treaty of Union Scotland and England each sent members to the new House of Commons of Great Britain.[20][15] The Scottish and English ruling classes retained power, and each country kept its legal and educational systems, as well as its established Church. United, they formed a larger economy, and the Scots began to provide soldiers and colonial officials to the new British forces and Empire.[21] However, one notable difference at the outset was that the new Scottish members of parliament and representative peers were elected by the outgoing Parliament of Scotland, while all existing members of the Houses of Commons and Lords at Westminster remained in office.

Queen Anne, 1702–1714

During the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14) England continued its policy of forming and funding alliances, especially with the Dutch Republic and the Holy Roman Empire against their common enemy, King Louis XIV of France.[22] Queen Anne, who reigned 1702–1714, was the central decision maker, working closely with her advisers, especially her remarkably successful senior general, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. The war was a financial drain, for Britain had to finance its allies and hire foreign soldiers. Stalemate on the battlefield and war weariness on the home front set in toward the end. The anti-war Tory politicians won control of Parliament in 1710 and forced a peace. The concluding Treaty of Utrecht was highly favourable for Britain. Spain lost its empire in Europe and faded away as a great power, while working to better manage its colonies in the Americas. The First British Empire, based upon the English overseas possessions, was enlarged. From France, Great Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a major naval base which allowed Great Britain to control the entrance from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.[23] The war marks the weakening of French military, diplomatic and economic dominance, and the arrival on the world scene of Britain as a major imperial, military and financial power.[24] British historian G. M. Trevelyan argued:

That Treaty [of Utrecht], which ushered in the stable and characteristic period of Eighteenth-Century civilization, marked the end of danger to Europe from the old French monarchy, and it marked a change of no less significance to the world at large,—the maritime, commercial and financial supremacy of Great Britain.[25]

Hanoverian succession: 1714–1760

In the 18th century England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rose to become the world's dominant colonial power, with France as its main rival on the imperial stage.[26] The pre-1707 English overseas possessions became the nucleus of the First British Empire.

"In 1714 the ruling class was so bitterly divided that many feared a civil war might break out on Queen Anne's death", wrote historian W. A. Speck.[27] A few hundred of the richest ruling class and landed gentry families controlled parliament, but were deeply split, with Tories committed to the legitimacy of the Stuart "Old Pretender", then in exile. The Whigs strongly supported the Hanoverians, in order to ensure a Protestant succession. The new king, George I was a foreign prince and had a small English standing army to support him, with military support from his native Hanover and from his allies in the Netherlands. In the Jacobite rising of 1715, based in Scotland, the Earl of Mar led eighteen Jacobite peers and 10,000 men, with the aim of overthrowing the new king and restoring the Stuarts. Poorly organised, it was decisively defeated. Several of the leaders were executed, many others dispossessed of their lands, and some 700 prominent followers deported to forced labour on sugar plantations in the West Indies. A key decision was the refusal of the Pretender to change his religion from Roman Catholic to Anglican, which would have mobilised much more of the Tory element. The Whigs came to power, under the leadership of James Stanhope, Charles Townshend, the Earl of Sunderland, and Robert Walpole. Many Tories were driven out of national and local government, and new laws were passed to impose greater national control. The right of habeas corpus was restricted; to reduce electoral instability, the Septennial Act 1715 increased the maximum life of a parliament from three years to seven.[28]

George I: 1714–1727

During his reign, George I spent only about half as much of his time overseas as had William III, who also reigned for thirteen years.[29] Jeremy Black has argued that George wanted to spend even more time in Hanover: "His visits, in 1716, 1719, 1720, 1723 and 1725, were lengthy, and, in total, he spent a considerable part of his reign abroad. These visits were also occasions both for significant negotiations and for the exchange of information and opinion....The visits to Hanover also provided critics with the opportunity...to argue that British interests were being neglected....George could not speak English, and all relevant documents from his British ministers were translated into French for him....Few British ministers or diplomats...knew German, or could handle it in precise discussion."[30]

George I supported the expulsion of the Tories from power; they remained in the political wilderness until his great-grandson George III came to power in 1760 and began to replace Whigs with Tories.[31] George I has often been caricatured in the history books, but according to his biographer Ragnhild Hatton:

...on the whole he did well by Great Britain, guiding the country calmly and responsibly through the difficult postwar years and repeated invasions or threatened invasions... He liked efficiency and expertise, and had long experience of running an orderly state... He cared for the quality of his ministers and his officers, army and naval, and the strength of the navy in fast ships grew during his reign... He showed political vision and ability in the way in which he used British power in Europe.[32]

Age of Walpole: 1721–1742

 
Walpole, by Arthur Pond

Robert Walpole (1676–1745) was a son of the landed gentry who rose to power in the House of Commons from 1721 to 1742. He became the first "prime minister", a term in use by 1727. In 1742, he was created Earl of Orford and was succeeded as prime minister by two of his followers, Henry Pelham (1743–1754) and Pelham's brother the Duke of Newcastle (1754–1762).[33] Clayton Roberts summarizes Walpole's new functions:

He monopolized the counsels of the King, he closely superintended the administration, he ruthlessly controlled patronage, and he led the predominant party in Parliament.[34]

South Sea Bubble

Corporate stock was a new phenomenon, not well understood, except for the strong gossip among financiers that fortunes could be made overnight. The South Sea Company, although originally set up to trade with the Spanish Empire, quickly turned most of its attention to very high risk financing, involving £30 million, some 60 per cent of the entire British national debt. It set up a scheme that invited stock owners to turn in their certificates for stock in the Company at a par value of £100—the idea was that they would profit by the rising price of their stock. Everyone with connections wanted in on the bonanza, and many other outlandish schemes found gullible takers. South Sea stock peaked at £1,060 on 25 June 1720. Then the bubble burst, and by the end of September it had fallen to £150. Hundreds of prominent men had borrowed to buy stock high; their apparent profits had vanished, but they were liable to repay the full amount of the loans. Many went bankrupt, and many more lost fortunes.[35]

Confidence in the entire national financial and political system collapsed. Parliament investigated and concluded that there had been widespread fraud by the company directors and corruption in the Cabinet. Among Cabinet members implicated were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Postmaster General, and a Secretary of State, as well as two other leading men, Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland. Walpole had dabbled in the speculation himself but was not a major player. He rose to the challenge, as the new First Lord of the Treasury, of resolving the financial and political disaster. The economy was basically healthy, and the panic ended. Working with the financiers he successfully restored confidence in the system. However, public opinion, as shaped by the many prominent men who had lost so much money so quickly, demanded revenge. Walpole supervised the process, which removed all 33 company directors and stripped them of, on average, 82% of their wealth.[36] The money went to the victims. The government bought the stock of the South Sea Company for £33 and sold it to the Bank of England and the East India Company, the only other two corporations big enough to handle the challenge. Walpole made sure that King George and his mistresses were not embarrassed, and by the margin of three votes he saved several key government officials from impeachment.[35]

 
Walpole's Houghton Hall

Stanhope and Sunderland died of natural causes, leaving Walpole alone as the dominant figure in British politics. The public hailed him as the saviour of the financial system, and historians credit him with rescuing the Whig government, and indeed the Hanoverian dynasty, from total disgrace.[36][37]

Patronage and corruption

Walpole was a master of the effective use of patronage, as were Pelham and Lord Newcastle. They each paid close attention to the work of bestowing upon their political allies high places, lifetime pensions, honours, lucrative government contracts, and help at election time. In turn the friends enabled them to control Parliament.[38] Thus in 1742, over 140 members of parliament held powerful positions thanks in part to Walpole, including 24 men at the royal court, 50 in the government agencies, and the rest with sinecures or other handsome emoluments, often in the range of £500 – £1000 per year. Usually there was little or no work involved. Walpole also distributed highly attractive ecclesiastical appointments. When the Court in 1725 instituted a new order of chivalry, the Order of the Bath, Walpole immediately seized the opportunity. He made sure that most of the 36 men honoured were peers and members of parliament who would provide him with useful connections.[39] Walpole himself became enormously wealthy, investing heavily in his estate at Houghton Hall and its large collection of European master paintings.[40]

Walpole's methods won him victory after victory, but aroused furious opposition. Historian John H. Plumb wrote:

Walpole's policy had bred distrust, his methods hatred. Time and time again his policy was successful in Parliament only because of the government's absolute control of the Scottish members in the Commons and the Bishops in the Lords. He gave point to the opposition's cry that Walpole's policy was against the wishes of the nation, a policy imposed by a corrupt use of pension and place.[41]

The opposition called for "patriotism" and looked at the Prince of Wales as the future "Patriot King". Walpole supporters ridiculed the very term "patriot".[42]

The opposition Country Party attacked Walpole relentlessly, primarily targeting his patronage, which they denounced as corruption. In turn, Walpole imposed censorship on the London theatre and subsidised writers such as William Arnall and others who rejected the charge of political corruption by arguing that corruption is the universal human condition. Furthermore, they argued, political divisiveness was also universal and inevitable because of selfish passions that were integral to human nature. Arnall argued that government must be strong enough to control conflict, and in that regard Walpole was quite successful. This style of "court" political rhetoric continued through the 18th century.[43] Lord Cobham, a leading soldier, used his own connections to build up an opposition after 1733. Young William Pitt and George Grenville joined Cobham's faction—they were called "Cobham's Cubs". They became leading enemies of Walpole and both later became prime minister.[44]

By 1741, Walpole was facing mounting criticism on foreign policy—he was accused of entangling Britain in a useless war with Spain—and mounting allegations of corruption. On 13 February 1741, Samuel Sandys, a former ally, called for his removal.[45] He said:

Such has been the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, with regard to foreign affairs: he has deserted our allies, aggrandized our enemies, betrayed our commerce, and endangered our colonies; and yet this is the least criminal part of his ministry. For what is the loss of allies to the alienation of the people from the government, or the diminution of trade to the destruction of our liberties?[46]

Walpole's allies defeated a censure motion by a vote of 209 to 106, but Walpole's coalition lost seats in the election of 1741, and by a narrow margin he was finally forced out of office in early 1742.[47]

Walpole's foreign policy

Walpole secured widespread support with his policy of avoiding war.[48] He used his influence to prevent George II from entering the War of the Polish Succession in 1733, because it was a dispute between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs. He boasted, "There are 50,000 men slain in Europe this year, and not one Englishman."[49] Walpole himself let others, especially his brother-in-law Lord Townshend, handle foreign policy until about 1726, then took charge. A major challenge for his administration was the royal role as simultaneous ruler of Hanover, a small German state that was opposed to Prussian supremacy. George I and George II saw a French alliance as the best way to neutralise Prussia. They forced a dramatic reversal of British foreign policy, which for centuries had seen France as England's greatest enemy.[50] However, the bellicose King Louis XIV died in 1715, and the regents who ran France were preoccupied with internal affairs. King Louis XV came of age in 1726, and his elderly chief minister Cardinal Fleury collaborated informally with Walpole to prevent a major war and keep the peace. Both sides wanted peace, which allowed both countries enormous cost savings, and recovery from expensive wars.[51]

Henry Pelham became prime minister in 1744 and continued Walpole's policies. He worked for an end to the War of the Austrian Succession.[52] His financial policy was a major success once peace had been signed in 1748. He demobilised the armed forces, and reduced government spending from £12 million to £7 million. He refinanced the national debt, dropping the interest rate from 4% p.a. to 3% p.a. Taxes had risen to pay for the war, but in 1752 he reduced the land tax from four shillings to two shillings in the pound: that is, from 20% to 10%.[53]

Lower debt and taxes

By avoiding wars, Walpole could lower taxes. He reduced the national debt with a sinking fund, and by negotiating lower interest rates. He reduced the land tax from four shillings in 1721, to 3s in 1728, 2s in 1731 and finally to only 1s (i.e. 5%) in 1732. His long-term goal was to replace the land tax, which was paid by the local gentry, with excise and customs taxes, which were paid by merchants and ultimately by consumers. Walpole joked that the landed gentry resembled hogs, which squealed loudly whenever anyone laid hands on them. By contrast, he said, merchants were like sheep, and yielded their wool without complaint.[54] The joke backfired in 1733 when he was defeated in a major battle to impose excise taxes on wine and tobacco. To reduce the threat of smuggling, the tax was to be collected not at ports but at warehouses. This new proposal, however, was extremely unpopular with the public, and aroused the opposition of the merchants because of the supervision it would involve. Walpole was defeated as his strength in Parliament dropped a notch.[55]

Walpole's reputation

 
1740 political cartoon depicting a towering Walpole as the Colossus of Rhodes

Historians hold Walpole's record in high regard, though there has been a recent tendency to share credit more widely among his allies. W. A. Speck wrote that Walpole's uninterrupted run of 20 years as Prime Minister

is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history... Explanations are usually offered in terms of his expert handling of the political system after 1720, [and] his unique blending of the surviving powers of the crown with the increasing influence of the Commons.[56]

He was a Whig from the gentry class, who first arrived in Parliament in 1701, and held many senior positions. He was a country squire and looked to country gentlemen for his political base. Historian Frank O'Gorman said his leadership in Parliament reflected his "reasonable and persuasive oratory, his ability to move both the emotions as well as the minds of men, and, above all, his extraordinary self-confidence."[57] Julian Hoppit said Walpole's policies sought moderation: he worked for peace, lower taxes, growing exports, and allowed a little more tolerance for Protestant Dissenters. He avoided controversy and high-intensity disputes, as his middle way attracted moderates from both the Whig and Tory camps.[58] H.T. Dickinson summed up his historical role:

Walpole was one of the greatest politicians in British history. He played a significant role in sustaining the Whig party, safeguarding the Hanoverian succession, and defending the principles of the Glorious Revolution (1688) ... He established a stable political supremacy for the Whig party and taught succeeding ministers how best to establish an effective working relationship between Crown and Parliament.[59]

Age of George III, 1760–1820

Victory in the Seven Years' War, 1756–1763

The Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale and saw British involvement in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and coastal Africa. The results were highly favourable for Britain, and a major disaster for France. Key decisions were largely in the hands of William Pitt the Elder. The war started poorly. Britain lost the island of Minorca in 1756, and suffered a series of defeats in North America. After years of setbacks and mediocre results, British luck turned in the "miracle year" ("Annus Mirabilis") of 1759. The British had entered the year anxious about a French invasion, but by the end of the year, they were victorious in all theatres. In the Americas, they captured Fort Ticonderoga (Carillon), drove the French out of the Ohio Country, captured Quebec City in Canada as a result of the decisive Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and captured the rich sugar island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies. In India, the John Company repulsed French forces besieging Madras. In Europe, British troops partook in a decisive Allied victory at the Battle of Minden. The victory over the French navy at the Battle of Lagos and the decisive Battle of Quiberon Bay ended threats of a French invasion, and confirmed Britain's reputation as the world's foremost naval power.[60] The Treaty of Paris of 1763 marked the high point of the First British Empire. France's future in North America ended, as New France (Quebec) came under British control. In India, the third Carnatic War had left France still in control of several small enclaves, but with military restrictions and an obligation to support the British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Great Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years' War therefore left Great Britain as the world's dominant colonial power, with a bitter France thirsting for revenge.[61]

Evangelical religion and social reform

The evangelical movement inside and outside the Church of England gained strength in the late 18th and early 19th century. The movement challenged the traditional religious sensibility that emphasized a code of honour for the upper class, and suitable behaviour for everyone else, together with faithful observances of rituals. John Wesley (1703–1791) and his followers preached revivalist religion, trying to convert individuals to a personal relationship with Christ through Bible reading, regular prayer, and especially the revival experience. Wesley himself preached 52,000 times, calling on men and women to "redeem the time" and save their souls. Wesley always operated inside the Church of England, but at his death, it set up outside institutions that became the Methodist Church.[62] It stood alongside the traditional nonconformist churches, Presbyterians, Congregationalist, Baptists, Unitarians and Quakers. The nonconformist churches, however, were less influenced by revivalism.[63]

The Church of England remained dominant, but it had a growing evangelical, revivalist faction in the "Low Church". Its leaders included William Wilberforce and Hannah More. It reached the upper class through the Clapham Sect. It did not seek political reform, but rather the opportunity to save souls through political action by freeing slaves, abolishing the duel, prohibiting cruelty to children and animals, stopping gambling, and avoiding frivolity on the Sabbath; evangelicals read the Bible every day. All souls were equal in God's view, but not all bodies, so evangelicals did not challenge the hierarchical structure of English society.[64]

First British Empire

The first British Empire was based largely in mainland North America and the West Indies, with a growing presence in India. Emigration from Britain went mostly to the Thirteen Colonies and the West Indies, with some to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Few permanent settlers went to British India, although many young men went there in the hope of making money and returning home.[65]

Mercantilist trade policy

Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Great Britain on its overseas possessions.[66] Mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its merchants—and kept others out—by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries to maximise exports from and minimise imports to the realm. The government had to fight smuggling—which became a favourite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish or Dutch. The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would pour into London. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in London and other British ports. The government spent much of its revenue on a superb Royal Navy, which not only protected the British colonies but threatened the colonies of the other empires, and sometimes seized them. Thus the Royal Navy captured New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1664. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country.[67]

Loss of the 13 American colonies

During the 1760s and 1770s, relations with the Thirteen Colonies turned from benign neglect to outright revolt, primarily because of the British Parliament's insistence on taxing colonists without their consent to recover losses incurred protecting the American Colonists during the French and Indian War (1754–1763). In 1775, the American Revolutionary War began, as the Americans trapped the British army in Boston and suppressed the Loyalists who supported the Crown. In 1776 the Americans declared the independence of the United States of America. Under the military leadership of General George Washington, and, with economic and military assistance from France, the Dutch Republic, and Spain, the United States held off successive British invasions. The Americans captured two main British armies in 1777 and 1781. After that King George III lost control of Parliament and was unable to continue the war. It ended with the Treaty of Paris by which Great Britain relinquished the Thirteen Colonies and recognized the United States. The war was expensive but the British financed it successfully.[68]

Second British Empire

The loss of the Thirteen Colonies marked the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa.[69] Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Great Britain after 1781[70] confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.

Canada

After a series of "French and Indian wars", the British took over most of France's North American operations in 1763. New France became Quebec. Great Britain's policy was to respect Quebec's Catholic establishment as well as its semi-feudal legal, economic, and social systems. By the Quebec Act of 1774, the Province of Quebec was enlarged to include the western holdings of the American colonies. In the American Revolutionary War, Halifax, Nova Scotia became Britain's major base for naval action. They repulsed an American revolutionary invasion in 1776, but in 1777 a British invasion army was captured in New York, encouraging France to enter the war.[71]

After the American victory, between 40,000 and 60,000 defeated Loyalists migrated, some bringing their slaves.[72] Most families were given free land to compensate their losses. Several thousand free blacks also arrived; most of them later went to Sierra Leone in Africa.[73] The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, were not welcomed by the locals. Therefore, in 1784 the British split off New Brunswick as a separate colony. The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and English-speaking communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Great Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.[74]

Australia

In 1770, British explorer James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement. Australia marks the beginning of the Second British Empire. It was planned by the government in London and designed as a replacement for the lost American colonies.[75] The American Loyalist James Matra in 1783 wrote "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" proposing the establishment of a colony composed of American Loyalists, Chinese and South Sea Islanders (but not convicts).[76] Matra reasoned that the land was suitable for plantations of sugar, cotton and tobacco; New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could prove valuable commodities; it could form a base for Pacific trade; and it could be a suitable compensation for displaced American Loyalists. At the suggestion of Secretary of State Lord Sydney, Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to the Individual". The government adopted the basics of Matra's plan in 1784, and funded the settlement of convicts.[77]

In 1787 the First Fleet set sail, carrying the first shipment of convicts to the colony. It arrived in January 1788.

India

 
Lord Clive of the East India Company meeting his ally Mir Jafar after their decisive victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757

India was not directly ruled by the British government, instead certain parts were seized by the East India Company, a private, for-profit corporation, with its own army. The "John Company" (as it was nicknamed) took direct control of half of India and built friendly relations with the other half, which was controlled by numerous local princes. Its goal was trade, and vast profits for the Company officials, not the building of the British empire. Company interests expanded during the 18th century to include control of territory as the old Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company battled for the spoils with the French East India Company (Compagnie française des Indes orientales) during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. Victories at the Battle of Plassey and Battle of Buxar by Robert Clive gave the Company control over Bengal and made it the major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the extent of territories under its control, ruling either directly or in cooperation with local princes. Although Britain itself only had a small standing army, the company had a large and well trained force, the presidency armies, with British officers commanding native Indian troops (called sepoys).[78]

Battling the French Revolution and Napoleon

 
Pitt addressing the Commons in 1793

With the regicide of King Louis XVI in 1793, the French Revolution represented a contest of ideologies between conservative, royalist Britain and radical Republican France.[79] The long bitter wars with France 1793–1815, saw anti-Catholicism emerge as the glue that held the three kingdoms together. From the upper classes to the lower classes, Protestants were brought together from England, Scotland and Ireland into a profound distrust and distaste for all things French. That enemy nation was depicted as the natural home of misery and oppression because of its inherent inability to shed the darkness of Catholic superstition and clerical manipulation.[80]

Napoleon

It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon, who came to power in 1799, threatened invasion of Great Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun. The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which the British invested all the moneys and energies it could raise. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy.[81]

Ireland

The French Revolution revived religious and political grievances in Ireland. In 1798, Irish nationalists, under Protestant leadership, plotted the Irish Rebellion of 1798, believing that the French would help them to overthrow the British.[82] They hoped for significant French support, which never came. The uprising was very poorly organized, and quickly suppressed by much more powerful British forces. Including many bloody reprisals, the total death toll was in the range of 10,000 to 30,000.[83]

Prime minister William Pitt the Younger firmly believed that the only solution to the problem was a union of Great Britain and Ireland. The union was established by the Act of Union 1800; compensation and patronage ensured the support of the Irish Parliament. Great Britain and Ireland were formally united on 1 January 1801. The Irish Parliament was closed down.[84]

Parliament of Great Britain

The Parliament of Great Britain consisted of the House of Lords (an unelected upper house of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal) and the House of Commons, the lower chamber, which was elected periodically. In England and Wales parliamentary constituencies remained unchanged throughout the existence of the Parliament.[85]

Monarchs

Monarchs' Coats of arms
 
Coat of Arms of the House of Stuart
 
Stuart arms used in Scotland
 
Coat of Arms of the House of Hanover
 
Hanoverian arms used in Scotland

Anne was from the House of Stuart and the Georges were from the House of Hanover. Anne had been Queen of England, Queen of Scots, and Queen of Ireland since 1702.

George III continued as King of the United Kingdom until his death in 1820.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Law French, based primarily on Old Norman and Anglo-Norman, was the official language of the courts until 1731.
  2. ^ a b "After the political union of England and Scotland in 1707, the nation's official name became 'Great Britain'".[2]

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Sources

Further reading

  • Black, Jeremy (2002). Britain as a Military Power, 1688–1815. ISBN 978-1-138-98791-3.
  • Brisco, Norris Arthur (1907). The economic policy of Robert Walpole. ISBN 978-0-231-93374-2.
  • Cannon, John (1984). Aristocratic century: the peerage of eighteenth-century England. ISBN 978-0-521-25729-9.
  • Colley, Linda (2009). Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-0-300-15280-7.
  • Cowie, Leonard W (1967). Hanoverian England, 1714–1837. ISBN 978-0-7135-0235-0.
  • Daunton, Martin (1995). Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1850. ISBN 978-0-19-822281-1.
  • Hilton, Boyd (2008). A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783–1846. ISBN 978-0-19-921891-2.
  • Hunt, William (2019) [1905]. The History of England from the Accession of George III – to the close of Pitt's first Administration. ISBN 978-0-530-51826-8. also Gutenberg edition
  • Langford, Paul (1976). The Eighteenth Century, 1688-1815. ISBN 978-0-7136-1652-1.
  • Leadam, I. S (1912). The History of England From The Accession of Anne to the Death of George II.
  • Marshall, Dorothy (1956). English People in the Eighteenth Century.
  • Newman, Gerald, ed. (1997). Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714–1837: An Encyclopedia. ISBN 978-0-8153-0396-1.
  • O'Gorman, Frank (1997). The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History 1688–1832.
  • Owen, John B (1976). The Eighteenth Century: 1714–1815.
  • Peters, Marie (2009). "Pitt, William, first earl of Chatham [Pitt the elder] (1708–1778)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22337. Retrieved 22 September 2017. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Porter, A.N.; Stockwell, A.J. (1989) [1986], British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, 1938-64, vol. 2, 1951–64, ISBN 978-0-333-48284-1
  • Plumb, J. H (1956). Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman.
  • Porter, Roy (1990). English Society in the Eighteenth Century (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-0-140-13819-1.
  • Rule, John (1992). Albion's People: English Society 1714–1815.
  • Simms, Brendan (2008). Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783. ISBN 978-0-465-01332-6.
  • Speck, W.A (1998). Literature and Society in Eighteenth-Century England: Ideology, Politics and Culture, 1680–1820.
  • Taylor, Stephen (2008). "Walpole, Robert, first earl of Orford (1676–1745)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28601. Retrieved 22 September 2017. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Ward, A.W.; Gooch, G.P., eds. (1922). The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919. Vol. 1, 1783–1815. Cambridge, The University press.
  • Watson, J. Steven (1960). The Reign of George III, 1760–1815. Oxford History of England.
  • Williams, Basil (1939). The Whig Supremacy 1714–1760.
    • —— (April 1900). "The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole". The English Historical Review. 15 (58): 251–276. doi:10.1093/ehr/XV.LVIII.251. JSTOR 548451.
    • —— (July 1900). "The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole (Continued)". English Historical Review. 15 (59): 479–494. doi:10.1093/ehr/XV.LIX.479. JSTOR 549078.
    • —— (October 1900). "The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole (Continued)". English Historical Review. 59 (60): 665–698. doi:10.1093/ehr/XV.LX.665. JSTOR 548535.
    • —— (January 1901). "The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole". English Historical Review. 16 (61): 67–83. doi:10.1093/ehr/XVI.LXI.67. JSTOR 549509.
    • —— (April 1901). "The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole (Continued)". English Historical Review. 16 (62): 308–327. doi:10.1093/ehr/XVI.LXII.308. JSTOR 548655.
    • —— (July 1901). "The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole (Continued)". English Historical Review. 16 (53): 439–451. doi:10.1093/ehr/XVI.LXIII.439. JSTOR 549205.

Historiography

  • Black, Jeremy (1987). "British foreign policy in the eighteenth century: A survey". Journal of British Studies. 26 (1): 26–53. doi:10.1086/385878. JSTOR 175553. S2CID 145307952.
  • Devereaux, Simon (2009). "The Historiography of the English State during 'the Long Eighteenth Century': Part I–Decentralized Perspectives". History Compass. 7 (3): 742–764. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00591.x.
  • —— (2010). "The Historiography of the English State During 'The Long Eighteenth Century'Part Two–Fiscal‐Military and Nationalist Perspectives". History Compass. 8 (8): 843–865. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00706.x.
  • Johnson, Richard R. (1978). "Politics Redefined: An Assessment of Recent Writings on the Late Stuart Period of English History, 1660 to 1714". William and Mary Quarterly. 35 (4): 691–732. doi:10.2307/1923211. JSTOR 1923211.
  • O'Gorman, Frank (1986). "The recent historiography of the Hanoverian regime" (PDF). Historical Journal. 29 (4): 1005–1020. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00019178. S2CID 159984575.
  • Schlatter, Richard, ed. (1984). Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing Since 1966. pp. 167–254.
  • Simms, Brendan; Riotte, Torsten, eds. (2007). The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837. ISBN 978-0-521-15462-8.

External links

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Kingdom of England
12 July 927 – 1 May 1707
Kingdom of Scotland
c. 843 – 1 May 1707
Kingdom of Great Britain
1 May 1707 – 31 December 1800
Succeeded by
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
1 January 1801 – 6 December 1922

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England and Scotland from 1702 to 1707 Continued as monarch of the United Kingdom until 1820 The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the 1603 Union of the Crowns when James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland Since James s reign who had been the first to refer to himself as king of Great Britain a political union between the two mainland British kingdoms had been repeatedly attempted and aborted by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland Queen Anne r 1702 1714 did not produce a clear Protestant heir and endangered the line of succession with the laws of succession differing in the two kingdoms and threatening a return to the throne of Scotland of the Roman Catholic House of Stuart exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 The resulting kingdom was in legislative and personal union with the Kingdom of Ireland from its inception but the Parliament of Great Britain resisted early attempts to incorporate Ireland in the political union The early years of the newly united kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings particularly the Jacobite rising of 1715 The relative incapacity or ineptitude of the Hanoverian kings resulted in a growth in the powers of Parliament and a new role that of prime minister emerged in the heyday of Robert Walpole The South Sea Bubble economic crisis was brought on by the failure of the South Sea Company an early joint stock company The campaigns of Jacobitism ended in defeat for the Stuarts cause in 1746 The Hanoverian line of monarchs gave their names to the Georgian era and the term Georgian is typically used in the contexts of social and political history for Georgian architecture The term Augustan literature is often used for Augustan drama Augustan poetry and Augustan prose in the period 1700 1740s The term Augustan refers to the acknowledgement of the influence of classical Latin from the ancient Roman Republic 4 Victory in the Seven Years War led to the dominance of the British Empire which was to become the foremost global power for over a century Great Britain dominated the Indian subcontinent through the trading and military expansion of the East India Company in colonial India In wars against France it gained control of both Upper and Lower Canada and until suffering defeat in the American War of Independence it also had dominion over the Thirteen Colonies From 1787 Britain began the colonisation of New South Wales with the departure of the First Fleet in the process of penal transportation to Australia Britain was a leading belligerent in the French Revolutionary Wars Great Britain was merged into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 January 1801 with the Acts of Union 1800 enacted by Great Britain and Ireland under George III to merge with it the Kingdom of Ireland Contents 1 Etymology 2 Political structure 3 Role of Ireland 4 Merging of Scottish and English Parliaments 5 Queen Anne 1702 1714 6 Hanoverian succession 1714 1760 6 1 George I 1714 1727 6 2 Age of Walpole 1721 1742 6 2 1 South Sea Bubble 6 3 Patronage and corruption 6 3 1 Walpole s foreign policy 6 3 2 Lower debt and taxes 6 3 3 Walpole s reputation 7 Age of George III 1760 1820 7 1 Victory in the Seven Years War 1756 1763 7 2 Evangelical religion and social reform 8 First British Empire 8 1 Mercantilist trade policy 8 2 Loss of the 13 American colonies 9 Second British Empire 9 1 Canada 9 2 Australia 9 3 India 10 Battling the French Revolution and Napoleon 10 1 Napoleon 10 2 Ireland 11 Parliament of Great Britain 12 Monarchs 13 See also 14 Notes 15 References 15 1 Sources 16 Further reading 16 1 Historiography 17 External linksEtymology EditFurther information Britain place name The name Britain descends from the Latin name for the island of Great Britain Britannia or Brittania the land of the Britons via the Old French Bretaigne whence also Modern French Bretagne and Middle English Bretayne Breteyne The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474 5 The use of the word Great before Britain originates in the French language which uses Bretagne for both Britain and Brittany French therefore distinguishes between the two by calling Britain la Grande Bretagne a distinction which was transferred into English 6 The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain 7 and as such Great Britain was the official name of the state as well as being used in titles such as Parliament of Great Britain b 8 The websites of the Scottish Parliament the BBC and others including the Historical Association refer to the state created on 1 May 1707 as the United Kingdom of Great Britain 9 Both the Acts and the Treaty describe the country as One Kingdom and a United Kingdom leading some publications to treat the state as the United Kingdom 10 The term United Kingdom was sometimes used during the 18th century to describe the state 11 Political structure EditFurther information Parliament of Great Britain and History of monarchy in the United Kingdom Wikisource has original text related to this article Act of Union 1707 The kingdoms of England and Scotland both in existence from the 9th century with England incorporating Wales in the 16th century were separate states until 1707 However they had come into a personal union in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became king of England under the name of James I This Union of the Crowns under the House of Stuart meant that the whole of the island of Great Britain was now ruled by a single monarch who by virtue of holding the English crown also ruled over the Kingdom of Ireland Each of the three kingdoms maintained its own parliament and laws Various smaller islands were in the king s domain including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands This disposition changed dramatically when the Acts of Union 1707 came into force with a single unified Crown of Great Britain and a single unified parliament 12 Ireland remained formally separate with its own parliament until the Acts of Union 1800 took effect The Union of 1707 provided for a Protestant only succession to the throne in accordance with the English Act of Settlement of 1701 rather than Scotland s Act of Security of 1704 and the Act anent Peace and War 1703 which ceased to have effect by the Repeal of Certain Scotch Acts 1707 The Act of Settlement required that the heir to the English throne be a descendant of the Electress Sophia of Hanover and not a Roman Catholic this brought about the Hanoverian succession of George I of Great Britain in 1714 Legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain which replaced both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland 13 In practice it was a continuation of the English parliament sitting at the same location in Westminster expanded to include representation from Scotland As with the former Parliament of England and the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom the Parliament of Great Britain was formally constituted of three elements the House of Commons the House of Lords and the Crown The right of the English peers to sit in the House of Lords remained unchanged while the disproportionately large number of Scottish peers were permitted to send only sixteen representative peers elected from amongst their number for the life of each parliament Similarly the members of the former English House of Commons continued as members of the British House of Commons but as a reflection of the relative tax bases of the two countries the number of Scottish representatives was fixed at 45 Newly created peers in the Peerage of Great Britain and their successors had the right to sit in the Lords 14 Despite the end of a separate parliament for Scotland it retained its own laws and system of courts as also its own established Presbyterian Church and control over its own schools The social structure was highly hierarchical and the same ruling class remained in control after 1707 15 Scotland continued to have its own universities and with its intellectual community especially in Edinburgh the Scottish Enlightenment had a major impact on British American and European thinking 16 Role of Ireland EditAs a result of Poynings Law of 1495 the Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the Parliament of England and after 1707 to the Parliament of Great Britain The Westminster parliament s Declaratory Act 1719 also called the Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719 noted that the Irish House of Lords had recently assumed to themselves a Power and Jurisdiction to examine correct and amend judgements of the Irish courts and declared that as the Kingdom of Ireland was subordinate to and dependent upon the crown of Great Britain the King through the Parliament of Great Britain had full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the Kingdom and people of Ireland 17 The Act was repealed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782 18 The same year the Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom However the Irish Rebellion of 1798 which sought to end the subordination and dependency of the country on the British crown and to establish a republic was one of the factors that led to the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 19 Merging of Scottish and English Parliaments Edit Queen Anne who reigned from 1702 to 1714 The deeper political integration of her kingdoms was a key policy of Queen Anne the last Stuart monarch of England and Scotland and the first monarch of Great Britain A Treaty of Union was agreed in 1706 following negotiations between representatives of the parliaments of England and Scotland and each parliament then passed separate Acts of Union to ratify it The Acts came into effect on 1 May 1707 uniting the separate Parliaments and uniting the two kingdoms into a kingdom called Great Britain Anne became the first monarch to occupy the unified British throne and in line with Article 22 of the Treaty of Union Scotland and England each sent members to the new House of Commons of Great Britain 20 15 The Scottish and English ruling classes retained power and each country kept its legal and educational systems as well as its established Church United they formed a larger economy and the Scots began to provide soldiers and colonial officials to the new British forces and Empire 21 However one notable difference at the outset was that the new Scottish members of parliament and representative peers were elected by the outgoing Parliament of Scotland while all existing members of the Houses of Commons and Lords at Westminster remained in office Queen Anne 1702 1714 EditFurther information Anne Queen of Great Britain During the War of the Spanish Succession 1702 14 England continued its policy of forming and funding alliances especially with the Dutch Republic and the Holy Roman Empire against their common enemy King Louis XIV of France 22 Queen Anne who reigned 1702 1714 was the central decision maker working closely with her advisers especially her remarkably successful senior general John Churchill 1st Duke of Marlborough The war was a financial drain for Britain had to finance its allies and hire foreign soldiers Stalemate on the battlefield and war weariness on the home front set in toward the end The anti war Tory politicians won control of Parliament in 1710 and forced a peace The concluding Treaty of Utrecht was highly favourable for Britain Spain lost its empire in Europe and faded away as a great power while working to better manage its colonies in the Americas The First British Empire based upon the English overseas possessions was enlarged From France Great Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia and from Spain Gibraltar and Menorca Gibraltar became a major naval base which allowed Great Britain to control the entrance from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean 23 The war marks the weakening of French military diplomatic and economic dominance and the arrival on the world scene of Britain as a major imperial military and financial power 24 British historian G M Trevelyan argued That Treaty of Utrecht which ushered in the stable and characteristic period of Eighteenth Century civilization marked the end of danger to Europe from the old French monarchy and it marked a change of no less significance to the world at large the maritime commercial and financial supremacy of Great Britain 25 Hanoverian succession 1714 1760 EditFurther information History of the United Kingdom Georgian era and House of Hanover In the 18th century England and after 1707 Great Britain rose to become the world s dominant colonial power with France as its main rival on the imperial stage 26 The pre 1707 English overseas possessions became the nucleus of the First British Empire In 1714 the ruling class was so bitterly divided that many feared a civil war might break out on Queen Anne s death wrote historian W A Speck 27 A few hundred of the richest ruling class and landed gentry families controlled parliament but were deeply split with Tories committed to the legitimacy of the Stuart Old Pretender then in exile The Whigs strongly supported the Hanoverians in order to ensure a Protestant succession The new king George I was a foreign prince and had a small English standing army to support him with military support from his native Hanover and from his allies in the Netherlands In the Jacobite rising of 1715 based in Scotland the Earl of Mar led eighteen Jacobite peers and 10 000 men with the aim of overthrowing the new king and restoring the Stuarts Poorly organised it was decisively defeated Several of the leaders were executed many others dispossessed of their lands and some 700 prominent followers deported to forced labour on sugar plantations in the West Indies A key decision was the refusal of the Pretender to change his religion from Roman Catholic to Anglican which would have mobilised much more of the Tory element The Whigs came to power under the leadership of James Stanhope Charles Townshend the Earl of Sunderland and Robert Walpole Many Tories were driven out of national and local government and new laws were passed to impose greater national control The right of habeas corpus was restricted to reduce electoral instability the Septennial Act 1715 increased the maximum life of a parliament from three years to seven 28 George I 1714 1727 Edit During his reign George I spent only about half as much of his time overseas as had William III who also reigned for thirteen years 29 Jeremy Black has argued that George wanted to spend even more time in Hanover His visits in 1716 1719 1720 1723 and 1725 were lengthy and in total he spent a considerable part of his reign abroad These visits were also occasions both for significant negotiations and for the exchange of information and opinion The visits to Hanover also provided critics with the opportunity to argue that British interests were being neglected George could not speak English and all relevant documents from his British ministers were translated into French for him Few British ministers or diplomats knew German or could handle it in precise discussion 30 George I supported the expulsion of the Tories from power they remained in the political wilderness until his great grandson George III came to power in 1760 and began to replace Whigs with Tories 31 George I has often been caricatured in the history books but according to his biographer Ragnhild Hatton on the whole he did well by Great Britain guiding the country calmly and responsibly through the difficult postwar years and repeated invasions or threatened invasions He liked efficiency and expertise and had long experience of running an orderly state He cared for the quality of his ministers and his officers army and naval and the strength of the navy in fast ships grew during his reign He showed political vision and ability in the way in which he used British power in Europe 32 Age of Walpole 1721 1742 Edit Further information Robert Walpole and History of the United Kingdom Walpole by Arthur Pond Robert Walpole 1676 1745 was a son of the landed gentry who rose to power in the House of Commons from 1721 to 1742 He became the first prime minister a term in use by 1727 In 1742 he was created Earl of Orford and was succeeded as prime minister by two of his followers Henry Pelham 1743 1754 and Pelham s brother the Duke of Newcastle 1754 1762 33 Clayton Roberts summarizes Walpole s new functions He monopolized the counsels of the King he closely superintended the administration he ruthlessly controlled patronage and he led the predominant party in Parliament 34 South Sea Bubble Edit Main article South Sea Bubble Corporate stock was a new phenomenon not well understood except for the strong gossip among financiers that fortunes could be made overnight The South Sea Company although originally set up to trade with the Spanish Empire quickly turned most of its attention to very high risk financing involving 30 million some 60 per cent of the entire British national debt It set up a scheme that invited stock owners to turn in their certificates for stock in the Company at a par value of 100 the idea was that they would profit by the rising price of their stock Everyone with connections wanted in on the bonanza and many other outlandish schemes found gullible takers South Sea stock peaked at 1 060 on 25 June 1720 Then the bubble burst and by the end of September it had fallen to 150 Hundreds of prominent men had borrowed to buy stock high their apparent profits had vanished but they were liable to repay the full amount of the loans Many went bankrupt and many more lost fortunes 35 Confidence in the entire national financial and political system collapsed Parliament investigated and concluded that there had been widespread fraud by the company directors and corruption in the Cabinet Among Cabinet members implicated were the Chancellor of the Exchequer the Postmaster General and a Secretary of State as well as two other leading men Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland Walpole had dabbled in the speculation himself but was not a major player He rose to the challenge as the new First Lord of the Treasury of resolving the financial and political disaster The economy was basically healthy and the panic ended Working with the financiers he successfully restored confidence in the system However public opinion as shaped by the many prominent men who had lost so much money so quickly demanded revenge Walpole supervised the process which removed all 33 company directors and stripped them of on average 82 of their wealth 36 The money went to the victims The government bought the stock of the South Sea Company for 33 and sold it to the Bank of England and the East India Company the only other two corporations big enough to handle the challenge Walpole made sure that King George and his mistresses were not embarrassed and by the margin of three votes he saved several key government officials from impeachment 35 Walpole s Houghton Hall Stanhope and Sunderland died of natural causes leaving Walpole alone as the dominant figure in British politics The public hailed him as the saviour of the financial system and historians credit him with rescuing the Whig government and indeed the Hanoverian dynasty from total disgrace 36 37 Patronage and corruption Edit Walpole was a master of the effective use of patronage as were Pelham and Lord Newcastle They each paid close attention to the work of bestowing upon their political allies high places lifetime pensions honours lucrative government contracts and help at election time In turn the friends enabled them to control Parliament 38 Thus in 1742 over 140 members of parliament held powerful positions thanks in part to Walpole including 24 men at the royal court 50 in the government agencies and the rest with sinecures or other handsome emoluments often in the range of 500 1000 per year Usually there was little or no work involved Walpole also distributed highly attractive ecclesiastical appointments When the Court in 1725 instituted a new order of chivalry the Order of the Bath Walpole immediately seized the opportunity He made sure that most of the 36 men honoured were peers and members of parliament who would provide him with useful connections 39 Walpole himself became enormously wealthy investing heavily in his estate at Houghton Hall and its large collection of European master paintings 40 Walpole s methods won him victory after victory but aroused furious opposition Historian John H Plumb wrote Walpole s policy had bred distrust his methods hatred Time and time again his policy was successful in Parliament only because of the government s absolute control of the Scottish members in the Commons and the Bishops in the Lords He gave point to the opposition s cry that Walpole s policy was against the wishes of the nation a policy imposed by a corrupt use of pension and place 41 The opposition called for patriotism and looked at the Prince of Wales as the future Patriot King Walpole supporters ridiculed the very term patriot 42 The opposition Country Party attacked Walpole relentlessly primarily targeting his patronage which they denounced as corruption In turn Walpole imposed censorship on the London theatre and subsidised writers such as William Arnall and others who rejected the charge of political corruption by arguing that corruption is the universal human condition Furthermore they argued political divisiveness was also universal and inevitable because of selfish passions that were integral to human nature Arnall argued that government must be strong enough to control conflict and in that regard Walpole was quite successful This style of court political rhetoric continued through the 18th century 43 Lord Cobham a leading soldier used his own connections to build up an opposition after 1733 Young William Pitt and George Grenville joined Cobham s faction they were called Cobham s Cubs They became leading enemies of Walpole and both later became prime minister 44 By 1741 Walpole was facing mounting criticism on foreign policy he was accused of entangling Britain in a useless war with Spain and mounting allegations of corruption On 13 February 1741 Samuel Sandys a former ally called for his removal 45 He said Such has been the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole with regard to foreign affairs he has deserted our allies aggrandized our enemies betrayed our commerce and endangered our colonies and yet this is the least criminal part of his ministry For what is the loss of allies to the alienation of the people from the government or the diminution of trade to the destruction of our liberties 46 Walpole s allies defeated a censure motion by a vote of 209 to 106 but Walpole s coalition lost seats in the election of 1741 and by a narrow margin he was finally forced out of office in early 1742 47 Walpole s foreign policy Edit Further information International relations 1648 1814 and France United Kingdom relations Walpole secured widespread support with his policy of avoiding war 48 He used his influence to prevent George II from entering the War of the Polish Succession in 1733 because it was a dispute between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs He boasted There are 50 000 men slain in Europe this year and not one Englishman 49 Walpole himself let others especially his brother in law Lord Townshend handle foreign policy until about 1726 then took charge A major challenge for his administration was the royal role as simultaneous ruler of Hanover a small German state that was opposed to Prussian supremacy George I and George II saw a French alliance as the best way to neutralise Prussia They forced a dramatic reversal of British foreign policy which for centuries had seen France as England s greatest enemy 50 However the bellicose King Louis XIV died in 1715 and the regents who ran France were preoccupied with internal affairs King Louis XV came of age in 1726 and his elderly chief minister Cardinal Fleury collaborated informally with Walpole to prevent a major war and keep the peace Both sides wanted peace which allowed both countries enormous cost savings and recovery from expensive wars 51 Henry Pelham became prime minister in 1744 and continued Walpole s policies He worked for an end to the War of the Austrian Succession 52 His financial policy was a major success once peace had been signed in 1748 He demobilised the armed forces and reduced government spending from 12 million to 7 million He refinanced the national debt dropping the interest rate from 4 p a to 3 p a Taxes had risen to pay for the war but in 1752 he reduced the land tax from four shillings to two shillings in the pound that is from 20 to 10 53 Lower debt and taxes Edit By avoiding wars Walpole could lower taxes He reduced the national debt with a sinking fund and by negotiating lower interest rates He reduced the land tax from four shillings in 1721 to 3s in 1728 2s in 1731 and finally to only 1s i e 5 in 1732 His long term goal was to replace the land tax which was paid by the local gentry with excise and customs taxes which were paid by merchants and ultimately by consumers Walpole joked that the landed gentry resembled hogs which squealed loudly whenever anyone laid hands on them By contrast he said merchants were like sheep and yielded their wool without complaint 54 The joke backfired in 1733 when he was defeated in a major battle to impose excise taxes on wine and tobacco To reduce the threat of smuggling the tax was to be collected not at ports but at warehouses This new proposal however was extremely unpopular with the public and aroused the opposition of the merchants because of the supervision it would involve Walpole was defeated as his strength in Parliament dropped a notch 55 Walpole s reputation Edit 1740 political cartoon depicting a towering Walpole as the Colossus of Rhodes Historians hold Walpole s record in high regard though there has been a recent tendency to share credit more widely among his allies W A Speck wrote that Walpole s uninterrupted run of 20 years as Prime Minister is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history Explanations are usually offered in terms of his expert handling of the political system after 1720 and his unique blending of the surviving powers of the crown with the increasing influence of the Commons 56 He was a Whig from the gentry class who first arrived in Parliament in 1701 and held many senior positions He was a country squire and looked to country gentlemen for his political base Historian Frank O Gorman said his leadership in Parliament reflected his reasonable and persuasive oratory his ability to move both the emotions as well as the minds of men and above all his extraordinary self confidence 57 Julian Hoppit said Walpole s policies sought moderation he worked for peace lower taxes growing exports and allowed a little more tolerance for Protestant Dissenters He avoided controversy and high intensity disputes as his middle way attracted moderates from both the Whig and Tory camps 58 H T Dickinson summed up his historical role Walpole was one of the greatest politicians in British history He played a significant role in sustaining the Whig party safeguarding the Hanoverian succession and defending the principles of the Glorious Revolution 1688 He established a stable political supremacy for the Whig party and taught succeeding ministers how best to establish an effective working relationship between Crown and Parliament 59 Age of George III 1760 1820 EditFurther information George III of the United Kingdom Victory in the Seven Years War 1756 1763 Edit The Seven Years War which began in 1756 was the first war waged on a global scale and saw British involvement in Europe India North America the Caribbean the Philippines and coastal Africa The results were highly favourable for Britain and a major disaster for France Key decisions were largely in the hands of William Pitt the Elder The war started poorly Britain lost the island of Minorca in 1756 and suffered a series of defeats in North America After years of setbacks and mediocre results British luck turned in the miracle year Annus Mirabilis of 1759 The British had entered the year anxious about a French invasion but by the end of the year they were victorious in all theatres In the Americas they captured Fort Ticonderoga Carillon drove the French out of the Ohio Country captured Quebec City in Canada as a result of the decisive Battle of the Plains of Abraham and captured the rich sugar island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies In India the John Company repulsed French forces besieging Madras In Europe British troops partook in a decisive Allied victory at the Battle of Minden The victory over the French navy at the Battle of Lagos and the decisive Battle of Quiberon Bay ended threats of a French invasion and confirmed Britain s reputation as the world s foremost naval power 60 The Treaty of Paris of 1763 marked the high point of the First British Empire France s future in North America ended as New France Quebec came under British control In India the third Carnatic War had left France still in control of several small enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support the British client states effectively leaving the future of India to Great Britain The British victory over France in the Seven Years War therefore left Great Britain as the world s dominant colonial power with a bitter France thirsting for revenge 61 Evangelical religion and social reform Edit The evangelical movement inside and outside the Church of England gained strength in the late 18th and early 19th century The movement challenged the traditional religious sensibility that emphasized a code of honour for the upper class and suitable behaviour for everyone else together with faithful observances of rituals John Wesley 1703 1791 and his followers preached revivalist religion trying to convert individuals to a personal relationship with Christ through Bible reading regular prayer and especially the revival experience Wesley himself preached 52 000 times calling on men and women to redeem the time and save their souls Wesley always operated inside the Church of England but at his death it set up outside institutions that became the Methodist Church 62 It stood alongside the traditional nonconformist churches Presbyterians Congregationalist Baptists Unitarians and Quakers The nonconformist churches however were less influenced by revivalism 63 The Church of England remained dominant but it had a growing evangelical revivalist faction in the Low Church Its leaders included William Wilberforce and Hannah More It reached the upper class through the Clapham Sect It did not seek political reform but rather the opportunity to save souls through political action by freeing slaves abolishing the duel prohibiting cruelty to children and animals stopping gambling and avoiding frivolity on the Sabbath evangelicals read the Bible every day All souls were equal in God s view but not all bodies so evangelicals did not challenge the hierarchical structure of English society 64 First British Empire EditFurther information Historiography of the British Empire The first British Empire was based largely in mainland North America and the West Indies with a growing presence in India Emigration from Britain went mostly to the Thirteen Colonies and the West Indies with some to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia Few permanent settlers went to British India although many young men went there in the hope of making money and returning home 65 Mercantilist trade policy Edit Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Great Britain on its overseas possessions 66 Mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth to the exclusion of other empires The government protected its merchants and kept others out by trade barriers regulations and subsidies to domestic industries to maximise exports from and minimise imports to the realm The government had to fight smuggling which became a favourite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French Spanish or Dutch The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses so that gold and silver would pour into London The government took its share through duties and taxes with the remainder going to merchants in London and other British ports The government spent much of its revenue on a superb Royal Navy which not only protected the British colonies but threatened the colonies of the other empires and sometimes seized them Thus the Royal Navy captured New Amsterdam later New York City in 1664 The colonies were captive markets for British industry and the goal was to enrich the mother country 67 Loss of the 13 American colonies Edit Main article American Revolution See also American Revolutionary War During the 1760s and 1770s relations with the Thirteen Colonies turned from benign neglect to outright revolt primarily because of the British Parliament s insistence on taxing colonists without their consent to recover losses incurred protecting the American Colonists during the French and Indian War 1754 1763 In 1775 the American Revolutionary War began as the Americans trapped the British army in Boston and suppressed the Loyalists who supported the Crown In 1776 the Americans declared the independence of the United States of America Under the military leadership of General George Washington and with economic and military assistance from France the Dutch Republic and Spain the United States held off successive British invasions The Americans captured two main British armies in 1777 and 1781 After that King George III lost control of Parliament and was unable to continue the war It ended with the Treaty of Paris by which Great Britain relinquished the Thirteen Colonies and recognized the United States The war was expensive but the British financed it successfully 68 Second British Empire EditThe loss of the Thirteen Colonies marked the transition between the first and second empires in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia the Pacific and later Africa 69 Adam Smith s Wealth of Nations published in 1776 had argued that colonies were redundant and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Great Britain after 1781 70 confirmed Smith s view that political control was not necessary for economic success Canada Edit Main article History of Canada After a series of French and Indian wars the British took over most of France s North American operations in 1763 New France became Quebec Great Britain s policy was to respect Quebec s Catholic establishment as well as its semi feudal legal economic and social systems By the Quebec Act of 1774 the Province of Quebec was enlarged to include the western holdings of the American colonies In the American Revolutionary War Halifax Nova Scotia became Britain s major base for naval action They repulsed an American revolutionary invasion in 1776 but in 1777 a British invasion army was captured in New York encouraging France to enter the war 71 After the American victory between 40 000 and 60 000 defeated Loyalists migrated some bringing their slaves 72 Most families were given free land to compensate their losses Several thousand free blacks also arrived most of them later went to Sierra Leone in Africa 73 The 14 000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys then part of Nova Scotia were not welcomed by the locals Therefore in 1784 the British split off New Brunswick as a separate colony The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada mainly English speaking and Lower Canada mainly French speaking to defuse tensions between the French and English speaking communities and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Great Britain with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution 74 Australia Edit Main articles History of Australia 1788 1850 History of Australia and History of New Zealand In 1770 British explorer James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific In 1778 Joseph Banks Cook s botanist on the voyage presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement Australia marks the beginning of the Second British Empire It was planned by the government in London and designed as a replacement for the lost American colonies 75 The American Loyalist James Matra in 1783 wrote A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales proposing the establishment of a colony composed of American Loyalists Chinese and South Sea Islanders but not convicts 76 Matra reasoned that the land was suitable for plantations of sugar cotton and tobacco New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could prove valuable commodities it could form a base for Pacific trade and it could be a suitable compensation for displaced American Loyalists At the suggestion of Secretary of State Lord Sydney Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers considering that this would benefit both Economy to the Publick amp Humanity to the Individual The government adopted the basics of Matra s plan in 1784 and funded the settlement of convicts 77 In 1787 the First Fleet set sail carrying the first shipment of convicts to the colony It arrived in January 1788 India Edit Lord Clive of the East India Company meeting his ally Mir Jafar after their decisive victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 India was not directly ruled by the British government instead certain parts were seized by the East India Company a private for profit corporation with its own army The John Company as it was nicknamed took direct control of half of India and built friendly relations with the other half which was controlled by numerous local princes Its goal was trade and vast profits for the Company officials not the building of the British empire Company interests expanded during the 18th century to include control of territory as the old Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company battled for the spoils with the French East India Company Compagnie francaise des Indes orientales during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s Victories at the Battle of Plassey and Battle of Buxar by Robert Clive gave the Company control over Bengal and made it the major military and political power in India In the following decades it gradually increased the extent of territories under its control ruling either directly or in cooperation with local princes Although Britain itself only had a small standing army the company had a large and well trained force the presidency armies with British officers commanding native Indian troops called sepoys 78 Battling the French Revolution and Napoleon EditFurther information French Revolutionary Wars War of the First Coalition and War of the Second Coalition Pitt addressing the Commons in 1793 With the regicide of King Louis XVI in 1793 the French Revolution represented a contest of ideologies between conservative royalist Britain and radical Republican France 79 The long bitter wars with France 1793 1815 saw anti Catholicism emerge as the glue that held the three kingdoms together From the upper classes to the lower classes Protestants were brought together from England Scotland and Ireland into a profound distrust and distaste for all things French That enemy nation was depicted as the natural home of misery and oppression because of its inherent inability to shed the darkness of Catholic superstition and clerical manipulation 80 Napoleon Edit It was not only Britain s position on the world stage that was threatened Napoleon who came to power in 1799 threatened invasion of Great Britain itself and with it a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which the British invested all the moneys and energies it could raise French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy 81 Ireland Edit The French Revolution revived religious and political grievances in Ireland In 1798 Irish nationalists under Protestant leadership plotted the Irish Rebellion of 1798 believing that the French would help them to overthrow the British 82 They hoped for significant French support which never came The uprising was very poorly organized and quickly suppressed by much more powerful British forces Including many bloody reprisals the total death toll was in the range of 10 000 to 30 000 83 Prime minister William Pitt the Younger firmly believed that the only solution to the problem was a union of Great Britain and Ireland The union was established by the Act of Union 1800 compensation and patronage ensured the support of the Irish Parliament Great Britain and Ireland were formally united on 1 January 1801 The Irish Parliament was closed down 84 Parliament of Great Britain EditMain articles Parliament of Great Britain and Elections in Great Britain The Parliament of Great Britain consisted of the House of Lords an unelected upper house of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the House of Commons the lower chamber which was elected periodically In England and Wales parliamentary constituencies remained unchanged throughout the existence of the Parliament 85 Monarchs EditMonarchs Coats of arms Coat of Arms of the House of Stuart Stuart arms used in Scotland Coat of Arms of the House of Hanover Hanoverian arms used in Scotland Further information History of monarchy in the United Kingdom Anne was from the House of Stuart and the Georges were from the House of Hanover Anne had been Queen of England Queen of Scots and Queen of Ireland since 1702 Anne Queen of Great Britain 1707 1714 George I of Great Britain 1714 1727 George II of Great Britain 1727 1760 George III of Great Britain 1760 1800 George III continued as King of the United Kingdom until his death in 1820 See also EditList of British monarchs Great Britain in the Seven Years War Timeline of British history 1700 1799 History of the United Kingdom 18th century Early Modern Britain Georgian era JacobitismNotes Edit Law French based primarily on Old Norman and Anglo Norman was the official language of the courts until 1731 a b After the political union of England and Scotland in 1707 the nation s official name became Great Britain 2 References Edit Carey Hilary M 2011 God s Empire Religion and Colonialism in the British World c 1801 1908 Cambridge University Press p 41 ISBN 9781139494090 OL 27576009M The American Pageant Volume 1 Cengage Learning 2012 Parliament of the Kingdom of England Union with Scotland Act 1706 Article I legislation gov uk That the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland shall upon the First day of May which shall be in the year One thousand seven hundred and seven and forever after be united into one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain Lund Roger D 2013 Chapter 1 Ridicule Religion and the Politics of Wit in Augustan England Ashgate Hay Denys 1968 Europe the emergence of an idea Edinburgh University Press p 138 Manet Francois Gille Pierre 1934 Histoire de la petite Bretagne ou Bretagne armorique in French p 74 The Treaty act of the Union of Parliament 1706 Scots History Online Retrieved 18 July 2011 Union with England Act 1707 The national Archives Retrieved 18 July 2011 Union with Scotland Act 1706 Retrieved 18 July 2011 Both Acts and the Treaty state in Article I That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England shall upon 1 May next ensuing the date hereof and forever after be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN Stanford Harold Melvin 1921 The Standard Reference Work For the Home School and Library Vol 3 From 1707 until 1801 Great Britain was the official designation of the kingdoms of England and Scotland United States Congressional serial set vol 10 1895 In 1707 on the union with Scotland Great Britain became the official name of the British Kingdom and so continued until the union with Ireland in 1801 England Profile BBC 10 February 2011 Scottish referendum 50 fascinating facts you should know about Scotland see fact 27 telegraph co uk 11 January 2012 Uniting the kingdom nationalarchives gov uk Retrieved 31 December 2010 The Union of the Parliaments 1707 Learning and Teaching Scotland 2 January 2012 Archived from the original on 2 September 2010 The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great britain in 1707 Historical Association 15 May 2011 Archived from the original on 30 January 2011 Scottish referendum 50 fascinating facts you should know about Scotland telegraph co uk 11 January 2012 Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom for more than three hundred years BBC History British History in depth Acts of Union The creation of the United Kingdom www bbc co uk Gascoigne Bamber History of Great Britain from 1707 History World Retrieved 18 July 2011 Burns William E A Brief History of Great Britain p xxi Report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland PDF Ninth United Nations Conference on the Standardisation of Geographical Names Item 4 of the provisional agenda Reports by Governments on the situations in their countries and of the progress made in the standardisation of geographical names since the eighth conference New York 21 30 August 2007 Act of Union 1707 Article 1 Act of Union 1707 Article 3 Williams 1962 pp 11 43 a b Williams 1962 pp 271 287 Broadie Alexander ed 2003 The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment ISBN 978 1 139 82656 3 Herman Arthur 2001 How the Scots Invented the Modern World The True Story of How Western Europe s Poorest Nation Created Our World amp Everything in It ISBN 978 0 609 60635 3 Coston amp Watson 1952 pp 128 129 sfn error no target CITEREFCostonWatson1952 help Costin amp Watson 1952 p 147 Williams 1962 pp 287 306 The Treaty or Act of the Union Archived 27 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine scotshistoryonline co uk accessed 2 November 2008 Allan David 2001 Scotland in the Eighteenth Century Union and Enlightenment ISBN 978 0 582 38247 3 Falkner James 2015 The War of the Spanish Succession 1701 1714 Pen and Sword pp 22 25 ISBN 978 1 78159 031 7 Hoppit 2000 chapters 4 8 Loades David ed 2003 Readers Guide to British History vol 2 pp 1219 1221 Trevelyan G M 1942 A shortened history of England p 363 Pagden Anthony 2003 Peoples and Empires A Short History of European Migration Exploration and Conquest from Greece to the Present Modern Library p 90 ISBN 0 812 96761 5 OL 3702796M Speck 1977 pp 146 149 Marshall 1974 pp 72 89 Williams 1962 pp 150 165 Hoppit 2000 pp 392 398 Speck 1977 pp 170 187 Gibbs G C 21 May 2009 George I Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Vol 1 online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 10538 Subscription or UK public library membership required Black 2016 pp 44 45 Williams 1962 pp 11 44 Hatton Ragnhild 1983 New Light on George I in Baxter Stephen B ed England s Rise to Greatness pp 213 255 quoting p 241 ISBN 978 0 520 04572 9 OL 3505103M Williams 1962 pp 180 212 Taylor 2008 a b Cowles Virginia 1960 The Great Swindle The Story of the South Sea Bubble New York Harper a b Kleer Richard 2014 Riding a wave the Company s role in the South Sea Bubble PDF Economic History Society University of Regina p 2 Retrieved 16 January 2020 Marshall 1974 pp 127 130 Browning Reed 1975 Duke of Newcastle pp 254 260 ISBN 978 0 300 01746 5 OL 5069181M Hanham Andrew 2016 The Politics of Chivalry Sir Robert Walpole the Duke of Montagu and the Order of the Bath Parliamentary History vol 35 no 3 pp 262 297 doi 10 1111 1750 0206 12236 Roberts Clayton et al 1985 A History of England vol 2 1688 to the present 3rd ed pp 449 450 ISBN 978 0 13 389974 0 OL 2863417M Plumb 1950 p 68 Carretta Vincent 2007 George III and the Satirists from Hogarth to Byron pp 44 51 ISBN 978 0 8203 3124 9 OL 29578545M Horne Thomas October December 1980 Politics in a Corrupt Society William Arnall s Defense of Robert Walpole Journal of the History of Ideas vol 41 no 4 pp 601 614 doi 10 2307 2709276 JSTOR 2709276 Leonard Dick 2010 Eighteenth Century British Premiers Walpole to the Younger Pitt p 94 ISBN 978 0 230 30463 5 OL 37125742M Kellner Peter 2011 Democracy 1 000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty p 264 ISBN 978 1 907195 85 3 OL 36708739M Wiener Joel H ed 1983 Great Britain the lion at home a documentary history of domestic policy 1689 1973 vol 1 Langford 1989 pp 54 57 Marshall 1974 pp 183 191 Black Jeremy 1984 Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole in Black Jeremy ed Britain in the Age of Walpole pp 144 169 ISBN 978 0 333 36863 3 OL 2348433M Robertson 1911 p 66 Black 2016 Wilson Arthur McCandless 1936 French Foreign Policy during the Administration of Cardinal Fleury 1726 1743 A Study in Diplomacy and Commercial Development ISBN 0 837 15333 6 OL 5703043M Williams 1962 pp 259 270 Brumwell amp Speck 2001 p 288 Marshall 1974 pp 221 227 Ward A W et al eds 1909 The Cambridge Modern History Vol VI the Eighteenth Century p 46 ISBN 978 0 521 07814 6 OL 7716876M Langford 1989 pp 28 33 Speck 1977 p 203 O Gorman 1997 p 71 Hoppit 2000 p 410 Dickinson H P 2003 Loades David ed Walpole Sir Robert Readers Guide to British History vol 2 no 1338 McLynn Frank 2004 1759 The Year Britain Became Master of the World Atlantic Monthly Press ISBN 9780871138811 OL 24769108M Anderson Fred 2005 The War That Made America A Short History of the French and Indian War Viking ISBN 0670034541 OL 3426544M Armstrong Anthony 1973 The Church of England the Methodists and society 1700 1850 Briggs Asa 1959 The age of improvement 1783 1867 Longman pp 66 73 Rule John 1992 Chapters 2 6 Albion s People English Society 1714 1815 Simms Brendan 2008 Three Victories and a Defeat The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire Savelle Max 1948 Seeds of Liberty The Genesis of the American Mind University of Washington Press pp 204 211 OL 5951089M Nester William R 2000 The Great Frontier War Britain France and the Imperial Struggle for North America 1607 1755 Praeger p 54 ISBN 0275967727 OL 40897M Black Jeremy 1991 War for America The Fight for Independence 1775 1783 ISBN 978 0 862 99725 0 Pagden Anthony 1998 The Origins of Empire The Oxford History of the British Empire Oxford University Press p 92 James 1994 p 119 Reid John G Mancke Elizabeth 2008 From Global Processes to Continental Strategies The Emergence of British North America to 1783 In Buckner Phillip ed Canada and the British Empire Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 927164 1 Maya Jasanoff Liberty s Exiles American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World 2012 Winks Robin 1997 The Blacks in Canada A History McGill Queen s Press ISBN 978 0 7735 6668 2 Morton Desmond 2001 A short history of Canada McClelland amp Stewart ISBN 978 0 7710 6508 8 Schreuder Deryck Ward Stuart eds 2010 Chapter 1 Australia s Empire The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series Carter Harold B 1988 Delamotte Tony Bridge Carl eds Banks Cook and the Eighteenth Century Natural History Tradition Interpreting Australia British Perceptions of Australia since 1788 London Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies pp 4 23 Atkinson Alan 1990 The first plans for governing New South Wales 1786 87 Australian Historical Studies 24 94 22 40 31 Lawson Philip 2014 The East India Company A History Routledge Stern Philip J 2009 History and historiography of the English East India Company Past present and future History Compass 7 4 1146 1180 doi 10 1111 j 1478 0542 2009 00617 x Knight Roger J B 2013 Britain against Napoleon The Organization of Victory 1793 1815 pp 61 62 ISBN 978 0 141 97702 7 OL 30961773M Drury Marjule Anne 2001 Anti Catholicism in Germany Britain and the United States A Review and Critique of Recent Scholarship Church History 70 1 Colley Linda 1992 Britons Forging the Nation 1707 1837 pp 35 53 54 ISBN 0 300 05737 7 OL 1711290M Andress David 1960 The Savage Storm Britain on the Brink in the Age of Napoleon Little Brown Book Group ISBN 978 1 405 51321 0 OL 34606684M Simms Brendan 1998 Britain and Napoleon The Historical Journal 41 3 885 894 doi 10 1017 S0018246X98008048 JSTOR 2639908 S2CID 162840420 British History The 1798 Irish Rebellion BBC 5 November 2009 Retrieved 23 April 2010 Gahan Daniel 1998 Rebellion Ireland in 1798 ISBN 978 0 86278 541 3 OL 403106M Rose John Holland 1911 William Pitt and the Great War pp 339 364 ISBN 0 837 14533 3 OL 5756027M Ehrman John 1996 The Younger Pitt The Consuming Struggle pp 158 196 ISBN 0 094 75540 X OL 21936112M Cook Chris Stevenson John 1980 British Historical Facts 1760 1830 The Macmillan Press Sources Edit Black Jeremy 2016 Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I 1714 1727 pp 44 45 ISBN 978 1 317 07854 8 Brumwell Stephen Speck W A 2001 Cassell s Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain ISBN 978 0 304 34796 4 Costin W C Watson J Steven eds 1952 The Law amp Working of the Constitution Documents 1660 1914 vol I 1660 1783 A amp C Black Hoppit Julian 2000 A Land of Liberty England 1689 1727 ISBN 978 0 19 822842 4 James Lawrence 1994 The Rise and Fall of the British Empire Abacus ISBN 978 0 349 10667 0 OL 9642159M Langford Paul 1989 A Polite and Commercial People England 1727 1783 Marshall Dorothy 1974 Eighteenth Century England 2nd ed Plumb John H 1950 England in the Eighteenth Century Robertson Charles Grant 1911 England under the Hanoverians ISBN 978 0 598 56207 4 Speck W A 1977 Stability and Strife England 1714 1760 ISBN 978 0 674 83350 0 Williams Basil 1962 The Whig Supremacy 1714 1760 2nd ed ISBN 978 7 230 01144 0Further reading EditBlack Jeremy 2002 Britain as a Military Power 1688 1815 ISBN 978 1 138 98791 3 Brisco Norris Arthur 1907 The economic policy of Robert Walpole ISBN 978 0 231 93374 2 Cannon John 1984 Aristocratic century the peerage of eighteenth century England ISBN 978 0 521 25729 9 Colley Linda 2009 Britons Forging the Nation 1707 1837 2nd ed ISBN 978 0 300 15280 7 Cowie Leonard W 1967 Hanoverian England 1714 1837 ISBN 978 0 7135 0235 0 Daunton Martin 1995 Progress and Poverty An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700 1850 ISBN 978 0 19 822281 1 Hilton Boyd 2008 A Mad Bad and Dangerous People England 1783 1846 ISBN 978 0 19 921891 2 Hunt William 2019 1905 The History of England from the Accession of George III to the close of Pitt s first Administration ISBN 978 0 530 51826 8 also Gutenberg edition Langford Paul 1976 The Eighteenth Century 1688 1815 ISBN 978 0 7136 1652 1 Leadam I S 1912 The History of England From The Accession of Anne to the Death of George II Marshall Dorothy 1956 English People in the Eighteenth Century Newman Gerald ed 1997 Britain in the Hanoverian Age 1714 1837 An Encyclopedia ISBN 978 0 8153 0396 1 O Gorman Frank 1997 The Long Eighteenth Century British Political and Social History 1688 1832 Owen John B 1976 The Eighteenth Century 1714 1815 Peters Marie 2009 Pitt William first earl of Chatham Pitt the elder 1708 1778 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 22337 Retrieved 22 September 2017 Subscription or UK public library membership required Porter A N Stockwell A J 1989 1986 British Imperial Policy and Decolonization 1938 64 vol 2 1951 64 ISBN 978 0 333 48284 1 Plumb J H 1956 Sir Robert Walpole The Making of a Statesman Porter Roy 1990 English Society in the Eighteenth Century 2nd ed ISBN 978 0 140 13819 1 Rule John 1992 Albion s People English Society 1714 1815 Simms Brendan 2008 Three Victories and a Defeat The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire 1714 1783 ISBN 978 0 465 01332 6 Speck W A 1998 Literature and Society in Eighteenth Century England Ideology Politics and Culture 1680 1820 Taylor Stephen 2008 Walpole Robert first earl of Orford 1676 1745 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 28601 Retrieved 22 September 2017 Subscription or UK public library membership required Ward A W Gooch G P eds 1922 The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy 1783 1919 Vol 1 1783 1815 Cambridge The University press Watson J Steven 1960 The Reign of George III 1760 1815 Oxford History of England Williams Basil 1939 The Whig Supremacy 1714 1760 April 1900 The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole The English Historical Review 15 58 251 276 doi 10 1093 ehr XV LVIII 251 JSTOR 548451 July 1900 The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole Continued English Historical Review 15 59 479 494 doi 10 1093 ehr XV LIX 479 JSTOR 549078 October 1900 The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole Continued English Historical Review 59 60 665 698 doi 10 1093 ehr XV LX 665 JSTOR 548535 January 1901 The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole English Historical Review 16 61 67 83 doi 10 1093 ehr XVI LXI 67 JSTOR 549509 April 1901 The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole Continued English Historical Review 16 62 308 327 doi 10 1093 ehr XVI LXII 308 JSTOR 548655 July 1901 The Foreign Policy of England under Walpole Continued English Historical Review 16 53 439 451 doi 10 1093 ehr XVI LXIII 439 JSTOR 549205 Historiography Edit Further information Historiography of the United Kingdom and Historiography of the British Empire Black Jeremy 1987 British foreign policy in the eighteenth century A survey Journal of British Studies 26 1 26 53 doi 10 1086 385878 JSTOR 175553 S2CID 145307952 Devereaux Simon 2009 The Historiography of the English State during the Long Eighteenth Century Part I Decentralized Perspectives History Compass 7 3 742 764 doi 10 1111 j 1478 0542 2009 00591 x 2010 The Historiography of the English State During The Long Eighteenth Century Part Two Fiscal Military and Nationalist Perspectives History Compass 8 8 843 865 doi 10 1111 j 1478 0542 2010 00706 x Johnson Richard R 1978 Politics Redefined An Assessment of Recent Writings on the Late Stuart Period of English History 1660 to 1714 William and Mary Quarterly 35 4 691 732 doi 10 2307 1923211 JSTOR 1923211 O Gorman Frank 1986 The recent historiography of the Hanoverian regime PDF Historical Journal 29 4 1005 1020 doi 10 1017 S0018246X00019178 S2CID 159984575 Schlatter Richard ed 1984 Recent Views on British History Essays on Historical Writing Since 1966 pp 167 254 Simms Brendan Riotte Torsten eds 2007 The Hanoverian Dimension in British History 1714 1837 ISBN 978 0 521 15462 8 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kingdom of Great Britain The Treaty of Union Scottish Parliament Text of Union with England Act Text of Union with Scotland ActPreceded byKingdom of England12 July 927 1 May 1707Kingdom of Scotlandc 843 1 May 1707 Kingdom of Great Britain1 May 1707 31 December 1800 Succeeded byUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland1 January 1801 6 December 1922 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Kingdom of Great Britain amp oldid 1133900514, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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