This, volume four of a wonderful history of England, opens with the succession of William of Orange, who brought to the throne in 1789 a detestation of France, who he had been fighting for over a decade and with whom he initiated a nine-year war that, on and off, would continue for over a century. The parallel theme of the book is the sorting out of power between the monarchy and Parliament, which had granted William a crown with considerable limitations, the antithesis of divine right. 'William's War' required financing, and Parliament created the world's first national bank when it passed The Bank of England Act. The establishment of the Bank of England is considered one of the seminal acts of the age, and was the financial foundation upon which England's ability to wage continual war and later build an empire was established.
Anne, the last Stuart, succeeded in 1702 and Parliament had already decreed that the crown would later pass to the Protestant House of Hanover. England and Scotland soon agreed to an Act of Union. Adam Smith later attributed the 1707 decision to the economics of creating the largest free trade area in the world. "In effect the treaty created a single sovereignty between the nations and a single parliament, including Scottish representatives, but it also preserved the Kirk, Scottish law and Scottish local administration." Soon thereafter, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ushered in an era of peace, established Great Britain as a world power and, a year later, the Protestant succession was forever assured when George I took the throne.
The 18th century saw a blossoming of growth that propelled England to its position as the world's leading country. Commerce began to boom, trade grew, the nascent industrial revolution began, towns around the country became cities, merchants became esteemed members of society, schools and hospitals were built, and the professions flourished. The fuel for these massive societal changes was something that England had an abundance of - coal. The UK had more coal than any nation in Europe, and a system that allowed its unfettered usage and deployment. Newspapers and magazines carried advertisements for consumer goods created by Joseph Wedgwood and many others. In 1776, Adam Smith introduced the world to the invisible hand of the marketplace in 'Wealth of Nations', setting forth ideas that would dominate social and economic thought for a century. There were many downsides though to industrialization and urbanization. Gin was mother's milk to many of the poor and a true curse upon society. There were 8,659 gin shops operating in London at mid-century. The Gin Act's attempt to restrain consumption led to riots. Only a crop failure that led to price increases slowed down gin's conquest of the city. As coal ash filled the sky and the waters, and as people flocked to the growing urban centers, there many more problems would follow.
Robert Walpole had managed the Commons and the government of George II by diligently pursuing peace. Not so the Great Commoner, William Pitt. Seventeen fifty-six saw the Seven Years War start because of conflicts in North America, and soon it spread around the world. "Pitt had a vision of England and of the nation's destiny, bound not by the narrow frontiers of Europe but by the global trading empire that would ensure the nation's commercial and naval supremacy." The Prussians defeated the French in Silesia and the British defeated them in Africa, India, Canada and the Indies as the decade closed. In the fall of 1760, George III began his sixty years on the throne. England did not have an imperial policy, but after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, it had an empire and the songs 'Rule Britannia' and 'God Save The King'. Matters quickly came a cropper. To pay for the war and future defense of the colonies in America, Parliament imposed taxes. After the Tea Party, the British punished the Bostonians, who pushed back, and soon there were shots heard around the world and revolution. The King and his ministers were convinced that they were entitled to tax and rule their colonies. There were many in the UK, particularly those underrepresented in Parliament or not represented at all, who agreed there should be no taxation without representation. American victory was assured after the victory at Saratoga garnered the support of France and Spain. In January of 1783, "Britain acknowledged the thirteen United states to be free, independent and sovereign". It was generally concluded that "it was better to trade with the Americans than attempt to rule them, and this salutary lesson became the single most important principle of the second British Empire.." It was much better to have a string of trading posts that "would be guarded by the navy in the world's first maritime empire."
It was industrialization, in conjunction with trade, that propelled the UK to the forefront of the world in every conceivable calculation of wealth and success. The steam engine harnessed 'power' for the first time and the English rocketed into the future. They created firsts in just about all manufactured goods and led the world in iron and steel production, textiles, food processing, brewing - everything. Why England? As mentioned above, England had abundant natural resources. The non-Anglican dissenters, particularly the Quakers and Methodists, had limited career opportunities and pursued the new opportunities with a vengeance. The government made no attempt to regulate or control the process. Capitalism was running unconstrained.
Revolutionary France declared war on the UK in early 1793 and the two nations would be at war, with a brief truce, until June 1815. The war would enshrine Nelson and Wellington in the pantheon of English immortals. Peace made the UK "the foremost power in terms of territory, and its empire included Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Australia and the Caribbean. It ruled, therefore, a large proportion of the earth's surface". Nonetheless, an exhausted nation, ruled by a King who had finally slipped into dementia in 1810, faced major political challenges in Ireland, cries for parliamentary reform, and the consequences of industrialization. That said the UK's greatest century was to follow.
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