England and the New World: An Expanding Empire

In 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht firmly established England's commercial and colonial supremacy, for it gave her new possessions in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Minorca as well as Gibralter and the sole right to supply slaves to Spanish colonies. Britain's interests in the New World had begun early. An indication of its eventual triumph in Virginia had been the founding of the College of William and Mary in 1693.

Success in colonizing North America had not come without its terrible costs, yet in retrospect it seemed extremely rapid. It is a sobering fact that the first voyage of Christopher Columbus took place only 20 years after Scotland had finally acquired the Orkneys and Shetlands from Norway. Columbus had visited England in 1477 to try to obtain backing for a voyage to discover a new route to the Indies but had been turned down (his brother Bartholomew was also rejected by the English Court in 1485). Yet only five years after Columbus had landed in the Bahamas, John Cabot reached Labrador aboard the Matthew. His 35 day voyage marks the beginning of British domination of North America.

In 1496, John and Sebastian Cabot, sailing from Bristol, took their little fleet along the coasts of what were later called Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Some English scholars maintain that the name America comes from Richard Amerik, a Bristol merchant and Customs officer, who helped finance the Cabot voyages. The elder Cabot recorded the vast fishing grounds later known as the Grand Banks.

Interest in finding new lands may have been initiated by the publication of "Utopia" by Thomas More in 1515, that described the benefits of a new land. It must certainly have been influenced by the Spanish discoveries of maize, tobacco and the potato, all of which they introduced in Europe, along with oranges from the Orient. Another deciding factor was the planting of the French flag in the Gaspe Peninsular, Canada and on lands along the St. Lawrence River, by Jacques Cartier in 1534. Much of Britain's investment in North America may have been simply to prevent French influence.

Further interest in the New World was surely sparked by the explorations of Franciscan missionary de Niza who returned to Spain in 1539 with glowing accounts of the "seven cities of Cibola." One year later, Dutchman Jo Greenlander discovered that early settlers had been in what was later named Greenland. Hernando de Soto landed at Tampa Bay and Coronado explored the American southwest. In 1541 Pizarro completed his conquest of Peru and de Soto discovered the Mississippi. Perhaps the most consequential discovery of the century was that of the silver mine at Potosi by the Spanish in 1545 that fueled the commercial activity of Europe during the following century.

The efforts of Spain and Portugal in the same area also spurred further English interest in the Americas. It was especially so since the writings of Welshman John Dee had claimed the New World for Elizabeth I as Queen of an Atlantic Empire, and successor to Madoc, a Welsh prince purported to have landed in what later became known as Mobile Bay in the 12th century and whose followers, it was claimed, intermingled with the Mandans in the upper Mississippi Valley.

England's own era of exploration, initiated by the Cabots, was expanded by the journeys of Hugh Willoughby to seek a Northeast Passage to China and the spice trade. He reached Moscow by way of the White Sea and Archangel in 1553. As a result, the Muscovy Company was founded by Richard Chancellor to trade with Russia in 1555. One year later, in what many non-smokers now consider "a year of infamy," tobacco seeds reached Europe, brought from Brazil by a Franciscan monk.

In 1561, Jean Nicot (who gave his name to nicotine) sent seeds and powdered leaves of the tobacco plant to France. Such imports to Europe seized the imagination of John Hawkins who began his career of high-jacking Portuguese and Spanish ships in 1562. Hawkins' exploits, along with similar exploits of his fellow mariners, led to England's entering the Slave Trade despite Queen Elizabeth's dramatic speech against it (she later took shares in his company and even lent him a ship).

Tobacco found its way to England when John Hawkins brought some home from Florida in 1565. Three years later, David Ingram explored from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada and reported finding vines with grapes as large as a man's thumbs. A great boost to exploration then came from the publication, in 1569, of the Flemish geographer Mercator's projection map of the world which represented the meridians of longitude by equally spaced parallel lines and which greatly increased the accuracy of navigational maps. English mariner Francis Drake then undertook his daring voyage of 1572 to capture the Spanish treasure fleet returning from Peru, a feat surpassed by his even greater haul one year later.

English exploration of North America continued in 1576 when Martin Frobisher discovered Baffin's Land and Frobisher's Bay on his search for a Northwest Passage to China. Two years later Queen Elizabeth gave a patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert to "inhabit and possess at his choice all remote and heathen lands not in the actual possession of any Christian prince." The search for the famed Northwest Passage continued unabated.

In 1580, Drake arrived back in Plymouth having circumnavigated the globe in the Pelican, renamed the Golden Hinde after the gallant ship had passed through the Straits of Magellan. Drake was then knighted by the Queen after capturing the richest prize ever taken at sea. Gilbert then tried unsuccessfully to create the first English settlement in the New World at Newfoundland. The Virginia colony was established in 1584 at Roanoke by Sir Walter Raleigh. One year later, Chesapeake Bay was discovered by Ralph Lane and Davis Strait by John Davis.

In 1585, the first oriental spice to be grown in the New World, Jamaican ginger, arrived in Europe. In 1586, Sir Richard Cavendish became the third man to circumnavigate the globe when his ship the Desire reached England after a voyage of over two years. During the same year, Raleigh planted potatoes on his estate near Cork, Ireland; and Virginia Dare was born on Roanoke Island, the first English child to be born in North America.

In 1594, after deaths from scurvy in the Royal Navy had become epidemic, Sir Richard Hawkins recommended orange and lemon juice as antiscorbutics. It eventually became standard practice in the Royal Navy to add citrus juice to the diet (conquest of scurvy played a big part in England's later domination of the seas). When the Portuguese closed its spice market in Lisbon to Dutch and English traders, the Dutch East India Company was created to obtain spices directly from the Orient.

English exploration of the New World continued, receiving a bonus when Richard Hakluyt produced a recognizable map in 1599. In 1600, the Honourable East India Company was chartered to make annual voyages to the Indies and to challenge Dutch control of the spice trade. The smoking of tobacco became fashionable in London this year. When the first spice fleet leaving for the Orient arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, James Lancaster dosed his sailors with lemon juice to make them the only crew in the entire fleet not decimated by scurvy. Coffee joined tobacco as a London fad.

In 1602, English sailor Bartholomew Gosnold explored what was later to be called "New England." He brought sassafras back, but left smallpox behind to decimate many of the native peoples, mistakenly called "Indians." After James I had made peace with Spain in 1604, he re-directed England's efforts at colonizing North America, and the Plymouth and London Companies sent ships and colonists. Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607. During the same year, Henry Hudson sought a route to China and sailed round the Eastern Shore of Greenland to reach Spitzbergen. In 1610, Hudson's ship Discovery reached the strait later to be known as Hudson Bay, Canada.

In 1612, John Smith published his "Map of Virginia" describing the colony, which eventually managed to produce an extremely profitable export commodity in tobacco. In 1614, Smith also explored the New England coast and renamed a native village, calling it Plymouth. Next, when he ventured to a latitude of over 77 degrees north to seek the Northwest Passage, William Baffin sailed farther north than any other explorer for the next 236 years. In 1616, John Smith published his "Description of New England", providing a further impetus to would-be settlers.

In 1618, the first legislative body in the New World convened at Jamestown, the Virginia House of Burgesses. This was also a year in which small pox ravaged the native population of the English North American colonies, including Chief Powhatan. One year later, the first black slaves arrived in Virginia, and the first American day of Thanksgiving was celebrated on the English ship Margaret at the mouth of the James River.

In 1620, the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod with 100 Pilgrims and two children born at sea. The Plymouth Colony celebrated its first Thanksgiving Day, but the colonists did not entertain their Indian guests at the dinner until the following year. In 1628 John Endicott arrived as the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thousands more English settlers went to the American colonies during the reign of Charles l. In 1632, Maryland received its charter by a grant from King Charles to Cecil Calvert. Four years later, Providence was founded as a Rhode Island settlement by Roger Williams, and Harvard College came into existence.

In 1639 the first Smithfield hams arrived in England from Virginia, now starting to thrive, and the following year, Massachusetts Bay Colony began to export codfish. In the West Indies, sugar cane was grown for profit, supplying Britain with a substitute for honey, now rare after the dissolution of the monasteries, which had produced most of British honey for centuries. The manufacture of Rum from sugar cane was established in Barbados. Britain began to concentrate on the West Indies and the Americas, leaving the East Indies to the Dutch, but competing with France (and to some extent the Dutch) for North America.

In 1649, after the defeat of the armies of King Charles l, many Royalists emigrated to Virginia. In 1655, Admiral Penn captured Jamaica from the Spanish. In 1664, Nieuw Amsterdam was renamed New York after its capture from the Dutch. A year later, the New Jersey Colony was founded by English colonists. The Treaty of Westminster of 1674 returned New York and Delaware to England, freeing the English to expand their trade and grow prosperous on it.

In 1681, Pennsylvania had its beginning in the land grant given to Admiral Penn's son, the Quaker William, who wished to call it New Wales, but settled for the Welsh word for head (Pen) and the Latin for woods (Sylvania). The Frame of Government for the new colony contained an explicit clause that permitted amendments, an innovation that made it a self-adjusting constitution, as the US Constitution itself later came to be.

In a move that has been ignored by many historians, England readmitted Roman Catholics to the army in 1686, thus allowing many thousands of Irish peasants and Scots Highlanders to join the forces that would be needed to expand and control England's ever-growing empire. In 1696, William Dampier published his general survey of the Pacific, "Voyage Round the World." One year later, Parliament opened the slave trade to British merchants who began their triangular trade from taking rum from New England to Africa, slaves to the Caribbean and sugar and molasses to New England. In 1698, Dampier sailed on his Pacific expedition to explore the West Coast of Australia.

Further emigration from England to the American Colonies was encouraged during Queen Anne's reign by the 1702 publication of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana," a history of New England designed to show that God was at work in the colonies. A French-Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts, however, was a precursor of the later war to come. Queen Anne, of a most "ordinary" character, and the last monarch of the ill-fortuned House of Stuart, died in 1714. She was succeeded by Hanover's Prince George Louis, a great-grandson of James I. During her reign, developments had taken place in England that were to shortly make it the world's leading industrial power. But first came political union with Scotland.

The Act of Union with Scotland: May 1, 1707

James II's youngest daughter Anne, whose last surviving child, Princess Anne did not survive; thus there was no direct successor to the throne. London was afraid that unless a formal, political union with Scotland was firmly in place, as distinct from the existing dynastic union (which had been established with the accession of the Stuart James VI of Scotland as James I of England in 1603), the country might choose James Edward Stuart, Anne's exiled Catholic half-brother.

The English Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701 to ensure that Anne's heir was to be the Electress Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James l. Consequently, when William died in 1702, he was succeeded by Queen Anne, a true daughter of the last legitimate monarch, James II. On William's deathbed he had recommended union with Scotland. In 1703, the Scottish Parliament passed the Act of Security that provided for a Protestant Stuart succession upon Anne's death, unless the Scottish government was freed from "English or any foreign influence."

The English Parliament responded with an Alien's Act that prohibited all Scottish imports to England unless the Scots accepted the Hanoverian succession. When union was strongly urged by Lord Godolphin, the Scots reluctantly acquiesced in order to gain the advantage of free trade with the new British common market; the Act of Union merely cemented what had been a growing interdependence between the two countries. Union with Scotland became official on May 1, 1707 by act of Parliament. There were advantages for both countries in the Union, seen in retrospect as an act of policy, not of affection.

Sometimes overlooked while discussing the reasons for Scotland's agreeing to the union is the terrible beating taken by that unfortunate nation in the Darien affair. The Scottish Parliament's grandiose scheme to finance a rival to the East India Company and its attempt to found a colony on the isthmus of Darien, or Panama, met with hostility from the English Parliament. Disease and Spanish interference brought a quick and sad end to the scheme, in which practically the whole Scottish nation had shown interest. Much of the blame was cast upon "Dutch William" and his English advisors, but Scottish mercantile interests were forced by the experience to find a workable solution. Perhaps it would be better, they reasoned, to give up a separate and divergent economic policy in favor of a merger that would be of equal benefit to both Parliaments. Not all on either side were happy with the Union that many historians see as a result of "judicious bribery". The mercantile interests in Edinburgh did not represent the whole nation. The people of the Highlands certainly were not consulted in the matter. In particular, the nation had to balance the loss of its ancient independence against the need to open itself up to a wider world and greater opportunities than it could provide by itself. For its part, England gained a much-needed security, for no longer could European powers use Scotland as a base for an attack on its southern neighbor.

Scotland kept its legal system and the Presbyterian Kirk, but gave up its Parliament in exchange for 45 seats in the House of Commons and 16 seats in the House of Lords. The Act proclaimed that there would be "one United Kingdom by the name of Great Britain" with one Protestant ruler, one legislature and one system of free trade. The Act of Union settled the boundaries of a state known as Great Britain whose people, despite their differences in traditions, cultures and languages, were held together simply because they felt different from people in other countries.

The people of Britain also felt superior; they were constantly being compared with those of other countries in Europe as being better fed, better housed and better governed. Part of the feeling of superiority came from the acquisition of so much overseas territory; part came from government propaganda and the need to suppress dissent, part came from technical advances that already heralded the coming of both the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

Eighteenth Century England

The Electress of Hanover, Sophia, died the same year as Anne. When her son George left Hanover to come to England, knowing but a few words of the English language, there were many who wished a restoration of the Stuart monarchy. In this period of rapid Anglicization of Scotland and the acceptance, through the Union, of the political and economic situation that prevailed in Protestant England, the Stuarts were not yet finished. In 1708, their hopes were raised once again when an invasion of Scotland, launched from France managed to avoid the British fleet. Unfortunately, and by now predictably, the opportunity was lost; the troops landed too far north to be effective in taking Edinburgh. Then, in 1715, James II's son, James Edward Stuart, who was James III to his supporters was persuaded to undertake an invasion of England, "the fifteen."

It had been highly apparent that attempts at restoring the Stuarts would have meant the replacement of a Protestant monarchy, however foreign and dull it appeared, with a Roman Catholic dynasty, for one thing, and it was far too late for that. For another, the restoration would have to be accomplished by a foreign (and Catholic) army of occupation. The Stuarts were backed by France, Britain's most obvious and strongest enemy, a Popish enemy at that. The British press was full of the horrors of life in the Catholic states of Europe and the blessings that the island nation enjoyed under its Protestant rulers. Despite the nostalgia and the romanticism attached to the exiled Stuarts, and their wide support in Scotland, it was unthinkable for most Britons to contemplate their return. The majority of people in the nation were not in the mood for what surely would be a bloody and prolonged civil war. They certainly did not welcome the idea of a Jacobite army that would be mainly composed of French troops marauding through their land. In addition, it seemed as if the struggle of Whig against Tory that had brought the country to the verge of civil war had exhausted everyone. The attempt of the Pretender to regain the throne for the Stuarts in 1715 thus fizzled out like a damp squib.

George I (1714-1727)

The first great crisis of the reign of George I, that fool of a king (who was ridiculed for his eccentric behavior and poor English), was the Jacobite Rebellion. He was lucky that his nation was in no mood for another civil war. James Stuart was sent back to France after failing to rally Scotland behind him. It was left to the Young Pretender, Charles Edward to try again during the reign of George II. The other crisis that affected the reign of the first Hanoverian monarch of England was known as the South Sea Bubble.

Briefly, the South Sea Company, founded in 1711, had acquired a monopoly in the lucrative Spanish slave trade and other trading ventures in South America. Prices of its shares increased dramatically when the government announced that the company, and not the Bank of England, should finance the National Debt. Dozens of irrational schemes came into being as the result of the ridiculously high prices of company shares. They all crashed in October of 1720 when shares began to tumble; many investors were ruined.

The fiasco, involving many government ministers, needed someone to straighten things out, and the right person appeared in Robert Walpole, who defended the ministers and the Crown, being rewarded with the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer and leading the House of Commons for 20 years. Walpole straightaway reduced import and export duties to encourage trade and took care of the financial crisis by amalgamating the South Sea Company stock with that of the Bank of England and the East India Company. An astute business man, he kept England at peace and he increased the powers and privileges of Parliament.

At the Act of Settlement of 1701, Parliament had insisted that there should be a Privy Council of 80 members. King George reduced it to 30, and from these, a smaller group formed the cabinet, and an even smaller group, the inner cabinet. And it was here that the important decisions were made. As "German George" knew little English, understood practically nothing of the English constitution and stayed away from cabinet meetings, Walpole rose to a position of chief minister. He continued his leading role after the death of George I in 1727. Walpole's day-to-day supervision of the administration of the country, unhampered by royal interference, gave him such influence that he is remembered as England's first Prime Minister (The title originated as a term of abuse when his opponents mockingly used it to describe his extraordinary power).

George II (1727-1760)

Among the many events that took place during the reign of George II, there were two that were to have a profound influence, not only upon his kingdom of Britain, but upon much of the world outside its borders. The first of these events began in 1728 when Yorkshire carpenter John Harrison created a working model of a practical, spring-driven timekeeper that would win the prize offered by the London's Board of Longitude to solve a centuries-old puzzle; how to make the accurate determining of longitude possible. (In 1676, the Greenwich Observatory had been established to study the position of the moon among the fixed stars and to set a standard time to help sailors fix their longitude). In 1730, John Hadley invented the reflecting quadrant that made it possible to determine latitude at noon or by night. Extremely accurate, it was quickly adopted by the admiralty.

In 1736, Harrison presented his ship's chronometer to London's Board of Longitude; accurate to with one-tenth of a second per day. Made weatherproof and placed aboard ships, along with the observations of astronomer Nevil Maskelyne, published in 1763 that calculated longitude at sea from lunar distances, the chronometer was to revolutionize the world's shipping. It was to prove of particular importance to English navigators in their constant, unending search for new markets for English products, new trading centers and eventually, new lands to settle her surplus criminals and poor, unemployed citizens. (The chronometer was proved to be a success aboard HMS Deptford in 1761).

The second major event began at Oxford University, also in 1728, when a group of students began to call divinity student Charles Wesly a "Methodist," because of his methodical study habits. Charles was to help found a holy club with his brother John and others for strict observance of sacrament and the Sabbath, along with reading the New Testament and undergoing fasting. Brother John was to begin preaching Methodism at Bristol in 1739.

The first conference of Methodists was held in 1744. From then on, the movement, aided by his indefatigable preaching and wide spread travels in the British Isles, spread rapidly. The new religious ideas were to take root in North America where ideas of political independence from Britain were to merge with ideas of religious independence from the Church of England.

At home, as strong-willed as George II seemed to be, he could be controlled by his wife, Caroline of Anspach, whose influence ensured that Walpole keep his position as prime minister in the new regime. When Caroline died in 1737, it was increasingly difficult for Walpole to keep England out of war with Spain, brought about by the continual harassment of British trading ships by the Spanish. When a certain Captain Jenkins presented the sight of his sun-dried (or pickled) ear, supposedly cut off by the Spanish in 1731, Parliament was enraged and demanded action. Walpole was unable to effect a compromise and England went to war in 1739. At the same time, the War of the Austrian Succession had broken out on the Continent.

Because George II feared a French invasion of his beloved Duchy of Hanover, England was forced to involve itself in the war that primarily involved the coalition of Central European powers, supported by France, to despoil Maria Theresa, the new Arch Duchess of Austria, of her possessions. To the dismay of the jingoistic Parliament, George signed a treaty with France to protect Hanover, Walpole was held responsible and defeated in Parliament after losing support of the Commons. Walpole had coined the term "balance of power" in a speech in Parliament in June 1741; it gave expression to the principle that was to guide British foreign policy for decades to come.

Despite King George's attempts to stay neutral in the European conflict, he had to fight. At Dettingen, he personally led his forces, and won a great victory over the French. When France declared war on England in 1744, believing that she was the cause of most of her troubles, Parliament was forced on the defensive. As so many times before in the island nation's history, however, the notorious British weather helped destroy a French invasion fleet in 1744. It was now time for the Jacobite Cause to resurrect itself.

The Last Gasp of the Jacobites

Incredibly enough, after the farce of the last attempt to regain the throne, the Stuarts were to try again. Despite having endured so many years of ill-fortune, the Jacobite cause was still powerful enough to be considered the greatest threat to Britain in mid-century. In 1718, the Spanish government, in the conflict with Britain for control of trade, had sponsored an abortive raid on Scotland. Though the attempt ended in a defeat for the Highlanders at Glenshiel, an English newspaper argued in 1723 that the people of the Scottish Highlands "will never fail to join with foreign Popish powers..."

As if to fulfill this prophecy, 22 years later, Charles Edward seized his opportunity. At a time when George II was away in his beloved Hanover and the bulk of the British Army fighting in Flanders and Germany, the Stuart prince landed in the Hebrides in July 1745. He was encouraged by promise of support from France, and indeed some ships did reach Scotland with supplies and artillery. By September, Charles had rallied thousands of Highlanders, was aided by the Provost's who had secretly left a gate open and had taken the city of Edinburgh (where he assured the Presbyterian clergy of religious toleration), captured Carlisle, and defeated a small British force at Prestonpans where his soldiers employed their broadswords in the famous Highland charge.

Flushed with victory over the obviously ill-trained and ill-prepared British force of General Cope, the Scottish army marched south to England, hoping to rally support all along the way. Yet, it soon became apparent that Charles Edward was not going to be successful in raising the men and money necessary to sustain the invasion. Even in the Scottish Lowlands, support had not been forthcoming. Interests of commerce overrode those of patriotism. Despite Charles Edward's bold plans to advance on London, Lord Murray argued for a return to Scotland. The Prince reluctantly admitted the lack of support from English Jacobites. In addition, misleading reports about the strength of the English forces convinced the majority of the Council to return to Scotland.

An English force that caught up with the retreating Scottish army was soundly defeated at Clifton, the last battle to be fought on English soil. Once again, a concentrated Highland charge managed to dislodge British dragoons. Scottish success, however, only strengthened the resolve of the pursuing troops under Cumberland, who was determined to use his superior fire power and strength of numbers to his advantage the next time. The battle also led to a feeling among the Highlanders that they were invincible in a charge involving hand-to-hand fighting. They were almost correct. On the bumpy, uneven pasture lands of Culloden in April 1745 with a considerable distance to cover under fire before they could reach the ranks of the English troops, the bravery of the charging Highlanders would not be enough.

The enormous casualties suffered by the Highlanders in their futile charges against the entrenched infantry, and the slaughter of their wounded was followed by a brutal aftermath. "Bliadna Thearlaich," Charlie's Year to the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, was finished. The Jacobites were left without any hope of reorganizing, though they still hoped for support from the Bourbons in Spain and France. This was not forthcoming, for struggles in Europe were shifting to those for control of North America.

After Culloden, Scotland was ready to play a major role in the expansion of the British Empire. In particular, the fighting qualities and heroic traditions of the Highlanders were put to good use in British armies sent to fight in Europe and further afield. The Seven Years War (1756-63) that closely followed the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion was the most dramatically successful war ever fought by Britain. Success followed success (mostly at the expense of France) in Canada, India, West Africa and the West Indies, and the tiny North Atlantic island of Britain found itself at the head of a vast, world empire in which the Scots played a leading part.

A New Role for the Island Kingdom

The War of the Austrian Succession was ended by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. But Britain was still anxious to fight for possession of new lands and trade routes. After Walpole's resignation, the country was led by William Pitt ("the elder"), a man who believed that the strength of the nation's economy depended upon overseas expansion as well as the defence of its trading outposts. Thus Britain found itself at war with France again, only the theatres of war were now primarily in North America and India. In the Seven Years War, England's ally Prussia was relied upon to conduct operations against France and Austria in Europe. In the sub-continent of India, Robert Clive won important victories to establish British presence at the expense of the French.

In other areas, at first, the wars went badly. Admiral Byng was disgraced when he lost Minorca to the French in 1757. In North America, the British colonists suffered defeats at the hands of the French, who began Fort Duquesne; in Europe, the French occupied Hanover. Then William Pitt took over, the person described by Frederick the Great as having been "a man brought forth by England's labor," and under his direction of Parliament, his countries' armed forces began a string of victories that made them seem invincible.

In 1747 James Lind had reported on the success of citrus juice in combating scurvy, and ten years later The Royal Navy received the new sextant created by John Campbell. (In 1775, upon his return from the Pacific, Captain James Cook received a medal from the Royal Society for finally conquering scurvy; he had brought 118 men "through all climates for three years and 18 days with the loss of only one man.) He had succeeded with sauerkraut: the Royal Navy ordered all its ships to give out lime juice as a daily ration in 1795.

In North America, British troops captured Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt (later Pittsburgh); other victories occurred at Senegal, the centre of the French West African slave trade and at Guadeloupe in the West Indies. In Canada, General Wolfe captured Louisburg and then Quebec, in 1759, a victory that was followed up by General Amherst to complete the surrender of Canada to Britain.

At the time of King George II's death in 1760, England was growing rich from profits made in sugar, tobacco, sea-island cotton and other products produced by slave labor. A new leisured class was rapidly developing that would eventually demand its say in government. Britain's prosperity had come about despite the favoring of Hanover by King George; it reflected the growing influence of the mercantile classes in Parliament. It also reflected the indomitable energy and initiative of William Pitt.

Pitt gathered all power into his own hands; he controlled finance, administration and the military. He understood fully the threat from France for hegemony in North America, and he took the vital steps to counter it. His war with France has been seen by many historians as the First World War; it certainly involved more than a mere redistribution of strategic forts and a re-shuffling of frontiers. It also took considerable toll on England's resources and a general war-weariness gave fodder to those enemies of Pitt who worked for his downfall.

George III (1760-1820)

The new king saw himself as a kind of savior; freeing the country from the tyranny of a corrupt Parliament and restoring it into the hands of a virtuous, honorable, "thoroughly English" monarch, one who was perfectly capable of choosing his own ministers. Lord Bute was more to his liking than William Pitt. When peace negotiations began with France, Pitt refused to desert Prussia. France then turned to Spain for an alliance to help her regain her North American possessions. Pitt's urging of war with Spain met with fierce resistance in the Commons and he was forced to resign.

Seen by historian Carlyle, as "King of England for four years," William Pitt undoubtedly was one of England's great leaders, a true statesman with a vision expanding far beyond the political boundaries of England. His successor in Parliament, Lord Bute, had nothing of Pitt's political acumen, wide-ranging vision or experience. Only months after Pitt's resignation, England was forced to declare war on Spain, but despite a series of overwhelming victories, including those by Admiral Rodney in the Caribbean, that made her mistress of the world and master of the seas, Bute did not wish to further antagonize a severely weakened France and Spain. Besides, the king wished to end what he called " a bloody and expensive war."

Britain gained handsomely at the Treaty of Paris of 1763, yet France and Spain came off rather well. It took a considerable amount of political chicanery and bribery to ensure the ratification of the treaty by Parliament, for it was denounced by Pitt as giving too much away and for containing the seeds of future war. Britain did gain Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton; the right to navigate the Mississippi; the West Indian Islands of Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica and Tobago in the West Indies; Florida (from Spain); Senegal in Africa; and the preservation in India of the East India Company's monopoly; and in Europe, Minorca.

To Pitt's dismay and fears for the future, France was appeased with the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, fishing rights off Newfoundland (the nursery of the French navy, later to play such a decisive role in the American War of Independence) and the rich sugar islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Spain, in turn, received Havana, which controlled the sea-going trade in the Caribbean and Manila, a center of the trade with China. Thus France's naval power had been left untouched. Britain was later to pay dearly in the loss of its American colonies.

As George insisted on picking his own ministers, he appointed four different men to lead the country in the 1760's: the Earl of Bute, George Grenville, the Marquee of Rockingham, and the Elder Pitt. His last choice, his personal favorite, was Lord North. Between them, they lost America.

The American War of Independence

The final revolt of Britain's American colonies was a long time coming: it certainly could have been foreseen and better prepared for by the intransigent London government. The enormous expense of the Seven Years War, and the protection of the Colonies from the designs of France, led Parliament to insist that Americans should pay for their own defence. It therefore could justify the infamous sugar tax of 1764 and the stamp duty one year later. But these taxes were only the latest in a long history of repressive measures that were designed solely to benefit England's mercantile, industrial and agricultural interests.

In 1651, the Navigation Act forbade importation of goods into England or her colonies except by English vessels or by vessels of the countries producing the goods. This was passed to help the nation's merchant navy in their struggle against the Dutch. It was still too early to be a bone of contention with the Colonies. In 1660, Charles I sought to strengthen the Navigation Acts in that certain "enumerated articles" from the American colonies may be exported only to the British Isles. These articles include tobacco, sugar, wool, molasses and many other essential items of American livelihood; the result was widespread economic distress and political unrest, especially in Virginia.

In 1663, a Second Navigation Act forbade English colonists to trade with other European countries. In addition, European goods bound for America had to be unloaded at English ports and reshipped. Export duties and profits to middlemen then made prices of the goods prohibitive in the Colonies. In 1672, Parliament imposed customs duties on goods carried from one American colony to another. Even though not many colonists were engaged in the woolen industry, it was mostly restricted to their individual homes, further resentment came with the Woolens Act of 1699 that prevented any American colony from exporting wool, wool yarn, or wool cloth to any place whatsoever."

Trading restrictions continued in 1733 when the Molasses Act taxed British colonists on the molasses, rum and sugar imported from non-British West Indian islands. The price of rum, a drink heavily favored because of its supposed therapeutic properties increased dramatically in the Colonies. A hint of later rebellion was provided in 1741 when Salem sea captain Richard Derby avoided the British Navigation Acts by sailing his schooner Volante under Dutch colors. Six years later, London marine insurance companies began to charge exorbitant rates on ship and cargo from New England to Caribbean ports, but large profits were made by American merchantmen carrying cod from the Newfoundland banks.

In 1750, the Cumberland Gap through the Appalachians was discovered by English physician Thomas Walker. Colonists could now break out of their relatively narrow coastal areas and move westward; ideas of breaking away from the Mother Country were sure to follow the pioneers as they moved over the mountains in search of new lands to settle, farther away from English interests. By 1763, the Mississippi River was recognized as the boundary between the British colonies and the Louisiana Territory. Meanwhile, the raising of the bounty on whales by the English government in 1750 did much to encourage the New England fishing industry, not to be overlooked in the growing aspirations for independence.

In the meantime, the population of the American Colonies was enjoying a rapid population increase, due to the high birth rate and high rates of immigration, especially from Germany, Ireland and other countries not disposed to favor keeping ties with Britain. A rolling iron mill established in New Hampshire also gave notice that the colonists could engage in an industry that had hitherto been an English monopoly.

In 1757, after a visit to England, Benjamin Franklin was able to report to the Colonies just how far American importers could safely go in flouting London's mercantile acts. In 1763, there was an angry reaction to George III's decree that Colonists must remain east of the sources of rivers that flow into the Atlantic. The decree was honored only in the breach and further intensified the Colonists' growing desires for independence from the dictates of London. The king had not wished to antagonize Spain and France; the land-hungry Colonists were indifferent.

In April 1763, Parliament passed the Sugar Act and sent customs officials to order colonial governors to enforce it. In May, the Currency Act then forbade the Colonies from printing paper money. Also in May, Boston lawyer James Otis denounced "taxation without representation," and urged the colonies to unite to oppose Britain's new tax laws. During the same month, Boston merchants organized a boycott of British luxury goods and initiated a policy of non-importation. As the colonists had contributed little tax support to England, the government decided at this juncture to take a harder line American industry, in the meanwhile, received a great boost by the invention of Pennsylvania mechanic James Davenport that could spin and card wool.

Events started moving to a head in 1765. First, Parliament passed the Quartering Act ordering colonists to provide barracks and supplies to British troops (quite fair considering the expense of maintaining the defence of the Colonies). The Stamp Act, passed in March, was particularly resisted: it was the first measure to impose direct taxes in the Colonies. It required revenue stamps on all newspapers, pamphlets, playing cards, dice, almanacs and legal documents. In May, in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry stood up to denounce the Act, despite cries of "Treason" from other delegates. The Act was also denounced in Boston, where the Sons of Liberty formed clubs to show their resistance. In October a Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to protest taxation without representation and resolved to import no goods that required payment of duty. Ironically, the greatest protest against the Act came, not in the Colonies, but in England, where merchants complained that it was contrary to the true commercial interests of the Empire.

Self-confident American colonials were beginning to flex their muscles. In Philadelphia the opening of the first American medical school, later to become the College of Physicians and Surgeons, showed only too well that the fledgling nation could develop its own institutions. In commerce, shipping interests were booming. Exports of tobacco, bread and flour, fish, rice, indigo and wheat were streaming out of the ports of Boston, New York and Providence. Philadelphia, with over 25,000 inhabitants, had become the second largest city in the British Empire.

Early in 1766, it seemed that reconciliation was in the offing when Parliament, partly in response to the persuasive powers of visiting Benjamin Franklin, repealed the Stamp Act. However in March, the Declaratory Act rekindled the flames of colonial resentment, for it declared that the King, by and with the consent of Parliament, had the authority to make laws and to bind the British colonies in all respects.

Though William Pitt had returned as Prime Minister, his powers were no longer as effectual, and the arrogant Lord Townsend introduced the infamous Townsend Act, a Bill that imposed duties on American imports of paper, glass, lead and tea. Rebellion may not have been immediately on the minds of the Colonists and John Dickinson's "Letters from a Farmer" advised caution and loyalty to King and Empire, but the Townsend Act would be on the minds of the merchant classes. They were now beginning to despair of bringing the British Government to reason through limited resistance.

In 1767, Daniel Boone took his party through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, thus defying the 1763 decree of King George, completely out of touch with the aspirations of the American Colonists. Two years later he was emulated by a party of Virginians moving into what later became Tennessee (10 years later, Boone led a party to break the Wilderness Road to be used by more than 10,000 pioneers pouring into the new territories of Western Tennessee and Kentucky).

When delegates from 28 towns in Massachusetts met at Faneuil Hall, Boston in September to draw up a statement of grievances, following anti-British riots, infantry regiments were brought in from Canada. More riots broke out in Boston the following June when Customs officials seized a sloop belonging to John Hancock. In the meantime, Cherokee lands were ceded to the Crown in the Carolina and Virginia Colonies, as were lands of the Iroquois between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. Another pioneering journey was that of a fleet of American whalers into the Antarctic Ocean to begin a new and most profitable industry.

In 1769, a huge step towards independence was taken by the Virginia House of Burgesses that issued its resolutions rejecting Parliament's right to tax British colonists. When the governor dissolved the assembly, its members met in private and agreed not to import any duty-liable goods. In January, 1770, at the Battle of Golden Hill, New York, the first blood was shed between British troops and the colonists.

In March, the so-called "Boston Massacre" further inflamed passions, already being incited to rebellion by radicals in many of the Colonial governments (aided by such Whig newspapers as "The Massachusetts Spy"). The repeal of the Townsend Acts by newly-appointed Prime Minister Lord North, came too late to assuage those who had already made up their minds that the future of their country was as an independent nation, completely freed from its political links with Britain.

Events moved fitfully towards an inevitable conclusion. The so-called Boston "Tea-Party" in December 1773 had protested British taxes on American imports and in September 1774, the first Continental Congress of twelve colonies met in Philadelphia. It is interesting to note that the protest was organized by Samuel Adams, supported by John Hancock, whose smuggling of contraband tea had been made unprofitable by the measures passed in Parliament. "Men of Sense and property" such as George Washington, however, deplored the actions of those who staged the "Boston Tea-Party" and it is safe to say, at this juncture, that the majority of the colonists opposed independence, or at least, were not willing to fight Britain to gain it.

The first Continental Congress quickly adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, but no less than George Washington himself wrote that "... no thinking man in all of North America desires independence." Benjamin Franklin also cautioned against a break with the mother country, for despite its unkindness "of late," the link was worth preserving. The radicals were still few in number and all measures taken by the Colonies were undertaken to pressure the British Government to listen to their grievances, not to force its hand. However, when news of the Bostonian's "tea-party" reached Parliament, outrage by many of its members produced its coercive acts in a failed attempt to bring the colonists to heel. Boston Harbor was closed until the East India Company was reimbursed for its lost tea and until trade could be resumed and duties collected. The acts were a fatal blunder by the Prime Minister, Lord North. As nothing else, they united the colonies against the government.

Other "tea-parties" followed Boston's example, and many colonies sent supplies to help the Bostonians survive the closing of its port. 1774 can be called the year of the pamphlets, with huge amounts of tracts being written and distributed throughout the American Colonies, arguing the pro's and con's of independence. In March, 1775, Patrick Henry made his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, and the dye had been cast. The war began in April 1775 when a force of redcoats, sent to seize war material stored at Concord, were met by a force of patriots. The resulting skirmishes of Lexington and Concord meant that there would be no turning back for either side.

The War of Independence can be summarized briefly. The strong determination of the colonists to make themselves completely independent would surely have succeeded in the long run, but they were aided enormously by incompetent English generals. One George Washington in charge of English redcoats would have quickly ended the rebellion. In addition, without the notoriously corrupt Earl of Sandwich in charge at the Admiralty, the Royal Navy would have surely held the seas against the French relief forces. Yet even with these crippling burdens, the war started well for the government.

In June, the Second Continental Congress had followed after the urging of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia to make foreign alliances and form a confederation. The resolutions were adopted on July 2, 1776. Efforts to end the war by negotiation broke off. At first, the colonists were no match for the better trained, better armed and better disciplined regulars of the British army, augmented by King George's Hessians, despite the incompetence of its generals.

The publication of The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson which was signed by 56 delegates was no doubt influenced by the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense written in July 1776. It created a major shift in political emphasis. One of its immediate effects was to create a will and strength to see the thing through. Before the Declaration, the revolutionaries had seen their cause as mainly fighting for their rights as British subjects against a stubborn English Parliament; after the Declaration, they saw their fight as necessary to protect their natural rights as free men against a tyrannical and out-of-touch king. This indeed was a cause worth fighting for.

To aid in the fight, General Washington appointed Polish military expert Kosciusco to help train the volunteers, "the citizen-soldiers" who made up the bulk of the American armies. Following many early defeats, it was a surprising victory over the Hessians at Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776 which provided a stirring impetus to continue. In January, Washington followed up his victory at Trenton by defeating Cornwallis at Princeton. Later in the year, however, when he lost the Battle of Brandywine and retreated to Valley Forge, General Howe failed to consolidate his victory, preferring to sit out the winter in Philadelphia, and the American army was miraculously able to recover.

In Parliament, Lord North expressed his dismay at the poor leadership shown by the British commanders in America. When the British forces, surrendered one of its armies under Burgoyne at Saratoga, who returned to England, it was the beginning of the end for the valiant redcoat armies. Poorly led, forced to march and counter-march through untracked wildernesses, dispersed over hundreds of miles of unknown territory and harassed every step of the way, they had been betrayed by the incompetence of their officers as much as by the determination of the Colonists under Washington's inspired leadership. The victory at Saratoga galvanized into action the French government, who followed up its policy of aiding the Colonists with money and supplies by recognizing American independence and forming an alliance with the fledgling nation. The French fleet was to prove decisive in the struggle and ultimate victory of the Americans. In 1779, Spain and Holland, for reasons of their own, also provided aid in the form of money, supplies and military hardware. Not only that, but sympathetic (and profit-hungry) British merchants, including Robert Walpole, were engaged in smuggling arms and provisions to the Americans through the West Indies.

When Cornwallis surrendered his troops at Yorktown, after foolishly digging in where he had no natural defences except the sea, which was blocked the French fleet, no further military operations of any consequence took place. The British armies in North America were exhausted. The War was over. Signed on September 3rd, 1783, the Treaty of Paris recognized the independence of the American Colonies. Britain's great age of Empire, paradoxically was just about to begin.

The Growth of Empire

The long struggle between Britain and France for world supremacy continued to be fought all over the globe. For 23 years, Britain was at war with the greatest military power on earth, led by its great military genius Napoleon. Its results were to destroy the ambitions of the French dictator, to impose a New Order on the whole of Europe by force and to vindicate Britain's equally firm resolve to not only resist, but to uphold the imposition of order only through international law.

United in their Protestantism more than anything else, the Welsh and Scots and English thought of themselves as British; it was their Protestantism (and perhaps their representatives in Parliament) that held them together; they thought of themselves as a united, religious and moral people. Thus it was only right for them to go out as bringers of enlightenment, mainly through the conflicting aims of trade and religious conversion (the latter always second to the former) to the far corners of the earth. The anarchy and confusion that prevailed in France during its Revolution were looked on with revulsion in England, now having come to terms with the loss of its American colonies and having become more of a united kingdom in the painful process.

On the Continent, the armies of France crushed those of Austria, repelled those of Prussia and helped establish a French Republic. (The monarchy was abolished by the National Convention in September, 1791: King Louis XVI was executed in January, 1793.) When France invaded the Netherlands, England was asked to help protect the navigation rights to the Dutch. The French Republic then declared war on Britain, Holland and Spain who formed an alliance. Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Rome in 1796, made the Pope a prisoner and the same year assembled an army to invade England. He went to Egypt instead, where his forces captured Alexandria and Cairo from the Mamelukes. Two years later, he defeated the Turks, with their British allies at Abukir. He then left to take command of his armies in Europe as first consul and dictator of France.

Napoleon continued his victories in Europe, defeating the Austrians at Marengo, 1800, but a temporary peace signed at Amiens in March, during the following year gave Britain control of Trinidad and Ceylon in exchange for its other maritime conquests. A renewal of hostilities and the need for France to find adequate finances led to the doubling of the United States by its "Louisiana Purchase" in 1802.

Napoleon once more contemplated invading England by assembling a fleet at Boulogne and negotiating with Robert Emmet to lead a rebellion in Ireland. In India, another British victory was achieved by Arthur Wellesly over native forces. In France, in May 1804, Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor. Spain then declared war on Britain. Early in 1805, Viscount Nelson blockaded a French fleet intent on invading England.

On October 21, 1805 one of the greatest sea victories in England's long history took place at Trafalgar, when Admiral Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet near Gibralter. All French pretensions as a great sea power were effectively ended by this decisive battle during which Nelson was mortally wounded. (It is to be noted that the British crews were now free of scurvy which continued its deadly toll on enemy ships).

On land, however, the French armies continued their string of victories, with Napoleon defeating the Austrians and Russians at the Battle of Austerlitz in December. Early in 1806, the Holy Roman Empire came to an end after a thousand years when the Confederation of the Rhine was set up under French control. Prussia now joined the fight against Napoleon's grandiose ambitions. Napoleon's Berlin Declaration inaugurated the Continental system designed to cut off food and supplies reaching Britain from the Continent. When British ships bombarded Copenhagen in September for joining the Continental system, Denmark allied with France and Russia declared war on Britain.

French troops then marched into Spain to prevent occupation by Britain, who invaded Portugal under Sir Arthur Wellesly, soon to succeed Sir John Moore as British Commander. It was the beginning of the end for the armies of Napoleon despite a costly victory over the Austrians at Wagram, leading to the Treaty of Schonbrunn that ended hostilities between the two countries. In March 1810, Napoleon married the Austrian Archduchess Maria Luisa. No-one in Paris witnessing the construction of the Arc de Triomphe could have guessed the fate soon to overtake their triumphant Emperor.

In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia, the same year that Britain and the United States began a 30 month war over issues that included the impressment of US seamen. Wellesly continued his success in Spain against the French armies, and when Napoleon reached Moscow, he found the Russian armies had prudently withdrawn and the city almost empty. The European war then seesawed back and forth; Austria renewed its enmity with France; Napoleon won at Dresden, was utterly defeated at Leipzig, and Wellesly continued his successes in Spain to cross the borders into France.

An alternating series of defeats and victories then followed for the French armies, now opposed by the formidable Prussian leader Marshall von Blucher as well as Wellesly, promoted to Duke of Wellington. Napoleon's abdication was followed by his internment at Elba. His escape from Elba and consequent defeat at Waterloo in June, 1815 at the hands of Blucher and Wellington finally ended his European dreams. The war came to an end during the same year when the Congress of Vienna rewrote the map of Europe. Similarly, the Treaty of Ghent ended the ''War of 1812' between Britain and the United States. With her armies victorious in Europe, England was now poised to assume the mantle of world leadership in many areas.

Leadership implied responsibility and created a dilemma as to which side England should support in the conflicts of Europe. Was France, the known, or Russia, the unknown, the more dangerous rival? In 1854, however, common interests brought Britain and France together in defense of the crumbling Empire of Turkey against the ever-increasing aggressiveness of Russia. Britain, in particular, wanted to keep Russia out of the Straits and away from the Mediterranean. The result was the costly muddle known as the Crimean War that began in 1854 and that solved nothing.

The horrors of the War have been well documented. The refusal of the Duke of Wellington to initiate reforms in the army, the general incompetence of the military leaders such as Lord Cardigan of the Light Brigade fame, the lack of an efficient central authority to manage supplies, send reinforcements and ensure adequate training created disaster after disaster in the field. The main enemy proved to not be the incompetent Russian armies, but the numbing cold aided by cholera, dysentery, typhus and scurvy as well as the lack of adequate food, clothing and shelter. Florence Nightingale and her gallant nurses did their best to remedy the appalling hospital conditions and the army's resentment at their "interference." The war ended when the allies took Sebastopol after a costly siege and Russia, to prevent Austria from joining the allies, agreed to the peace terms.

Other areas in which English soldiers were involved included India, where they had to deal with the great mutiny; but a war with China over British export of opium from India in exchange for silks and tea. The Chinese forbade the opium trade, rashly fired on a British warship and were bombarded by a Royal Navy squadron. The Opium War ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 that opened up five "Treaty Ports" for trade and gave Hong Kong to Britain. The second war with China came in 1857 out of an incident involving the Arrow, a Hong Kong schooner sailing under a British flag. Palmerston won an election on the issue, vowing to punish the insolent Chinese for arresting the ship on a piracy charge. An Anglo-French force captured forts leading to Tientsin and Peking, won concessions from the Chinese, including more "treaty ports," gained diplomatic representation and the right for Christian missionaries to practice their trade in China. Palmerston continued his "gun-boat" policy by later aiding Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily and the Neapolitan mainland by sending warships. His government also compensated the United States for the mischief caused by the Confederate raider Alabama built on Merseyside.

The Agricultural Revolution

King George III had shown such a great interest in the agricultural improvements taking place in England that he was known as "Farmer George." He had much to be proud of; his countrymen were at the forefront of creating changes in the way the land was farmed and livestock raised that would dramatically change the face of agriculture, an undertaking that had for so long been traditionally conservative and opposed to change.

In 1600 "Theatre d'agriculture des champs" had been published in France by Huguento Ollver de Serres recommending revolutionary changes in crop growing methods. It had been mainly ignored by all, but there were some in England who took notice. There, land enclosures had been taking place steadily since the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, with the great barons amassing huge swathes of the best agricultural lands when the king sold them off. Massive numbers of peasants and small landowners were displaced.

A riot against the enclosures in Elizabeth's reign was severely dealt with, and the enclosures continued apace. Notorious winter weather continued to plague a system that was reluctant to introduce major changes except to increase the amount of land available for the raising of sheep and cattle. Potatoes had been planted in the German states as early as 1621 though much of Europe remained in fear of the tubers' spreading leprosy but their food value was too great to be ignored.

By 1631, potato production in Europe was so great that a population explosion ensued. In England, population growth had been more or less increasing at the same slow rate for hundreds of years, but began a rapid rise in the 18th century. It was simply a matter of the nation being better fed. Land enclosures may have been protested vigorously by the peasantry, but they did result in better management, allowed for selective breeding of stock and experiments with fertilization and machinery that produced better crops.

In 1701 Jethro Tull's seed-planting drill had enormously increased crop production and lessened waste. Tull had studied farming methods on the continent and was not reluctant to introduce them into England. In 1733 he invented the two-wheeled plough and the four-coulter plough, both of which, strenuously resisted at first by his labourers, had a great impact on future methods of cultivation.

Another great pioneer was "Turnip" Townsend, Secretary of State under George II and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Townsend also studied foreign methods of land use and introduced the practice of crop rotation into England, using turnips and clover to revitalize land left fallow and to provide winter feed for livestock, whose manure in turn fertilized his fields. Townsend was followed by Thomas Coke who worked on the principle "No fodder, no beasts: no beasts, no manure; no manure, no crops." At Holkham, Coke continually worked on ways to improve crop yield, contributing greatly to better breeds of both cattle and sheep.

It is to Robert Bakewell, however, that most of England's outstanding success in producing better breeds of sheep and cattle is to be attributed. Bakewell pioneered methods of selection and the secret of breeding, including breeding the new Leicester sheep. Farm animals became fatter, hardier and healthier. Britain became a meat-eating nation, but it also enjoyed better and more reliable supplies of bread and vegetables.

Even as early as 1707, England was enjoying the fruits of its explorations and settlements in India. The opening of Fortnum and Mason's in London in that year attests to the increased demand for foreign delicacies, English farmers having produced sufficient basic necessities. In particular, farmers had realized that beef and mutton would be more profitable than powers of draught and quantities of wool. In the latter part of the century, Arthur Young's tenure as Secretary of the Board of Agriculture ensured that the new farming methods were accepted throughout the nation (though it took many years for English farmers to utilize the iron plow, developed in 1784 by James Small).

In 1786, Scotsman Andrew Meilde developed the first successful threshing machine. In addition, following the publication of Lady Montagu's "Inoculation Against Smallpox" in 1718, and after the work of Edward Jenner in the 1790's, the killing disease began to be eliminated in England. Hand in hand with the vast improvements in agriculture and medicine, an industrial revolution was taking place that would also change the world forever. Progress in agriculture was to be dwarfed by what took place in industry.

The Industrial Revolution

The progress of the industrial revolution is a long catalog of mechanical inventions by which the labor and skill of the human worker was replaced by machines. It had its beginnings in the depletion of England's forests in Elizabethan times to provide timber to build its great navies. Coal was a ready substitute as fuel and it was abundant. The early part of the 17th century brought a new emphasis on coal mining though effective methods of extracting it had to wait until developments in the steam engine took place and mines could be drained of their ever-present water. The enormous increase in the price of firewood fueled a rush to find and extract more coal. By 1655, even under the most primitive mining conditions, Newcastle was producing half a million tons a year.

But coal was expensive and dangerous to mine. In 1627, Edward Somerset had invented a crude steam engine. This was of little use, but in 1698, English engineer Thomas Savery improved matters with his crude steam-powered "miner's friend" to pump water out of coal mines. A further advance came in 1705, when Cornish blacksmith Thomas Newcomen produced his steam engine to pump water out of mines. In 1709 a major breakthrough occurred when Abraham Darby, who made iron boilers for the Newcomen engine, discovered that coke, made from coal, could substitute for wood in a smelting furnace to make pig and cast iron. The industrial revolution was on its way, the whole process being geared to producing for profit and ushering in a totally new economic system.

In 1739, Benjamin Huntsman rediscovered the ancient method of making crucible steel at Sheffield, soon to become a major British steel producer. In 1754, the first iron rolling mill was established in Hampshire, the same year that the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufacture was formed. In the 1760's the Bridgewater Canal was opened to link Liverpool, England's major port (which had profited enormously from the slave trade) with Leeds, a centre of manufacturing. It heralded an era of rapid canal building, joining cities and towns all over the nation and enabling manufactured goods and raw supplies to be shipped anywhere they were needed.

In 1765, James Watt produced his steam engine, a far more efficient source of power than that of Newcomen. During the same year, Brindley's Grand Truck Canal began construction to link the western and eastern coastal ports of Britain. In 1769, Watt entered into partnership with Mathew Boulton to produce his steam engines which would revolutionize industry and the world. In 1782, English ironmaster Henry Cort perfected his process of puddling iron, completely changing the way wrought iron is produced, totally freeing it from its dependence upon charcoal for fuel, and giving further impetus to the search for coal. The mining industry benefited greatly from Humphrey Davy's invention of a safety lamp for miners in 1815.

At the same time that coal mining and iron manufacturing were making such rapid progress, the textile industry was also changing English society. Labor costs had been halved by the invention of Kay's flying shuttle in 1733, the first of the inventions by which the textile industry was transformed. The same year saw the invention of a spinning machine by Wyatte and Paul that redressed the gap between spinning and weaving. In 1765, Hargreave's spinning jenny completed the balance, for it allowed enough thread to be produced for the weavers. A single worker could now operate a number of spindles to produce several threads at once.

The move away from cottage industry to the factory system was further hastened in 1769 with Arkwright's invention of a frame that could produce cotton thread hard and firm enough to produce woven fabric. English cotton mills began to proliferate in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Both English and US economies were to benefit from Eli Whitney's cotton gin of 1792. In 1805, Scotsman Patrick Clark developed a cotton thread that was to replace linen thread on Britain's looms. The woolen industry was also to benefit enormously from the new machinery, especially in Yorkshire. In 1779, Samuel Crompton devised his spinning mule, a landmark in the industrial revolution.

With the steam engine replacing animal, wind, or water power, the Golden Age of domestic industry was now over, and the lines of the factory system laid down. Sporadic riots against the employment of the new machinery did nothing to halt their proliferation and with the increase came a shift in the way industry was financed. (The Luddites began their activities in earnest in 1811 to no avail; quick execution of their leaders brought the movement to an end with only sporadic outbreaks). The factory system was responsible for the development of the joint capitalist enterprise that became such a powerful force in the nation's economic affairs. The steam engine also affected and completely transformed transportation and though the canals had their glorious years, they were soon to be eclipsed by the railroad.

James Watt patented his double-acting rotary steam engine in 1782, a great improvement on his earlier invention. It was used to drive machinery of all kinds, beginning two years later at a textile factory in Nottinghamshire. Women and children now left their homes and their spinning wheels and looms to work in the mills, at first furnished by the rapidly flowing streams of the North, but more and more powered by steam.

The 1780's saw the introduction of steam to power riverboats, in which the work US inventors John Fitch, James Rumsey and Robert Fulton and the Scot William Syminton led the way. The adaptation of Richard Trevithick's high pressure steam engine to propel a road vehicle in 1800 is a major milestone in the development of the railroad. In 1804, in a trial run, Trevithick carried 10 tons of iron and 70 men by steam engine run on rails at Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. The locomotive had arrived on the world's scene.

Only three years later the first paying passengers were taken on the mineral railroad world linking Mumbles with Swansea, South Wales, using horses for power (It lasted until 1960 when its electric trams were discontinued). English inventor George Stephenson ran his steam locomotive on the Killingworth colliery railway in 1814, the first to go into regular service. In September 1825, the world's first steam locomotive passenger service began as the Stockton and Darlington Railway. (Ironically, this was the same year that the Erie Canal opened in the US to link the Great Lakes with the Hudson and the Atlantic: only two years later, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, using rolling stock and rails imported mainly from Wales, began its challenge to the Erie Canal).

The S.S. Aaron Manby, the world's first iron steamship was launched in April, 1822 but it took many years for iron to displace wood in the world's navies. During the same year, the first iron railroad bridge was completed by George Stephenson for the pioneering Stockton-Darlington line.

The introduction of the hot blast by Scot James Neilson in 1828 made it possible not only to use coal without having it coked first, but also to use anthracite to smelt iron. Huge coal fields were thus made available in Scotland and Wales, though the biggest gains came in Pennsylvania when Welsh iron master David Thomas built his first furnace on the Lehigh in 1839. In 1830, the invention of the flanged T-rail by Robert Stevens in New Jersey laid the foundations of all future railroad track developments. In the meantime, road transportation began to benefit enormously through the improvement of highways brought about by the experiments of Scot MacAdam after 1815.

The snowball effect of all these inventions continued throughout the century. In 1856 Bessemer introduced his revolutionary steel-making process, and a new industry was given to England and the world. In 1864, Siemens invented the regenerative furnace, improving the strength and durability of steel, needed for the vast networks of railroads sprouting up all over England. In 1879, an important advance came when Gilchrist-Thomas was able to remove phosphorous from the ores used in smelting (Germany and the US with great deposits of iron ore were particularly grateful for this invention).

During Britain's rise to world supremacy in so many areas, it is sad to relate that so many of its leading citizens made their fortunes from the slave trade. The nefarious business played a crucial role in the development of Britain's mercantile interests.

England's Role in the Slave Trade

Only two years after Columbus discovered the New World, he brought back more than 500 Caribbean's to Spain to be sold as slaves. In 1501, African slaves were first introduced into Hispaniola by Spanish settlers; the natives had already been severely decimated, resulting in a labor shortage in the plantations. In 1511, African slaves were taken to Cuba. The nasty business had begun in earnest.

By 1518 huge numbers of African slaves were arriving at Santo Domingo to harvest sugar cane. The 1545 discovery of the Potosi silver mines as well as epidemics of typhus and smallpox hastened the decline of the natives, used as slave labor and increased the importation of African slaves to replace them. In 1560, Portugal also imported slaves into Brazil to replace native labor in the sugar plantations.

English participation in the lucrative slave trade seems to have begun when John Hawkins hijacked a Portuguese ship carrying Africans to Brazil in 1562. Hawkins traded the slaves at Hispaniola for ginger, pearls and sugar, making a huge profit which could not be ignored by his countrymen. One year later, Hawking sold a cargo of Black slaves in Hispaniola and the floodgates were opened. Though Queen Elizabeth spoke out against the dark business, she later took shares in Hawkins'' ventures, even lending him one of her ships in the enterprise that pitted her adventurous navigators against those of Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands (It was Hawkins who introduced tobacco into England in 1565).

In 1570 large scale exports of slaves to the Americas began. Ironically it was maize, introduced into Africa from Brazil that ensured a steady food crop that fueled the population growth to furnish a steady supply of slaves. In Europe a growing appetite for sugar as a sweetener for the newly introduced beverage, tea (begun to be drunk in earnest in England in the mid-1600's), and as a preservative for fruit, meant a great increase in sugar plantations in the Caribbean and thus the need for more slaves. The Virginia colony received its first Black slaves in 1619. From this time on they began to play a role in the North American economy. In 1627 English settlers colonized Barbados and soon began to transform into the largest sugar grower in the islands.

In 1672, English privateers in the slave trade gave way to the Royal company, formed expressly to take slaves from Africa to the Americas. In the North American Colonies, especially after "King Philip's War" of 1676, the fast-swindling supply of native slaves was augmented by Africans who were bought and sold at enormous profits. In 1698, Parliament opened the slave trade to British merchants who began the triangular trade, taking rum from New England to Africa, and from there, slaves to the Caribbean, from there West Indian sugar and molasses was shipped to New England to produce more rum. By 1709, Britain was taking as many as 20,000 Black slaves a year to the Caribbean. However, the most active period in its participation in the trade began when the South Sea Company received a grant to import 4,500 slaves a year into Spain's New World colonies for the next thirty years.

As the industrial and agricultural revolutions in England began to show enormous profits for many individuals, more and more investment took place in the slave trade. A new triangular trade began, mainly centered in Liverpool, in which cotton was sent to West Africa, where it was sold for slave. The slaves were then taken to the American South, where they were sold for raw cotton which was taken back to Liverpool to be processed in the mills of Lancashire. The business of cotton helped create hundreds of banks in England, including the giants Barclays and Lloyds, and, after 1773, a booming stock exchange appeared. British slavers began taking Xhosa (Bantu) slaves to Virginia plantations in 1719. By the 1750's, a whole new leisured class had been created in England from profits gained mainly from island cotton, sugar and tobacco grown with slave labor. At this time, English Quakers did not follow the practices of their Friends in the American Colonies who excluded slave traders from their Society.

Perhaps the beginnings of public protest against the slave trade in England began in 1763 when the badly beaten slave that Granville Sharp nursed back to health was kidnapped and sold (three years later, none other than George Washington exchanged an unruly slave for rum). A turning point in British toleration of slavery occurred in 1772 when James Somerset escaped from his master. Britain's Lord Chief Justice William Murray ruled that "as soon as any slave sets foot in England he becomes free."

The first motion to outlaw slavery in Britain and her colonies was heard in the Commons in 1776; it failed, perhaps due to pre-occupation of the House with the American War of Independence. English Quakers were also very active in their denunciation of the trade. A speech in the Commons by William Wilberforce in 1789 strongly condemned the practice of shipping Africans to the West Indies, but insurrections in some of the islands prevented a motion from being passed in 1781 that forbade the practice.

British cotton manufactures were also profiting greatly from slave labor in the American South that gained enormous benefits from the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1792. Though the US and Britain had agreed to cooperate in suppressing the slave trade in the Treaty of Ghent (that ended the War of 1812), the new, speedy Baltimore clipper ships continued to deliver cargoes of slaves.

In 1823, all the elements of the anti-slavery movement in England coalesced when William Wilbeforce and Thomas Buxton formed an antislavery society in London. Prominent Welsh reformer and factory owner Robert Owen also publicly advocated the abolition of slavery. In 1830, British authorities in the Bahamas declared that slaves from the wrecked schooner Comet were free, despite American protests.

Sharp's rebellion in Jamaica took place in 1831, but a drop in sugar prices had made slavery unprofitable on the island and news of the savage reprisals shocked British consciences. Parliament finally ordered the abolition of slavery in the British colonies to take effect by August 1, 1834 (three days after the death of Wilberforce). England and its empire was at last free from its terrible curse, During the same year, the Factory Act forbade the employment of children under 9 and proscribed the number of hours children were to work in the textile mills.

Political Reform

Between the death of George III in 1820 and the accession of Victoria to the throne in 1837, England was ruled first by the Prince Regent, during the dotage George of then under his own rule as George IV ending in 1830 and by his Uncle, William IV from 1830 to 1837. There is not much to say about George IV except that he suffered from a disastrous marriage and that he exercised a fine artistic taste. During his reign, Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace were renovated and extended and under the architect John Nash, St. James' Park and Regent's Park laid out, and the extravagant Royal Pavilion built at Brighton. When the Catholic Emancipation Bill became law, George threatened to abdicate, only reluctantly agreeing to prevent civil war in Ireland. George had no male children; his daughter had died in 1817, and his second brother was childless. The throne thus went to his third brother, who became William IV who ruled from 1830-1837.

Progress in the Arts

The first half of the 18th century had given us the "Augustans," following the ideals of classical Rome. Alexander Pope led the school that included Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne and James Boswell; and the "common sense" philosophy of Dr. Samuel Johnson. England produced the painters Gainsborough and Reynolds and crrated a climate for musicians such as Handel to receive Royal patronage.

The transition was most apparent in the writings of philosopher David Hume "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," 1748; the historian Edward Gibbon "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," 1776; and politician Edmund Burke "Reflections on the Revolution in Francem" 1791. The new class of poets included William Cowper and Robert Burns. English poets and painters, in their revolt against "common sense," began to follow the brilliant explorations of poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827).

The brilliant landscape artist John Constable died the same year that Victoria became queen. J.M.W. Turner was still alive. As members of the so-called Romantic Movement, they had been part of an astonishing artistic revolution that accompanied the topsy-turvy develpments in politics and the gradual displacement of the aristocracy by the middle class trading interests in the seat of power. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron all followed in rapid succession bringing a new depth to English literature, changing it from one concerned primarily with "reason" to one that we now call "romantic." Instinct and emotion took the place of the old rationalism. The idealization of the "noble savage," could only have come about however, when England's explorers and missionaries journeyed to new, and hitherto unknown lands.

Expansion of Empire: Australia

One result of the separation of the American colonies was that the British legal system lost one of the places to which convicts could be transported (Canada's climate was too severe for plantations and thus slave or convict labor). After considering the coasts of Africa, the British government decided that the lands called Botany Bay would be suitable and in 1788, the first shipload of 750 convicts arrived in that most inhospitable area of Australia.

Dutch sailors had landed on the coast of Australia in 1606, but they were driven off by natives. It wasn't until 1770 that Captain James Cook explored the eastern coast of what was then called "New Holland." Cook took possession of the island continent in the name of George III; he named his landfall Botany Bay on account of the great variety of plants he found there. The whole of Australia may have had no more than 250,000 natives at that time. There was lots of room to accommodate British convicts, further shiploads of which caused the early settlement to move to an area to be named Sydney, in the colony now named New South Wales.

It wasn't just land to resettle criminals that Britain needed. Both the agricultural and industrial revolutions had contributed to an enormous growth in population. There just were not enough jobs to go around, and as one historian has pointed out, in Ireland "there were neither enough tenements nor enough potatoes." Following the peace of 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a great increase in the population of the British Isles, so much so that a feeling of alarm spread through government ranks.

A growing population which had hitherto been regarded as one of the strengths of the nation now found itself looked on as something of a curse. There simply were too many people to feed (and control). Increasing pauperism and distress, along with monstrously bad harvests, massive unemployment and public debt, severely strained the limited resources available, and drastic remedies were sought by the folks in Westminster.

Perhaps the easiest solution was emigration. In 1822, an article by James Mill on "Colonization" in the "Encyclopedia Britannica" offered emigration as a remedy for over-population. It was eagerly read and avidly discussed by M.P.'s such as Robert Horton, who spent quite a few years of his time in the House of Commons trying to convince his colleagues of the merits of his emigration schemes. In the years 1823- 25, attempts were made to put his plans into practice, especially because the Government wished to settle British people in new lands that could be contested by other nationalities. Though most of the emigrants chosen for government-assisted passages in these early years were Irish (one way to get rid of those troublesome Catholics) many Scots were attracted by the offers of free land overseas.

Despite its reputation as a penal colony, in the very early years of the 19th century, the island continent of Australia had more and more begun to appear as a practical proposition for settlement. Australia offered an alternative to the vast wildernesses of loyalist Canada. Attitudes in Parliament began to shift with the publication of Captain Alexander McConochie who recommended that Britain look to the Pacific Ocean to expand its commerce. He particularly advocated a settlement of New South Wales that would open up new markets as well as absorb what he termed Scotland's "superabundant population." McConochie's "A Summary View" of 1818 gave the people of power in Scotland, especially the commercial interests, an awareness of the potential awaiting them in Australia.

By 1815, the Blue Mountains had been crossed and the vast interior revealed, an interior suited to sheep farming. The introduction of the merino sheep was to lay the foundation for the great Australian wool industry. The native Aborigines were ignored, especially in Tasmania, where they were hunted down and killed off for possession of their lands.

Thousands of convicts continued to arrive each year, and from 1820-60 new colonies were established. These new colonies included : South Australia, Van Diemen's Land (later named Tasmania); the Swan River Colony (later part of Western Australia); Victoria, transformed by the discovery of gold at Ballarat and Bendigo and Queensland, created in 1859 out of New South Wales. The rapid increase in the number of free settlers led to demands for some kind of self-government as had been granted to Canada. A Parliamentary Committee condemned the convict system and gradually each Australian colony banned their importation. In 1856 all four colonies were granted constitutions which gave them responsible self-government; Queensland and Western Australia soon followed suit.

New Zealand

In 1642 Dutch captain Abel Tasman discovered what he named Van Diemen's Land after the governor general of the Dutch East Indies. Four months later, Tasman discovered the islands of New Zealand. In 1769, Captain Cook arrived to charter the coasts and to discover that the country consisted of two main islands. He reported that they were fertile and well-suited for colonization. Gradual penetration by settlers, whalers, convicts and missionaries followed, and in 1813 the islands were proclaimed as dependencies of New South Wales under British protection. Mainly due to missionary activity anxious to protect the native Maori population from exploitation, in 1840 Captain William Hobson was sent out from London to negotiate with the Maori chiefs for the cessation of sovereignty to the Crown.

There were many land disputes between the Maori and the white settlers, but under the leadership of Sir George Grey, 1845-53, native lands and possessions received some kind of protection. The Maori had banded together in the face of increasing immigration from Britain and elsewhere, and for almost twelve years, a military police action against them eventually led to their being granted full citizenship rights, including fair prices for their land and equal treatment under the law. The Treaty of Waitingo was signed by many Maori chiefs, and though some resentments linger among the Maori people, who number about 12 percent of the country's population, it remains an important symbol for the equal partnership between the races that is the foundation of New Zealand's national identity.

New Zealand particularly owes a great debt to John Mackenzie, who had left Ardross, Ross-shire in 1860 to become a farmer in his new country. In Scotland he had developed a deep antagonism towards the power of the landlords to dispossess small farmers, a phenomenon that was destroying much of the traditional life of the Highlands. Witnessing the same kind of activity in New Zealand, Mackenzie entered politics to prevent it from happening in his adopted land. He was elected to Parliament in 1881 as a Liberal, becoming Minister of Lands and Immigration in 1891 under Prime Minister John Ballance, equally committed to protecting the small farmers against encroachment by the large landowners.

In 1892, Mackenzie won passage of the Lands for Settlement Act, opening up Crown land for leasing. An amendment in 1894 compelled the owners of large estates to sell parts of their lands. The same year, the Advances to Settlers Act greatly expanded the supply of credit available for small farmers. He also sponsored a plan to use the unemployed to clear and then lease land holdings. In addition to his sponsorship of legislation to aid the small farmers and break up the large estates (something that had never been achieved in his native Scotland), Mackenzie used his political clout to promote scientific methods of agriculture. Also to his credit was the laying of the foundation of the New Zealand ministry of agriculture. There were many more Scots of influence in the islands; they did much to make the country prosperous, as well as keeping it closely tied with and proud of its association with, Great Britain.

In l880, New Zealand began to export huge quantities of frozen mutton and lamb to Britain. By l902, this process began to flood the English market. Alas, Scots settlers stripped millions of acres of lush, sub-tropical forests to create their sheep pastures, and the ruinous effects of the subsequent soil erosion are still very much in evidence.

Canada

Captain James Cook had made three exploratory voyages to the West Coast of Canada between 1768 and 178l. Because the Chinese were very interested receiving fur in exchange for the tea, silks and porcelain in so much demand in Europe, the lucrative fur trade beckoned further English interest. In 1788, a group of English traders settled on Vancouver Island (discovered by Cook 10 years before). Spain still claimed the whole West Coast of America up to the boundary of what is now Alaska, but after a confrontation at Vancouver between the two countries, England presented an ultimatum to the Spanish whose lack of allies, and an effective navy, forced them to accept its terms. The Spanish recognition of British trading and fishing rights in the area opened the way for the establishment of British Columbia and the creation of a British North America stretching from ocean to ocean. There still remained the thorny question of the borders with the United States.

Many thousands of Empire loyalists left the United States after its independence to settle in Canada, mainly in the eastern Maritime Provinces. Many of the kilted soldiers who conquered Quebec for Britain had been Jacobites and followers of Prince Charles Edward. It has been suggested that their victory at Quebec was sweet revenge for France's general indifference to and failure to help the Jacobite cause.

Perhaps the Canadian province most closely connected with Scotland is Nova Scotia New Scotland. The land had been discovered by John Cabot in 1497 and claimed for Britain. The vast territory of Acadia was seized by Captain Argall in the name of James VI of Scotland (James I of England), in 1613. Part of this lovely land became the first permanent North American settlement north of Florida when Scotsman Sir William Alexander, friend of the king, was granted a charter in 1621. In his book describing the colony, Sir William deplored the ancient proclivity of Scotsmen to expend their energies in foreign wars and encouraged them instead, to send swarms of emigrants "like bees" to New Scotland. Over 300 years later, seven eighths of its people acknowledge British ancestry, mainly Scottish.

The West was still unknown territory. In 1809, Welsh-born fur trader David Thompson surveyed and mapped more than 1 million square miles of territory between Lake Superior and the Pacific. The War of 1812 seems to have begun over the impressment of US seamen, but frontiersmen on both sides were intent on territorial gains in many disputed areas.

The naval battles on Lake Erie showed only too well US interest north of the established borders. The Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 limited US and British naval forces on the Great Lakes. One year later, the US-Canadian border was established by a convention, making the 49th parallel the boundary to the Rockies while Thompson continued his survey. The two countries agreed to a joint occupation of the Northwest Territories for a 10-year period. The treaty was extended in 1828 for an indefinite period.

Back east however, a French Canadian rebellion against British rule, led by Papineau and Mackenzie took place in 1837. It was crushed after some desultory skirmishes. In 1839, in his Report on the Affairs of British North America, the Earl of Durham proposed a union of Upper and Lower Canada and the granting of self-government. Durham argued for putting the government of Canada into the hands of the Canadians. The Union Act was passed in July, 1840. Two years later, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty finalized the Maine-Canadian border.

Still in dispute was the boundary of the Oregon Territory, which received thousands of American immigrants after John Fremont mapped the Oregon Trail guided by Kit Carson. Other settlers from the US arrived in the Columbia River Valley, claimed by Britain. In 1846, the Oregon Treaty granted land south of the 49th parallel to the US, thus extending the frontier to the Pacific and granting British Columbia and Vancouver to Britain.

In 1847, Lord Elgin was made Governor of the newly united colony of Canada. By the 1860's, the fear of economic and political subordination to the US stimulated the movement to combine the eastern Maritime Provinces to the rest of Canada. In 1867 the British North America Act united Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the Dominion of Canada with its capital at Ottawa, first settled in 1827.

A Scots-Canadian, John Alexander Macdonald, who had led the federation movement became the first premier. Within six years, the Dominion was joined by Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island (Newfoundland joined in 1949). The Canadian Pacific Railway begun in 1880 then became a crucial link in the chain of confederation, making it possible for the addition of the two prairie provinces to join in 1905, Alberta and Saskatchewan. In June, 1880, the anthem "Oh Canada" was sung for the first time in Quebec; it received official English lyrics in 1908.

Other Maritime Provinces were also heavily influenced by Scottish settlers. Prince Edward Island was captured from the French by Lord Rollo, a Scottish Peer, in 1758 and parceled out among a number of landed proprietors, including many Scots. One was John Macdonald of Glenaladale, who conceived the idea of sending Highlanders out to Nova Scotia on a grand scale after Culloden.

New Brunswick also became the home for many Scots. In 1761, Fort Frederick was garrisoned by a Highland regiment. The surrounding lands surveyed by Captain Bruce in 1762 attracted many Scotch traders when William Davidson of Caithness arrived to settle two years later. Their numbers were swelled by the arrival of thousands of loyalists of Scottish origin, both during and after the American Revolution. A continual influx of immigrants from Scotland and Ulster meant that by 1843, there were over 30,000 Scots in New Brunswick.

A large group of Scots chiefly from Ross-shire arrived in 1802 on the Nephton to settle in the Quebec province. Many of their descendents have become prominent in the business, financial and religious activities of Montreal ever since. The great centre of the Scottish Loyalists, however, was not in Quebec, but in Upper Canada, the Glengarry Settlement in what is now Ontario. Here, in what was then wilderness, many of the early settlers had come from Tryon County in New York State. They were joined by many Highlanders during the Revolution, and after the War had ended, by a whole regiment of the "King's Royals."

Unemployment and suffering that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars caused the British government to reverse its former policies and to actively encourage emigration. In 1815, three loaded transports thus set sail from Greenock for Upper Canada: the Atlas, the Baptiste Merchant and the Borothy. After the end of the War of 1812, they were joined by many soldiers from the disbanded regiments. In 1816, further arrivals from Ulster helped swell the Scottish element in what was at first a military settlement. Many Perth families became prominent in both state and national governments.

The list of Scots who influenced Canada's history is indeed a long one. We can only mention a few more who contributed in so many different areas. Explorer Alexander Mackenzie completed the first known transcontinental crossing of America north of Mexico. John Sandfield Macdonald (1812-72) became Prime Minister of the province of Canada in 1862 and the first Prime Minister of Canada in 1867. Sir John Macdonald (1815-91), who emigrated in 1820, became the first Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada, leading the country through its period of early growth. Under his leadership, the dominion expanded to include Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. Sir Richard McBride (1870-1917) was Premier of British Columbia from 1903 to 1915, where he introduced the two-party system of government and worked tirelessly on behalf of the extension of the railroad.

The list seems endless. Immigrant Alexander Mackenzie was the first Liberal Prime Minister of Canada (1873-78). Another Scot, William Lyon Mackenzie, who led the revolt in Upper Canada against the Canadian government in 1858, became a symbol of Canadian radicalism. His rebellion dramatized the need for a reform of the country's outmoded constitution and led to the 1841 Confederation of Canadian provinces.

British India

In India, Robert Clive had defeated pro-French forces at Arcot in 1751 thus helping his East India Company to monopolize appointments, finances, land and power. The British victory led to the withdrawal of the French East India Company. Then, six years later, faced with native opposition, opportunist Clive defeated the local Nabob at Plassey to become virtual ruler of Bengal and opened up much of the country to further exploitation and control by the East India Company. When Clive was recalled to England, Warren Hastings took over to strengthen British interests in India and to establish a basic pattern of government that remained virtually unchanged for 100 years. Hastings was impeached by Parliament for enriching himself unduly in India. His trial, in which he refused to admit his mistakes, was closely studied in January 1999 by members of the US Senate in their own impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

India was regarded as the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire; over two thirds of the vast sub-continent was ruled by the East India Company. Its finances and its troops were used to protect British interests, even overthrowing native Indian princes. Much of the country, however, was chafed under English practices, there were simply too many differences in social and religious customs between the two countries. In 1857, simmering discontent flared into a great mutiny, when sections of the army of Bengal attacked British settlers.

After atrocities on both sides, the revolt was finally crushed by November 1858, the majority of Indians, having remained loyal. The British government then took over the administration of India from the East India Company and the British Governor General became the Viceroy of India to represent the Crown. A proclamation from the Queen then ensured the Indian people that their religious practices and customs would not be interfered with, that the titles of their Indian princes would be recognized and that in the future they would be able to participate in the government of their country.

At the same time, a network of roads, railroads and telegraphs (in addition to the ubiquitous civil servant) helped unite the sprawling subcontinent, and an educated, English speaking elite emerged to further westernize its peoples. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877 by Prime Minister Disraeli. India did not gain its independence until after the Second World War when it fought alongside other countries of the British Empire.

South Africa

South Africa came to the attention of Europeans when a Dutch ship, Haarlem, broke up at Table Bay in 1648 and the survivors, back in Holland, urged authorities to establish a settlement for provisioning their East India fleets. In 1652, a small group of Dutch settlers founded Cape Town. In 1815, Britain gained its long-desired "half-way house" on the sea route to India when the Dutch ceded the Cape of Good Hope. The British arrived in 1820 when the Albany settlers founded Grahamstown in the eastern coastal region. By 1826, Britain's Cape Colony had extended its borders to the Orange River. In 1834, Xhosa tribesmen revolted against Dutch encroachments on their lands but were defeated. The seeds of later conflict, however, involving British, Dutch and native Africans were sown.

Soon after Britain abolished slavery in its Empire in 1834, Dutch cattlemen in South Africa began their great Trek north and east of the Orange Rivers. In the next two years, some 10,000 Boers (Dutch colonists) moved to new lands beyond the Vaal River. They were to found Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1838, they were forced to defeat the Zulu at the Battle of Blood River in Natal. Britain then repulsed the Boers and made Natal a British colony in the pretense of protecting the natives. In 1854, the British withdrew from lands north of the Orange River and the Boers seized the Orange Free State. In 1856, Britain made Natal a Crown colony; and the Boers established the South African Republic (Transvaal) with Pretoria as its capital.

Events came to a head between Boers and Brits when diamonds were discovered in the Orange Free State. The British disregarded Boer claims to the territory, annexing the district to Cape Colony in 1871. Six years later, Britain annexed the South African Republic in violation of the Sand River Convention of 1852 that recognized the independence of the Transvaal. The Boers demanded a restoration of their independence and fully expected it from British Prime Minister Gladstone, always concerned with doing what was right and moral. His slowness, however, in getting a reluctant Parliament to act led to the Boers taking up arms. In December 1880 a Boer Republic independent of Britain's Cape Colony was proclaimed by Paul Kruger. After a British defeat at Majuba Hill a year later, the Treaty of Pretoria gave independence to the Boer Republic but under British suzerainty.

When gold was discovered in the Transvaal in 1886, the drive to annex the Boer republics began in earnest. Cecil Rhodes (who had founded the De Beers Mining Corporation in 1880) was determined that the riches being discovered in South Africa were not going to the Boer farmers. Rhodes dreamed of extending British rule in Africa, building a railroad from the Cape to Cairo but the Boers were in the way, controlling the key areas of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Using his great wealth, amassed in the diamond and gold fields, Rhodes with other imperialists established British colonies to the north of the Boer territories. Both Northern and Southern Rhodesia (settled by English workers for Rhodes's British South Africa Company who founded Salisbury in 1890) were granted charters by London.

The Outsiders (Uitlanders, who flocked to the gold fields soon began to outnumber the Boers (sometimes called Afrikaners), who took retaliatory measures which included excessive laws against the newcomers that led to Rhodes intervening in the abortive "Jameson Raid," late in 1895. When Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain tried to get Kruger to accept British supremacy, the attempt ended in yet another humiliation for his government. War began in 1899 as a result of British diplomatic pressure and a military build up on the borders of the Transvaal.

The highly mobile guerrilla units of the Boers were immediately successful in defeating much larger units of the British Army. Their big error, and one that may have cost them the war, was not to invade Natal, but to lay siege to a large British force penned up in Ladysmith, an error they repeated in the sieges of Kimberley and Mafeking (of Baden-Powell fame). Yet overwhelming Boer victories occurred when British commander Redvers Buller split up his forces.

Victory for Britain only came when Buller's replacement, Lord Roberts took the war into the enemy heartland, putting the Boers on the defensive. The capture of Bloemfontein and Pretoria effectively ended the gallant efforts of the Transvaal Field Army of the Boers, so successful in small engagements but heavily outgunned an out numbered in larger battles. Kruger went into exile and the two Boer republics were annexed to the British crown in 1900.

Yet the war dragged on. Under skilful leaders such as de Wet, Botha and Smuts, the Boers utilized commandos to strike at British lines of communication in determined efforts to fight to the last for their independence. The British resorted to a scorched earth policy to deny the Afrikaners food and supplies, burning their farms and crops and removing masses of farming families to concentration camps. Losses to attrition and demands from Liberals in the government at Westminster to stop the barbarism led to negotiations and the Peace of Vereenigning in May 1902. The Boers accepted British sovereignty with a promise of future self-government.

The war was costly for both sides, but especially the British. Deaths from disease greatly outnumbered those from bullets, and a series of defeats showed only too clearly the deficiencies in leadership, operational planning, training, equipping and supplying of troops that had been so evident in the Crimean War. The red jackets of English soldiers had made them easy targets for Boer marksmen on the high Veldt, and their lack of knowledge of how to survive on the land was to lead Baden-Powell to found the Boy Scout movement primarily as a form of early outdoor military training for youths born and bred in the unhealthy cities spawned by the industrial revolution.

Further Expansion of Empire

Britain's rise to a world power meant that she found interests everywhere. Not only was she now head of the self-governing colonies, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand (mostly settled by British newcomers in addition to the relatively tiny native populations); but also the vast Empire of India and a veritable host of dependent territories all over the world's oceans. Most of these had been acquired somehow to protect the merchants and traders of England, or areas in which their missionaries and explorers (mostly Scots such as self-promoting David Livingstone or English brave hearts such as Richard Burton and John Speke) had established their outposts.

Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister in 1874 with the idea of expanding the Empire and taking up the "White Man's Burden" (as Rudyard Kipling described it) to not only create trade and bring profit, but also to spread British ideas of democracy and law, as well as the Christian (and Protestant) religion. The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, offered a 5,000 mile shortcut from Britain to India and the east, to Australia and New Zealand and Disraeli persuaded his government to buy the khedive of Egypt's majority shares with a loan from the Rothschild banking house.

Because of Britain's control of Egypt it got involved in the war against the Mahdi, preaching a holy war in the Sudan (a dependency of Egypt), and the defeat of General Gordon at Khartoum. It was also Disraeli who backed British military intervention in the Transvaal in 1877, in the Zulu War two years later and in the ill-fated attempt to support the ruler of Afghanistan against Russia in 1878.

Britain had become involved in Afghanistan, that graveyard of so many foreign troops, when the expansion of Russian power in the Near and Middle East in the 1820's and 30's alarmed the East India Company. An attempt by the British government to control the mountainous land in 1839 by placing a pretender on the Afghan throne proved a complete disaster. A whole British army was destroyed, the puppet ruler assassinated and the British envoys murdered. Not much was learned from the experience.

In a further attempt to control the northwest approaches to India, another British invasion against the legitimate ruler (considered too friendly to Russia) took place in 1880 under Gladstone's government. The murder of the British Resident in Kabul brought another British force to remedy the situation under General Roberts. It managed to extricate itself after dealing with rival claimants to the throne. The Northwest frontier between the Punjab and Afghanistan was finally drawn up in 1901 under the British viceroy in India, Lord Curzon.

1901: The End of an Era

In 1897, Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee. She died in 1901. Britain had undergone enormous changes in the 60 years of her reign. It had become the workshop of the world, yet, to many of its inhabitants, the days of prosperity and optimism were over, the future was uncertain. Commerce was flourishing, industrial productivity was booming, exports were soaring, the nation led the world in manufacturing, the Empire had expanded across the globe. Yet there were many cracks in the wall and skeletons in the closet.

The great movement in population from the countryside to the towns and the urban squalor and poverty it created has been well-documented by such writers as Charles Dickens. Not even the Royal family could escape the dreaded cholera, rampant in London due to its tainted water supplies. Victoria's uncle, William IV's had two daughters die in infancy and disease was rampant in the squalid slums of the rapidly growing cities and manufacturing towns.

The constant refusal of landlords to improve their properties, install proper sanitary facilities and relieve the burden of high rents was matched by the indifference of the factory and mine owners to the terrible working conditions of those they employed. Those who did care about their workers, such as Robert Owen, were few and far between. The government was forced to step in; only law could change the intolerable conditions.

Reforms had tentatively begun under the Tory Party, which dominated in Parliament from 1812 to 1827 and under the dynamic Robert Peel as Home Office Minister. Peel reformed the criminal code, abolished the death penalty for over 100 offences, improved prison conditions and created the London Police force, the so-called "Bobbies."

It was only a beginning. Reforms were greatly needed in every sector of British society. Not everyone had benefited from the improvements in agriculture and industry. Increasing enclosures of land had thrown hundreds of thousands of small landowners onto the mercy of the Parish or drawn them into the fast-growing cities to replenish the stock of poor and unemployed. Lord Byron, a hereditary peer in the House of Lords was not the only one to speak out against the evils of industrialization. The poor had no representation in Parliament, for the system had long ago failed to represent anyone except a small privileged class. It was time for major changes.

In 1832, the Duke also had to acquiesce in the passing of the great Reform Bill of 1832 that, while doing nothing for the poorer classes, at long last recognized the right of the new manufacturing magnates and the middle-classes to govern England. It was a right long overdue, for the manufacturers and merchants had long been the chief factors in the economic life (and success) of England. Their agitation was their demand to be admitted into the elite of the ruling set. As the first formal change in electoral law, however, since an Act of 1430, it heralded further inevitable changes in the relationship between the old aristocratic oligarchy and the new men from the boroughs and manufacturing towns.

The British working classes were still without representation in Parliament: they turned to Chartism to redress their grievances. Early attempts at forming workers' unions had failed miserably, their leaders denounced as "gin-swilling degenerates" and their members expelled from their work places. The workers then turned to violence, forming groups such as the "Scotch Cattle" that destroyed property and threatened workers. The great depression of 1829, with its massive unemployment and wage cuts led to the great Merthyr Rising in South Wales, now heavily industrialized and influenced by many of its Irish immigrants. Order was brought into the area by the military and punishment was severe. Dic Penderyn was hanged for wounding a soldier, becoming a martyr for the Welsh workers.

The Chartists now began to recruit in earnest. The movement was named after the radical London reformer William Levett, who drafted a bill known as "The People's Charter" in May 1838. The Chartists hoped to bring about a democratic parliament and an enfranchised working class. They staged demonstrations in many towns and when the government refused to consider the six points of the Charter presented in June 1839 took to arms. The biggest demonstration took place in South Wales, at Newport, where thousands of marchers, coming into the town in columns from the coal-mining valleys, were shattered by well-directed volleys from a body of troops (chiefly recruited in Ireland) stationed in the Westgate Hotel.

The repeal of the infamous Corn Laws in 1846 and the consequent availability of cheap bread meant that people were less inclined to revolution. The Chartist Movement, faced with the might of the British military and a recalcitrant government, was fading by the late 1850's. In 1857 an Act declared that property qualifications were no longer necessary for a seat in Parliament, and the first great democratizing point of the Charter had been conceded by the government.

Not to be overlooked, was the introduction of canned foods, created for the Royal Navy, but sold commercially by the London firm of Donkin-Hall in 1814 that eventually helped alleviate shortages caused by bad harvests (the industry took advantage of the vacuum pan recently invented by Edward Howard). In 1867, the Great Reform Bill finally ended the Chartist Movement, for in that year, nearly one million voters were added to the register, nearly doubling the electorate. Forty-five new seats were created, and the vote given to many working men as well as tenants of small farms. From henceforth, governments had to heed the voice of the middle and lower classes; its resources had to be used to benefit all of society, not just the privileged few, and the State came to play a leading part in the lives of Britain's citizens.

The Continuing Problem of Ireland

One of the major cracks in Britain's armor was Ireland, a country so near and yet so far. A country that remained an enigma to most Britons, unable to understand the depth of nationalist (and Catholic) feeling that kept their neighboring island out of the mainstream of the Empire in so many ways. Even the revolutionary effects of the coming of industry to Britain had little effect upon Ireland, which remained rural and agricultural. Anglo-Irish relations had been bitter ever since the ruthless policies of Cromwell. The Ulster Plantations of James I, and the failure of the Jacobite rebellions had not helped matters. In 1791 Wolfe Tone and others established The Society of United Irishmen to follow the lead of the Americans to agitate for independence from Britain. A French fleet set sail for Ireland in December, 1793 to aid the Irish rebels. A mighty storm dispersed the ships and no invasion took place, but the French tried again in 1795, after the Battle of Vinegar Hill had broken Irish resistance to British rule. Once again, however, they were defeated; this time by troops under Cornwallis.

On January 1, 1801, the Act of Union of 1801 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, establishing one single Parliament. Primarily due to the obstinacy of George III, who did not wish to give full emancipation to Irish Catholics, the union had little chance of success. Catholics could vote in elections, but only for Protestant candidates, no Catholic could be a Member of Parliament, nor become a minister or servant of the Crown. The problem could not be continually put on the back burner by the Parliament in London; the work of Daniel O'Connell saw to that.

O'Connell gave voice to the political aspirations of the Irish people. In 1823, he founded the Catholic Association, to provide the funds for a national movement, and in 1823 a Catholic Relief Bill was passed by the Commons. Its rejection by the Lords, however, meant further agitation by O'Connell who returned unopposed from County Clare, and in 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Bill was pushed through Parliament by the Duke of Wellington over strong Tory opposition. The Bill opened up the right to sit in Parliament and to hold any public office (with few exceptions) to Catholics.

The Act settled one grievance, but it did nothing to settle the major one: that of the unpopular Union of 1801. O'Connell wanted nothing less than the restoration of an Irish Parliament. Despite the Irishman's eloquent oratory and strong support in Parliament, however, Robert Peel refused to budge on the question, and in time-honored fashion, sent troops to Ireland to quell disturbances. O'Connell's activities had him convicted for conspiracy, but the verdict was reversed on appeal. His influence waning, he died in 1847. Meanwhile, Peel's proposals to alleviate the problems in Ireland, were met with hostility from both Protestants and Catholics alike. A Bill introduced in 1845 to give Irish tenants the right to compensation for improvements to their holdings was opposed in Parliament. The Great Famine prevented its implementation for over thirty years.

There had been many warnings of the problems that could result for the Irish from their reliance on a single food crop. Potatoes had come to their country in 1586, planted on his estate near Cork by Sir Walter Raleigh. They seemed to be an admirable food to supplant wheat, so dependent upon the weather. They were easily grown, easily stored, easily cooked. In 1770, they were sold publicly in London. In less than one hundred years, their value as a food source had helped fuel a population increase in many parts of Europe but especially in Ireland, an increase that was most dramatic after 1800. By 1841, there were almost eight and a half million people in Ireland depending upon potatoes, but as early as 1830 William Cobbett had warned of over reliance on the crop.

In 1845, over one half the Irish potato crop, mostly grown on nearly 2 million acres in spade-cultivated plots of less than one acre, was lost to a fungus. The harvest failed, and the peasants saw their winter food supplies go to rot. A greater tragedy came with the second failure a year later. The British government did very little; it believed that economic forces must work themselves out with as little interference as possible and threw the burden of relief onto the local Irish Poor Law authorities. The repeal of the Corn Laws (passed to aid the British farmer) in 1846 did practically nothing to solve the problem.

For the majority of the Irish, the answer was starvation or emigration, and between 1848 and 1851 over a million left for the United States, taking with them their resentment of the British government and its feeble attempts to solve the mass starvation in Ireland. Unlike the Scots, bereft of their lands in the Great Clearances, they did not remain loyal to the Empire. Meanwhile, the "Problem of Ireland" intensified for successive British governments during the second half of the century.

In the 1860's a new force entered Irish politics, the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, founded in the USA, that became known as the Fenians. Its aims went a lot further than those of O'Connell, for it sought nothing less than complete separation from Britain and the setting up of an independent republic. It also promoted violence as a means to achieve its aims. In 1868, Gladstone promised to "pacify Ireland," and began a program of moderate reforms including the disestablishment of the Protestant Church of Ireland. In 1870, Gladstone enacted a Land Act to prevent eviction of tenants (except for non-payment of rent), and to give compensation for the improvements made to land or property. The only problem was that landlords consequently raised their rents (and could thus have an excuse for evictions). The Prime Minister responded to the resulting violence by the Coercion Acts that further antagonized the poor Irish. Gladstone's desire to give the Irish Catholics their own university was defeated by a narrow margin in Parliament.

Disraeli was not married to a Welsh girl as was Gladstone; he had less sympathy to the people of Ireland. During his 1874-80 ministry, the Irish Home Rule League was founded, to demand repeal of the Union of 1801 and the restoration of an Irish Parliament at Dublin. It was supported by 59 Home-Rulers elected to the Commons in 1874. When Parnell took over the reigns, the League became a powerful political force. In 1879, another movement began: the Irish National Land League was founded by Michael Davin to boycott landlords and to work for ownership of all Irish land by Irish peasant farmers. Like the Home Rule League, the INLL was backed by huge sums of money raised in the US by Fenian societies.

Between 1880 and 1895, at the height of its imperial powers, Britain suffered the humiliation of having four out of six governments being defeated as a direct result of Irish affairs. Parnells' power block of 80 or so Irish M.P.'s was a crucial factor. Determined to press for Home Rule for Ireland, their constant side switching in an attempt gain their aims led to the Irish Home Rule Crisis of 1886 which split the Liberal Party in two and kept the Conservatives in power. Unfortunately, despite their passage of a Land Purchase Act in 1891, the government implemented strict measures to try to improve law and order in Ireland, all of which were vigorously opposed by Parnell. After Parnell's disgrace in 1891 (over an affair with a divorcee), Gladstone continued to press for a Home Rule Bill. His final attempt passed the Commons in 1893 but was rejected by the stubborn, myopic House of Lords. Ireland's problems, and the inability of the English government to deal with them continued well into the next century, one in which the accomplishments of Britain began to be matched by other countries, and one in which its mighty empire disintegrated.