History of the United Kingdom
The history of the United Kingdom begins in 1707 with the Treaty of Union and Acts of Union. The core of the United Kingdom as a unified state came into being with the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, into a new unitary state called Great Britain.
The first decades were marked by Jacobite risings which ended with defeat for the Stuart cause at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In 1763, victory in the Seven Years' War led to the growth of the First British Empire. With defeat by the US, France and Spain in the War of American Independence, Great Britain lost its 13 American colonies and rebuilt a Second British Empire based in Asia and Africa. Politically the central event was the French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath from 1793 to 1815, which British elites saw as a profound threat, and worked energetically to form multiple coalitions that finally defeated Napoleon in 1815. The Acts of Union 1800 added the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Tories, who came to power in 1783, remained in power until 1830. Forces of reform opened decades of political reform that broadened the ballot, and opened the economy to free trade. The outstanding political leaders of the 19th century included Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone, and Salisbury. Culturally, the Victorian era was a time of prosperity and dominant middle-class virtues when Britain dominated the world economy and maintained a generally peaceful century from 1815 to 1914. The First World War, with Britain in alliance with France, Russia and the US, was a furious but ultimately successful total war with Germany. The resulting League of Nations was a favourite project in Interwar Britain. In 1922, 26 counties of Ireland seceded to become the Irish Free State; a day later, Northern Ireland seceded from the Free State and returned to the United Kingdom. In 1927, the United Kingdom changed its formal title to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to Britain, United Kingdom or UK. While the Empire remained strong, as did the London financial markets, the British industrial base began to slip behind Germany and the US. Sentiments for peace were so strong that the nation supported appeasement of Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, until the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 started the Second World War. In the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the US joined the UK as the main Allied powers.
After the war, Britain was no longer a military or economic superpower, as seen in the Suez Crisis of 1956. Britain granted independence to almost all its possessions. The new states typically joined the Commonwealth of Nations. The postwar years saw great hardships, alleviated somewhat by large-scale financial aid from the US. Prosperity returned in the 1950s. Meanwhile, from 1945 to 1950, the Labour Party built a welfare state, nationalised many industries, and created the National Health Service. The UK took a strong stand against Communist expansion after 1945, playing a major role in the Cold War and the formation of NATO as an anti-Soviet military alliance with West Germany, France, the US, Italy, Canada and smaller countries. The UK has been a leading member of the United Nations since its founding, as well as other international organisations. In the 1990s, neoliberalism led to the privatisation of nationalised industries and significant deregulation of business affairs. London's status as a world financial hub grew. Since the 1990s, large-scale devolution movements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have decentralised political decision-making. Britain has moved back and forth on its economic relationships with Western Europe. It joined the European Economic Community in 1973, thereby weakening economic ties with its Commonwealth. However, the Brexit referendum in 2016 committed the UK to leave the European Union, which it did in 2020.
18th century
Birth of the Union
The Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707, as a result of the political union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland under the Treaty of Union. This combined the two kingdoms into a single kingdom and merged the two parliaments into a single parliament of Great Britain. Queen Anne became the first monarch of the new Great Britain. Although now a single kingdom, certain institutions of Scotland and England remained separate, such as Scottish and English law; and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Anglican Church of England. England and Scotland each continued to have their own system of education.Meanwhile, the War of the Spanish Succession against France was underway. It see-sawed back and forth until the treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt ended the war. Historian G. M. Trevelyan argues:
Hanoverian kings
The Stuart line died with Anne in 1714, although a die-hard faction with French support supported pretenders. The Elector of Hanover became king as George I. He paid more attention to Hanover and surrounded himself with Germans, making him an unpopular king. He did, however, build up the army and created a more stable political system in Britain and helped bring peace to northern Europe. Jacobite factions seeking a Stuart restoration remained strong; they instigated a revolt in 1715–1716. The son of James II planned to invade England, but before he could do so, John Erskine, Earl of Mar, launched an invasion from Scotland, which was easily defeated.George II enhanced the stability of the constitutional system, with a government run by Robert Walpole during the period 1730–42. He built up the First British Empire, strengthening the colonies in the Caribbean and North America. In coalition with the rising power Prussia, the United Kingdom defeated France in the Seven Years' War, and won full control of Canada.
George III never visited Hanover, and spoke English as his first language. Reviled by Americans as a tyrant and the instigator of the American War of Independence, he was often insane after 1788, and his eldest son served as regent. He was the last king to dominate government and politics, and his long reign is noted for losing the first British Empire in the American Revolutionary War. The reign was notable for the building of a second empire based in India, Asia and Africa, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that made Britain an economic powerhouse, and the life and death struggle with the French, in the French Revolutionary Wars, which ended inconclusively with a short truce, and the epic Napoleonic Wars, which ended with the decisive defeat of Napoleon.
South Sea Bubble
Entrepreneurs extended the range of their business around the globe. The South Sea Bubble was a business enterprise that exploded in scandal. The South Sea Company was a joint-stock company in London. Its ostensible object was to grant trade monopolies in South America; but its actual purpose was to renegotiate previous high-interest government loans amounting to £31 million through market manipulation and speculation. It raised money four times in 1720 by issuing stock, which was purchased by about 8,000 investors. The share price kept increasing, from £130 a share to £1,000, with insiders making huge paper profits. The Bubble collapsed overnight, ruining speculators. Investigations showed bribes had reached into high places—even to the king. Robert Walpole wound it down with minimal political and economic damage.Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole is now generally regarded as the first Prime Minister, from, 1721–42. The term was applied to him by friends and foes alike by 1727. Historian Clayton Roberts summarizes his new functions:Moralism and hypocrisy
Hypocrisy became a major topic in political history in the early 18th century. The Toleration Act 1688 allowed for rights for religious minorities, but Protestant Nonconformists were still deprived of important rights, such as the right to hold office. Nonconformists who wanted to hold office ostentatiously took the Anglican sacrament once a year to avoid the restrictions. High Church Anglicans were outraged, and outlawed "occasional conformity" with the Occasional Conformity Act 1711. Using sermons, speeches, and pamphlet wars, high churchmen and Nonconformists attacked their opponents as insincere and hypocritical, as well as dangerously zealous. Historian Mark Knights argues that by its ferocity, the debate may have led to more temperate and less hypercharged political discourse. "Occasional conformity" was restored by the Whigs when they returned to power in 1719.English author Bernard Mandeville's famous "The Fable of the Bees" explored the nature of hypocrisy in contemporary European society. He argued that the efforts of self-seeking entrepreneurs are the basis of emerging commercial and industrial society, a line of thought that influenced Adam Smith and 19th-century Utilitarianism. A tension arose between these two approaches concerning the relative power of norms and interests, the relationship between motives and behaviour, and the historical variability of human cultures.
From around 1750 to 1850, Whig aristocrats in England boasted of their special benevolence for the common people. They claimed to be guiding reform initiatives to prevent the discontent that caused instability and revolution across Europe. However Tory and radical critics accused the Whigs of hypocrisy—alleging they were deliberately using the slogans of reform and democracy to boost themselves into power. Historian L.G. Mitchell defends the Whigs, pointing out that thanks to them radicals always had friends at the centre of the elite, and thus did not feel as marginalised as in most of Europe. Meanwhile, a stream of observers from the Continent commented on the British political culture. Liberal and radical observers noted the servility of the lower classes, the obsession everyone had with rank and title, the extravagance of the aristocracy, and a pervasive hypocrisy that extended into such areas as social reform. There were not so many conservative visitors. They praised the stability of English society, its ancient constitution, and reverence for the past; they ignored the negative effects of industrialisation.
Historians have explored crimes and vices of England's upper classes, especially duelling, suicide, adultery and gambling. They were tolerated by the same courts that executed thousands of poor men for lesser offenses. No aristocrat was punished for killing someone in a duel. However the emerging popular press specialised in sensationalistic stories about upper-class vice.