Victorian age Flashcards
1832
first reform bill
1837
Victoria becomes queen
1846
corn laws repealed
1851
the great exhibition in London
1859
Charles Darwin’s Origin of species published
historical self-consiousness of the Victorians
they were aware that they were living in a period of change
railway mania
railways change landschape and support commercial growth
reform bill
abolition of rotten boroughs and extension of the right to vote to lower middle classes
hungry forties
- laisser-faire economy
- financial crash of 1837 and famine
- unemployment and poverty
Chartists
demands further extension of the vote
repeal of the corn laws
- by Sir Robert Peel
- abolition of protection tariffs on imported grain
- stimulates free trade
condition of literature in England
- social criticism in the novels by Charles Dickens
- John Ruskin’s criticism of technological progress and laisser-faire economy
- Anthony Trollope’s novels of tolerance and equanimity
great exhibition
celebration of science and modern industry (in Crystal palace)
British empire
- atrocities, oppression, racism
- colonization
- basis of today’s globalisation of trade
- ideological basis for current nationalist Euroscepticism (Brexit)
the white man’s burden
protect the poor natives and advance civilization (Kipling)
utilitarianism
principle of maximasition of pleasure and minimalization of pain (Jeremny Bentham)
higher criticism
Bible as historical text
Darwin’s origin of species
revolutionary theory
married women’s property acts
allows married women to own property (1870-1908)
the subjection of women
radically questions traditional beliefs about the social role of life (John Stuart Mill)
Factory acts
abolished mine work for women, improved working conditions
